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 Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 2:59 pm
Quote: Slightly forward dated to ~April 18th.
It wasn’t even entirely down to Muri feeling like he hadn’t owed them anything (the way he felt toward Michel and the Not Pendour Neptune Knight who’d been a jerk to him last year), because several of the people Muri hadn’t told, he did count amongst his friends. Monoceros, for instance, had found out not from Muri telling him about the plans directly, but because he’d shown up for his on-the-job training at Puppy Paws, so they’d gotten to meet each other as Robin and Kiyoshi. But he hadn’t caught up with Asmodeus to thank her for her help yet. More importantly, he hadn’t told Daedalus and Fang anything, aside from intimating to Daedalus that he had plans, that Mirrorspace made things complicated, and that he couldn’t leave the Mirror without telling his family, first.
Part of his avoidance came down to Yuki. More specifically, it came down to how Yuki had lovingly threatened to confiscate Kiyoshi’s henshin pen if he spent too much time powered up as Murikabushi, and not enough of it—in his words—“doing, like, normal human stuff and just letting yourself be an actual *person*? Y’know, as opposed to treating yourself like some kind of weaponized magical boy who only exists to fight Chaos by compassionately sparkling at it.”
It wasn’t like Muri didn’t understand where the threat had come from, because he did. But it still made him feel overly conscious of the time he spent powered up, in a way that didn’t come naturally or feel terribly pleasant to him. Like some ******** Cinderella s**t.
As he slunk through Prospect Park after clocking out of his shift at Puppy Paws, Muri thought about his world, waiting for him up in space. For a variety of factors—including the few days he’d spent barely moving from bed and mostly asleep immediately after finishing the end-run of leaving the Court—he hadn’t made time to visit, yet. Guilt twisted in his throat about it, because Muri wanted, so very badly, to visit his world. He wanted to take the fancy tea set from Almadel—right now, waiting in his subspace pocket—and try emulating the tea ceremony that Airan had done when he’d aged out of being a chibi senshi.
Something about the idea felt like it had promise, like maybe Muri would find some kind of peace and balance that he hadn’t felt in his life since Awakening.
He just didn’t really want to go alone. Partly, he didn’t know what would be on his planet and having backup just sounded like the safest idea. But even more than that, he wanted to share his world with the people he loved, instead of hoarding it. Murikabushi had debated a few different candidates for whom to take with him on the first visit, but none of them had felt entirely right—not until, at the top of the hill with the picnic tables, he felt a White Moon aura and spotted a familiar fluffy tail and orange fuku.
“Fang! Hey, Fang,” Muri called out to him, moving carefully but quickly as he descended the hill, and thinking exactly not at all how much his fuku and aura would have changed from the last time he and his friend had seen each other. “Fang, wait up!”
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 3:02 pm
One of Fang's ears twitched backward at his name being called out. He could almost swear he recognized the voice, but it didn't sound… quite right? He didn't know who this was, so with wariness, he turned around, tail bristling, prepared for a fight even though the aura was White Moon— The sight that greeted him knocked the breath from his lungs. He never thought he'd see the day that Murikabushi would look like this. That his friend would have purified. "Muri?" he asked, voice wobbling and cracking.
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 3:18 pm
Even from a distance, seeing Fang bristle made Murikabushi feel anxious. He didn’t think that he should have seemed or sounded so different on the other side of leaving the Court? Yeah, sure, the new fuku had so much white that it was visually, aesthetically, and spiritually offensive to Muri on so many levels, but it hadn’t shocked anybody quite in the way that Fang seemed gobsmacked by it. That said, Murikabushi had, so far, admittedly mostly dealt with people who had already known what he was planning to do.
Plus, Fang hadn’t had any semblance of stability in his life since he’d been seven years old. As Muri came closer, even though he tried to give Fang a small, warm smile, he retroactively felt like maybe he should have made more time to warn Fang what was happening. Springing such a big change on him like this, even a good one……maybe the shock would keep him from being happy about it?
Still, the smile was genuine, and fond, and Muri tossed in a little wave to go with it. “Hi……” he offered, feeling like it was possibly the stupidest thing he could’ve said. “…D’you like the new fuku? Ida helped me with it.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 3:31 pm
Fang nodded, speechless. Muri looked so… so good. His heart swelled and tears started leaking from his eyes, tail just about starting a helicopter takeoff from wagging so hard. He couldn't hold himself back for one more moment, darting forward and pulling Muri into a crushing hug. "Muri," he cried happily. "Muri, friend, happy, safe!"
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 4:02 pm
The full force of Fang’s reaction didn’t hit Muri until he got pulled up into the hug. He blinked bemusedly at the tears and the fervently wagging tail, while his brain might as well have had a little spinny “buffering…… buffering…… buffering” icon above it because yes, Murikabushi could identify what he was seeing? But something about the meaning of those looks from Fang didn’t connect in his brain until Fang was scooping him up, and Murikabushi was laughing fondly as he returned the hug.
“Friend happy and very safe,” he affirmed, gently patting Fang’s back. “Mirrorspace made it all really complicated for us to get out? Me and my cousin, we both left the Mirror. I can’t speak for my cousin, but for me, I just—? I couldn’t stay like that, y’know? Mirrorspace, when it takes a senshi? It puts this cage of Chaos around your starseed. Staying like that was smothering me. And leaving was a whole Thing, and messy, and complicated, but…?” Murikabushi sighed, giving Fang a gentle squeeze. “But I’m out of there now. And I’m safe. And I’m so happy to see you again, like this.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 4:11 pm
Fang let out happy little grumbles deep in his chest when Muri hugged him back and rubbed his face into the top of Muri's head enthusiastically. He was glad—so, so glad—that Muri and his cousin, whoever they were, had left the cage of Chaos. It seemed as though the world had righted itself a little more, with one of the people he considered a "best friend" coming out of there and being safe. After a few more moments, he finally let go of the tight grip, backing up some, but refusing to release Muri entirely and leaving his arms loosely around Muri's torso. "Fang happy that Muri happy. Now Muri can meet Fang in normal clothes!" His eyes brightened, and his tail seemed to wag fast enough to break the sound barrier. "Fang want to take Muri home, show him things!"
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 4:25 pm
Murikabushi laughed softly but happily, giving Fang a warm smile and happy to just……have this moment. To get to have this moment with Fang.
Watching Fang get so excited about the idea of taking Muri home, though, he felt a little twist of guilt in the pit of his stomach. Would Fang be open to the idea of doing something else, first? It wasn’t that Muri didn’t want to see where Fang lived, or meet the humans he lived with (who were probably at the very least cool and open-minded, since they’d given Fang a good home and helped him adjust so well to life on Earth). Muri did want to meet Fang’s pack. It was just……
“Would Fang be open to going somewhere else, first?” Pulling out his phone, Muri held it up for Fang to see. He’d set his background image to a picture of Cersei outside in North-End Park, all bright-eyed and eager, and he’d moved the app buttons down to the bottom of the screen so everyone could see her precious face. Most importantly, though, the app with the star in the center—the one responsible for homeworld travel—was still a vibrant shade of violet, not grayed out, the way it apparently got when people couldn’t travel to their home-world. “I haven’t gone to my planet yet. But there’s something I need to do up there, and I thought……I’d really like to take you with me?”
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 4:32 pm
Fang's tail had slowed, briefly, when Muri had said to wait a moment, but it kicked right back up when he heard what Murikabushi was offering. His heart soared, everything vibrating, the universe seeming like it was bestowing the best of gifts on him today. His friend was safe."Yes yes yes!" he chanted, nearly in a full-body wriggle now. "Want to see, want to see! Can't show Muri Fang right now, but want do that too!!!" He grinned so widely his face hurt. "And Muri's puppy very cute. Want meet her, someday!!" He clutched tightly to one of Murikabushi's arms and stared at him eagerly, excited for the space travel.
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 4:33 pm
The slowing of Fang’s tail made Muri pause briefly, heart in his throat—but oh, thank god, Fang was excited about visiting Murikabushi. Hearing that Fang wanted to meet Cersei and take Muri to see his planet as well……that made Murikabushi glow and melt into a relieved, eager smile. All of this threatened to overwhelm him a little bit, emotionally speaking. Getting to go to his world at all had felt like an impossible dream for the longest time, and now that it was here—now that Murikabushi was going to share this moment with one of his best friends (one of the best people he knew, period) in all of this magical girl stuff—it all felt like So Very Much.
“Her name is Cersei,” he said, taking a moment to steady his nerves before he finally pushed the app button. “She’s at home with my best guy right now, but I’m sure she’ll love you.… Yuki can take a minute to warm up to new people, but he’s going to like Fang, too. I know it.” Yuki did, after all, have trouble resisting the charm of earnestly enthusiastic people who just wanted to do more good than harm in the universe. This trouble of Yuki’s had enormously benefited first Reiki, and now Kiyoshi. Taking a deep breath, Muri looked up at Fang and gave him a smile that he hoped would be at least somewhat reassuring. “And whenever you’re ready? Whenever we can go? I’d love to see Fang, too.”
But……waiting any longer might kill Fang from the excitement, and kill Muri from the anxiety. As ready as he was going to be, Muri pressed the app button with the star, and everything around them blurred.
When Murikabushi opened his eyes, he and Fang stood in a sprawling garden, large enough that it could have been one of the parks back in Destiny City. If not for the types of plants unfurling and grown over the old, stone pathways—if not for the architecture looming around them—Muri might’ve thought that they hadn’t gone anywhere.
On consideration, the sunlight was another clue. Evening had blanketed over Destiny City quite comfortably by the time Fang and Muri had left, but here? Where they stood, the midday sun shone bright amidst a cloudless sky.
The way that Muri felt, as well, proved without a doubt that he and Fang had left Destiny City. Wholeness clicked into place, settled warmly inside of Muri’s chest, filling him in a way that shocked him only because he hadn’t realized that he’d felt empty until that feeling had left him. On some level, yes, he had known that. He’d said as much to Remarque before he’d left the Court. But intellectually knowing that he felt incomplete was such a different beast from this visceral sensation of something inside of Muri finally feeling right.
Trying to ignore that for the time being—he could unpack it later, at home, with Yuki and Cersei and some hot tea or something—Muri looked more closely at the world where he and Fang had found themselves, at once strange and yet, so unspeakably familiar.
None of the buildings looked anything like Destiny City and its more contemporary stylings. Parks in town tended to have lines of shops or bars or apartments surrounding them, but however busy Destiny City ever felt, there was room to breathe down there. The buildings around Fang and Muri now, though? They seemed packed in so tightly that Muri had to wonder if breathing too hard might not have constituted assault, back when people actually lived here. On top of that, he and Fang hadn’t been standing near an ornate fountain, when they’d left; the picnic tables had been the closest architecture. They’d stood on grass and dirt, not cobblestones with resilient blades of grass, and moss, and even some flowers poking through the joints of soil between the rocks.
Destiny City also had taller buildings than these, Muri felt quite certain, but the way these ones fit together made them seem longer. Between that and the almost Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-esque appearance that emerged in how the buildings squeezed in beside each other—a cramped sort of feeling with knife-sharp angles and corners like razorblades—the city’s façades felt even more imposing, making the absolute most out of any given building’s height (though not in a way that made Murikabushi want to run away in fear). Punctuating them, however, were clear views down the thirteen avenues that stretched out from the centerpiece that the garden created. The sheer number of breaks caused by those paths into the city kept the façades around the garden somewhat tame, smaller than they could have been without those interruptions.
Slowly, almost hesitantly, Murikabushi turned around to get a better view of the fountain. Eyes wide and body trembling, he teetered toward it as if he didn’t know damn well how to walk in his pumps. Three steps up took him onto the raised, limestone pedestal where sat the broad, deep basin. While time had weathered the brass sculptures fixed along the edge of the bowl—even the ones that had spouts where people must have once gone for water—the basin still shone in the sunlight. At the center of it all sat a black marble dais. Each of its four faces bore a spout that would have poured into the basin, had any water flowed right now. Around all those spouts rested bronze sculptures turned green by age and weather, shaped like different beasts that had once called this world home: a wolf pointed to the north; a dragon pointed to the south; a lion pointed to the east; and something like a warthog pointed to the west. Muri didn’t move to look at them all, but he knew them; he’d seen this garden in one of Airan’s memories, thanks to the first vial full of golden liquid that Mirrorspace had given him.
Atop the dais stood another bronze sculpture, and Murikabushi shivered involuntarily as he raised his gaze to look at it. The figure rendered there wore thigh-high stockings and pumps with little bows on the toes. He stood with his arms spread out, open as if welcoming the citizens of Murikabushi unto him. Wide, billowing sleeves covered his arms from about mid-bicep, down to his wrists; like Muri’s own sleeves, they were fixed in place with ribbons at the top, but the statue’s sleeves were considerably larger than Muri’s with inlaid gold filigree meant to look like an embroidered pattern of roses. The robe of the statue’s fuku had a high-low cut like Muri’s, but the skirts were wider and the train went to the floor. The statue had an extra layer of skirt as well, and a pair of small wings attached to his lower back, like the ones that Ida and Kerberos and Cybele all had (and Remarque, Acubens, and Elsa, though theirs were black).
Even before Muri looked up at the lovingly carved face so very like his own, save the pointy elf ears, and the heart-shaped hair-buns accompanied by waist-length tresses, he knew whose soft, beatific smile would stare back at him.
“Airan……” he whispered, feeling his eyes grow hot and start to itch. “It…… He…… He was the senshi before me, the last one……”
Murikabushi swallowed thickly, feeling his voice leave him as he looked to the collar attached to the Airan statue’s robe. Taking in the statue alone would have been enough to get to him. But over the senshi collar rested a garland of black roses, probably grown on one of the bushes in this very garden. Similar garlands hung from the statue’s wrists and a matching crown sat on his head, covering up the tiara. Time had weathered the blossoms, drying them out so badly that they might have crumbled with the slightest touch, but Muri couldn’t mistake the flowers for anything else. He whipped away from looking at the statue, but that didn’t help.
Instead of the flower garlands someone had put on Airan’s statue, Murikabushi stared out at the basin and noticed the black roses that covered its interior. Strewn around the base of the dais, they numbered far too many to count. Shiny coins laid among them, as well as rings and necklaces, old knives of different makes and sizes, flasks and drinking mugs, puppets, hand mirrors (some broken while others remained perfectly intact), and several types of dolls and figurines (more fragile sorts, most made of glass or porcelain, sat closer to the basin’s edge while various cloth dolls had been thrown in closer to the dais). A battalion of glass bottles also sat around the interior edge, flanking the various fragile dolls, their labels decorated with all kinds of paintings. Those labels likely said something about the types of drink that had once lived inside those vessels, but Murikabushi couldn’t attempt to fathom what the labels meant right now.
All those roses—he could scarcely think of anything else. Muri could perfectly imagine the people throwing all of these items there, as tributes to their senshi. But the flowers, those symbols so deeply and powerfully associated with the senshi of hunger……they made him choke up hardest. Without knowing how Airan had died, Muri couldn’t say for sure how long the people had done this. What if he had gone before the planet had met its end? Had his people thrown roses to his statue for years—for decades, even—while praying for a new senshi? Had they hoped every day for the Mauvians to find a new one, some brand new seven-year-old to Awaken for the sake of this entire world? And then, when he had finally been reborn, not only did his starseed go twenty-six years before Awakening but he had first Awakened into Chaos.……
Muri’s breath hitched in his throat. Trembling worse than before, his legs finally gave out. As he dropped to his knees, bowing his head before the fountain and the memorial statue of his predecessor, Muri couldn’t fight the flood of grief washing over him. Tears pricked up and spilled down his cheeks before he had a moment to realize he was about to cry. Both arms shook, struggling to keep Murikabushi from entirely collapsing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, not to Fang, not to anyone who was alive to have heard him. “I kept you waiting for so long.…… Please, I—I’m sorry………”
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Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 3:05 pm
Fang grew concerned when Murikabushi started to cry, tail stopping its wagging. He stopped looking around at everything, as eager as he was to take in another world's appearance, to go kneel by Muri. He didn't touch his sobbing friend, only waited solemnly for Muri to be ready to come back to the present. He knew how it felt, to come back and have everything flood you all at once, even if their experience with it was vastly different. After some time, though, he slowly reached out and took Muri's hand, giving it a soft squeeze. He, too, was a failed senshi. He could understand that so deeply it hurt.
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Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 3:46 pm
It took Murikabushi several moments to notice that Fang had even joined him. But when Fang squeezed his one hand, all bets were off. Muri’s friend was here, and the offer of comfort was here with him. Pushing himself up and out of the borderline kowtow he’d fallen into, Muri turned and hugged Fang tight around the shoulders. Although he buried his face in the fluffy fur around Fang’s jacket, it was another few moments before Muri composed himself enough to speak.
“Airan thought that his people hated him,” he told Fang, voice soft and unsteady. “He…… I found something in Mirrorspace before I left that let me feel some of Airan’s memories? Some of his planet’s rulers took him from his family after he Awakened. Imprisoned him in the palace so they could control him. He tried so hard to do whatever he could to help his people behind the scenes, but—but so many of them were starving, and suffering, and they thought he’d abandoned them. And this man who loved him, he talked about trying to change things, but—? Airan didn’t even think a revolution would redeem him to the public or make his people want him for their senshi.… He thought that he’d die young, and hated, and remembered as a selfish traitor, even though he’d spent most of his life as a prisoner.”
But the array of offerings around the statue very strongly suggested otherwise. Airan must have died before their world did, Muri figured, but by that point, the people couldn’t have hated him. Not if they were leaving treasures like the ones in the fountain.
“They probably died, wishing for their senshi to reincarnate, Awaken, and save them.…” Shivering with emotion, Muri clung closer to Fang. “……I thought my world didn’t want me. I—I got found so late, and the Chaos Mau who found me said the Order Mauvians must have screwed up and missed me, and I thought…… I thought ‘Maybe my world just doesn’t want me for its senshi. Maybe that’s why they couldn’t find me.’”
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 1:53 am
Fang slackened in surprise at the sudden hug, but hugged back, trying to give Murikabushi some comfort. He didn't know if he was doing any good, but he hoped he was. Gently, he rubbed Muri's back and hummed. "Whole world... struggle," he said, trying to place his thoughts into words in a way that Muri would understand. "Try to come back from Chaos explode. So many Senshi on Earth because... Big bad happen. Take time to fix. Some faster, some slower. Not mean Muri bad. Never mean that."
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