GODLY AUDIENCES - TAKAOMI SHISHIMARU

[divus]

Comments

[bakaomi]

[ in a hushed whisper, ]

The elves...?

[divus]

I always thought they made the toys, too, but according to North they don't do much and he just lets them think they have important jobs. [Shrug.

Jack is awesome at distractions.]

[bakaomi]

[ jack is right and the easiest way to distract taka is by blowing his mind with santa facts ]

The yetis...

[divus]

Make the toys, guard the pole and have kicked me out dozens of time whenever I tried breaking into the workshop. Usually nice guys though.

[bakaomi]

Are they getting compensated for this?

[divus]

I never thought to ask. Pretty sure they're getting free room and board and their meals are covered. They seem to like their job just fine.

[bakaomi]

[ he is

in deep thought about yetis ]

[divus]

[That's fine, he'll wait. He's probably laughing a little, but he'll wait.]

[bakaomi]

[ and what he settles on is, ]

Wait. You tried to break into the North Pole?

[divus]

Oh yeah, multiple times. I tried for years.

[bakaomi]

...

You weren't trying to like, rob him were you...?

[divus]

What? No! I mean not really, I just wanted to see what it was like on the inside. That's the kind of thing that would've landed me on the naughty list if I wasn't already on it.

[bakaomi]

[ deadpan ]

You're on the naughty list? Whaaaaat.

[divus]

Ha. Ha. [He just pushes at Taka's head because don't be a shit, except your god's kind of a shit so maybe that works out.] According to North I held the record. All the more reason I couldn't figure out why they wanted to make me a Guardian in the first place.

[bakaomi]

Hmm... it's kind of obvious to me, but I guess you probably wouldn't have been able to see it back then.

[divus]

...to be fair? I wasn't the same person I am now as I was back then. There's a reason the other Guardians and I didn't get along right away.

[...] Working with them and experiencing some of the things that happened made it possible to start taking it seriously. Like the potential was there and I didn't have it for a long time.

[bakaomi]

... so he wanted to give you the chance to grow into the position.

[divus]

He was really insistent about it because the Man in the Moon told him it was true. I'd spent the last 300 years trying to get the guy to talk to me, so I didn't really have a choice.

[...but.] I think they all did, except maybe Bunny but that's not too surprising. It was kind of overwhelming to have that many people trust me suddenly when I was busy thinking of all of the ways I could screw up.

[Is there a reason he's telling Taka all of this now? Maybe.]

[bakaomi]

[ jack stop turning this into a lesson ]

... I guess that would be stressful....

[divus]

A little, but at the same time I found out I had some pretty sweet powers I didn't know I could tap into.

...North never really let me dwell on stuff either. [Ah. The lesson part.] I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing considering how everything turned out before the ascension.

[bakaomi]

[ ... ah ]

But what do you think, even if you're not sure?

[divus]

Probably not gonna be an answer you'll like, but I think I wish he would have. I know why I did what I did, and maybe if things had been different I wouldn't have screwed everything up for them. But if I didn't screw everything up, I might be playing this game differently, too.

So. It's hard to say. I wish I had more time to talk to him, but we had other things happening at the same time. Moving from one thing to the next. [A wave a hand.] Sort of like this place.

[bakaomi]

... mm. It's hard to stay focused on what happened last week when there's so much happening in the current one, and then in the next.

[ it somehow feels like a long time and a very short amount of time at the same time. ]

You guys really can't ever see them again?

[divus]

There's that, too. And eventually it builds up that when things finally stop...not that great. [He shrugs.

...] I don't know. We're committed to this now and as far as I know, we can maybe check in but I'm not sure about ever being able to talk to them again or anything like that.

[bakaomi]

...

If you could, do you know what you would say to them?