KARAOKE!

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

((Sorry about the delay but it took me a while to decide how to play this. If you think it's unrealistic for your character to have been drunk enough/influenced by Ryuuji, you don't have to play along. Otherwise, pick any song you think your char would have sung, upload it to yousendit, then comment with a link. Easy way to share musical tastes! And if your char was drunk enough, pick a song they'd never normally sing and upload that. XD))

Over the course of the evening, everyone had been roped into trying out the karaoke machine at one point or another. Or trying it out several times, since Ryuuji hadn't been quite sure if he'd caught everyone and had compensated for that by pushing anyone he caught onto the stage and insisting that they serenade the pub.

For himself, he'd ended up performing once to break the ice, once for the hell of it and once near the end of the evening to prove he was still sober. And the fact that he thought that would prove he was sober probably testified to the fact that he was more than a little intoxicated by that point.

Songs were:

Every Me and Every You - Placebo.

The Calender Hung Itself - Bright Eyes.

Irresponsible - Voltaire.

Comments

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"You haven't? You don't drive then, do you."

Crowley eyed Ryuuji over the top of his glasses, yellow eyes reflecting the dim light in the bar. "You can stay if you want, kid, but I expect you could find better company this evening."

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"I've got a very cool vintage car, actually, but I don't have it in this world. And I drive like a maniac anyway, since I'm something of a speed demon." Ryuuji confessed cheerfully with a laugh, then shook his head at the other's offer to let him leave. "Nah, it's okay. I'm not going to ditch you if you're feeling down, and besides, I've already got Nightwing out of his shirt and into leather pants, so I think the highlight of the night is over for me. I'd rather stay and talk with you."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley looked up, suddenly interested.

"Oh yeah? What kind of car? I've got a vintage job myself." He laughed. "And don't tell me that you're a speed demon until you've gone 90mph down Oxford Street at rush hour."

Then he stared into his glass of wine again.

"I already told you, kid, I'm not feeling 'down'," he sneered, "And how thoughtful of you to point out that I'm not the highlight of your evening. No need to stay if being in my company is a chore."

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"Argh, hell, I didn't mean it like that!" Ryuuji instantly protested, realizing that Crowley had taken his words the wrong way. "What I meant was, I've had enough partying for the night. I'd rather sit back and talk to you than force myself to keep playing the role of graceful host. Get it?"

A little ruefully, he added, "I'm sorry you misunderstood me, but really, people need to stop always assuming that I'll say the most insulting thing possible any chance I'll get. It reflects badly on what they're used to."

To make up for it, he slid the nearest saucer of treats down towards Crowley, hoping they'd soak up the effects of the alcohol.

((...I have no idea what kind of car, and I can't find screencaps right now, but it's blue. That's about all I remember.))

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley smirked at that. "So you don't have to play the graceful host for me? And I'm the opposite of partying?"

He waved a hand, laughing at Ryuuji's frustrated expression. "I'm just messing with you. I knew what you meant. So what did you want to talk about?"

((oh well, he'll just have to talk about the Bentley later... :D))

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"...Right now, how it's not fair to pull that kind of prank on people that are halfway to drunk." Torn between relief and annoyance, Ryuuji settled for laughing as well, then tried to remember what they had been talking about.

Taking a sip of his drink - which had mysteriously morphed from a Bloody Mary to something green, pink and decorated with an umbrella on a straw called "Goodbye Mr. Brain Cell" - Ryuuji suddenly snapped his fingers. "Oh yeah! Alternative universes. You said we could talk once you had several bottles of red."

((Or just forget conveniently that Ryuuji has a vintage car and bring it up as part of a different convo XD))

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley downed the contents of his glass and watched it refill before turning back to Ryuuji.

"Yeah, I think I'm nearly drunk enough for that. What do you want to know about it?"

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"Why you don't believe in them." Ryuuji answered promptly, opting for the simplest question possible. To be helpful, he added, "And how that's possible when there are so many people in this school that clearly don't belong to this world."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"With Him all things are possible," Crowley said facetiously. "Look, how much do you know about Christianity?"

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"Uh..." Considering that seriously, Ryuuji gave a half shrug, "Some. Not all that much. I'm amused you refer to God as male and the metraton refers to God as female. I know he's classically male, and a lot of wars get fought in his name and he supposedly invented the earth and everything..."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"He is genderless and all powerful so he can appear to anyone in any form He likes. If He wants to be a woman for a while, that's His business. I always say Him because it's easier and I don't say His name, so don't expect it."

Crowley took rather larger sips of his wine then he normally would and continued.

"All right. Here's the condensed version of the story. In the beginning of everything there was Him and nothing else. Not even space or time for Him to exist in. Then he created the angels. Nine choirs in three tiers. At first, they existed only to praise Him, their Creator. But although there was no time yet, they knew that at some point they would be needed for something else and they worked towards those ends, trusting His plan.

"Now, He had a second-in-command who was the Morningstar, you know him as Lucifer. And things were fine for a while, though there was no while for them to be fine in. I won't keep saying that, just keep it in mind. It's hard to explain non-temporality in English. Anyway, at some point, the Morningstar learned of His plans for the creation of the universe. Lucifer's pride told him that he could rule such a creation better than Him, so he gathered followers, nearly a third of all the angels, and rebelled against the Lord.

"There was a War, the likes of which you could not conceive and many angels were slain. In the end, however, the Archangel Michael, the Commander of the Host, and a real jackass by the way, overpowered the Morningstar and threw him down. As punishment for his sins of Pride, the Morningstar was cut off entirely from the Presence and made to Fall into a new realm. This he called Hell and he became its ruler the way he wanted to rule Heaven."

Crowley finished his fourth, sixth, ninth? glass of wine and poured himself another. He really hated talking about this part.

"Every living thing feels the Presence. I know that you're an atheist, but you feel it, too, and would only miss it if it were gone. Since it was nearly everything that makes up an angel, most of those who lost it went insane or became really cruel and twisted. They started to become known as demons.

"Then He created Light, Time, the Universe, the Earth, Water, Life, and Humans. He created a Man and Woman and put them in the Garden of Eden where He told them they could eat of any tree but one: the tree of knowledge. Well, Lucifer, for various reasons, formed for me a mortal serpent body (I suspect it was easier than a human one...) and sent me to the Garden with an order to make some trouble. Since there was only one rule, the only trouble I could make was to get them to break it. Eve was dissatisfied with her idiot husband Adam, but he was the man and the first so he was in charge. But I convinced her that if she ate the apple from the tree of knowledge that she would be the one in charge. She did and got instant awareness of right and wrong and free will to go along with it.

"Suddenly with free will, the humans could choose whether they wanted to be good and follow Him or to be evil, wallowing in sin for their own personal gain. And somehow, I never did quite understand this part, but there was some kind of Agreement that said that His followers would return to Heaven when they died and those who chose evil would be punished and sent to Hell. It doesn't seem like a fair choice to me if those are the consequences, but He has never been fair, no matter what anyone says."

Trying very hard not to sound bitter, Crowley tried to wrap up his argument.

"So here's my point. There is nothing that can exist that He didn't create, right? Because He is omnipotent. So if He didn't create other dimensions, and we would know if He did 'cause we were there, then they don't exist. So, where then do you people come from? I don't know. Maybe He wants you all to just think you're from another dimension. Maybe He wants me to think you exist when you really don't. Second guessing Him is impossible and His plan is ineffable, so I don't worry about it."

Crowley sat back, muttering something about solitare. "I hope that answers your question, kid."

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

I think I need to be more drunk to understand that. Ryuuji focused on absorbing everything Crowley said, analysing it and looking for the weak points. Right. Okay. Put aside the native skepticism. Focus on what the demon is saying as if it actually makes sense. Accept - for the sake of argument - that Crowley's tale makes sense for his world.

"Okay. I can get your point, but why does God have to be omnipotent for everything? He can be omnipotent for this universe alone, and have all the power over everything he created without having any power in other dimensions. I mean, it's the box argument, isn't it? A box inside a box inside a box inside a box, and you never can tell that there are more boxes beyond the one that you're trapped in."

Please tell me I'm sober enough to argue metaphysics.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley shook his head. "That's not what omnipotent means. Omnipotent means having unlimited or universal power and authority. If there were," he waved a hand, "other dimentions out there, worlds, universes, that He didn't create and didn't control, then He wouldn't truly be omnipotent and if He weren't then there'd be no point to anything."

He could feel the alcohol kicking in and was glad of it. When one was discussing the potential redundency of one's entire existence, alcohol was needed to cushion the shocks.

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, that's the thing! Universal. So he can be completely powerful over all of your universe, but not the other universes." Ryuuji pointed out enthusiastically, treating this as an abtract problem mostly because otherwise it would be too weird to argue over something he knew was true, when Crowley apparently knew the opposite was true.

Hm. His drink was blue now. And fizzy. With little gold bubbles.

Oh well. With a shrug, Ryuuji knocked back a gulp of it, not bothering to wonder whose idea it had been to get magically changing drinks anyway.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley shook his head. "Nah, we're getting caught up in semantics. I knew this would happen. Universal means everything, right? Ev-ry-thing. If he's not all powerful over all of Creation, then the battle between good and evil and by extension, my existence, is entirely pointless. So forgive me if I choose to believe that other dimensions don't exist. You don't have any proof that they do, anyway."

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"No proof besides I come from one of them. And I've seen other gods." Ryuuji pointed out, then took another gulp of his drink - urgh, it was bubble tea! Alcoholic bubble tea.

Making a face, he tried to focus, and then went on, "Besides. Who says he's omnipotent anyway besides himself?"

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Or you think you do. These other people who call themselves gods, like our new Astronomy Professor, are powerful, yeah, but not like Him. I've been in His Presence, I watched Him work. It's so completely ineffable that even if you knew angel language I couldn't explain it. You just know."

Crowley knew he was getting tipsy now, because even though he couldn't find words for concepts that were ultimately indescribable, he was trying anyway.

"You've met Adam, right? That kid is omnipotent, too, but he mostly represses it, thank... him. He could know everything, do everything, be everything, but then the world would end, so that's not so good. Sometimesss when he looks at you, it's like he can see everything you've ever done written on your soul in letters ten feet high. It's a good thing he's not judgmental..."

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

...I hope he never looks at me like that. Was the first thought to spring into Ryuuji's head, oddly enough, but he brushed that off in favor of continuing to listen. Head canted to a side, Ryuuji shrugged and looked down at his drink, "You're right that I've never met your god, so I don't know what it's like to be around him. I've met Egyptian gods, in my home world though, and I know what it's like to dimension-hop. And what about DEATH? In your mythology - sorry, religion - he's an angel, isn't he? Whereas he obviously isn't an angel here."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"I've met Egyptian and Norse gods," said Crowley thinking of Horus and Odin, "and any number of anthropomorphic personifications, but they're not true gods. They were all created in the minds of men and are sustained by man's belief in them. They have human failings. He is the only one who existed before mankind, who created mankind, and by extension, the other gods."

Crowley drank the last mouthful of his glass of wine. His drink wasn't changing because he didn't expect it to. He did, however, expect it to refill itself and it did.

"Death is a special case. He's not an angel, he's a horseman - the first and greatest of the four. Ask him about it if you like."

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"But they all say that they created mankind. And if he created you, and he was created in the minds of man, then wouldn't you believe whatever he says because you were created by him to believe what you're meant to?" Ryuuji wondered if that made sense. He hoped it did. Just in case, he passed up on taking another gulp of his drink and made a mental note to try to talk to Death.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"The ones I know never said that. The stories about them, written by men, say that they created mankind, but the gods themselves know better."

Crowley took a second to try and follow the second statement. He frowned in concentration.

"Couldn't you say the exact same thing about yourself? Couldn't anyone? That's why trying to figure it out is so pointlessss. We're all just deuces in a giant game of solitare, so we believe what we need to and get through the day."

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

Cue a shrug from Ryuuji, and a slight tilt of his head, "Maybe so, but still, the alternative dimension thing bugs me. Like Cthulhu. Do you really and truly believe that your god created him? And if he wasn't created by your god, then how do you explain his existence? It works out fine for me since I know the multiverse exists, even if I don't believe in gods as a matter of principle, but by your method, he's inexplicable."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley leaned forward. "Tell me sssomething, Ryuu... kid. Do you believe in dinosssaurs?"

[dice-addict.livejournal.com]

"...Ryuuji works fine." Ryuuji paused, mulling that question over, then shrugged. "Not sure - I've had gods tell me that they just put the skeletons down to test humans, but that seems kind of croddy of them. It's always struck me more as something that happened, and people tried to explain away later if it didn't fit in with their belief system."

Cue a head tilt, Ryuuji's drink starting to steam red smoke. "Why?

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley shook his head. "Couldn't say it...

"I watched Him do it. Put all those giant bonesss in the ground. He was laughing about it. Great big practical joke."

He was beyond tipsy now and his drunken hissing was getting significantly more pronounced.

"Any ssscientist, any one, will tell you that thisss planet is four and a half billion years old. Basssed on calculationsss and whatnot. But I know, I know, that it's just over sssix thousand. I know 'cause I've lived every blesssed one of them. Why does He want them to think it's older than it really is? Who the fuck knowsss? That's what I say about sssquid boy, too. It just doesssn't matter when you get right down to it."