Welcome to Gaia! ::

The expressions on the two newcommers was everything Ida could have hoped for and she felt warmed straight through at their appreciation of her asteroid. This place was so special to her. A safe haven and refuge, a place where she was truly free and wonders hid in every corner. There was still so much she hadn't explored yet, even with the memories that had started to flood her since receiving her crystal. Sharing that with other people was such a joy, she felt like she was going to explode with the upwelling of pride.

But they were not here to visit Ida. That could come later, maybe, once everything was sorted out. This was about the two she had brought here, culminating their hard struggles to reach this point.

"You're very welcome." She told Volterra with a shy smile, sweeping a glowing arm towards the Tower behind them and an area at its base that was not the riot of plant life the rest of the garden was. She felt herself flushing at Kerberos’ comment as she gestured to the others to join her, throwing him a small smile. Butterflies of the proverbial kind were not what she needed right now, even if the attention that caused them added a new layer of warmth to the sunshine. "I have a sitting area over here, if you'd like. I'm sorry I had to rush you a little bit back there, but we're safe now. I have some bottled water I brought and whenever you are ready, we can start. This will be at your pace, I don't have anywhere else I need to be right now."

Would it look cowardly or insensitive, to not rush straight to purifying them? But it also seemed... overly hasty to insist on it the moment the two had set foot on her asteroid. The awkwardness of this first time tugged at her and there were so many things to worry over whether she was doing them right or not. It would have been different if this had been... a spur of the moment thing, done in the heat of need. Not needing to rush it made everything feel... strange and uncertain. What if they changed their minds? A stupid concern, considering what they'd already done to get here. What if I do it wrong?

Ida hid her nerves behind her smile and ushered the others towards the scattering of outdoor pillows around a low wicker table on top of a couple of old wool rugs spread over the dirt. A hammock hung off to the side, one end fixed to the tower and the other to a metal stake driven into the ground. It all had the feel of something put together piece-meal from odds and ends, something intimate and not necessarily staged for guests, but comfortable for the group anyway. Some of the largest and brightest blooms from the garden sat in a clear vase on the table, cut in the last few days in preparation for today. There was other not so visible preparations waiting in totes, but Ida had tucked those behind screens of bushes in an effort to make the scene as comfortable as possible.

Volterra knew that Murikabushi trusted Ida. But Volterra also knew that Murikabushi trusted just about anyone, and the delay only made nem more tense. Very stiffly, ne followed and knelt on one of the pillows, almost robotically. The idle-ish chatter made nis skin crawl, and ne just wanted to scream stop being nice! I don't care! Just do it!, but ne held nis tongue. Ida was probably trustworthy. It was going to be fine. Ne could take this. It was only the last of things in a very doing things day full of emotions that ne didn't like or care to acknowledge no matter how much they pressed in nis chest, made nis heart beat erratically, palms sweat, and senses all heighten, just in general. Ne could take it. Pleasantries! Perfect time for it! Murikabushi ******** loved to talk on and ******** ON about how this whole thing had been delayed, like people weren't still waiting for him to shut the ******** up so the show could go on, you ******** a*****e!

(Ne loved nis cousin. Ne knew that. But right now, Volterra felt like ne would explode if ne had to wait one second more, and ne really didn't want to have some kind of mental breakdown on a stranger's asteroid and start trying to hurt people to get away and find a dark place to curl up in and be safe, like some kind of animal.)

"I'm ready too," ne said, when he finally heard those words after tuning everything out. If ne had had the presence of mind, ne would have felt bad for ignoring Ilyria and Kerberos and also Ida to a degree. But Volterra had laser focus on getting the damn thing over with so ne could relax.

Even if getting purified wasn't actually the last giant emotional turmoil of the day. Ne suspected it wouldn't be. But still. At least after it, ne could ******** off home not home—new home—stop. thinking. Soon. Ne could sleep. And forget everything about today. And it would all be great and nothing else would upset nem. Not at all.

Listening to the conversation that was drifting up from the individuals that had come to Ida’s world, in order to gain a fresh start, Illyria frowned slightly. There wasn’t a particular reason for her to frown, yet frown she did. Her gaze took in the two dark mirror senshi once more before she inched closer to where everyone was sitting down. Kerberos had moved to sit near her bonded partner, and given what she knew, it was probably a good thing too. Illyria had never been witness to a purification herself, but there was no doubt it required a lot of energy. It looked like Kerberos would be able to provide Ida with energy if it came down to her needing more than what she had to spend.

Moving silently, stealth-like, Illyria disappeared into the largest of the towering trees where she knew that supplies could be found before she grabbed at least five bottles of water before returning to the garden. Her gaze took in the scene before she went to the table and placed four of the five bottles of water on the surface before she took the last one for herself before pulling up a seat for herself. Her gaze moved to land on Ida and underneath her breath she started a soft mantra of what could only be encouragement to her bonded partner. If one had been close enough to the Mauvian, they would have heard her whispering repeatedly, “you can do this. You got this. I believe in you.”

This is what a magical girl is supposed to be like.

Not the first time that Reiki had ever felt it about Ida. But as he watched her take the mirrorseal and bring out her royal crystal, the sentiment flared up bright again. Probably not as bright as the power she wielded, but being real, that felt like a tall ask for anybody—

He winced, when it finally started. Trying to keep his posture upright didn’t work out so well. He wound up bracing himself with one palm on the ground and the other clutching at his chest. It hurt, whatever Ida was doing with her crystal. Worse than the pain like something clamping tight around his starseed was the feeling of dread, the memory of staring up at a nasty set of mechanical claws that had seemingly come out of nowhere and feeling too shocked to move. Reiki clamped his lips shut, though, lest he make the wrong sort of noise and distract Ida, or make her worry about him and stop, or otherwise manage to break everything after coming so far, like he’d gone and broken so many other things lately. He refused to let himself look away from Ida’s hands as well, believing in her power wholeheartedly but still needing, for his own sake, to watch the flare of violet light cleansing him of the Chaos.

When Reiki knew how little he deserved this grace—how much he had ******** up since getting Awakened, and how much he’d let down (how he’d hurt) at least two people he loved by choosing himself in a way that neither of them liked, and how all of this (including Volterra also being with the Court) had been his fault in the first place for not asking questions about the fine print until it had been too late to do anything, and how maybe he had so much trouble getting people to listen to him about the lack of magi-political motivations on his part because they actually knew his heart better than he did and had any right to tell him how I just don’t want to suffer anymore actually secretly meant <******** you, ******** you, ******** you, ******** you, ******** Mirrorspace, and especially ******** you; your mission statement is s**t, your tactics are s**t, everything you use your magic for is s**t, you’re s**t when he’d never thought that he was even implying anything like that and he’d never intended for anything he’d said to come out like that—Reiki just…… He needed to see that the universe disagreed with him.

He needed to see that the universe, or Cosmos, or whoever thought even perpetual hot mess drama queens who’d got themselves into their current predicament without any undue influence deserved a second chance.

How his eyes stayed dry throughout it all, he didn’t know. But as Ida finished, he heaved a sigh of relief. Maybe he’d have a sobbing meltdown about everything later, back at home, in bed with Cersei snuggled up to him. Or maybe curled up with Yuki somewhere. Or maybe he’d never have a meltdown at all; he wasn’t gonna stop having s**t to do just because he had to stop being Reiki Rokugin and become Kiyoshi Sakurazawa, now.

Not that that felt like the right name at the moment, as he took slow, steady breaths and finally looked away from Ida.

As he looked down at a veritable ocean of white fabric.

Wrinkling his nose and pouting more than a little bit, Murikabushi looked over to Kerberos—and somewhat more specifically, to his outfit. Sure, okay, his bustle had some size and volume to it, but there wasn’t a lot of white junk all over his body, pressed up close to his already fairly pale skin. Yes, this was because Kerberos was practically naked in his fuku, but still, he barely had any white to contend with.…… Very much unlike Murikabushi, who blinked down at big, billowing yukata sleeves that engulfed his tan brown arms with white, and a left-over-right yukata bodice that (with the exception of the red lining) looked like he’d been full-body baptized in sour cream, and an overskirt that looked similarly yukata-styled (albeit much shorter than a yukata) and seemed to leave barely any of his purple skirts still visible—at least, not right now.

Eugh. ******** heinous.

Even without a mirror to check in, Murikabushi felt perfectly certain that he looked like he’d just gotten freshly prepped for his own burial. What had his fuku even done to deserve being banished to the Shadow Realm like this? Mirror senshi or not, the Look had been absolute perfection and Muri’s outfit had never hurt anybody in its life, so why couldn’t Cosmos just NOT ******** *DO* this to him? Why did not wanting to feel so passively accepting toward the idea of his own death have to mean a washed-out complexion and looking absolutely hideous on top of it?

Dear Mary Magdalene, heavenly mother of redemption arcs, and infernal trash-filth mother of shamelessness Divine, Murikabushi prayed silently and with the same aching earnestness that had recently tried to explain to Elsa, Remarque, and Faustite that he didn’t care about energy draining, he just didn’t want to keep feeling like he’d fix everything in his life by walking in front of an oncoming train. Dear Saint George of East Finchley, patron saint of unapologetic self-indulgence…… Dear unstoppable b***h-reading icon and queen of shade, Saint Oscar Wilde, please protect my stupid a** from looking unsalvagably ******** in this new outfit. Please make sure my thigh-highs have the decency to still be violet or, like, literally any color but ******** *white*. Please, please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE.

For everybody else’s sake, though, Murikabushi kept a lid on those thoughts. Hopefully, they’d all read any trembling, pouting, and looks of ostensible confusion on his part as Murikabushi being some combination of tired and overwhelmed by the whole process. With everything Ida was already doing for him and Volterra—with everything Kerberos and Illyria were doing by helping her like this—none of them deserved to deal with Murikabushi melting down in some stupid little tantrum about his fuku and how he wanted to be an Order senshi, he did, but why couldn’t Miss Supermodel of the Cosmos please appreciate the fact that he looked infinitely better in black than white (more so than most people, who also looked better in black than in white, because almost nobody looked good in godforsaken ******** white) please and let Muri have an exception?

The answer to that question was obvious, anyway: she couldn’t give him such an exception to the apparent rules of magical girl fashion because Murikabushi was not, had never been, and would never be that special. Cosmos probably only showed up for or took questions from senshi who were actual legitimate big deals, not whiny little brats with unnecessarily strong and passionate opinions about colors.

But even though he couldn’t entirely repress the fact that he was Feeling A Whole Lot Of Something, Muri could at least be mature about it and push those emotions aside for later. He could nod, and give Ida a wobbly, grateful smile, and softly tell her, “……Thank you. I—” He nodded again. “Thank you.”

And then, Murikabushi did the right thing and shut the ******** up so he didn’t keep Volterra waiting any longer than ne had already needed to wait for him tonight.

Exhaustion crashed down on her as Ida set the empty shard aside, very carefully keeping herself steady and up right despite the need to slump against the sudden weight of her own shoulders. It wasn’t that bad… she’d done long days at the hospital and felt worse. And Muri was free now. Free, and pouting?

Part of her felt a little flutter of worry that… maybe she’d done something wrong? But… the shard was cleansed and Muri was in white. His aura shone against her senses with that warmth and welcome she felt from other order senshi, and she couldn’t help feeling a surge of emotion about it. Pride, happiness, relief… even tinged with that nagging worry. She wanted to ask, but Volterra was waiting and they both seemed so eager to have this done, Ida didn’t have the heart to make them wait.

“No, its okay.” She said softly as she offered nem what she hoped was a confident smile. “Kerberos can help me for this part.”

She needed to do this. She could do this. She would.

Reaching over, Ida took Kerberos’ hand and met his eyes for a moment, silently asking for what he’d offered before. She was going to need it, if this proved as much an effort as the first had been. Her eyes swung to Illyria as well, a little nod saying ‘I’m okay’. She placed Kerberos’ hand on her shoulder and then reached for the second shard, cupping it in her hand again, her crystal in the other.

The power came more sluggishly this time, or maybe it was just her mind that felt sluggish. Warmth poured into her skin from the hand on her shoulder and up through her legs from the land beneath her. The power was there… more than enough for what she needed. She gathered it up, felt something inside of her swell with it. Sweet and wonderful and right… but like trudging up a mountain to lift it all. Then she let it pour from her again in that rush of burning brightness, running down her arms to the shard in her palm.

Light swept over the mirrored surface, sinking in and burning away the darkness inside of it. Purging the chaos with star-fire until every bit of it was gone… not even ashes left behind. The light surged bright again, peaked, and faded… leaving an empty shard, and a yawning hollow inside of Ida’s chest.

It would never stop being a wonder, purification. To watch the darkness be burned from someone’s soul, leaving them in light, and in white.

Murikabushi went first, and Kerberos felt his heart lift. Months—years—of hoping he’d be able to help him, hoping that Murikabushi would make the right choice in the end, and here he was. Bedecked in white and perhaps looking a little displeased about it, but that might be the shock of adjustment. It wasn’t nearly as different from his old uniform as Kerberos’s had been, but colorswise? Still probably a pretty big shock.

“I’ve got you,” he promised Ida, and when she placed his hand on her shoulder, he began to pour his energy into her, to help feed the power that her crystal demanded of her. This was what he was here for, more than moral support or just being a good friend—to make sure that Ida had everything she needed, to help their friends.

And after a long, tense moment—Volterra changed, too.

There they were—two Order Senshi, made anew from the Dark Mirror.

Kerberos broke into a smile, but he didn’t take his hand off Ida, feeding just a little more into her. He only had so much to give, and if he was honest, he felt a little tired himself—but he wasn’t the one who had just channeled two rounds of cleansing light into corrupted mirrorseals. He could deal.

“You’re free. Both of you.”

Being quiet did not come easily to Murikabushi. Never had, and unless purification somehow completely rewrote his personality, Muri doubted that it ever would.

Still, as Kerberos helped rally Ida and as Ida did the work of purifying Volterra’s starseed, Muri willed himself to just……keep his mouth shut, stay quiet, and let the two of them have their moment. Muri had gotten to have his own moment, and no matter how much exhaustion from the process of even getting here ached through every inch of him, Muri would not ******** this process up by running his damn mouth too much. He’d already almost ******** things up by failing to think about the practical concerns and constraints around trying to purify two Dark Mirror senshi at once. He couldn’t go and ruin this for his cousin, not when he’d ignored all good sense regarding the relative fairness of the situation and gone first in purifying.

Illyria made it much easier on that count, bringing over a bottle of water. Muri did take the bottle, giving his hands something to do and putting his mouth around something. He couldn’t start talking if he was hydrating.

By the time Ida finished Volterra’s purification, though, Muri didn’t really know what to say. Even weirder, he didn’t feel super-inclined to start randomly going off about whatever came to mind, just to fill the dead air, despite knowing perfectly well that he could. Doing both of these purifications at the same time…… Ida had indicated before that she was nervous about the toll it would take on her, and part of Murikabushi worried that, if he let himself start up talking, then he’d make all of this even more stressful for Ida than it already had been.

Worse, if he let loose on the tantrum brewing within him about his outfit, then Ida might take that as something wrong with her or with what she’d done, when none of this was like that. Nobody had really done anything wrong; Muri just hated how godawful he looked in white, and he hated the color white as both a reality and a concept, and he hated that Cosmos or whoever the ******** out there designed senshi fukus couldn’t just let Order senshi look as gorgeous, stunning, and fashionable as Negas and Mirror senshi. Facts were facts: everyone looked wonderful in black. Only a handful of very blessed people like Ida-hime-sama could make white look good. Arguably, forcing White Moon senshi to dress up in white was completely contrary to the entire egalitarian ethos that was supposed to be, like, A Thing here.

Kerberos’s statement about their newfound freedom got a nod because……yeah, okay, he was objectively correct. But sitting here with one hand in his lap and the other around the water bottle from Illyria, Muri only found anything to say when he looked to Ida. “Do you…… How do you feel,” he asked gently. “Is there anything we can do?”