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 Posted: Sun May 22, 2022 1:12 pm
While Reiki still wasn’t entirely certain what being a magical girl-boy for this Dark Mirror Court meant or entailed, strictly speaking? He knew good and full well that he wanted to do a lot of it. Everything Soyala had said about the mysterious-to-Reiki “Order” while she’d helped Levi awaken him—about how the Order cats had done something wrong by him, about how negligent they’d been in leaving him unawakened for so long, about how Reiki had been waiting for this all of his life to awaken and they’d left him to rot—that made the Dark Mirror special.
Because the Dark Mirror had seen Reiki, seen something good and special in him. That good, special something, apparently, went by the name “Murikabushi”—and he would make sure that the Mirror got what it needed.
Apparently, this meant some kind of energy draining business? The details, Reiki was still sort of piecing together as he went……but it sounded like there wasn’t much difference in the quality of energy between actual decent people and the sort of people who deserved some comeuppance anyway. So, a certain philosophy he’d learned long ago from a certain (distinctly fictional) vampire could apply: “The trick is not to think about it.… We grow stronger as we go along.… Evil-doers are easier, and they taste better.”
Fortunately (for the first time he’d ever felt that), Reiki knew plenty of people like that.
One in particular had wandered right across his path, tonight. Since Sybil and Cherry were still encouraging him to take some personal time, he hadn’t had his usual Monday night show and had been free to throw himself into a patrol. In one of the alleys near The Closet, he’d spotted a certain smug a*****e he knew from around the queer bars: Michel Carpenter—and with the way he treated some of the boys in town, with the way he’d treated Margarita and Dorian—Reiki’s own drag siblings—the term “evil-doer” certainly applied. (He also didn’t deserve to share his first name with the great Michel Foucault, but that was beside the point.)
Nobody had ever gotten anything out of taking complaints about him to the cops. Even some of the most damning evidence available had been brushed aside as dramatic gays being vindictive at their ex……but Dark Mirror Sailor Murikabushi swooped down and had Carpenter on his back in mere seconds. Briefly, he eyed the bright young thing who’d come down the alley with Michel. God, he looked barely legal; Reiki wouldn’t have been shocked if he was actually underage but out late with a fake ID.
“Perhaps you ought to leave,” Murikabushi told him, gently but with an edge of threat lurking beneath it. “You’ve done nothing wrong, and you may not wish to see this. Go.”
That, and Reiki was still mostly improvising. He hardly wanted to make such a dramatic entrance, only to look like an idiot if his draining didn’t work.
Fortunately, the boy nodded and ran back the way he’d came. With a smirk, Reiki turned back to Michel and splayed a hand over his heart. Time to get to work, then. But not before adding a zinger—“The Disobediences send their regards.”
Perfect. Cut, print, Emmy—or whatever the equivalent was for magical girls.
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Posted: Sun May 22, 2022 5:27 pm
It was a strange feeling, in the back of Daphne's skull. She knew the energy that she was coming up on was not the Negaverse. It did not have the same sharp edges to it. It was slicker than that, like black oil. That did not matter so much to her. She could feel that it was Chaos. The Chaos that had overrun her planet and turned it into a war zone had not been the Negaverse, either. Daphne did not have much mercy in her for any of it. She was getting more used to Earth's blocky, concrete architecture, and she bounded from the roof of one building to another while she was out on her patrols. Usually she was more leisurely about it, just trying to stay away from any unpowered humans who might throw a fit about her tail while she looked around for potential allies, but when she felt the oily aura and heard angry voices? She broke into a sprint and leapt from roof to roof. She leapt down into the alleyway where the voices were coming from, and she landed light on her feet, where she took stock of the tall senshi and the citizen who had been laid out flat on his back. For a moment, her arms were crossed in front of her chest, but she called out, " Kinship," and reached her arms out in front of her. It was her charm magic, meant to buy her some time, or at least distract the Chaos-infected human while she went in for the punch. Instead, it fizzled out in front of her in a puff of purple smoke. " What," she hissed, and her narrowed eyes and blame shifted quickly to the other senshi. Her tail twitched behind her. "What are you?"
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 3:06 pm
Murikabushi felt the intruding presence coming up on his work, so different from the energy signatures he’d felt off of Elsa and Soyala after passing through the Mirror. Something about it felt so bright, and for the life of him, Reiki couldn’t quite place whether it felt warm like a campfire or cold like a white-out blizzard. Whatever it was, it certainly didn’t feel friendly.
Thankfully, when someone leapt down near him, making the aura feel that much brighter, Murikabushi didn’t need to think about the question of friendliness or lack thereof. As far as he could tell beneath the streetlamps and radiant light of the city, they were a tiny little someone, in a dress that Reiki would have gladly appreciated, were it his turn to be in center-stage……were it not necessary to perform the correct role right now. To do what Murikabushi would do and feel it as real as Reiki had felt the heart-stab of figuring out how long his garbage ex had been two-timing him.
“I’m Sailor Murikabushi,” he told the newcomer, “of the Dark Mirror Court, and I’m a who, not a what. Charmed, I’m sure—and you are?”
This new senshi was probably one of the Order Senshi that Soya had mentioned? Judging from the bright, shiny, goody-two-shoes aura? Despite this situation clearly mattering a great deal to her, he kept his tone pointedly above-it-all, trying to seem like this was a trifling matter and he didn’t care for her, or her sense of morals, or any petty concerns like that—Think Lestat, he told himself. You are The Brat Prince, you are The Damnedest Creature, you are Gentleman Death In Silk And Lace…
Looking back down at dear Michel, Murikabushi continued, “If it’s of any interest to you, darling? He’s still alive, though I’ve drained his energy some, and I don’t intend to kill him. Some in the neighborhood would argue I’d be doing a public service if I did. None of the boys he’s harmed have gotten help through any official channels, so…… What would you do, if you knew you had the power to stop a monster in his tracks?”
(Had Murikabushi not been pointedly ignoring any impulses that felt too much like what Reiki felt, he might have stopped to consider that if he wanted to seem like he didn’t care, then maybe he should have chosen a fictional role model who was not certifiably obsessed with what other people thought about him. Unfortunately, the urge to feel his fantasy surpassed anything resembling common sense.)
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2022 7:12 pm
She hadn't been asking his name, although maybe she should have been. If she'd been back home, attempting diplomacy, she would have been asking his name, but the rules were so different here on this world, in this war, that Daphne didn't know what to make of it. She could only go off of her instincts, and off of what she knew of Chaos. The knowledge that he was called Dark Mirror didn't actually give her any more information than she'd had before. She knew he was an agent of Chaos, though. That much was clear between his aura and his actions. "You are a who. You're right," she said, squinting at the man on the ground. "You are a person. That said, you are a person with Chaos in you. I have heard the things that Chaos makes people say, before. I've seen what it makes people do." Her eyes might have still been on the man, but her gaze was somewhere in the past. People on Daphne hadn't hurt each other like this before the Chaos had started influencing them. Chaos was what made people fight. It made them blame each other, start pointing fingers, as this Dark Mirror senshi was doing right now. The man on the ground was likely innocent, despite Murikabushi's claims. She felt no Chaos coming off of him. "I'm Sailor Daphne, and I will not let you terrorize anyone," she said, and she swung forwards, swinging out with a kick like she'd practiced."Go home."
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2022 5:03 pm
Perhaps Murikabushi might have noticed what was coming, had he given Daphne his full attention, rather than divvying it up between her, dear Michel, and trying to feel his fantasy so hard that he manifested it into reality. He heard what she was saying, sure—distinctly did not hear an apology for calling him a what instead of a who, so that was nice—but fully processing it or drinking it in sounded like a problem for someone else.… Someone who cared for the opinions of some tiny girl—short and so skinny that it couldn’t have been healthy for her; honestly, pick a struggle—who’d already made up her mind to dislike him.
Or, more accurately, someone who cared for her opinions outside of any that found him mysterious, and beautiful, and ever so Naughty. But seeing as she wasn’t really expressing any of those right now—and truly, “terrorize” was such an ugly, unfair word, wasn’t it—Murikabushi didn’t notice her kick until it knocked him off of dear Michel, onto the cold pavement and his a**.
Up this close, though, he did note the leopard-like splotches on her arms and the swishy tail behind her. Ugh, CATS. Of course a ******** cat-girl wants to murder me, because why ******** wouldn’t she?
“If anybody’s terrorizing anybody around here,” Murikabushi said, sitting up but staying sprawled on the ground (rather than risk undermining his point by standing and lording his height over her), “then how is it me and not the woman who runs around, making threats and kicking people to get her way? How, exactly, is not terrorism to swoop in on someone and a situation you know nothing about, call me a what—like you think my pronouns are ‘it,’’ ‘it,’ and ‘its,’ not ‘he,’ ‘him,’ and ‘his’—because I’m not on your magical girl team, and start getting violent because I’m not doing what you want?”
With an indignant huff, he pushed his bangs back behind his ear so they couldn’t get in the way of him looking her in the eye. “Have you even asked anybody why they’re with the Chaos you seem to hate so much? Has it literally ever occurred to you that maybe the freaks and rejects whom your precious Order abandoned need some kind of family, too? That just because your side doesn’t want us doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to know the truth about our starseeds?”
………Not that Reiki actually did know very much about his starseed. Nor did Murikabushi, for that matter. Truth told, the fact that he’d been left languishing for as long as Soyala had suggested made him wonder if the truth wasn’t that his starseed was broken, or corrupted by something other than the Dark Mirror, or that it had something wrong with it. But still, it was his starseed, and what right did this Sailor Daphne have to give him orders because he’d sided with a team who’d actually wanted him in their ranks?
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 6:46 pm
She was the one terrorizing? Daphne's lips twitched at that. "The difference," she said, "Is that you are trying to hurt someone who is already down. Stay away from him and I won't fight anymore." It was the truth, at least mostly. She left out the part where she'd panicked when her magic had failed, since seeing his face, she wasn't sure that he had anything to do with that. Her actions were cautious, but not violent. When she stepped forwards between him and the other man, she didn't try to keep up the fighting stance. Instead, one hand rested on her hip while she tried to figure out what to make of him. She tried to figure out what would make him leave. That was what she thought at first, since her priority was making sure that nobody died. She never needed to see heads flying, again. She never needed to see any more corpses on street corners. As he spoke, though, she tilted her head, her slit eyes focusing in on his. "I did ask, yes. The last person I talked to said something similar, about being chosen, but-" Her nose scrunched. She was trying to be reasonable in this situation she knew nothing about, trying not to terrorize, but her head was spinning. "Being a senshi isn't something that people choose you for. It's something you are, at your core." It was a lonely job, too. At least, it had been for Daphne. It had taken her away from her family. "Also, I was not calling you a freak. I just think you're going down a bad path, one I watched my people go down and die for." There was a slight pause and then she added, quieter, "I don't know what pronouns are."
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 10:05 pm
“Well, excuuuuse me, Princess!” Reiki huffed indignantly and pouted up at Sailor Catgirl, all attempts at living up to the persona he envisioned for himself temporarily forgotten. (The fact that he could’ve gotten up off the concrete at any point was not forgotten, but……lording his not insignificant height over Sailor Catgirl might well have made her feel threatened and try to start kicking him again.)
“I’ve only even been a senshi—knowingly, anyway—for like, a week.” Less than, really, but she didn’t need to know that. The point was the same regardless, so Reiki didn’t mind rounding things off a bit. “When the kitty who helped me awaken found me, she talked about how it was so negligent of some so-called ‘Order cats’ to abandon me instead of awakening me themselves. So, maybe you’re not calling me a freak, but that doesn’t mean the same is true from the rest of your team.”
Just like so many of the non-magical people Reiki had ever known in his life. Why would the magic talking cats be any different from the idiots who’d made his life Hell from Knightside up through their Meadowview graduation?
“…Also,” he went on, “even if you’re right about senshi-ness being something you are? It does sort of feel like choice plays a factor in things here, since you can’t awaken without some magic talking cat, and they get to gatekeep who does or doesn’t deserve to know that their—I don’t know—shiny, sparkly soul-gem is special and means they get to have magic powers and defend the innocent or mete out justice on evildoers or whatever—which, by the way?” For emphasis, he pointed at Michel’s unconscious body. “Is what I was doing with him. Regardless of whether or not you believe that people can do ******** up things without the taint of Chaos on them.”
And, really, it would’ve been so easy and felt so vindicating to just keep being indignant at her……but gods help him, when Daphne said that she didn’t know what pronouns were, Reiki couldn’t fight off the pang of oh no, honey and the impulse to help her understand. As he got himself sitting up a bit more properly and tucked his legs off to the side—not the most comfortable position, but alas, panniers were high-maintenance—he figured that getting her to understand the Dark Mirror might be a lost cause tonight (not least given his own admittedly limited understanding of it), but he could at least help Daphne understand pronouns.
“But alright, so, the thing with pronouns? They’re a grammatical construct, and you’ve actually been using them already, even if you don’t know what they are. They’re the words we have to make referring to people, places, and things easier. Like, ‘I’ is a pronoun; it’s so we don’t have to talk about ourselves in the third-person all the time—which would sound like, to use your own sentence, ‘Daphne doesn’t know what pronouns are.’ Or to use one of mine, I can say ‘you’re not calling me a freak’ instead of ‘Daphne isn’t calling me a freak,’ which would sound awkward, right? Since…I’m already speaking to Daphne.”
Tucking his bangs back behind his ear, Reiki couldn’t help but hope that his Obaasan would be proud of him for this, if he could ever explain this situation to her without doing several things that would probably put her in danger. “Where pronouns can get kind of fraught, though? Is when it comes to gender, on one hand, and connotations, on the other. Like, in English, pronouns are, for the most part, fairly straightforward: I/me/mine, you/yours, he/him/his, and so on? We also use them pretty regularly, because they’re a fundamental part of how English conjugates verbs. In some languages, the subject—whoever’s doing the verb—is baked into the conjugation with different alterations to the base word? But it’s not always like that in English, so we have to specify things.
“But in Nihongo—my family’s ancestral language—pronouns are more optional. Nihongo is a language of subtlety, nuance, and finesse, and context is essential to understanding almost anything. Pronouns only tend to show up when they’re either absolutely necessary, or when you’re using them to make a point. For instance, if I were talking about you to someone else in English, I’d say ‘she kicked me,’ but in Nihongo, that would be rude; most of the third-person pronouns have a connotation of disdain or dislike, and it’s more correct to use someone’s specific name. ‘Daphne kicked me’ instead of ‘she.’
“Nihongo can also be way more complicated when it comes to pronouns, because all of them have tied-in connotations related to people’s social statuses, and some are gendered. When you do choose to use a pronoun for yourself in Nihongo, you’re always making a statement. Like, the one I prefer—atashi—is very associated with femininity, so for me to say it? The statement I’m making is that I love my feminine side—” He gestured at his skirt by way of illustrating this, “—and that I identify more with femininity than masculinity, despite being a man. But ‘atashi’ can be too informal for some situations, but……unless you ever want to learn Nihongo? Getting into all the differences between options isn’t really that important.”
Pausing……felt weird, even though Reiki rather needed to breathe. Having no reason to animatedly gesticulate like he’d been doing, he felt like he might start vibrating—but at least he could pick up soon enough: “Then there’s gender, which is also important. In English, plus a lot of other European languages—whether they’re Romance like French and Spanish, or Germanic like German and Dutch, or Balto-Slavic like Russian and Polish—pronouns are typically associated with people of different genders, especially in the third-person.
“Like, ‘she’ tends to be used by girls and women, while ‘he’ gets used by boys and men. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, though? Like, I’m a man but I don’t mind she/her pronouns. If you’re not sure about someone’s pronouns, ‘they’ is a good neutral option. This binary also doesn’t get at everything, because there are plenty of people whose genders aren’t just ‘man’ or ‘woman,’ and some of them will be okay with singular they/them? But some of them aren’t, so they have other options like zie/hir, ox/ex, ey/em, ne/nem, shklee/shkler, mew/mews, ail/ailous, the list of options is huge, honestly? And some people actually do like using ‘it’ and ‘its’ for themselves, it’s just……
“…‘It’ and ‘its’ are usually what we use for objects. Non-sentient things. Like, a chair, or the street, or a peach, and like, for me?” Reiki shrugged, both abruptly aware that he was going on……quite a lot, and that he wasn’t entirely sure how to stop. He thought he had an idea how to wrap this up……it was just going to require being vulnerable with the tiny catgirl who’d just kicked him: “Personally, I’m used to people saying ‘it’ and ‘its’ about me……because that’s what they think about anyone who doesn’t gender in the way they want us to. Boys who go to school in skirts. Girls who cut their hair too short and wear flannel shirts. People whose gender they can’t guess just by looking at them. Which is all……”
He gestured vaguely, at nothing in particular. “…What came up in my head when you stormed in here, calling me a ‘what,’ and……” Pursing his lips, he debated whether or not to say the next thing, then opted to add, “I’m sorry. For taking that out on you.…… That wasn’t fair, especially when you’re apparently not even from ‘round here……because aliens are real now, too.”
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Posted: Sat May 28, 2022 10:18 am
For all that Daphne deeply distrusted Chaos, there was a lot she wanted to know about Earth. There was a lot she needed to know about Earth, if she was going to act as a proper representative of Daphne instead of bumbling around like an alien. That word made her skin crawl for some reason. When he gave his impromptu lesson on pronouns, which she thought that she remembered from her schooling now that she was thinking about it more, she was listening intently. When he talked about the way that it all tied into Earth's concepts of gender, she realized that maybe that was the real issue here, the thing that had made him feel so insulted, she nodded slowly. There was a sky's worth of culture that she was going to have to unpack there, but his words were a helpful start, and as he spoke, Daphne sat down across from him, her tail curling over into her lap. "You can call me she," she said, "If you don't want to say Daphne all the time. That's fine. I won't think it's too informal." There was a slight pause while she looked over to him, her expression shifting into something softer. "I won't call you an it, or a what." Maybe she should have apologized here, if she was going for diplomacy, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. "I was surprised, earlier. I was asking about your magic, what that was. I don't care that you're wearing a dress. I know you're a person." She did know what gender was, at least to some extent, but she didn't know what it had to do with clothing. That sounded like another Earth problem. Still, since she was doing her best to treat him like a person and not jump to any conclusions, she decided to open up about herself some, too. "I think I know what you mean, about being a misfit, not fitting into the role people think you should. Not because of clothes. I used to have short hair. Nobody minded that, but they did mind, some of them, that I never wanted to take partners or have children." She tilted her head. "I don't think the Mauvians care about any of that, for what it's worth. The ones I know wouldn't. It's just hard for them, since everything here has to be so secretive." The frustration edged into her voice again. "There's no systemic way for them to go around and try to see who's a senshi. They just have to wander, and guess, and sometimes people get missed."
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2022 10:44 pm
Fair enough was fair enough, Reiki figured, and since things had taken such an odd, abrupt turn toward not…being…violent anymore, he did his best to pay attention to everything Daphne had to say, nodding along where it seemed appropriate (acknowledging Daphne’s pronouns, for instance). Some of it (mostly the part about her engaging in apologia for the cats who’d abandoned Reiki and gods knew how many others like him) made him wrinkle his nose……but that would’ve earned him a very pointed “you’re better than this, Kiya, and I know that you know that I know you’re better than this” sort of look from Ojiisan, had he been here.
………Well, considering the magical glamours of it all, Dr. Kiyoshi Rokugin being here in this alley, right this second, probably would’ve earned Murikabushi a politely befuddled stare as Ojiisan failed to recognize his own firstborn grandson, but like as not, that was rather beside the point.
Somewhat more saliently than hypothetical situations in which Reiki ever crossed his grandfather’s path while gallivanting around as Murikabushi, Daphne had posed several questions. Too bad for her, Reiki could only shrug and make a sound like I don’t know. “I thought maybe it was on your end? But……look, I really haven’t been doing this very long, so……”
Sighing, Reiki shook his head and slouched a bit. “Maybe it’s something with the Mirrorwraith? They’re the creatures we have to summon to do what I was doing, like? So, when I got Awakened, one of my group’s Eternal senshi—I guess that’s what they’re called?—took me to our Black Mirror, and I don’t really know how it works or what its deal is? But it needs energy to stay alive, and probably keep a lot of other things alive? But we, senshi of the Dark Mirror Court, can’t drain people’s energy on our own, so we have to work with these beings called Mirrorwraiths, who do the actual work. Strictly speaking, I probably didn’t need to be right up here while they worked, I just—I mean, partly, I don’t want them to get hurt while they’re helping me out, y’know?
“But on the other hand……” As he came up short of other ways to say this more politely, Reiki rolled his eyes and huffed. “Do they have ‘drama queens’ on your home-world? Or some other kind of conceptual, shorthand way of saying ‘messy b***h who loves drama, and making a scene, and playing to an audience even when they don’t have one’? Because……hi, yeah, that’s me. Has been me for as long as I can remember. And this guy over here……”
He waved vaguely at Michel, still apparently down for the count. “I don’t like the idea of just taking energy from people who haven’t done anything wrong, like the Black Mirror needs it, sure, but so do they. But I know this guy, from my day-to-day life. He has hurt people—maybe not in the same ways that the Negaverse does, but still—several of them people I care about. And it’s not like anyone’s given me a mission statement on what the Dark Mirror Court stands for, or a philosophical treatise on what our central, ideological, organizing principles are supposed to be? So……”
Another shrug, coupled with a half-frown that he hoped she wouldn’t take in a bad way. “I figured why not take some energy from him. And I……was very needlessly dramatic about giving him a personal touch while the Mirrorwraith I summoned did the work? Because life is too short to be boring?”
All of which……sort of danced around the real, central point, Reiki guessed, namely: “Anyway, I guess I don’t really know how to answer ‘what are you,’ in this case? Like, the cat who came with me and the Eternal who did the job with me? She said that I’m a senshi, and Sailor Murikabushi of hunger, and something about starseeds, but I don’t know? What the vast majority of that? Actually means?
“And usually, it’s my spells not going off consistently, which is something to do with how long I went without awakening, and……I don’t know if it’s contagious or anything? I assumed it wouldn’t be, but……I don’t know, I could’ve been wrong?” ……Gods, Reiki hoped that he wasn’t wrong. How much of a ******** senshi would he be if his annoying little problem hurt other senshi, too?
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 7:12 am
He kept talking about mirrors. He'd been taken to some kind of mirror. The creatures that he allied himself with were called mirrorwraiths. His alliance was with the Dark Mirror Court. Even his aura felt mirrorlike, in some ways. If Dapnne really sat there and focused on it, felt more like a reflection of Chaos, not the familiar, direct kind of Chaos that she'd felt coming off of that Lieutenant. Daphne knew better than to ask what he was again, but she'd never stopped thinking about that question, and that seemed like the best answer she could come up with at this point. He was of the Dark Mirror, a reflection of Chaos. "We have theater," said Daphne, possibly too quickly, when he asked about drama queens. "We're not barbarians." She didn't think she'd ever seen anyone on Daphne, at least not before the Chaos had come, who would knock someone unconscious in an alleyway with nobody watching just to make a show of it, but her diplomatic instincts told her not to mention that. "If you want me to say that I approve of what you've done, I don't." Chaos was so insidious on this planet that it was possible that the man behind her was infected in his own way, which would mean it was possible that he had hurt others. "Taking energy, even from dangerous people, to this mirror who's philosophies you don't understand is- what is the word? Sketchy. It's sketchy." She didn't stand, but she did roll her shoulders back, and behind her, her tail twitched again. "If you try it again, I will fight you again. Not because of your pronouns, not because of your skirts, but because of that."
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 3:58 pm
Impulsively, Reiki itched to point out that “drama queen” didn’t always exactly mean theater so much as it meant “possessed of a certain irrepressible panache that yearned and lusted for everything to be more interesting—and, admittedly, a tendency to make everything bigger, more extravagant, and more sensational than it actually was because real life was <******** boring and so tediously unmiraculous that, sometimes, a b***h simply couldn’t stand it.”
In the tiny part of his brain that sometimes remembered to care about self-preservation, though, he somewhat doubted that this was a good idea. Honestly, he might’ve been on thin ice enough with Daphne as it was. As she started on about Reiki not understanding the Mirror, and how even taking energy from awful people was itself awful, he definitely got the sense that whatever goodwill he’d accidentally stumbled into was probably drying up.
That, and a soft groan came from behind them. Glancing over his shoulder, Reiki saw Michel’s hand twitching against the pavement, as if he was trying his damnedest to summon enough energy to move.
Ugh, Reiki mused to himself, biting his lip so he wouldn’t roll his eyes and risk setting Daphne off again. After everything you did to Ritka and Dorian—what you did to my own family—I’ve got every right to just leave you here, don’t I? Talk s**t, get hit. Or “use your energy to hurt people, don’t get to keep it,” as the case may be. Does it make me a bad person that I don’t want to kill you, but I wouldn’t really mind it if you just died already?
Looking back toward Daphne, Reiki supposed that she’d probably say “yes”—not least since, if Michel died right here, tonight, then it would undeniably be because of something that Reiki himself had done. Maybe he and his mirrorwraith wouldn’t be the official cause of death, but it was still as good as killing Michel.
“That’s fair enough,” Reiki told Daphne with a sigh. Careful not to let his unnecessarily long legs hit her, he hauled himself up to standing. “Honestly, it’s probably more than I can expect, since following a man I love into a group where people actually want me—where I ever get the chance to be any kind of senshi—apparently makes me a mass-murdering lunatic by default.”
Not that Daphne had exactly said that, or really implied it. But a lifetime of directors who’d come before her had as good as trained Reiki to hear it, every time they’d suggested something like “That was a great read for Ariel and Ophelia, but we’ve got something a little different in mind for our productions of Hamlet and The Tempest. Why don’t you let us hear what you can do with Lady Macbeth for this all reverse-cast Shakespeare festival?”
Or “Kid, you smashed it with your audition song, but you know we can’t let you play Sandy. Just give Rizzo a try. Everyone loves getting to play the bad girl, right? And who wouldn’t want to lead everybody in ‘Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee’?”
Or “Do you know how many girls auditioning for us want to play Dorothy? Making your own gingham dress is great for you, but we can’t deny one of them that chance just because you read the part great and killed it on your ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow.’ We could hear you out for the Wicked Witch of the West instead, though, if you want?”
Or “Yeah, no.… I can tell you worked to prepare for this, but I’m just not seeing you as our Cinderella. If we really can’t sell you on playing her Prince—come on, you’ve got the height, the bone structure, the attitude—then let us hear your Witch. She’s got all the best numbers in the show anyway, doesn’t she? Who wouldn’t want that part?”
In Reiki’s experience, the answer to that question was simple: someone who just wanted a ******** chance to play a hero for once. Someone who wanted the blue gingham dress and red rhinestoned character shoes, not two hours of painting himself green and, since this wasn’t Wicked, not even getting a musical number out of it. Someone who honestly didn’t see the humor in having a camp gay guy play Miss Hannigan in Annie or having a camp gay Japanese-American guy play ******** Velma von Tussle, as if Reiki’s Obaasan hadn’t been fighting for her right, as a Japanese-American woman, to simply attend an American university around the same time that ******** Hairspray was set.
As if her family and Ojiisan’s hadn’t been put in internment camps only twenty years prior to the musical’s era, even though the Rokugins might well have been in the States a few decades longer than some of the lily-white cops and soldiers who’d rounded them up.
None of which was Daphne’s fault. She clearly didn’t know her way around Earth in general yet, so he couldn’t very well expect her to appreciate the finer points or storied history of human theater and its casting process, much less all the specific ways that humans had, without any influence from her Chaos business, invented just to hurt each other. Still, all of that history did make Reiki want to just…not be here anymore. Standing beside Michel, Reiki turned to face her.
“Listen, if I leave him here? Either he dies, or someone’s going to find him and call our emergency help dispatch. Good idea in principle, sure, and their heart will probably be in the right place. But he’ll probably end up with a steep bill for the ambulance service because our systems suck.” Strictly speaking, Reiki was pretty sure Michel’s parent could afford to float him the money for it, if he couldn’t get it himself between his trust fund and his inexplicably well-paid, do-nothing job.
But………still. It was the principle of the thing.
Crouching down, Reiki reached to scoop him up. “He’s not dead, so…unless you have anything more you’d like to criticize about my aura, or my choices, or whatever? I’m taking him to get medical help. If you want to follow up and make sure I didn’t lie to you? Check on him tomorrow. Destiny City Memorial Hospital is where I’m taking him. And his name’s Michel Carpenter.”
If Daphne did decide to subject herself to more human insanity for long enough to do so, then she’d find he was going to live up to his word. After all, she had stopped kicking him, and Reiki didn’t have a Cersei Lannister tattoo for no reason. Much like the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, a Disobedience always paid her debts.
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:14 pm
A man he loved? Daphne had to blink at that information. This wasn't just about suspicious mirrors, then, or about what Mauvian had found him first and told him that his natural source of power had abandoned him. This was about a boy. It took biting her bottom lip hard, but Daphne managed not to say anything petulant and grumpy about that, or even make a single snide comment about how that was sketchy, too. Unfortunately, she didn't quite have the self control to keep from rolling her eyes. She was the Senshi of Kinship, she understood that relationships were important, but really? Following someone into the clutches of Chaos wasn't going to help anything. At least he was offering to take the man he'd attacked somewhere safe, which was more than Daphne could really offer given her limited knowledge of the city, and of Earth's healthcare system. She wasn't sure if it was ideal, letting him run off with his own victim, especially when he'd admitted to being a dramatist, who was perfectly capable of lying and taking him to an even darker alleyway to finish him off, but for some reason, Daphne didn't think that would be the case. He'd been trying, when he explained things to her. He'd almost been being kind after the bumpy start. Daphne wanted to give him a chance, and so she nodded. "Fine," she said, jumping to her feet with the grace of a cat. The fighting stance was gone, though. "I'll check tomorrow. Show me that I can trust you at least a little." She wasn't about to ask for his identity. She wasn't about to follow him, and so, with one last suspicious glance, and one last nod, she sprang up onto a nearby rooftop and sprinted off. amorremanet Fin for me, thanks so much!
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