The Day of Thunder

[Nozomi]

"I don't want people to become reliant on it. That breath was a powerful tool, but its overuse could be very much a replacement for their own efforts, and might prove a problem." Look, giving people void through their chi just screamed problems if you overused it. She didn't like to use that more than once a day for people as a rule. It was too likely to prove a problem.

She frowned and considered. "One of the Imperials, a young woman I think is tied to Shiba. She was worried that her own fate would not allow her to help. I suspect she could not be a Thunder, but how mutable are the rules in this?" She wasn't admitting that this was a way she herself could find out, since she was certain that destiny weighed heavily on herself as well.

[Shinsei]

He ran a hand down his face. "The last two events give little indication of how mutable the rules may be. The Ogres had a great immortal hero who went one on one with their Champion. The Five Peoples sent one of each. With us... nine, one from each Clan, but what does that mean?"

[Nozomi]

"It means that there will be nine who are sent," she said in the tone of someone who had no clue what the past was. "And those nine will be who needs to be there. And if it is based on the nine clans? Let us say that the impossible and the most awful happens, and everyone of great potential suddenly dies because of an assassin's blade?"

She shrugged. "It might be time to adopt someone into the family. Maybe that moment was meant to be the one where they were suddenly a member of the Ajing line, for example." Their daimyo was, after all, here.

[Shinsei]

"I wonder if that would work, without the long bonds of loyalty?" He wondered, looking up at the sky for a moment.

[Nozomi]

"Is it the bonds of loyalty that matters, the tie of the family to a clan, or what is it that truly matters? Maybe it is something neither you nor I could possibly imagine. What would have happened those years ago, if the young girl had died?" She didn't name Matsu. They both knew she was here. "Another would have risen. Fate seems to hate a vacuum, and prophecies can be re-interpreted."

[Shinsei]

He gave her a tired smile. "How grim. True, though."

"We know that it happens every one thousand years, give or take a few. We know that it is happening now - this is it, without a doubt. The concentrated assault on their sleep is proof enough of that. We know that it is a always a fight between one Champion of Jigoku, and one or more Champions of Ningen-do... but never a large amount. Never an army. Just those who represent the group it targets."

"I wonder if it could be reinterpreted."

[Nozomi]

"One of us has to be the gloomy one," she offered with a small wink. She almost sounded affectionate, or at least as affectionate as she could get away with at a time like this.

"It sounds as if it leaves much room for the possibilities. Perhaps Ningen-Do likes to leave options, just in case Jigoku gets clever one day? Assuming a world itself has a personality and a plan that is. Does it?"

[Shinsei]

He smiled at that, desperately tired but also warm. "I suppose that makes sense. Most realms have some sort of consciousness. It's most obvious with Jigoku's maliciousness. Options does seem like the very definition of Ningen-do, doesn't it? A place with a little of everything the other realms have, put on a timer, because its control is mortality."

[Nozomi]

"Control?" she said, quirking her head a little bit. "Oh, do you mean that the fact that all of us are mortal somehow makes us more under the control of this world? But the kami aren't exactly mortal are they?" Well, Hantei probably was at this point because of what he'd done to sacrifice his golden light.

[Shinsei]

He nodded. "They are, though. They may not age, but they are vulnerable to death, disease, injury... all of those vulnerabilities of we residents of Ningen-do." He looked toward her. "They really were gods before. Their behavior has become more human, as well, away from the control of Tengoku."

[Nozomi]

"In heaven, they are not subject to that then." Ok, that made a certain amount of sense. Why they were so much more than mortal here in the basic sense, and yet still under its curse and touch. "Hmmmm... Is Ningen-do's control greater than Jigoku's? We are here, after all."

"Or put another way... can you make hell mortal?"