Strays (1) : Destiny City News reports several sightings of ‘feral dogs' appearing throughout the city. Those interviewed claim that the dogs would surround them and chase them down the streets, seemingly popping in and out of sight until the person finally found themselves in a well lit area. You have the misfortune of running into these same dogs.
They cling to the shadows as you go about your way at night. Seemingly at the corner of your vision, one flickers by, and you turn and see nothing. Again and again it happens. They are trying to drive you into the darkest corners of the city, herding you away from the light. In the nearby distance are the lights of the city: streetlights, signs, traffic. You have to do something to get there, to escape these creatures. When you make it to any significant light source, you hear a low growl, a wailing hiss; the dogs have vanished.
For now.
How many nights could a boy go out, doing the same old senshi grind and not really seeming to get any better at it, before he gave it up? Reiki didn’t know, but only because he hadn’t entirely given up, yet. No matter how much of himself he felt like he was giving to this senshi business—no matter how often trying (what he thought was) his best only seemed to dig him further into a hole—he wasn’t……getting anywhere. Not in any positive ways. Or so it seemed.
Sure, he’d had his selfish, bratty little meltdown on the subway station floor, following the final battle with the Blights, when Princess Ida, Fang, Kerberos, and Encke had all disappeared and left him behind……but as awful as it had felt, even that experience had faded from its previous potency, drowned amidst the tides of Reiki reminding himself, it wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about me.… Ida had to think about the safety of so many people, that night. So many senshi who might not have been able to handle having me around, an agent of capital-C Chaos.… The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few—or the one.… It. was not. not ever in a million years. about. ********. me.
In the thick of it, swept up in his emotions like an idiot and falling to his knees like he had, of all the worst things that could have happened, being left behind had felt like The! Worst!! Possible!!! Thing!!!!—or, to invert Voltaire’s Candide: the worst of all possible things.… But on the other side, having survived and continued with this thing called life, Reiki only felt silly for having gotten so upset about that in the first place. Hadn’t he experienced worse than that before?
He’d only been fourteen when Aunt Satomi had forgotten him at Westside Mall while drunkenly escorting two teenagers and a twelve-year-old through their back-to-school shopping. It had taken him hours to get anywhere he even recognized—no thanks to his phone with its bullshit 2010 reception and absolutely pathetic battery life, croaking while he was trying to make it help him figure out where he was. At that, when he succeeded by some measure, he hadn’t made it home home, as in the place he’d lived with his parents, siblings, and grandparents. Instead, he’d made it to Miss Sibyl’s place, where his drag mom could call his Mom-mom for him (and where he’d gotten the exquisite privilege of hearing Dad and Satomi yelling at each other about where the Hell is my son, filtered through two phones but still more than loud enough to catch the play-by-play)?
Hadn’t that been worse than getting ditched for perfectly valid, understandable reasons, as an adult who knew damn well how to defend himself and how to get himself home, and who only hadn’t done so that night because he’d been too In His Feelings and let himself get snatched?
Obviously, the answer was “Yes.”
Therefore, Reiki had nothing to be upset about—and yet.……
And yet.………
And ******** yet.…………
Despite knowing so much better, powering up and heading on a patrol kept inspiring Reiki to play That Damn Song From “Once More, With Feeling” in his head: Every single night, the same arrangement: I go out and fight the fight. Still, I always feel this strange estrangement. Nothing here is real, nothing here is right.……
Trading blows with youma got the blood pumping somewhat, he guessed, but so few things managed to give him pause anymore—which was probably how he’d gotten himself into such a dark alley in the first place.
Truly, he should’ve known better. He’d heard all the reports on the news about feral dogs running wild all over town. For weeks now, he’d been extra-careful when taking Cersei out for walks, and more so to potty before bed, specifically because he didn’t want to run into any of said dogs and get his Best Girl scratched, or bitten, or who-knows-what-else.
When it came to protecting himself, though? No dice. Standing in a long alley with very little in the way of illumination, Reiki thought about how he’d gotten there.… He’d kept following flickers at the edge of his vision, thinking that a youma would make itself apparent in due time and he’d soon smash it back to the Negaverse, as one did.… But no youma had emerged, and now, Reiki shivered as he heard a low growl, as he felt a whole pack of eyes surround him like they couldn’t wait to learn what his meat tasted like, as he felt his chest tighten and the buildings closing in around him.…
He had to get out of here.
As deep a breath as he could manage, and Reiki took off down the alley. Snarls and barks dogged at his heels, but he kept running. He had to get out of here. Had to get away from these dogs.
Alexa, he quipped in his own head and for his own amusement only, play “Hounds of Love” by Kate Bush.
Daekie
ahgkgbsh, sorry for the delay in getting this banged out, but: a start! heart
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2022 9:53 pm
Roaming the streets and the rooftops was an easy way to wring out the useless energy from their limbs. There were some districts and areas that they preferred to visit as Alexis, if only for the promise of a warm body, but to some degree there was still... unease, if they stayed that way for too long, still hidden in human guise. It made their entire body into a lie, to some degree, and not even a particularly useful one; plenty of people all that time ago had tastes that leaned to what was exotic to them, and certainly Rokae biology would be exotic to a human, but –– it was not an argument or a discussion worth having.
They had spent so long as Roka it had felt impossible to think they would ever be able to let that power down. Even now that they had, they wanted ti be in it often; they felt weak and fragile with none of that power to seep into their bones.
But. But. That Senshi, not so far away, in a perfect position for them to glance down on him and take him in; if he didn't look up, he'd never see them ––
Those colors – they recognized those, sans the black. Certainly there could be any number of Senshi with any given color scheme, Roka had met others who bore similar teals to theirs, but those colors – and that hair ––
That couldn't be. Airan had died even before they'd been trapped on Roka.
The memories of that time were faded, smeared, blurred – but beyond all doubt, they were certain: he had died, and he had died with no friends by his side. They hadn't been anywhere near. They'd learned, after, and it had gutted them at the time; it'd made them almost nauseous with fury and self-hatred, they remembered that much, the phantom taste of bile in their throat.
They had been his friend, once. It tasted like rot on their tongue for Alexis to admit to it even in their own head. But they had been young and stupid and reckless (and they were still reckless, even now, even if it had been tempered by time and blood and stretches of scars that were never going to heal the way they'd been once), and he had been a person who had little chance to have friends, and they'd felt affection instantly. They'd wanted to help him, to get him out of there, to give him the chances to choose free of chains they'd thought he deserved. They'd wanted to ––
It felt foreign to think about it now. Someone else's thoughts. Not theirs. That rot on their tongue gathered and sharpened: perhaps this was something they could hurt him with. Perhaps it was serrated.
But before any conversation could be had with this maybe-traitorous rat of a boy, they did need to help him - actually, did they need to help him at all? Senshi here were so weak on the whole, utilizing their magic as a crutch and a hallmark of their identity; it made them easy to take off-guard. It was a little pathetic, all things told; but if Roka was to go back to their old preference and their knives, they'd be breaking the unspoken rules of engagement, and not in a way they could play around.
That was acceptable. Brawling was their secondary preference, in any case.
"Need aid?" Roka called down to (had to be, couldn't be) Murikabushi, landing cats-foot lightly on the nearby rooftop, no stumble or shake. If he was too proud, they had no issue with letting these things maul him a little; it was always an excellent way to earn someone's favor, to step in when they were in tears from the pain, and to let their mind blissfully blank out that Alexis might've been involved in exactly why they'd been hurt to that point. It was a very simple strategy, all in all.
And if he wasn't too proud - even without Senshi strength, Alexis was all lean muscle, anyways; with Senshi strength, with their magic activated, their velocity was a force of its own. These things would be easy to break. The odds were they wouldn't even bleed; a disappointment, but an inevitable one.
amorremanet
➤become friends with someone ➤he dies anyway ➤less than a year later, experience the worst thing that's ever happened to you and have a severe psychotic episode in the aftermath ➤tfw were these two things related? almost definitely not! were they also a thousand years ago and alexis' recall of that entire year or two is a little ********? yeah,
The dogs had so consumed Reiki’s attention, he hadn’t even thought to feel around for auras—either theirs or anyone else’s. This was Hell. ******** his life. He’d spent pretty much all his time as a magical girl either getting himself in trouble or complaining about the problems that he had caused, by himself, with help from no one else in probably ninety-five percent of cases. Now, his a** was grass. What could he even do about this? Given the darkness he’d gotten himself into and what his magic would do to these poor dogs……
Ugh, it had to be the pet owner in him. That, or the bleeding-heart idiot who didn’t know his own good from a silver-plated statue of a root canal. Either way, Reiki couldn’t help thinking that these dogs probably didn’t know better.… Maybe they weren’t aggressive, actually?… Maybe they were different, and misunderstood, and lonely, and nobody had taught them that people running away from them was not some kind of game?… ********, he couldn’t try his luck with relying on that, not with how many of them he felt, running in the shadows and nipping at his heels, and the unfortunate chance that these escapees from Baskerville Hall actually were as vicious as they seemed.
At the sound of another voice—human? or at least a humanoid alien, like Fang, like Daphne, like Lysvi and Vaylin—Reiki startled, jumping in his gait. Flailing about trying to search for the voice’s source. Despite knowing full well how to move in heels, he fumbled backwards like he’d slide into a pratfall at any moment. Didn’t stop until his back hit a dumpster. That’s when he saw them, far from perfectly visible under the faint moonlight but visible enough to see what looked like……fins? Along their ears? Were those fins or was it some attachment to the tiara?
Moreover, did Reiki truly care?
With the hounds in every shadow and all the aliens he’d met being cool—well, except for the Jeff Goldblum knockoff on Astraya, but the rest of the aliens who’d crossed Reiki’s path had been awesome—he decided that no. No, he did not care.
“Please? Yes! I……” Recent memories of his own damn words flooded back, his mind screaming at him to shut up lest a certain b*****d win at something by virtue of Reiki doing this. But, his breath heavy with anxiety, he made himself nod up at the other senshi. “My magic’s only going to make them hungry! They don’t exactly need the help!”
(Any thoughts of Faustite deserved to be smothered with a pillow. Reiki would get the hang of it, so help him.)
Daekie
Gah, and now that I have been able to RP brain for long enough—I’m SO sorry this took so long heart
Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2022 9:46 pm
Oh? So he wasn't so prideful, then, as to deny their aid. As amusing as it might have been to draw it out and make him bleed for a moment of their time, Roka mused, they had offered, hadn't they...? So if they wanted to build a specific reputation -- which they did; it was easier to destroy people if you were known to be reliable, because why would you lie to them, why would they ever suspect -- they'd need to save him well enough.
Not unsatisfactory. A little dash of brutality generally did improve their day, from time to time.
"Your magic," Roka said, idly, dropping down into the alleyway with barely a huff of exhalation, sounding about as worried as they might on a pleasant walk, "should not be your first and only line of defense." Oh, senshi always fell so easily into that trap: that because their magic came so naturally, it should be all they were capable of, as if they'd all forgotten that most of the universe was fighting fist and fang and claw and had been for unknown millennia. Roka knew they weren't perfect -- but for all their many flaws, at least they had never been that way. They'd always defaulted to fang and claw and blade.
Easy to call that magic to hand like an old friend, water veiling their limbs. Roka went in with that type of vicious confidence they knew how to wear like a second skin; their most reliable false-face, if it was even false at all. If they still knew and understood how to do anything after those long and tangled years alone, anything at all, it was how to kill.
One. (Kicking it away, their accelerated blow landing harder than Murikabushi's might've -- pivot and grab at the second coming near, throat -- it was a monster, it was a youma or something close, it wasn't meat enough for the eyes to matter -- just thin enough for their hand to get a solid grip.) Two. (It went against the wall, hard, and they dropped it.) Three. (Economy of motion -- one heel slammed into the third, coming up behind them, and twisted. When the creature fell, they pushed off the alleyway wall for that slight bit of extra motion and -- there was no pretty way to say it -- curbstomped the thing, or something like it.) Four. (They'd gotten almost too distracted. This one's jaws closed around their forearm -- that would draw blood, but -- no. It wouldn't scar. They'd need to bandage it, keep an eye on it, but it wouldn't scar unless they were truly careless. Into the <********> wall it went, with all the surprising denseness of their lean-boned body behind it, until the thing released its grip and withered and died.)
"But I shouldn't be surprised. You've never been the best frontline combatant, have you, Murikabushi?" Roka said it casually. Oh so casually. "You never do learn." They said his name like it meant nothing, because of course they would know him, they'd known him for ages -- and getting a closer examination of him like this -- there was no room for doubt. Airan, or Airan, reborn. Murikabushi in black that -- suited him, really; he was hardly an unattractive young man. (Was this the time for it? It might have been.)
amorremanet
you're fine! this is by no means the longest i have ever waited for a tag or made someone wait for a tag, lol. did the prompt involve fighting the dogs? no but IT'S INSPIRATION we can fight as many dogs as we want. magic:
Sailor Scout Attack: Roka's Current Roka's lower arms and legs are covered in veils of water that manifest out of thin air. Anyone who touches the water generated by this attack will temporarily experience the feeling of being trapped in a rip current and dragged under; this may include feeling as if they're tumbling head over heels, being dragged down and away, being unable to breathe, drowning, etc. This magic is primarily an agility boost -- the debilitating effect only lasts as long as an enemy makes contact with Roka, although at player discretion they may be affected for longer. While this magic is active, Roka's agility and speed are increased considerably, including acceleration.
