paixaorpg | Foundation Day Festival: Stage Area

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Foundation Day Festival: Stage Area

Character(s): everyone in the stage area
Content: entertainment and stuff
Setting: Joco da Crianca Fairgrounds, stage area
Time: all day~
Warnings: Multithreaded posting format (please include time of day and sub-location in your comment's subject line)

The stage isn't terribly large, but there's nearly always music coming from it one way or another. The entertainment here consists almost entirely of five or six acts in rotation, all of them by the gypsies; some are stand-alone music, while others are music and dance.

Normally, guests aren't allowed on stage or backstage, but there is a bulky fellow manning the backstage entrance who might let people in if they can convince him they are, in fact, on the roster.

Seating consists of a few rows of chairs facing the stage, and behind those, a few handfuls of small, metal, bistro-style outdoor tables and chairs.

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Rikku was having a ton and a half of fun at this festival. The games here were fantastic, and the prizes, too! She and her friends were rolling in new stuff, which was awesome, of course. Less awesome was that she still hadn't seen Uncle Braska or that Auron fella like she'd been planning to, but she was sure they'd show up eventually.

After a while, when they were starting to have a hard time carrying all the stuff they'd won, Rikku had finally offered to poof it back to the room they'd been staying in, saying she'd be back in just a second. (No point just poofing the stuff there, or they'd never find it again!) But her aim wasn't perfect on the way back, and she'd reappeared in another part of the festival altogether.

"Oopsie." She looked around quickly. "Rakka? Stitch?" she called, but of course they would still be back at the games... well, she'd just head on back to -

Just then she was distracted by a funny hat a little ways off. Wasn't that what Uncle Braska had been wearing in his picture? IT WAS! Delighted, she zipped over and tackled him in the back of the head, without even seeming to notice that he was inexplicably six feet tall. "Uncle Braska!!" she exclaimed.

Braska had just recovered from being knocked in the head by... something, when he heard a voice behind him. However, as he spun around to see who had called his name--most likely Rikku, due to the inclusion of the word "uncle"--he encountered no one.

Had he simply been hearing things? She'd sounded so close, though... One plus one suddenly equaling two as he remembered being struck in the head, he took his headdress off, checking the back. Braska was consequently rendered speechless.

She... She... shrunk! he thought to himself incredulously. Was this really Rikku? She looked like she did in the picture he'd seen on the journals, but it was impossible for the Rikku he knew to be the size she was now. Was he happy to see her? Of course he was! She was his niece! But... "I don't... understand."

Rikku squeaked as the headdress started moving with her still holding on. She let go a second later, though, and righted herself in front of her uncle, grinning until she realized how confused he looked. It was about then that she realized she was pretty confused herself.

"Wow, and you said I'd grown," she said, eyeing him quizzically (and probably invading his personal space in the process). He'd been bigger than her the last time she'd seen him, of course, since she'd still been a kid, but definitely not by this much.

Braska shook his head and blinked a few times, but it didn't help; apparently he was seeing things correctly. Rikku was small. And flying. Well, Spira was gone now... maybe this had happened to her in the process?

Still, she was safe, and that was what mattered, as did the fact that he finally got the chance to speak with her again. That is, if he could pull himself together long enough to do so. After fumbling his words for a bit, he finally sighed and decided to start with something simple and work from there. "How have you been?" he asked, smiling. Had he asked her that before? He wasn't sure.

"Oh, pretty good, pretty good," Rikku replied happily. Braska's height didn't bother her nearly as much as hers bothered him, apparently. After all, she'd been hanging out with an angel and a little blue alien, not even to mention all the funny stuff she'd seen in Traverse Town. People growing five feet in ten years? No big deal, right? It could've easily been something he ate.

"Just been putzing around, y'know, waiting for you and Auron," she added. "We won a ton of stuff at the games! I'd show you, but I don't have it with me."

Auron? Right, he was coming here as well. Braska hoped there weren't any other stages around. On the journals, Auron had said there was someone he was going to meet, that Braska should probably meet them as well. Was this what the man had meant? It certainly seemed to be the most likely case.

"So you have talked to Auron?" he asked, it seemed a good way to continue the conversation, "You must have spoken with him before he spoke with me. He mentioned that he was going to be meeting someone here."

"Yep, that'd be me!" she exclaimed, sitting down in the chair next to him. It rather dwarfed her, of course, and she swung her feet back and forth over the edge as she talked. "I haven't seen him yet, though. Kind of weird, huh?" Then again, it was totally possible she just hadn't been looking hard enough. Carnival games required a lot of concentration, after all.

"So what about you? What've you been up to?" she asked excitedly, suddenly remembering. "Auron said something about you went on a pilgrimage, right? How was it? I wanna hear all the details!"

Braska nodded, "It is, but I believe he had just arrived when I got in contact with him earlier. Perhaps he wasn't expecting either of us for awhile?"

And now he dearly wished that Auron was here. Somehow he always knew just the right question to ask in order to deflect another question. Braska should have known that he'd be asked about his pilgrimage, but he was still taken rather off guard. "All the details?" he asked tentatively, but quickly gained more confidence, "That would take a little too long, I'm afraid. The short version might have to do for now."

Then Braska remembered Rikku's statements over the journals. She'd forgotten what the Guado were, she'd said something about "Gummi Ships"--whatever those were--and... Well, there were many things that made Braska wonder whether his niece's memory was all right. "You... do know what the pilgrimage is..."

Since by now Rikku was well and thoroughly sidetracked from looking for her new friends (temporarily, of course, she was bound to remember sooner or later), she was quite disappointed he couldn't tell her the long version. There was still plenty of daylight left, and she really did want to hear the whole thing - her uncle on a grand adventure! Who wouldn't be excited?

Despite that, she nodded eagerly. "Yeah, Auron told me about it. You had to defeat Sin, right? He said you guys won, too!"

Braska nodded. "Auron and Jecht were my guardians for the journey," he told her. After a little thought, he figured it would be best to explain that a little more. "They were to make sure I wasn't harmed along the journey. That isn't to say I can't handle myself, of course, but when you start to move off the roads and the fiends get more powerful, there's only so much one man can do."

"I don't think you've met Jecht, have you? He's a good man. Rough around the edges at times, very rough around the edges when I first met him, but he has a good heart in him," he said, smiling, "I must admit, I really am surprised you don't know much of this already. I thought that my pilgrimage was common knowledge back home."

Braska would be lying if he said he wasn't in the least happy that she didn't know. Beneath all of the confusion, there was at least a little bit of relief. He could make this easier on her, go in little steps. Maybe, if he was lucky, he wouldn't have to tell her about the very end. Or... maybe he'd only tell her if she asked. He hadn't decided yet.

Rikku listened with rapt attention, nodding. Naturally it was better to travel with friends than alone, so that made sense.

"Well, maybe the message just didn't get to our village," she offered, shrugging. "I wouldn't be surprised, people did accidentally-on-purpose lose our mail a lot." But that was neither here nor there, as Braska's story was way more interesting than the postal service.

"You'll just have to tell me now, I guess!" she giggled. "So how'd you do it? What's Sin? How big was it? Where'd it come from?"

Braska could easily believe that--or would in normal circumstances. But he had met many an Al Bhed who would easily express their views on a summoner's pilgrimage and why it should be stopped. He had many questions, but all they seemed to lead to was confusion. Perhaps he'd wait until a later time to ask them.

"Well, it all starts with training. Then you head to the temple nearest to your town, go through the cloister of trials, and make your way to the fayth. You pray to them, and if you are found worthy, they lend you their power. The pilgrimage takes you to other temples where you gain the power of other fayths until you reach Zanarkand, where you receive the Final Summoning. You use it to defeat Sin," he explained.

"Sin is a very large monster. If I remember correctly it was... was... Hm. See the stage in front of us? This is an estimation, but I believe Sin was at least thirty of it long, and fifteen to twenty high. I don't know how accurate I am, but not many people wanted to get close enough to measure Sin, for obvious reasons." He gave her a small smile before continuing, "It was the product of a war between two great cities, Zanarkand's last effort to preserve their city, although Sin got its name because we, not knowing that little detail, believed it to be a manifestation of our sins come to punish us."

"Wow..." The sheer scale of the monster made Rikku gape. Especially from her perspective, that was absolutely enormous! She'd never seen anything anywhere near that big, especially that wasn't a Heartless.

"And you and Auron and Jecht beat it all by yourselves! Wow." It was so cool! For a second she imagined Yuna and Paine and herself engaged in epic battle with a monster the size of the entire city (in her mind, Sin looked roughly like a gigantic albino centipede). The Gullwings in her imagination were, of course, kicking its butt, albeit mostly with powers they didn't actually have.

Although, that reminded her that she didn't actually have a clue where Yuna and Paine were, and that in turn reminded her that she had been on her way to find Rakka and Stitch again. "Oh!" she exclaimed, jumping up a foot or so into the air (and staying there). "Silly me, I almost forgot!" She turned to Braska, grinning widely. "You should totally come meet my new friends! They'd like you a lot," she added.

Braska couldn't help but smile a little as he saw Rikku gape. However big Sin had seemed to him, he could only imagine just how big it would seem to her.

He noticed the far away look in her eyes and wondered what she was thinking about. Perhaps imagining the battle for herself? What did she see in that fight? How were Auron, Jecht, and he portrayed? He quietly thought on it for awhile until she jumped, startling him.

"Well..." Braska wasn't sure how to answer for a moment. He had told Auron that he would be waiting here, and if he showed up while Braska wasn't there, the ex-guardian wasn't likely to be happy. But, on the other hand, Auron was supposed to have arrived at the festival before him and hadn't stopped by yet, and meeting a couple people wouldn't take too long. "All right."

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Foundation Day Festival: Stage Area

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