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 Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 2:32 pm
Pregaming probably hadn’t been Líanlí’s greatest idea that he’d ever had. Nominally, the idea behind going out to The Closet or Scandals was getting to be around other queers for a good, long while—but here he was, all shaken up by so much of the oddity that had accompanied this Halloween in Destiny City, and his nerves had refused to quiet down. To be certain, he was not, by any means, drunk drunk (or so he decided was the case based on how he could still mostly manage walking—not quite in a straight line but he also rarely managed to do that anyway, even while sober; staggering and teeter-tottering were some of Líanlí’s dear old friends.
Even so, he had worked himself up into a nice, comfortable buzz, making the world feel all fuzzy and pleasant and pink around the edges. Nice. Decent. Significantly less upsetting than usual. Had other people been around, he might have tried harder to seem drunk—but thanks to the bouncers at The Closet, Líanlí had been left to meander on his own, with neither company nor a destination in mind. Something about the mix of pungent chewing gum and spray-on deodorant that he’d used to cover up how he’d mixed himself a couple drinks before getting to the club had only served to tip off bar staff to the fact that he was already somewhat intoxicated while darkening their doorstep in this way.
Sooner or later, he figured he’d need to call an Uber or something.… Rubbing one of his eyes while held up at a crosswalk, Líanlí had no idea where he’d wandered off to, exactly. Somewhere in town that he might have recognized, had he been at his most cognizant.… Taking Xiáyùnshì out from the inner chest pocket of his jacket, Líanlí looked around for a nearby park.… They truly were a dime-a-dozen in Destiny City, and maybe he could try falling into a leaf-pile.… It had, to his knowledge, worked to get at least one person in town from the cemetery on 53rd Street over to North End Park. Maybe it could get Líanlí significantly closer to home.
……Assuming that he could, first, find a park.* * * * Trying to get back in the swing of things (or somewhere adjacent to it, at least)……certainly had gone somewhere. Mostly, everything that had happened since he’d followed Levi to the Mirror had made Reiki feel like he needed to skip registering for classes next semester and just put in for a mental health leave, the way Mom had suggested he do for this semester……the way that had been floated as a possibility since he’d first walked out on Greg. If it hadn’t been so late in the term, he might’ve put in for it now and just quietly withdrawn from everything he was taking or TAing. On so many levels, taking a nap until [TBD] sounded……so ideal.
Offhand, he didn’t know for sure if he’d gone past the date to withdraw without it penalizing his GPA.… He was pretty sure the date to withdraw and get a refund on the tuition had passed, though.…
Ugh, Reiki hated having his mind so scrambled as this. But nearly three months since what had happened on Astraya, he still felt all ******** up about it, and he didn’t rightly know why.… Not talking about it probably hadn’t helped, he supposed, but still: Kerberos had saved him, his starseed had been put back where it belonged, and everything was supposed to be fine, now. Sure, he hadn’t been in his right mind enough to finish choreographing the piece he’d planned to do for Levi’s birthday—Reiki hadn’t been in his right mind enough to invite Levi to Scandals for his birthday at all—but……things were supposed to be fine.
Slipping out of Levi’s building in his civvies, Reiki just hoped that nobody took the gift basket out of the hallway. He’d considered powering up, mirrorwalking in, and dropping it in Levi’s room, but……almost as soon as he’d had the idea, that had felt so invasive. Really not necessary for a purple wicker basket with some blue and teal ribbons woven around the handle (not quite the same shades as Elsa’s fuku, but Reiki thought they got close enough), filled with: a sampler box with the six most decadent-looking chocolate cupcakes that Puppy Paws had had out today (all certified kosher); a heart-shaped tin full of homemade cake balls (dark chocolate coating on a chocolate fudge cake), and a post-it note clarifying that Levi could trust them because “Junsei helped” (meaning, in practice, that Reiki’s twin had done all the actual work of making them and banished Reiki from the kitchen in the interests of everyone’s safety and the food actually being edible); a crocheted scarf, nothing special in design or construction, though Reiki considered it a win that he’d found yarn in purple and blue shades that looked so nice together; a handmade plush doll that Reiki had snagged as soon as he’d seen it on Etsy, because the lady who’d made it had styled it to look like Disney’s Elsa, with her hair down, in her “Show Yourself” dress; and a gift voucher for Levi to get himself something from Puppy Paws—something that Reiki hadn’t picked out for him based on “Levi loves chocolate” and “those cupcakes look perfect.”
All of it was potentially of interest to someone else, Reiki guessed. He just hoped that it wouldn’t be interesting enough to steal. The basket was for Levi, for his birthday (which was also Lavender’s, Reiki guessed, twins and all, but……well. She had a wife, and Acubens could spoil her just fine, Reiki assumed. So……shouldn’t somebody have made sure Levi also got spoiled for his day? Obviously, the answer was yes).
Slinking into the nearby alley, Reiki powered up and whistled to let Volterra know he was ready. Going out on a patrol with Haruhi tonight…… Maybe it wasn’t Reiki’s usual Friday night plans, but……at the same time, he really didn’t feel like getting up in drag tonight, much less actually doing a number.
Besides, Haruhi almost never got Saturdays off from the post office, and with the winter holiday season looming over them, ne was unlikely to have too many days off at all in the coming weeks. Reiki had to make the most of what time they did get to spend together.
Motioning for his cousin to follow him, Reiki hopped up onto a dumpster, then onto a fire escape. Once he’d clambered up that, he pulled himself onto a roof. Strictly speaking, he probably could’ve looked for a mirror and mirror-walked up—considering how many of them were stashed throughout the city, it wouldn’t have been hard to find one—but……eh, climbing was more fun.
To quote the philosopher, Elle Woods: Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands. They just don’t!
Either way, Reiki sighed. “Here’s hoping we don’t have to bat any youma off of anybody.” A shudder that, frankly, he was overselling but a considerable amount, then he set off into the night. “A nice, quiet patrol with nothing of interest on it would be really ******** nice right now.”* * * * The only problem with taking out Xiáyùnshì was that Líanlí had enough trouble resisting the urge to idly play her even while stone-cold sober. Under those circumstances, Sober Líanlí only had to contend with his own impulses—the desire for music to help him think more clearly, the longing for that sense that he was doing something significant even if the music only mattered to him personally, the perpetual lust for <********> to do with his <******** hands.
Drunk Líanlí, on the other hand, had no such fetters and several more impulses to wrestle into submission.
Not that Líanlí was drunk. Only a little bit mild-to-moderately toasted.
Yet, as he ducked down some alley that didn’t strike him as particularly familiar, despite knowing that calling attention to himself after dark was probably an even worse idea than pregaming had been, Líanlí couldn’t help himself. The tune he played was sprightly, keyed in D major, and even to his own ears, sounded odd on a dizi when it had been composed for twangy rockabilly guitar and a clear, gravelly tenor full of earnest emotion (and his arrangement was an adaptation of the vocals; anything else would’ve been too difficult to channel). Still, Líanlí knew the song all too well. It had, after all, been one of the first covers he’d put on his Youtube:
Don’t go ‘round tonight. Oh, it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise.…
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Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 1:41 am
Volterra wasn't sure what to do anymore, with this whole "I'm a magical person" thing that required nem to take energy from people to feed the mirrorverse or whatever the ********. Ne just knew ne didn't like being a Dark Mirror Senshi, not really, but there was very little ne could do about it now. So, ne was making the best of it, doing a patrol with nis cousin late at night in the ******** freezing autumn air in the outfit that ne was admittedly growing kind of attached to (even if it was not! great! for keeping warm! ne really needed to get some leg warmers to put in the subspace to shove on!). Still, despite the complaints, it was nice just to hang out with nis cousin. Ne followed them with amusement across a dumpster and a fire escape to the roof. A mirror would've been easier, Rei-chan... Ne didn't say anything though, just enjoyed taking nis time with Murikabushi as they wandered together. "Heh, hopefully," ne said, before stopping, throwing a hand out to stop Murikabushi as well. "Hey... listen to that. That flute. That's beautiful." Ne wanted to leap down and meet whoever that was, and started to do so, when the world went black, and ne was suddenly in some kind of tiny little space, holding a die, and staring at nis cousin and.... some guy.... with a flute! Flute-boy! ....Oh, hell, ne wasn't getting a power signature from flute-boy over there. Whatever weird magical s**t was about to go down was just up to nem and Murikabushi. And both of them had fluctuating magic. "....Your flute playing sounds nice," ne said awkwardly.
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Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 7:12 pm
……Well, that had been unexpected.
Líanlí hadn’t thought much about stopping at first, nor about seeing an odd glimmer out of the corner of his eye. Destiny City made itself a home for little oddities about which one probably wouldn’t write home, just like he’d been telling the cute leaf-pile babe who’d wound up in North End Park with him. (Any avoidance of writing home could be chalked up, quite easily, to either “One does get used to these things, when one lives in Destiny City” or “One wouldn’t want one’s parents and/or guardians hearing about half this stuff, they might catch their deaths of scandalization.”)
Still, strange six-sided dice lying in dirty alleys, distributing vibes that screamed “Hey! Listen!!! Pay attention to me!” did not normally have cause to happen.
Nor did they typically mean getting dropped into random situations with two strangely dressed people one had never seen before. While both newcomers had black thigh-highs and opera gloves, as well as a certain panache to their outfits, they looked like they’d come from worlds apart, otherwise. On the left, the shorter of them had cropped silver hair and an eyepatch, with all kinds of gold theming around nis outfit: golden forearm bracers, golden sunbeam crown atop nis head, golden sparkly doodads on nis chest, nis temples, and nis shins. While the taller lacked so many overt sparkles, he more than compensated for it; between his frills and the hand-on-hip swagger he’d decided to channel, he gave off an air like someone not to mess around with. That, and Líanlí expected that he would’ve towered over Líanlí even without his cute little pumps.……
Honestly, why did anybody in this town ever accept all the lines about gas leaks, and feral dogs, and whatever else got passed around? When things like this happened?
Somewhat greater in scope than everything else going on right now, though: Líanlí doubted that the garden variety weirdnesses of Destiny City normally got in the habit of whisking one and one’s new companions of the moment away to……apparently, the middle of nowhere?
In a very literal sense, at that: looking around himself and the two who’d shown up here with him, Líanlí did not get the sense that the three of them had wound up in a place. Certainly not someplace that anyone else might recognize. Black inked its way around the three of them, an endless, empty sea of nothing (or at least Líanlí sure hoped it was nothing), illuminated only by the golden road of squares before them.
Both of the newbies had six-sided dice of their own, on top of that.
Cursory glance said they looked the same as the one Líanlí had stopped to pick up: stained wood and shiny, with numbers just as gilded as the shorter one’s outfit.
Fidgeting and telling himself to just breathe, Líanlí twirled Xiáyùnshi. He threw a grin toward the little one in the sparklies, trying to make himself feel a little less insecure about everything before them right now. “Thanks,” he said. “Don’t suppose either of you know anything about this? Or d’you have any secrets in your cute skirts?”
Líanlí’s own cute skirt—black-and-hot-pink plaid, pleated and styled like a slutty schoolgirl’s, and worn over black skinny jeans—had no such benefits. But the other two here obviously had some kind of magic about them, so maybe they had some kind of clue, here.As Reiki tried to get his bearings in the unfamiliar situation before him, he caught a whiff of something……rank. Was it polite to squint, frown, and pull a sour face like he did in front of someone new? While Volterra was actually trying to be nice to someone who wasn’t family? Maybe it was. But Reiki recognized the unsteadiness in how this guy was pacing around the square of space they’d all found themselves in. Far more tellingly, Reiki recognized the stiffness of someone trying too hard to perform—to what effect, Reiki couldn’t quite guess. But there was something artificial about his movements and Reiki didn’t like it.
Sighing, he whispered to Volterra, “Whatever this is? Be extra-careful, especially with that one. Playing the flute like that doesn’t stop him from smelling like the time at Scandals when Shirl-He/Them-Pull stole everyone else’s drink tickets from our drag bags.” Not that he didn’t empathize with a b***h getting ******** up after finding out their ex had been cheating. Gods knew, Reiki knew that feel all too well. Didn’t make this right here any less a—“Goddamn b***h of an unsatisfactory situation.……”
With a shake of the head, he cast a sidelong glance over at the civilian. “For all we know, the ******** Negaverse pulled us in here to drain us and him—well. Probably not us us, specifically, but……victims in general. This could be some elaborate victim-draining scheme of theirs, and the guy we have to protect is drunk.”“I am not drunk!” Líanlí held up his free hand, pointing one finger at the empty void where there really ought to have been a ceiling. Or a sky. Or something other than the great nothingness around them. Pointing toward the glowing platform near the end of the golden-square road, he added, “I am, however! Thinking that if we want to get out of here, we should probably start walking.”
Which Líanlí did.
……Right into an invisible barrier that wouldn’t let him pass.
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Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:56 pm
Volterra grimaced a little at the attention called to nis skirt—it was easier to accept it for what it was when people didn't point it out. But... Nis lip curled a little at Murikabushi's warning. Drunk. Of course. Ne exhaled sharply. There really couldn't just be anything nice in this world. God, the last thing they all needed was for someone in a dangerous magical situation to be ******** drunk. At least, ne thought, the drunk guy was a civilian, so he couldn't ******** up some magical aim of some horrible spell like Reiki had, or something stupid like ne nemself had. "I wouldn't—" Smack. "—do that." Ne shook nis head, rolling nis eyes and sighing deeply. Honestly. Civilians just didn't know what to do when presented with magic. No wonder none of them wanted to accept it was real, when they acted this stupid about it. "We appeared into a magical box with a path laid out in front of us in squares like a sidewalk... Or, squares like a board game." Volterra lifted the six-sided die in nis hand, raising nis eyebrow. "We each have a die. Seems like that's the point. We're playing... like, Mouse Trap or something." They were trapped, so it seemed an appropriate guess. It could have been Monopoly, but ne didn't see any fake purple money in any of their hands, so. Wait. "Or Jumanji," ne suddenly thought, paling instantly. "Oh, <******** class="quote"> amorremanet
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Amor Remanet rolled 2 6-sided dice:
6, 3
Total: 9 (2-12)
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Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 11:07 pm
“Jumanji?” Líanlí repeated, still sitting down on the floor, rubbing his face and wracking his brain for that name.… He’d heard it before, right? It didn’t sound like any word he could recognize in any of the languages he knew, so name seemed like a good bet? “Jumanji, Jumanji, Jumanji…”“It’s a children’s book, you significantly less dignified, gin-soaked crane-wife.” Maybe it was rude (it was probably rude), but once he’d nudged his glasses out of the way for a moment, Reiki openly facepalmed. Seriously…… As if Volterra deserved this after everything ne dealt with from the Karens and Steves who came to the post office.…… As if Reiki deserved this when he wasn’t being paid or getting tipped.……
“Children’s book that got turned into a movie with Robin Williams? Brother and sister find a magic, jungle-themed board game in the park, and play it, and all the hazards come to life and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting town? They made a sequel-slash-reboot a few years ago with Karen Gillan, Jack Black, and Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson? Made the board game a video game, and the main characters go from an elementary school brother and sister to four ragtag misfit high-school kids.”
Ugh, why was he even bothering? Trying to coach a drunk guy into remembering movies he probably hadn’t seen in over twenty years? Why didn’t Reiki ever learn to give a damn about his own sanity?Whether it looked like it or not, Líanlí did listen as the tall magical weirdo in the fluffy skirts tried to explain what the silver-haired magical weirdo had meant by saying the still-unidentifiable (to Líanlí personally) word Jumanji. With a hmm, he pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think, think, think, thiiiiiink……but he came up with so much nothing and could only shake his head.
“Don’t think I ever saw any of those movies…or read the book……or had it read to me, either……” Da-jie probably would have read it to him when they were kids, if it had been allowed in the house. But unless Líanlí just couldn’t remember right, then the Jumanji book had probably met the same fate as most English-language fiction that wasn’t required for schoolwork, cram school, or standardized test prep: his parents and grandparents had looked it over and decided that it seemed unedifying, more likely to give the children joy than necessarily teach them anything, so it hadn’t been permitted.
“I’m Xiǎolían, by the way,” he not-exactly-lied without needing to think about it. This was a verbal conversation, so it wasn’t like these two in the black could see the characters of his pseudo-alias (小莲) and make A Whole Thing out of it, or use it to somehow get back to his real name.
Unless they’d ever watched him on Youtube, he guessed, but if Líanlí was honest, he didn’t have so many subs to merit thinking that someone recognized him unless he heard his music playing on their headphones or he saw something from his Redbubble store on their person. Enough subs to earn a decent living, but not so many that he was even on Jonathan Young’s level, much less that of someone who’d reached pop cultural ubiquity like Mr. Beast or the big name beauty guru drama squad. Plus, Líanlí had changed enough that any of Zhìháo’s old clips, back from before he’d become Líanlí, didn’t seem like reasons for concern.
“So, how do all the ragtag who’s-their-names win anything at Jumanji?”Ugh, brooding and rubbing his face like that, the drunk guy—Xiǎolían, apparently, at least for the time being; if he was smart, he wouldn’t give away his real name so easily—was liable to make Reiki feel bad for having no patience for his s**t right now. Crossing his arms, he explained, “They have to play the game, basically. If you don’t finish the game, it keeps causing trouble, but if you make it to the end and someone calls ‘Jumanji,’ everything goes back to normal.”
With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, he added, “And I’m Murikabushi.”Líanlí hummed, nodding along, and got to smile when the Tall One In The Very Fluffy Skirts—Murikabushi, or so he said—finished his tale. “So, you’re saying I’m right about how we need to get to the exit over there, and your friend is right about how we need to roll the dice to make it happen. Well, don’t mind if I do…”
Líanlí didn’t wait, he simply rolled. Luck seemed to be on his side, too, since that natural six put him closer to the exit than the two who’d gotten sucked in with him. Good thing he was ready to get up, because once he’d gotten back on his feet, he felt something pushing him forward. “Last one in with the rotten eggs and whatever you like,” he trilled, letting the invisible hand on his back guide him along to space number six. Maybe this kind of fun was worth getting turned away from the bar.
……At least, until the shrill sound pierced Líanlí’s ears. Up in front of him, something whooshed past. He stumbled backward, just narrowly missing something else that rushed behind him. More of these sounds and these weird breezes sent him maneuvering around the square, staggering more than he ever did normally, even while so s**t-faced that he lost all semblance of self-control—but one of them just narrowly managed to get him, skirting up against his Adam’s apple. That’s how he realized what they were: wires, razor sharp, and this last one was way, way too close to his neck.
“No.…” Líanlí snuffled piteously. “Please, mister, touch anything but my voice.… I need that.… Like, to work.…”“I don’t think we should—” Reiki tried to protest, but Xiǎolían was already off, this time with some modicum of success.
Or anyway, it seemed successful until the razor-wires shot out around him like chains from a Cenobite puzzle-box, making the poor drunk dance around while trying not to get all sliced up.
Reiki heaved a sigh and looked to Volterra. “Whatever you roll? Please be careful. I promise to do the same.”
Tossing his own die gave Reiki a three, and almost immediately, he felt something at his back, pushing him along. Once he moved three squares ahead, it stopped, seemingly satisfied—but the game itself wasn’t. Because of course it wasn’t. At least the thick, Silent Hill-looking fog that rolled in didn’t try to slice him into ribbons. Reiki couldn’t see worth a good goddamn, but he also wasn’t bleeding and honestly, he’d gladly take that.
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