Shin had never considered himself to be particularly religious. Not really.
How could he be, after all? The Head of All Religions in Magica straight up admitted to him that the vast majority of Divine Beings in his world were little more than piggy banks for Cleric spells. He’d had a hand in the actual creation of his own Goddess. Like, a literal hand; he’d reached out with his own personal hand and pressed the buttons that determined who the Goddess of his entire people was as a person.
All that, however, didn’t tell the whole story. He was willing to admit that he prayed, every now and again. Most days, probably. He’d certainly prayed as he bid his friends taken in the attack on the docks goodbye. And his daily sweeping of the path leading to the Great Mother’s shrine couldn’t be explained entirely as a simple act of boredom. Shin didn’t think about it too often, but he supposed that Tasan Okaa really did mean something to him. That, at his core, he really did believe that she was different from the other Gods of Magica.
He just hadn’t realized how different, apparently.
The girl retreating frantically back behind her door, bending down to scoop up a massive pile of dirty clothes, was not exactly what Shin had been expecting. Her oversized ears waggled frantically as she scoured the messy bedroom for someplace to hide her laundry, ineffectively attempting to blow her floppy bangs out from her eyes and dropping socks everywhere. After a solid minute of panicked shuffling, she opted to simply shove open the window at the back of her room and hurl the evidence of her shame out into the empty void that lay beyond. Then she spun back around, her pale cheeks blazing red and her darkly outlined eyes unable to meet Shin’s gaze as she did her Divine best to play it cool. “Oh, um, h-hey Uncle Shin. What’s up? What's, um…been up?”
“I…” Shin stared back at the increasingly crimson-faced Goddess, unsure if he should reassure her or pretend nothing had happened or just drop to his knees in apologetic prayer. “Not, uh, much? You?”
The girl shrugged haltingly, lifting her chin in a show of confidence. “Oh, um, I’m fine! I’ve just been, um, you know, doing…Goddess-y…stuff?” She blinked, her ears and tail decisively sinking, before hurling herself onto the big pile of plushy kobold dolls that apparently served as her bed. “Omigod I’m such a dork!”
Okay, right. Reassuring it was, then. “Hey, no, you’re not–?!” The Schemer shuddered as the music wrenched itself back to full volume, blasting the higher brain functions clean out of Shin’s skull as the girl-Goddess buried herself inside her stuffed toy bed.
Woof. The cause of Momo’s mood was quite a bit clearer, now.
Still, Shin had to make an attempt to communicate with this girl. One, she was apparently at least partially his Goddess, and so he probably had a duty to support her. And two, he absolutely had to know why he was ‘Uncle Shin’. “Hey, are you alright?”
Only the girl’s sulking gray eyes were visible deep within the kobold doll nest. “What?”
“I SAID–” Shin yelled, “ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!”
She poked her head out a little further, shouting back over the impossible intensity of the incredibly morose singing. “WHAT?!”
“I SAID I LIKE THIS MUSIC, WHAT IS THIS?”
“Oh.”
Shin silently groaned in relief as the music lowered to a more reasonable level, the girl vanishing back into her bed-pile. At length, she reluctantly emerged, tightly clutching one of the kobold dolls as she leveled a wary eye at Shin. “Do you, um, mean it? About the music. Do you really like it?”
“Oh yeah absolutely,” Shin insisted, too dazed to be concerned with the ethical implications of out and out lying to a Goddess. “It’s absolutely unlike anything I’ve ever heard, that’s for sure.”
“Hmph.” The girl sank back an inch into the pile, suddenly suspicious. “What do you like about it, then?”
Oh Goddess. “Um, so many things?” The Avatar burrowed in a little deeper, looking doubtful; change your approach. “I think it’s mostly that I can. er. really tell how powerful the singer's feelings are? He’s just got so many emotions, right?”
Somehow, that managed to be the correct answer. “Omigod right?!” the girl gushed, kobold dolls tumbling as she leaned forward in excitement. “It’s like, so melancholic, but it’s still got this really wicked sort of black humor too, right?”
“Definitely; I think so, too.” Shin summoned up a laconic sigh. “Sometimes there’s nothing to do but laugh, right?”
“Yes, that’s so right, yes.” The girl bounced up, still a bit embarrassed but now eager to talk. “Um, do you want to hear another one? I could play another one.”
There were certain inviolate rules of existence, and one of them was this: When a Deity asks if they can play you a song, the only possible answer is ‘Yes.’ “Go for it.”
“Awesome, just one sec~!” The girl threw up a prompt, her fingers tapping through options at superhuman speed as she eagerly introduced the next song. “I actually like this one way better; those other guys had some classics but the singer is apparently, like, a major asshole now, and hey you should hold onto something RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
–the girl flapped away the impossible barrage of System Errors, rolling her eyes as they stuttered and snuffed themselves out of existence. “Sorry Uncle Shin,” she sheepishly offered, “You good?”
Shin wasn’t entirely sure. He lifted his hands to his face, confirming that his eyeballs hadn’t exploded inside his skull. Okay, well, then he was at least good enough. Good enough for questions, at least. “What the hell was that?”
“Oh.” The girl trilled her lips in dismissal. “That was just the dumb System getting all pissy because I’m pulling up some Other World stuff for you. It’s like, it’s just one song, right?! So lame.”
She’s pulling up some…wait. “Are you saying you have access to the Other World?”
“Huh?” The girl briefly looked up from her prompt. “Yeah.”
“The Players’ World? That Other World?!”
“Uh, yeah?” She scoffed. “It’s really not a big deal. The System’ll get mad sometimes but it’s like, ‘Hello?! I control the very stuff of your existence over here, guy!’” The girl tsked. “The System’s not my mom. The System can’t ground me.”
Okay, Shin was absolutely not going to miss this opening. “About that...you said Momo is your mom? Isn’t your mother Tasan Okaa?”
“What?” The girl snorted. “Uh, no? I’m Tasan Okaa?” No sooner had she declared that then she bobbled her head back and forth, reconsidering. “Well, I mean, I’m sorta Her. I’m a totally independent being, completely separate from Her, but at the same time we’re also totally a single Godhead. It’s, like, this complicated divinity thing; it’s for real not a big deal.”
Well, Shin supposed he…no, he wasn’t fooling himself or anyone else. Shin absolutely did not get it. But grasping the underpinnings of complex religious dogma could wait. “So why is Momo your mom?”
“Uh, because she made me?” The girl leveled a head tilt towards the Schemer. “Like why you’re Uncle Shin? I mean, I guess I could have decided you were my Dad and she was my Aunt, but you feel way more like an Uncle.”
“Is that right? I don’t have that Dad aura?”
She shook her head decisively. “Nope. If it was going to be anyone, Auntie Gero would have been Dad. Oh here it is~!”
The girl made a final selection on her prompt and then expanded the window, a thrumming note pulsating deeply through the room as the song began. It was all simply too surreal. It wasn’t so long ago that Shin was a mongrel and his ambitions hadn’t yet run higher than idly hoping he’d have as amazing a death as his brother, who got his head crushed by a super cool falling rock. Now, he was standing in the room of a real-deal Goddess, listening to an incredibly sad song from the fucking Players’ World.
No one could ever say that Shin’s life hadn’t taken some fascinating turns, that was for certain.
Wait, was the girl pointedly scooting over on her bed-pile? Did she want Shin to join her? That was…honestly pretty adorable. Shin was still baffled by the revelation that he had a Divine niece, but discovering that she was apparently a softie underneath her brash exterior was an absolute treat.
Stolen story; please report.
“Can I sit there?” he asked, pointing towards the other side of the pile of plush kobolds.
“Um, sure,” the girl mumbled, doing her best and failing to appear nonchalant. “You know. Whatever.”
Shin carefully settled down, picking up one of the dolls to make a little cozy for himself. Wow, these were really well made; this one actually looked like it was…wait. “This is Hanbun, right?”
“Yeah,” the sort of Goddess confirmed, clutching the doll that was now so clearly Shita a bit tighter. “I’ve got the whole village, actually.”
“...is there a Moots down there somewhere?”
Shortly after Shin was sprawled out on the ersatz huge pile of kobolds, eyes shut and the cheery Plushie Moots squished against his chest as he allowed the increasingly compelling music to wash over him. He had no idea who this rich voiced man baring his soul through song was, what mistakes he had made, or why he felt he had to take the blame. The kobold only hoped that this sad spooky prophet would learn that a loaded gun would not set him free, before it was too late.
The girl had allowed her faux standoffish facade to fade away as the music pulsed to an end, her grin splitting her face as Shin let out an emotional breath. “It’s great, right?” she demanded. “Isn’t it great?”
“Yeah,” Shin found himself replying, deeply surprised to find that it wasn’t even a lie. “I really liked that.”
The girl’s grin somehow managed to spread even further. “Should we listen to it again?!”
“Actually,” Shin began, cracking open an eye. “Maybe you could play me something else from the Other World? Another song? Or anything, really?”
The girl shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t. If I share any more than this, the System will probably explode you.”
Oh. Well. That didn't sound optimal. “Rain check on that, then.” He sat back up, wobbling briefly as the kobold pile shifted underneath him. “So hey, what should I call you? Rippana Choujo is sort of a mouthful, right?”
“Um, Cho?” the girl bashfully offered. “I sorta thought people might call me ‘Cho’.” Her expression soured. “If I ever got to talk to anyone besides Mom. Well, and that one guy.”
Shin’s ear perked up. “‘That one guy’? Who’s he?”
Cho tsked again. “He just shows up sometimes to tell me about what’s going on with God stuff or whatever. Honestly I think he sorta sucks but if you wanted to meet him…” When Shin didn’t immediately answer, Cho started to sing. “When you need to place your fealty, But you–”
“No stop blah!” Shin waved his arms frantically, Plushy Moots’s stuffed beard waving about as the kobold did everything in his power to prevent Cho from summoning Divine Bolty. “It’s fine, I’m totally good. We do not need to invite that guy.”
“Right, okay,” Cho shrugged. “Like I said, he sucks.” She hunched over, a defensive note entering her tone. “Though I guess it’s kinda okay to have someone to talk to, sometimes. I guess.”
“I get that,” Shin offered. “Is that why you’re fighting with your mom? You want to talk to more people?”
That opened the floodgates. “Ugh, she won’t let me!” Cho dumped Shita back into the pile, snatching up another plush and crushing it into her chest. “I’m an adult and a Goddess, and I can absolutely take care of myself! But noooo,” –she waggled her fingers in mock spookiness– “Things are scaaary right now! It’s too dangerous for me to have adventures! To talk to new people! To finally meet up with–”
Cho swallowed that final thought, her cheeks flaring in a fresh inferno. She shot Shin a suspicious dose of side-eye, squeezing her doll a little tighter when she decided that he had not sussed out her secrets. “...anyway, yeah. I wanna go out and see stuff. And people. Not specific people. General people, who are very much not specific.”
If Shin couldn’t untangle this particular mystery, he needed to turn in his Schemer license as quickly as possible. Especially given the glaring clue she was clutching to her chest. “Is that a Bex doll?”
The color drained out of Cho’s face in an instant. “No!” She darted her eyes down, her blush erupting once more with all the power of a volcano when she confirmed that there was no chance the kobold doll with the freckles and chestnut-colored bob could be anybody else. “I mean, yes, but–!” The girl shook herself, making a last ditch effort at appearing aloof. “I mean, I guess? I don’t really, um–”
“If you’re going to lie,” Shin noted, “You need to cultivate better control of your non-verbals. Your tail and ears are snitching on you so hard right now.”
Cho blinked, and then her tail vanished and her ears sharped into broad wedges, cute little tusks popping out from her mouth as she transformed from Kobold Cho to Hobgoblin Cho. “How about now?”
“Too late.”
“Aw, friggin’...beans!” Cho pouted for a moment, her features shifting back to that of a kobold as she mulled over what response would save the most face. Then she clacked her teeth and glared at Shin. Anger it was, then. “I mean, so what? She’s part of this village, too!”
Shin tilted his head, unphased by the Goddess’s mask of outrage. “Is that why you’ve been Contacting her and then breaking off the connection?”
“...she knows that happened?” Shin nodded, and Cho released a primal groan of unbearable embarrassment, flipping around to bury her face into her bed pile “Omigod I am such a dork this is the woooorst…”
Oh wait, shit, was Shin terrible at talking to young people with very intense feelings? The evidence suggested he might be terrible at talking to young people with incredibly intense feelings. He needed to handle this quick. “Hey, Cho, c’mon, it’s not like that! It’s not like Bex is mad or anything!”
Cho’s sniffle echoed out from her nest of dolls. “She’s not?”
“No! Definitely not. She really wants to talk to you, is all!”
“She does?” The Goddess coughed, forcing back her brief outpouring of unvarnished joy as she adopted a self-conscious scowl and slowly sat back up. “I mean, I guess that sounds okay.”
Shin couldn’t help a little smile as he watched the girl surreptitiously wipe her nose with her Hilde plush. This was Shinki Itten’s Goddess, huh? Shin didn’t hate it. And while he still wasn’t sure whether or not he was especially religious, the idea of being an Uncle had grown on him. “What do you like about her?”
Cho chewed at her thoughts for a moment, eventually managing a little sigh. “I don’t really remember all of it, but before I formed out of Tasan Okaa? I really liked the way she prayed.” Cho sighed again, a wistful shimmer in her eyes. “She’d just, like, talk to me? About her day, and her dreams, and her fears...I dunno. It was different from how the rest of you prayed. It was really…”
When the girl trailed off, Shin took a stab at finishing her thought. “Intimate?”
“Yeah, that’s it!” Cho nodded, her smile spreading. “It was really intimate. It was nice.”
“What about now that you’re your own person, though?”
Cho let out a small whine, her ears flush against her hair and her tail twacking nervously against the bed pile. “I, I just, she’s so awesome, I can’t stand it!” She flopped backwards, lifting the Bex plush into the air as she gazed dreamily into her stuffed face. “She beats up assholes and she’s such a loyal friend and she’s really really funny and, and she’s super cute…”
The Goddess gulped, staring up at the doll for another moment. Then she let it drop behind her, letting loose another sigh. “I like a lot about her, I guess. I dunno.”
“Mm.” Shin lay back as well, staring up at the ceiling. “Well, Cho, for what it’s worth? I bet she’d like a lot about you, too?”
“Thanks, Uncle Shin.” The girl propped herself up on an elbow, adopting a serious expression. “Hey, you should be careful by the way. I think the way you’re helping protect everyone is really great, but you need to watch out.”
Shin’s ears began to fold. “What do you mean?”
“I mean more weird stuff is happening. It’s all kinda hazy, but I think something’s being smuggled into the village?” Cho frowned. “Sorry, I’d be more specific if I knew more. But I’m pretty sure that something really upsetting is going to happen to you soon, and when it does you can’t just get mad. You’ve gotta figure out how it happened, or everyone will be in trouble.”
“That’s it?” Shin forced himself up, hoping for just a few more details. “You don’t know anything else?”
Cho shook her head. “Sorry. And I think you’ve got to go, now.”
She had a point, judging by the way he was beginning to fade away. “I guess so…” Still, warnings from Goddesses aren't to be treated lightly, no matter how non-standard said Goddess might be. Best to commit the girl's words to memory. “Do you feel any better, Cho?”
The girl smiled. “Um, yes. Thanks.”
“Good. Then apologize to your mother.”
Cho immediately blew a raspberry at Shin. “Ugh okay, gawd. I was totally gonna, you know.”
“I know. You’re a good kid.” The two kobolds shared a smile as Shin dissolved away from the divine realm, both Goddess and petitioner and uncle and niece all at once. It was nice, Shin thought to himself. He was feeling a lot–
Oh shit he forgot about one last question “Hey wait why isn’t there a M–”
—————————————————————————————————
‘ –tell me you actually did it?” Momo asked, incredulity etched across her face. “She actually talked to you?”
Shin gave himself a moment to remember how existing worked before responding. “Um, yeah. We actually had a nice talk.”
“Ugh,” Momo huffed. “Did she at least eat any of the food I left out for her?”
“Oh. No. But that might be because I accidentally stepped in it.”
Momo threw up her hands in defeat. “Well fine, okay then. I guess I’d better prepare some more; she doesn’t have to talk to me but she does have to eat something.”
Huh. He hadn’t really thought about it earlier, but now that he was looking at Momo? The resemblance between her and Cho was impossible to miss. “Well, I think she’s pretty great. You did a really good job with her, Momo.”
The Priestess’s put upon expression cracked, a ray of undeniably gratification beaming through as she folded her arms into her sleeves. “Well. I’m trying.”
Bex raised her hand. “Um, are we still talking about the Goddess here, or…?”
Oh right, Bex! Time for Shin to be an impossible busybody. “Hey Bex, what sort of music do you like?”
“Eh?” The girl titled her head. “All kinds, I guess?”
“Yeah?” Shin pressed forward, choosing to ignore that every candle and torch inside the shrine had dimmed in a clear warning. “What about sad music? Are you into that?”
“You mean, like, goth stuff?”
“I have no idea. Yes.”
The girl laughed, reaching back to rub the back of her head. “Sure, I suppose so?” If it got me a hot goth girlfriend I’d absolutely be into it.” She flushed, embarrassed to have been so candid. “God, that takes me back. I remember these was this one girl back in high school, she had these bangs and that style and–”
As the honorary kobold chatted on, the lights in the shrine flared back from their ominous low to an exultant radiance. Don’t worry, Cho. Uncle Shin’s got your back.