The Wishing Tree (2) : Your wish is only said to come true if you grant the wish of someone else; when you write your wish, you must also take one off of the tree and do your best to grant it. What wish do you pull off, and how do you intend to ‘grant’ it? Do you work with someone else to grant this wish, or do you work alone? You may get approval from another player to use the wish their character hung up, but no names are attached so your character may not ever know who wrote it!
Honestly, Reiki probably should’ve read the second wish he grabbed off the Wishing Tree before just taking it. Yeah, sure, okay, he’d sort of needed to get it quick, since Cersei had been so excited to go meet the Other Dog!!, but Reiki still could’ve tugged her leash a bit, just to hold her up a bit so she wouldn’t run off while he read the wish he was taking.
Because, seriously. Instead of something like cleaning up trash or building new sugar water dispensers for the butterflies in East End Park, Reiki had wound up pulling, “I wish more people would GENUINELY apologize. Admit when they did something wrong, humble themselves, and REALLY say they’re ******** seriously. This was homophobic (in that it inconvenienced Reiki personally).
Sure, he had a lot of people he could stand to apologize to for one reason or another. He called Junsei to apologize for blowing him off when he’d tried to express concern (again) about Reiki’s work schedule, because Junsei was honestly right to worry. Since Mom and Obaasan had been on campus for some faculty meetings today, Reiki had gone over and apologized to their faces for having been evasive with them recently; he hadn’t meant to be that way, he’d just been busy and distracted with Pride Season, and he didn’t expect it to comfort them that he was concerned about some things he’d been feeling lately, but he was gonna bring them up to Dr. Mjoli and his group at the queer community center. Backstage after his number but before he bugged out for the night, Reiki had apologized to Brandy and Sybil for being a temperamental little b***h the other night, and yes, it had absolutely been on the lack of sleep, because Sybil and Cherry had more than a few valid points about his utter lack of balance in his life.
But……none of those apologies really felt like they satisfied the wish.
Mostly because, while all the hurts he’d caused had been real, none of them was the one looming over him like a cartoon anvil, hanging by a single, delicate thread, about to plummet and squish Wile E. Coyote into oblivion.
No.… No, the real apology Reiki needed to deliver took him away from his normal patrol zone around the queer district and over to North End Park. Specifically, it took him (and his feline assistant) over near a certain bench, where a certain sluttaciously costumed, blue-haired pretty boy was sitting, with a circle of white flowers sprawled on the ground beneath his dainty feet. Lurking behind a nearby tree, Reiki itched to just run over to Kerberos right away now and start talking……but, no.
No, he couldn’t do that. Not without undermining the spirit of the apology—hence Reiki begging Soyala to help him.
“Remember, all you need to do is please take him my message, and let me know what he says,” Reiki told her gently, holding a folded scrap of paper up to where Soya sat on his shoulder. “And regardless of what happens? There’s sushi-grade salmon in it for you, I promise. Because, Soya-hime? I love you.”
……He didn’t know offhand if Soya knew Casablanca, much less knew the movie well enough to appreciate the reference he had in mind. Either way, though, Reiki stood by the sentiment.
The paper came from one of the recycling bins in the building where Mom and Obaasan had their offices, though Reiki had at least been smart enough not to take paper from the bins in either the polisci department or the gender, queer, and feminist studies department. Some nonsense poster about an end of term dance party only suggested that Murikabushi might have some ties to DCU, while something closer to Mom and Obaasan risked having their names on it. Their names too easily could’ve pointed back to Reiki, if Kerberos had any inclination to play Nancy Drew about this. Still, on the back of the poster, in purple gel pen, Reiki had written:
Quote:
花 (Blossom),
Can we talk, please? It’s okay, if not. Just tell Soya you don’t want to see me, and we’ll go.
—むりかぶし (Murikabushi).
Noir Songbird
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 12:58 am
It was mildly humiliating, for Soyala, to be reduced to carrying a message--and not just any message, a message from a Dark Mirror to someone on the other side. An enemy. Someone that, in her imperious opinion, Reiki should not at all be worried about apologizing to.
Still. There was promised salmon, and the poor boy seemed so distressed over the whole incident, and honestly, as long as it never got back to anyone that she had done this, Soya supposed that she could eat the embarrassment and go on with her life.
Just...no one was allowed to speak of this. Ever.
"This did not happen and I have not done you this favor," she said, imperiously, and then she took the note, leapt off Reiki's shoulder, and trotted over to the pretty Senshi in the circle of blooming flowers.
She bounded up onto the bench, and deposited the note in his lap.
"From Murikabushi," she said, tail swishing. If this Senshi refused him the chance to apologize....Murikabushi might tolerate it, but Soya would not. It was as simple as that.
Of all the visitors Kerberos was expecting, a Chaos cat wasn't it. He blinked at the feline visitor to his bench, and frowned down at her, but he took the note from her hands and opened it.
It was kind of cute, actually, and he was glad that his disappearing act at the end of their last conversation hadn't totally put Murikabushi off. It had been a bad time, his magic, but...that wasn't Murikabushi's fault, any more than it was Kerberos's fault that his magic made people hallucinate dying and dead loved ones. Hell, Kerberos knew what his magic did, and he still let it loose anyway.
And he had offered a trip to his planet. Maybe he could get Murikabushi to take him up on it.
"He's the Dark Mirror aura hovering around here, right," Kerberos said. "Let him know I'm willing to talk."
"Good," Soyala said simply. She leapt off the bench and darted back to Murikabushi, tail swishing behind her.
"He'll speak to you," she said, and she gently butted her head against his leg. "I sohuldn't stay. Better for the both of us if I don't know too much more about this." She made an unhappy noise. "But I'll be waiting back at your apartment. I do expect my salmon."
Waiting for Soya to get back was probably the most nerve-wracking thing that Reiki had endured in weeks—and he absolutely included in his assessment multiple youma attacks, the run-in with Mr. Amsvartnir of Cosmos, and the initial rush of panic when Kerberos had first swooped in on him. It felt like he barely breathed at all while waiting for her to get back, and was the ensuing sigh of relief maybe kinda possibly a bit over-dramatic? Yes, absolutely. But……this conversation was important to Reiki.
Still, before he could have it, he needed to crouch down and offer Soya some skritches (ready to either bestow them or pull his hand back, per her comfort). “Thank you, Soya-hime. I promise: I’ll bring you your salmon. I know I asked a lot from you tonight, and I do appreciate your help.”
Once she’d gone, though, he had to……actually make himself go over to Kerberos and his bench. Which, even knowing that Kerberos had given Soya an affirmative answer, seemed to take Herculean effort—mostly because Kerberos’s permission didn’t negate Reiki’s anxiety about the situation or erase what it meant to him. Or, more importantly, erase what he might well have done to someone who had, as far as Reiki could glean from what all Kerberos had shared of his personal history, well and truly suffered enough without Reiki’s magic (theoretically, probably) triggering him.
Still……Reiki had come here and made Soya put herself at risk of her superior officers’ displeasure for his sake. That, more than anything else (even the wishing tree paper stashed in his subspace), inspired him to push away from the tree and make his way over to Kerberos, head bowed and hands knotted together, the way Reiki held them while going up for his turn at Communion on Sunday mornings (which had the added benefit of keeping his hands in the open, just in case Kerberos had any worry that Murikabushi might be getting up to something).
Once he was close enough, Reiki probably should’ve asked for permission to sit……but if he hesitated too long, he’d talk himself out of doing this, so rather than wait, he unceremoniously sat. “Hi, uh. I……thanks? For saying you’d see me?” Fidgeting, he couldn’t get himself to stop thumping his thumbs together, or twisting his fingers. But he took a deep breath and forced himself to look up at Kerberos’s face. “I……I wanted to ask, um? About what happened? Last time? Y’know, when I……”
Triggered you. Kicked you in the cravings. Triggered you. Knew you had a drinking problem, because you told me you had a drinking problem, and even if I didn’t know what my powers would do, I used them on you anyway and—
“When I finally got the attack off, I mean?”
Noir Songbird
Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:37 pm
Soya waited, a moment, to gracefully accept the offered skritches. No amtter how little she liked this whole affair, Murikabushi was a good sort, really; it wasn't his fault that his soft heart apparently predisposed him to be kind to people who didn't deserve it. Like idiots on the other side of the war. Moreover, Soyala was fairly certain she knew the name "Kerberos"--but she didn't want to bring it up, because if she feigned ignorance, then if anyone found out about this venture, it would be far better for her. Especially if she was right about the reason she thought she recognized the name. She wondered if Murikabushi knew he was talking to a defector, or if this Kerberos kept that a secret.
"Mm, you did. But taking care of my Senshi is part of my job. You might not be Negaverse, but you're still mine, and I'm still going to look after you." Which included looking after his emotional needs, which this obviously was. Poor boy was so twisted up about the whole thing, it really was sad.
She gave one last purr, rubbing against Reiki affectionately, and then darted off into the night. As promised, she headed back to his and Haruhi's apartment; she would wait there until he returned, and then assudiously would not grill him about the conversation, no matter how much she wanted to. She just had to keep reminding herself that the less she knew of this, the better. For herself, for Murikabushi, for everyone involved.
It felt like a long, long time, after the cat disappeared, before Murikabushi emerged from behind the trees. The length of the wait made Kerberos nervous--was Murikabushi having second thoughts about talking to him? He hoped not; from what little exposure he'd had, he liked Murikabushi and wanted to spend more time around him.
So when he did arrive, Kerberos couldn't help a tiny sigh of relief, and he scooted over to make more room on the bench for Murikabushi and his very full skirts.
"Of course," Kerberos said. "I'm glad to see you again. Wasn't expecting you to seek me out, after I dipped, last time." He smiled, a little wryly. But it seemed like Murikabushi was incredibly worried about something, and so, very gently, he prodded.
"Did you have a specific question, or? I know I wasn't a great test subject, sorry, I was a lot less ready for it than I thought I was." To say the least. It had been awful, and upsetting, and Kerberos still wasn't entirely over how bad it had felt, to both want a drink and want anything but.
But he had his planet, and he had the healing power of laying in a field of glowing asphodel and being climbed over by little rodent-foxes, and that was a lot, he thought. Not quite better than therapy, but still pretty good. And he'd talked around the exact trigger, a little, at group, but everyone there knew what it was to have a surprise urge, and...generally, he felt better, all things considered.
“I…wasn’t really expecting to seek you out, either,” Reiki admitted quietly, still fussing with his fingers and finding it difficult to actually look at Kerberos’s face. Which was some stunning lack of nerve from someone who’d been so happy to talk s**t at Captain Phoenix-Force, last time he’d made his way to this particular bench. Seriously, if Reiki was going to run his mouth like that, didn’t it behoove him to look Kerberos in the eye?
……By American standards, probably, yes. But despite growing up in Destiny City, not Kyoto, something just felt wrong about looking at his face right now.
“I mean, you flounced like that? And it felt like ‘Oh, wow, I knew you had to be kidding about coming on all nicely and offering trips to your planet, but you did come on so sweet, I wasn’t expecting the act to stop so abruptly’? Worse, like—I felt the magic, or thought I did? But it was—it didn’t even do anything? Like—like, some of my—” Drag sisters—wait, no, probably too revealing… “—friends? You know Encanto? Because they compare me to Luisa all the time, if you do. All. the. damn. time—but all that build-up and my magic not seeming to do anything felt like Mirabel not getting a gift……or that’s what I thought.”
That’s what Reiki had carried around inside him and pouted about for considerably longer than he’d had any right to pout, honestly. That’s what had put him in such a foul mood that he’d talked aforementioned s**t in the first place. Thinking he hadn’t done anything and Kerberos had run off to keep him from figuring out, or because he’d been lying about coming on so nicely, or……something. (Reiki had not settled on an actual decent explanation. He just also hadn’t confronted that lack……until Fang.)
“And then……it was a few nights ago? Over in Ramsett Park. I…” Sighing, Reiki paused to dip into his subspace for two bottles: his chilled metal water bottle for himself, and an unopened plastic one to offer, in case the heat was getting to Kerberos despite him actually being dressed quite sensibly for it. (He still couldn’t bring himself to look at Kerberos, but he could proffer a bottle of water, at least. It was just polite.) “I was patrolling, and I found this……spot? Where everything was just……dead. Gray and dead, and being around it felt wrong. Plus, like someone was watching me.
“Which someone was, but……he wasn’t the one making me feel that. He’s, uh—another space-animal senshi? Sailor Fang, I think of chrysocyon? You’ll know if you run into him. White Moon aura, messy brown hair, looks kind of like a cute wolf-boy and has some trouble with talking? Especially if it wears on too long. He, uh…had a very troubled life. For a really long time. Before he got to Earth.”
Troubled because of Chaos, Reiki remembered.
Because Chaos—the thing that Reiki and his Court were supposed to serve in exchange for power, allegedly—had invaded Fang’s entire world, killed his family and everyone he loved, destroyed his childhood and eventually everything else. Fang, from the sound of it, had so much trouble with verbal communication because he’d been denied almost all chances to ever learn after losing everyone he loved. Losses he’d suffered because of Chaos.
Just like Daphne had apparently lost everything to Chaos. Hearing her version, her cat-people hadn’t ever had a war or any kind of disagreement amongst themselves until Chaos invaded (which still sounded fake or at least highly dubious to Reiki, but considering she’d lost everything, it probably made sense for her to exaggerate how good her planet had been before it had fallen to Chaos).
Chaos, the thing that gave Reiki his power in the first place.
Trying to temporarily shove those thoughts back in a box to be dealt with later, Reiki took a long sip of water. Didn’t really banish them, but at least he dragged himself back on track to continue, “So, Fang……we were trying to suss out anything about this dead spot? And he tried attacking it. Which made me start seeing things—a lot like how, when you’re really sleep-deprived, you can start seeing, like, rats or bugs or skittery things? In the corners of your eyes? But it was snakes instead of rats. And…y’know, I thought…there’s snake monsters coming for us, my attack might not do anything, but it’s better than not trying?
“……And then it did. It did do something.” Swallowing thickly, Reiki gripped on tight to his water bottle, lest his hands get any ideas about dropping it. “…I hit Fang instead of any monsters. And he—he’s okay now, I swear? But he just…collapsed? Wailing? Terrified that he was starving to death? Because it……I mean, senshi of hunger, right? I made him hungry. And maybe a lot of people would just be annoyed by that? But it could destroy somebody, like—like, if they have an eating disorder and hang so much of their self-worth on abusing themselves to not feel hunger anymore, or if they have trauma about almost starving to death because Chaos stormed into their planet and started wrecking up the place, or……”
With a shiver, Reiki forced himself to look up. Away from his hands. At Kerberos’s face. “Or……if they have a drinking problem? It—it’s a kind of hunger, I—did…? Did I…? When I got you, I mean…?”
Despite the fact that he’d been the one to come here and start the conversation in the first place, part of Reiki itched to insist that he wasn’t asking because he cared about Kerberos personally, or anything! So, don’t go thinking that, Blossom! He was just here because he knew too well what the stakes could be with alcohol abuse, how they’d ******** up his own family and more than a few friends! Nothing! At all! About Kerberos himself! Anta baka!!
But for all he could talk enough for ten people, for all he’d already done that here, now that it mattered most, he struggled to get his mouth around the actual question dogging his mind. Trying to spit out any blatantly inaccurate insistence that he didn’t care probably would’ve made his tongue rip itself out of his mouth in protest.
Noir Songbird
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 12:27 am
Kerberos inhaled, tensely. This was definitely not going to be an easy conversation, and he knew it. Especially since Murikabushi seemed incredibly upset about the series of circumstances that had led them here, to this moment, especially because it sounded like he'd actually gotten to find out what his magic could do.
Kerberos's first urge was to lie. To minimize. To paper over what had happened, sweep it under the rug, pretend it wasn't all that serious. But Murikabushi seemed so genuinely concerned, and to disrespect that by sweeping his pain under the rug was probably a shitty thing to do. So, Kerberos took a deep breath.
"Yes, your magic did in fact kick me right in the drinking problem." He twisted his hands in his skirts, taking a very shuddery breath. "It was very upsetting, and I had....a really bad time with it, but that doesn't make it your fault. You didn't know what your magic could do, and triggers like that are..." He shook his head. "You know I can't even go to bars, anymore? Because the stupid smell of alcohol, it's--the General that put me throguh the world's worst rehab, back when I was still in the Negaverse, poured a bottle of vodka on my head and threatened to set my hair on fire. Which, at the time, Negaverse Senshi--one of their tells is the stupid long hair, so. It was a pretty serious threat."
He swallowed.
"So, yeah, ever since then, the smell...." He shrugged. "Which is all to say, there's a lot of things that can trip me up, and I know how to cope with it. Laying in a pile of bioluminescent foxes and discovering that my world has bioluminescent bunnies now were pretty helpful, in terms of dealing with the initial issue. And then I went to my group, and talked it through as best I could, so--really, I'm okay, but it's kind of you to be worried."
On one hand, Kerberos’s answer crashed into Reiki with a cold wave of guilt. He’d suspected as much, about what his magic had done to Kerberos, or else he wouldn’t have come. But actually hearing it out loud……was different from just pondering over it all on his lonesome, thinking that he maybe had some kind of idea what could have possibly happened, maybe sorta.
On the other hand, though, the answer hit Reiki with a wave of relief (one that meant he couldn’t help sighing): finally, he knew for sure what had gone down—and some of the additional context from Kerberos’s side, besides—and since he knew, now, Reiki could account for his magic and how it might affect people in the future. Maybe not with Kerberos specifically—ideally, he wouldn’t need to use it on Kerberos again, ever—but……with others. Which the reality of life as a magical girl was likely to make inevitable.
Actually knowing what to say……felt much more challenging than just listening, but. This was okay. Reiki had done enough theater in his life to improvise. He just needed to take a couple deep breaths, find something sort of akin to his center, and let himself……say things.
“Okay, uh. For starters: what the <********>.” ……Not, strictly speaking, the best way that he had ever started an apology, but. Well. Certain things needed to be said. “About the General who did that, just……what the <********>. Like, I thought it was bad that my grandfather usually can’t come watch me perform live because…it’s usually in bars and his trigger isn’t the smell, so much? It’s more being around drunk people. ********. Deep breaths. Reiki took a moment to bury his face in his hands, rub the bridge of his nose, and just……breathe. Deep, steady, even. He hadn’t revealed anything too personal with that, right? He performed in bars—a lot of people did that, and not exclusively drag artists—and what he’d said about Ojiisan, while arguably not his thing to disclose, was something that Ojiisan had written about in his book. So, it wasn’t entirely private, anymore……but it also probably described a lot of people with drinking problems……but it also wasn’t the biggest point, really……
Pulling himself out with a shake of the head, Reiki went on, “I swear, every new thing I learn about the Negaverse just makes their way of being that much more offensive. They were seriously just……totally fine with all of this? This General threatened to kill you, using vodka as the accelerant, then—I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but……from what you said before, I……thought it sounded like they made you detox without giving you anything to take the edge off.
“Which—I’ve seen what that can look like. More than once. Every single time, it was like ‘Okay, I’m not gonna cave. Aunt Sayuri’—not her real name—‘can’t get me, this time. Dad says not to listen to her if she tries to weasel me, her teenage nephew, into trying to buy her tequila, and that she needs to go detox at a hospital’……but then, she’d be such a mess? We’re all lucky she didn’t die, doing that.”
Sighing, Reiki slumped a bit lower on the bench. “……My point, I think, being? That……it’s not entirely kindness here? It’s just……” He shrugged, idly fiddling with his skirt. “I mean, I have been worried about you, ever since the incident with Fang, but like……part of that worry also comes out of stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with you personally? But that does make me……feel other-than-pleasant about doing that to you, and what could’ve happened if you didn’t have coping strategies and bioluminescent space-bunnies, and how it could’ve hurt your family, or your friends, or whoever else you have in your life?”
He could’ve probably left well enough alone at any point in here, but……with a huff, by way of wrapping up, Reiki added, “Also? High-key ******** the Negaverse, if they’re okay with just……risking it that their own people might die because ‘Better dead than drunk,’ or whatever the ******** was going through that General’s head.”
Noir Songbird
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 2:21 am
Kerberos smiled, wry and bitter and clearly very tired. "General Schörl, is what the ********," he said, and he shook his head. "She was....a monster. I say 'was' because I haven't heard of her arriving to go bump in the night, lately, and she leaves such a wide swath of trauma behind her that I feel like I'd know if she was still around."
And wherever she'd slithered off to, he hoped she stayed there.
"Anyway, I don't know how many people knew, really, or how...tolerated her abuses were. I didn't really get the worst of it--not minimizing, just facts, she wasn't actually my General so she only had so much power over me. The people she actually was in direct command over....I shudder to imagine."
Faustite, for one. Quartz, who he remembered with an ache in his chest. they hadn't known each other, but the man had seemed so....miserable.
"Anyway, yeah, it....I was technically under monitoring from Negaverse agents with medical training? But it was still detox in a tiny room in Negaspace, getting constantly drained by her ******** lion-rug youma, and it did, in fact, ******** suck."
Ugh, he hated reminiscing about Schörl, but better to open up and be honest. Murikabushi deserved that from him.
"Anyway, you mentioned dead spots--I saw one of those, on my partner's Wonder. And I've gotta admit, I'm kinda concerned, so...tell me more about that, yeah?"
Nodding, Reiki committed the name General Schörl to memory. If she wasn’t around to cause problems or menace people anymore, then so much the better, but in case she ever showed up again, Reiki wanted to know who to avoid. Even based on the little bit of information Kerberos had shared about her in all this, Reiki could safely say that she now ranked very highly on the list of People, Places, And Things He Did Not Want To Deal With, somewhere in the vicinity of “Ted Bundy,”“his Onibaba-sama maternal grandmother and her technically sapient marital aid with the missing batteries,” and “people who used their cameras’ flash settings during drag shows like the performers really needed that kind of stress.”
“Okay, I…” Fussing with his bangs, he made himself take a few deep breaths. It didn’t really help him feel calmer, more centered, or more capable of doing this. But he had to, or he was going to kick himself for ages. “First, I’m not avoiding your actual question, I just.… I wanted to say that I’m sorry? For making all of that come back to you with my magic? And I’m really, really glad that you have people you can go to, even if you have to talk around the magical girl parts at your group?” Something told Reiki that he’d know that feeling all too well sooner or later, even if the specific things that he and Kerberos had support groups for were different. “And……I know you agreed to it, and neither of us knew what would happen, but…?”
He sighed, wilting dramatically. “But……I’m still sorry.… Soya—the Mauvian who brought my message over?—she thinks I shouldn’t be because of some issue about factions, but I’m just like…? I don’t think? That I’m okay? With the idea of thinking it’s fine if somebody who’s in recovery relapses just because they’re an Order senshi or one of your Knights, and I’m a Chaos rat?” As soon as he’d said it, Reiki winced, remembering that Kerberos had been pretty clear previously about not wanting Reiki to use that term for himself. But maybe they could just……move on? Please? “I mean, not wishing a relapse on someone sounds more like an issue of basic decency to me than anything, and—I get it? Soya’s just looking out for me in the best way she knows how? Which means ‘don’t hang around Order senshi too much,’ I guess?
“But……” Another sigh and Reiki mussed his fingers over his bangs. “What my magic did to you? That’s not something I take lightly. And I don’t think faction allegiances should be a ‘get out of apologizing free’ card? When it comes to something like sobriety?”
But—Kerberos had asked something entirely different, too. And ignoring that would’ve been rude and required another apology, so—“As for the gray spot, I’m? Not sure how to describe it? …But all of the grass and plants inside the ring had just died. Fang and I, we couldn’t sense any Chaos auras, not like mine or like the Negaverse’s, but there was definitely something wrong with it. This sense like someone was watching me. Then, Fang attacked it to see what would happen and that’s what made the snake-looking monsters appear.”
Noir Songbird
Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2023 2:02 am
Murikabushi was too good, Kerberos thought. For Chaos, for the world in general, for this stupid war especially. There weren't enough people like him out there, and Kerberos was certain that if he could talk Murikabushi around, convince him to join the right side--he would be an asset to Kerberos's work, convincing people to break the bonds of Chaos.
And, he'd be free of whatever hold Chaos had on him, which was also a net positive, Kerberos was pretty sure.
"I get it," Kerberos said. "So...apology accepted. You couldn't have known, and yuo didn't mean to cause harm, and I expect you'll be more careful with your magic in the future, yeah? But." He raised a finger, like a teacher lecturing. "Don't be afraid to deploy it when you have to. It sucks. It hurts people, yes. But you need to be able to use it if you're in danger. It's a weapon, like any other, and has to be wielded with care."
He exhaled. Let his hand drop.
"That's my take, anyway, as someone who has magic that forces people to see their loved ones dying or dead, which can be traumatizing in and of itself. Never mind the crushing hopelessness and despair it brings. But there are times when that's the only answer. Not to lecture, or whatever, just...decade's worth of perspective and all."
Okay, maybe to lecture a little.
He tilted his head to the side, considered what Reiki was telling him.
"That sounds...worse than what was on Lyonesse, for sure," he said, frowning. "More advanced, maybe. I'll have to keep an eye out, and see if I can find anyone who knows anything about it--it sounds dangerous. And it's killing things on planets, so stands to reason it'd be killing things here on Earth. Bad times all around."
Reiki listened so attentively that he could’ve taken notes on Kerberos’s kinda-sorta-but-not-really-lecture-except-for-like-a-little-bit, mostly out of genuine, starry-eyed curiosity—about magical girl everything, about what it meant that he’d been born with this starseed and what it meant that it had the magic it did (nothing good, most likely, though maybe Reiki was allowed to dream), about how Kerberos had gotten so good at being a magical girl and what he did that made him so good at it and how Reiki could learn from him so that he could also be a good magical girl someday—but partly because……that was just……what you did. Not even exclusively in therapy group settings, but when your family had among their number multiple historians, a political scientist, two engineers (three once your brother got his PhD), a journalist, a bunch of drag artists (the two matriarchs among them being especially prone to delivering oral histories of this that and the other whenever they felt like it, which happened pretty regularly).……
Plus, there was further personal motivation. Aside from the potential learning opportunity of it all, Kerberos wanted to help Reiki. Even if he didn’t judge the Chaos taintedness that hung around Reiki’s entire situation—fair enough to think he didn’t, having been with the Negaverse himself before—Kerberos still had every valid reason to not want Reiki around. Nothing obligated him to reach out and help someone who not only wasn’t on his team but also, from the sound of things, only wasn’t the exact opposite of Kerberos’s faction because, A., the Negaverse existed; B., there didn’t seem to be enough Dark Mirror senshi to constitute an actual threat to anyone; and C., the ones who did exist did not, as far as Reiki could tell, do very much of anything. Surely, someone like Kerberos had better things to do than help something like……
Someone like Reiki.
Going out of his way for Reiki like this wasn’t a courtesy you could just……spit on by not paying attention (even if Reiki……didn’t really feel that, in light of what it did to people, using his magic could ever properly be justified. Only thing holding him back from entirely writing off that part of the lecture was the fact that, apparently, Kerberos’s magic also didn’t have very pleasant effects on people).
“Well, for one thing? Yeah.… Yeah, I plan to be more careful with throwing my magic around anymore. I don’t……” Reiki fussed with his hair, untucking his bangs from behind his ear only to slide them back into place. “It’s like busting up trouble by the bar where I perform. It’s important, somebody has to do it, the other option is letting innocent people get roughed up—usually queer-bashed, or at least that’s the assumption until proven otherwise—and aside from the practical considerations, you know? Six-four, broad shoulders, works out regularly, all of that? Breaking things up and bashing back as necessary is sort of a sacred duty for performers like me, going back even before Stonewall but……” He huffed. “Doesn’t mean I enjoy it any. And like……what’s worse, a brick or magic that triggers people? Hahaaaa, trick question, they’re both equally dangerous, just for different reasons.”
Was this getting into too much detail?
……Reiki didn’t think so?
Sure, it sounded like a lot of words, but doing the math, all it actually added up to was that he performed in drag. At that, it only got there if Kerberos knew his queer history in similar terms as Reiki did, about drag queens and drag kings guarding and protecting queer spaces with violence as necessary (which wasn’t an uncommon take, in Reiki’s experience, but having two drag moms and not a single straight person in his most immediate clutch of family surely gave him a lot of biases on that count). Either way, it wasn’t as if Reiki had handed Kerberos a ******** map to Scandals and gone like “I’m not saying that I perform here, ‘cause I definitely don’t, but I hear one of their regular queens, Miss Sayuri Kurobara Disobedience, is wicked fricken’ stunning, you should check her out, nudge nudge wink wink.”
He performed in queer bars. He did it in drag. He hadn’t told Kerberos anything seriously revealing, anything that would have pointed back to Reiki, The Real Human Being, and gotten him in trouble.…… Not that worrying about that at a time like this spoke well of Reiki’s potential to ever be a good magical girl. When the gray spots were out there, killing things and coming from who-even-knew where?
“So, the splotches started out in space, and they seem to be escalating in the move to Earth,” he said, and sighed pensively. “Is… Have you heard anything from anyone else in your faction? Weird things on their planets, or……? Is there anybody else who might know more about whatever this garbage is? I mean……I know I’m sort of…?” He vaguely gestured at his bodice, at its black color and the violet overlay. “Wearing a sexier color to compensate for the more hostile-feeling aura or whatever the great cosmic costume designer’s idea here was? But if this is coming after everyone, then shouldn’t we be working together on it, regardless of faction?”
Noir Songbird
Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2023 8:35 pm
Kerberos nodded along with Murikabushi's explanation. This, then, was more fuel for his certainty: Murikabushi did not belong with Chaos. He understood far too well the responsibiltiy of being a Senshi. The responsibility of having strength, and what it meant to use it.
Chaos hadn't beaten it out of him yet, and the longer it took for that to happen, the better. The more likely it would be that they were able to save him.
"I'm glad you understand that," Kerberos said, softly. "And that sometimes the only way to protect other people is to throw a punch. Or a brick."
He considered Murikabushi's question.
"I'll let you know if I find out more, how about that? I sit here at this bench all the time, so we can meet back up and I can keep you informed. Because you're right, we should all be working together to do this."
