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 Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 11:28 pm
Quote: In Tribute (12) : In the days leading up to the Star Festival, small stone shrines began to appear randomly throughout Destiny Cityâon rooftops, in alleyways, hidden down long forest paths. Theyâre small, altar-like platforms with a little bowl in the center and a single glowing stone inside. Thereâs something peaceful, refreshing, about the shrine, even if no one seems to know who is setting them.
However, if the stone is removed, the glow vanishesâalong with your sense of peace. This was not your offering to take. Immediately, you feel something breathing on the back of your neck but thereâs nothing to be seen. Returning the stone returns the area to an uneasy stillness, but if you attempt to leave without returning the stone, a mounting pressure and anxiety will grow within you. You never make it far from the shrine before some unseen force overtakes you. It feels like a great force collides into your back, and unconsciousness is quick to follow. When you awaken, the shrine is gone. All that remains is pain and fear.
If you are tempted to leave an offering of your own, however small, you will find yourself feeling as though you have received the protection of something greater than you can understand. This strange blanket of security will last for the remainder of the day. A shrine never stays in the same place for long but no one ever sees who is setting them up or taking them down.
Somewhat more importantly, though, this park had recently become the host of a little shrine.
Not the only one of its kindâeven with his and Yukiâs agreement about his allotted weekly senshi time in place, Murikabushi changed up his patrol routes too often to have missed the appearance of these little shrines all over town. He didnât understand them, not really. Any time heâd gotten close to one, heâd felt a sense of awe and reverence fall over him, the sort of feeling that motivated a boy to, like, not ******** around with whatever had made this place exist. Or whatever spirits inhabited it. Even putting aside all the normal levels of magical bullshit in Destiny City, Murikabushi had grown up hearing tales like Yotsuya kaidan and BanchĹ Sarayashiki as bedtime stories. Obaasan had told him stories about futakuchi-onna, tsurara-onna, The Crane Wife, and Lady Rokujo.
Hearing their cultural heritage in the way that Obaasan told it had imparted two central lessons that Murikabushi held forever dear: 1., donât ******** around with a bad b***h if you know whatâs good for you; and 2., if some place feels like it has significance or energy about it that you donât understand, it probably does, so you should err on the side of caution and behave respectfully unless you really, really want to die.
The youma apparently hadnât heard anything similar from someone before, or if it had, it clearly didnât remember. Overall, the body looked not entirely unlike a Galarian Linooneâcomplete with letting its long-a** tongue loll outâexcept for how the creature gamboled around on horse-like legs that didnât seem equipped to handle carrying a body like what it had. Part of Murikabushi almost wanted to leave the poor thing alone. As Murikabushi lurked amidst some trees around the shrine, watching the stupid creature gallumph around filled him not with awe or fear, but guilt because okay, fine, sure, it was a youma and probably wanted to devour energy and starseedsâŚâŚbut it just looked so pathetic. The more he watched, the more he wanted to just take his pretty, pink star charm and go home.
Then, Murikabushi saw who else was in the shrine.
God, speaking of pathetic, he thought and immediately kind of hated himself for thinking. Before heâd purified, he hadnât known Dr. Isidor Sturm very well. Most of what he-as-Reiki had known had been that Dr. Sturmâs wife, Dr. Maria Gatti, was a real piece of work and probably a pretty big factor in all the things about Dr. Sturm that made Ojiisan feel incredibly concerned about his junior colleague. Well, fighting this youma wouldnât feel like any kind of victory, ******** it, even inveterate drunk history professors deserved to ******** live.
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Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 11:50 pm
Isidor was really trying with the whole "making himself try not to be such a pathetic drunk mess" thing. Yes, he'd had a few drinks before coming out for a walk, but honestly, the fact that he was on a walk and being healthy ought to cancel out the slight buzz hovering around him from a few glasses of whiskey.
He'd stopped and decided to go out before he emptied the bottle. That counted for something. Probably.
He'd intended to walk for a few blocks and then power up, just to make sure there weren't magical auras popping too close to home, but he'd gotten distracted on the way; the park he was cutting through hosted one of the strange little shrines like the one he'd found with Vaylin, the ones that kept popping up throughout the city, and he couldn't help but stop to examine it.
Reasonable intellectual curiosity, so on. They were clearly magical, and clearly made in tribute to someone, though Isidor couldn't guess who or what, and didn't seem to be made by anyone; or at least he hadn't ever heard of anyone spotting them being put up, and he'd purposely started listening since finding one for the first time.
This time, he knelt down, and actually pulled his flask out of his pocket. Pouring one out for the deceased was a worldwide tradition, he was pretty sure, and in that moment of peace, he was compelled to tip a little in front of the shrine.
It felt...nice. And suddenly, he felt protected.
Which was good, because as he was screwing the cap back onto his flask, he noticed that he was no longer alone.
With a heavy, frustrated sigh, Isidor straightened, and as he did, he shifted from Dr. Isidor Sturm into Pergamon, Page of the Moon.
(Distantly, he realized he could feel a much stronger Senshi aura nearby; that was probably a good sign, in case he needed help.)
He reached up. Adjusted his glasses. And stared down the strange weasel-ferret-horse youma.
"Are you intelligent enough to understand me if I tell you to leave?"
Probably not. He shifted his book into Smacking Grip, readied for it to attack.
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Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2025 12:22 am
Murikabushi didnât want to hesitate, not when everything he knew of Dr. Sturm said the man had a good chance of being drunk and there was a youma coming toward him. Regardless, he had to assess things before running in half-cocked. Even a quick assessment was better than nothing. Watch where the youma was moving. Notice that it hadnât picked up speedâbut was that a function of it being sated, or a function of it not being able to run very well?
Several questions abounded in Murikabushiâs mind (not least of which was why the ******** would Metallia make a youma suffer such a humiliating and sad existence). But still, he threw himself into a dash. He hadnât noticed anyone around to overhear, so he didnât think twice about calling out, âDr. Sturm!â
Distracting the man from whatever research he was doing, good idea.
Distracting the youma from the hapless civilian, also a good idea.
But then Muri felt the aura of a fellow warrior of Order flaring up into existence. Only a Page or a first-level senshi, but that was still good.
Until he made it into the shrine and skidded to a halt, about the same distance from the youma asâŚâŚâŚa Moon Knight. Well, Page.
An admittedly quite handsome Moon Page in an immaculately tailored uniform and a book in-hand, who was standing exactly where Dr. Sturm had been standing.
âOh, you have got to be ******** joking,â Murikabushi said before he could think to stop ********, far be it from him to question The Code or the Wonder that the Moon Page before Muri belonged to or whoever decided whom got to be which Knight of what specific special significant place on the ******** Moon. Who was Murikabushi, relative to some massively intelligent ancient super-entity that empowered all Knights in the universe (or, again, whoever made this kind of decision)? Obviously, he wasnât anybody important or special in any way. Some loudmouth, plain vanilla Order senshi with too many opinions who happened to be a drag queen when he wasnât powered up, had arguably spent too long forgiving and ignoring the way a certain extremely flaming tsundere treated him because Faustiteâs story made his heart ache and made him want to show Faustite the kindness heâd clearly lacked in his life, and cared exactly not at all about sass-mouthing more powerful people than himself. Had Murikabushi had any say in choosing who got to be what Knight, he probably wouldnât have chosen LiĂĄnlĂ to be Kaifeng of Saturn, and he would have been wrong about that because LiĂĄnlĂ kept proving himself to be an extremely competent Knight who took his duties very seriously.
ButâŚâŚâŚDr. Isidor âkeeps showing up to campus hungover if not still drunk from the previous nightâ Sturm was a Moon Knight now? Like, ******** really?
While Muri boggled at the scene before him, the youma paused its paces. It looked to the Moon Page, whoâd previously been its desired snack. Then, it looked toward Murikabushi. It looked back and forth between them a few more times, clearly entranced by the target-rich environment placed before it.
The time it took before deciding to charge Murikabushi was enough for him to decide how to handle it.
Normally, he didnât mind using his magic to make youma eat themselves alive. But he had no idea how long the Page before him had been doing this, and on the list of things Dr. Sturm needed to see, Muri felt like âwhat Muriâs magic did to youmaâ fell pretty far toward the bottom of the list. Instead, channeling all the gumption with which he had, as an unpowered civilian, fought youma with garbage and sass-mouthed them to the Rift and back, he threw one of his cute pumps at the creature, aiming to hit it right between the eyes.
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Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2025 12:28 am
Oh.
Oh, okay. Isidor had not expected the ridiculously tall Eternal Senshi who came running out to call his name, which meant that whoever was under that fabulously beribboned fuku knew him.
He didn't recognize the man before him--that had to be that magic glamor thing--but the "Oh, you have got to be ******** joking" reaction to him powering up absolutely sealed the deal. Yeah, this was someone who knew Dr. Isidor Sturm. One of his students, maybe? Which meant this had the potential to be very awkward.
"Not joking, no," he said, "but we can talk about it later."
It wasn't as if he was unsympathetic to the sentiment. No matter how proud he was of his Knighthood, no matter how much it gave him purpose...yeah, it did sort of feel like a cosmic joke sometimes.
Still, the youma was distracted, possibly by the more tempting prey of a Senshi starseed, and with the opening, Pergamon hurled his journal as hard as he could at the thing.
End its miserable existence, figure out who he had just unintentionally outed his Knighthood to. Reasonably ordered priorities, he figured.
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Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2025 12:52 am
âItâs gonna be a slightly complicated conversation!â
Murikabushi said so mere moments before his shoe and the book both collided with the youmaâs head. As it made an eerily goose-like HOOOONNNNNK!!!!-ing noise and crumbled into dust, Murikabushi allowed himself to justâŚâŚsigh. dramatically. about the situation that he had wandered into tonight. Part of him wanted to text Keiran immediately upon powering downâbut at the same time, Keiranâs hard-won and hard-maintained sobriety meant that he wasnât going to tell Keiran about this immediately.
It meant he was going to take the evening to calm the ******** down, and vent the messy initial shock to Elior and Yuki back at home, and then spill the tea to Keiran over a lunch break tomorrow, when he, Kiyoshi, could be clearer-headed, and more fair about the whole situation, and less likely to express himself in a way that would, A., not accurately reflect how he really felt about things, and (much worse, in his opinion), B., stand a serious risk of hurting one of the most important people in his life by hitting Keiran with a stray.
Butâthe youma was dusted. For the moment, Murikabushi justâŚâŚtook a deep breath and shook his head.
âCanât say I expected that thing to make a noise like that, butâŚâŚeugh, youma logic, I guess.â Looking toward Page ******** of The Moon, he pushed his own glasses back up his nose. âIâm Murikabushi, Senshi of Hunger, and youâre not going to recognize me when I power down, by the way. Maybe a year agoâwell, ehhh, more like fifteen months, actually? Like, maybe you would have recognized me then? But I also wouldâve been showing up as a Dark Mirror senshiâand if you havenât met one of those yet, I can explain them for youâso, there wouldâve been a black outfit, and a Chaos aura, and I wouldnât have powered down in front of you under pain of death because I wouldnât have wanted you to accidentally say anything to my grandfather before I had the chance to do so for myself.â
Which was, Murikabushi felt, probably a really good clue about who he was.
Sure, plenty of senior faculty in the DCU history department were men with grandchildren.
But, really, how many of them were Japanese-American men whose very tall, fabulously senshi-fied grandsons powered down into likewise tall young men, wearing a Star Trek t-shirt (black, with the same Gilbert Baker rainbow-striped Vulcan symbol Kiyoshi had tattooed on his lower back, and the words âInfinite Diversity in Infinite Combinationsâ splashed across the chest, also done up like the queer pride rainbow), a lolita skirt heâd made himself (one of his simpler, more casual fits: four layers of tiered ruffles, alternating between black and hot pink plaid, with hot pink plaid suspenders just to keep it extra cute), and a somewhat more sensible pair of heels than his Murikabushi pumps (chunkier heel, lower to the ground, ankle strap for more support; a âwalking aroundâ shoe, not something he wouldâve performed in)?
âPleased to meet you as Kiyoshi Sakurazawa,â he said, earnestly (though still palpably a little what the ******** even is happening? about what reality had decided to make him learn tonight), holding out a hand. âLast time we met, it wouldâve been as âOjiisanâs colleague with the interest in the histories of occultism and alchemyâ and âMurasakiâs loudmouth drag queen grandson who may or may not have been on mental health leave from his PhD program at the time.ââ
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Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2025 1:03 am
Youma were....something the ******** else, Pergamon supposed. But at least the impact of an Eternal's shoe and a Page's weapon were enough to take this particular one out, even if its tragic death honk (why) did give him a moment of slightly guilty pause.
Once it was gone, though, he stepped over to where his weapon had landed, picking it up and dusting it off--as if it needed to be cleaned. Felt like the appropriate respect to show, at least.
"I can't believe that it was part weasel, part horse, and part sad rubber chicken," Pergamon deadpanned. The longer explanation briefly made him wrinkle his nose in thoughtful confusion, but it was an interesting data point--you could leave Chaos. That was...that was very, very good to know.
When Murikabushi powered down, he did too, though he didn't look any less confused, until he started explaining more. Because yes, there had been an obvious candidate, just looking at him, with the context given, but it was like...his brain couldn't quite make the leap until all the cards were on the table.
"Reikiya?" He blinked. "You--so when you disappeared, that was....ah, I see." He'd known, of course, about Reikiya's disappearance. Couldn't have been so far drowned in his own misery that he missed such a major upheaval in his colleagues' lives. It took him a moment, his surprise was such, to take the hand and shake it, but he did. "Pergamon of the Moon. And you...already know who I am otherwise."
Wild. Absolutely wild.
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Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2025 1:30 am
âYeah, itâs called purification,â Kiyoshi said, shaking Dr. Sturmâs hand more politely than heâd been behaving for the rest of this encounter. âDark Mirror senshi belong to a faction called the Dark Mirror Court. Where senshi are supposed to be empowered by our connection to the asteroids, moons, comets, planets, stars, and so on that our starseeds are tied to? Dark Mirror senshi are empowered by their connection to this Chaotic entity-slash-sapient magical location called Mirrorspace. They access it by walking through any mirror or reflective surface that an adult human can reasonably pass through. It is a deeply, aesthetically offensive hellscape of noncommittal whitish gray bullshit with mirrors absolutely everywhere because the Court and Mirrorspace have their branding game more on-lock than anyone else involved in the whole cosmic struggle between Order and Chaos.â
All of which Kiyoshi expressed with several sassy but not particularly pointed gestures, talking with his hands as much as with his words.
âI initially got Awakened into the Court because a really good friend, it turned out, had been with them since we were teenagers. He isnât with them anymore either, and heâs my boyfriend now, butâthatâs not the point.
He sighed again, this time sounding more tired and sympathetic, softening all over as he progressed into properly explaining his former faction. âI donât hold any grudges against the people in the Court overall, but Iâm not going to say you wonât need to intervene if you ever run into one. Sometimes, Mirror senshi do hurt people. They use these creatures called Mirrorwraiths to drain energy from people. Most do not ask permission or get consent before doing so. Some are entangled with people in the Negaverse and varying levels of complicit in what their Nega family members or romantic partners do. Someone Iâm still friends with in the Court is the human version of a shivering purse dog and he isnât usually helping anybody? But he also usually isnât hurting them either. He eschews both of those activities for the same reason: they would require effort, and asking him to do work is extremely Hybris-phobic.
âBut most of the people in the Court donât want to hurt anybody. Most of them donât want to fight. A lot of themâat least of the ones I knewâhad really been through Hell, whether magical or just the Hell that people inflict on each other without needing magic to do it, and they saw the Court as their refuge. Theyâre trying to make their own way through the universe with powers that they never asked for, stuck in a really sensitive, precarious position. I had to leave for my own peace of mind, because I had several layers of irreconcilable differences with Mirrorspace itself. But I really donât have any ill will toward the CourtâI deeply respect the way their de facto leader, Remarque, has to maneuver in this war and how he looks out for all of them as best he canâand if you run into any of them on your own? Please, just judge them by their own actions rather than their Chaotic aura signatures, okay?â
Another sigh. And then, before he could go off on another tangent, Kiyoshi said, âYou also donât have to keep this secret from my grandparents; they know. My parents know. One of my cousins purified with me, so we had to tell them in advance. My queerplatonic partner has been keeping the family updated until it was safer for us to get back in touch. And, uh.â He wasnât going to say anything about the mild scent of alcohol. He wasnât going to say anything about the mild scent of alcohol. Calming down. Being respectful and kind to someone who was an ally in this war, now. âIf you donât have anywhere to be, could I buy you a coffee or something? To apologize for being kind of an a*****e with the âYouâve got to be ******** kidding meâ comment?â
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Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2025 1:37 am
Well. That was important information. Isidor had mostly dealt with the Negaverse, so far; the Dark Mirror was sort of an unknown, but it was interesting to hear that they were in a sort of odd position, in this war--and maybe that made sense, or maybe it didn't; clearly Chaos came in myriad and fascinating forms, given that Pyrrhus, Trolus, and Thalassa all had entirely different Chaoses lurking on their homeworlds.
So that two at minimum had found their way to Earth? Maybe not that weird.
"It sounds like I got lucky," he admitted, "having a relatively uncomplicated introduction into this. I...would not have liked to have to lose my whole life to all of this." Whatever was left of it. Maria certainly wouldn't have regretted him going missing, like so many others in Destiny City.
"And I'm glad your family knows. No hard feelings, by the way. I do recognize that if you know me, this is sort of a joke." To everyone but Imnolu, apparently, but Isidor still sort of felt like Imnolu didn't really see the...messier depths, to him. He smiled, wryly. "But coffee sounds nice. Thank you."
Better than anything else he'd do with his evening, anyway.
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