ma·ni·a /ËmÄnÄÉ '/ - mental illness marked by periods of great excitement, euphoria, delusions, and overactivity. - an excessive enthusiasm or desire; an obsession. ~~~ ((Independent RP blog for an alternate Chen, who overthrew her master and has lost herself to her obsession with black magic. Sanity not included.))
Contrary to far too many beliefs, the process of dominance involves two very important parts: action, and inaction. Everyone thinks about the action part, as they should - action is fun. Action is exciting. Action was quick, intense, and if done correctly, extremely satisfying.
There was much squawking and general noise on Youkai Mountain as a tunnel on the south slope all but exploded into a gout of flame the likes of which had not seen for several millennia⊠Rather than alarm though, the Karasu were having a field day! They rode the wonderful thermals, gabbered amongst themselves about possible causes, and batted aside the evil spirits that rose to bother them. The newspapers would all feature various pictures of the aftermath, complete with all the wild speculation one could ask for, but all that printing and writing would delay the distribution to the point of offering absolutely zero warning to the Human village.
Not that the Tengu overly cared about that, but whatever⊠Not their job to safeguard the lowlands, right?
Know whoâs job that was? Mufugginâ Hakurei miko, thatâs who.
Fortunately Chen's repitoir of resources was not at all thrown off in response to this little hitch here in her agenda, and a handy dandy projection outlet was still nice and operational near the human village, giving a half decent vantage point to observe the chaos unfolding there.
Did she care at all what happened down there? Nope. Never had. Humans were even less of her concern than they normally would be for someone of her position. No no, she was looking for something still sorta human but also not. And given that she was the only one that seemed competent for miles compared to panicking villagers, she wasn't hard to spot. Track? A bit harder. But she was spotted, and then lost in a vague that way direction.
Mountain. Of course she'd go there. Why wouldn't she? The mountain was vomitting fire. Of course she'd start there.
So Chen did her best to vacate the scene of the crime, bouncing through at least half a dozen cleared spots where she had set up camps to confiscate materials from lesser youkai. She stayed low and hugged the underbrush as she took a very wide way around back to the Hakurei shrine, swan-diving straight into the dead geyser in the back and descending down the windy blowhole to the proper scene of the crime.
This was fine, this was all fine. She'd planned for this. Granted she didn't expect this, but it was fine, this was all fine. Just had to work this a certain way, just had to-
"-ng way from home if yo- hey! HEY!"
Ugh. Yes, this was why she usually cheated down here. This is stupid. No time for-
"Think you can just breeze past me like you're hot shit?! You are dead, you're fucking dead!"
...yes, well. Would just work through this and keep going. Not like it'd take too long...even if she did suck at danmaku. Not enough practice. Chen didn't duel much.
Meanwhile, this would be the first time to memory that Chen had ever had to dodge a bridge throwing chunks of itself at her. Also the first time she'd unwittingly attempted to fuse by the face with a support beam. So that was interesting.
Chen. Chen, darling. Bubala; listen to Derek for a second. WAi u do dis? Why you gotta go and make holes? Babby boid don't like holes. You dun fucked up. You dun fucked up bad.
Tell Chen that I am coming through numerous layers of the veil of space and time over the course of several decades within my perception, just so I can ground her and make sure she doesn't get dinner tonight.
Contrary to far too many beliefs, the process of dominance involves two very important parts: action, and inaction. Everyone thinks about the action part, as they should - action is fun. Action is exciting. Action was quick, intense, and if done correctly, extremely satisfying.
But that was where the other side of the coin came in.Â
For ever second of action, any number of hours of inaction was necessary. Everything added more and more time between when you began to plot and when you finally finished what you accomplished, if it could ever truly be finished at all. For every second spent doing something, spend untold hours sitting, plotting, scheming, organizing, contemplating, speculating, compensating, and just plain waiting for the right time to come. The more precise your end goal, the more meaningful your every action, the more ends that need meeting, the more variables to consider, the greater the scale of your project...everything just added more and more time till you could be finished.
Chen had a plan. It was a very big plan, with a very lofty goal. Because of this, she had been waiting for a very, very long time. Maybe a little bit too long. Longer than any sane person could reasonably expect to bide. Longer than anyoneâs patience could cover.
However, if your sense of time was so askew that you were nay unaware of its passage, you canât very well grow restless from hours, weeks, months, years, decades of inactivity, now can you?
Lunacy is effective. It meets many ends, has many perks, opens many doors. Chen knew. This was intended. Everything was intended. It always had been.
And in this particular case, all that waiting had potentially paid off. Opportunity had presented itself at last. And no one would see it, because there was literally no light at all to see with.Â
It was underground. Far underground. Chen had projected and probed via several means, but this was her first time actually entering the cavern for herself. Invisible around her was a yawning cavern approximately 20 meters wide, slightly circular except for the farthest wall, which was flat and precisely shaped as though by the hand of a craftsman. In the other direction, a narrower tunnel about 5 meters wide stretched out forÂ
Engraved in the wall was a tableau of exotic yet simple inscriptions, some only surface-deep, others carved deep into the stone itself and weaving into yet more symbols and shapes, forming a three-dimensional spell circle not out of compressed mana, but solid stone. Some parts were hidden completely behind the wall itself, where no one could have been able to reach to carve them. Other parts were completely invisible and hanging slightly below the visible spectrum - wires of magic slotted neatly behind the scenes, where they were out of the way.
It wasnât complicated. Not in its components, anyway; the most complex part of it was its size, and the amount of parts linking together. It was about twenty individual parts of many spells all mingled together, ending in an activation marker sitting obediently inside the artificial cave it had been carved from. A perfectly square hole was the only flaw in the mechanism - the one and only breach in the circuit. An un-pulled trigger to a loaded gun.
She couldnât see, but Chen knew exactly where the hole was. A perfect square of stone fit into the perfect gap in the stone, and the circuit closed. The mechanism activated. The glyphs glowed to light, and the wall rapidly began to melt itself away like to an invisible mortar dabbed with acid was being pressed into it. And it just kept pressing, and pressing, and pressing, digging a tunnel longer and longer...
And then she got the hell out of dodge, because standing in this chamber was going to be an extremely bad idea very soon.
About an hour later, Chireiden would awaken to a most violent of alarms: the sound of shattering stone and the roar of crashing debris, along with the deafening boom and fire.
A thin column of fire from within one of the furnaces blasted up taller than it had ever done - not a set of licking tongues, but a single, condensed beam of indescribably hot and wicked plasma. It blasted a hole through the ceiling of the furnace chambers, straight through the abandoned Hellâs stone upper limits, and then proceeded to start tunneling its way straight upwards, melting and vaporizing rock as fire splashed across the cavern ceiling and ate its way straight through the earth like water through dust. Were the denizens of this area anything less than residents of Hell, they might find the constant dribbling of magma coming down from the ceiling to be rather concerning indeed. Honestly it was the rubble that was the most disruptive, as it made quite a mess and kicked up clouds where they landed, obstructing vision and making assessment of what was even happening all the more difficult. It probably didnât help that parts of the palace may have been cut off by collapsed hallways rattled by the vibrations of Hellâs fire being funneled straight up through the old furnace.
It probably would have kept burrowing its way straight up, had it not found an opening first: a river fed out of a tunnel in youkai mountain, pointed perilously in the direction of the Human Village.
The fire itself that was belched out of the cave like flames from a dragonâs throat, cooking fish alive and sending plumes of steam into the atmosphere...a little conspicuous, honestly. But the mountain was kind of far away. The heat that might have slowly radiated over to the village? Also a little worrisome, but nothing too bad, it was just a little heat wave.
The wicked spirits that started to dart through the area like bats hunting in the night? That was probably worth some attention. Because evil little skulls darting around and knocking stuff over and hissing at people that freaked the fuck out in the streets would probably get more than a little talk in the extremely near future.
Incident-worthy? Yes. Yes it was. And someone was probably going to be searching for butts that deserved kicking any minute now.
ofgapsandyakumo replied to your post:âWhatâs it like being a slave and liking it?ââŠ
âAnd how can you be sure you arenât? Maybe youâre just altered to feel like you are. Can you prove anything? Can you prove youâre real? Do you KNOW that you are you?â Suddenly focused Chen is suddenly very focused. And kind of pushy.
âOf course I donât. But you know what? Thatâs the great thing about being a cat, you know? I donât have to think about all this deep, human, philosophy type crap. As long as Iâm comfortable with how my life is, who cares if I can prove it or not?â Good luck, Chen.
Define public in a place consisting mainly of wilderness. Gensokyo is sort of a nature reserve.
(Eh. I give it a 3. Itâs weird but naked to a cat isnât really a thing. She isnât really sure why she or anyone else wears clothes really, but doesnât question it much.)
(I also imagine youkai to be extremely complacent. I mean theyâve got thousands of years of life to look forward to and theyâre clearly solitary in nature; they put something off for a while and the next thing you know itâs been 20 years and that one little thing has gone untouched this whole time, and theyâre as likely to keep putting it off too. Theyâre very quick to settle with what they have and arenât ambitious in the slightest, save for the odd case of, say, emotional outburst or what have you, or the nature of the youkai itself. Or something food-related.
This probably makes them look as lazy as  hell but in reality theyâre just satisfied creatures naturally. Theyâre alive and theyâre doing their job and thatâs all they really need out of life.)
(Chen was never that great at danmaku, and she lost practice for a while. When trying to salvage some sort of combat technique, she actually cheats - uses magic to project her danmaku in places where they shouldnât normally - but disguises this in a style appropriate for the kinds of bullets she uses. She uses tiny micro-spell circles mounted on top of another spell that violently and rapidly shoves the first spell out, around, and behind the opponent. The danmaku it fires arenât as good as ones launched directly by her, but duels arenât really about efficiency or power, just style and technique. Chenâs technique involves keeping the opponent on edge at all times and denying them any kind of safety while bombarding them with select and randomly moving bullets from every angle.
So while itâs technically cheating, and technically in violation of the spellcard rules, itâs not something you would notice right away unless you were a versed magician yourself. Chenâs track record in duels isnât that impressive anyways.)
âI burned something like that once. You wouldnât think it would burn all that well, but it does! Donât breathe it though. You wonât like, die, but um, Iâm like, 90% sure youâll probably die.â
Will eat literally anything without being bribed, you just have to ask. Was funny until she attempted to eat a lightbulb and it shattered, and everyone freaked out and made her stop. They donât tell her to eat stuff very often anymore.
Dresses in the same general type of clothing; always wears her jacket, even in summer
Tends to avoid eye contact
Seems clueless until something random comes up and suddenly is extremely informed and practiced on that specific thing; hard to pry off that topic afterward
Not sure if autistic or just extremely weird
Tends to receive the inverse grades as the rest of the class; flunks easy stuff and aces hard stuff
Rumor has it that someone saw her have a seizure once but nobody can confirm this
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