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feat., Murikabushi, Kimadésir (NPC Robot), & Kerberos
After getting away from the beacon, Reiki wandered without much in the way of direction, destination, or anything resembling company. The mirror spat him out in a corner of this accursed rock that he didn’t recognize. Not that this was necessarily special, he was dimly aware. Having never been here before, Reiki could hardly expect himself to recognize anything about this place. Plus, it meant he couldn’t quite succumb to the helplessness of feeling lost. To his mind, in order to be lost, one needed to have some manner of idea where one was in the first place, or at least a vague concept of where one wanted and/or was supposed to be.
“All that is gold does not glitter,” he murmured to himself and whatever ghosts or spirits (or robots running way too high on compulsory happiness) might have lurked around unseen. “Not all those who wander are lost.…”
Idly, he thanked whatever lucky stars had as yet kept his non-Haruhi family from finding out anything about Reiki being a magical girl now. As much as he loved and treasured Obaasan, he didn’t particularly want, at this point in time, to discuss any of the numerous reasons why neither of them liked Tolkien very much. Worse, Reiki didn’t want to deal with Junsei doing his obnoxious younger brother thing, giving Reiki an insipid smile that thought it knew something deeply embarrassing, like it wanted to ask “You like Krabby Patties, don’t you, Squidward?”
After a while, though, Reiki might have found it in him to tolerate Junsei’s bullshit. True, he may not have enjoyed it very much, but Reiki also didn’t enjoy meandering around this rock alone.… No signs of Kerberos or Amsvartnir, none of Ida or Encke or Pendour, none even of Little Miss Can’t-Be-Wrong (and Reiki enjoyed the thought of finding Logos even less than the thought of Junsei having wound up here to be an obnoxious younger brother about anything).… That kind of solitude wore on one’s nerves after a while.
Silence, especially, wore on Reiki Rokugin’s nerves. It always had. For as long as he could remember, he’d struggled with the concept of shutting up and being quiet, more so with the related concept of letting things simply exist as they were, without inserting a bunch of bells, and whistles, and ricketa-racketa in some half-baked attempt at making the universe around him more interesting. Faced with peace, quiet, and a dearth, if not an outright absence, of noise, Reiki always caught his nerves itching like they wanted to burn clean through his skin and escape his body by any means necessary, just because it would make things more interesting than allowing them to be as they were.
At least it was good, he supposed, that he and Levi still hadn’t made time for a conversation that they’d been putting off since June. After whatever all happened with this bullshit, Reiki would desperately need to add “kidnapped to some middle-of-nowhere space-rock full of robots who didn’t understand how to let a b***h be In His Feelings if those feelings were anything but happy, and made to deal with some snarky, harsh, overly judgmental little b***h-boy for Cosmos, who looked like someone forgot to dry-clean Jeff Goldblum.
On top of that, the thought of Levi gave Reiki something to work with, in that it gave him an idea for some noise that he could make, a song that he knew like the back of his hand after damn near losing count of how many times he’d performed it for Pride season: “The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside. Couldn’t keep it in, Heaven knows I’ve tried. Don’t let them in, don’t let them see. Be the good girl, you always have to be. Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them knooow! Well, now they *knoooooow*!”
Keeping up with the chatter in the datastream had left Kima feeling……truly ill-at-ease about everything going on. Prophecy had foretold the development of the robots’ own starseeds, had it not? That was what Kima himself had thought when provided with his own starseed containment vessel. If the purpose of a trial was to prove one’s fitness or lack thereof for the prize that waited at the end, then surely, the trial to prove one’s fitness for a starseed—for a proper place within the cycle of rebirth as blessed by Cosmos, the same as so many other sapient life-forms—would result in the growth of one’s own starseed? If one truly deserved a starseed, then why should one need to steal it from another?
Worse yet, why would Kima—why would any of his artificial brethren—need to steal the starseeds from the most recent senshi belonging to their homeworlds? Home Helper had brought that up in the datastream, only as a question—a query into the presence of beings from the artificial ones’ worlds of origin and an explanation for that point of interest—but Bo had jumped on the idea and as far as Kima could tell, she had committed herself to keeping an eye on Sailor Terebellum……trying to liberate a starseed from the chest of the senshi who shared a homeworld with Bo herself.…… Was that what Kima would need to do? In order to access the cycle of rebirth? To truly become alive by that definition of the term, as his sapience should deserve?
Yet, Surly hadn’t managed to find the senshi from Eros, his own world of origin, and so many of the ones who’d come to Astraya did not appear to be senshi at all.…… Moira, Pax, Dione, Pluto, Mercury—surely, if the organics needed to donate their starseeds to robots from matching homeworlds, there would have been far more senshi to work with and far fewer………whatever all of these other beings were. Thinking of them only as donors for potential starseeds felt wrong.… So. impossibly. wrong. If that was all these organics meant in the grand scheme of things, then why did they come to Astraya with so many foibles, so many histories, so many vivid, vibrant emotions between the lot of them?
So much of this overwhelmed Kima so terribly, he could hardly think of what to say into the datastream……what to tell the others about the situation as he perceived it……what to ask that could have helped make things any clearer for himself or his friends.…… After too long, he also couldn’t think of what to say to explain his long absence during the debate—for surely, it stood to reason that, if this issue meant as much to Kima as it did the others, then he would have said something sooner, rather than writhing silently toward the brink of collapse, until he felt like his wires and his circuits would burn clean out of him.
No matter how hard he tried to move on from this one simple point, Kima kept returning to the thought, This was supposed to be a party……
In some capacity, he knew that he needn’t have worried about what was supposed to have been. Prophecy existed for several reasons, and perhaps he and his brethren simply hadn’t heard the full truth of things when they had come up with the party. Maybe that possibility had existed only in their own heads, not in The Reasonser’s or the minds of whoever had first laid down the prophecy.… Oh, but how tragic that would have been, for them to have invented the entire idea out of nothing! Some part of Kima twisted in shame—he thought that it was likely shame, at least—over failing to ever move beyond this part of his original design……but he did ever so love a party.
(But……why did Kima ever so love a party?
Because, once, he had been programmed to ever so love a party, to adore the gatherings of organic lifeforms and all the goings-on between them.… So many of them longed for songs or dances, for anecdotes related with the sharpest wit and most dazzling charms, for a chance to while away the night in the company of people whom they enjoyed.… None of the organics whom Kima had yet encountered seemed to agree with such ideas, or at least they didn’t seem in the mood for any sort of party right now.… Had the definition of the term changed so wildly since Kima had had it programmed into him? However long had that been?
………And yet, he could not shake the feeling that he had endured hardship like this before, the struggle to inspire a smile in someone who seemed so desperately opposed to the idea. That boy flitted through his mind again, the same one who always resurfaced when Kima allowed himself too much in the way of nostalgia for the times before he gained his sapience, such as he could recall them. All sharp edges without the necessary drive to weaponize them, skinny and fragile like a butterfly too soon emerged from its chrysalis, a full skirt done in violet with ribbons of vicious red, such long, black hair and those eyes—Kima could never recall the face exactly, but those eyes haunted him, so richly purple and always so sad. If only he could have……)
By the time Kima felt like he could perhaps voice an opinion in the datastream, everyone had already decided: the organics needed to be liberated from their starseeds in order for the robots to enter the cycle of rebirth. Feeling that verdict resonate from the others, Kima felt as if his own opinion had vanished. Things this level of important could not be so brutal as all this, could they? And yet……if this was how they needed to do things…… If no other ways existed……
“And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast—”
Kima’s head snapped up, whirling in the direction of the sound. That…… Was someone around here singing?
“I’m never going back!”
Oh, but they were! And such a lovely voice, at that! Perhaps a bit untrained, unpolished in the ways that a proper courtier’s might be, but with a bit of guidance, they had such a richness to their tone, such raw emotion…
“The past is in the paaaaaaast! Let it go, let it gooooo, and I’ll rise like the break of dawn…”
Following the sound, it took Kima hardly any time at all to find the source: in one of the courtyard pavilions (one that Kima rather liked himself), a very tall boy in a very full skirt stood on the wide rim of a stone fountain that had, in the robots’ entire time on Astraya, never had running water. He pranced quite expertly on his long legs and heeled shoes, swishing a mane of long black hair behind him, twirling in time with the tune he had in mind. Although Kima did not hear it himself, he almost felt as if he could, so powerfully did the organic boy believe in his music.
“Let it go, let it goooooo! That perfect girl is gone!”
Although the words spoke a moment of triumph, the boy himself sang like a wolf without a pack, on the brink of starvation and desperately yearning for something he could eat. As beautiful as his voice was, and as passionate as his performance, pervasive sadness lurked beneath it all……such a terrible sense of perpetual wanting, of always going unsatisfied, of hunger that would not—could not—be slaked.
“Here I stand, in the liiiiiiight of daaaaaaaay!”
Kima trembled behind the column where he stood, watching as the boy strode forward, head held high and arms wide open.
Lifting his arms as though he could control that same storm, the boy let starlight hit his chest. Kima’s circuits sparked in delight as he saw what laid beneath the glint: a silver brooch—a senshi?! how fortuitous! Focusing on it, he could make out the design as well: a violet serpent, curled up and chasing its own tail, but falling just shy of its mark.
Could it be……?
That design, Kima recognized so well. Reaching into his pocket, he removed the watch he carried there.… It hadn’t ticked at all since he’d gained sapience, regardless how many times he wound it up. Still, the violet serpent on the front……it must have been the same as the one on that senshi’s brooch, though Kima’s had been fashioned from little cuts of amethyst and he could not guess what materials had made the brooch. He only recalled that the sigil belonged to The Senshi—Kima’s senshi, Sailor Murikabushi, the Senshi of Hunger—because another copy sat engraved on the back of his left hand, with the words Property of Sailor Murikabushi.
Inside its silver casing, the watch’s face and hands sat behind broken glass. Opposite the face, a finely engraved message read, To Kima, Never forget who you are. You have always had more heart than the fools for whom you contort yourself. Your friend, Airan.
Airan.……
Airan.………
Airan.…………
Kima had dwelled on that name so many times since becoming properly himself, had repeated it to himself over, and over, and over again—and now, just as before, he could not fix a face to the name.…… Something in him—he did not know from whence—told him that the name went with that beautiful boy so plagued by such incurable sadness……that Airan and Sailor Murikabushi were one and the same……but the boy singing in the courtyard: he wore the sigil of Murikabushi now, proudly fixed on his chest and gleaming in the starlight, and he didn’t seem the same as the boy Kima only somewhat managed to remember.……
Oh, what if Kima was wrong? What if this boy wasn’t even a senshi? All the good senshi—all proper senshi—wore white, it was known (or at least Kima assumed that it was known, because the conviction felt so certain to him that it must have been reality). Yet, here stood this boy, with his dress, his gloves, and his tights all done in black.
A Sailor Murikabushi who wore black—who even could have dreamt such nonsense?
But did that mean that he’d stolen the Murikabushi starseed? That he’d stolen Airan’s starseed? Or had the rebirth cycle gone terribly, terribly wrong, this time? What in creation could possibly explain someone with the sigil of Murikabushi on his brooch dressing in black like some……some filthy plague-rat? Why, Kima should have run in and claimed that arrogant little worm’s starseed for himself right now! How dare he wear that sigil and parade himself around in the color of Chaos—!!
Shaking his head, Kima shoved the watch back in his pocket. He would need to investigate before reaching any conclusions. With how long must have passed, how could he know that the old fashions and the old ways from Murikabushi still endured? Perhaps this was all an innocent misunderstanding……?
Perhaps he had been misled, or perhaps he needed saving.…… Perhaps he was not one of the malcontents that Surly had pointed out as ripe for potential starseed-pickings because no other organics would have missed them.……
“Let the storm rage ooooooon!” Ah, the big finish. Two ways to take it when actually singing: crisp and clean and punchy like Idina, or a show-stopping belt like Cassie Levy from the OBCR. Some other day, perhaps, Reiki might’ve felt up to belting like Cassie, but so far, things had been—most politely—An Absolute <******** Day.
So, he kept it short and sweet: “The cold never bothered me anyway~!”
Snapping his arms down to his sides, Reiki was prepared to get on his way, now. He’d been in his feelings, he’d had himself a happy little musical number, and this meant that he could get back to the project of relocating someone he knew……except for the sound of someone clapping.
That made Reiki perk right up, back into reality. Hopping off the fountain he’d taken to using for his nonsense, he tried to follow the sound—“Hello,” he called out, “who’s there? ……If you’re from the Disney Corporation, I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to sue me for an unmonetized, mostly private performance that was just to make me happy?”
“Oh, but did it, though?”
As he peeked out from around the column, Kima wished that he could smile genuinely. His facial features never moved, painted in the same unflappable expression with the rouged and powdered appearance as always—and while it technically constituted a smile, Kima did long for the ability to choose for himself what his face looked like, and when, and for whom. A genuine smile, crafted with his own desire to move his face, would have proven useful for getting the organic boy to un-tense himself.
“You sing so beautifully, darling boy. But this one feels compelled to ask: what yearning moves you so powerfully?”
Ugh, great, another ******** robot—It took everything Reiki had not to roll his eyes over the sudden intrusion of this guest, and at the fact that they (he?) had apparently been the one clapping for Reiki.—Guess they don’t have the concept of tipping your performers out in space, huh?
(Far more likely, he supposed it was probably the case that the robots didn’t have any money of their own, and whatever they did have wouldn’t count as legal tender back down on Earth. Hell, it might not have counted as legal tender with the sexy dragon-man who lived to peddle his wares. Who even knew anymore?)
Still, as he got closer to the pillar, Reiki could get a better look at the robot.… At least this one was vaguely humanoid, unlike the weird tiny one with the tambourine who hadn’t grokked the concept of “no,” and he was clearly capable of speech (again, unlike the little one with the ******** tambourine).
From a distance, he looked like he’d gotten dressed up nice, in a lovely violet and silver brocade waistcoat and breeches, but up closer, Reiki could see that said brocade pattern was not on fabric, but rather painted on the robot’s silver casing. The wig attached to his head sure looked real—Reiki himself couldn’t afford the vast majority of human hair wigs out there on the market, but he’d been fortunate enough to see some that Sybil and Cherry owned, or that other queens had brought with them to different pageants, and for all he’d have needed a magnifying glass to be certain, he recognized the look—but real or not real, Reiki appreciated the look, he guessed.
A long, pink ponytail with waves in it that fell about halfway between a Marcel wave and the loosely Botticelli-inspired waves that people generally bestowed on Lestat de Lioncourt in Vampire Chronicles fanart. Much as this situation still sucked, Reiki had to admit: it was a gorgeous look for this robot’s hair.
“Uh, sorry for my ignorance, I guess,” Reiki said, “and sorry if manners just work differently for all of you, but……? Shouldn’t I be allowed to know who I’m talking to before I start telling you my life story or whatever? Helping you pass judgment on my happiness based on how I sing a Disney song?”
Kima had no idea what a “Disney” was. Perhaps some other model of robot? One more designed for singing? Not that Kima couldn’t sing if he’d felt like doing so, but a model with music more directly in mind during their programming would have been better suited to the task. Still, he did have sufficient programming in etiquette, and hadn’t lost it when he gained his sentience.
So, with a flourish, he bowed and extended a hand. “This one has the honor to be Kimadésir, one of the finest entertainment and courtesy models from asteroid Murikabushi’s top-end artisans.” As he said this, Kima watched the boy’s face. Thankfully, he could make his own expressions, and ostensibly had no training in how to school his face into behaving itself. His eyes went wide—perhaps with recognition? “And to whom does he—”
“Wait, you are from Murikabushi?!”
Even knowing how rude he was being right now, Reiki couldn’t help himself. Couldn’t keep himself from interrupting. Everything about him lit up at this unspoken potential for this robot to actually know something about any of these shenanigans that Reiki had gotten himself embroiled in, all because Soya had heard his starseed singing and Levi had asked him if he’d wanted to be a magical boy. Questions upon questions bubbling like he’d filled his mouth with Diet Coke and Pop Rocks—practically bursting out of him, even. So many disparate pieces he’d managed to hear from so many different sources.…… Past lives, and reincarnations, and what sure sounded like some kind of magical girl Avatar Cycle, but none of it had come together for him yet—and the robot had held out his left hand while introducing himself to Reiki.
On the back of his left hand, some engraving named his previous owner as Sailor Murikabushi. Simply reading those words made Reiki’s breath snag in his throat, and he could feel his eyes getting too big to be allowed. Surely, he was robbing himself of anything resembling dignity—given his tendencies, oft remarked on by friends and family, his eyes had gone quite soft and earnest—but……? How could Reiki act dignified when presented with an opportunity like this?
“Please, I—I’m Sailor Murikabushi,” he told the robot softly, “At least, I guess I’m the Sailor Murikabushi of right now? For whatever that’s worth when I’m pretty sure Murikabushi didn’t even want me? This planet, or asteroid, or whatever that I’d never even heard of until someone told me that I’m its senshi now, I’m certain that it didn’t want me and honestly, I don’t think I blame it? Because I don’t think I’d want me either, if I were a single planetoid in possession of good fortune and in want of a senshi?
“Still, it’s stuck with me being its Senshi of Hunger, and I…? I don’t know what I’m doing.… I don’t know what it all means? If it—if any of this garbage that we call life—means anything at all, then……something like being a senshi, surely? It must? But what are you supposed to do when it doesn’t? Or when you want it to, but you just don’t know—”
“Oh, but how could you not—”
“Well, it’s not like they’re handing out instruction manuals or anything is it?”
That point made the robot tilt his head, which Reiki supposed was the best he’d get right now. Didn’t seem like the poor guy really had any ability to change his face up worth a single damn. No matter what he ever felt, his expression would always be painted on the same, chosen for him by gods-only-knew who, whenever they’d made him and gone ‘Ah yes, give this one the most insipid smile imaginable.’ Tragic, really.
“It’s, like? First, you don’t get a visit from any talking cats until you’re well into your twenties. From the way she—the Mauvian who finds you—tells you what that part means, she almost couldn’t wake you up anymore, and all kinds of stuff you hear from other senshi all over the playing field? Seems to support her in that. There’s one senshi who you look up to—and you don’t want to tell him that you look up to him, but you do—and he’s been doing this a decade already. Gotten himself out of horrific garbage like most people, even most other senshi, can only begin to imagine.”
Reiki shivered over everything that decided to come spilling out of him, faced with this robot who maybe didn’t even understand, but……but he came from the same world as Reiki’s starseed, didn’t he? So……maybe, actually, he would? Maybe, they were of a kind, somehow, inexplicably?
“Then there’s another—one you only wish you were half as good as what he deserves in life, which is the best, which is to say ‘not. ********. you’? And he helped bring you into this. You’ve known him outside of senshi this, that, and the other for a while, and you trust him, and you want to impress him but you don’t know how. You want him to think well of you, but all you can think of lately is ‘Elsa, are we the baddies?’”
Not that Reiki imagined this poor robot had ever heard of Mitchell and Webb, much less of a vintage British comedy sketch about two Nazis realizing they were on the wrong side of things, moralistically speaking, but the point of the central question didn’t require much explaining, he felt fairly certain.
“Because your own team doesn’t exactly have a mission statement that anybody’s told you about, not really. Like, a nominal goal, alright, you guess, but no one’s told you what that goal actually means in context, or what it’s <******** FOR, or how any of it relates to anything out in the real world, where people are <******** dying, and with the kinds of powers that senshi get to have by virtue of being born with the right starseeds, you shouldn’t get to just opt. OUT. of ******** dealing with that!
“Because a lot of the people most at risk don’t have that kind of option to defend themselves! They’re just lined up like cattle to the slaughter for these sick ********> from the <******** Negaverse, who rip innocent people the ******** apart, and rip families apart, and hurt. people.—they’ve hurt your own friends—left right and center for the sheer ******** DELIGHT of doing so—and they all act like you’re supposed to be <******** FRIENDS!”
Was it petulant to stomp his foot? Yeah, probably. Did it actually do anything to emphasize his point? Meh, maybe not so much. Reiki didn’t know for sure, but allowing himself to have that particular dramatic gesture felt like a sufficient treat.
“Because……because you wear black. And all the senshi dressed up in white—or at least enough of them for it to matter—they act like you’re friends with the Negaverse as well. Like anyone actually explained to you what ‘Chaos’ or ‘Order’ or anything about that even meant when this beautiful boy who’s way too good for you held out his hand, and smiled with his infuriatingly perfect hair, said ‘Do you trust me,’ and let you walk through some magic mirror so you could—so you could be a magical boy—”
The sob caught him by surprise.
Maybe it shouldn’t have. Maybe he should’ve seen it coming, considering how close he’d come in so many other conversations. But it did still surprise him, finally clawing its way out of Reiki’s throat like it had threatened to do when he’d talked to Encke, like it kept threatening to do so many times when he’d shown up at Kerberos’s bench, handed him some water or a coffee, and gone ‘What’s up, slut’ like Reiki wasn’t really feeling ‘What groveling must a b***h perform in order to get a ******** do-over from the universe?’ or, worse than that, ‘I made my choice, and I chose wrong, and now, I’ve burned everything down—and taken my cousin with me, my younger cousin who’s as good as a sibling and who I’m supposed to protect because I’m the oldest, but because Haruhi is so much better than ne thinks ne is, ne ******** had to follow me instead of saving nemself and letting me just fumble down the road to Hell alone.’
Another pitiful little noise soon followed, refusing to let him muffle it in the back of his hand. Tears blurred the corners of Reiki’s vision, but he continued, “I just…… Senshi are supposed to help people, aren’t they? If they’re not, then why even have these magical powers in the first place? But because someone, at some point, must have misled the boy I like—and misled so many others like him too—we’re all stuck here together and we can’t get out, with this Chaos bullshit giving us our powers, with the sick. mother. ********> from the ******** Negaverse acting like because they’re with Chaos and we’re with Chaos, we should all be <******** friends, no matter what kind of <******** garbage they treat our Court like or how they walk all over us while assuming aforementioned solidarity, and apparently, it’s considered <******** rude to tell representatives of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party that you don’t think you want to stand in alleged solidarity with them, actually, because you don’t morally support leopards eating people’s faces!”
Which…… God, all of that was too much. Even by Reiki’s standards. Far, far too much. But—if anyone was going to understand, then……someone who’d known the last Sailor Murikabushi, surely……wouldn’t this Kimadésir know something that could help Reiki take on the mantle, now? ……Maybe? ……Pretty please?
“…All I wanted was to help people and impress the boy I like, Kima,” Reiki told him, softly, miserably, pleading with something in the universe to please, just make this all better. “I wanted him to like me, and I wanted to be special, and I guess that’s why some horrific nightmare sphere like Hunger is ******** perfect for me because all I ever do is ******** want. things. Desire’s all I’m made of in the end, and it never wants to simply be controlled, and I just……”
Reiki shook his head, but looked to the poor robot, tears still freely flowing down his cheeks. “Is it always like this for Sailor Murikabushi? Is this all we ever get to be? Or was he—were they—just—the Murikabushi who you knew?” Reiki pointed at the sigil engraved on Kima’s hand. “Was he ever, I don’t know, ******** happy? Ever in his life, I guess? Or at least did he get the chance to help anybody?”
“Was he happy……?”
Such a deceptively simple question, on its surface—and further complicated by Kima’s memories being so fragmented.… The ballroom at midnight, with its enchanted, glowing lights all floating amidst humanoid bodies, still caught up in their dances.… The crash of waves on some other world—somewhere distinctly not Murikabushi—as Kima’s senshi curtsied for another and thanked her for granting him an audience.… The darkness of a different world, one whose senshi came with wings and gears (unless he hadn’t, in which case, where had Kima gotten that idea in the first place?), while Kima’s senshi introduced a new retainer, one whose starseed wasn’t blessed with the powers of a senshi but had called out to Airan’s anyway, and made him smile, whose soul had resonated with his own in the way so many poets on Murikabushi wrote about, whether they had experienced such things themselves or not.…
Kima remembered countless examples of poems like that. Once upon somebody’s time, those verses been programmed into his mind along with his precepts of courtesy and the code that taught him how to contort his body’s flexible limbs, how to extend a hand toward the face of someone crying and ever so gently brush away the tears. As to whether or not Kima believed the old poets and their pretty words concerning the nature of what they called love……
When he tried to ask himself that question, he felt like he remembered smoke, and fire, and his delicate, beautiful boy—his senshi—being dragged away in chains, called a traitor by that same retainer, and forced to his knees beneath a blade meant only for severing pretty little heads from delicate little necks.
Organics truly were such fragile creatures.
And so hopeful in such unforgiving circumstances, if this New Murikabushi spoke the truth about how Chaos had taken to recruiting its soldiers with such filthy lies and underhanded deceit, playing right into the senshi’s natural inclination toward helping others at their own expense.
……Perhaps this, Kima thought to himself, was actually his trial after all: if senshi were meant to help people, and if the starseed that had come to him belonged to a senshi—at one point, to his senshi, and now, to this New Murikabushi who’d never visited their homeworld and didn’t believe that their asteroid even wanted him to defend it—then would Kima be strong enough to perform a mercy that, on its face, seemed so terribly cruel?
Truly, a trial of unspeakable weight and significance.… He didn’t know if he could live up to that demand—but watching this New Murikabushi lean into his palm, allowing Kima to cradle his face when they’d only just become acquainted, he resolved himself to try. For this new boy who had already suffered far too much, and for the boy whom Kima only remembered in wisps and pieces like trying to catch smoke inside one’s fists, Kima had to make his best attempt.
“Oh, you poor, sad thing……” he whispered, struck with the unspeakable sense that he had said those words so many times before and only sometimes truly meant them. “…This one regrets the pain to which you have found yourself subjected. Truly, he wishes better for you. But, if it helps you any, then do remember: you need not carry such a burden by yourself. Nor is it a failing on your part that you need, sometimes, to be weak.”
From the sound of things, New Murikabushi had already been too strong for far longer than he should have.
Hopefully, Kima’s kindness would do him well……would reward him with the rest that he deserved.
Hearing those words that ought to have sounded like empty platitudes, Reiki nodded. For how often he told other people similar things, he so rarely listened when someone thought to say them right back at him. This time, though, he thought he’d at least try.… After all, didn’t he owe it to this poor robot, who’d only wanted to help his artificially intelligent kin throw some kind of lovely fête, and had wound up in this courtyard, handling a strange, absurdly tall boy in his frilly, incredibly full skirt, and trying so hard to reassure Reiki that anything would be okay again?
At the sound of a three-note tune, Reiki perked right up again. He meant to ask what the song was, if it was some relic of Murikabushi-That-Was, the homeworld that Kima must have lost to have found himself out here on this a*****e space-rock. If it was, then perhaps Kima would have taught him more about it, given their old customs a chance to live on through the new senshi, even if he was a truly mewling, weak, pathetic excuse for one.
Tendrils reared up and dove for Reiki’s chest. As they pierced through his brooch and sternum, a strangled little sound croaked out of him. His face contorted in confusion, in betrayal. His body went ragdoll limp, all his previous supporting strings abruptly severed—rent asunder, even—while his gray eyes dulled over without the thing that gave them such a spark in the first place. The simple protest—“Kima…why?”—never left his lips.
“Sshhh, my darling,” Kima whispered, wondering dimly if he was even being heard. As the precious, precious starseed emerged from the poor boy’s chest—vivid, vibrant violet like the fabric overlay cocooning his black dress and like the old Murikabushi’s skirt had been, with a glowing core of violent, visceral crimson—all of a sudden, his face felt so much heavier. When Kima withdrew his hand, using it to cradle the starseed instead, New Murikabushi unceremoniously collapsed. “Rest well, sweet boy.… You’ve been too strong for far too long already.… Please allow this one the privilege of shouldering this glorious burden for you. He promises to honor your sacrifice as best as he knows how.”
Noir Songbird
……god, please kill me with the length on this. I don’t even wanna know how crazy it got.
