Walking on Water (Open RP; the Lake)

[herlivinglegacy]

Standing on the surface of the lake like the messiah Sephiroth knew was, single black wing motionless, Sephiroth pulled his useless PHS from his pocket and threw it down into the water. He watched it ripple and send waves outwards to brush against the soles of his boots with a mild sense of amusement. The thing had long since been useless, he wasn'

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[dreamingnotdead]

((Cthulhoo hasn't appeared in too long, so how can I resist a Cthulhoo appearance when someone's walking on the lake? =D))

A subtle turbulence in the water was the first sign that something unusual was happening. The second sign was far more obvious- a hump of green, squamous flesh emerged from the lake. It was followed by a great deal more of the same, which eventually resolved itself into a unspeakably huge head, greatly resembling an octopus or squid. If there was more to the creature (and there was), it was either beneath the water, or in another dimension (the latter was correct). The head turned towards Sephiroth, a massive pair of utterly inhuman eyes looking down and blinking down at him rather blearily. Great Cthulhoo had of course been sleeping, but, it was nearly impossible to sleep soundly for aeons, and, ever since he'd come to Hogwarts he'd found himself sensitive to the happenings at the lake. He'd learned to ignore the presence of another God-like monstrosity who lived in the waters, but, the footsteps of the unknown personage on the water had cut through his slumber like the elephantine tramplings of some noisy neighbors living in an upstairs apartment, and, he couldn't get back to sleep.

The first sound which emerged from the ancient horror was a guttural impossible to transcribe bellowing, which might have been translated as "GRRRRAWWWGH! KRAAAAH! GRAAAGHWAG'PHUI!" This was followed by an enormous wad of unspeakable phlegm emerging from Great Cthulhoo's mass of tentacles, which fell into the lake with a resounding splash. "Jellyfish must have swam into my mouth again, they do that when I'm sleeping," Great Cthulhoo explained far more understandably, the translation charm effective for rendering his actual speech into something audible and understandable, rather than mind-rending and impossible to transcribe. Too sleepy to be truly irritated, Cthulhoo just sounded idly curious as he asked, "Why are you stomping around on my roof, human-shaped thing?" The human-shaped thing had a wing, and therefore, couldn't be quite human. "Are you one of my cultists? They usually sink in water after flailing around a little while."

[herlivinglegacy]

Roof? Well, okay.

He was, secretly, a little pleased that the...thing had called him human-like rather than, well, human, since he didn't always look human. Few recognised that. He smiled a little. The thing reminded him a little of his mother. Tentacles and all.

"I apologise if I've disturbed you," he said, ducking his head a little. The only creatures he took issue with were humans, so he didn't mind treating this creature as an equal. He tilted his head a little at the question of whether he was one of his cultists though. "I am not one of your cultists, I have plenty of my own so I have no desire to be such a thing."

[dreamingnotdead]

((I'm sorry, I always TL;DR Cthulhoo! . . . but then again, I always TL;DR everyone! I can't help it.))

Cthulhoo, being confined to his sleep in the sunken city of R'lyeh until the stars were right (or the rare occasions when its rising coincided with the arrival of some over-curious sailors), had developed a rather proprietary feeling towards the ocean, and water in general. He was larger than anything in it, being immeasurable, and had also been there longer than anything else in it, having arrived upon earth sometime after it had cooled off a bit, but well before the Ordovician era. It took a moment to realize what particular spot he'd surfaced in- it wasn't his usual spot located near the Pacific pole of inaccessibility, as far as possible from any dry land. It was that weird place where the Shoggies had given him sacrifices at what had appeared to be a cultist party.

Hogwarts, he recalled, as he noticed the little castle. A castle which was surely full of humans, which were a small species, but bursting with flavour. And yet, somehow, he felt no urge to munch on any of them, which was really quite abnormal. He didn't even want to abduct any to take them back to his own dimension to eat them there- unless perhaps the Shoggies brought him some humans which were properly labeled as sacrifices? There was some sort of unusual magic at Hogwarts, which caused the whole place and its inhabitants to appear as almost an anti- sacrifice. This was simply the form that the no-kill spell took where Cthulhoo was concerned, as it would have had to work a bit hard otherwise. The magic likewise tended to dampen his tendency to cause instant madness in any who beheld him.

So it was with calm bemusement that the Great Old One eyed the little one-winged cultist shaped . . . god? It seemed to think it was one, as it claimed to have cultists. As it clearly wasn't a human, and, Cthulhoo was not a jealous god, he decided that the tiny one-winged god was really quite. . .cute. He could forgive it for waking him up, as sleeping did get incredibly dull after a few aeons. "It's alright, better than a boat through my head," he told Sephiroth, referring to one of his recent awakenings, wherein a freaked out sailor did in fact drive a ship through his head. He'd been fine, as he was not made of earthy matter, but, it had of course been a disconcerting and unpleasant experience. "I've never seen you in the vault before. Do you have a name, little one-winged god?"

[herlivinglegacy]

Sephiroth hadn't had anything as bad as a ship being driven through his head, however he had had the misfortune of his body destroyed, and then all of his clones destroyed, and then even his memories destroyed. It didn't work in the end, since he'd sent out his genes to infect most of the Planet in order to be able to set Plan B into motion, wherein his nemisis remembered him and therefore Sephiroth did too. Thus his resurrection and another near destruction of Gaia.

The saying 'aim for the moon and if you miss you'll fall upon the stars' had never been so true for Sephiroth. It needed to be said that even if the spell hadn't been taking care of the instant insanity on sight, Sephiroth barely would had twitched. What little sanity he'd gained had long since been reduced to the occasional human emotion and virus-like impulses of breed and destroy.

So he bowed a little to Cthulhoo and gave a smile that was a mere twitch of his lips. "I was named Sephiroth," he replied. The scientist that had created him had named him that, at least. At best it was an alias, but if Sephiroth had a name, let alone a surname, he never knew. He tilted his head soon after. "The vault?"

[dreamingnotdead]

Cthulhoo actually liked that the inhabitants of Hogwarts tended to remain relatively calm at the sight of him- the fact was, all the screaming and freaking out was a bit irritating. That Sephiroth's cool appeared to be entirely natural and separate from Hogwart's dampening magics merely confirmed to Cthulhoo that Sephiroth was a cute little one-winged, human-shaped god. After all, gods never freaked out at each other, at least not in the unusual dimension Cthulhoo referred to as 'the vault' where they all tended to pal around when not performing their godly duties. Which, in Cthulhoo's case, was simply sleeping in R'lyeh until the stars were right. He had a relatively easy job as a god.

Had he heard of Sephiroth's scheme involving using his genes to infect most of a planet to set another plan in motion, he'd have been reminded of his pal Nyarly, known more seriously as Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. Even without this knowledge, there was something Nyarly-ish about the little one-winged god, namely his human shape. Nyarly was known to have played a human now and again. In any case, Cthulhoo found himself rather liking the pleasantly calm little god. 'Sephiroth' was indeed a name he'd never heard in the vault, but, perhaps little gods had a little vault of their own? "I have never heard that name. Are you a young god, perhaps?" To Cthulhoo, 'young' meant anything after the dinosaurs, and possibly them too. "I am Great Cthulhoo," he explained. "But you may call me Cthulhoo." Just as Cthulhoo was not a jealous god, neither was he demanding. "The vault is a dimension where the Great Old Ones lurk." Elder gods lurked there too, but 'great old' or 'elder' was still old.

[herlivinglegacy]

Sephiroth's mother, Jenova, had sailed to Gaia some millennia ago, before the creation of the humans, wherein most of the inhabitants were Ancients of which Jenova took the body of. Whether or not to add her years onto his own thirty odd was a little troublesome, simply because they had fused in death and her cells had been injected into him when he was still in utero. Jenova was Sephiroth; Sephiroth was Jenova.

"I am...considerably new at this, yes," he said, simply because being vague answered all questions correctly if Cthulhoo chose his own appropriate answer, and he didn't wish to seem naive or weak, of which he was anything but. "In my own world the gods live in the memories of the dead, a system called the Lifestream. Being there is a little like being in a library fill of immeasurable information, but I've never heard of the vault, though I understand the concept of dimensions being infinite and your vault being one of them."

[dreamingnotdead]

Cthulhoo would have been familiar with the migrating-to-Earth millenia before humans thing. It was something Cthulhoo and his 'star-spawn' had done themselves, along with other races known to them, such as 'Elder Things' (not to be confused with Elder Gods) who'd made the Shoggies, and the Mi-Go. Unfortunately for Cthulhoo and his spawn, the stars had gone wrong, and R'lyeh sunk, trapping them until the stars were right once more. Now and again, the stars would almost be right, and R'lyeh would rise for brief periods, in which his psychic emanations could go forth and touch certain sensitive minds. It was likely during one of these periods in which the Mad Arab penned his cryptic couplet, That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.

And so, Hogwarts was something of a pleasant break from monotony. The vault was somehow like this too- Cthulhoo had no logical explanation for how he managed to simultaneously pal around with his fellow Old Ones, Elder and Outer Gods and Friends, while simultaneously remaining in what amounted to an incredibly dull existence. This was of course because the vault is purely UVOD canon, which allows Cthulhoo to be a bit more active than his purely Lovecraftian counterpart. The Lifestream didn't sound much like the vault to him, whatever it was, but it sounded plausible enough and properly godly. "We're all new at it once. Why, I remember back when I was at the God's school," Cthulhoo said. There was nothing wrong with being a newer god. Gods were gods. Some gods did have tastier followers than others.

"I think the vault is infinite. I know dimensions are," Cthulhoo agreed. "It is probably why I've never met you, little god." The 'little' wasn't condescending, merely a statement of size. It was nice to wake up and talk to another god, without all the screaming and boats-through-the-head. "Are you often at this place?"