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 Posted: Sun May 04, 2025 10:36 am
Takes place during At World’s End. “So,” Cynthus began as soon as Reims had gone to save the world or whatever.
Obviously Cynthus was distraught about that. Duh. The world ending would suck. Ganymede was okay as a substitute, but there wasn’t any wifi there. Not that Cynthus needed wifi. It wasn’t like she was addicted to her phone. (Maybe she was a little. How was she supposed to wind down after a long day without rotting her brain on TikTok?) Her dad was safe, at least—here on Ganymede, too, but at the capital instead of Reims. Reims would probably be okay. He’d almost died once, so hopefully he knew when to cut his losses and get his a** back here. Amarynthos and Ephesus should be alright with Mr. Grumpy Pants and his alien husband. Yvoire was supposed to be right across the river. And Dering… Well, okay, Dering was a little wimpy, but he had a shield! They’d all be fine. Nothing to worry about.
Cynthus was determined not to worry. She stood with her hands on her hips, but instead of staring around the cathedral (which was way too cool a place for a dork like Reims) she stared right at Cassidy.
“How did you meet Reims?”Rose was worried and didn’t have anything against showing it. Her face didn’t seem quite as adept at holding a smile as usual. She’d agreed to wait at Reims’ Wonder, but that meant leaving her mom on Earth. That meant trusting her friends to be safe. That meant sitting here, powerless, while other people risked their lives.
Then again, she was only a Page. If she’d gone, she would’ve only gotten in the way.
While Cynthus put on a brave front, Rose spent the first few moments glancing around. Back in Destiny City, spring was in full swing. The temperatures were warming. Flowers were blooming. Soon winter would seem like a distant memory. Here on Ganymede, the air was cool and the leaves were gaining their fall colors.
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Posted: Sun May 04, 2025 3:00 pm
Cassidy had arrived in shorts and sneakers, and a t-shirt and hoodie. He knew he should have dressed a bit warmer, but when Reims said it was time to go, he didn’t really waste time changing. He’d grabbed his bag–which was now sitting on a pew–and let himself be whisked up here.
And Reims had just left them.
Naturally, Cassidy was snooping.
“Oh, you beat me to the question. I was going to ask you the same thing. I’ve met a ton of magical boys but not any magical girls. Unless I’m misgendering you, you can correct me.”
Cassidy had just finished stretching, which was probably more to give himself something to do than actually needing to limber up. But then, he was also planning on exploring as much as he could while Reims wasn’t here to tell him not to.
“A youma jumped me on my way home. He was super heroic and rescued me. Are all your Wonders this gloomy? I feel like a ghost is going to jump out any second.”
Or Reims, telling him to stop poking around, but at this point in time, his presence would be more than welcome.
Cassidy had knots in his stomach and was sick with worry, but he managed to keep an easy-going, lazy smile on his face. He looked naturally smug, but his smile kept him approachable.
“How did you two meet him? Are you his girlfriends?”
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Posted: Tue May 06, 2025 6:06 pm
“Ew, no,” Cynthus said. Her nose crinkled with disgust. “I’d never date Reims. I have higher standards than that. Rose is the one he pretends to date when he doesn’t want to admit he might be a little bit gay.”“Cynthus,” Rose said, only half chiding. Her mouth twitched at the corner like she might smile. Not because she thought it was funny! It wasn’t nice to talk about Reims like that, especially behind his back, but Rose also couldn’t say Cynthus was entirely wrong.“What? It’s true. We’ve talked about this.”
They hadn’t actually talked about it, if only because Cynthus hadn’t really hung out with Rose much without their other friends there, too. At most, they shared knowing looks when the boys were being stupidly obvious.
“He’s all soft with Dering, and he’s always looking at Evie, and I swear I’ve caught him sneaking a peek at Effie’s a** in those shorts. He looks at your boobs, so I know he’s not lying when he pretends to be into girls, and he probably would date you for real if he wasn’t such a wimp. Maybe he’s got a thing for blonds. I’m so glad I dye my hair.”
Cynthus eyed Cassidy again, who also had blond hair.“Anyway,” Rose said, like she could get Cynthus off the topic if she made enough of an effort to. (She couldn’t.) “Reims and I’ve known one another for years. Before we knew about any of the magical stuff. And Cynthus—”“I was there when he got super powered. Then I got super powered. Personally chosen by the magic glowy ball, actually. Reims was just born that way. Now here we are in this creepy space church. I bet we could find some weird s**t in here.”
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Posted: Wed May 07, 2025 1:51 pm
Cassidy cupped his chin thoughtfully while they spoke, nodding along as if taking mental notes.
“I wanted to look for weird s**t while Reims wasn’t here. I didn’t get to look around before, but to be fair, I was trying to figure out where the hidden cameras were. I was pretty sure I was on some prank show.” He’d come to Reims this time hoping it was another elaborate prank, except he knew better.
He just didn't want to think that the earth could actually be destroyed.
Cassidy vaguely gestured to the church, as if to invite them to poke around with him.
“Reims is keeping too many secrets from me. He didn’t tell me he had other friends! I don’t know either of those names, who are Dering and Evie?” His lips pressed into a pout and he planted his hands on his hips. Was Reims ashamed of him? No, impossible. Were his shorts not short enough? His a** looked so much better than Effie’s. No offense to Effie, who was a sweetheart. But, be for real, Reims.
He was probably just an opportunist. Rose had a flattering chest but it made Cassidy wonder if he should find some low cut shirts for himself. Was Reims getting tired of looking at his legs?
No, impossible.
“How do you get powered? I want magic. And my own creepy space church.”
He bent over the back of one of the pews like he was looking for secret letters taped to the bottom of them.
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Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 6:48 pm
“Dering’s quiet,” Cynthus said. “Very sweet. Cute. Blond. Really pretty blue eyes. Reims’s probably a sucker for them. He’s a Knight of Lysithea. Dering, I mean. Not Reims, obviously. Speaking of, I wonder if we can see Lysithea from here.”
Cynthus went to one of the windows. They were huge, overlooking the city and the riverbank, throwing colored splotches along the floor when the light came through. Cynthus had no idea how sunlight reached this far out into space, or how a moon of Jupiter had blue skies like Earth, but she figured it had something to do with magic.
If there were other moons in the sky, Cynthus didn’t notice them. Jupiter was the more dominating presence.
“Evie’s place should be right over there,” she continued, glancing over the river. “Yvoire. I think it’s that castle. He’s cute, too. Blond. He’s got a nicer a** than Effie or Dering. Evie and Reims used to have a thing, but then they had a falling out and Evie’s been moody about it for months. It’s been so awkward for the rest of us. He should get over it, but boys are dumb. Full offense,” she added good naturedly, turning back to the other two.“Reims has been pretty private about all this stuff,” Rose said, giving Cynthus a significant look, like she was trying to steer her away from more gossip. (She’d fail, of course.) “It’s dangerous, being what we are, so he doesn’t like involving too many people if he can help it. I’m surprised he’s involved you.”
Maybe she shouldn’t be. He didn’t always show it well, but Reims cared about his friends. He wouldn’t want Cassidy in danger, whether or not he had any intention of sharing who he was.
“Most of us become what we are at random,” she continued. “Or maybe it’s not so random. I think most of us are born with the ability to become what we are. Sometimes it just takes a little nudge. But some people like Cynthus—”“—get chosen,” Cynthus concluded, lifting her chin pridefully. “By the glowy ball. The Code. Reims should have a piece of it around here somewhere. There’s a bigger piece on the moon. Earth’s moon. It beamed me up and said I’d make a great knight and poof! I had magic. Maybe you should ask. It might like your confidence.”
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Posted: Fri May 23, 2025 7:21 am
Once more, Cassidy absorbed and filed the information quickly, but he was easily caught up on her words. At first, because he wondered how his a** compared to Effie or Dering’s, but then because she was just scratching the surface of all that he wanted to know.
He didn’t take offense to the suggestion that boys were dumb; personally, he liked them that way. “Reims had a thing with someone?” Cassidy blurted, and adjusted positions to settle himself into the pew.
It wasn’t very comfortable but he was trying to imagine Reims having a thing.
Despite Rose’s best efforts, Cassidy was hooked on Cynthus’ gossip.
Oh, and all of this magic stuff.
He didn’t know if it was more interesting to pester about how to get magic like theirs but Reims could fill him in later, after he saved the world. He wanted to hear about the things Reims wouldn’t tell him.
“I never heard about a thing.” Cassidy wasn’t quite sulking, but he pressed his lips together in something of a pout as he draped himself across the pew. There were no secret notes taped to the bottom of it so he was going to have to start looking elsewhere if he wanted to snoop.
It wasn’t just because he was nosey, either. He needed something to distract himself while grappling with the fact that they were fighting to make sure Earth wasn’t destroyed.
“You have to introduce me to Yvoire sometime, I want to see his butt. For educational purposes. Maybe I can help him out of his moodiness, I'm good at that. Don’t get me wrong, I want you to introduce me to ‘the Code’ too. It can just pick and choose someone and give them magic? That’s so crazy. And like–who do you tell? Do your parents know? I bet you can’t put this on a college resume. Too bad: ‘An ancient cosmic deity chose me so you should too’ would be a great essay.” If they left out the ‘glowy balls’ part.
He stretched out his legs briefly but after only a few seconds, he was pushing himself up again. There was this room, and more, to explore and he had a lot of energy to work out. “What were you doing when you got your nudge? Or when you got chosen?” he asked, even though his mind kept drifting back to Reims and Yvoire.
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Posted: Sat May 24, 2025 9:40 am
“I was with Reims when he became Reims,” Cynthus said. She turned away from the windows and walked around lazily, glancing down at the floor every once in a while like she was looking for trap doors, but her gaze invariably returned to Cassidy each time, eyes bright with the opportunity to torment Reims behind his back as much as she tormented him to his face. (All in good fun, of course. She didn’t do it to be mean. It was how she showed how fond she was!)
“He was being his usual jerk self making fun of my hair, and then a youma jumped out at us and he was so scared he almost wet himself and turned into Reims.”“Didn’t he find his weapon?” Rose cut in. “That’s what happened with one of my other friends. We were out when we came across a youma, too, and then we both happened to touch our weapons and transform at the same time.”“Okay, but where did the weapons come from?” Cynthus asked. “What are the chances they were actually lying around in the exact spot you needed to find them? Who says they didn’t just appear there because you’d had the s**t scared out of you and needed them?”Rose shrugged guiltily. She couldn’t pretend to be an expert on knighthood. She wished she had better answers, if only because Cassidy seemed so interested.“So Reims became Reims, and he tried to fight the youma off but he didn’t do a very good job, so me and my no magic self had to come in with a baseball bat and whack it into dust.” Cynthus demonstrated with a few empty-handed swings of an invisible bat. “Then the Code beamed us up and told me how brave and amazing I was and let me be a knight, too.”“But there’s worse out there than youma, so we don’t usually tell anyone who or what we are unless we know for sure they can be trusted,” Rose said. “My mom doesn’t know. Only one friend from school does, but only because she was there with me when it happened. I only found out about Reims because I didn’t know how dangerous it could be when I powered up in front of him.”“My dad knows but only because he’s a knight, too,” Cynthus said with a brief roll of her eyes. “Effie’s my cousin. Or… second cousin? First cousin once removed? I don’t know, something like that. I know too many people who’re magic now. As for Reims’ fruity thing with Evie, which is way more interesting than any of the rest of it—”“Cynthus…”“What? You’re his fake girlfriend. You can’t pretend you’re not curious. I know for a fact Reims and Evie used to come here a lot. Reims always said they’d just clean and explore, but I bet that was a load of s**t and they’d come here to make out so Reims could pretend being a little queer was just a Reims thing and not him actually being a little queer. The ghosts of the past made me do it or something lame like that. We were soulmates in another life or whatever’s going on with Effie’s dads. But I guess Reims decided to tell Evie who he was and Evie got mad about it because Reims was a jerk to him like he’s a jerk to everyone, and now they don’t really talk and they’re both being annoying and mopey about it.”
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