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 Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2022 4:11 pm
Quote: Disappearances (14) : People are missing. Maybe they’re people you know, maybe you’ve just heard about it on the news. They’re just disappearing. In front of you one second, gone the next, sucked into some between-space. Into some hole that flickers out of sight once it’s swallowed them up. Maybe you got sucked in–right into a strange strange black expanse, with no access to anyone else or any exits. The pull would have been magnetic, almost unavoidable. Some might escape, but maybe you didn’t. Electronics don't work and characters cannot power down. There’s no way to reach the outside world. You might feel the sensation of creatures following you, you might run into obstacles or strange environments in the darkness. While you are in this strange location you may feel hungry but will not starve to death; you may feel tired but you will not need to sleep. Maybe you were lucky and got sucked in with someone. Maybe you’re trapped there and run into someone and team up. One thing is for sure, though–once you’re here, you can’t get out on your own. Characters who get sucked into the strange between-space will not be able to participate in the ORP immediately but will have an opportunity to join partway through so if this is something you’re interested in, please keep your eye on that! If you have questions on if something is permissible, you can PM The Space Cauldron to ask!) Oh, no. No.Her garden. Yesterday evening, it had been lush as lush could be. Everything's leaves had been glossy emerald, the way you would want a garden to look at the height of June after a few weeks of on and off rain. The potatoes had looked a little droopy, and she'd whispered to them about how they were the best little plants, so perfect, so strong, and she'd thought that had helped. Everything else had already been perfect, though. Her peppers were growing up the trellises she'd set. She'd found a baby cucumber peeking out from under a giant leaf, and she'd promised the plants that she'd swing back around to the community plot today to see how everything was doing. Dead. That was how it was doing. Her precious little cucumber was all shriveled up. Her pepper plants had crumpled, and the leaves weren't just brown. They were black. Almost the strangest thing of all was that it was just her plot. The surrounding ones seemed fine. There was no sign of fire, or animals. Just, perfect little plants that had shriveled up, leaving Sadie baffled. Even powering up and trying to feel around for any magical answers did not get her far. All she could do was kneel down, ignoring the fact that she'd end up with dirt stains on her mermaid skirts, and paw through the dirt, whispering, "What happened to you? What happened?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2022 4:46 pm
Varying up his patrol routes, all up, wasn’t really helping Reiki get a better sense of who Murikabushi was meant to be, or more accurately who he was meant to be as Murikabushi. Still, it was helping keep things fresh and interesting, for him. Seeing places in town in whole new lights, venturing off to places he’d only rarely visited despite growing up in Destiny City, running into new people (even when it wasn’t always fun or they didn’t always like him)—sure, he wasn’t getting what he wanted, exactly, but he was getting more experience as a senshi, he supposed.
Maybe, to paraphrase the philosophers Jagger and Richards, he wasn’t getting what he wanted, but he was getting what he needed.
Tonight’s adventure had taken him a bit further afield than he usually traveled, to one of the parks in town with community garden plots. Typically, he preferred to avoid them—nothing against the plots personally, but he’d had a sour taste move into his mouth after running into an old ex-boyfriend one too many times around them—but without Jaremi anywhere in sight, Reiki could admit that this park was really nice.
Except for the massive dead spot he spotted, right over by where the garden was supposed to be.
Except for the woman on her hands and knees, digging around in the dead spot.
“Wait! Stop!” Bless the enhanced speed of a sailor senshi for getting Reiki closer to the woman, to the plants turning to ash under his feet and her touch. Too bad moving so quickly meant he didn’t give himself enough time to notice her aura, or her strange-by-normal-people-standards dress. His heart raced, despite the enhancements from his magic, but only because—“Hi, okay, I know random weirdos in strange costumes coming up to you in the park aren’t the most reliable source? But……”
As his brain caught up with the situation, Reiki trailed off. Blinking down at her, he realized: he’d just run up to a Knight. With a sigh, he amended, “Okay, scratch that. I know that being a Dark Mirror Senshi and running up to you in the park probably doesn’t make me seem like a reliable source? But…please, trust me, you don’t want to be touching this stuff. You don’t even want to be on this patch of land right now. It—it’s not safe. Nobody I’ve talked to has known what it is, but it has a couple Eternal senshi from your side spooked, so…”
He held out a hand to help her up. “Please? Come get out of here with me?”
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2022 5:43 pm
It probably wasn't okay to tell any member of Chaos that she was elbow-deep in tainted soil because it was her garden, her passion project from the last several months, that had been wiped out, turned to some dry, possibly corrupted thing just like that. He could look up who's plot was who's, and then he'd know that Pendour was Sadie Avamir, and even though she didn't know for sure that the Dark Mirror Court was twisted and broken the same way that the Negaverse was, even though she didn't actually know all that much about them at all, now that she thought about it, she didn't like the idea of one of them being able to find out where she lived. So, she could only sigh sadly as she pulled her arms away from the dirt, turning to look at the person who had come up to face her. She stared a little, because she always stared, but this time she stared a little longer, because this person was six feet tall, like her, and flat-chested, like her, and wearing a dress like her, and that wasn't a combination she saw every day. She'd also never seen a Dark Mirror Senshi this close before, and she wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to feel about that. She wasn't about to comment on any of that, though, in case it came across as mean. "No, it's okay," she said. "I don't judge people by what they're wearing. I mean, I try not to judge people at all, but especially not by their clothes." Just as she hoped she wasn't about to be judged by the scars across her face. Her attention turned back to her arms, and she sighed at the streaks of black dirt on her skin. "I was just trying to figure out what this was," she said, and for all she was trying to stay calm, her voice went a bit thin as she said, "It's just awful, isn't it? Those poor cucumbers."
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2022 7:35 pm
“I’m sorry,” Reiki told her without even needing to think about it. Whoever this Knight was, she clearly cared about this garden. Maybe it was some sort of Disney princess thing where she cared so much about all living things, even plants (though if it were, it did make Reiki wonder what she ate; he doubted that whatever Knights could do, magically speaking, would allow her to photosynthesize her own food). Maybe she came here as a civilian to plant things. Or maybe she was just an enthusiast for public parks and community growing plots.
Whatever the answer was, Reiki held a hand out toward her shoulder. He didn’t touch her immediately, not even to give her the reassuring pat he wanted to give, but waited, giving her a look to ask if she was alright with the physical contact right now. If not, then he didn’t want to overwhelm her. Besides, his Chaos aura could make her averse to physical reassurance from him in general, which was a fair enough boundary, especially when she was (as far as Reiki could tell) grieving for the garden.
“I don’t know what all it is, exactly? But the two Eternals from your side I’ve talked to—Ida and Kerberos? They’ve seen similar things in space. Different senshi and knights have been seeing them at their homeworlds and wonders, apparently. Nobody’s sure yet how they spread to Earth, or why, but…” He shivered despite the heat, glancing at the dead spot and remembering what had happened at the one in Ramsett Park with Fang. “These spots…… There are more of them around the city, and they’re bad news. My Court’s not doing them, neither is the Negaverse as far as anyone can tell. Too much time around them, and you can start hearing things…seeing things…feeling like there’s someone watching you. That…that’s why I rushed right over to tell you not to touch it. Nobody really knows what these spots can do to people.”
Sighing softly, he gave her a sad, earnest look. “I am sorry…for what the dead spots did to the garden.… I wish I could promise that your side’s Eternals will be able to set it right and fix everything, but…I have no idea.”
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Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 4:43 am
This was happening in space, too? Pendour didn't know the Eternals that he was talking about, but it didn't keep a deep, grief-stricken sigh from passing through her lips. She couldn't help thinking about her real garden, up in space, where she was growing coral bells, and rare breeds of roses, and where she'd finally, finally started having some success growing food, too. Was all that about to be wiped away? "If the Eternals had some way to fix this, hopefully I would know about it, too," said Pendour. She uncurled herself from the way she'd been bent over, still staring down at the dark soil and the ruined plants, and she stood at her full height. Under the dirt, the Transcendence markings glowed on her arms, and her cape fluttered out behind her, marking her as a fully realized Knight. Pursing her lips, she twisted two interlocking rings on her fingers, and cupped her hands, which filled with water. She splashed it over the dead plants, waited expectantly, and then shook her head. "Worth a try." She looked back over to him, twisting her face so the scarred side didn't show so much. "Also, I'm, um, Pendour. Hi. Sorry, I'm not trying to ignore you."
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:54 pm
As difficult as patience often was for him, Reiki tried to stick it out for this poor lady’s sake. Something that mattered to her as much as the garden clearly had……of course she’d be distracted by having something so awful happen to it. And since she was one of the White Moon’s Knights, he had no idea what she could’ve had up in space, at her Wonder, but he could imagine that worrying about that probably had her distracted, too.
(Idly, he wondered about his own……planet? Celestial body? Whatever the thing he’d stolen his senshi name from was.… Or, well, he guessed that it wasn’t really his planet anymore, if it ever had been.… He might have been born with the Murikabushi starseed, but that didn’t mean that the planet itself wanted anything to do with him.…… Was that why none of the talking space cats had found him for so long? Part of why his magic was such an unreliable mess? Because the planet Murikabushi didn’t want him? Maybe even wished that he would just die so it could get a new senshi out of its Avatar cycle or something? Either way, were these dead spots out there, too? With no one to check on them?
How would he even know, if they were? Even if he could, in theory, talk someone from the White Moon into taking him to Murikabushi, assuming they could find it, who was to say the planet wouldn’t just kick him off its surface and into the vacuum of space, to die like a b***h?… Whatever, he’d ask Levi, or Soya, or Acubens about it later. Maybe Kerberos, just to get an additional perspective, since he could probably give insight from a White Moon point of view and insight into how the Negaverse thought. Someone who’d know more and better than Reiki himself did.)
For now, though, he shook his head and just……tried to give Pendour the most reassuring smile he could manage. It probably wasn’t very reassuring, all things considered, but……if nothing else, she deserved to know that she hadn’t done anything wrong. “It’s okay, I promise—and? It’s not as if I actually introduced myself to you, either. But…” Lifting his fuku’s overlay, he gave Pendour a little curtsy.
“Sailor Murikabushi of Hunger. And for what it’s worth? I’d like to hope you’d know about a fix for this too, if the Eternals on your side did. But it’s also a fairly new arrival to Earth. I’m…genuinely not sure how many people from any side even know it’s happening. Kerberos hadn’t seemed to notice that it had gotten to Earth yet when I brought it up to him, at least?” He shrugged. “I know we’re all supposed to be on different sides or whatever? But……this thing seems like a pretty clear and present danger to all of us, so…I’ve been trying to keep an eye on any dead spots I find, and keep as many people as I can in the loop.”
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2022 7:37 pm
For all the awfulness that had been finding her carefully tended plants dead on the ground, Pendour thought that maybe tonight wasn't so bad, because she'd met someone kind. He was interesting, if only because she hadn't met someone dressed quite like him before, and although he was wearing black, he hadn't tried to stab her through the throat with a blade, or to reach into her chest to dig out her starseed for Metallia, and that was all she could ask, really. Instead, he was trying to fix this, or at least to pass on news to someone who would be able to help. It made Pendour's heart feel warm as warm, and it made her want to talk to him more, to ask him about who he was and how he knew about Eternals and what made him have friends in the White Moon. Maybe she would have tried keeping it short, though. It had seemed a little like he was just passing through, after all. She didn't want to annoy him by keeping him here. She didn't have a chance to say anything at all, though, because just as she opened her mouth, the air around her crackled and darkened. It all happened in a moment. The air itself tore. A rift opened up around Pendour, and then, a moment later, it closed, taking the Knight with it. Then, the garden was quiet once again.
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2022 10:17 pm
Everything happened so fast.
For a moment, it had seemed like Pendour might say something more, and Reiki wanted to hear it, if she did. Nice chats without taking a detour through violence first, Reiki had gathered in this first month as a senshi, were precious rare and to be cherished—especially when you only wanted to help and had managed to find someone willing to let you do so.
Then, one of the rifts cropped up. Same as when he’d run into all of the ones he’d found with Acubens and Morpheus. Except this one was hungry, and in an instant, Pendour was gone. Only an empty space remained where she was been, and frankly, the disappearance left Reiki feeling like the space between his ears as pretty empty, too.
Fortunately, that—unlike rescuing a Knight from a rift like this—was easy enough to shake around. A deep breath (plus a moment’s pause to pick up a little blue star charm—had Pendour dropped it?), and Reiki took off, silently thanking something that he’d always worked at his cardio even before becoming a senshi. His extra speed and dexterity could carry him further and faster, now, and he needed to get to North End Park. Needed to hope that a certain blue-haired thot in his admittedly well-made Party City harem girl costume would be on the same bench as always, surrounded by his asphodel blossoms.
Reiki had to get to Kerberos. He didn’t know if Kerberos would know Pendour, but someone from the White Moon needed to know that she’d been taken. Aside from the obvious threat of the rifts, Pendour deserved to have someone care about looking for her—someone who might actually be able to do anything about it, anyway.
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