Difference between revisions of "Myrios LeJean"
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− | =• | + | =• Story: Modern Troubles For the Modern Malak •= |
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+ | It’s a phenomenon that’s been recorded across most species in Existence. It’s something that’s featured heavily into many works of fiction; movies, books, video games, comic books, etc. It’s a thing that’s become used with such regularity that it’s become a trope with many variations across various forms of media. It’s something that’s looked on with absurdity but, with so many instances in so many different places and variations, did anyone actually consider that there was ever a grain of truth to the trope? That perhaps if they looked hard enough that they might find something of it in ancient history. | ||
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+ | In every place there’s an urban legend of the mysterious store that everyone’s positive wasn’t there yesterday but somehow it’s in the collective consciousness that it’s always been there. This store seems to sell most everything from the apparently useless to the decidedly ridiculous. But somehow off to the side people can catch a glimpse of the one thing that they’ve always wanted. It may not be exactly what they need, or anything that they’re capable of handling, but they’ve always wanted it. | ||
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+ | This place is known as The Rift. It has doors and locations spread all throughout the universe and into other dimensions. Through the innumerable mysterious looking buildings and aged doors of the building as it exists in the number of places it can be found, every door leads to the same impossibly large store. Things can be found here that defy the imagination. Various species and races, various periods in time in various lands. The odd and mysterious place opens it’s doors and holds nearly everything inside of it’s extra-dimensional space. Though there are doors to innumerable places and times that lead there, one can only exit through the door in which they entered. There is no time or dimension hopping for the average customer. | ||
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+ | Much like every other store in the universe there has to be a curator. There is someone who has to maintain and occupy the space. A store like this, left to its own devices can become a very sinister place indeed. The lone permanent occupant of The Rift is a man. He wears the skin and appearance of a man at the least. He’s been there since the moment that the Rift was created and he’ll likely be there until the universe blinks out of creation. Most people assume that the proprietors of such shops are simply out after some diabolical goals. Evil plots that end in a supernatural treatise on why you shouldn’t trust strange shops who just so happen to sell the one item that you want for no apparent price. This would be incorrect. | ||
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+ | Myrios LeJean is the being who has been in charge of the shop since it’s moment of creation. While there have been rumors and legends throughout the ages no one truly knows if he’s an angel, or a demon, both, or something else entirely. Today Myrios LeJean is a nervous man desperately cleaning his impossible store. While there have been thousands, perhaps millions of visitors to his store over the passage of time, he’d never once actually invited someone to The Rift. | ||
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+ | The man that most people know as DJ Malak has been a solitary and quite often lonely observer of the world for many many years. Of course in such an impossible store Time has little meaning. That’s not to say that Time isn’t an incredibly nice Lady, but that her passage doesn’t hold much weight. It has been a long time since he’s taken an interest in the affairs of humanity. In fact it has almost certainly been close to an Age since he cared to see what the humans have been up to in their world. Never, in fact, has he cared for a lone human, until very recently. | ||
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+ | It’s been close to a week in fact and today he had decided that he would need to fill her in on the very weirdness of his existence. For much of everyone’s comfort he takes a very casual appearance. The rumors and the stories, god damn those stories, have left the proprietor of such stores in a very poor light. Of course that Gaunt Man that ran that one store up north somewhere didn’t do much to further the image. He wasn’t sure how someone would take the news of the impossible store or it’s impossible owner. | ||
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+ | So he cleaned and rearranged the store in an attempt to make it look much more ordinary than it was. He would go through spurts of frantic activity before standing back and admiring his handiwork before shaking his head and going through another frantic burst of activitiy. The problem with cleaning a store like this is that the store has a mind and a personality all of its own. The store will appear precisely the way it wishes to, despite his best efforts. It’s part of the magic of the store. Myrios is simply there to give it someone to talk to. A lonely store has a habit of turning its mind to more sinister things in its boredom, and then you end up with a store much like the Gaunt man’s store, and then intrepid young horror writers blow the WHOLE thing out of proportion and suddenly there’s rumors that he trades in souls and blood contracts for items. | ||
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+ | Myrios cleaned and adjusted the sign by the register that he’d made a few decades before to fight precisely that image. The sign said simply “No Weapons, No Tomes of Elritch Horrors, and No Legal Documents. Prices are CLEARLY marked on all items” He was rather proud of himself for the sign. It had perhaps been one of his strokes of minor genius. He looked around the place once again before checking the watch that he’d been given in order to keep track of time in his impossible store. Time really was a kind Lady, but he was certain he’d simply been given the watch so that she could have a bit of sway in the place. Like the girlfriend stealth moving the toothbrush in. One moment you find yourself with a toothbrush, only to come home and find frilly throw pillows and dust covers all over everything. This was Time’s “toothbrush” but it was an incredibly handy toothbrush when he needed it, much like for his shows or on this evening, a date with a beautiful young doctor who he hoped wouldn’t either run screaming in terror or fall over dead from shock. | ||
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+ | The last was a real possibility. He wished himself luck and left the store, locking it for one of the few times in history. That was one of the fundamental rules of the strange store that happens to have everything; It’s always open at all hours for the desperate souls to trade something he needs for something he wants. | ||
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− | =• | + | =• A Day Off For Malak •= |
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+ | Malak scratched his head as he looked down at the empty crate. He frowned and circled the crate another time or two. He even nudged it with his foot to confirm that the crate was possibly an illusion. He left the store room at the back of his shop and returned momentarily with a broom and began to poke at the crate, poke by poke sliding the crate across the floor. Dropping the broom he squatted down next to it, peering down closer at the emptiness that the crate embodied. Giving a final scoff at the sheer laziness of the crate he stood and walked into the store room itself and looked around. | ||
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+ | The process and the system was simple. It had stood a solid policy for Ages. Malak, always one to argue with a good policy, and perhaps even yell in the general direction of a bad one, had made his peace with this policy a long time ago. He walks down the crowded shelves, stretching up, dozens of feet into the air. Ages of various items, lost to history but not forgotten, stood on those shelves as he walked down the aisles between them. He found an old ball sticking out conspicuously from a shelf and immediately picked it up and started bouncing it in time with each footstep. “This doesn’t make up for THAT” he says, gesturing in the direction of the empty crate. Plog, Plog, Plog follows the sound of each footstep and the accompanying echo as the sound of the ball comes back to greet him. | ||
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+ | He walks further. He know exactly where he’s going and he scans the shelves as he makes his way to the marvelous miracle at the center of the store room. He pauses at an intersection between sections of shelves and he hangs his head and shakes it. He throws the ball at the end of a shelf at a poster seemingly taped in place. The ball whips back on the rebound, catching him in the head and knocking him off his feet onto the floor, a small bit of dust kicked up in his landing. “You really think that’s funny?” He calls out to seemingly no one in particular. The Poster depicted a harried cartoon cat hanging onto a bookshelf, surrounded by the words ‘Hang in there! There’s always tomorrow!’ in a fanciful comic font. He stood up and dusted himself off. He casually scanned around for where the ball had disappeared to. He had words for his small rubber attacker and they weren’t kind. Giving up on his search he decided to turn a corner and try down another aisle. | ||
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+ | The crate couldn’t be empty. It had never been empty before in all the time he’d been the shopkeeper. That was the rule. He goes to the stockroom and items would be there to stock for the day. He stocks those items and then people buy them. “That’s the way this works!”, he calls out again. He finds an old rapier and doing his best Edmond Dantes thrusts and ripostes, tossing out a hearty “HA!” every now and then. He grins and sets the sword back onto another shelf knowing that it’d be in it’s proper place most likely before he made his way back to the front. He resumes his stalking towards the end. | ||
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+ | What could have been minutes or hours pass as he continues walking. Time doesn’t have much to say about this part of the store room and the path has slowly become darkened. The physical shelves start to fade from view, replaced by the darkness that creeps in. It’s partially for effect but mostly to keep people from wandering further who shouldn’t be here. Several more steps, or dozens more and it comes into view. The heart of the store room, the densely contained Singularity at the heart of the store. He smiles at the bright white light that radiates only a few inches from the containment field. Wonderful technology from the cradle of creation housing the universe’s largest collection of items in one place. | ||
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+ | He circles the sphere, leaning in to inspect the surface. He flicks it with his finger and turns his head to hear the sound better. It makes absolutely no sound and he seems entirely satisfied with the results. He begins the walk back, finding the ball in his travels as his foot nudges it. He bends to pick it up and continue. Plog, plog, plog goes the ball as he walks back. Somewhere in the distance the sound of Concorde, Lancelot’s squire from Monty Python and the Holy Grail declare, “Message for you Sir!” moments before a paper airplane comes sailing into view. He snatches it out of the air, crushing it in his fist. “What cute bit of nonsense is this? I’m still mad at you! You know what you did!” He grudgingly un-crumples the airplane and finds a note written in incredibly flowery script inside. | ||
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+ | “Dear Myrios, | ||
+ | I’ve taken the liberty of putting the stock out for today. I know you don’t sleep but I thought you could go out and do something. See some things for me. Bring me back some candy floss. I’ll watch the shop today. Have a day off, | ||
+ | Amanda.” | ||
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+ | His irritation deflated almost instantly and he grinned a little bit down at the note, feeling bad for having handled it so roughly. He turns back around in the direction of the Singularity and says begrudgingly, “You’re off the hook this time, but I’m keeping my eye on you!” The rest of the day was his. | ||