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 Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 4:32 pm
Mayumi clutched her purse strap in both hands as she glanced around the corner down the alleyway, then took a deep breath before striding down to the end. She was, admittedly, more than a little nervous - she was supposed to meet a friend of Ilmenite's down here, someone named Zink. Of course, the girl had been warned against meeting strangers in back alleys, but, well, she was not sure he could quite qualify as a stranger, since Ilmenite knew him. And this was a pretty good part of town. Mayumi was fairly certain the building towering above her to her left was an apartment or something; if things went south, she could just scream.
She had just tried to think of it like a blind date. Except Mayumi would be meeting with someone who was also the head of something important. Dressed up nicely, she shivered slightly as the sound of her footsteps echoed around her. This was more like job interview-nervous, maybe.
"Hello?" Mayumi called out, looking around as she reached the end of the narrow road. Then she checked her watch. Maybe she was here early, and her watch was fast....
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Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 4:58 pm
There was a gust of wind, air displaced from somewhere within the shadows, stones ground under boot heels as someone moved forward out of the alleyway. “Mayumi?” the man asked through thick fabric that obscured the entire lower half of his face. “Am I late?” he murmured and offered you a gloved hand. “Zinkenite.” He introduced himself.
“I understand that you are interested in joining us, how much did Ilmenite tell you about our organization?” He glanced you over with piercing eyes and then glanced around, cocking his head to listen just to be sure that there was no one else within rage, satisfied, he pulled the mask down from his face.
“Did you have questions for me?” He was young without the mask to hide him, friendly looking really. “Or did he already answer all your questions?”
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Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 6:29 pm
The girl jumped slightly at the voice, turning to give him a wary glance until he introduced himself. His garb looked strange, as well, like Ilmenite's, but ... well, made him seem legit, right, if they were both soldiers?
"Yeah, Mayumi," she acknowledged with a smile as she took his hand. She may have come off as still a little nervous about all this, in spite of the masked man's polite manner. But she continued, "He told me basically that you guys were protecting the world and the city, and that I could talk to you more about joining."
The thought crossed her mind that maybe dressing up like for a date had been a dumb idea, that maybe it made her look ... not serious about fighting or something. Mayumi certainly would have gotten here faster if she had come in her derby garb and skates.
"I don't know if I have any specific questions," she went on, glancing upwards as she thought. "Other than how much time all of this protecting the city will take up? I am still in school...." Mayumi fiddled with a few strands of hair and glanced back at Zink, studying him carefully. He did not look too much older than her, or maybe even a little younger, because he was pretty short for a guy. It had sounded from Ilmenite like a lot of his comrades were school-age.
But she didn't want to make a time commitment she couldn't keep.
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Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 6:39 pm
“We can be fairly flexable I assure you, I’d tell you what other tasks I keep up with despite my own roll in the guardianship of this city, but I’m afraid it would… potentially compromise my identity.” He gave a small shrug before adding. “You’d be joining at a very basic level in the organization of course, it’s nothing personal of course, it’s a matter of…structure. The terrorists we’re so familiar with I think lack that…and it’s a very good thing. I’ve seen… I have seen very well what they are capable of when they organize to meet a specific goal. It was, to put it mildly, terrifying.”
His words were soft, his eyes haunted by whatever memory that the words stirred.
“Did he warn you that… recruitment could be uncomfortable?” ‘Can be’ was of course an understatement. It was a –fact- that it hurt, and likely it would become an earmark of degrees of pain until the time that she earned Captain’s rank. Still, there was no point in putting her off with –that- trivial detail. Pain was transient; she would learn that soon enough.
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Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:19 am
A little thrill went through her at the thought of secret identities, and a structured secret organization. Mayumi had seen enough James Bond and other such thrillers to find the glamor in that sort of thing. She had always wanted to be somebody, and the constant overwhelming talent of her brother had made specific awards seem less and less inviting. What was the point in being an honor student if Daisuke had done it a hundred times before? But to be part of this group that helped to defend the city against the terrorists?
Even if she could never tell her family, it was something Mayumi could make her own. Not being able to tell them maybe even made it that much more valuable to her.
She shifted her feet again at the mention of pain, but nodded. "Yeah, I guess I wanted to know about that part, like, what do you actually have to do?" She imagined a brand, or perhaps some sort of subcutaneous technological gizmo to help in her mission... and had also not completely discounted the idea of some sort of assault, but Mayumi dearly hoped it would not come to that.
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Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:37 am
“What do you have to do in order to join?” He asked, repeating her question to ensure that he was going to answer the correct one. “Harder to explain than it is to show. Nothing that the outside world can see, nothing that can be tracked or traced by our government, nothing that will even show so long as you are… standing as a civilian. But if you change to uniform, then… people who are like me, and like them will know.
It’s a –feeling-…and your rank directly corresponds to how easily people can find you, but the transition truly only takes a few moments. Time being relative it can seem longer…but becoming a Lieutenant, not so terribly long I promise. I barely remember when I did…” He gave a small smile.
“Did you want to?”
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Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:49 am
Mayumi had her doubts. Suddenly rather a lot of them, really.
She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
Then, looking Zink in the eye, she replied with all the confidence she could muster, "Yes."
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Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 5:45 pm
He stepped closer, almost intimately close, hand lifting but not quite touching you as though some fine line separated the both of you. “I should warn you.” He said softly. “This –will- hurt.” His hand pushed forward, closing that final gap, and… moved through you. A shock that was also pain, and more of it after his fist balled inside of you, closing carefully around the most precious part of you that you couldn’t even know you had. His eyes widened a moment later, an intake of breath that was sharp and sudden. “Ah… well now…” he whispered. “This will be harder than I thought, but all the same, I hope more rewarding.” He pushed the chaos into her precious glittering crystal. “Welcome to the Dark Kingdom….” He said as he drew his hand out, looking shaky and tired.
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Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2013 4:24 pm
The brief moment of intimacy set her heart racing, with both fear and excitement, but all of that changed as the general put his hand into her chest, and found her starseed.
Images flickered through her mind like dreams she could not comprehend now, nor would she remember them later; all Mayumi was aware of was a momentary forceful feeling of abjuration, trying to resist, before it was smothered by the darkness the Negaverse officer forced into her. Her nerves sizzled with indescribable pain, the agony of something being completely destroyed to make way for something new. The girl might have been screaming, but she lost all sense of the world around her, of herself, while the chaos coursed through her body, filling her completely.
After what felt like an eternity, the girl slowly became aware of pavement beneath her, then of the spots where the grit of the asphalt pressed uncomfortably into bare shins and palms, and gradually, of the rest of her as well.
She was indeed different. The newly-awakened senshi shifted where she sat, then started to rise slowly and shakily to her feet, rubbing sweat from her cheeks with a trembling hand. Her clothing had changed, and, as the last of the pain faded away and proprioception returned, she became aware of a dark hole in the center of her chest, where the general's hand had been moments (or was it hours?) before.
Drawing a ragged breath, she steeled herself and tried to shift her stance to a straight, attentive one.
"I-" What were the words for this? Mayumi the girl had never encountered such a situation before, had never dreamed it possible. Whatever she was now was new as well, forming new memories, testing new limits.
"Who am I? What am I now?" Firstly, she would need a word for this new ... self.
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Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2013 4:36 pm
He let out a breath before answering, a moments thought before the name came to him, because she’d need one, he had none for her otherwise.
“Acanthite.” He replied, reaching a hand for a moment towards her scarab hair clip, curious in its design. “That will be the name you reply to when you are in uniform this way.” He smiled at her slightly and nodded. “And more than I expected, you are a senshi, you are one of OUR senshi now, they will call you ‘Corrupted’, and with training, and practice… we will call you magnificent.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2013 5:33 pm
"Acanthite," she repeated, testing out the name. Then she looked back to the general as he continued to speak, and nodded, taking in his words.
Obedience to him would be no issue. She could feel her new power, and he had been her patron in discovering it.
Acanthite smiled, as though she had suddenly remembered that she could, as a feeling of pride and wonder settled into the spot in her heart where her now-fractured starseed rested. "I will do my best to be magnificent. Teach me what I need to know, please, and I'll make sure you are satisfied with choosing me for this."
She wobbled on her feet slightly, and adjusted her stance as she looked momentarily faint. The newly-released Acanthite put a hand to her head, but, determined to be a quick learner in all of this incredible and new power she now held, pressed on with questions: "Wh- what is a senshi? And who will call me 'corrupted'? The terrorists?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2013 5:56 pm
“Senshi are what most of the terrorists are, though they call themselves forces for ‘Order’” He told her, offering her an arm so that he could stabilize her in her new heels. “Corrupted is what they call us, the Dark Kingdom, agents of chaos, let me tell you, let me tell you a little of our history.”
He summarized it; all that he knew of princess and princesses, of lost castles that were hidden from the world. He warned her of the rift and how she must never pass through the mouth of it alone.
He told her the ranks and of the guardian cats, how some senshi could visit alien worlds…but that she, being one of theirs, never having been in their hands could not.
“To the best of my knowledge, all their worlds lie In ruin, small wonder that they are all clustered here now, somewhere rich and fertile, still filled with life.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2013 6:13 pm
"This is even bigger than I imagined," she breathed, clinging to Zinkenite's arm for support. They were not even Earthly terrorists ... but it more than explained all the strange news from the last few years. There was something huge at work here ... and now she was a part of it.
"Oh- Oh my," she whispered, as her body, thoroughly routed by the change she had undergone, gave up on her and she fainted.
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