10 – Shame of Fools
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Chapter 10!

-wutaaaanonononoletmeoffletmeoff!

 

Yes!” Taiko gasped, briefly getting a hold of himself. “They are the Fist and the Rod, Prominence!” he said, before Justin’s dumbfounded expression reduced him to laughter again.

“You people have demon children just – just- wandering around on the streets here!?”

“Ahahaaha, no, P-Prominence; a-as a rule, they s-stay sealed in their Shrines, dozing.” Taiko wiped his eyes with the other sleeve. “And few of them are childlike; most are much larger and more monstrous. Their Hokyukko bind and supervise them, sending them out as needed to deal with serious emergencies – evil entities, natural disasters; large earthquakes or fires. In the very old days, centuries ago, they were used for Ribe’s defense against invasions and raids. But they haven’t been needed for those duties for a long time.”

“Do you know why they were there – oh. My. Go-hhoodness.” Justin buried his face in his hands again. “They were there for me, weren’t they?” he mumbled into his palms. “I’m not being – hubristic, right?”

“I believe they were, Prominence, so no, I believe you aren’t.”

Why?

“To those with the skills and powers to sense such things, Prominence, you are a very intense source of unnatural energies. More than just supernatural; inhuman. Alien. The politest names we have for such beings are ‘Voidspawn’ or the technical term ‘Xenopote’. Furthermore, your. . .presence. . .is exceptionally strong. Cataclysmically so, one could say.”

A horrible suspicion began to form in Justin’s mind. Evil entities. Natural disasters. “I – at the – I came here from the Dawn Salon; the Damo had this blue crystal lightsource – he was studying me - did that – did they – oh no. No. No. Please, no.”

“That sounds like a Stellar Lamp, Prominence; a magical tool for detecting beings with your nature, among other uses.”

It was Justin’s turn to topple over onto his side in a fetal position. In his case, however, he was moaning with shame and embarrassment. His face felt hot as a coal. Every sentence, every turn of phrase from his interview with Madame Shinbi flashed through his mind.

He’d just been trying to hide his unearthly origins while being as genuinely honest and polite as he could. To appear as a relatively normal foreigner, maybe a tad awkward, his language stilted from trying to feel his way around unfamiliar customs. Get in, get a fair price, get out. A room, a guide, a plan past the next day’s shelter and meals.

But they’d known. And thought he was some kind of, of eldritch abomination from beyond the stars. With immense power, and mimicking human form.

From that point of view – what he’d said, the way he’d put some things, his phrasing – they could have taken the most ridiculous double meanings -

Oh god, he thought, cringing even harder. I must have come across as the ultimate Lovecraftian  what was the word – chuunibyou? Yes - how did Derek put it, that one time?

Like the chuuniest cthulhuoid chuuni that ever cthulhuly chuuned a chuuni chuun of cthulhuoid chuuns. Oh, god!

Pretty much! whispered Sol’s voice in his ears, cold, like a bracing dawn breeze, but also carrying the promise of coming warmth. As I said - a signally egregious example.

Not helping! Justin thought back.

Not trying to help! Sol replied. You still don’t need it.

You keep saying that – oh god, is that a warning!? Am I going to!?

That will depend on you. I will offer you some advice, though. No obligation.

I’ll take it, Justin thought, desperately.

If you don’t settle down and get to rowing, you’re going to be late to the same meeting I showed up to facilitate.

The rustle of wind in his ears faded away.

Right. Right. Okay. Nothing’s actually broken, here. Taiko won’t say anything. Tomu’s chugging some Milk of Amnesia. So – as long as the Shinbis never find out that I didn’t know that they knew what I was – am – except if I had known they knew, I would have. . .um. . .

- uhhh. . .where was I going with that? Oh. Yeah. Hiding how -

- oh.

No. Don’t do that, Justin. Respect your father. Honor his memory.

A hot day. Hotter tears, burning his eyes. His father’s voice; raspy, tired, worn out from another hard day’s work, with more left to do at home. But still, the time to sit beside him, put a hand on his back, rubbing gently.

Son. . .did I raise you to run from things? To hide? To lie? You don’t know better than the truth. You can’t. You’re not - separate from the world, looking down on it, in charge of it. That’s just – vanity; false pride, to cover up your fear. You’re only in charge of you. You’re part of the world, like I am; like everyone and everything else. And that means lying to the worlis lying to yourselfand that’s always where things start going wrong in life, son. Always.

Justin scrubbed his face and sat up. Taiko was sitting cross-legged, watching him, the inner edges of his steepled hands pressed against his smile.

“Screw it,” Justin said. “Back on the horse. How long until lunch service at the Silver Palace? And enough with the ‘Prominence’ already.”

“Yes, O Blessed -”

All of it, Taiko. How do you usually address the non-laity with respect? Use that.”

“A lunch appointment at the Palace would likely be scheduled no sooner than two hours from now -”

- was what Justin understood, but what he actually heard was ‘than the last third of the Heron’, and he made a mental note to follow up on it -

“- address, would ‘Brother’ be acceptable?” Taiko finished asking as Justin refocused on the man. “The range of applicable meanings is broad enough that no one would find it noteworthy.”

“It’ll do,” Justin said. “Next. I don’t want to bumble around the City scaring the crap out of anybody who can sense me. Can we do something about that?”

“Not. . .easily, Brother. But I feel I have misled you regarding the prevalence of such persons. They are far from common. Only higher clergy such as myself, ranked Masters in the magical Schools, and singularly sensitive mystics are at all likely to perceive your. . .emanations. And even then, unless they were actively searching, or within. . .hmm. . .several body lengths, they would not casually notice.”

“What does ‘not easily’ mean, exactly?”

“Several priests or spellcasters accompanying you while keeping a mobile barrier active, which would include the constant recitation of sutras or incantations. . .there are enchanted objects than can provide similar effects, but they would not be for sale, and borrowing them would require both negotiations and costly favors. . .or - and I only mention this for completeness’s sake – a binding by a Hyokokku -”

“Never mind, then. Can you at least assign someone to accompany me and explain the situation, if necessary?”

“Will I do? I’m entirely at your service, you know,” Taiko said. “Not to suggest anything improper, Brother, but I have the rest of my life free for you. I fully expected to die today, like Seiso Hou out at reception, and the rest of the clergy stationed here in the Temple.”

What!?

“We were expecting you, Brother; due to the Shinbi warning us, but we didn’t know what you truly were. Not until I could examine you myself. And then of course I realized that the Dawn had Blessed you, Brother, which cast a very different light on the matter.”

Justin looked around the room. “This was a setup!?

“Yes, Brother, but at the last moment, Tomu there signaled us that he’d assessed you as probably non-malign, by bringing you in through the West gate. We’d cleared out both these western offices and those to the North, including one of the Vaults, to, er, receive you. And then you didn’t react to the barriers going up once you’d entered, and, er. . .here we are.”

Justin’s eyes flickered around the room again, this time in thought, and then Taiko flinched away as he exploded into a spate of enraged cursing.

“I humbly apologize, Brother - but we honestly thought -”

“Not you!” Justin bellowed. “That cactus-humping cockmongle Contract! That rat bastard! He set me up for all this! I know it! Ohh, when I get my hands on him-! ‘Scribble’ nothing, I’ll – I’ll – I’ll hand him to Kon with a box of crayons! No; finger paints! I’ll use him for paper towels! I’ll – do you have monster breeders in this City!?”

“Um – not within it, no – but nearby -”

Three words,” Justin hissed malevolently. “Baby. Monster. Poop.

 

Too many favorite lines in this chapter to pick one!

Who the Shinbi think Justin is -

Spoiler

For those not knee-deep in the manga/anime, that's Alucard.

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And, finally - at least for a while - who Kokyu Taiko thinks Justin is -

Spoiler

And that's poor Tanya (The Evil) Degurechaff.

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Fair warning - next chapter is a 1-time POV change interlude, where

Spoiler

the Dawn and the Contract have a discussion about Justin.

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I won't be doing these often, probably every 11th chapter or so, max. The warning is for those readers who dislike POV changes enough to stop reading, and to those people, I say: I regret the necessity, but I'm just not a good enough writer to convey the events more skillfully. If that's the stopping point for you, then I sincerely thank you very much for reading this far - not only have you pushed this crazy impulse project to 1400+ views in less than a week, but the story will almost certainly exceed 1500+ by the end of today. Furthermore, MIS:GO is already on the first page of 3 of its tags (Lawyers, Priests, and Store Owner), and with 39 Favorites and 57 total Readers is poised to do that on several more soon.

Thank you!

I can only hope you'll keep giving me a chance to reward your trust with more enjoyable storytelling (Chapter 11 won me my first review on That Other Site; 5x5 to boot) but if not, then again: thank you for your valuable time and attention until now. We only get so much of that in this world, and it's a great compliment to me to have received so much of yours.

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