The time, however short that it was, that had been spent in China with his family had been worth it. It was always good to see the rest of his family, though the time spent on an airplane sucked.
With spring coming though, ever so slowly it seemed, and the end of the semester coming with it Fai had decided it was time to start powering up again. He needed to get out and do things as a senshi again, to help, and to check on a certain chibi senshi...when he could. Tonight was to stretch his legs though, as he hadn’t done that in a while.
Normally most people would be worried, at this time of year, over final projects and papers and such. He was normally no exception except this year, with two tournaments scheduled, however this year he’d started on things early and was either done or almost done with all those end of year things. Professors were, thankfully, good enough that they told students in the syllabus what the final project or paper was and all the guidelines for it. He’d put that to use so he now had some free time.
Maybe, if he was lucky, he could find someone who knew what he’d missed in the last few months. He knew he’d likely missed a lot, and he hoped it was nothing too major, but he needed to find out what it was. He could try and ask his cousin, he knew that, but he didn’t want to just yet. Let him try and find out whatever he needed to know from other people...instead of mei. He wanted to do this on his own, as he should.
Larissa grunted as she jumped across a few buildings. She wasn’t able to sleep, not since that stupid circus came to town and she… had been in it. Luckily she had been able to vent about her feelings to Alphubel a bit, but that didn’t help her to sleep as much. At the end of the event she had seen creatures, presumably youma if the auras were correct, had run off when the general had fallen. That meant that there was something else going. Well, that and there were probably a ton of youma roaming the city right now, more than usual she would have guessed.
And that’s why she had been out. She couldn’t sleep at night knowing that a youma could be lurking around, and possibly targeting one of her family members. She was the only one who knew… the only one who could protect them, even if she wasn’t sure she would make it, she would try her best.
So she had gone out on patrol that night, but she hadn’t expected to feel the aura of another White Moon senshi nearby. And with that, she headed toward it, hoping that the other might have some information on any youma. She finally found him, not too far from where she had been looking luckily, and jumped off of the building she was currently on to greet him, trying her best to land as gracefully as she could on the grass below. That didn’t work however, and she felt herself about to fall before she regained her balance and could stand up again.
She sighed, and looked at the other senshi. It was definitely one she hadn’t seen before. “Hi! I’m Larissa! I was wondering if you had seen or felt any youma wandering about tonight?”
It wasn’t often that the senshi of kappa dealt with other senshi, especially since his cousin had left that little group of hers. He’d heard, from her, that she hadn’t left per say...but that wasn’t something he planned to discuss with is cousin...ever, as he was sure it bothered him even now. So when he felt another senshi headed his way he gave pause, waiting. He didn’t think they’d come for him, maybe by pass him, he wasn’t the most social typically either.
He would, admittedly, follow his cousin if she decided to join a team ever. She was family and so he would follow her. On his own he was just as fine however, though he did have that little chibi he liked to train. This senshi was neither of those people when she turned up, Cetus taking the time to glance her over.
“Cetus, senshi of kappa.” She seemed rather bright in personality, most seemed to in fact. “No, none yet. I take it you have not either.” Tonight though he wasn’t looking for youma as much as he was an update on things and perhaps this senshi could provide that, as much as he didn’t like being social he sometimes had to.
“Kappa? Those Japanese uh…” She wasn’t sure if they were monsters or mythical creatures. “... those things. I’m senshi of Water lilies! And darn it. Was hoping that you had sensed one. See there was this Negaverse plot having to do with a circus and other stuff, well anyway at the end of it, I’m pretty sure there were quite youma released and I wanted to go and see if I could find some and stop them.” And see if I could actually sleep better afterwards. She thought to herself.
“But if you’re not busy… and since we haven’t met each other before, you want to go looking for one with me?” Two was always better than one after all, and Larissa could always use the help. After all, her magic was more supportive than offensive, so if she could have someone who knew how to fight with her, she might stand more of a chance of actually defeating the youma!
“Yeah, those Japanese things.they are called yōkai demon.” Not that it was that important but he might as well toss out some information. He still found it odd that his uniform was Japanese and so was his sphere yet he was Chinese - very odd to him. “Circus? I’ve been out of the loop so I’m afraid you’ll have to fill me in. He was really hoping she would fill him in on these things, he had to find out what he’d missed. He’d likely to Mei as well.
“I can join you for a youma hunt.” And hopefully they’d find something. If she was right, and as far as he knew there was no reason for her to be wrong, and a lot were released than they were likely still roaming the city. It would be a good idea to hunt them down and remove them as quickly as they could, he hoped others were doing the same thing.
Larissa was glad that Cetus had decided to join her. “Awesome! And thanks for the information! Really interesting, or at least, I learned something!” She said. She was surprisingly positive tonight, but it was most likely from wanting to be able to destroy a youma. “Yeah, fake circus that was actually a Negaverse plot. There were… casualties.” On both sided, but mostly on the civilian side, if eating all of those star seeds had been any indication.
She pointed in a northwest direction. “How about we go that way? Though I don’t want to go too far. I’m not going to spend the whole night trying to find a youma. And besides, there should be plenty here anyway, unless people have been really busy trying to get them. Which I would hope they are, but you can never be too sure!” She was starting to ramble. They needed to find this youma quickly!
She waited for him to walk with her, before speaking again. “The circus was a total sham, should have known since it was ‘performing’ so late at night. But anyway, an acquaintance and I had gone to go and see it, just wondering what a circus looked like, and then we were all brainwashed, and then suddenly we weren’t anymore and there were a couple of agents and youma that we had to fight, and then we had to fight the really dumb-looking general. It was not fun, at all.” She said, making a face that said she was ‘done with all of this’.
After only a little while, she started to feel the pricklings of a telltale aura, hopefully a youma one. She hadn’t quite been able to tell the difference between them and agents, but she felt like youma had a bit more chaos in them? Anyway, at least they were on the trail. “Finally. I hope we can take this one down quickly.”
“It’s always good to learn something new.” It was good to always learn things and not stagnate in that area, even if the information was seemingly useless. One never knew when a useless bit of information would be needed, or could be put to use in some manner. “Civilian casualties...and a fake circus. Explain what happened. I’ve been busy and haven’t been permitted time to power up till now.” And it sounded like something big and that he really should know about it.
“Mmm, lead the way.” He’d follow, right at her heels, listening to her and watching out for anything which might turn up. She was a super senshi so he knew his senses had a bigger range than hers, which might be helpful right now.
“Brainwashed…?” She had, thankfully, started to explain some of what had happened but he wished for more details, they might pay off sometime in the future, and a dumb looking general. Well he assumed the fight had been won, or it wasn’t likely this senshi would be here. If the Negaverse, and their youma, had one that battle they would have taken hostages or killed the senshi and knights there - right? “After the youma we should find a place to talk. I’d like to know whatever you can tell me about this event.” He too had sensed the youma, before her, but hadn’t said anything as he’d waited for her to pick up on it. Let her notice it was there and use her senses. “First we get the youma.” Already moving to head off towards it, hoping it wasn’t something which would run from them.
Larissa nodded in agreement. “That’s fine. I think everyone should know about it. It was… disturbing to say the least.” She really needed to put that in the database. Maybe she could find one of the guardian cats? Either way, she hoped she could add something to it in case others had already put in their information on it.
“Yeah. Thought we were part of the circus, but it was a distraction. I guess the general had been consuming starseeds in the meantime, or at least collecting them. But that’s why I’m out here looking for youma. It seemed that a bunch of them were released when we finally… beat the general. I can’t stay still and not do anything while I know about it and believe my family to be in danger.”
She followed him towards the youma. In case it did try to run, she could always use her magic and hoped that it would be stopped in its’ tracks. She whispered to him, “my magic is defensive/keeps one in place, so if you have a more offensive attack, I might be able to keep it from moving.” This senshi probably had more experience with youma than her. He looked confident about it at least, so she let him take the lead.
Making people think they were in the circus was indeed a distraction but the question was how he’d done it, and for how long. Could such magic be done again but by someone else, as it sounded like this particular General was dead, there was a lot to find out about this but he was sure he couldn’t find it all out. He was interested however, and wondered if his cousin had heard about this event yet. He’d have to call Mei, or maybe text her, and find out. If not he was going to fill her in on whatever he found out here, from this senshi.
If he had them under for a while he could have pulled a lot of starseeds...but where had the bodies gone then? There were, to his knowledge, no reports of lots of missing people or a load of bodies found. Surely either or both would have been all over the news - right? Had he missed it or had it been covered up? Maybe somewhere on the internet it was to be found but not on the news, due to a cover up? Another thing to bring up with his cousin, and maybe see if she knew someone who might be able to search the internet better than either of them could.
These thoughts went about in his head while he listened to the other senshi, he didn’t want to miss anything she said, it was information he needed so he was doing his best to take it all in. It was just a lot, and it brought up a lot.
“I don’t, mine is illusion based. It’ll keep them mostly still, as they won’t see anything around them, this’ll come down to physically beating and killing the youma.” Not that it bothered him, and that much was obvious, the trek towards the youma was a short one but when they got there he stopped and didn’t do anything for a moment, It was, in his opinion, best to at least try and gauge his opponent before diving right into a fight with it. “If this becomes a long fight we can on off our magic, you than me, to keep it as still as possible in order to finish it.”
Larissa didn’t feel too confident about going in first herself, but she was pretty sure that Cetus would help her in case the youma went after her. She quietly nodded to him before silently, or as quietly as she could, stepping forward. She couldn’t quite see what the youma looked like, but it seemed to be some sort of… well, what could only be described as as a miniature yeti. It had dark gray fur, horns, and that was all she could make out right now. She decided however, that she could probably user her magic, and if it came charging at her, well, hopefully it would be caught.
She stood up and loudly said, “Waterlily Dance!” And of course, the accompanying flowers appeared. As predicted, the yeti-youma whirled around, and Larissa made a disgusted look at it’s face. It seemed to be in some weird contortion or something. Either way, it wasn’t pretty. And then it charged! Luckily it either didn’t seem to notice or care that the flowers were now there, and stepped on one, making it stuck. It took a few seconds for the youma to realize that it wasn’t going anywhere and it roared in anger as it tried to rip it’s foot off the flower. Larissa looked back at where Cetus was. “All right it’s caught! The flowers trap people and they don’t discriminate so make sure you don’t step on any!”
“Got it.” Nodding his head to her words, he’d have to be cautious, he was glad for the senshi’s magic. Well...the youma didn’t exactly look pretty, rather ugly really, and it certainly didn’t seem happy - too bad. Moving in quickly the senshi of kappa was quick on his feet, having sneakers on rather than geta helping in that, as his hands moved and struck the youma multiple times in quick succession.
He didn’t, for now, use his magic as it wouldn’t do anything which the others magic hadn’t done. His hands struck out at the youma quickly, each strike well aimed, as he moved and ducked as needed. Cetus was not interested in being hit by the youma, even if it was just a swinging arm, as he wanted to try and finish this fight without being hit at all...call it a matter of pride really.
Larissa had stepped back a bit, waiting for Cetus to help, and he didn't’t disappoint her. Unfortunately, she herself hadn’t really ever done any sort of self-defense classes or fighting styles, and wasn’t quite sure what to do, however she followed him in hitting the youma as best she could.
Of course, the youma was now much angrier, and swinging around a lot more randomly since it couldn’t move it’s foot. Larissa only knew it was a matter of time before her attack wore off and the youma would really be able to attack. “Cetus, I’m not sure how much longer my attack will last.” Sure, she could use it again, but even if she did, the youma may not step on the flowers the next time. They needed to finish this quickly!
“That’s fine. I don’t think it’ll last much longer.” He really didn’t think it would survive too much longer, he was somewhat surprised it had lasted this long. It wasn’t long, mind you, but it was longer than a lot of youma lasted when he attacked them. Maybe this one was just stronger...or maybe a tougher skin or something? He honestly wasn’t sure.
When he stepped back, to avoid an arm swinging at him, he kicked up high towards it’s face in a perfect crescent kick. It wasn’t a skill which came with his style, either of them, but it was a skill he knew nonetheless. Watching as the youma, free from the magic, stepped back and fell over as it started to turn into dust. A roar of pain, or anger, passing it’s lips right before it burst into dust and was blown around and landed on the ground.
“Good.”
“Woohoo! You did it! Good job Cetus!” Larissa said as she quickly joined him and looked at where the youma had been. She was about to say they should go get something to celebrate, but that was when she noticed a black object on the ground. She hesitated looking at it, but it didn’t seem to be… exuding evil or anything. She walked over, and quickly picked it up, standing up again, holding it in her palm. “Eww, it dropped this.” She was sure it wasn’t going to be a good thing. Especially because it came from a youma, which came from that creepy Circus thing. It just had bad news written all over it. She held it out in case Cetus wanted to look at it.
“Well I know I feel better with that youma gone now. One less thing to worry about.” And it showed that she could at least do something about them if she needed to, though she appreciated Cetus’ help. “Thanks for helping me take down that youma.”
Moving to look at what she was holding, wondering what it was, he waited to see if it would do anything. He almost expected it to do something, truthfully he did think it would do something bad, but when nothing happened right away he wondered what it was. There was no reason to think it had no purpose, or possessed no ability.
“We should see if anyone else has found these, maybe they’ll have answers. Until then we should be cautious of this.” He didn’t like the idea of something being dropped from a dead youma, especially if it had been involved in some sort of incident.
“No problem. I’m glad it’s dead as well.” But now what about the shard it had dropped? Maybe a cat might know something? They could also see if any other senshi or knight did, but that would take a long time and be hard.
Larissa agreed with him. She didn’t exactly want to be keeping a shard that could possibly be evil or something. Better to know what it was before trying to do anything with it. “Sounds good. I’ll have to put it in some container or something until we can find a cat to look at it.” But until then, they couldn’t really do anything with it, and she put it in her pocket. She looked at him and grinned. “So, you want to go and grab a bite then? I know this has made me hungry for something!”
Sleet Tempest Snape
The Space Cauldron
kuropeco
