The Dozy Giant

Metaphysical / Paranormal event

"Now then, knave!" the Princess Masamune commanded. She was looking imperiously down from her balcony at Matsumoto Ooawagaeri. It followed, then, that he was the knave. "What boon would you have me grant to you, the victor of this tournament?"   The erstwhile Black Blade did not hesitate. "I wish to continue moving forward with my journey, if that is not too much to ask."   This, however, appeared to be the incorrect answer. The Eternal Princess yawned and stared at him with half-lidded eyes. "Bo-ring! You don't want riches? Girls? Stuffed animals?"   Unheeded by the Princess and her Knave, something was happening amongst the assembled Hyakki Yagyō. The Cart Driver, having given out furry bundles to each person present, also seemed to have snapped them out of their dreamlike fugue. Hakutaku was notably attempting to disentangle herself from the edgy black cloak she'd donned for this event. "Why am I wearing this clyoak?"

"I suppose I like a good sword every now and then," Ooawagaeri mused as per the Princess' question.   "A sword, hm?" This response seemed to meet with much greater approval. "Mn! A fine choice for the victor of a tournament!"   "Lord Matsumoto!" A small hand gripped Ooawagaeri from behind. The chaos to his rear seemed to be of increasing intensity. "How long have you been here?" It was Okuni with umbrella in one hand and a squirming kitten in the other. What's more, her single eye was now unclouded and shined at him in recognition; a far cry from her behavior when he'd met her at the gates.   "I'm not sure exactly. Not long, though," the knave said distractedly. The Princess, after all, was still speaking.   "Yes! A sword befitting you would be wicked and black, with spikes. Some onyx jewels in the hilt, and..." Lost in her own imagination, Masamune produced a small notebook from the stuffed animal at her side and began doodling in it as she spoke.   "Hey Ooawagaeri!" This time it was Bedivere. "Did you get one?" She showed off a cat cradled in her arms. Ooawagaeri's attention kept dancing between the Princess' scribblings and the pink bow on the kitten's head.   "What's this?" he managed to ask. The castle walls shuddered with the ever-growing noise.   Finally, Masamune too seemed to realize something was not right. "Wh- what's happening?" she stammered. "Where are all these cats coming from?"   "That guy in the hat. He's giving them out." Bedivere pointed at the broad shoulders of the Cart Driver, even now disappearing into the crowd of excited yōkai.   "Shame. I didn't receive one." Ooawagaeri had to practically shout this mild comment over the racket of Skyhold's walls bending under some immense weight. As if in response to his complaint, the masonry tipped inward under a veritable flood of cats. Each one was black, wearing a little neckerchief with the emblem of the Matsumoto Family embroidered upon it. Like a tidal wave, they rose into the sky and crashed down...   "Aieeeee–!" Princess Masamune shrieked.   "What is hyappening?!" Hakutaku screamed.   "Hmm. This might be too many," Ooawagaeri ventured as he was lost in the flood.   Skyhold fell.   ...
......
.........   When his vision cleared of fur and purrs, Ooawagaeri found himself standing amid some scattered ruins on a snowy plateau. There were no cats, no stage, and no Princess. However, a wickedly long sword with spikes on the reverse edge and an onyx-studded hilt was plunged into the snow a few feet away. Ooawagaeri grabbed it by its cat-paw-shaped handle and withdrew its blade. "Well. No use leaving this here," he said with utmost nonchalance.   Not far away, the Night Parade gathered in a rabble. Bedivere could be seen among them, as could Hashiba Hideyoshi. It seemed they were all equally confused by the whirlwind of events that just befell them. Like a vengeful specter, one tall, dark-clad figure rose from the mob to place an enormous claw on Ooawagaeri's shoulder.   "I think we are owed an explanation, human," Hitotsume-nyūdō hissed.   "I know about as much as you." Ooawagaeri shrugged, an impressive feat given the weight of the hand on his shoulder. "Though my guess is it was a trap to prevent us from moving east."   "It was that stuff, right?" Bedivere ventured, approaching the two. "Dream stuff."   "It is true that we came here to seal the Dreamlands rift," HItotsume-hime added.   "And all that stuff that happened there, that was dream logic for sure." Bedivere crossed her arms and nodded with the authority of experience.   "I gyuess we hyave Ooawagyaeri-syan to thank for snyapping us out of it." Hakutaku looked at him kindly, in stark opposition to Hitotsume-nyūdō's cold expression.   "I'm afraid not. Our mysterious cat peddler seems to have done that..."   Ooawagaeri trailed off as a truly bombastic snore tore through the evening air. The souceless snooze nearly rocked all of them back as those assembled looked around for its origin. Only Hitotsume-nyūdō seemed uninterested, her eyes locked furiously on the knave.   "A 'cat peddler'? Are you certain?!"   "Uh, we're not going to just ignore that huge snore, right?" Bedivere broke the tension of the moment, wandering off so she could poke around the fallen stone walls. "Hello! Who's sleeping here?"   Extending his senses outward, the erstwhile Black Blade joined in the hunt. He saw the mingled energies of the Hyakki Yagyō, indeed, but also a hulking blue-green aura slumped in a seated position beyond a far wall. Bedivere cleared the same wall a moment later, letting out a low whistle as she did. "Ooawagaeri, you might want to see this."   And so he did, tromping over through the snow until he turned the corner and beheld a giant. The huge man was sprawled out in a rough wooden seat like a carved throne. His long white beard reached the center of his breastplate, armored like an Albionite knight. Again, he snored, like a full forest of logs all being sawed at once.   "He looks European but, hm..." Bedivere studied the three-meter man with a pensive expression. Indeed, hadn't it been rumors of a fellow knight displaced which had led her here? "This isn't any Knight of the Siege that I know of." She stared up at his blubbering lips for a moment. "Do you think that was his dream we just muddled through?"   "I suppose it could be possible. But why didn't they wake up?"   In response, the bearded man muttered something in a thick, consonant-heavy language neither of them understood.   "Good question," Bedivere said. Whether it was a response to Ooawagaeri or the giant wasn't quite clear. "Or...are we still in a dream?!"   "I don't think we are, based on those ruins." Ooawagaeri motioned to the roughly circular array of crumbling walls around them. It wasn't difficult to tell they would once have formed the stone base of a Japanese castle.   Before Bedivere could answer, Hitotsume-nyūdō swung around the wall, her eye narrowed in fury. "I expect an answer, human. What did you say about cats..." She trailed off as she looked up at the man who, even sitting, dwarfed her tall stature. "Who is this?"   "No clue. As for your question, a man gave each of you a cat and that was the catalyst for 'waking us.'" Ooawagaeri slipped the pun in there so casually it almost went unnoticed. "Or so I believe. A wave of cats was the last thing I saw before ending up here."   "It WAS him!" The nyūdō paced a furrow in the snow in her anger. "That bastard!"   "Hrrmpbbllb..." The giant groaned. One eye cracked open, then the other. "God morgen."   Ooawagaeri, Bedivere, and Hitotsume-nyūdō all stared at the man. The man stared back, then said something in his strange, foreign tempo.   "I don't think I've ever heard that language," Bedivere said slowly, "And I have a classical education."   Ooawagaeri shrugged. Whatever language it was didn't hail from his corner of the world, that was certain.   With a groan and a cracking of his back, the giant stood. He stooped down to pick up a broken broadsword from the snow around his feet, then patted a few dustings of white from it and himself. Fortuitously, Hakutaku chose that moment to wander by in search of them. "What's gyoing on? You all hyave been here for a while..." As was becoming the standard reaction, the little yōkai trailed off as she stared up at the towering foreigner.   The giant exclaimed something, looking back at her. This time, Ooawagaeri clearly caught the word "Woodkin." "I think he means you, Lady Hakutaku," he said laconically.   Looking between the odd group, Hakutaku waved her staff and magic threads bound everyone's languages together.   "Finally!" the giant exclaimed. "A decent Court Wizard. Good children, tell me, where have I awoken this time?"   "You're in Japan right now," Bedivere answered. She seemed intent to just skate past that 'children' bit. "Yeah, I didn't know where it was at first either. You look like a knight, but I don't know your langauge. Tell me, good sir, from wheremst do you hail?"   "My name is Ogier, and I hail from the nether lands, but I have spent most of my career in Ys under the banner of Charlemange."   Bedivere crossed her arms and nodded sagely at this. "Mmm... mmmm....! Haven't heard of any of it! You must have gotten her ethrough the Dreamlands rift, or maybe you just dreamed yourself here?"   "My dreams have been exceptionally vivid of late..." Ogier mused. His watery eyes focused once again. "Who among you is the leader?" Somehow, everyone turned to look at Ooawagaeri. The giant stared in disbelief. "This knave? I can tell from a look how untrustworthy he is."   "Rude," Ooawagaeri scoffed.   "No, no," Hitotsume-nyūdō cautioned him. "He's got a point."   "That's fair. I do wear a mask most of the time."   "Then with your leave," proclaimed the Dane, "I will join you until I find my bearings in this new land."   "We are traveling east in order to close a rift that seems to be combining our realm with the one beyond," Ooawagaeri explained.   "Harrumph!" Ogier harrumphed. "Then we had best not dally."