|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 6:52 pm
 |
|
|
 |
Finding a person who didn't care about hiding proved much more difficult than he expected. He wondered, then, how he might possibly find someone who actively tried to hide — who expunged the records they could, wrapped themselves in a new and noisome glamour, who moved states and bank accounts and cell phone numbers. These were the people he intended to find, and yet he troubled greatly with one man, named, who disappeared to China.
But in his hands sat that progress. As Eion walked, an unassuming boy clad in rorshach-colored black leggings and a sleeveless double-breasted green hoodie, he clutched in his hand a textured blue folder with evidence of his progress. Now nearing the need for a binder, Xi-Wang's case for his father expanded large enough that promise lay between its leaves. People found, dates found, lives tracked, purchases made, places went. As he walked the long, tree-lined path toward the library, he held a dozen people's personal identities at his side. Credit card numbers, street addresses, driver's license numbers. He walked with two-inch heels announcing his presence in cork.
There was more to do yet. As he walked, he considered the next steps — the use of a library computer, VPNs, watch list software. He needed the time in the library to explore his loopholes. On the line was not his reputation — Eion was a non-entity now — but his personal integrity and his tenuous friendship with Xi-Wang. The risks were worth it.
Risks. The word laid heavy on his mind, wrenching away attention under its tonnage. Risks were what he took in admitting his own lack of name to Xi-Wang. Risks were what he took by simply spending time with another individual for more than a simple passing second. Risks were what drove him forward in this digital dawn. And as he moved, as he walked steady toward the next wall of legality to break, he caught sight of someone familiar in the deep distance.
Xi-Wang.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 8:16 pm
|
|
|
|
He'd been by to visit Lovina again, wanting to talk to and simply spend time with his friend, but as it was nearing curfew he'd slipped out from her room and taken off through the school heading for an exit.
Once outside, the cool night hair hitting his face and ruffling his hair, the teen had headed off across the grounds. He was hoping to put some distance down before powering up and mirrorwalking his way back home. There was, by his own placement, a mirror tucked away under some bushes so he could make his escape from there.
Snuggling into the large hoodie he wore, his fingers only just peeking out, Xi-Wang enjoyed the gentle chill air brushing over his face as we walked. It felt nice, it was the perfect amount of coolness really. The only thing he wanted once he got home was a nice warm cup of something to drink, it felt like the perfect way to curl up on a couch, or in a chair, and just stare out across the city.
It wasn't until he was far enough away, and close to the mirror he had hiding, that he pulled out the henshin pen he kept and holding it close he whispered the words he knew by heart at this point. Powering up was simple, easy, and done quickly in the shadows which he figured would hide him and keep him safe.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun May 06, 2018 4:39 pm
|
|
|
|
Eion quickened his pace. Booted feet struck the sidewalk in an energetic jog; he breathed no call to Xi-Wang, but aimed to catch him before he vanished into another Romano's building. The youth went not into the library or the cafeteria or strolled toward the parking lot, but cut instead down a narrow path between two of the tallest buildings on the campus. And as Eion neared the edge of the nearer one — a shop building laden with a dozen idle workbenches — he realized why.
Kiuchi Asteroid Power, Make-Up echoed out from behind the corner. Lights spawned and flecked across the opposing brick wall, spelling out a synchronous dance. And dance they did in duos, trios, quartets — in spotlights and ambient lights that shimmer-shone into the night sky. What played over brick was a confessional dance, an ask, an invitation. A come and see. A dare. A brilliant, beautiful, heart-rending dare. A dare so bold that it seized him for a moment, left him breathless, left him wanting for action. A dare that could end any chance of friendship between the two — or anything further. Or everything altogether.
Eion couldn't heel long. Breathless with tremor, he rounded the corner. He felt like he ran through water — like he tried to dash and breathe and see the world through the thick, murky hold of the ocean on his thin body. But when he reached the other side of the wall, when he beheld the source of those playful lights, he broke the surface and regretted its horrid chill.
Xi-Wang was Kiuchi. Xi-Wang was a mirror senshi. Xi-Wang shared a court with the ignominious wretch that so haunted him and dogged him in every action. He was part of the court that loathed to take action. He wore the wrong black.
Eion swallowed stiffly. The bile-knot of disappointment spread its languid arms through his chest until he could ill breathe around it. Until he tasted the way the hurt spread through his ribs and sucked it off his tongue. Absently a hand moved to press, palm flat, against his sternum. But nothing massaged away that bitter reality — that curse. Forming friendships out of his shame of a civilian life was its own patent disaster. Its own desperate shipwreck that he so clung to for another chance against drowning. And when Schörl constantly stirred the seas, these meager friendships became integral — life-saving.
To watch one crumble like this —
The folder dropped from his hand. It clattered to the ground, spilling out its pages in a sea of white. But the noise snapped him from his dumbfounded state; when he spoke, it was with dry lips. "So you're a senshi," he began sharply. "You're a scout from the stars sent to save the samaritans and drain the weak and wanting." Eion stole a breath.
"Why. Why this."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun May 06, 2018 9:43 pm
|
|
|
|
Surprise shown in dark, onyx, like eyes as he turned them onto the other. He hadn't thought anyone had seen him, who would be out here so late? He hadn't expected anyone to see him much less Eion. But what was potentially worse was they knew him...knew what he was.
"Not from the stars...we have no access to them." Shaking his head as he spoke. "Only mirrors and what it offers us...." Something cold and dark was a mirror, glass with backing which showed only what it saw. It wasn't some distant star or asteroid...nor was it a moon or a planet. But it was what he wanted regardless of this fact. It was wondrous in it's own way, and dangerous as well. "We're not out to save anyone...at least I've never been told such...but how do you know?" Walking towards the other, already that nervous habit of tugging at his own clothing creeping up.
It was more a subconscious actions, than something he thought to do, that had him pulling from subspace a small plushie he kept there. Some people kept useful things in subspace...Kiuchi kept a plushie, a pillow and a few other things. Things which were, for him, useful and helpful. Holding it against his chest he kept his dark eyes focused on the other.
"You haven't attacked...so not a knight or white moon.....? Please...tell me you're not....not one of them." He'd only met one which hadn't tried to hurt or kill him, though one had sort of redeemed themselves. But most of them hated him....really hated him.
"I'm not bad...if that's what you think...or what's wrong." Thinking that might be the issue...and hoping it wasn't. He also remembered someone mentioning name changes, and more, when ones identity was found out by others...and he hoped that wouldn't happen to him. He didn't want to become someone else - to lose what he had....who he was.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun May 06, 2018 10:35 pm
|
|
|
|
"Semantics," Eion spat. "You subvert the point." Astronomical access never changed the essence of who he was: Kiuchi, a squeamish and ineffectual Dark Mirror Senshi belonging to a Court that burrowed its parasitic claws into the upper echelons of the Negaverse. The same court that unleashed twin monstrosities that required outside interference to rectify. The same court that harbored a murderer and rapist.
He dragged the words off his tongue. "I spoke to you once."
Eion boiled. He seethed. He felt the heat of Faustite flood his veins, burning him, fueling him, scathing him. Eion wanted nothing more than to show Kiuchi the full extent of this betrayal — this wronging. The boy in the library had been a trap. He'd been a ruse devised by the Mirror and sent out to scurry about school grounds. As a mole, he —
Eion let out a hissing breath at Kiuchi's next words. Stuttered and stammered, spaced out like his mind couldn't fathom how to pull sentences together. "Does it matter what I am?" Kiuchi was Mirror. He was a step away from enemy. Star-written and cast out, their ilk wandered with an impotent chaos. They lacked Metallia's strength, her drive, her mission. They wandered the earth listless and unaware. They interfered where they didn't belong. And they failed to recognize Metallia as the entity that would rule this earth. What stood before him now wasn't Xi-Wang, the boy whom he agreed to help, but a twilit cusp of an enemy. A few missteps from a fight.
As Kiuchi approached, Eion retreated. Further and further he drifted from the white of the dry and unkempt papers. Kiuchi insisted on his own innocence — on his own moral quality. "That doesn't matter." He tried to explain the burden, but when he reached for the words, they lodged in his throat as a thousand restless butterflies. Each word whorled, replaced with the next, in a picture so lurid and fleeting that the lot of it became a technicolor nightmare in his own mind. He couldn't find the first starts with which to speak, to explain, to admonish. He felt as lost and adrift in the sea of non-expression as he did the day he found his mother. His fingers numbed with rage. His tongue hung useless in his mouth. His feet moved lead-slow. Over and over his gaze traced the blacks that made up Kiuchi's outfit.
What if you know him?
He turned at once, whip-quick, and kicked the brick wall nearest him. His foot struck the unyielding material and its force sung up his leg, jarring it terribly. He didn't care. Blaring, bone-jarring hurt was easier to tolerate. Easier to moderate. It was a problem that solved itself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun May 06, 2018 10:48 pm
|
|
|
|
"I...what is the point? We just...we want a home - that's it for us." That's all he'd heard. They weren't after anything else in his court. He didn't think any of them had it within them to want more...to want to dominate or take over. "I guess...we're neutral in all of this." They could help or hinder either side in the war...it depended on each individual, and so far he tried to toe the line. He tried to keep true to himself, as much as he could anyway.
The other had spoken to him once? Oh...that likely wasn't good, as most of his encounters with those outside his own court had not gone well. He was dreading this now, the cold feeling filling him and churning his stomach. He didn't like the feeling, the hold on the plushie tighter now, he pressed his chin against the soft plush fabric in his hold.
"Maybe not? I mean it seems you dislike me..." Shifting his weight he kept his head lowered, dark eyes anywhere but on the other now. "If we met I'm not surprised...only a few haven't tried to hurt or kill me so far...from both sides, though mostly the white moon side..." Aside from that Captain, and he was oddly enough less afraid of her than the senshi who tried to choke him, twice, and landed him from a tree...and brought the branch down on him.
Stopped in his tracks, not wanting to further upset the other, he kept himself in place just watching. It was when the other moved, turned around, and lashed out against a brick wall that he moved again. Moving to e,brace the other and pull him away from that. "You'll hurt yourself. You can't damage brick." It damaged people, not the other way around. His plushie pressed between them, and ignored, he moved to pull the other gently away from it, aware he was stronger now than as a civilian. "I-I'm sorry...if I bother you...but don't hurt yourself because of me...please."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun May 06, 2018 11:29 pm
|
|
|
|
"The point is you're Mirror." And while Eion's voice never rose, it tore about the edges — it frayed, tattered, furled listless in the wind. Desolation cluttered at its edges. Desperation embroidered its malformed patterns into its bulk.
Kiuchi's prattling about his own experiences, his infuriating slip into self-pity, formed background noise against the beating in Eion's skull. That he lost some other pursuit surprised him little. That he lost a pursuit to the Dark Mirror, to their ragtag travesty of a group, ailed him. Into perspective came the futility of exploring normal relationships. What point was there in trying to meet the world on its own terms when each boy he met turned out to be special in all the ways he didn't want? Unlike Rowan, he couldn't wrench Kiuchi from the fabric of the Court. He couldn't uproot it from between them. There it sat, glaring and ugly and teething and wanting and hateful, and there it would forever remain.
Dark eyes searched for the answers that skittered into the brick wall's cracks. "It isn't you." He tasted iron on every syllable. "I lost my name to someone like you. I lost more than that." Eion scraped a breath into his lungs. "To someone wearing a uniform like yours."
But saying so wasn't enough to deter Kiuchi's move. "I said it isn't you!" Eion shot back, voice cracked, as he wrenched against a strength he couldn't overcome. Restrained were his arms, his torso. Kiuchi stood at his back with something pressed between them. Panic and bile rose as two twisted snakes in his throat. Harder pounded the drum in his head as he was stolen away from the wall.
"I'm tired of it," he snarled. "I'm tired of it." Again, he shifted futilely against his human restraints. "I'm so tired of it. Everyone I meet has an ulterior self. Everyone hides it away like a festering secret. Like a curse. Like shame," he finished, voice straining. "Every one of them walks away with a part of me I'll never get back. My innocence. My trust. My name. My parents." Slowly his struggles ceased.
"Now my hope." His gaze fixed to the brick before they traveled slowly downward. Holding him, he knew, was a boy who held a fractious relationship with his mother. Who searched for a father ever out of the picture. Who lived with friends he trusted implicitly, followed a life he newly earned, chose to pursue what mattered most to him. But he wrapped himself in the guise of a mirror agent — a stammering fool of a mirror agent — who gave no explanation for the events that sucked him into a mirror. Who fibbed poorly. Who stammered and stuttered and clung to himself helplessly when under duress. Who was related — by court — to an injurious problem.
And that last kernel weighed on the load of despair he carried on his back. All the accumulated crimes against Elex Yorke — broken bones, youmafication, forced cannibalism of souls, Schörl's domineering and untenable training, enduring Sinope, corrupting Heliodor, losing himself in the Rift and swilling his own piss — bore down with their full brunt. But no tears came as he expected; no racking sobs, no raw pulls of air between anguished cries. Nothing came. No feeling of catharsis pervaded him. He felt nothing. Weightless. Empty. With it came a sudden and undeniable exhaustion, so thorough and invasive, that his bones sagged in concrete coffins.
Eion cracked a wry smile."I wanted to give you my name tonight."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 12:12 am
|
|
|
|
Again it all came down to his uniform, to what he was. Why was it that him being in the dark mirror court such a problem? It seemed neither side licked his faction and he'd forever be disliked by both sides simply because of his uniform, because he was happy where he was.
It wasn't him though...but someone else - someone else in his court. Listening to the other he held him closer, leaning his head down to the others shoulder. He hesitated as he moved, removing the plushie from between them, he offered it to the other after some moments of consideration. "If it isn't me...then don't let that color your opinion of me. I'm me and no someone else. The uniform is similar but not the same." He knew it wouldn't be easy to see past the uniform, the other already had shown he didn't like his court simply because of someone else, but he wasn't his court - he was just a member of it...a small piece of it.
"I'm not ashamed of being in my court...I'm happy to be in the dark mirror court. I only hide it for my own safety." Since people, civilians, thought they were all terrorists and might just grab the pitchforks and torches and attack. He didn't mention the group of drunks he'd let corner him in an alley, and beat on him some, not too long ago. He didn't figure that was a good thing to mention at the moment, if ever, to the other.
Moving to gently rub his cheek to the others he sighed softly. "I'm not going to run off with a piece of you. I'm not like that....I'd think you'd know me a bit by now." It simply wasn't in his personality to hurt other people, especially on purpose. He would sacrifice himself over others, especially those he was close to and cared about. He gave and gave and sacrificed and suffered, he'd suffered a lot for his mother...all in the hopes she'd love him eventually.
Moving, slowly, arms still about the other Kiuchi moved to stand in front of the other. "You can still tell me if you want. I won't hurt you." Leaning down to try and catch the others gaze. "Promise." And he offered up the plushie to the other, as if it would somehow help the other or soften things a bit. The other was upset, clearly, and he wanted to just help and calm the other down.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 10:20 pm
|
|
|
|
In came a plushie to his field of vision and Eion pushed it away. "I'm not six, I'm sixt —" cutting himself off, he rolled his eyes. "Seventeen." Her fault.
Touch felt foreign — desperately foreign. He'd been touched before with a variety of reasons. Often for someone taking their own enjoyment from him, or a physical reprimand, or a bid to stop him out of selfish purpose. But never like this — never where someone like Xi-Wang restrained him for his own sake, however ill-informed. However instinctive. And that touch alone, the fingers pressing their divots into his arms, the crisscross over his chest, buoyed him out of his depth. The cheek against his was so plain and so straightforward and so ceaselessly there. The swell in his chest seldom let him forget.
But Eion softened nonetheless. Rigid muscles went lax and his attention found the floor where their feet stood intimately close with one another. "You're right," he admitted softly. Sinope's poison bled its way into the waters of the remaining court, tainting them irrevocably. Xi-Wang — Kiuchi — may have no knowledge whatsoever of Sinope. The court may be so scattered that they never existed to one another.
Still, he struggled with the thought. How close were they really? What if Sinope and Kiuchi passed through the same mirror? Shared the same space in that damnable mirror world? Were awakened by the same person? Then what do they share? How much is too much?
Eion loosed a sigh to the stars, long and slow and feeble. "A murderer and rapist represents your Court. So do you. It's…" He swallowed. "Hard to look past it. To look past this," he returned, reaching back and tugging up enough of Kiuchi's overlay to draw attention to it.
"But that's an excuse." Eion knew his own shortcomings in this. That he should face castigation for it now was only necessary. He failed as Heliodor would — to his friend and to this nebulous maybe-alliance. "The shock doesn't matter," he reminded himself softly. You have to move. You have no time to dally. Falter, and anyone tastes your hesitance on the air. Find your conviction. Find your drive. Find something.
Finally Kiuchi sidled around, and while Eion made eye contact, he did so begrudgingly. The stiffness lingered in his body language — shoulders back, spine straight as military drills lingered in his person. "It's Eion. Eion Risk.
"But this isn't water under the bridge. Your Court stands in poor favor with me — I don't want to meet your friends. I will make this exception for you. Only you."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 10:44 pm
|
|
|
|
A murderer...and a rapist. He wasn't sure which was worse...though perhaps it was the rapist, their victim was still alive? At least he assumed so, unless they were one in the same - raped and murdered. He didn't ask though, he wasn't sure he wanted the details on that. The idea was...nauseating to say the least but it was no one he knew, right? He couldn't see such behavior from any of his own...as rape didn't seem something which would, or even could, happen in a battle and he didn't see any of them being violent outside of a battle of some sort.
"I understand...I don't mind it being hard for you. Not knowing that." Though how did the other know about someone being raped by a member of his court? Had he seen it...? Afraid to ask, yet curious, he held his tongue even as he worried over how Eion knew this.
"I like it...the name. It's good." Nodding his head to the other. "Mmm, and I wish I could clear it a bit...but I'll take what I can get...and if it's me and only me being accepted then I'm ok with that. Because you see me and not just the uniform." Because the other saw him....because he stood out and he wasn't representing his whole court nor did his court represent him. He loved his court, he did, but he knew others didn't...and that was ok, everyone was entitled to their own opinion and feelings. But he didn't want to be seen poorly when he was innocent in things.
"Tell me....you didn't say you were white moon or a knight...you haven't tried to kill me. You're Negaverse...but what?" Was he an officer or a corrupted senshi of theirs? Who was he...Eion had to be on their side though.
Vanishing his plushie, for now, as it was ignored he settled for just keeping the other drawn close to his taller frame. His dark eyes were focused on the other, waiting to find out, he was glad the other was at least giving him a chance and accepting him. He just would have to continue to earn the others graces wouldn't he?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 7:20 pm
|
|
|
|
While Kiuchi spoke, Eion focused on his breath — on the predator's claws clinching slowly around his chest. His breaths came slower as those claws began to clutch, as the thousand stars of the night sky encroached on his vision. He knew this feeling now. He knew this tightness. He knew that he should press his hand to his chest, feel the humming drum of hyperawareness, and pass it.
He would not be hurt here. He knew this above all. He knew this as he knew the hubris of the stars.
Slowly he calmed against the tentative plodding of Kiuchi's voice. Swallowing, he loaded words onto his dry tongue. "I'm an agent. Captain Faustite." His gaze transfixed on the brick, now too far for him to reach. In it he saw the memory of a lifetime ago, when a Captain Faustite met a Dark Mirror Super Kiuchi and discussed the strange happenstance in the hot summer months. In the time where mirrors swallowed whole everyone vain enough to look into them. And he found nothing — heard nothing. Now he faced that same youth with half his panicked desperation gone out of his features. Now he was restrained by that same youth. Now he was the one acting out of the same desperation that Kiuchi so readily shirked.
"We spoke before. Do you remember?" Eion turned his head, and though he couldn't glimpse much of Kiuchi, he searched regardless. "It feels like an age ago.
"You changed since then." A short silence followed. "I didn't know it before, but I see it now."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed May 16, 2018 10:15 am
|
|
|
|
So he was in the Negaverse...at least he felt a bit safer than if the other were a senshi or a knight, he'd had more bad experiences with that side of things. He'd had a few bad Negaverse encounters as well, it seemed no one really liked his court, but at least this way they were both chaos? So energy gathering was something they both did, and wasn't somethihng the other would have an issue with him doing.
"A captain..." Thinking on it didn't take long, there had been so few he'd met, before realization dawned in dark near onyx colored eyes. "I remember...." And he wasn't scared, not like then, because he knew Eion and he trusted the other not to lash out at him as he had that night. The other might not have struck him that night but it had been an attack of sorts.
"I haven't changed that much." He was still a super senshi who served the same court, wore the same uniform, and still had issues he was working on. Apparently he was missing something though - something Eion saw.
"That night...when you got pulled into a mirror...it wasn't us." Maybe he shouldn't say anything, he hadn't then, but he could trust the other...right? "Keep this to yourself - please? As a friend..." He didn't want others to know but Eion had wanted to know then...and he could tell him - right?
"We had already been summoned and went in - on our own. Mirrorspace tried to kill us and someone pulled us from there and to their world - in space. We don''t know much, how they pulled us from there or knew we were there...if they manipulated mirrorspace to attack us....or have it summon us. B-but she tried to kill us - slowly. She had guards made of crystal....we started to crystallize. I - I didn't want to let someone else know about mirrorspace attacking us...it seems weak...makes us seem like a loose cannon." But being stuck up in space for days, with no way home in sight, and winding up with crystal patches of skin had been terrifying for him.
"We didn't even understand everything - we still don't." His voice wavering as he held the other and went over what had happened up in space, he mentioned what the princesses plan for Earth seemed to be, the fiance trapped in a dungeon, and how they had finally dealt with her. He kept his voice low, a whisper, as it shook at some points.
She had really just been trying to save her people when she took on the chaos seed. She hadn't a clue what would happen, had she? "When she was gone a mirror appeared that we went through and we wound up back..." Back but with mirrorscape now and some of them, at least himself, still with marks from the encounter. He didn't mention the fact that the black under his eyes wasn't make up but it was the remains from the crystals which had been there once.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 9:15 pm
|
|
|
|
The simple fact that Kiuchi pulled their discussion from memory, without ever beholding his austerity as a captain, suggested that he met slim to none. Either the captains he met were women or he was the only one that ever crossed Kiuchi's path. Had he introduced himself then? It was so long ago now, Eion couldn't remember.
Eion remained silent and still as Kiuchi gave what he could. This account was more whole, if wanting. Eion bit back all intention of asking clarifying questions for the moment; what he knew of Kiuchi and Xi-Wang urged letting the timid youth provide what he could on his own time. These dealings required patience, even if his tongue scraped at the roof of his mouth for need of lashing out. Even if questions clustered at the fore of his mind. Even if minute inconsistencies troubled him so.
From 'they' to 'she' he dodged, whether indicative of multiple enemies or a single enemy whose gender was clarified later. Eion didn't know. Kiuchi's account sounded strained for all the ways he troubled to account for any details. The lot of it ran quickly, one event following the next, each interspersed with charged dialogue like 'manipulated', 'attack', 'kill', 'weak', 'loose cannon'. The words went on. The vagueries of their encounter remained in every next breath, always dangling the information on a cusp, yet never providing quite that much. But the stress in Kiuchi's account was palpable and Eion knew the necessity of slow progress here.
When Kiuchi's grip tightened, painful for how easily senshi underestimated their strength with civilians, Eion made no sound. Arms began to bite into his midsection, but he responded with light, grazing fingertips on Kiuchi's exposed arms. The story wrapped with small gains for the Dark Mirror — they returned to their original world, no longer under threat of siege. But they weren't left to scratch their heads over whether it truly happened, unlike the rest that met in the gauntlet. They now held a new realm of their own.
And Earth was no longer under contention. They prevented a stronger entity than themselves from challenging the Negaverse on another front.
Eion was silent for a time afterward, though his fingers continued their slow and predictable trace along Kiuchi's arms. "Quite a journey, wasn't it? To be sucked into another world, uncertain if you would return. If you would see friends and family again. All for this," he added, as fingers paused to tap on one of Kiuchi's delicate metal bracers.
"But you survived it. You can tell about it. That marks you stronger than before."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun May 20, 2018 12:41 am
|
|
|
|
It was in bits and pieces, second by second, that his hold on the other loosened and he snuggled in close to the other. His nose pressed to the flesh between shoulder and neck. "We did survive...but only just. i-I still don't know how. We're few in number and magic is limited. She had a lot more than we did and it was stronger than ours." He hadn't heard a thing about the dark mirror senshi, he couldn't remember her name, who had sided with the princess against the dark mirror court. He worried for her, wondered where she was and what she was doing. Had she gone into hiding? Had someone from the court, who he didn't know, attack her for betraying them? He hoped the senshi was ok...but he didn't know.
"It was unexpected...none of us ever expect to see space, and while we didn't we were in space." And he wished he'd somehow gotten to see it, taken advantage of the situation. He'd been too worried over the crystals on his skin, of getting home, of other things...important things.
"I'd do it again though...for my court - with them. I'm glad I survived it...I'm glad you and others survived mirrorspace. We didn't know anyone was in there while we were in space....we have no way of telling." Just that they expected it was safe and no one could get in unless they were brought in...by a dark mirror senshi.
"Should I say you're stronger also for surviving our home beyond the looking glass?" He whispered the question close to the others ear. "You lived...I know what mirrorspace can do - it's tried to harm us also." Yet it was their home...and it was unsafe even for them....at least sometimes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu May 24, 2018 2:02 pm
|
|
|
|
Goosebumps rose at the cast of breath on his shoulder. Kiuchi whispered ocean wind over the patch of bare skin. Stuttering and sputtering as he was, Eion remained quiet for more tellings. Still against that anxious air.
That patience came with its own rewards. This other entity was not in Mirrorspace, but space itself. Out there, elsewhere, were other powerful threats agains their hold on the planet. People with magic far beyond the wanting scouts that tossed their petty parlor tricks at them. The world of magic broadened for him, but this strange entity did not fixate on the earth. She lusted not after seven billion starseeds, but for the meager members of the Dark Mirror. What happened to the Mirror Court was deliberate; what happened to the rest of them was bizarre and inexplicable.
I wonder if your leaving triggered Mirrorspace's antics. While the parents are away, the child will play.
"I'm not stronger for that." His voice came low, an intimate mumble. His hand, still pale and human, reached upward to find a trimmed mop of Kiuchi's black hair. Eion's fingers grazed their way through lightly, but surely. "But I am stronger.
"Thank you." Eion unwound himself enough to turn and face the taller boy. There in the alley, with printed papers still scattered and soaking up the wetness on the pavement, Kiuchi looked wildly out of place. Up close, senshi showed their foreign roots undeniably — Kiuchi's delicate gold windings of snakes over his forehead and arms, his sheer overlay fitted with green, the strange cut of cloth. He looked like Xi-Wang entered into a space opera, yet he looked sure of himself in the role. Strange it was, to learn someone's identity this way. Stranger still to look at them and see both halves of the same whole.
"Mirrorspace is… Unruly. It isn't like the Rift. Its innards change regularly. Why call that a home?
"You have your home with your friends. You have your father to find, closer now than before. So why that wretched space? It's a prison, not a home."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
