avalononline | text | un: Helios

Legal age?

[1582, Shinji. No one had trouble stabbing children, so they were allowed to drink too.]

[But he'll be sitting right at the bar (he likes barstools! At lot more comfortable than chairs, and a lot easier to grab his weapons as needed!) with a saucer of sake. It's obviously him, because he's wearing a cloak, a katana that nearly scrapes the floor, and still got his gun handy like it's the wild west.]

It's

I'll explain when I get there. [He did this to himself and he hates it.

In any case, it's not long before he gets to the bar himself. At least overenthusiastic Sengoku warlords are easy to spot.]

You probably don't need to carry around both the sword and the gun. [Is that going to dissuade him, almost certainly not, but it's what Shinji's going with.]

[Have an absolutely puzzled King of Demons. Even when he sleeps, they're both always next to him.]

Why wouldn't I?

Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say. [Shinji pulls up a seat and has a look at the menu. He wasn't in Liminal Space's main bar very often, but he has a vague idea of what's what.]

So what first, the concept of a minimum legal drinking age or how much fires suck?

["Suck" -- he mouths the word to himself repeatedly! Contextually it just seems to equal bad, but maybe it's literal? Like sucking out the oxygen? He'll have to hear it again before using it!]

Legalities. It seems I may need to get a few dozen books on laws at this point.

But then we can move onto fires and their legal status too!

[Shinji orders himself some sake before continuing. Sounds like the best option on the menu.]

There's a few parts to it. For one, water's a lot safer and you don't have to ferment all your grains and rice just to keep 'em longer. Also it is actually possible to have too much alcohol, and that's a lot more likely to kill you than too much sugar.

[Also there are more drink options, but... frankly the last thing Nobunaga needs is to be introduced to soda, so that will not be Shinji's fault if he can help it.]

I also think the average alcohol these days gets people drunk faster than it used to. But anyway, there's more options and actual concern about what alcohol does to people, so most countries say you have to be a certain age before you can have... either any, or any outside of your parents' house. [But don't ask him where Japan falls on that one. He doesn't have parents.] Japan's 20, like most other official-adulthood shit. Some places it's as low as 16. America's 21, and I think they did some kinda 'well, you don't have to enforce it but we'll take away your road money if you don't' bullshit to make it national, but find an American if you wanna know how their shit works.

Last place I was stuck, the unofficial regular bartender was underage himself, most of the time we were there. He didn't say there was an age so much as a 'capable of not fucking everything up' level. Think he only refused to serve one person who wasn't, like, under ten.

[Bless you Shinji, you're too good for this world!]

I know about alcohol poisoning. [But he will grant you, since he didn't know it was physically possible to have too much sugar, yes, fine. He can see why you would feel the need to remind him it exists.]

Alcohol gets stronger? [Huh. That's kind of impressive. He almost asks why and how, but... eh he's good!] Right, I suppose since alcohol was the kind of luxury no one wasted on children in my time...

[You could drink young, but most kids didn't even want to. Especially since a lot of the cheap stuff was disgusting as hell.] There's no age limit on tea, correct? [Or he has to ask about Alice's party!]

Or... does tea not have the same risks as alcohol and sugar? [Even if there's no age limit on sugar, it seems to be relatively widespread knowledge that sugar can cause problems, so Nobunaga safely assumes people just protect children from it without needing to ban it outright.]

It's a hell of a lot harder to have too much tea. The caffeine can fuck with you if you have a lot at once, but otherwise I don't think it's a big problem.

[There are two reasons he doesn't dare mention soda. Caffeine is the other one.]

And no long term diseases like alcohol liver or diabetes pancreas?

[Sips his sake anyway!]

Caffeine is... like sugar is to candy? Also in coffee, correct? Is it in anything else?

Edited 2021-05-07 19:57 (UTC)

Not that I know of, anyway. [Medicine has never been his interest, though, so.]

Kinda. Caffeine's the part that helps wake you up.

[Nope nope nope still not talking about soda.]

You are very knowledgeable, Chef. I'm impressed!

[He is!]

[Though he's still working on sake = downer (sleep!) and caffeine = upper (wake!) because he doesn't generally sleep well and hasn't worked out caffeine could be making it harder for him to sleep. Part of that fire is bad thing, he just flat out has nightmares, and general PTSD about assassins.]

Last question if you'll indulge my curiosity.

[But wording it...] Are there age restrictions on weapons and sex as well? [He's not sure how you ban sex. But maybe going back to some of the things Mai said, there were some more intense legalities enforcing it.]

[He snaps his fingers.] And taboo words.

Weapons, yeah. Sex, kinda. Swearing, not really, just a social expectation you don't do it at school, at work or around kids.

[Go on, guess how many fucks Shinji gives about that particular rule. (Spoiler: The field in which he grows his fucks is barren.)]

Guns got smaller, more accurate and easier to use, so most places have clamped down hard on who's allowed to have 'em. America's got a real bad gun problem, but again, find an American. For a while Japan just said anyone who wasn't in the military wasn't allowed to have any weapons at all, which didn't stop people from improvising.

Like drinking, there's a minimum age where you're considered capable of sayin' you want sex. People care more about an adult crossin' that boundary with a kid than they do about two teenagers messing around. Forcin' it's not cool at any age, but the problem is a lotta people never report it when that happens. Dunno all the shit around abortion - getting rid of a pregnancy you don't want or can't survive - but I don't plan on putting anyone in that position, so.

[BLEH.]

Which brings us to why the fires are everywhere. [Finishes off his current sakazuki of sake!]

[And hand over his eyes!] Did anyone tell you about the message board quests yet? Sometimes there are some less than noble ones up there. Noble meaning -- [Rolls his free hand in a circle.] Protecting people, fetching a granny a shiny faerie stone, that sort of thing.

One was to watch a building burn, no one to die from it, that's why fires are everywhere now. The other was to assassinate wealthy demon heirs. [Rubs a temple!] Some things never change, huh?

Fuck's sake. [Why are people like this. Also how has Takay not gleefully claimed credit for one of those damn fires yet.

...well, if his silence means he's gone, Shinji will take it.]

Watchin' shit burn is overrated.

Beats being inside it.

[That sake needs to come faster.]

Not by much, but yeah.

[Arches both eyebrows.]

That bad?

[So it wasn't Shinji surviving the fire, or was it?]

...My sister died in a fire. [Luckily, he has a drink now, so he can punctuate that sentence properly.]

Well, Aki's sister by blood, but it didn't really matter by that point. All we really had was each other. Nighttime fire, started in the girls' dorms. Before anyone could get in... the roof gave out. She was six. We were eight and Aki was still ready to run in there after her.

[So damn young!]

[Fifty years of life has a man, except they didn't even get that much by 1/5th!]

[Mind, Oda knows full well some kids were in the fire of Mount Hiei, but he still thinks it's different.]

Do you remember her name?

Miki. [He's probably never going to forget her name, even if he loses everything else of her with the attrition of time.]

After that Aki got it in his head that he could just punch all his problems hard enough to make 'em stop being problems. No, I don't know how he planned to punch another damn fire.

[Waves a hand.] I get it. Almost all of us, me and my vassals have something like that powering us.

To Miki. Kanpai.

Edited 2021-05-07 23:52 (UTC)

[Shinji returns the toast and has another drink.]

...Thanks. Took me a while to get to grips with bein' allowed to mourn my own losses.

What, why?

Because brains are stupid and mine took 'you fucked things up for other people' as 'your own grief doesn't matter.'

[Nobunaga hesitates briefly... and pats Shinji on the head.]

[He's FINALLY starting to get how he is freaked out by others touching him without warning, but it still seems appropriate, so he does it unapologetically!]

Grieve away then. We all fuck things up. It's impossible to escape this -- or any world without it. Being born, dying, all these things affect others, not always for the best. Don't try to avoid it. Just do things to make the world...s overall less fucked.

[More drinking!]

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