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 Posted: Thu May 26, 2022 10:22 pm
Monoceros was having himself a pretty good night. He'd taken a civillian's starseed and put it into his subspace, and he was looking out for someone to drain energy off of to help top up a lieutenant's quota. It probably wasn't something he should be doing, but he wanted to help out, and this would do overall good for the Negaverse anyway, so who really cared? He skipped around the rooftops, sizing up potential candidates, not paying attention to the auras around him until he nearly dropped in on one draining the civillian he was about to start draining from. "Oh, shoot, sorry," he apologized, stepping back from his superhero landing on the concrete. "I, uh, didn't notice anyone was here."
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2022 11:28 pm
As much as he normally enjoyed being around people, and as thoroughly as he’d enjoyed meeting his Dark Mirror sisters earlier in the week, Murikabushi appreciated getting some quiet time to himself tonight. One needed some room to breathe, sometimes—especially when one had made a point of trying to find someone to drain who actually deserved it.
The target, a certain Jonathan Watts, was the CFO of a construction company who’d been involved in several gentrification projects in the tricounty area, in spite of any protests against those plans. Local governments got paid off while civilian activists got hit with SLAPP suits—thanks, Virginia, for having painfully lax legislation or regulations against people filing those. In the end, the only things to come out of Watts’s activities sounded like people being unhoused or forcibly relocated by the rents getting jacked up, local cultures and their unique personalities being erased, and it getting that much harder for BIPOC and queer people to find somewhere to go.
(The CEO or COO probably would’ve been more advantageous to drain, Murikabushi thought, to say nothing of people from the actual development company—but none of them was quite as immediately accessible. It also helped that Watts was hardly in the best of health; Reiki could have easily subdued him, even without using the advanced strength and dexterity he got while powered up.)
As he had with dear Michel, Murikabushi didn’t intend to outright kill this man……but if he happened to die in the hospital after being drained, then Murikabushi also didn’t plan to mourn. He probably could have stood to take a bit more energy—but he tensed as soon as he felt the sharp-edged aura of a Negaverse agent coming nearer. After his encounter with Valjean, Murikabushi couldn’t imagine what sort of trouble he might be in……except the voice that cropped up sounded……oddly sweet?
“Oh, no, it’s fine, I promise. No trouble at all. There’s still some energy left, if you want?” Maintaining politeness with the Negaverse was probably the best idea. Murikabushi couldn’t guess what they knew or didn’t know about him (if anything, though…even if Valjean never mentioned him, Soya might have). Better not to get on anyone’s bad side.
It was a simple plan: stand up, step aside to let the newcomer have a shot at the unconscious man below them, and turn to face them, but Reiki stopped in the middle of step three as he recognized—“……Toráin?”
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2022 11:37 pm
Monoceros didn't know jackshit about the guy on the ground. What he did know was that some strange Dark Mirror Senshi knew who he was. Even if this new, fragile identity of his didn't really have any friends or family, or anyone who cared, someone knowing who he was set him on edge and he took a wary step back, eyes flicking up and down Murikabushi's body. "Yes?" he asked, tone warier than his body language, and he was already poised like a frightened rabbit ready to flee, or perhaps... a frightened porcupine ready to blast quills first and ask questions later. "And who might you be?"
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2022 11:43 pm
“Don’t you remember? We met a few weeks ago? You had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and there were the trashcans—in the alley? By Gertrude’s, and……ohhhh.” Reiki trailed off, abruptly remembering that there was a reason why he could get away without wearing a helmet, cowl, or domino mask. “Right, ********, it……the magical glamours, just—just a second, okay? You’ll understand, I promise.”
At least, Reiki hoped that Toráin would understand. Powering down in front of someone from another faction was inherently dangerous, even if both of them were with Chaos instead of the hypocritical ******** Order. But—it wasn’t fair, Reiki figured, to be on such wildly different pages where he recognized Toráin but Toráin didn’t recognize him. At least he didn’t feel any Order auras around anywhere.
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 12:01 am
Monoceros kept watching him with distrust in his eyes until the other senshi powered down, not really liking the way he'd been speaking until that moment. "Reiki?" he exclaimed, clapping his hands together excitedly. "How did you—you're—wow, you look amazing! I love your, like, WHOLE thing, it totally matches your, like, entire vibe, dude! When I saw you in your drag 'fit?" He powered down as well, becoming Toráin in an instant so he didn't have to worry about anyone coming to attack. "Why Dark Mirror, though? The 'verse isn't so bad," he asked, tilting his head.
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 1:17 am
Reiki shrugged. Toráin’s initial reaction was delightful, of course—and Reiki had to agree: he’d gotten exceptionally lucky in the outfit department, and Murikabushi’s senshi gear worked very well for him on so many levels. But that wasn’t the most important aspect of what Toráin had said, nor was it the one that Reiki really wanted to focus on.
“It’s not a value judgment or anything. The Negaverse just aren’t the ones who came for me,” he explained as simply as he would’ve delivered a report on the state of drying paint. “I mean, I suppose the cat is with you? Though I thought based on her behavior that she seemed more like a general agent of Chaos than the Negaverse specifically? But the senshi who came with her…… He’s kind, and he’s sweet, he’s a bit mischievous but in a really endearing way most of the time, and he’s with the Dark Mirror Court, so that’s where I went.”
And even if the Negaverse had come for him, Reiki wasn't sure he’d join them anyway, with what he’d learned from Valjean. But he needed to work up to that. He couldn’t just drop it on Toráin out of nowhere. “How have you been, though? Are you still having the issues from last time? With your head and your memory?”
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 1:25 am
Toráin nodded, making a gesture to the sidewalk to see if Reiki wanted to walk and talk at the same time. Maybe they could head towards Gertrude's again, have some of that delicious, greasy diner food. "Yeah, that's understandable," he said, already thinking of ways he could persuade Reiki to leave his life behind for the Negaverse. He would love to have a friend that was actually on the same side as him, and the 'verse needed to have someone as cool as Reiki with them, anyway. But this would probably take subtlety, so he'd have to be careful about proceeding. "Pretty much," he finally answered with a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. "That's what comes with forced corruption. I don't know if I'll ever... Feel completely whole and normal. I'm in a much better place right now, but sometimes it sneaks up on me, y'know? I do know that, frankly, thank God I do not have a family to go back to, now. ******** them. I just wish I knew what to do with Arsenolite, but... I think things are getting better. I'm not sure entirely yet, but more days are easy than not." He hummed happily. "What's the Dark Mirror like? Ooh, and what are you the senshi of? If you couldn't guess mine, it's porcupines. Universe-assigned furry."
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 6:42 pm
Walking and talking sounded like a good plan to Reiki, though truth told, he was also following Toráin’s lead a bit. Idly, he wondered if that was an odd position for Toráin to be in, and how he would’ve felt about that assessment. But Reiki couldn’t wonder too much, not when Toráin was freely and willingly telling him so many things that sounded more than slightly important. (Besides that, Reiki’s blood Adderall levels were quite lower than he normally liked for having important conversations and being able to give them his full attention.)
For one thing, he freely and openly confirmed that, like Valjean, he hadn’t been an enthusiastic participant in his corruption—which made all the sense, really. From what little Reiki had seen of the Negaverse so far, it was so hard to picture someone as sweet as Toráin going to them without being dragged into it, possibly kicking and screaming. Whoever this Arsenolite character was, it sounded like he was involved in the whole mess—possibly also a member of Toráin’s family (maybe the so-called brother he’d mentioned before?)—and even without meeting him, Reiki decided that he hated Arsenolite, now. If it turned out that he hadn’t been involved in corrupting Toráin, then Reiki could consider changing his mind later, but for now, he felt content to quietly hate this person he’d never met.
“I’ve actually been wondering about that, of late—forced corruption, I mean…and about whether or not it was what happened to you.” As they came up on a crosswalk, Reiki looked around, and gave himself a moment to feel out more auras, just to make sure they were alone. Sufficiently pleased, he turned to look down at Toráin’s face. “I ran into someone else from your team a few nights back? Name of Valjean.… I’ve run into him before, actually, but—magic glamours and all? So, he didn’t recognize me. But we got talking, and he mentioned that his corruption hadn’t been a willing one either. Between his memory issues sounding like yours and the matching stars…”
Reiki shrugged, and sighed as the crosswalk let them go again. “Anyway, there’s not a lot to tell about the Dark Mirror—or at least, not yet, there isn’t? I’ve only met a few of us so far—the very pretty boy who brought me in and two new sisters besides—and I’m still…really trying to figure things out here, y’know? …I do know that I’m the senshi of hunger, so. That’s fun? And probably explains why the stupid Order cats never came for me, when their senshi are running around with incantations like ‘Kinship’ and kicking people for existing while Chaos.”
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 7:39 pm
Toráin hummed in response, nodding along and making a disgusted noise. "Ugh, right? Like, they literally think they're better than us because they wear white," he said with a roll of his eyes. "But hunger sounds interesting. I wonder what applications that'll have for you, once your magic settles." He flipped up the collar of his jacket to hide his reddening face as he contemplated asking a question that he probably shouldn't. Deciding to delay it a moment, he answered an unasked question of Reiki's. "The stars just mean we're senshi in the 'verse," he explained, "Not that we were corrupted forcibly. There's not really a way to tell just by looking at someone. Valjean's pretty cool, I like him. We almost got into a fight but things turned out nicely. Force corruptions are.... dirty, but... necessary. And once I got the right help I needed, well, I've mostly been fine. Sometimes things just hit hard, still." His face re-reddened, because after he'd calmed while talking work things, personal things got brought back to the forefront of his mind, and he hunched his shoulders, hiding like a turtle in his jacket. "....Did you mean it?" he asked softly, "When you said, before... In the alley? About... me being attractive? Like... actually attractive? Enough to do... what you said?" God, his face was burning. Was he actually on fire? No, probably not, but that's how it felt. He couldn't even bring himself to say two normal words about the entire length Reiki had gone off on about all the ways to mean "sleep with".
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2022 3:09 am
“I think we might have to agree to disagree about forced corruptions,” Reiki said, trying to keep his tone even and neutral when the idea made him want to stop and retch in the nearby trashcans. “I get that the Negaverse has its goals and all—and like I told Valjean, I respect you guys for having a plan, because gods know, I do not need help to ******** up six of my own plans before breakfast, some days? But just as a matter of personal preference and personal philosophical outlook? It’s like killing somebody so you can use their body and their starseed as tools for your own ends. And not to be all Immanuel Kant about it when all the cool kids are into Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, and Slavoj Žižek the Curmudgeonly Mountain Troll?”
Inhaling deeply, Reiki just hoped that he could express this sentiment without making Toráin angry—or worse, without making him feel guilty over finding some kind of a home with the Negaverse. “But Kant’s whole moral philosophy goes back to how we treat and perceive other people, right? And his big central argument is that the definition of ‘evil,’ at its core, is seeing another person as a means to an end, rather than an end in themself. So, like……if forced corruptions are being done to help people, in the same way that someone might need to go to rehab but might not want to go to rehab, then I think that’s one thing? But if they’re only being done to make someone ‘behave,’ so to speak? Then……yeah, I have a problem with that.
“Not to bring an entirely different famous smart person into things? But Elie Wiesel has a famous quote about that, too: ‘We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.’” Sighing, Reiki nudged his bangs back behind his ear. “Which—I don’t know if that’s how everyone in the Dark Mirror Court does things? But it sure feels like it’s true of everyone I’ve met so far.… They’re all some of the most caring people I’ve ever met; it’s an honor, honestly, to fight with them.”
Whether or not it was as much of an honor to be the senshi of hunger—something that honestly felt increasingly dubious and weird, the more Reiki thought about it—Toráin raised a significantly more interesting question. And he did it while blushing so adorably, Reiki could’ve gladly kissed him right then and there, had there not been just enough night-owls on the street to probably make Toráin feel awkward about it. So, instead, he nodded. “I absolutely meant it. About the only things that’d make me go ‘no, not right now’ are the whole……recent split from my ex-fiancé that I’m still really in my feelings about? And alcohol, just because……”
Pointedly, Reiki traced his eyes over the difference between their heights. “Trying to negotiate height differences when you’re drunk is a good way to end up in the ER. Unless you only want oral, which usually works out okay.”
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2022 1:30 pm
Toráin... part of him wanted to listen to Reiki, because it sounded... almost right, close to correct of some kind, but he violently squashed the thought, shaking his head slightly against the oncoming headache. When that didn't help, he rubbed his temples a bit and let out a little whine followed by a gusty sigh, and that seemed to be much better. Whatever Reiki thought, forced corruptions were just necessary, and that was that. He'd figure out something to get Reiki over to their side, and for now, take the "agree to disagree". In the meantime, though, Reiki was being incredibly graphic (to this poor virgin soul) and he squeaked loudly, hiding his face further in the collar of his jacket, so much so that only the top of his hair poked out. He had no idea how to even respond to this. Reiki seemed so sincere... And he had no experience in this kind of thing at all. No kisses, no hand holding, not even someone telling him they'd had a crush on him. At least, as far as he knew, but he suspected with his extreme reaction that this was an ongoing problem instead of just a "cannot remember" problem. "Um—Well, I mean, I—and, um!" he stammered, not popping up from his jacket at all, and, in fact, pulling up his t-shirt to cover the lower half of his face even more, "Sorry I'm.... short?" And a total idiot virgin.
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Posted: Mon May 30, 2022 9:17 am
While Reiki lacked the ability to magically intuit Toráin’s inner moral/ethical turmoil, he did have enough perspicacity to notice that, seemingly out of nowhere, Toráin seemed to be in pain. Between the temple-rubbing and the head-shaking, the headache was unmistakable, and made Reiki frown in concern. “D’you need anything for that? I’m sure there's a drugstore or something that’s open, this time of night?”
Several, he was well aware, and a handful of them were in the general vicinity of Gertrude’s, so they wouldn’t be too out-of-the-way. There simply wasn’t any sense in Toráin suffering when he didn’t need to. Ideally, he wouldn’t have had to suffer at all, nor would anyone else, but the world never had been ideal, as far as Reiki knew. Making the world behave itself in such a manner also felt like something of a long-shot, if he was honest. But thankfully, headaches had several significant differences from larger ideological questions of morality, justice, and so on.
Anyway, since they’d need to adjust course anyway to hit a drugstore if Toráin wanted, Reiki seized the moment and shot him a small, soft smile. “You don’t have to apologize for anything,” he said gently. “It’s not a judgment or anything so much as it’s just acknowledging the reality of the situation. Height differences are great, but laws of physics are a harsh mistress, y’know? So, you have to be careful when negotiating them during any special adult time.”
Snorting at his own commentary was probably at least slightly ridiculous—not least since Reiki hadn’t even made a joke—but he couldn’t help himself. That way of phrasing things always tickled him because it just sounded so patently silly.
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Posted: Mon May 30, 2022 5:58 pm
Toráin shook his head at the offer of meds, giving Reiki a weak smile. "Nah. I'll be okay. I don't need anything. Usually goes away in a minute or two, anyway, so it won't help." But then Reiki decided to just... dance around the subject in the most silly way, after he'd just been practically explicit, and it made him snort a laugh, no longer hiding his face quite as much, though he kept his collar flipped up. "Yeah, uh. I figure so, but..." He trailed off, clearing his throat and looking up to the stars. "I don't think I've ever held hands with anyone, let alone, well. That. But, I mean, if... you're offering something, err.... halfway? I, um. I would. Take you up on that. Because. You are very, very good-looking, and you've been... So kind to me. And if you, I mean, if you really think that I.... I'm cute? I don't think I could ask for a better first fella."
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 11:49 am
Although Reiki didn’t much like the idea of dropping the issue, he also didn’t think he had too much justifiable cause for pressing the subject of Toráin’s headache.
Sure, he could judge from the outside what it looked like (a pretty nasty piece of work, as far as headaches went), and he could take mental note of the potentially suspicious circumstances of its onset (while they were talking about the matter of forced corruptions and Reiki was disagreeing with what was apparently not just Valjean’s opinion but possibly one that held true for more people in the Negaverse than himself and Toráin). Reiki could even wonder to himself if Valjean and Toráin sharing the opinion was a side-effect of their corruptions (and admit that, while it didn’t seem to mesh with the rest of Toráin’s behavior, Reiki didn’t know enough about Valjean to reach any conclusions, so the answer could’ve been anything.
For all Reiki knew, the answer to “What would Valjean have thought about forced corruptions back when he could still resist them? When he was still the bitchy little hellcat who fought a General-Sovereign so much that it made his magical rewriting so much more drastic and left him with zero memories of his old Self?” was “Why did that Alaskan river salmon hop out of the water and steal a tandem bicycle while screaming German obscenities with significantly more precision and familiarity than you’d expect from an Alaskan river salmon turned bicycle thief?”)
But all the pondering in the world didn’t give him more immediately relevant cause to keep pushing the matter when……he admittedly had no idea what Toráin’s headaches were like, or why they happened, or any of it. As much as Reiki didn’t trust coincidences like this, he had to admit that sometimes, they only were what they appeared to be. Something something, correlation and causation or whatever, something something, like they’d tried to teach him about in his science classes back at Meadowview, blah blah yadda.
All of which took some of the fun out of where the conversation was actually heading—and honestly, it was homophobic (read: personally inconvenient) that reality (and moreover, Reiki’s feelings) saw fit to make that A Thing, because smiling and flirting at a very cute boy should have been positively lovely. Taking said very cute boy out for more middle of the night chicken fingers should have also been lovely. Several of the things Toráin was saying were significantly less lovely, but Reiki couldn’t blame Toráin for that, when it sounded like the fault was more so on reality, all the jagweeds who kept s**t like “no fats, no femmes, no Asians, no trans” on their hookup app profiles, and whoever else had played a role in making Toráin feel like he was anything but adorable.
“If I were joking about hitting on you—about any of this?—please, trust me that you’d know.”
As he held the door into Gertrude’s open for Toráin, Reiki wracked his brain for idea about how to prove that……no really, Toráin would know if Reiki weren’t serious. Not that Reiki liked getting there right as Late-Shift Pink Hair Rachel led a different couple toward the back of the diner, but needing to wait did provide him with the opportunity to put his mouth to good use on explaining himself. There were photos Reiki could pull up on his phone, but—was that even safe to do? Toráin, Reiki trusted him, but all he knew about Toráin’s bosses was that they didn’t think anything of erasing people’s entire Selves in order to further their own alleged goals (whatever those were).
“I mean, in fairness?” Reiki shrugged, trying to keep himself from getting too bogged down in paranoia like some Cold War spy thriller. “There definitely are situations where I do the old Oscar Wilde thing of, like, deciding that I’m super into some kind of idea, or new thing, or whatever, and not knowing how much of it is genuine, sarcastic, or my old frenemy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, coming for my throat again? But the only time I hit on anybody without any actual intention behind it, is when I’m all up in my geish, onstage, and probably doing a cute little number to, like, ‘Don’t Cha,’ or ‘Peacock,’ or ‘Abnormally Attracted To Sin.’ See, then, it’s part of the act and the Miss Sayuri Disobedience fantasy—and maybe they’re a generous tipper, too—but when it’s just me? Just Reiki, like—”
“Hey, ******** someone call that name, Reiki perked right up, couldn’t help smiling. Right on cue, Rachel came back to the hostess stand, and fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any problems with her letting Reiki take Toráin over to a booth nearish to the diner’s main fire exit.
“Friend of mine,” he explained to Toráin while Rachel grabbed some menus and extra sets of silverware, then led them off. “Very dear, close friend of mine—honestly, he’s one of the biggest reasons why my ex is still alive instead of decomposing in a swamp with all the friggin’ gay frogs—it’s, like, y’know? That nickname is, like, ‘********, affectionate’ rather than ‘********, derogatory,’ so to speak?”
The potential danger of this meeting still lurked in the back of Reiki’s mind. Even if Toráin didn’t seem like the type of person to go spill a friend’s civilian life secrets to the Negaverse’s higher-ups, who was to say that his commanding officers wouldn’t use whatever they had at their disposal to make him talk? On the other hand, though, maybe Toráin would get the message about Reiki’s personal beauty standards from watching him flop into the booth beside a tall, bespectacled, very chubby guy around his age.
“Gorgeous, this is Toráin,” Reiki said as casually as undergrads showing up to class in their pajamas, drooping over onto his very dear friend’s shoulder. “New friend. I met him a couple weeks ago, beating up the trash cans, then we had chicken fingers, and now we’re friends.”
An affectionate snort came first. “Yeah, that sounds very you. Or like, a very you way of meeting somebody.”
“I know, right? But anyway…” Lifting his head ever so slightly, Reiki smiled at Toráin. “Toráin, this is Yuki Disobedience, and like I said, he’s a very dear friend of mine.… Which is a long way around saying ‘my queerplatonic partner,’ because my ex was a ******** idiot about understanding concepts like ‘Yuki and I aren’t in romantic love, please stop being a jealous little b***h when he’s trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and be supportive of our relationship.’”
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 12:17 pm
Toráin thanked Reiki for holding the door open as they went in, listening quietly to him ramble on about his flirting habits and trying very hard to not blush. Which he was failing at, so he instead tried very hard not to blush so hard that his head blew up or something. So far, so good. The calling of "********" certainly confused him for a minute, but he was no stranger to funny, affectionate names used between friends that were technically insulting but really had no punch behind them, so he nodded, smiling widely, and sat down across from Reiki as he explained who Yuki was. "Oh! I've heard about the QPP thing," he said, lighting up a bit, "I haven't had the pleasure of having someone that close to me, but that's cool for you guys. Nice to meet you Yuki, as Reiki said, I'm Toráin, and he indeed met me as I was beating up a bunch of trash cans. I... had been having a bad day." Which was an understatement, but now, with the incident in the past, he couldn't help but giggle a bit. It all seemed so silly, now... "Reiki yelled at me then bought me the chicken fingers, because that wasn't totally a whiplash to experience, and now, uh... We're just kinda chill. It's nice." He sat there for a moment, having said his fill, and thought for a moment... Reiki really wasn't kidding about Toráin being cute, then, if this other cute, chubby guy was his QPP. That was something special, and it made Toráin feel warm all over to know for certain, with the proof in his face, that Reiki really might be interested in him for a night or two. And, maybe... Hopefully? Reiki knew some other really cute guys (or, maybe girls, he was still ostensibly bisexual, but things seemed to have changed a little bit) who would also find him attractive. Maybe long-term. But he was in the middle of meeting someone else, and he really ought to be paying attention to what these two were saying. He had a feeling that they would be massively entertaining to engage with.
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