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 Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:06 pm
The planter that Pendour was holding was nearly as big as she was, and Pendour wasn't a small person. One of the nicest things about having the powers that she did, in a more practical sense, was how much easier it became to move around potted plants. In this case, she was going to need a potted plant that was all lush and lovely, not just some sprout, and she was going to need to find a place for it that was out of the way, where no humans really bothered to go all that much. When she'd gone back to check on her garden plot, she'd found monsters frolicking around in the blackened, drained soil. At least, they'd been sniffing around for a moment before they saw her and skittered back off into the shadows, and left Pendour there blinking at them. It wasn't an ideal situation, but at least Pendour had some answers. The garden had been destroyed by creatures. It seemed they wanted to eat vegetables. They looked like they might be a little dangerous if someone got in between them in their vegetables, so while she thought about what to do about them, exactly, she'd decided to try to give them some food where nobody else would be hurt. So, she'd grabbed a tomato pot from her Wonder, one that was doing well, one that was heavy with lovely, slightly pinkish Brandywine fruits. She was carrying it away from her Earth garden plot, deeper into the park in a section where budget cuts meant that things were a little overgrown and forgotten.
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2022 6:11 pm
Taking a nearly week-long nap had done wonders for Reiki, though if he was honest, not…nearly……as much as he would’ve liked. He wasn’t sure if that was because this year, he’d tackled all of his Pride bookings as well as a bunch of high-concept, high-emotion magical girl hijinks—though he’d also taken extra days to recharge—or because he’d emerged back into the realm of the living right on time to find a bunch of freaky monsters hanging around all the dead spots he was keeping an eye on.
Or maybe he was just stressing about everything because he still hadn’t heard back from Toráin, who no longer had the retroactive explanation of “Sailor My Little Unicorn took him away to space to help fix something awful that the Negaverse had done to him” covering his absence, which………was very concerning, given the Negaverse of it all.
God, if those vicious ******** had done any more evil to Toráin than they already had, Reiki would personally find a way to claw the Chaos out of his starseed or whatever so all the Order senshi would stop seeing him as a Universe-Assigned Villain and let him politely rip the entire Negaverse to shreds with his bare hands.
(Unfortunately, it’d have to be bare hands, but at least Reiki knew how to use those pretty well. After all, it only made sense that he’d no longer be a magical girl without Chaos in his life. It was the thing that gave him his powers, Kerberos had said that, and if he factored in Daphne’s assertion that being a senshi was some inherent quality of one’s being, not something chosen for one, then maybe the Dark Mirror Senshi weren’t? actually? supposed to be senshi in the first place? Maybe they all had the drive but they’d been born with starseeds that were broken or wrong or something like that, and they had to get their powers from Chaos and the Mirror specifically because nobody else would take them?
In Reiki’s estimation, and based only on his personal experiences with completely irrelevant, unrelated situations, that would’ve made a lot of sense. Nor would it have been the first time that something about him was broken and wrong.)
About the last thing he expected to find while making his rounds tonight was something nice. Aside from Soya visiting and watching Madoka and The Wizard of Oz with him while he recovered from his self-inflicted burnout, senshi business had been painfully short on nice things lately—and Soya’s visits hadn’t been a gift from the universe like what Reiki thought he saw in the park; they’d been a gift from Soya herself, because she was a good friend. And yet, the sight of a very tall person with very long, white hair in an elegant cocktail dress, styled like a mermaid? Put that bright, hopeful feeling back in Reiki’s chest, like it had been when Soya and Levi had said he could become a senshi too, and Levi had held out his hand, and smiled, and his hair had been perfect as he’d asked Do you trust me?
“Pendour…?” Reiki called after her, jogging to catch up. If it wasn’t her, he’d have to apologize and maybe risk looking like a weirdo creep……but the last time he’d seen Pendour, she’d gotten sucked into a rift over by her cucumber plot. Looking like a weirdo creep was an acceptable cost for checking to see if she was okay. “Hey, Pendour! Gardener knight who looks like an Alphonse Mucha mermaid!”
Or a Dante Gabriel Rossetti mermaid. Or an John William Waterhouse mermaid. Any of the three descriptors would’ve been accurate, in Reiki’s less than humble opinion.
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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:58 pm
Pendour glanced over her shoulder to see who was calling after her. She shouldn't have had to, really. There was only the one senshi from the Dark Mirror who she'd ever had a chance to talk to, who would know her name. Well, unless someone had corrupted, but she didn't want to think about that. She'd been off in her own little world, though, thinking about the wolves, and the tomatoes, and if this would actually work, and she was trying not to think so much about what she would try to do if it didn't work. She was so caught up in it that she didn't notice the aura until it was right on top of her, and it left her blinking around her tomato pot. "Oh, hi Murikabushi. Um, lolita boy?" That's what she could call him, if they were going with nicknames. Unfortunately Pendour was not very good with nicknames. She squinted slightly. "Wait. Um, are you a boy?" It only seemed polite to ask. She didn't think she'd gotten a straight answer before. "Well, either way, I'm sorry I vanished on you last time. Um, literally. I wasn't trying to. It was cosmic magic, or something like that?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2022 6:54 pm
Once he caught up with her, Reiki didn’t quite know what to expect. Sure, Pendour’s question about his gender caught him off-guard, making him blink at her blankly while his brain tried to process that—but pretty much anything she did would’ve done that. His brain was still catching up with the part where she was here! Alive! In one piece!! And not stuck in an interdimensional rift with a bunch of really fugly and deeply unsatisfactory gargoyle dudes!!!
With a small huff, Reiki gave himself a firm shake of the head. “That—that’s not my answer,” he said quickly. “Just…trying to shake myself around a bit.”
Breaking up one train of thought with a little bit of a shock……it helped. Mostly. Reiki thought.
Either way, he did feel more in the present moment as he gave Pendour a small smile, still following her and her……rather large gardening pot, apparently. Maybe this was something related to what kind of Knight she was? Reiki hadn’t met very many of them yet—Amsvartnir, Ser Purple Rain (Kom El Shoqafa), and Pendour herself—but they all wore different colors (white and pastel rainbow, all kinds of purple shades, and a lovely bouquet blues and turquoises, respectively). Duckling had mentioned he was……of Cosmos, once? But neither Shoqafa nor Pendour had said anything like that. Maybe they had different knightly orders……?
Whatever, he’d figure things out as he went. That usually worked out okay.…… Usually.
“Anyway, I—yeah? I’m a boy?” Honestly, it was weird to get a question like this in such obvious good faith. Most people tended to ask it with a tone like eugh, what even ARE you—or at least they had more often until Rupaul’s Drag Race had made Reiki’s artform and gender nonconformity more popularly cool—but Pendour……seemed genuinely, politely curious.
So, Reiki tried to give Pendour politeness back as he explained, “I’m a boy, I just…don’t? Enjoy? Wearing quote-unquote ‘boys’ clothes,’ most of the time? And it always reminds me of an old Eddie Izzard standup bit from before she came out as trans? Back then, she had a bit about people telling her she was wearing women’s clothes—when they thought she was a man and that’s how she identified too—and she would go back ‘Well, these aren’t women’s clothes; they’re my clothes.’
“Like, I don’t think I really get a choice about my fuku, but I would happily wear this in my day-to-day, if I could.” He shrugged. “Once upon a time, I wanted to be a princess when I grew up. My brother tried to go ‘That’s just for girls’ but our grandmother said I could be a boy princess if I felt like it, so……I guess that’s what I am? Well—not in the magical sense? Since there are Princes and Princesses of senshi, apparently? And…I’m definitely not one of them. Just…a boy who likes being a princess.”
Which was……probably more detail than she’d wanted.…… Reiki just liked getting to talk about gender stuff with people who seemed open-minded.
“As for the rifts? You don’t have anything to apologize for,” he told her gently. “I know that wasn’t your fault or anything.… That’s…sort of why I came over? I hadn’t seen you, and…I mean, everything got sort of weird with the rifts for a while, and……” He sighed. “…It was just nice? To see you back out here and in one piece? …Are you doing okay? After all of that?”
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Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2022 6:09 pm
"Oh, you can be a boy princess," said Pendour, the words coming quickly although her voice stayed soft. "I hardly, um, am going to judge you for your clothes. I mean," she trailed off for a moment. This wasn't something she talked about so often, because she really didn't find it that important for most people to know, but she didn't mind telling him if it made him feel at all better. She shrugged in the end, and then said, "I have XY chromosomes, and I'm in this." She ran a hand over her ballgown, silky smooth and in a cut that most people would probably say was feminine"Intersex," she clarified, "And I never did figure out how to answer the question are you a boy or a girl?" There was another slight pause, and she kept playing with the silks of her skirt, just for the comforting feeling of having the soft fabric rubbing against her fingertips. "Um, I know it comes down to identity, but I never figured out how to identify as anything, either." Talking around the tomato plant was a little awkward, since it seemed like they were committed to a conversation, now. She placed it at her feet. "But, I know the identity matters a lot to some people, and I realized I didn't know yours. I realized I was assuming, so I asked. That's all. I like your dress." She didn't exactly like that it was black, since she didn't trust Chaos, but it had a pretty, elegant silhouette to it, and it fit him. "The rifts weren't awful or anything. I didn't like the fighting at the end, but," she shrugged again. It was a war. She couldn't prevent every battle, much as she tried.
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