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 Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2023 2:45 pm
A long holiday weekend sounded, to Lete, like a perfect opportunity to do some energy draining—especially with how busy downtown Destiny City was, all bustling full of shoppers who were too focused on their Black Friday Weekend sales and trying to find holiday presents for the people they cared about.
All around, it was a noble endeavor that Lete wholly supported. While out and about as Gabi, she’d definitely stopped by some of the sales herself and picked up gifts for some of her cousins (with Leandro’s gift being the most important to her personally, because Leandro was her Best Cousin and therefore deserved the Best Presents).
But the Mirror wouldn’t exactly gather energy for itself, would it? Hence, the need for the Mirror’s senshi to go out with their Mirrorshards to summon Mirrorwraiths and gather it from some donations of technically debatable consent (but really, if you thought about it, what would anyone achieve by trying to get informed consent from a civilian, who probably wouldn’t believe anyone who tried to talk to them about senshi this, or Negaverse that, of Would you kindly donate some energy to the Dark Mirror so we can make our magical realm more capable of sustaining itself?)
Maybe it was true that *SOME* people were whiny little bitches who didn’t like doing their part to make everything happen, but Lete was proud to consider herself NOT one of those people.
Going out as Lete so relatively early in the evening definitely felt weird to her, but on the other hand, the sky had darkened early enough that it didn’t feel terribly odd. More like a little bit of a nerve-twisting sense that she wouldn’t have gotten away with this so easily over the summer, when the days lasted longer and enterprising Chaos senshi had less cover of darkness in which to work. All the same, the bustling streets around Ramsett Park did have rather a lot of people, any of whom could have noticed Lete had she seemed too glaringly remarkable.
To the end of seeming more inconspicuous, Lete wore a long coat over her fuku while sitting quietly on a picnic table. As far as anyone who couldn’t sense powered auras was concerned, she was a perfectly normal, non-magical girl with exceptionally good taste in hair decos, ostensibly absorbed in her Nintendo Switch.
In fairness to appearances, Lete did genuinely have her face all up in her Switch while sitting here on her picnic table, sending out her little duos of mirrorwraiths to drain energy off the hapless shoppers. The nearby café had free wifi whose reach made it all the way to Lete’s spot, and she had a seven-star Tera raid to try and beat. Maybe she hadn’t gotten a good set of teammates for snagging this Hisuian Samurott yet, and maybe she’d stopped counting how many sets of wraiths she’d summoned, but surely, things would turn in Lete’s favor soon enough.Kaifeng had to be careful while patrolling with Helene. Several extremely important reasons necessitated such care.
For starters, whatever senshi power Helene had had a thousand years ago, he’d gotten knocked back down to something like a beginner level. As much as Kāifēng didn’t want to disrespect his zhiyin or act like Helene couldn’t handle himself? He also worried. Plenty of people in Destiny City had outrageous amounts of power, and not all of them thought to use it responsibly or to help anyone else. In fact, several of the extremely powerful people around here actively used their power to harm others—including the potential to yank Helene off into one of the factions of Chaos senshi, whether he wanted that or not.
Even if Helene had still been fully powered, Kāifēng would have worried about that. He’d only had Helene—and even more so, Huanxi, his Huan-ge, the person at the heart of the senshi power—in his life for about two months, and already, Kāifēng desperately didn’t want to lose him. Every memory of Xīngyì’s that Liánlí-Kāifēng recovered deepened that sense of attachment, not only because of how much Xīngyì had treasured Huanxi, but also because of how much of what he’d felt Xīngyì had left completely ******** unspoken.
Liánlí-Kāifēng wanted to be good to Huanxi.
Liánlí-Kāifēng wanted to be good for Huanxi.
Liánlí-Kāifēng did not want for Chaos to get its claws into his Huan-ge when they’d barely started having their time together.
………On the other hand, Liánlí-Kāifēng had to be careful while patrolling with Helene because it was easy—far too easy—for him to get distracted by aforementioned zhiyin.
What they’d stumbled into tonight, however, had demanded the bulk of Kaifeng’s attention. At first, a couple straggling people around Ramsett Park’s shopping district who’d seemed rather sluggish, or headachey, or somewhere on the verge of passing out—all the signs of energy drainage. Meant that someone was probably up to some nonsense nearby, or at the very least, they had been recently.
As Kāifēng and Helene had gotten closer to the park, more and more people had shown the signs of energy drainage. Being fair, some of them might not have gotten hit by anybody from the Negaverse or the Dark Mirror Court—several of the people wearing service uniforms or name tags, for example, Kāifēng figured had probably only suffered having to work retail on Black Friday Weekend (and he hoped none of them got properly energy drained, because working retail this weekend was awful enough on its own)—but several other civilians seemed too ill or too tired for it to not have some kind of magical cause.
When he first picked up the feeling of a Dark Mirror aura at about his same power level, something cold and nervous lurched inside Kaifeng’s chest. He’d only met one Dark Mirror super as yet, and he’d talked Murikabushi up to Helene on a couple occasions, mentioning how Muri and some silver-haired Dark Mirror had kept him safe on the mysterious gameboard before Liánlí had powered up as Kāifēng, and talking about how, in the battle at the bank back in the spring, Muri had tried to rescue some other space senshi and protect some Cosmos Knight.
He’d mentioned how Encke and Pendour—two people who seemed to have good hearts, good heads on their shoulders, and a good deal of experience at all this—had both dealt with Murikabushi before, and how both of them vouched for him being on the level, Chaos aura or not. Plus, whatever state this life had found him in, Muri was the senshi of a world where Xīngyì had had family and that meant something to Liánlí (though he and Muri hadn’t, per se, discussed it………ever).
On top of all that, Muri had snitched to Selenga about how Liánlí had lied to him with the whole “lost a fight with a gardening implement” lie, and yes, part of Kaifeng felt petulant and sulky about that. Most of him, however, acknowledged that it was very fair to snitch to his family about something so serious and that Muri had only done so because he was a decent person who cared about people. Approaching the Dark Mirror aura with Helene, Kāifēng really, really hoped that the aura wouldn’t be attached to Murikabushi, and fortunately, it wasn’t.
Unfortunately, observing the Chaos senshi from behind a tree a few meters off from her, Kāifēng couldn’t help groaning. “Ugh, I’ve dealt with that meimei before,” he explained, looking up at Helene with a deeply exasperated expression and shaking his head. “She’s easily stopped if we stand up to her and don’t take her bullshit? But gods, some of the nonsense she can spout off is insufferable.”
Warning Helene ahead of time seemed only fair, if you asked Kāifēng.
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Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2024 6:52 pm
After only a few months on Earth, Helene was beginning to feel like he might finally be adjusting. It had, at least, been good to have Lianli to guide him--if he had been cast onto this planet alone, to fumble, he wasn't sure exactly what he would do. But he'd had someone willing to help him learn, and so Earth felt....much less strange and daunting.
And, better, he had Kaifeng back. No, Lianli was not Xingyi--but he had come to love Lianli just the same, for all that they were different people. Whatever weights Lianli carried, they were clearly different than Xingyi's, and he handled them differently, but there was an irrepressible brightness to him that had Huanxi entranced.
So, he often found himself thoroughly distracted by Kaifeng when they were meant to be patrolling together. It wasn't that he didn't take their duties as Senshi and Knight seriously--he did, very much so--but simply that....it sometimes seemed more worth his time to pause and steal kisses than to wander and hope to run into something.
Tonight was not one of those nights. Tonight,t here were far too many people displaying symptoms of energy draining for Helene to be anything but fully on alert. So, when they found the source--a Dark Mirror that Kaifeng apparently knew--he frowned, and considered.
"Mmm. Perhaps some shame will make her reconsider her actions." Best to deal with her quickly, so that she would stop draining people, and no one else would be in danger.
So, he moved forward, closer, and without introduction or warning, declared "Inhibit Impulse."Quote: Helene speaks the name of his attack, and makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. Enemies within a 10-foot radius of him feel overcome by inhibition, as if every action they might take would be shameful and worthy of judgment. This feeling lasts for 30 seconds, and Helene can use this attack three times per
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:58 am
The last two wraiths she’d sent out came out to Lete looking like a pair of little rabbits with fairy-wings. Good thing that she’d been in a lull between trying to manage Hisuian Samurott raids, because not only did she want to thank them for the efforts—which she did; it never hurt to be nice to the wraiths, especially since certain Muris (who deserved to remain forever nameless) loved to talk s**t about them as if they were in any way remotely dangerous—but Lete also wanted a moment to appreciate how adorable they looked. The endless variations in how Wraiths looked never ceased to amaze her, and all of them were beautiful.
Unfortunately for Lete, she noticed a pair of White Moon auras right as the wraiths slipped back into her pair of mirrorshards. One of them seemed to match her own power level, while the other felt like they were stuck on level one. Couldn’t blame the White Moon cops for sticking together, she guessed, but it made her frown regardless and, frankly, seemed more than a little unfair when they probably had more people among their numbers than anybody else in town. Lete glared in the direction of the auras—made that much easier to do when another one of those alien senshi decided to come out into the open—and she readied her magic, feeling more confident than ever since her jaunt into the Mirrorscape.
But she didn’t get to use her magic.
Instead, the pastel-Dayglo space senshi threw his magic out first, with a sweeping gesture of his hand. Immediately, a chill swept over Lete and it felt as though a million eyes were aimed right on her. Watching her more closely than reality TV competition fans, picking apart her every move in the same way that they did while coming up with their theories about elimination orders and how editing decisions played into storylines. Shame crashed down on her, and ******** thank you, Lete hated it.
“What the HELL, you ******** jerks,” Lete protested, starting to tear up in frustration. “Why are you being so mean to me!”“Because, meimei,” Kaifeng told her, folding his arms across his chest as he left his spot behind the tree and joined Helene, “you’ve drained more than enough energy off of innocent people tonight.”“You don’t know that,” Lete whined—which soon gave way to a groan as she saw whom was addressing her: that Saturn Knight from before, the one who’d been palling around with that dragon senshi in the steampunk outfit. “Ugh, come on! Why is it, whenever I run into a space senshi, you have to be there! Can’t you just let me do my job already? Instead of making trouble for me because your stupid boyfriend—” She pointed at the purple senshi with his lemon-lime hair, “—decided to pick on me!”
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 1:24 pm
It seemed that Kaifeng's judgement of this particular Dark Mirror as insufferable was thoroughly accurate. Her reaction to Helene's magic gave him the impression that he had not often experienced shame--and perhaps a little of it would be good for her.
He crossed his arms, drawing himself up--it wasn't often that he tried to make himself look particularly tall, but in this case, he wanted to make a point to this ridiculous Senshi that he would not tolerate her nonsense. There might be a magical power differential between them in her favor, but the physical size contest was clearly in his--and frankly, whatever her magic, he was willing to bet that would equalize them quite nicely.
"Trust, Mirror Senshi: I am capable of being far crueler than I have been." He held up his hand, in a manner he hoped came across as threatening, and fixed her with a cold, focused stare. "You will take what energy you have drained and you will leave, or you will be made to leave."
It was that simple, as far as Helene was concerned. Any amount of energy drained from innocents was too much, butt hey had seen so many people lagging--this Senshi had glutted herself and her Chaos master on the life force of other people, and it could not be allowed to continue. So he and Kaifeng would simply have to make her stop, as she was clearly far too selfish and uncaring to stop on her own.
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 2:22 pm
“You’ll want to be listening to my zhiyin, xiao-meimei,” Kaifeng told her, simple and straightforward, aside from the emphasis that he placed on the correct term that he liked for Helene. Not that he had any particular objections to boyfriend as a term—truly, he didn’t mind it—but it wasn’t the most correct turn of phrase. Didn’t capture everything that Helene, and moreover Huanxi himself, had so quickly come to mean to Kaifeng and represent in his life.
But he could dwell on squishy, pleasant, romantic feelings laters. For the moment, Kaifeng took his weapon in one hand and extended it toward the Mirror-meimei with the bad attitude and the habit of misusing words and concepts she didn’t understand.
“Knights like me, we get our abilities from our Wonders, places of power that we protect,” he explained. “Mine, up on Saturn? It’s a burial ground. Houses the remains of several people who died quite unpleasantly, or who didn’t have anybody but my predecessor to care for them after they died. Means they’re usually not very happy to see people acting with such disregard for others as you’ve demonstrated.” Huffing, Kaifeng looked at her very seriously. “Put your Mirrorwraiths away and clear out or I’d be happy to introduce you to the ghosts of Kaifeng.”As she listened to the self-righteous White Moon jerks deliver their callout posts, Lete kept seething in impotent frustration. The angry tears spilled over despite her best attempts to stop them, which only made the hateful chill twisting inside her feel that much worse. With every beat of her heart, she could hear another word, one that neither of her bullies bothered to say out loud, but at the moment, it felt like they refused to extend her that smallest bit of dignity because she was so far beneath them.
Vergüenza.
It repeated itself in Lete’s mind, over and over and over again: Vergüenza. Vergüenza. Vergüenza. Vergüenza. Vergüenza.
Making a loud noise of frustration, she shunted her Switch and her Mirrorshards off in her subspace pocket.
“Fine, you cabrones malditos!” She wished that she’d had something to throw. Briefly, she considered using her magic, something to give these hijos de putas a parting shot to remember her by. But raising her hand just made the nausea of shame rush back to her, and Lete tantrum-stomped as she pivoted on her heel to run for the nearest mirror and the safe embrace of Mirrorspacd. “Have a good night, I hope it sucks!”
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