Day 60: Music Room (Fourth Shift)

[stray_shinigami]

It wasn't often that Renji felt less like punching people in general as his day wore on. This was a new experience for him. A not unwelcome one, if he was being honest. And the fact that he felt less like punching Fai? Kind of mind-blowing. The sort of thing Zen masters would probably use as a kouan to reach an all-new level of non-punching

Comments

[scintillatingly]

Even though the schedule for their shifts seemed to be the same from week to week, it wasn't like Sora kept track. For that reason he was glad that he didn't end up picking a room for the free choice shift only to end up going there later on in the day. Instead, he was escorted from Arts and Crafts into the Music Room, which was fine by him.

These days when he came here he was almost always reminded of that day when he'd tried to get a band going with Scott, Venom, Roxas, and the others. It hadn't really worked out as well as they'd hoped and Sora had never heard another mention of it, but he couldn't help but be curious. If he ever ran into Scott again he'd have to ask about it.

he couldn't help but smile when he caught sight of Renji speaking with someone, though he decided to leave the man alone. He'd already taken up enough of his time at breakfast this morning, but he was still marveling over the fact that he was really back. Instead of going up to Renji, though, Sora started to wander around, wondering if he should listen to

oh my god i'm so sorry for being late LOL

[chippforprez]

"Do you understand, Robert?"

"I'm not Robert! Stop calling me that!"

After his misadventures with the weird rainbow-haired Gear girl in the rec field, Chipp had spent the majority of his afternoon being yelled at by one of the zombie nurses about how to behave properly in front of other patients and how he has to be aware that being bigger then most of the other patients meant he could easily hurt them. Naturally, her whole speech went over the ninja's head for many reasons: 1) He wasn't trying to hurt the Gear girl, who could probably level half the Institute with her powers and 2) She didn't know anything about Japan and that was unforgivable! How could she not know about JapanThere was also the fact that Chipp, thanks to Venom, had the idea in his head that the nurse was a zombie and was constantly trying to shuffle away from her lest she decide to eat his flesh. This resulting in a strange walk to the Music Room after Chipp had mostly calmed down, though the nurse didn't let him go without more stern warnings

[scintillatingly]

For the third time that day Sora was being approached by someone else. Just like Woody, this was a familiar face, someone he had spoken to twice before. His mind immediately labeled the man as "Venom's friend," but he reminded himself that he knew his name. This was Chipp

[chippforprez]

Indeed, Chipp was in a slightly better mood just seeing that Sora was okay. Though, didn't he have a friend with him? That silver-haired kid... Well, Sora didn't look too upset himself so maybe it was pointless to worry about it. Sora seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't leave a friend behind, so he was sure the silver-haired kid was alright. And then, there was Venom... hm. Chipp didn't reply at first, crossing his arms for a minute as he thought about how to answer Sora's question. It wasn't that he had bad news to report, but Chipp couldn't exactly remember how Venom actually was during their conversation, due to him being half-asleep. Well, Venom was pissed and Venom was talking, so he had to be okay otherwise, right?

"Well, there were these damn demon birds that gave us some trouble, but we took care of them," Chipp bragged, leaving out the part where he overused his ki and then apparently blacked out since he didn't remember shit afterwards. "Venom's alright, he's kind of pissed that we didn't get to Landel before he

[scintillatingly]

Demon birds? Sora had fought a few different kinds of birds during his time here. There had been the ones that had attacked that night a while back when the buses had all broken down, but even worse had been that other one that had attacked him and Kairi on the patio -- the one that had lightning attacks. Normally it would have been a piece of cake for Sora to take something like that down, but here it counted as extremely dangerous

[chippforprez]

See, Sora understood! How could Venom still be ... well, like Venom yet befriend such a good kid? Chipp was happy that someone seemed to get it. Obviously, they would have to work together at some point. In the future. Hopefully for Sora, that would be in the far future. Not only was Sora refreshingly optimistic, he was also helpful. Sort of. At least, Chipp thought his opinion on the military's presence was helpful

[scintillatingly]

As it turned out, Chipp was a pretty interesting guy to talk to! Unlike so many other people, he was focusing on how they could keep accomplishing things and pointing out the few advantages that they had, rather than always dwelling on how it was going to be impossible. Venom was the one who was constantly giving out warnings to Sora about how he was going to get in trouble by being too optimistic, but he was just looking at it the wrong way

[chippforprez]

Sora was surprising, that was for sure; it wasn't that Chipp was oblivious to how anti-social Venom was, but hearing the boy doubt Venom's feelings on their friendship was a little surprising. So surprising, in fact, that Chipp just had to say something to correct it.

"Really? But he went straight to check on you when all hell broke loose last night. I mean..." Chipp frowned, realizing he didn't exactly have enough experience around Venom to really say what was and wasn't normal behavior for the assassin when dealing with people was concerned. Yeah, Venom wasn't the most social guy, but he wasn't that much of an asshole for an assassin. "... I dunno, it's like you're important to him or something

[scintillatingly]

When Chipp put it that way, Sora could only agree with him. It was true that he and Venom had been through a few things together, between that one night when Venom had been drugged and that morning when the cafeteria had been gassed. They both looked out for each other, and Venom seemed to take Sora's safety seriously, if nothing else.

"Yeah, that's all true, but whenever I say we're friends he gets kind of weird about it." Sora sighed and rubbed at the back of his head awkwardly. Friendships weren't really supposed to be this complicated, were they? "I don't know if he just doesn't like to call anyone a friend, but I don't want to step on his toes either." That would just cause Venom to avoid him, which Sora didn't want.

Though the fact that Chipp was suddenly willing to explain how he'd met Venom in more detail certainly caught Sora's curiosity. He tilted his head up to look him in the eye, smiling briefly.

"Yeah, tell me! I'm really curious now." Not that he hadn't been before, but he had to wonder what made it so awesome.

this is the worst story ever told.

[chippforprez]

"He's weird about a lot of shit. Don't worry about it, you two are friends." For some reason, Chipp felt like he really had to reassure Sora about his friendship status with Venom. Nevermind the fact that he wasn't questioning why the two should be friends. Anyway, it was time for him to move on to a bigger and better subject: how he and Venom met. Chipp grinned, glad to know that Sora was interested in hearing the story (because he would have gone ahead and told it regardless).

"Alright, so, I was tracking down the leader of the Assassin's Guild. I thought it was this guy named Zato, but when I found him, he was already dead! I didn't find this out until I defeated him in battle and the weird shadow demon that was controlling him ran off. But then, Venom found me and he got really pissed that I was beating the corpse of the old Guild leader. I guess he was Venom's old boss or something, cuz he was really pissed. Then we started fighting

if by worst you mean best.

[scintillatingly]

Just like that, Chipp was saying that he and Venom were friends. Sora couldn't argue with that, since he'd labeled Venom a friend a long time ago. It was nice that there were other people out there who got it the same way that he did. And maybe it didn't matter if Venom wouldn't agree to it; all that mattered was the actions they took, right? In the end, the words to describe it were secondary

i'm glad someone else sees how awesome this story is /bricked

[chippforprez]

Despite how underwhelmed Sora sounded at first, if only because there was so much new information to process, Chipp felt like his story had been well-received. This was because he had no idea that Venom had kept the more unsavory details of his life and day job from Sora. Back home, pretty much everyone knew what Venom did at least considering how often he invited various people to join the damn Guild in the first place, so that was why Chipp actually looked surprised when Sora asked him exactly what the Guild was.

It wasn't even that he felt that it should have been obvious just by going from the name, but... how could someone hang around Venom and not know what the Guild was? Of course, Chipp didn't even bother to consider exactly why this information was withheld from Sora, when it ought to have been clear as day. Then again, Chipp was never a fan of mincing words or hiding things

[scintillatingly]

It was clear just from the look on Chipp's face that Sora should have known exactly what this guild was, which made him feel kind of bad. Still, he was almost positive that Venom had never spoken a word of it to him. The question that Chipp asked soon after that just made him feel even worse.

If it was normal for Venom to invite people, why hadn't he ever extended that invitation to him? Not that it mattered much here, since this was clearly something that existed back home, but Sora had invited Venom to join Arts and Crafts. It hadn't been accepted, but he'd still made the offer, which was the important part.

"No, I... he's never talked about it before," he admitted. "Maybe he didn't want to talk too much about stuff from his home? He's kind of secretive about that stuff."

Mainly his conversations with Venom involved talking about the institute itself, trading information, and being given advice. Sora hadn't mentioned much about his own life either, but he hadn't been actively trying to hide it. Maybe Venom hadn't either, but

[chippforprez]

Secretive? He was so damn mouthy back home... Then again, Chipp was rather glad that Sora didn't hear anything about it. That sort of stuff was best kept away from anybody, much less kids. So that's why Chipp shook his head, trying to assure Sora that it wasn't that much of a big deal

[scintillatingly]

[Sorry for the delay!]

It was kind of weird that Chipp had just gone from asking him why he hadn't been invited into the Guild to forbidding him to join it. Sora was having a tough time keeping up, but if he understood right, the Guild wasn't exactly a good thing. If it really was for assassination, then that meant that the members of it were murdering other people, which --

Well, Sora had done that before, if Nobodies counted as people, but that was different. He doubted that this Guild was targeting people who were emotionless and friendless.

The idea that Venom hadn't mentioned it to prevent Sora from getting hurt made sense, though. Venom was usually overprotective of him, so that would fit in there. And Sora probably wouldn't have even wanted to join, so what exactly was bothering him about all this?

"Okay, so... what do you plan to do, if you're president?" Maybe it was better to focus on other things now. He could talk it all over with Venom later.

[chippforprez]

If only Chipp knew how much potential damage he was doing to Sora and Venom's friendship, he might have backpedaled a little further to try and do some damage control. Even if he and Venom didn't quite agree on the whole Guild thing, he wasn't that much of an asshole that he'd want to ruin a perfectly good friendship that didn't even have anything to do with it. At least, to him, Sora didn't look too bothered...

Besides, he was distracted with a better question. A far better question, though it turned out that Chipp didn't really have a good answer for it.

"What else? I'm going to change the world!" Of course, such a vague answer would have made anyone listening to him skeptical. Even Chipp was slowly starting to realize how empty that sounded. "... But I have to get elected first, don't I?"