Holidays/ Celebrations? Maybe a little backdated??

[reindered]

Type: Video
Sender ID: @ reindered (Tony Tony Chopper)
To: Public/Everyone
Subject: Holidays! Tell him about them! (and excuses to devour more candy!)
Warnings: Not that I can think of??

[Chopper looks rather happy, sitting wearing his ghost costume with a small pile of candy surrounding him. Evidently, everyone seemed to think his costume adorable and gave him lots of candy. He smiles, beaming and waving a hoof at the shellphone, putting another empty wrapper in the rubbish bin next to him with the rest. He may have chocolate around his mouth. But that's clearly not the important thing here!]

Everyone! Hey! So, we've had this 'Halloween' with dressing up and stuff. What other holidays are there?

[Read as: what other excuses are there for him to get all the candy and chocolate? Clearly, the priority here! If there are more holidays like this, he wants to know.]

Comments

[reindered]

Hm. Sort of? I guess?

[Cue him drawing one as an example in an attempt to show Faulkner what he means. It's sort of similar, at least? He holds it up, showing the other and anyone else curious.]

They look like this!

[withermarked]

[ Okay, now he's thoroughly distracted from what he was talking about before. ]

They're... creatures?

[ He almost said angels, but he suspects he'd have to explain that. ]

Or do they just look like that?

[reindered]

Yeah. That's how they look. I haven't really used them so much, but I know the Marines back home would use them to talk to each other. I guess they're creatures, alive. Just that the Marines use them for communication. Sort of like we do with these shell things.

[It's not quite the same as the snails. But....close enough? That he has some vague idea? Sort of.]

[withermarked]

If they're alive they'd probably count as some kind of angel, back home. You said they use electricity too?

[ This seems like a bit of a tangent, but it might actually make things easier to explain. ]

[reindered]

I'm not sure. Maybe. I haven't used them myself. But I know the Marines do. Maybe it is sort of like these shellphone things. I'm not sure how it works exactly.

[Someone like Usopp or Franky might know more than him about that sort of thing. Probably. Or Robin, perhaps.]

[withermarked]

Huh. Well... point being, the Saint Electric is our god of electricity. Well, god and saint, hence the name.

[ A pause while he thinks how to explain that exactly, given it's kind of important to explaining the holiday. ]

[reindered]

God and Saint? Oh. I thought things were usually one or the other. But I guess the name is pretty self-explanatory. Electric and all.

[He's sure Robin would be more interested in things like this. History and stories from other worlds. There's always a bit of an ache when things remind him of his crew back home. How much he misses them sometimes.]

[withermarked]

[ That last part gets a chuckle. But then he goes on. ]

Things usually are one or the other, yes. She's a very... special saint, though. Mostly saints, where I'm from, are humans transformed by divinity. Remade in the image of a god. That's what she began as, too. A young lady who became the saint of some ancient fire god or another.

[ He's skipping all the more horrible parts of this, or at least he's trying to do that. ]

She became a livin' flame, hotter than anything else. Hot enough to turn the first steam turbine, so the story goes. And so the story goes, she chose to impart her secrets on the first members of the Church Electric, and to power all their future inventions.

[ But this isn't really about the lore, or his actual opinions on the commercial gods. It's about the holiday. ]

Of course, what all this meant to me as a kid is we got to eat cake about it every year. The fun part is settin' it on fire.

[reindered]

Oh! Like a birthday cake with candles?

[Clearly the important part. Cake!!! He's sure Robin would be more interested in the rest, though. Learning about the Saints. The history of it.]

[withermarked]

Sort of like that. But there's this glaze over the whole thing and you light it an' it all goes up. My dad used to make us all stand by with a fire extinguisher 'cause he was always terrified they'd burn down the house.

[ He sounds just a tiny bit nostalgic. ]

[reindered]

A glaze? Ah, but you didn't need to use it, right? It was fine, and it didn't set everything on fire?

[withermarked]

We never had to use 'em even once. But that didn't stop him from standin' by barkin' orders just in case.

[ He snorts. ]

Those premade cakes he'd buy hardly even lit up to begin with.

[reindered]

He was just being careful, I guess. Which is a good thing! Keeping safe around fires and stuff is important! So nobody gets burnt or anything!

[withermarked]

I mean, you're right. Besides, he didn't exactly build the sturdiest place in the world so... probably would have gone up in a flash.

[ And suddenly he's reminded of something that makes his expression flicker to something a little less cheerful. He hides it just as quickly again. ]

So yes, probably for the best.

[reindered]

It probably was. But ah...is everything okay?

[He had seemed sad? Just before? Or maybe that was just Chopper imagining things?]

[withermarked]

Oh just... thinkin' about how far we are from home, I suppose. Fact I'll probably never see that old place again, if it's even still standin'.

[ He has reason to believe it's not, but he doesn't say that part. He gives a little shrug. ]

It's alright, though. I'm glad to be here all the same.

[reindered]

Oh. Mm. I miss home, too. My crew. But I'm trying to make the best of things. With my new crew. New friends I've made here.

[It doesn't stop things being hard. Still doesn't stop that ache all of them probably feel in missing home or loved ones here.]

[withermarked]

That sounds like a good way to look at it, but I'm sorry to hear that. Suppose I'm lucky in a sense—pretty much everyone I care about these days is here.

[ It really is true. There's a couple of people he'd bring here if he had the chance, but he doesn't miss a single thing enough to want to be there. ]

[reindered]

That's good. I mean. That you're not alone. I guess it can depend. Some people have others here from home and some don't. But I'm glad you have your friends.

[It varies. But at least not everyone was alone. And everyone was making new friends while here.]