Quote:
follows like a rotten dog

While far from the primary point of interest in anything, as he paced around his and Haruhi’s apartment, he couldn’t shake off the thought that Faustite’s handwriting was kind of adorable. Messy, yes, but Reiki’s was hardly neat either, so he couldn’t really judge. At least Faustite’s penmanship felt distinctive in a way that would have seemingly prohibited it from being anybody else’s. It had a certain character about it, personality, even.

“It has me wishing for a magical restraining order, is what it’s got,” Reiki muttered at no one in particular. “Frankly, even if the handwriting itself didn’t scream ‘Oh, that’s very him,’ the terse, demanding attitude problem would be a dead giveaway.”

Next Tuesday. Meet me on the roof.

F.

Nothing polite about it. Nothing overtly threatening either, but after three run-ins and Faustite flinging orders at Reiki for two of them as if that was remotely his right to do? Hard not to read into things. To read between all seven words, one spare letter, and two lines of text, seeing all manner of things. Perhaps these phantoms didn’t exist outside of Reiki’s own head, but in the version of the letter that his perceptions constructed out of its objective reality, what little Faustite had actually written teemed with unspoken threats of violence, tacit insults in the same vein as Mirror Thing, and the same nauseating ******** entitlement that his team (or at least a few members of it) had shown when they’d assumed so much ******** solidarity about trying to make Reiki accept the chains of being their pet monster/weapon of mass emotional trauma and acted like he ought to have been grateful for the alleged opportunity of giving them the chance to subjugate him.

All because every single one of them had the taint of Chaos on them. No actual work on their collective part to reach out and build anything, only the presumption that he should’ve groveled for the honor of being deemed worthy of their attention.

“Does this constitute effort, though?” Reiki had no idea and neither did the void he spoke into……as much of a void as it could be called, an apartment that sat here empty, save for him and Cersei. “Does leaving behind some note addressed to ‘Dial M for Mirror-Thing’ and ******** demanding my presence actually count as effort? It barely counts as outreach, honestly.”

Certainly fitting with the bitchy attitude Faustite had shown him in every encounter thus far. (In fairness, though, Reiki had to concede: any bitchiness when they’d crossed paths in the industrial district hasn’t been personal, not until Reiki had come out from behind the smokestack. Unknowing, same as Reiki had been, Faustite had only thrown out so much vitriol because……that simply defined how he engaged with most of the world? Something like that, probably.

Still didn’t speak well to his temperament or make Reiki want to deal with him ever again, but it hadn’t been personal until the end and Faustite deserved to have that fact acknowledged—even if Reiki was only debating this issue with himself.)

“Who does he even think he is, throwing demands like this at someone who doesn’t even go here.” Huffing, Reiki added, “Well, there, technically speaking. ‘There’ as in meaning ‘the Negaverse.’ Point is, I don’t ******** work for him, so who died and gave him the right to ******** talk to me like this. And seriously? How ******** hard is it to just leave each other alone—you know, the way that we <******** agreed on doing.”

Or Reiki thought that had seemed like Faustite’s final verdict. When asked to decide what he’d wanted done with Reiki, he’d gone off at him about forgiveness or whatever, barked to his team with an address that had long since evaporated out of Reiki’s memory, and stormed off. Maybe he hadn’t said as much, but that sure seemed, at least to Reiki, like a final answer of the Yes, let’s just stay away from each other, best for everyone, really variety.

Flopped out over on the sofa after a nice, long walk (during which Her Person had struggled to keep her out of the leaf-piles, not trusting them worth a damn this year), Cersei didn’t even decide that clearly, he meant to address her. She gave him a noncommittal little groan, but the interest didn’t last. As quickly as she’d perked up, she closed her eyes and dropped her head back onto the cushion and nestled closer to her plush lion, idly licking its face.… Oh, to be so cute, and innocent, and free of the burdens of dealing with garbage like this.

“What is he even going for here,” Reiki groused, letting himself think aloud, since neither Haruhi nor Soya was here to get annoyed with him for it. “How many ways can a person possibly communicate that they don’t like you? Because I’m pretty sure he hit a lot of those potential marks. And <******** yet?”

He sighed dramatically, waving toward the ceiling the letter he’d found when he’d popped over to the Farnsworth. He’d made a habit of going there semi-regularly, looking to check for any details on where and when to meet with Tama, or how to get in contact with him so they could set something up on their own. Most of the time, he’d returned empty-handed, but oh, tonight?

Of course Reiki had to find something tonight.

Of course the something in question had to be <******** this, some cryptic bullshit
instead of literally anything about when he could meet with Tama and not upset any plans with Team Tramp-Stamp that required their resident Mauvian.

Of ******** course the something just ******** *had* to be a demand for Reiki’s presence, because getting summoned to show oneself before someone so much more powerful than you were ever turned out well for this.

Hugging himself, Reiki glanced over at Cersei. Still snuggled up with her lion, she seemed to have drifted off into a proper nap. None of the usual gruffing or twitching that accompanied her deep sleep, but she’d probably only gotten there, so that made sense.

“No help at all, Baby,” Reiki said with a shake of his head while every word came out warm, and fond, and affectionate. “This is what I get for wearing you out, huh?”

Without rousing, she made a soft, whuffing sound.

Rather than risk waking her up, Reiki plopped onto the floor, between the foot of the sofa and the coffee-table (a relic of his and Greg’s relationship; Reiki had paid for the stupid thing, so Yuki and Junsei had pointed out that Greg had had no right to keep it when Reiki walked out). Nudging his glasses up, Reiki sat the note down by his mug of still-steeping tea, in a tent-like arrangement so that Faustite’s hateful, delightfully shaped little M. faced Reiki himself. He sighed wearily as he pulled out his phone (his phone-phone, rather than the senshi compact he could have used to call another member of his Court).

Obviously, he could talk to Soya-hime, when she next came around……but Reiki needed someone, uhhh? If not right now, then at least soonishly? Like, before “whenever Soyala next decides to come over”?

So many contacts rolled before his eyes as he scrolled and so many of them, he could’ve deleted. Greg and his parents, for one thing.

The family therapist he’d endured sessions with when Satomi quit drinking and hadn’t seen since he was twenty-one, when he’d quit going so he could do more brunch shows with Miss Sibyl and Cherry instead.

A takeout place Junsei had liked once upon a time, five or six years closed by now.

Someone whose number Reiki had had for a while—nearly thirteen years—but who only survived as “Bus-Line Correction Guy” (he didn’t know if their texts to each other survived anywhere, but said guy had helped him get on the right bus line so he could get to Miss Sybil’s place after Satomi had forgotten him at the mall, then checked in to make sure the nervous wreck then-fourteen-year-old had gotten somewhere he could call a “home”).

Worse, he didn’t have contact info for so many of the people who came to mind as Probably Good To Talk To About This Situation: Kerberos, Ida, Encke, Lysithea maybe, Amsvartnir maybe (though given his admitted impulse control issues, Reiki………had serious reservations. Two stupid b***h gay boys with impulse control issues and an emotionally charged situation on their hands could not go well for anybody). Fang had a phone, but he didn’t like using it, would’ve been much happier with an old Nokia that actually had buttons (and still, Reiki did not have his number). Moreover, they all stood on the Other Side of this magical girl gang war.… The side that nominally opposed both the Dark Mirror Court and the Negaverse, and who nominally wanted to destroy Reiki and his fellows as much as Faustite and his team.……

For Toráin, Reiki had his cell number, but would it even be safe to call him? Or would Reiki guess wrong and pick a time when he was busy with Arsenolite, or someone even worse—a General, not a Captain, great and terrible and probably beautiful because as far as Reiki could tell, the Negaverse seemed to have a “no uggos” rule in their ******** recruitment manuals? Would reaching out to his friend for an opinion on what to do ruin everything that Lysithea and her friend had worked so hard to do for Monoceros? To finally get him out of that horrible place?

What was Reiki even supposed to tell any of them, besides Kerberos? With him being the White Moon person Reiki saw most often, how could the story sound like anything but some Archie-Betty-Veronica, Edward-Bella-Jacob, Peeta-Katniss-Gale-even-though-Katniss-belonged-with-Johanna downright horror-show ******** of an unsatisfactory situation?

“Yeah,” Reiki muttered to his screen, “a love-triangle where one of the options openly despises me, the other would never see me romantically anyway and he’s probably taken, and the guy I actually have feelings for somehow isn’t one of the pretty boys involved. Call Taylor Swift and have her adapt it as a whole new musical, the Tonys will ******** gag for the drama, drama, drama of it all.…”

Kerberos had his bench……but Faustite knew where that was. Worse, the trees had ears and anyone in any outfit could be an undercover Negaverse officer or one of their senshi. No one could know for sure who was or wasn’t eavesdropping at any given moment when they gave off no magical signatures in their civvies. Sure, there was his planet, but……that offer hadn’t been serious, right? Even if it had, what were they supposed to do if they tried to go and Homeworld-Kerberos didn’t want to let him in?

Mom and Obaasan, Reiki couldn’t drag them into this. Not his siblings, cousins, Dad, or Ojiisan either. Nor his drag house, for that matter. Assuming any of them even believed him rather than thinking that sleep-deprivation and overwork had finally made him crack and go full on “gurl, delusional”—the sort that was actively, harmfully detached from reality, rather than Reiki’s usual breed of committing really hard to whatever he wanted to believe in, this week.

Same went for his therapist and any of his friends from group. At most, he could tell his group-friends that he was struggling and they might help put a bandaid on some of the ripple-effect problems. Fix nothing about the actual issue, but give it a little kiss better for the emotional comfort of it all.

One contact Reiki lingered on longer than the others.…… Levi’s. By now, Reiki had owed him A Serious Conversation for months and had failed to make time for it. He’d wanted to have it when the only things nagging Reiki’s mind had been feeling insecure about his magic not working, being pissy with Kerberos for fake-smiling and running away, and feeling too terrified to do anything while Arsenolite had stolen Raymond Callahan’s starseed. By now, they also had to add—among other things—the rifts with the ******** gargoyles in them, Anser and her ******** geese, getting starseeded by a robot, fighting the Blights, Ida going Princess, Sailor Huge-Tits of Who-Cares and her utter lack of manners in hunting victims around Scandals, possibly triggering her with his magic and definitely triggering Kerberos and Fang and Faustite, and now, whatever situation was going on, when Reiki and Faustite were supposed to be leaving each other alone.

As he stared at his and Levi’s previous texts, Reiki’s stomach lurched. The mere thought of looking like a complete ******** in front of Levi—honestly, just Too Much (derogatory).… But as much as talking to Haruhi also sounded like a good idea, ne didn’t know much more than Reiki did. In some regards, it would involve a lot of apologizing and explanations about how quickly and unexpectedly things with Faustite had spiraled beyond any semblance of Reiki being able to control them. In other ways, any conversation with Haruhi could be like talking to himself but with an external party to call out his bullshit more easily than Reiki managed on his own, because ne didn’t know much more than Reiki did.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Reiki sighed and banged out a simple pair of texts:

texts to Levi
hey, remember that “not until later” conversation we were gonna have?

are you free for it before next tuesday?

—Just in case Levi didn’t have time, though (what, with it being a midterm election year and everything), Reiki also texted the one of his many cousins who actually had magical powers all nis own:

texts to Haruhi
hey do you have a day off between now and next tuesday?

if yes, can we talk? about some [magic] stuff involving [the Negaverse]?

heading out soon. going to the park [to see Kerberos].

Had he been as stupid as Faustite seemed to think, Reiki might have typed out everything. Technically, he sort of did, but truly, emojis were the greatest gift ever given to modern texting.

“Magic,” Reiki represented with the emojis of sparkles and a crystal ball. “Negaverse,” the black heart and Milky Way. “To see Kerberos,” Reiki communicated not in so many words, but with the emojis of a white heart and a crescent moon, followed by three of the little dog emojis (not an asphodel blossom, but an emoji didn’t exist for those anyway, and ‘Kerberos’ was the actual accurate transliteration of the mythological guard-dog’s Greek name, hence the choice of emojis to represent him).

To anyone on the outside, it might look like he was simply very excited about taking his Best Girl for a walk.

But to Haruhi, who’d been getting more and more of these emoji combinations in nis texts of late, this provided an indication that nis Kiki-chan was heading out not to drain energy or look for trouble, but to go see the White Moon senshi in the harem girl costume, with whom he totally, definitely was not friends………because he did not say the word “friends” and this fact alone meant that greeting Kerberos with some boba and a “what’s up, slut” was anything else but the behavior of someone being casual with a friend.

(He probably should have just said “friends.” Would’ve been considerably easier. It just………felt weird, trying to let himself be so vulnerable with Kerberos when Reiki also knew that he had thoughts about Kerberos that felt distinctly unfriendly—not out of anger, resentment, or unkindness, but the potential for uncomfortable pedestalization inherent in thoughts like Kerberos is everything that a good magical girl is supposed to be.

Overly lauding someone like that could be every bit as alienating and dehumanizing as marking them out as Other and making them a social outcast for it. Could Reiki really lay any claim to being friends with Kerberos while harboring sentiments like that in his heart?)

With the texts sent and his fate in that regard sealed, Reiki probably could have checked on Cersei’s water, powered up, and headed out……but something didn’t feel Right about him talking to Levi, and Ruhi, and maybe Blossom, if he had some kind of magical silencing talisman hidden up his sleeve……but not talking to Soya, too. So, yes, he freshened up Cersei’s water first—she remained snoozing on the couch—but before so much as reaching for his henshin pen, he picked up a normal pen and wrote a quick little missive:

handwritten note for Soyala, left on her nest
猫姫,

If I’m not here when you get here, I’m probably out on a patrol. But please don’t let me distract you with any thrilling adventures or nonsense, when we next talk? Got a follow-up note from that Negaverse General, Faustite, the one I thought was NOT going to be my problem anymore. He’s talking about meeting up in a few days and I don’t know what to do. Any advice both desperately needed and deeply appreciated?

猫姫の戦士、 霊希。

Using one of the many cute notepads cousin Kasumi had sent him, a gift between family visits to Kyoto, came as second nature. Only after Reiki had jotted it down did he notice that the cute art decorating the margins was of Miki Sayaka-chan and Sakura Kyoko-chan from Puella Magi Madoka Magica—which briefly made him pout.…… Back during his multiple-day post-Pride Season nap, he’d put on the dubbed episodes of Madoka because Soya didn’t know Japanese.…… So, she’d seen Sayaka melting down play out in a language that she understood, without the distraction of reading subtitles.……

Some (most) of how Reiki felt about his magic, he hadn’t shared with Soya. He didn’t want to make her regret bringing him in or make her think she’d made a mistake with him. But he’d still been in a weird emotional place since Astraya, and him not vocalizing to her that he felt like a monster over what his powers did to their victims? Wouldn’t hide that he’d been feeling Down, and messy, and more willing to throw bricks, broken bottles, and assorted garbage at youma trying to attack him than do anything with his magic. Soya was smart. She could probably figure out that something wasn’t right. If she did that, then would she read into the choice of stationery as more than “My cousin sent it to me from Japan and I think it’s cute”?

Still, she wanted to do a good job as a guardian cat, and depriving her of that wasn’t very fair of Reiki, was it?

Making the Mauvian he belonged to happy mattered significantly more than gathering energy for some silly little mirror that Reiki had only seen once, and sometimes imagined himself questioning with the words of late-20th/early-21st-century philosopher, Janet Jackson: what have you done for me lately.

He probably wouldn’t have been as cool or in control of anything as Janet had been in that song, though. As he stopped to kiss Cersei’s forehead “goodbye,” Reiki felt quite certain of that fact. Moreover, the rhetorical question he was hypothetically using Miss Jackson’s words to ask likely had a real answer, and that real answer would probably make Reiki look like the biggest ******** idiot.

Ah, well. Small benefit to carrying around the name and duty of ‘Murikabushi’ like a noose made out of solid iron: Murikabushi didn’t need to be ******** cool, not really. Reiki still wanted him to be—since powering up didn’t make him feel empowered, liberated, or any kind of good anymore, at least he could try to ensure that other people thought he was cool—but as he slipped through his bedroom mirror and into another one in a nearby alley, Murikabushi didn’t need to be cool.

All he needed to do was power down closer to North-End Park, wait in line for a little while and be nice to the staff at Boba Hut, then power up again.

All he needed to be was the leggy nerd in cute little pumps, with his very full skirts, two takeaway cups, and a paper bag of pastries, who’d swan up to Kerberos’s bench with a what’s up, slut and an offering of snacks.

Noir Songbird_
Notes for Levi and Soya (and Kerb, but not in note form) heart
genovianprince_
Note for Haruhi heart