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 Posted: Sun May 22, 2022 9:12 pm
This whole senshi thing, Reiki really needed to figure out. He knew that much. Accepting the problem’s existence and consequences was the only way to someday fix it, right?
More specifically, he suspected he’d need to figure out his work-life-senshi balance—which, god, was probably going to be a ******** nightmare once classes resumed—and that, if he didn’t get a handle on how to balance all that and work in time to sleep, Sybil and Cherry would probably definitely insist on him taking more and more personal time off of performing. Plus, Haruhi would notice in a bigger way than Reiki bringing Levi and Soyala home, explaining that he’d run into them after leaving the bar, and then leaving his cousin in the dark (which left several bad tastes in Reiki’s mouth to do, and alas, the fictional role models he could think of here were mostly a bunch of explicitly dysfunctional basket-cases who simply diverted their trauma to mostly overall positive goals.
Robruce Battinson was exceptionally good-looking while doing so, but that was beside the point. His lovely face and messy hair did very little to help Reiki with the question of how to prevent his cousin worrying without also telling nem about his new magical girl-boy secret identity).
Either way, as it stood tonight, he was spending another of his drag mom-mandated “personal nights” out and about on the town instead of sitting around and dwelling on the garbage about Greg. Just—Reiki was out and about as Dark Mirror Sailor Murikabushi, and nominally, hunting around for energy to drain from some evildoer who hadn’t yet been visited by the cold hand of karma. So far, no luck on that front.
Down near Cherrygrove Street, though—a bit off from the center of Destiny City’s unofficial queer district, in the liminal space where that locale mixed with another intra-city neighborhood—Murikabushi did stumble into something quite interesting. Namely: a creature that definitely pinged on his new senses as a youma. Even if hadn’t felt the energy signature, how else could one explain a set of plump, curvy, humanoid legs that stopped about halfway up the torso, exploding into a mass of ink-black tentacles and distinctly cephalopodian head?
Delightful.
Hopping down with a whistle got her attention right away, and Murikabushi flashed her a grin. “Okay, Vanessa,” he drawled, “it’s time to teach you a lesson in the importance of body language—ha!”
Was it necessary to wiggle through that and pop his hip like a certain thoroughly copyrighted cartoon cecaelia he’d looked up to since childhood? No, probably not—but it just felt right. Now, as he extended his arm and bent back his wrist, it was time for Murikabushi to take these powers for a while. He called out, “Gnawing…Hunger!”
Something warm welled up inside him as he called the incantation, but at first, he couldn’t tell if it had really worked……but then, Vanessa started screeching. Soon enough, her sounds turned more into whimpering as she clawed all over her own body (as much as she could do with tentacles). Not even half a minute, and she let out a horrible, rattling cry and collapsed into dust.
Game. Set. Match. Murikabushi: 1, Nasty Brainless Beasties: 0. He was probably allowed to smirk about that, right?
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Posted: Sun May 22, 2022 11:13 pm
Valjean did not like youma, and youma did not like him. There was one shining exception, but--well, Faustite was half-human, anyway, and Valjean's inordinate fondness for the General that had ripped him away from his previous life was something he didn't care to poke at. Faustite was clever, attractive, and ruthless when he needed ot be; all fo those were things Valjean liked very much.
Well, the new Valjean liked them. He had no idea what his previous self would have thought.
The point, however, was: Valjean was on a rooftop, trying to stay away from the youma on the streets below, because...well, because youma didn't like Corrupts any better than they liked any other kind of Senshi, and he really did not feel like having to tangle with one of his own side's beasties.
Which, graciously, the universe decided to let him avoid, because another Senshi arrived--and Valjean did not recognize this aura at all. He narrowed his eyes. It felt Chaotic, but....distinctly not Negaverse. And the other Senshi attacked the youma with little hesitation, dusting her with ease.
He humphed, and jumped off the roof, landing with the sort of grac eone might ordinarily attribute to a predatory big cat.
"Good show," Valjean said. He rattled his brain around for the piece of information that would make this all click, and then--ah. "You must be from the Dark Mirror. Unless there's another faction of Chaos Senshi I don't know about." Which would be quite strange. "Sailor Valjean, of the Negaverse." He gave a brief bow as his introduction. Sure, the Dark Mirror and the Negaverse weren't per se buddy buddy, but they weren't enemies either, and there was no need to make one for himself tonight.
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Posted: Sun May 22, 2022 11:42 pm
While Murikabushi would have been content to bask in his moment for a little bit longer, the universe decided to have other plans—plans with preternatural grace and a distinctly sharp-edged aura to them. At first, he shifted, just in case he needed to defend himself. That aura felt like Chaos, so maybe he didn’t need to worry, but those sharp edges put Murikabushi a bit on his guard. Not that he wanted to show that—he didn’t—but wasting a youma could theoretically cause trouble with a Negaverse officer. That was probably why Soya had run over to him while Elsa had wasted Niji Kidna, so she’d have plausible deniability.
Then, the bearer of this pointy-ended aura stepped closer, and he bowed, and a not-insignificant part of Murikabushi balked, yearning quite terribly to scream, Oh, so NOW you have some ******** manners? You sure didn’t know how to treat a girl by that bench the other week, when I didn’t have any magical femboy powers to throw around.
But……right. Secret identities. Maintaining them. Pushing Reiki to the back for a while so Murikabushi could take center-stage, and right now, the Dark Mirror Sailor Murikabushi course of action felt like letting slip an ever so relieved sigh. Giving the jerk-a** blond in the thotty little shorts—Sailor Valjean, apparently—a small smile (Murikabushi was going for Mona Lisa cryptic), he curtsied in return. If only his magical girl-boy outfit had come with a lacy fan to pop dramatically and work like an out-of-touch noble b***h up in the ancien régime court at Versailles, everything would have been perfect, but ah well, minor disappointments could be endured.
“Sailor Murikabushi, of the Dark Mirror Court, yes. Yoroshiku!” ……the significance of which, Murikabushi realized immediately after saying it, would be pretty much entirely lost unless Valjean either spoke Japanese or watched Neon Genesis Evangelion with subs, instead of a dub. But—oh, well. Time to press on in something resembling a diplomatic fashion. “Charmed to meet you, though…surprised? Pleasantly so, I suppose, but…youma are your Negaverse’s soldiers. So, please pardon my confusion at you…seeing a show in one getting dusted?”
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 12:42 am
The Dark Mirror Sesnhi was certainly pretty, Valjean had to acknowledge that. So many of the magical people in Destiny City were lovely; it really did make this gig that much more entertaining. Clearly the Dark Mirror wasn't exempt from that. Besides, seeing another masc Senshi in a skirt reminded Valjean of Alkmene, and thinking aobut his teammates always put him in a good mood.
"They're ours, yes, but they hate Sesnhi like me just as much as every other variety." Valjean sighed. "Some kind of inborn enmity, as I understand." He shrugged his shoulders, as if it didn't matter. It didn't, really. "Their home realm, the Rift--us Senshi can't even enter it without an escorting officer. The youma will kill us if the Hall of Shadows that leads in there doesn't first."
He shook his head, unhappily.
"So, yeah, it's a bit of a show to see one bite the dust. They won't listen to me, they're as like to attack me as they are you or a civilian or even an Order Senshi, so...why shouldn't I find it entertaining?" Sure, okay, Faustite might not approve, but Faustite wasn't here to approve or disapprove.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 12:14 pm
As much as Reiki disliked the thought of playing nicely with Valjean—especially knowing how Valjean seemed to treat civilians, both Reiki himself and the unconscious man from the bench—everything that the Negaverse senshi had to say was new information for Reiki. As someone who’d been awakened so late, who had barely any idea what was going on in this entire magical war that he’d been abruptly thrust into, Reiki couldn’t afford to discount the importance of learning something, even if the teacher was an off-putting jerk-a**.
………………And, besides that, it was not Reiki’s turn. God, was he gonna have to beat himself in the head with Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter later? Was burying himself alive in Judith ******** Butler the only way to get it through his head that sometimes, now, he was going to need to perform the social role of Dark Mirror Sailor Murikabushi and not the role of Reiki Rokugin?
As he listened to Valjean, Murikabushi only hoped that the internal conflict wasn’t coming out too clearly.… He did his best to keep his facial expression more neutral but politely interested (but he did, more than once, catch himself glancing down or away from Valjean, and needing to force his gaze back up).… He kept his hands out in front of him, so Valjean (hopefully) wouldn’t think he was getting up to something by putting them behind his back (but if pressed on why he’d folded them together around his waist, near the carnal red ribbon sash that was just…chef’s kiss gorgeous? Murikabushi would have struggled to find an explanation other than “shielding behavior, inasmuch as I understand the concept from studying body language as a theatre kid”).… Crossing one leg ever so slightly in front of the other, he thought he could justifiably explain as a relic of years spent in ballet classes (but if Valjean didn’t buy that, then Murikabushi didn’t know what he’d say because “preparing to either run, dodge, or fight you if it comes to that” would all sound Distinctly Not Great).…
Still, he hadn’t yet shouted Oh, so NOW you have some ******** MANNERS?! at Sailor Valjean, and he deserved to congratulate himself for that. Maybe it wasn’t a huge accomplishment by anyone else’s standards, but it was for Reiki and for Murikabushi, so no one else’s standards mattered.
“Interesting—I hadn’t known all of that,” he told Valjean after a moment that he hoped came off more as careful consideration than trying to keep himself collected. “Most of what I knew beforehand amounted to ‘Youma are obnoxious nuisances, and usually quite lacking in higher cognitive functions—which is a tragedy, when one mistakes them for someone more sapient and wastes cleverness on an unappreciative audience. Fortunately, they’re easy enough to dispatch, so at least it’s merely a one-act tragedy.’”
That could’ve been it. He could’ve shut up and said nothing else. But—the potential for gleaning something else dangled before Reiki like the divine Fruit in front of Eve. So, he added on, “It seems like a rather egregious oversight on the Negaverse’s part, though? Having your foot-soldiers be incapable of distinguishing your own senshi from enemy factions? Perhaps it’s only ignorance on my part, but it seems…negligent to put someone as powerful as a Senshi in such danger from within their own ranks?”
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 4:24 pm
Valjean observed Murikabushi's body language with not a small amount of interest. He, too, was working on keeping a politely interested expression, and it was certainly interesting to him that aspects of Murikabushi's stance read, to him, as...well, nervous.
Good. Perhaps he sohuld be. Maybe it was leftover adrenaline from the fight. Maybe he was more familiar with the Negaverse than he was letting on. Any number of things could be true, and all of them were potentially interesting. Anyway, polite dialogue was still probably the way to go, here; there was no need to get agitated or anything foolish like hat.
There was something about the way he spoke--it seemed affected, but then, they were all dressed up for magical drama, and perhaps this particular Senshi thought to inject an extra layer into the whole show.
"Mostly true," Valjean acknowledged. "A few have human cognitive abilities; most of those will be with an officer, if they're out, and thus on a shorter leash. The average youma wreaking havoc generally has about the brains of a clever dog, and much like an animal left to go feral, they run primarily on instinct." He sighed. Should he be giving this much information to an outsider? Eh, if it caused problems, Faustite could get mad at him for it later.
"It is a fairly egregious oversight, but as I understand, it's....not something that can be separated out. Just something that we have to be careful of, and that officers are supposed to be conscientious about if they're working with a Senshi." He sighed. "It is what it is. As I understand, things can get rough for Lieutenants, too--youma really only listen to Captains and higher--but that's why it's generally best to just stay away from them if there's not someone who can leash them around."
He looked thoughtful, briefly.
"....Tell me a little about your Court, if you can? I'm not familiar with you, and if I knew before I joined the Negaverse, I've forgotten--unfortunately, if you disagree with a General-Sovereign's decision to bring you in, the price of struggling is all of your memories."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 5:18 pm
Plenty of things Valjean was saying stood out as things to jot down and remember later: there were different kinds of youma out there, and some apparently served as officers in the Negaverse. The ones Reiki-Murikabushi had seen so far—they must have been these feral dog type youmas, considering their behavior and how all of them had had such limited reactions to Reiki talking s**t at them (which Murikabushi was NOT going to feel bad about! He had nothing to regret about sass-mouthing youma! Centi-Tina had been in his way, had snuck up on him, even! Niji Kidna had cornered him while he was having a sobbing meltdown about his garbage ex! Vanessa……
………Well, Vanessa had honestly just been minding her own business, whatever that meant for youma, and then he’d swooped in and dusted her just to know that he could, so. Maybe Reiki could feel bad about that later, but Murikabushi wasn’t going to! So help him, he couldn’t afford to look weak in front of someone who clearly had more experience with all of this high-concept magical girl nonsense than he did. Gods only knew what someone like Valjean—someone with no visible compunction about attacking civilians, rather than just draining them—would do with a whiff of weakness).
Maybe, though, if Murikabushi played the right cards, he could get some sort of explanation for the star tattoo on Valjean’s forehead. It looked exactly like the one Toráin had had, that night in the alley by Gertrude’s. Something like that had to be significant, though Murikabushi hesitated to speculate on the exact meaning at play. As a very wise Cardassian had once said: “I believe in coincidences; coincidences happen every day. But I don’t trust coincidences.”
Unfortunately for both that plan and Murikabushi’s desire to appear strong, the last thing Valjean said cracked the façade wide open. Murikabushi felt it happen—felt his veneer of polite interest plummet off his face as his eyes went wide and his brow knotted up in concern—and yet, he couldn’t stop himself. No, no, ******** him, no—this was wrong, he wasn’t supposed to be Reiki right now, but even knowing that, even knowing that the stakes could be terribly high—
“They—the Negaverse, their leaders, whoever—they forced this on you?” Despite wanting, in the part of his brain where common sense lived, to maintain a relatively safe distance, Reiki came closer to Valjean. He kept his hands where they sat, partly to maintain the sense of self-shielding and mostly so Valjean would (hopefully) be less likely to read into the advance or think he was up to something (no matter how much Reiki’s pettiness wondered why he wasn’t getting up to something).
And even knowing that he didn’t owe Valjean anything, Reiki couldn’t help but keep his voice gentle as he said, “I—I’m not ignoring your question, I promise? I don’t think there’s much I can tell you, since…I’ve only even met the Senshi and the cat who brought me in, but…? The Negaverse did that to you? Just…” Thinking on what Valjean had done to the feisty redhead Order Senshi, Reiki tried to mime something similar by plunging one hand into his own chest and grabbing at the knot tying his collar together. “They wanted to possess you, but you resisted, so they…they what? Reached in, ripped out everything that made you yourself, and rewrote you to be what they wanted instead?”
……If true, and if Toráin was connected to Valjean and the Negaverse somehow, then maybe that explained the memory problems he mentioned having—but Reiki could think about that later. Right now, anything about Toráin had to entirely be Future MuReikibushi’s problem.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 5:43 pm
Ah. Valjean probably should have kept that to himself, because now Murikabushi looked all....concerned for him. It made him more than a little uncomfortable, to have that much concentrated care turned towards him--especially when he hadn't really meant to elicit sympathy, or anything. Perhaps he needed to be less blase about the circumstances surrounding his induction into the Negaverse, if people who were ostensibly on the same side were going to be like this about it.
Surely the Dark Mirror did and could forcibly corrupt too, anyway!
"That's....roughly the process, yes," Valjean said, and he shrugged, like it didn't matter. "It was that or kill me, and I'll take the option that leaves me alive. Anyway, Order--it's all hypocrites and arrogant, self-righteous fools. Why would I ever want any part of that, when the Negaverse has purpose? A real goal? And all they have is the smug insistence that they're right."
There was a fire in his voice when he spoke about it, and something lit in his eyes. Yes, Valjean was very much not a fan of the other side.
"No, I don't like how I came in. I don't like not remembering anything about my life before--but I would, for one, rather be alive, and for another, rather be where I am."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 8:50 pm
Watching Valjean act like none of this mattered at all to him—like it didn’t matter that he’d lost, from the sound of things, his entire self or thereabouts, with no hope of ever properly retrieving him—it struck a chord in Reiki’s chest that he didn’t much appreciate having struck. (Not least since, as the part of him that really, really wanted to be a petty, rancid b***h reminded him, it hadn’t been THAT long since he’d watched Valjean literally shove his hand into that feisty redhead’s chest! If that wasn’t justification for being a rancid little b***h, then Reiki didn’t know what was.)
………It was just. So much harder to feel justified in that when Valjean was standing right in front of him, insisting that everything he lost when the Negaverse forcibly corrupted him didn’t matter.
Still, at the fire Valjean had for the Order, Reiki had to give a bitter, miserable little laugh. “Oh, you wanna talk about the Order,” he drawled like Venus Xtravaganza getting ready to teach a lesson about Reading. (He didn’t know if Valjean knew Paris Is Burning, or if he would’ve been familiar with it before the Negaverse did this to him; at this point, for Reiki, emulating one of Venus’s iconic lines was more instinctive than intentional.)
“You want to know why I’m with the Dark Mirror Court? The Order abandoned me. They—look at me, right? I’m in my twenties. If the cat who found me hadn’t done it when she did, I might never have awakened, and I don’t know what that would look like, but I assume it’s bad. I’ve spent my whole life feeling this……this ache. This emptiness. This chasm where I knew that something was supposed to go, but I could never find out what. When the cat and Senshi who awakened me…did whatever she did with my starseed and let me pass through the Mirror? Which, by the way, wasn’t even a month ago?”
Or a week ago, for that matter, but even being earnest like this, Reiki knew good and goddamn well: he couldn’t give everything away—especially when it sounded like the Negaverse’s idea of fair repayment would probably suck like a high-end vacuum cleaner.
“Walking through the Mirror, becoming Sailor Murikabushi? Finally, for the first time, that part of me felt……whole. It felt like……like, putting on my own clothes—” By way of hopefully illustrating his meaning, he delicately swished his skirt, “—after getting my uniform stolen and having to borrow my cousin’s.” Brother’s, but Valjean didn’t need to know that; it could serve as too much of a clue. “It felt like taking Adderall at a pharm party and wondering why you feel like the universe makes sense all of a sudden, instead of feeling high.”
Which had never happened to Reiki personally; he’d been diagnosed early because some teacher from first grade had decided he only wore skirts as a form stimulus-seeking, so meds would make him behave himself, genderifically speaking. Still, he’d heard enough stories about people in his class at DCU having that experience.
“And I don’t know why the Order never came for me—not yet? I want to know, but…there’s been several more immediately pressing things to learn first? It’s like…what, is my starseed not bright enough for you people? Is there something wrong with it? Is there something wrong with me? Did your stupid, lazy talking space-cats look at my starseed, recognize what was inside it, and decide I couldn’t sit with you stuck-up, plastic little bitches? Or did they just see an unreasonably tall, undeniably masculine person in skirts and decide not to waste their time with it? Because it confounded them, and didn’t follow their rules about gender, or something, so why ******** bother, right?”
—All of which was, frankly, more than Valjean had ever asked for, at any point in this conversation. And a bit more than Reiki had intended to tell, before his mouth had decided to jump a few steps ahead of his brain. At least, taking a few deep breaths gave his mind time to catch up, though as usual, it had several complaints to register about the massive, raging house-party that his ******** mouth had thrown without it.
“I know there’s a lot that I don’t know yet. But one thing I do know is that I can’t be the only person the Order’s hurt, or abandoned, or left behind because we weren’t good enough for them. And I respect that the Negaverse has a plan, because gods know, I don’t need help from mice and men to make my own best laid plans go awry? I can ******** up at least six of my own plans before breakfast, some days. But…”
Another deep breath, and Reiki made sure to look Valjean in the eye while saying, softly and genuinely, “You’re somebody’s son. Somebody’s friend. Maybe somebody’s brother, or senpai, or the only coworker they actually like. Without even your relations to other people, you’re a person; the old you was, too. Maybe you were on the wrong side, but your life was special because it was yours. If we’re supposed to be better than those sanctimonious ******** in the Order, then…shouldn’t all of that matter? Should we just…be okay with throwing Selves away like garbage because they inconvenience us personally?”
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2022 9:33 pm
Valjean crossed his arms. Knew he was visibly retreating, knew he should make an effort not to, but he was really, really not ready to have someone act as if he should at all be concerned about his....situation.
"I...." He exhaled. "I'm glad someone finally found you. And that it was the correct side." Not entirely, butt he Dark Mirror was better than the White Moon. "I don't know what does or doesn't draw their cats to people. I don't remember being Order, so I don't remember by Awakening, and I don't remember what I did or didn't do. You'd have to ask someone who does know."
He shrugged his shoulders, huddling in a little more.
"But I do know that even if they decided you weren't worthwhile--which is rich--then that is a reflection on the cat that ignored you, not on you." He said it with a sort of firm certitude. "And, anyway, I--"
Valjean exhaled. Looked Murikabushi in the face.
"How am I supposed to mourn a person that I can't even remember? Whoever I used to be, whatever ties I used to have, they're all gone. Trying to scramble and get all that back is--pointless. A waste. If someone recognizes me, perhaps that'll mean something, but for all I know, I wasn't anything to anyone, just one of the people who slips through the cracks of society, before I decided that it was a brilliant idea to get into a punch-up with a man who is literally on fire." He barked a laugh. "Which speaks poorly for my previous self-preservation skills, if nothing else."
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2022 10:01 pm
Watching Valjean pull back, Reiki tried to reflect something similar back at him. While he didn’t pull back as much as he might have done, he slouched ever-so-slightly at the hips, hoping that it came off as some kind of demurring. All of this, it was messing with his head, never mind his heart. Hearing Valjean insist so (by Reiki’s eyes) defensively that losing his old self didn’t matter, just because he didn’t remember that person? As if he hadn’t made some kind of difference in anyone’s life?
It flew in the face of several things that Reiki had deeply believed for almost as long as he could remember, and the emotional weight of it made him want to hang up his heels for the night and go lie down with Cersei.
“I’m not saying that you need to mourn the person you used to be,” he said gently, hands still up where Valjean could see them, “and I’m sorry for giving you that impression when it wasn’t what I meant to say.” With a deep breath, Reiki pushed off his back foot, and started a slow, purposeful strut out of the alley, toward the sidewalk. “All I meant was: no matter what you or anyone else thinks about the value of life, and no matter how trite it sounds, each person on this planet—every individual soul in this universe—is a miracle unto themselves. Miracles we take for granted, because there are so many of us? But when you look, in aggregate, all the individual events that happened to create who someone is, the chances of them becoming exactly who they are? Are so small as to be statistically insignificant.”
Pausing just below a streetlamp, Reiki looked back to add, “Don’t destroy the person named Valjean. Or, if you must, then at least don’t do it for people who see you as their own blunt little instrument, more than a person unto yourself.”
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