mayaka ibara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sharpjustice) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bottlecaplogs2026-02-02 09:04 pm
sharpjustice) wrote in bottlecaplogs2026-02-02 09:04 pm
Entry tags:
- final fantasy xiv: firoza istus,
- hyouka: mayaka ibara,
- in stars and time: odile,
- in stars and time: siffrin (start again),
- jjba: emporio alniño,
- original characters : dolly mancer,
- persona 2 innocent sin: maya amano,
- the amazing digital circus: kinger,
- the outer worlds: parvati holcomb,
- the wolf among us: bigby wolf,
- the world ends with you: shoka sakurane,
- undertale: flowey,
- yugioh: the ring-spirit
[OPEN] Dreams & Ghosts
Who: Mayaka & you !
What: 2 open prompts (reviewing dreams from last month + attempting to get over her fear of ghosts) and wildcard option
Where: Around Bottlecay Bay + Skull Town
When: Beginning of Feb
Warnings: none atm a. dream review
Perhaps you're passing through the Archives, or the living hall in Skull Town when you spot a Sneasel sitting at a table furiously scrawling out various drawings on paper. Mayaka's gloves have been set aside neatly beside her for now, because she finds it easier to hold onto the charcoal pencils using her bare claws. She's experienced some weird dreams from last month. Though she doesn't remember the exact details, she's been dutifully drawing out the images that lingered in her mind upon waking up. Now, it's time to try to make sense of them. On the table you'll find the following drawings:
1. What appears to be a spaceship, though Mayaka's drawn it to look more like a truck with four wheels underneath.
2. A primordial-looking fish creature. She has given it a pair of cute, anime-sized eyes to make it look more approachable.
3. A black cat with an extra pair of eyes on its stomach. More cat-like than Mimikyu at this point.
4. The drawing she's currently working on, and struggling to capture. She's trying to remember what the alien beings in the final big nightmare looked like, though the large and erratic shapes on paper may not look recognisable to anyone. Mayaka is finding it difficult because she doesn't have an image in mind to associate with what she saw in the nightmare.
She's too caught up with this to notice if someone were to approach...
b. how to deal with ghosts
If you're wandering around Bottlecap Bay, you'll find Mayaka outside her house in the Lum Berry housing area, rooted on the spot.
Her attention is focused on a small clay sculpture she's placed in the garden of her front porch. It's a little handmade ghost figurine with a hairbow on its head. While it might look strangely cute, the more you look at it, the more you'll notice that it's two eyes seem to be gazing directly at you with an unblinking Stare™.
This is the ghost that's been chasing her in her dreams, but she's too scared to get rid of it! (Also, the fact that it was a gift to her from Catrina doesn't help!)
The Sneasel is shaking a little, and it's not from the cold weather. She's standing a safe distance away from the figurine, muttering to herself: "It's just a doll... it's just a dolll..."
(Dolls are creepy too, though??)
c. wildcard!
for any other threads or ideas that come up!
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She swivels in place then, glancing around in obvious confusion.
"What's what?"
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"Th-those claws! It looks like a ghost! I thought you were a cat Pokemon!"
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... She finds that she isn't surprised, once it hits her. Did she know that already, somehow?
(Maybe that's just because it's normal for people to be afraid of ghosts? Or because it's normal for Pokémon to be scared off by so much as a glimpse of a Mimikyu's true form...?)
"I'm both," she replies with a brief wiggle of her jagged fingers. She mercifully withdraws her tendrils then, making herself appear almost normal and catlike once more. "So what?"
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Her voice shakes even though she finds some semblance of relief that Shoka is only half-ghost. The Sneasel slowly gets up from behind the table once those scary claws are gone from sight, to observe Shoka once more (from a polite distance). She truly does look like a cute black cat to Mayaka.
"Ghosts just freak me out," she admits bluntly -- still addressing the Mimikyu's top half. "B-but I understand that some Pokemon are born Ghost-types and all."
Though, based on her name, Mayaka's got a hunch.
"Shoka-chan, were you originally human like me?"
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If Shoka is at all offended by that, she gives no indication of it. Her white-painted eyes (and her real ones, gray and eerily human in the darkness under her shroud) stare benignly back as she gives a snort.
"Originally, yeah. Wasn't born dead." There's a pause before she adds, "You're Japanese, too, right?"
Mayaka's usage of honorifics should have made it obvious if her name didn't... But she's met people from all sorts of worlds. One with Japanese-like practices that still isn't Japan doesn't seem like much of a stretch.
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"Yup. From a small city near the mountains called Kamiyama. And you're..."
A beat of silence. Based on the accent, standoffish-tone, and golden hoop earring, Mayaka confidently concludes:
"From Tokyo."
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... Implying she does a lot of mystery-solving? It feels right to say that, somehow. Just like in that one dream she had...
"Yeah, you got me. From Shinjuku, to be exact."
If she were to say that back in her own world, it would be equivalent to saying she's from nowhere. Shinjuku is long gone now, reduced to ash. Pointlessly, she wonders if it's still standing in Mayaka's Japan the same way it is in Akechi's.
She changes the subject.
"Anyways—if you're gonna keep hiding over there like a big baby, guess I'll take this opportunity to check out the rest of your work!"
Too small to get a good look at all the drawings from where she's standing, she decides to usurp Mayaka's seat, hopping onto it and lifting herself up on the shadowy, snail-like foot of her body to peer out across the table. Truthfully, the way that Mayaka looks at the disguise-head rather than at her actual eyes when they speak appeals to Shoka's instincts as a Mimikyu, but right now, with her false head craning back, it's a little more obvious where her gaze is actually located.
She must be readying a comment or rude joke of some kind, but once her eyes fall on Mayaka's most recent piece—the most abstract of the bunch, a series of bold yet erratic lines that she can't identify, but at the same time finds so familiar (that seems to be the overall theme for today)—she forgets what she was going to say.
1/2
However, before she can form her next sentence, she sees the Mimikyu's head tilt back unnaturally.
2/2
With Shoka's silence, it takes Mayaka a few seconds to blurt out a question from the long list that has resulted from this revelation.
"S-so... underneath that is the Ghost part of you?"
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"Do us both a favor and don't try to figure me out," Shoka hisses, suddenly a bit defensive.
Her attention returns to Mayaka's art; she abruptly changes the subject.
"So you saw them, too, huh?"
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"... Yeah, I did." Mayaka replies, stepping closer to the Mimikyu. "Do they look familiar to you? I've been trying to find out if they mean something."
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You are a Fairy-type Pokémon, a member of the clinic staff had told her. It's only natural that poison would have an especially severe effect on you. But she hadn't been hit by any Poison-type moves, of course. The dream, however—what she could recall of it, at least—was still fresh in her mind.
Thinking back on this makes it finally click for her: the reason Mayaka looks so familiar to her is because she (or at least someone extremely, eerily similar to her) was present in another one of those fever dreams.
"Sort of. But only 'cause I had that dream about 'em." Just like she had a dream about Mayaka, someone she also had never seen before. But she can't just say that! "... I think. I don't remember exactly what those things looked like... But I sure as hell haven't seen anything like that while awake."
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The Sneasel sounds a bit reluctant as she says, "Maybe Akechi has an idea of what's going on."
He's not the first guy she's met to act like a know-it-all detective. Annoying as that may be, there's something familiar about the way she interacts with him that reminds her of her antagonistic friendship with a certain Houtarou. Though, unlike Houtarou, Mayaka can at least admit that Akechi takes pride in being a hardworker.
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Shoka's eyes drift from the drawing to the others, which are much less abstract in comparison.
"... What about the rest of these?"
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"These are other things that I dreamed about. I'm trying to figure out if they mean anything. I thought drawing it them out would help."
She offers a pencil to Shoka. "You can give it a try if you want."
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Just when she's starting to wonder what kind of dreams those images could have come from—the image of herself especially—Mayaka hands her a pencil.
"What, drawing?" She blinks at Mayaka, then shrinks back a little against the back of the chair, suddenly almost shy. "Hah. Yeah, I'm—not exactly an artist. I mean, I can sort of sew and stuff, but..."
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She slaps a blank piece of paper down in front of the Mimikyu firmly.
"It's about expressing yourself. I promise I won't look."
As curious as she is, Mayaka is equally protective and embarrassed about letting others see her manga drafts.
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"... Ugh, fine. I'll throw you a bone."
Maybe it's because this has given her an idea, or because becoming a Mimikyu has just made her more compelled to try every craft there is. Either way, she takes the pencil in hand, puts its point to the paper...
And makes only a couple of clumsy lines before she gives up on staying in the chair and clambers up onto the table instead so she can actually see and reach the paper more easily. Once there, she seems to finally lock in mentally and settles down to practice, then start actually drawing the images still lingering in the back of her mind.
Mayaka said she wouldn't look, but eventually Shoka will hold up the sheet to show her. On it are a few of her practice scribbles (dark lines that resemble branches, the shapes of birds in flight, slit eyes in a messily sketched blackness) and, more prominently, her first attempt at a serious drawing: a lithe, weasel-like creature with two tails and a ring (or is it a ruff of fur?) around its neck.
Her style is clearly unpracticed, her lines unsteady, but there is some skill present in the work. To anyone who's seen one before, it would be easy to identify the creature as a Buizel.
"Hey. Look familiar?"
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She hadn't expected Shoka to actually share the drawing, but looks at it attentively when she hears the question being asked. Mayaka wants to compliment Shoka on the clarity of the shapes and her confident lines, but the subject of the drawing distracts her. More than familiar, this picture looks uncanny.
Back when she'd been poring through the Archives and reading up on various Pokemon species, certain Pokemon reminded Mayaka of the people back home. If they were turned into a Pokemon, this is what they would be. Oreki was a Slowpoke. Chi-chan was a Bellossom. And Buizel made her think of Satoshi. It was because of the creature's playful smirk, and the ring around its neck, which reminded her of the one time he made a Saturn costume from scratch to wear for the first day of the culture festival.
"It... reminds me of someone. You wouldn't know who he is, though."
Mayaka blinks, wondering why that felt a bit strange to say.
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But Mayaka managed to draw her anyway.
Shoka's depiction of the Buizel is more stylistic, almost cutesy, but there are a few identifying details that make it all the more uncanny. It stands on its hind legs like a human and there's something round—like a pouch—held in one of its paws; it has a smile on its snout, but the impression of shadows around its eyes give that smile a vaguely menacing quality.
"Here's a wild guess... You're thinking of someone named Satoshi. Right?"
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"Eh?! How do you know him?"
She thinks a few moments to collect herself, before arriving at the only possible reason.
"Was it from that dream?" The exact same dream where she first saw Shoka. Things are starting to make sense. Sort of.
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"'That' dream?"
1/2
Her gaze lingers over her drawing of Shoka, and the brand new sketch of the Buizel with that familiar-looking pouch -- strange yet undeniable evidence that she's met the Mimikyu before.
2/2
"Oh my god. I dreamt about Fuku-chan? And you were there?!"
She sounds incredibly embarrassed all of a sudden.
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"... Fuku-chan?"
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ok to wrap !