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“Very little, honestly,” Murikabushi said without needing to think about it—because, well, he didn’t know very much about Mirrorspace, the ways it worked, or its myriad hows and whys. “It was pretty late in the night when Elsa brought me to the Mirror. I’d just done a drag show at my home-bar, he’d just saved me from a youma, it was all pretty hectic? And tiring? So, he sort of skimmed over the finer details of how Mirrorspace works to get to the more immediately important things—like not straying too far from him, and not getting lost.”

The deeper they went into Mirrorspace’s shifting halls, the more that seemed like exceptionally sound advice, especially for him. It would’ve been so easy to just wander away and lose himself, in here, following something off on a path to nowhere in particular, even if he hadn’t actually seen anything. And it felt……odd, this space. Considering Murikabushi had only visited Mirrorspace once before, had only seen a couple of rooms, and had been drinking beforehand, it probably made sense enough that everything felt odd. Taking in the inherent surreality of the space without any hints of Cuervo dulling the impact, that was bound to make Mirrorspace seem stranger than it had before, because he was really processing things, now.

Really trying to appreciate the landscape, even with the sense that it would likely change before the next time he came to visit. All of the strangeness made perfect sense, in its own way.…… Swallowing thickly and squeezing Acubens’s hand, Murikabushi tried to push away the thought he’d first had while walking through the Black Mirror—the feeling that maybe, whatever had been in there and Awakened him, it had wanted to snatch him up for himself. None of that was real; it couldn’t be. It was probably just…he didn’t know. His mind playing tricks on him because wasting so much time and energy on his stupid, ******** ex had made him nervous about committing to something as major as becoming a magical boy.

Fortunately for Murikabushi’s sense of calm, the next thing that caught his eye gave him a good reason to push those thoughts aside. “Uh, if we’re looking for things that might be wrong with Mirrorspace,” he said, pointing a bit off from the path Acubens-oneesan was leading them down, “then…does that count?”

The “that” in question looked……like a gemstone, frankly. Blue and shiny, its crystalline formations sticking out at all angles. Something about it made Murikabushi want to tear his hand out of Acubens’s to go pick it up—but he refrained, for the time being. Last thing he needed was to accidentally stumble upon some kind of Mirrorspace pomegranate because he got distracted by something pretty and sparkly.

Acubens had to laugh. For all of Morpheus' arrogance and insistence that he was deserving of the rank of super and should be addressed as such -- and to an extent, Acubens did agree, such ranks were not handed out for nothing -- he still knew pathetically little. Not, she supposed, that was any fault of his own. It was ultimately the fault of whomever awakened him and then left him to flounder. A wrong she intended to correct with the two of them, even if Elsa would be a perfectly capable trainer for Murikabushi. Too many helping hands never hurt, and she herself was the product of three seperate trainers.

"Well, we still don't know a whole lot about Mirrorspace," Acubens admitted. "However we have some hypothesis about some parts of it." There was a lot, she had to admit, more than she even fully understood.

"Without going into the details about how or why we know this, that can be another conversation, Mirrorspace is powered by this crazy powerful crystal. Now that is a very watered down explanation of it because we're not super sure what it is, where it came from, or even what it is truly capable of. But we do know that there is so much potential in that crystal. And we also know that Mirrorspace sort of like a... sentient holodeck. It wants to create what it's inhabitants want. The problem is that it's not super stable, and so it can't create true life. That's what the mirrorwraiths are. They're copies of copies of copies. Now, our hope, that is Prince Remarque, myself, and a few other senshi, is that we can stabilize it and make this place somewhere that we can all inhabit and escape the war threatening to overtake earth."

Acubens made some dismissive gesture and went on.

"So basically, Mirrorspace wants to be inhabited. And the Crazy Powerful Crystal powers Mirrorspace, which we hope has the power to make it life-sustaining if we can just tap into it. Again, without going into detail of how or why we know that, because it's a saga." Not that Acubens was in any way. "And I would love to start poking at it but Prince Remarque constantly rebuffs me, explicitly saying that I am not allowed to touch the Crystal under any circumstances." She air quoted Remarque's scolding, and her irritated tone was betrayed only by the affectionate smile on her face.

"Again, that's a very watered down version of things. I'm sure Prince Remarque could give you both a more thorough explanation. As much time as I spend in here, he's spent years more."

Acubens stopped her lesson when Murikabushi pointed at something laying on the floor. She smiled and thanked the Mirror for it's gift, as though proving her point.

"No," she chuckled at Morpheus, "it has nothing to do with the Negaverse. These are gifts for us and only us. They're from Mirrorspace." She nudged Murikabushi towards the crystal, still holding his hand, and went on, "that blue one, when crushed on your realm or in the community area of the Mirrorscape will produce a small spring. I've already used a few of them to make a small creek on my realm. I use it for irrigation for my crops. And if we just look around... Ah! Yep, right over there!" Acubens pointed further down the way where two more crystals sat. One green, which she scooped up, and another grey.

"Morpheus, the grey one is for you. It'll make stone if you crush it on your realm. I think you said you had one, right?"

Morpheus listened intently, if he had a mentor before he didn't remember so he had to relearn a lot since he had remembered he was a dark mirror, to begin with. He nodded listening about the crystal that powered the mirror world. He hoped they would be able to do that. He was tired of fighting negaverse members and white moon senshi it was such a pain. "Why are we about to be there but a bird can't?" He looked at the crystal and picked it up and held it close. He was given the gray one to make stones. He nodded again "Yes I have I went there after I regained my memories of being a senshi."

He laughed at how much Murikabushi was overthinking this. "Slow down we will learn more in time." He wasn't worried he figured he would care for his space and try to give more energy to the crystal so they could live in peace one day.

(Fin)