Ekaterina’s Wednesday morning odd encounter(Ekaterina)
Date: 2025-10-29 05:33
(Ekaterina’s Wednesday morning odd encounter(Ekaterina):Ekaterina)
[Wed Oct 29 2025]
In Ordination Hall/span>The ordination hall occupies a spacious rectangular chamber with polished
teak floors that gleam under the warm light of crystal chandeliers suspended
from the high ceiling. Gold leaf covers the ornate molding that frames the
doorways and runs along the ceiling’s edge, while deep burgundy carpet
runners create pathways between the three open entrances. Large murals
depicting the life of Buddha span the walls between tall windows, their vivid
blues and golds interspersed with scenes of lotus ponds and bodhi trees
rendered in meticulous detail. Fresh marigolds and jasmine garlands drape
from brass hooks along the walls, their sweet fragrance mixing with the smoke
from sandalwood incense burning in ornate bronze braziers positioned at each
corner. Rows of meditation cushions in saffron and crimson silk line the
eastern side of the hall, while the western side holds low wooden platforms
draped with embroidered cloth where ceremonial items rest – brass singing
bowls, carved wooden bells, and bundles of incense sticks tied with gold
thread. The afternoon sun streams through the windows, casting geometric
patterns across the floor and illuminating the fine dust motes that drift
through the incense smoke, while the faint sound of chanting occasionally
drifts in from the Buddha Altar Room to the west./span>It is about 50F(10C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Market and Lake/span>(Your target stumbles upon a street artist whose graffiti literally comes to life – but the creations are becoming increasingly hostile and breaking free of the artist’s control. They must decide whether to stop the artist, help them regain control, or deal with the escaped art-creatures terrorizing the neighborhood before the situation escalates beyond containment.)
Tenzin is an early riser who moves with his brethren, but today there is a feeling of detachment from the monastery. He kneels in the back, armor clad and weapons slung, keeping them close rather than stowed away. There is no longer safety within these walls. His meditation is a low gaze rather than one completely sealing the world out.
Early morning in New Haven city.
The sun has not risen, and will not do so for some time yet, which is likely yet more cause for Tenzin to be armed and observant of any and all worries of the night, still more so when there is evil afoot within the temple.
Early to rise though Tenzin is– As early as all brothers of the temple are– there is an air of something -other- about the city this early morning. Something that portents eventualities that have not been so in quite some time.
Be it a need for the city to wake, the time of year, the impending eve when the veil is thin and supernatural activity is at an all time high, the air is veritably pregnant with the haunting ephemeral suggestion of -something-.
The city wakes, and with it– with the early-to-rise, with the bakers and shopkeeps up from their beds and already sweeping their stoops.
This though is something more.
It is not Tenzin’s duty this morning to sweep, so he has not noticed it, though as the voices raise in volume, the sound drifts through the temple, and Tenzin is made aware of the disruption, some altercation taking place just outside the doors.
It is harder for the clouded mind to hear what is beyond it. Today, it takes Tenzin a full minute to realize that there is talking. Not the occasional shout from the kitchens deeper within the temple, but rather outside behind him. With a reverent bow to the image of Buddha, to the room, and to his own tempered discipline, he rises from his cushion.
After fitting his sandals from the rack, one Templar leaves the hallowed ordination hall to investigate the commotion.
The air itself is bracing when Tenzin makes his way out to the temple steps.
The street lights illuminate the area, the sun not yet cresting the skyline of New Haven, and across the way lumbers that abomination of a luxury store owned by the Hand.
The weather is a cool 50F/10C though raised where he was, Tenzin is likely more used to such temperatures than many others.
The odd car drifts past, its headlights blinding Tenzin momentarily, shadows thrown wildly, as if animated across the walls of the temple and reflecting off of the vast sheets of glass across the way.
Upon opening the temple doors– Well oiled at the hinges, of course, none of the ascetics here would avoid their duties lest they visit upon themselves the punative measures of the Abbote– Tenzin sees one of the lesser brothers in heated debate with some delinquent.
The brother’s voice is raised, pitched to carry, though there is nothing but serenity in his tone, and still, the other figure– a rough and ready sort who must be in their late teens or early twenties is growing rather heated.
The brother pauses as Tenzin exits, hands clasping before him, head bowed as he greets Tenzin respectfully, eyes down cast.
The reason for the disruption makes itself very clear as Tenzin’s fellow monk steps to one side, his bucket and scrubbing brush taken with him, and as it would appear, this vagabond has been spraypainting the temple’s front with increasingly more and more lude images, each more contrary to public convention than the next– each more and more real looking.
Tenzin need not relay his intention to the other monk. A knowing bow of his head tends to be enough to convey that he’s got it from here. He does tend to take on such duties from others of the monastery, and being armed means he is simply ready. “A pleasant morning,” calmly greets the ascetic, his smooth step halted by the degree of obscenity emblazoning the Temple’s facade.
With a quiet cough, he turns back to the rough and ready individual. “Why have you decorated our modest temple, friend? I am afraid the brothel is down in All Saints, and they would ah, enjoy your artworks more.” Avoiding the imagery of womanly genitalia, he squints at one line of word art that reads ‘Nut Pang Sai’.
No symbols are obvious on the nir-do-well, though the young lad looks the type to be payed off by someone-or-other for this. He is dressed for the weather, though Tenzin notices the tell-tells.
The spray can is perfectly average, but what is not is the runes, glyphs and other, more eldritch iconography enscribed around the can, and set across various items about his person– Various piercings, items of jewellery and the pariphinalia of an arcanist set into pockets, pouches and bags of paint-stained garments.
The brother bows his head once more, fully ready to leave such worldly things to Tenzin, and resumes his morning task of cleaning, bocket and cloth in one hand, broom resting against a shoulder– That part was easy, but what of this next?
The -artist- pauses only so long to point at Tenzin, the spray in his other hand continuing to work manicly, a pictographic form taking shape– Not anything crude now, but something quite elegant.
It’s a rather well done painting in linework of Jackie Chan fighting a chinese dragon– This fellow either doesn’t understand his audience, or is actively mocking it.
The genitalia image on the wall moves then, lips darkening with desire as they grow slick, become three dimensional– then slap with a wet thud to the steps.
“You don’t get it, man.” the graffiti artist rants at Tenzin as if unable to tell one monk from another. “It’s not about you. It’s all about the expression. It’s all about the canvus and the art, and how much you can do with it. And I have to use this– It’s perfect for my masterpiece.”
Said masterpiece, just as with the disembodied genitals appears to take form, Jackie Chan leaping from the wall to take up a very improbable martial arts move that is not advised in any coriographed -anything- with the dragon slithering from the wall behind him, its maw already opening, its throat glowing as it inhales– holds– then begins to exhale, smoke bursting forth from its all-too-existant maw.
“The man’s expression is one of furious -need- as if compelled, though the animation suggests far more of obsession and undeserved– unwarrented– supernatural gifts and poor application than possession.
Even as the dragon claws its way from the wall, gaining shape and mass as it moves, Jackie Chan is acting, performing moves directly riffed from such nonsense as Samurai Jack, Dragonball Z and worse. It’s a caricature of reason, with each motion less and less reasonable, and all the more dangerous, with the martial artist’s actions sending bursts of sharpened air, bursts of flame and … Ki blasts?
The dragon, having nearly freed itself by now rears back, its maw still glowing, and now fully manifested, it becomes obvious as the Mortal Kombat dragon.
The artist though is not done– Far from it. his graffiti is already continuing, the previous works driving him to more and more furious lashings of the can, the paint lashing the walls and taking shape into– Is that the Death Star?
“Isn’t it beautiful?” the -artist- bellows, regardless of the dragon and movie star engaged in — well– mortal kombat– closer to Tenzin.
Suspicion grows at a gradual pace the more of the lad Tenzin looks over. He’s seen this sort of thing before on patrols around the city. Some artist devoting their work to a devil, completing sacred geometry. However, none that has combined Jackie Chan, Dragonball Z, and enlarged, disembodied ‘chakra points’, if one could call them that.
“What manner of devil have you let in?” the assuming monk questions the vandal tersely. He tries all too hard not to stare at the genitals that slap onto the temple steps; even if it has become an unnatural reality, perhaps if he does not look at it, it will cease to exist.
What holds his focus more is Jackie Chan and his crouching dragon, both of whom get the monk’s staff held in defensive posturing. “You must use the Wat Pang Sai for this? Why?” But even as he asks, he may already know the answer. The very same reason landmarks dot the cityscape of New Haven. And the first of his actions is to smack the paint can out of the artist’s hands with a decisive blow of his staff.
As the Death Star takes form, the world destroying laser already lighting up, each stream murging into the single central point ready to fire, Tenzin moves.
The artist doesn’t even stop him, so obsessed as he is, and no answer escapes his lips in Tenzin’s direction.
Jackie and the dragon leap into the air, lighting the skyline of Elysia up with the fireworks of -skilled- martial artists in… a cartoon, complete with the ubiquitous “whoosh!!!” speach bubble.
The staff lashes– impacts– and the can thuds from the man’s hand, even as the not-a-moon-but-a-space-station bubbles and…
And what? The can rolls away, and Jackie and the MK dragonsimply stop being, perhapse a reflection of the heavy handed smashing of normality and the supernatural within the city of New Haven itself.
The paint stops spraying, the artist screams, and then, as if proving Tenzin’s point entirely, bursts into flames as incandescent as the inferno, his form drifting to ash at Tenzin’s feet.
The paint rolls to thud against the wall of the temple, and all goes quiet.
Just another morning in New Haven…
Tenzin may possibly have baught the wrong mushrooms, or the city begins to be less mundane again, who knows, really. But what is clear is that this situation has, in the most simple terms, been resolved.
So ready is Tenzin to see the artist’s work unmade. So many calculations are crunched in the monk’s head as he’s caught in the laser’s line of fire. This happens in the span of the moment he spends slamming that ‘weapon’ from the lad’s hand.
Fast reflexes carry him promptly forth to meet Jackie Chan’s comic strip onomatopoeia, where his own swirling movements bring no such life or color — only the dull and boring lack of real form, preparing to block the master martial artist.
However, it is all over before he can even blink again. He’s stood stunned, and warily looks to where the giant… lips fell.
Tenzin takes a step back to see if any artwork at all has been left on the Wat Pang Sai’s walls, assessing for damages.
Thankfully, no artwork remains on the walls.
Be that from Tenzin’s fellow brother’s quick hand, or one of the many curious applications of supernatural ability now resolved in the simple ways that so many would like to believe do not exist, all is as it was– the slate wiped clean.
The relief is clear on Tenzin’s face and shoulders, more effective than anti-dandruff shampoo. He lifts his fingers to his ear and quietly says over a frequency, “This is Tenzin reporting ah, a disturbance in Elysia. It has been resolved, as far as I can see, but there is a need to neutralize a cursed item. If you could dispatch to my location, please?”
The ornate paint can, assuming it is still there amidst the pile of ash slowly blown by the wind, is guarded but not picked up. He’s happy to let the experts do that, with their gloves and protective suits.
The paint can spins slowly in a circle as the breeze catches it, the ash of the former artist spiraling outward to drift away on the wind.
There is a responce from Temple Security, and a team is sent in short order.
Complete with the appropriate equipment, they sweep what ash remains for evidence, take the can in tongs, shipping it into a warded box that is then sealed, then welded shut, and taken to be deposited in the Temple vault.
It seems, with that, Tenzin is able to return to business as usual. There is one less agent of chaos in Elysia, but who’s to say there aren’t hundreds to take its place. Stifling a yawn, he looks around for his horse, spies it nibbling on the Diamond Pavilion’s white petunias, and pettily pretends he hadn’t seen a thing. Back into the temple he goes, to reassure that one other brother from another mother.