The Caves (5) : To any explorers visiting the new Reservoir, they may find that just a bit away from the sandy water are a set of caves. Some of these connect back to the lake, but others rapidly plunge into darkness. It wouldn't be hard to get lost in here, but thankfully there are some very odd lights to help guide you out. If you turn off your light down some of these dark paths, you may find yourself surrounded by glowing pastel lights. A closer inspection reveals that you seem to be looking at some sort of glowing caterpillars. An internet search will reveal that Destiny City scientists have been researching the strange, unnamed creatures, but the articles are very limited. If you take them out of the cave they seem to shrivel up almost immediately. They’re neat, but clearly meant to be stay in their natural habitat.
Well, meeting the Mirror Prince, or however Reiki was supposed to refer to Sailor “You Should’ve Dry-Cleaned Jareth,” certainly had derailed the original plan of taking homemade seaweed cookies to the alleged reservoir cryptid. They—Reiki, Haruhi, and Olivia—hadn’t even really gotten close enough to doing the job that Reiki had dragged them all out there to do. Which, incidentally, was the same job that drew him back out to the reservoir tonight, with a fresh box of (hopefully cryptid-friendly) seaweed cookies in hand.
True, he supposed that he could have lied to Tatsuya about having delivered the cookies……but Reiki was lying more than enough to the family right now—both his drag family and his blood family. He had been ever since Levi and Soya had taken him to the Black Mirror. Considering he’d given so many of the people who loved him reason to suspect he was heading for a major backslide soon, if not an outright relapse, Reiki couldn’t bring himself to consider lying to Tatsuya an actual option.
He’d brought a flashlight with him, this time. Since becoming a senshi hadn’t granted him darkvision or improved low-light vision, it seemed like the best way to get closer to the reservoir without needing the Senshi of Sunbeams to help illuminate things (while Reiki wouldn’t have minded asking Haruhi to come with him, ne had work at the post office tonight, so that wasn’t really an option, and Olivia had been low-key kidnapped into the original misadventure in the first place, so it was probably better to just let her have some time to herself instead of dragging her along again). Being powered up, he had the necessary balance and dexterity to get pretty much anywhere; he just needed to see where he was going.
In theory, the flashlight was a brilliant idea on Reiki’s part.
In theory, he’d made a very good call by bringing the stupid thing.
In theory, he’d done something terribly intelligent and perspicacious that reflected very well on how he was learning to look before he leaped, make better choices that were less likely to end in him getting himself hurt or something like that.
In practice, it started flickering once he’d gotten into the reservoir’s cave. Although Reiki tried begging it to please, just not, and thwacking it against his thigh, and cussing at it in a mostly unintelligible mish-mosh of English, Japanese, German, and Spanish, none of it came to any good. One more thump against his leg, and the light just…went out.
“Oh, ******** me…” Reiki started, but trailed off as something strange happened.
He’d heard about the glow-worms in the caves by now, but most of what he knew was limited to how they’d been used to create the Star Festival lanterns. Watching them actually switch on—watching the cave around him light up like The Closet’s dance-floor—left Reiki breathless, in a good way. Maybe it was trite of him, but god, he appreciated the reminder that, for all the unadulterated bullshit that Destiny City could throw at a b***h, sometimes things weren’t all hopeless garbage.
Noir Songbird_
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 1:09 am
The caves by the reservoir, Izanami thought, were exactly the type of place it might be fun to take Amaterasu for a little bit of wandering and exploring. It would feel very dangerous, but be totally safe for a kid, and they might even get a glimpse of the reservoir cryptid.
Besides, it was lovely, all lit up by the glow-worms.
So, she'd decided to scout things out first, just to make sure that ti was as adventurous-but-safe as she thought it should be, and she frowned at the feeling of a Chaos aura tugging at her senses. Not Negaverse, she was fairly certain, but...something else.
She was wary as she stepped into the cave, and there was no missing the probable owner of the aura--tall, handsome, bedecked in a skirt that made her feel a brief rush of envy.
Reiki had been prepared to spend the evening mostly by himself, give or take Tatsuya’s reservoir cryptid, so the approach of another powered-up aura made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. White Moon, from the feel of it. More powerful than Reiki himself but not as powerful as Kerberos or Anser—the Ivysaur, Quilava, Marshtomp, and Morgrem awkward middle child evolutionary stage for senshi, he guessed. Sort of like Amsvartnir being a squire, but for senshi. At least, that felt like the most logical conclusion to draw.
Turning toward the source of the aura, Reiki put on a smile and told himself to just……be cool. Play things cool. He wasn’t doing anything suspicious or nefarious, so whoever had come to join him had no reason for doing anything against him. Granted, he also hadn’t been doing anything to Gabe when Sailor Untitled Goose Game had decided to come in and wreck his s**t, so there wasn’t necessarily a guarantee that behaving himself would mean anything to these White Moon senshi, but……maybe this person would be disinclined toward just attacking people on sight for wearing Dark Mirror fukus?
……God, Reiki hoped not. Aside from his malfunctioning magic and how it might not have felt like playing nicely with him, it would’ve been a shame to knock this girl into the reservoir when her fuku looked so nice. The base color needed to go, obviously—the white washed out her poor skin like it would’ve done for Reiki, and the funereal look it gave her truly didn’t suit anybody—but the short, yukata-esque wrap with the dramatic, billowing sleeves looked lovely. All the blue shades decorating her fuku were equally beautiful, especially so illuminated by the glow-worms.
“Hey, Gorge,” Reiki said and waved at her with one hand, in a way he hoped came off more pleasantly than not, even as he watched to make sure this Sailor Katsura Yumi Runway Show wasn’t going to come at him as Anser had. “Let me guess: you promised someone you’d come give seaweed cookies to reservoir cryptid, too?”
Noir Songbird
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2023 11:11 am
At least he seemed polite, and he wasn't causing any real trouble. Izanami could respect that he genuinely seemed to be here for exploration, and not to cause any nefarious Chaos trouble, or whatever the Dark Mirror got up to--she wasn't as familiar with them as she was with the Negaverse, and so she supposed she sohuld approach this conversation with no particular prejudice.
It was not, after all, likely his fault that he'd Awakened into a Chaos faction. Not that she really knew how that worked. Perhaps she ought to ask around.
And, anyway, his explanation for why he was here startled a laugh out of her, and drew an easy smile to her face.
"Ah, no, not quite," she said. "My younger sister is a Senshi, and she likes to chase any suspicious monster-like trends--so I thought I would take a look around and see if it was safe, before she inevitably asks to come here."
Okay. Okay, this meeting was going……pretty well, actually? If anybody asked Reiki about it?
He did tilt his head in bemusement at the reason why Miss Sailor Yūrei Supermodel of the World had come out to the reservoir tonight, wondering how young the sister had to be……but for one thing, it probably wasn’t any of Reiki’s business? For another thing, Sailor Untitled Goose Game was basically just twelve and had been at the senshi thing for quite some time, which meant that obviously other senshi out there could also have been younger. (And if Sailor Yūrei Supermodel of the World’s sister was one of the tiny senshi, then that probably made anything about her, like, extra Not Reiki’s Business.)
Still, she was smiling, which made it easier for Reiki to smile in return. “Well, that sounds like a fun sibling adventure to go on,” he offered. “My cousin…… Y’know, if any of us was magical like this, I actually would’ve guessed him? Not that I don’t like it or anything, just……he’s got the sort of temperament that screams ‘magical,’ y’know?”
What Reiki wanted to say was that Tatsuya was the Luna Lovegood of the family, but……eugh. Anymore, the comparison left a bad taste in Reiki’s mouth without him even needing to say it out loud. ******** transphobic Scottish billionaire in her transphobic Scottish billionaire castle.
But after a moment’s pause to take the lid off the seaweed cookies and set them near the water, where the alleged cryptid might get them more easily, Reiki approached the other senshi, hand extended in greeting. “Murikabushi of Hunger, by the way,” he said, still offering her a smile.
Noir Songbird
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2023 6:15 pm
"Ah, I hope so," Izanami said, and she smiled, fondly. "My sister...she's so excited to be a Senshi. Hasn't seen some of the worst of it yet, and I'd like to keep it that way."
It was important to her, that Amaterasu got to continue to think of being a Senshi as an exciting magical adventure for as long as possible. Let her stay blind to the truth, which was that it was...painful. Deadly serious. Not at all whimsical, fun, or joyful--well, it could be, Izanami supposed, but then,t here were also dragon-women with nothing but murder on their minds, so it wasn't all puppies and bunnies.
She extended her hand, and shook his. "Izanami of Cremation. It's a pleasure to meet you." And very genuinely, it was. He wasn't causing any trouble, draining any energy, or trying to harm anyone,. so she really had no quarrel with him. "So far, this place seems safe enough, and honestly, bringing food might not be a terrible idea. Could help us lure out the cryptid when we come."
If it was even able to be lured. Izanami supposed she didn't know. Nor did she know what its diet consisted of--but maybe fish was a safe guess? And there was always plenty of that in the house, no one would miss a few slices of salmon or tuna.
Ah, she would ask Amaterasu what she wanted to do, if they did indeed go out. No use planning when Himiko might have a wholly different idea of how things were supposed to go.
Listening to Miss Yurei Supermodel—Izanami of Cremation, lovely name for a very sweet girl—Reiki nodded. Because everything she was saying made sense. Even without Nariko, his own baby sister, being as young as Izanami’s sister might’ve been—apparently was, from the sound of things—the older sibling level of protectiveness more than made sense. “Definitely sounds like a good bet on something to do,” Reiki agreed, looking around the cave again, all lit up as it was. “Finding things to help her learn the ropes of being a senshi while still keeping her away from too much of what the Negaverse does.”
He shuddered, thinking about some of what he’d managed to see since going to the Black Mirror.… Any kind of child having to see that without someone there to help them sounded like an absolute nightmare. Yet, as he headed back toward the mouth of the cave, Reiki bit back on the shudder he felt building up and kept smiling. “Lovely meeting you, Miss Izanami of Cremation,” he said. “I hope you and your sister have a good time, when you come out.”
