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 Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 1:45 am
Quote: The Real Cinnamon Challenge (11) : In a city this size, a little smog is inevitable–no matter how hard the local scientists are working to produce clean air for the many citizens. A thick, brown fog has recently been known to roll in. It would be easy to brush this off as standard pollution–except for the overwhelming smell of cinnamon. The odor is potent enough to be immediately recognizable, and worse than that, it hits you like a wave of cinnamon, too. If you inhale, you will almost immediately find that your mouth feels dry, and your lungs are quick to follow. The smoke burns your eyes and breathing becomes difficult. Just being out in the cinnamon smog can cause coughing, vomiting, or other irritation. If you thought the cinnamon brooms were bad, wait until you catch a whiff of this. It’s probably best to just stay inside and spare yourself the worst of it.
Karakorum had really hoped to never run into it again, after the first time. Sure, she'd shoved a box of KN95s into her subspace, just to be sure she was prepared if she ran into it again so there was no fumbling with makeshift masks made out of torn fuku, but she had really hoped to not need them. Surely, surely this was not going to be a two nickels situation, as Shuangxu might have called it. She would definitely not run into orange foggy hell twice.
Except that she did. It had rolled in on her faster than she could try to run or find somewhere else to be, and as she fumbled the box of masks out of her subspace and shoved one onto her face, the awful scent was rapidly becoming choking. This was it, totally--she was never going to be able to smell cinnamon again without gagging. Or, at least, she felt pretty sure that was gonna be the case forever now.
How this kept happening was a total mystery to her, too. No one seemed to know, and she'd gone down some weird internet rabbitholes after the first time looking to see if anyone had any information. Nope, nothing, just more fun Destiny City weirdness that had absolutely no explanation and they were all just expected to live with it.
Absolute bullshit.
Worse, as she jogged through the fog hoping to find an edge, she could see someone else.
"Hey!" She called, into the cinnamony darkness, "can you hear me? Are you okay? I have facemasks if you need one!"
She hoped the poor other person was okay, and hadn't been too overwhelmed by the ridiculously spicy situation they found themselves in.
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 12:45 pm
Usually, Demeter loved cinnamon. Call her a basic white girl all you want because you'd be right, she thought about herself often. She liked those sorts of things, sue her about it and then die mad when the judge told you you were an idiot. However... this dreadful smoke, fog, whatever it was, it choked her. And it smelled like cinnamon. Cinnamon fog stuff was choking her and it burned her eyes and it was almost enough to make her curse, but she didn't, just coughing and trying to expel the crap out of her lungs. Man, this sucked! She really hoped it didn't ruin her experiences with cinnamon forever—she was going to be extremely upset if her body decided cinnamon was poison from here on out. She heard someone calling out to her, offering a mask—oh, God, yes! She wheezed as she stumbled towards the voice, the aura, a Page? Everything felt so dizzying... "Yeah," she shouted back, voice cracking as she coughed again. "This sucks!" She finally got close enough to see the person and she smiled awkwardly, blushing as she realized oh no, she was a mess in front of a cute girl! She told herself to stop that— you HAVE a girlfriend, idiot!— but the power of pretty girl overrode all her sensibilities and she stumbled a bit as she made her last few steps closer.
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 1:02 pm
Oh, good, she wasn’t crazy, there actually was a person there. Karakoram sighed her relief, and then coughed a little, because even a good mask couldn’t totally block the overwhelming smell of the nasty cinnamon bomb all around them. Seriously, this was unfair and ridiculous. And apparently it was just a thing that happened now, a part of Destiny City’s ininimitabke weirdness that they were all just supposed to accept as Occurring to Them Now.
Hopefully it was just holiday weirdness. People reported all kinds of strange things at certain times of year. Surely this was one of those situations. Had to be.
The other girl couldn’t see her smile, but she did anyway, because it helped relax the whole body language, and she offered over one of her masks, and an extended hand to catch the poor girl when she stumbled.
“You okay?” She asked, more than a little concerned. This whole thing sucked, and if all the cinnamon was making the poor girl dizzy…yeah, that would make sense.
“I’m Karakorum, but you can just call me Kara. Do you need water or anything? Not that it’ll make that much of a difference…” With everything being cinnamon doom, their better goal was probably to try to find a way out of this, but that was a little bit of a challenge. “This is the second time I’ve tripped into this stuff, which is why I came prepared.”
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 1:43 pm
Demeter grasped the offered hand when she stumbled, steadying herself before letting go and trying not to do it too quickly or something silly like that. She didn't want to embarrass herself on a good day, let alone in front of someone so intimidatingly pretty. Gratefully, she took the mask and secured it over her face, trying not to trap a bunch of the cinnamon fog against her face in the process. "I'll be okay," she assured Karakorum with her own smile, relaxing just a little. "I think I'll take you up on the offer of water once we find a way out of the fog, yeah? Don't really want to take the mask off even for a few seconds." She rolled her shoulders and neck, trying to loosen the tension she felt. "Nice to meet you, Kara, though I wish it could have been under happier circumstances! I'm Demeter, of Agriculture. Let me know if you find any plant seeds on your wonder, 'kay? I'd love to help the return of the environment! Anyway, you say it's your second time encountering this dense cinnamon toast garbage? Ick. Thank you, for sharing a mask with me."
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 7:44 pm
Karakorum nodded. "That's fair," she agreed. "Also, the water might end up all...cinnamon flavored, eugh." Seriously, now that she was two for two on this s**t, it was going to be a long, long time before she touched anything with cinnamon in it again.
How she kept running into these ridiculously enthusiastic Senshi, Karakorum did not know. But at least it was sort of cute, in its way. And it meant she wasn't just sulking through the cinnamon fog all by herself and miserable.
"I've never been to my Wonder," she admitted, "but if I find any seeds or anything, I'll let you know." Would there even be seeds? She had no idea. Not without knowing more about what Karakorum on Cybele even was. "Anyway, we should try to find the edge of this so we can get out of it and not die a very festive but super annoying death, yeah?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 7:57 pm
Demeter giggled at the phrasing and nodded, squinting at the fog to try to see... anything. Ugh, tears were starting to stream from her eyes in a steady flow. How gross. "You ought to visit it soon," she chirped. "Just, uh..." She grimaced under the mask, shaking her head. "Be prepared to see some weird stuff. When I visited my own planet for the first time, I learned how my past self died. Not cool seeing a skull that was once your own, you know?" She refrained from sharing too many details, shrugging as she spoke and picking a direction to start walking in.
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 8:47 pm
Karakorum winced. "My brother did not mention that possibility in Knight 101," she said. Nor had Belial, but then, he hadn't died, so....maybe that was why.
Eugh. What a weird possibility. Hopefully that wasn't what happened when she got to her Wonder....
"My brother's boyfriend--he's a thousand year old space alien which is a very 'please roll with it' sort of sentence--said there weren't Cybele Knights a thousand years ago, so maybe I don't have a magic past life? That might save me from visions of my own death or whatever?" Ohhh, she hoped that was true.
At least they were moving, and hopefully towards the border of this awful, weird weather.
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 8:52 pm
Demeter nodded. "Yeah, if there weren't any a thousand years ago... You're probably safe then," she said thoughtfully. "If your Wonder is completely new... Wow. That'll be nice." A short moment later, they reached the wall of the fog and came out the other side. Demeter breathed a sigh of relief. "Yay!"
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