prompt
In a village in the middle of an eerie forest, you need shelter. There are many empty houses speckled across a central village, each with its own customizable features. The houses are always made of wood and field stone. They lack all modern commodities, however there is crude indoor plumbing. There are thick glass windows, misty and difficult to see through, and thick wooden doors that are heavy and difficult to move--however all of them have barricades on the inside to keep intruders out. Most houses have several rooms and some even have multiple floors, but there is something aged and almost crumbling about each of them. They are safer than nothing, but they are cold and uninviting. You need to claim one of these homes for yourself, but with so many unknowns, it's probably best to find a group to stick with and have your back. Do you try to take on this oddity in a house, alone? Or do you manage to find people to get along with and share a house with?
Nataniel had never gotten along with his younger brother. Ellian had come about reasonably early in Nat's life: around when he was eight. But they had never been close. Despite how the younger boy trailed after him and mimicked his actions and wanted so obviously badly to have anything to do with him, Nataniel could barely tolerate being around Ellian. He tended to not like stupid, obnoxious, selfish things, and Ellian was all that and more.
Whiny, needy, reckless child, even after he'd practically grown into an 'adult' by legal standards.
Nataniel had always been content to keep minimal contact with his younger brother. They saw each other when he made visits across town over the holidays. They saw each other when their mother coerced or demanded that Nataniel uphold his brotherly duties. 'He loves you so much, Nataniel.' 'He misses you.' 'You should take him to the movies.' 'You should answer his texts.' 'You are blood. No one will ever forgive you so easily as your own brother.'
...Fine.
This was the accepted social norm. Sometimes you had to give in to your family's unnecessary demands to foster the type of close-knit connection blood shared. They were very dissimilar in so many ways... But they had been there for him before he'd even registered that other people existed. So fine. He could 'take Ellian to the movies.' If Nat was very lucky (and he usually wasn't), it would be a silent process.
So it had been unfortunate that such a decision had led Nataniel to find a Guardian snoozing on his little brother's pillow. An Order Guardian.
What was he supposed to do? There wasn't an 'accepted norm' for this, Nataniel was sure. No handbook explanation for how to tend to delicate familial ties in the midst of a magical war. What did agents do when their loved ones weren't on the 'right' side?
Kill them.
Should he?
No matter how abruptly the thought flit across his mind, there was something... uncomfortable that came with it. Nataniel didn't like Ellian. It shouldn't matter if he was dead or not... Except it inexplicably did. They were blood. They were brothers. No one would know him, forgive him, like Ellian.
A General King had come and corrupted the cat. And his brother. And it was suddenly a lot more difficult to justify ignoring Ellian when it fell to Rakovanite to train a clueless and inexperienced new senshi: Diesel. It infuriated him. Because of course it did. Everything about Ellian had always infuriated Nataniel, and when his stupid brother was of course chosen to be graced with senshi magic, it seared through Rakovanite's nerves like a slap.
The universe chose Ellian over him every time.
The Mauvian had called him 'Diesel,' but Rakovanite picked something more fitting: Cervantite. It would be better, he explained, to use a name that followed the standards of the rest of the Negaverse. They tended to not like senshi. Rakovanite didn't want his brother to stick out more than he had to. This was a kindness. Despite the explanation, it was perhaps a little too easy to ignore the hurt that flickered through Diesel's eyes at the name.
Cervantite.
Servant.
It felt like such an insignificant jab, but it made Rakovanite feel better as he tried to instruct his younger brother on how to use his newfound abilities. "Keep up with me, Cervantite," Rakovanite demanded briskly as he strode down an alley in the dark of night. "You have a strict energy quota to meet, and you will never do so if you are continually distracted. Hurry up."
Cervantite flapped a hand in front of his face and spat out a long strand of hair. "The wind keeps blowing my stupid hair into my face! And it's dark. I can barely see as is! It's so easy for you to complain when you're not being smacked in the eyes every time you so much as turn your head just a little-"
"Keep a hair tie in your space pocket, then. And stop complaining. I have no desire to be out here anymore than you do. We should find our targets quickly, so I can send you home."
The senshi fumbled with his too-vibrant hair, flipping it behind his shoulder as he scrambled to try and keep up with Rakovanite's brisk stride. "Well, uh. Maybe we can go grab a bite after?" He asked hesitantly. "Like, that might motivate me to be done faster, if there's a reward involved..."
"Are magic powers not reward enough?" Selfish child. Rakovanite turned to look at him over his shoulder, and there was a war brewing in Cervantite's eyes: doubt, petulance, frustration, hope.
It simmered out, and he grumbled, "I guess it is..."
"Mother probably has dinner waiting for you at home."
"Probably."
Rakovanite fought again with how easily it was to be annoyed when Ellian opened his mouth. It was an endless battle, testing every ounce of his endurance and patience. He prided himself on being affected by very little, but Ellian... Ellian could break him.
"There is a couple up ahead. You need to touch someone in order to drain them. Try and control how much you take. You should be able to tell by feeling. But it will be best for us if they are incapacitated by the time we are done. It is easier to chalk it up to a hallucination or accident if they see very little of us and wake up alone on the sidewalk. Cervantite, come." Rakovanite moved quickly and silently toward his selected targets.
While Cervantite needed contact to drain, Rakovanite was under no such obligation, now. He only needed to reach with his senses, feeling for the energy reserves of the nearby civilians and tugging almost imperceptibly to siphon their energy away.
"S-something doesn't... feel right?" Cervantite whispered tightly as he kept close at Rakovanite's side. "It got cold. And there was wind a second ago. Now it's so still... Nat?"
Rakovanite could feel it too. It was dimmed over the sensation of draining, but when he turned his focus away from the civilians and around to Cervantite beside him, he felt how bizarrely empty the air felt without the civilian's energy to cling to. It felt dark, chilly, still, quiet, and despite having no problem of hair getting into his eyes, Rakovanite suddenly found he couldn't make out much around them.
A grey haze rolled in down the alleyway, quick and silent, despite how the wind had stopped.
"W-what is...?"
"Stay with me," Rakovanite commanded briskly, flinging out his awareness to feel for any nearby senshi aura. But there was none he could detect. If this was Order magic, its wielder was keeping carefully concealed. The haze moved in, and when Rakovanite jumped to the nearby rooftop to avoid it, dragging Cervantite with him, it followed. From this vantage point he could see how much it blanketed. The fog covered all but the rooftops, settling in heavy sheets down the roads and alleys. And then, it crept toward them.
"I don't know about this!" Cervantite yipped, and heat immediately swirled around him. Rakovanite knew for only an instant the Cervantite was going to use his magic before he did-
"Control yours-"
But too late. The warmth the vibrated in the air around the senshi snapped to the palm of his hand and forcefully out as Cervantite punched at the air, creating a sound like a firecracker and a wave of heat the forced the mist back and away. For a moment. It swept forward visciously, as if angered, slapping like a wave around Rakovanite and Cervantite and swallowing them down.
A terrified yelp left Cervantite as he fumbled to cling to his brother's coat as the fog drowned them with a sensation akin to falling through a tornado, though they remained perfectly still. Rakovanite's gut wrenched up into his throat and he let his fingers encircle Cervantite's arm to hold them together.
It dissipated as quickly as it had come, but rather than standing on a roof in Desiny City, they were planted on dirt ground behind an aged building of wood and stone. Rakovanite's heart thrummed as he stared, and he turned his head slowly to take in the new surroundings. There was the ping of other auras- many other auras around them. They weren't alone. Rakovanite let out a strained sigh.
Cervantite's nails were still locked hard into the sleeve of his coat. "Where are we. What is this place. Did you bring us here? You can teleport, right?"
"I can," Rakovanite answered stiffly. "But I did not bring us here. I think- I have only ever described it as 'the city's' magic- I think it likes to bring us places sometimes. Last year it moved me through the shadows. Over Christmas, it sent me through a doorway. And then over the summer..." He cast a quick, quizzical look to his brother. Ellian had been at the gala with him, but Cervantite seemed clueless. So Rakovanite continued. "They are brief occurrences. An hour or so, usually." Though there was usually some kind of fight happening, too...
Rakovanite decided not to mention that much. "Come. We will look around and see how it expects us to get home."
------
"It's been hours, Nat," Cervantite grumbled as he plodded along behind his brother, casting dark red irises up toward a grey and dimming sky. "We've looked down all the alleys, we've looked in all the buildings... Nothing is happening, Nat. Even the other people here look confused. No one knows what's going on. I'm getting tired and hungry. I was hungry while we were still in the city..." Which felt like a long time ago, now.
"You should know to use my powered name like this."
Cervantite wanted to <******** scream. He'd spent all day being so excited- so excited! Something he and his brother could do together! Something they could only do together- to patrol as a senshi with Rakovanite. He'd thought Nat would be proud of him for being Diesel. He thought Nat would see some worth in him, but it was never ********>. And now Cervantite just wanted to scream and have dinner and go to bed.
It had been late into the night when they'd been in Destincy City, but it must have been mid-day in the village when they'd arrived. And Nataniel had spent all of that time trying to figure out 'how' to get home and getting nowhere. "Why won't you just ask someone?" Cervantite demanded. "There were lots of people earlier, but I'm seeing less and less as we keep looking for whatever you're looking for."
"I can feel their auras," Rakovanite admitted. "It... seems as if no one else is leaving, either. They are unlikely to have the solution."
"But you didn't ask!" Cervantite screamed then, impatient and tired and biting back the first dregs of fear that threatened to slip into his mind. Could they really not get home? Nat had said 'an hour' when he'd been transported previously. It had already been much longer than that. Disappearances were so common in Destiny City, and who was to say this wasn't the reason why? All of this was so foreign and so bizarre and how could he possibly know what to do-
He took in a shuddered breath and reached to snatch at Rakovanite's hand. "It's cold," he stated firmly. "I'm tired, and- and it looks like it'll be dark soon. Let's rest, okay?" When Rakovanite rolled his eyes dismissively and made to pull from his grasp, Cervantite yanked him around and shook his by the collar, the surprise at how easy it was dwarfed by how impatient he was with Rakovanite never listening to him.
"Are you stupid?" He demanded in a shriek, and there may have been something that registered as shock on his brother's face. "Do you not feel that? Do you not feel that something is off in the air? I don't want to be out here, anymore, Nataniel! Let's go inside. Pretty sure any one of these buildings will do, and if we're lucky, it'll be over when we wake up. That's what you said, right? It doesn't last long. And if we're not lucky... Well, the way home won't disappear between now and then."
Probably. He didn't actually know. He had no idea how this or anything else worked. But he did feel something looming, something dark and watching. All the houses they'd checked had had barricades in them, like they were built for keeping something out.
So Nataniel really was dumb if he just expected to stay out in these village streets.
Cervantite released him, and whipped around. Then immediately thought better of it and snatched up Rakovanite's arm again, earning him a disinterested grunt in response. "We should have stayed with everyone else. Now we're stuck protecting ourselves from whatever is out here alone. Thanks a lot, you stubborn a**."
Any one of these buildings would work. That's what he'd said. So Cervantite didn't waste time picking out one that looked 'the best,' because they all looked 'serviceable,' and that was good enough.
He and Rakovanite slipped inside the nearest stone shelter, and Cervantite wasted no time in hauling the barricades into place behind them.