Strays (1) : Destiny City News reports several sightings of ‘feral dogs' appearing throughout the city. Those interviewed claim that the dogs would surround them and chase them down the streets, seemingly popping in and out of sight until the person finally found themselves in a well lit area. You have the misfortune of running into these same dogs.
They cling to the shadows as you go about your way at night. Seemingly at the corner of your vision, one flickers by, and you turn and see nothing. Again and again it happens. They are trying to drive you into the darkest corners of the city, herding you away from the light. In the nearby distance are the lights of the city: streetlights, signs, traffic. You have to do something to get there, to escape these creatures. When you make it to any significant light source, you hear a low growl, a wailing hiss; the dogs have vanished.
For now.
There was something stalking her.
Xenia did not like this feeling at all. She was used to being the predator, the scary thing in the dark that other people needed to watch out for. But there was definitely something following her--or more than one something--and she felt very certain that she was being herded. There was nothing on her aura sense except for maybe a Dark Mirror sort of nearby, which meant it wasn't a youma--and that made her even less happy.
A youma would attack her, sure, but she could handle it.
Some unknown thing, driving her away from the light and into the dark, always at the corner of her vision and never actually in it? Yeah, no, Xenia didn't like that.
But the news reports said they vanished in the light, and so she stopped, finally, spinning around and looking for something--anything--a streetlamp, a neon sign, whatever it took to break the shadows.
"Here, puppy puppy," she said, under her breath. "I promise not to hurt you....Much...."
amorremanet
Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 11:48 pm
Halloween season this year certainly had been……mmm, something else. Which Reiki supposed went without saying, since he’d never spent Halloween with magical girl powers before—but still. Everything had been so much more………much this year, and that sure dampened his ability to enjoy……hmmm, most of the festivities, really. Everywhere you turned, there was some new youma to punch, and a new local cryptid or haunting to be a pain in your a** (better a local cryptid than a local crypto-bro, Reiki supposed, but that bar to clear was less “in the ground” and more “somewhere down in probably the Eighth Circle of Hell? Maybe the Seventh or the Ninth but most likely the Eighth”), and oh, it exhausted a b***h’s nerves.
Perking up at the feeling of a nearby Negaverse aura, Reiki almost went in the opposite direction. So far, no trouble had come for him from Faustite or any of his little minions, and Reiki wanted to keep it that way.…… Thankfully, whoever it was, they felt more like a senshi than an officer, though it was always hard to tell with how abrasive and wrong a Negaverse aura felt in general.…… It would’ve been so easy to just run away and do nothing, wouldn’t it? Definitely would’ve kept Reiki out of any potential trouble with the literally flaming General and his entourage.
But on the other hand, Halloween was the best season for curiosity to kill any cats, what with all the wannabe Victor Frankensteins, Wei Wuxians, and Herbert West: Reanimators running around.
Peering into the shadowy alley where the aura felt strongest, Reiki couldn’t exactly pinpoint where he felt them coming from—but he damn sure heard the all-too familiar snarling.… The feral dogs from before. <******** if it was someone from Team Faustite, how was it okay to just leave them behind right now? With those things?
Thankfully, he’d come prepared: a cheap but sufficiently bright little lamp with an attached elastic band. Meant to be worn over a bicycle helmet, it came out of his subspace in a flash and found itself fastened to his wrist. Hopping off the roof of the used bookshop where he’d been lurking, Reiki switched the lamp on.
“Hey!” he called into the darkness. Holding his arm out and up, so the lamp could function as a lantern, he looked around for whatever Negaverse senshi had run into these dogs. “Need a little illumination? Or maybe just a bigger dog?”
Xenia was not actually expecting backup. She had very little experience with the Dark Mirror, but all of it suggested that they generally kept to themselves and let the Negaverse keep to their own, and that was that, all well and good. Butt his one, apparently, was stepping up to help--effectively, too!
She wasn't sure, at first, what to make of the light he shone in the direction oft he snarling that had been stalking her, but it seemed to work--she heard a low growl and a wailing hiss, and the strange shapes slunk away, back into the shadows from whence they had come.
"Oh, man, thanks," she said, and she jogged forward into the light, and--
"Holy s**t you are tall." Maybe Xenia had met someone taller at some point. In the moment, she simply could not recall. "Uh, hi, I'm Xenia, do you run into doorways a lot, or?"
amorremanet
Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2022 12:59 am
While the senshi who came out of the night to join him had a long, artfully tousled mess of green hair like The One In The Boobs had back in July, she was also—to Reiki’s stomach-turning, face-paling horror and disgust—a <******** kid. Standing shorter than he did and having such a cute, fluffy-looking fuku didn’t make her too special; most people Reiki met fulfilled the former qualification and there were plenty of fluffy-looking senshi fukus out there in Destiny City, on all sides. But……God, she was so young, and the youth written all over her big eyes and cute face only emphasized her petite stature and innocent question in a way that made Reiki feel even more protective.
Worse, between Rana and Quetzalcoatl, Reiki couldn’t even judge either the White Moon or the Negaverse because his own team also had recruits who seemed like they should’ve been more worried about who to ask to the Spring Fling dance or their big algebra test coming up, rather than anything like this godawful magical girl war. How ******** damning was it of all three factions that they all recruited literal teenagers, and were apparently quite happy to do so?
Still, however uneasy he felt about this girl being a ******** kid, Reiki gave her a small smile. “Murikabushi, and that happens less often than you’d think, actually? Does still happen sometimes, but most of the doors in town are fine.” On a cursory glance, he couldn’t spot anything overtly wrong with Xenia? But it still couldn’t hurt to ask—“Are you okay? Nothing injured or anything?”
"Oh, good," Xenia said, idly. She hadn't really meant to ask the question, it was rude and ridiculous, but it had slipped out without her really thinking about it, so here she was. That seemed to happen to her a lot; words that escaped without her really intending them.
Or actions taken without really considering the consequences, like holding her own ******** starseed aloft in the Rift. But that was over and done with and she had defintiely and totally learned a lesson from it. Probably.
The lesson was "don't do exactly that thing that she did or people might die, and next time, 'people' might include 'Xenia herself,'" which Xenia thought was very much a step in the right direction in terms of Learning s**t.
"Not injured, totally fine, they didn't catch up to me and even if they had, my magic's shields." She shrugged like it didn't matter, because really, it kinda didn't. She was alive, no one had been injured, that was really all she could ask for. and even if there had been danger...it was long gone now.
"You seemed to know what to do. Have you run into those things before?"
amorremanet
Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2022 8:06 pm
For all Xenia said she was okay, Reiki had his doubts—but in fairness, he would’ve had doubts about any version of the story in which she was completely okay. Had it been any other, equally young Negaverse senshi in her position, he would’ve felt the same (unless they decided to be annoying brats, in which case he’d temper his concern with exasperation). Ditto for any Dark Mirrors in around her age or Rana’s. Considering how young some of the Order kids running around the subway station had been, he probably would’ve been more upset by running into one of them.
Still……just because he wanted something to be wrong, didn’t mean that it actually was. As far as he could tell, she seemed to be standing fine, and he couldn’t spot any rips or tears in anything, be it flesh or fuku. With his arm still held aloft, he nodded and motioned for her to follow him toward the other end of the alley, where there were streetlamps, stoplights, and lit-up signs to help keep the hounds at bay.
“I was keeping an eye on the news reports about them anyway,” he explained (leaving out the part about why: Cersei was at home, and safe, and he planned very much to keep it that way, with her safely off of any Negaverse radars—except Soya-hime’s, but that didn’t really count). “Thought maybe they’d be exaggerated or something? Then, a little while back, I got the joy of running into these mutts over near the gayborhood. Not fun. Still, it’s why I put this lamp in my subspace.”
Once they got to the light, maybe he’d tack on an offer of some water. Whether she was as okay as she claimed or not, most people could stand to be reminded that hydration, for human beings, was thoroughly non-optional.
Xenia let him lead her out of the alley and back onto the well-lit street, and sighed heavily. This whole thing was so dumb, really--she was supposed to be a big bad Negaverse Senshi, and she was getting chased around by feral dogs.
But at least she'd escaped unscathed; that was what really mattered. And her rescuer was someone on her side, sort of. Chaos was Chaos, wasn't it?
"Oh, yeah, I saw some stuff, but I didn't really pay that much attention." She shrugged. "I figure they were youma, and if they'd turned out to be, my girlfriend's an officer and so's my mom, so, you know, free backup."
Backup youma would actually listen to, even.
"But then they weren't, so....I'm glad you showed up." She dusted off her skirts, though they were clearly pristine and undamaged. "Ugh, stupid dogs. And this stupid city, there is just so much weird s**t here. No one should live here."
amorremanet
Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 9:24 am
“Yeah, these streets leave a lot to be desired……” Reiki agreed with a sigh. “I probably should have thought youma, at first? The news reports were weird enough for it. But I got firsthand experience before I got around to thinking anything else.”
Despite telling himself not to, Reiki gave Xenia another quick once-over. Ugh, he needed to stop doing that. Trying to search for something wrong about Xenia, about the situation, or about any of this? Probably made him no better than any of the weird conspiracy theorists out there in the world. No matter how young she was, Xenia knew better than he did how fine she was or wasn’t.
Still, as he reached back into his subspace—to deposit the lamp, now switched off, and pull out one of the bottles of water he made a habit of carrying around—Reiki couldn’t help but give her a bemused look. As he offered Xenia the water, he asked, “Did you say… Your mom and girlfriend are both in the Negaverse?”
……Considering his cousin and the boy he fancied were both with the Dark Mirror, Reiki supposed that he couldn’t be too surprised. Maybe all the factions in town made some kind of habit out of collecting families or various romantic entanglements? Sure would’ve explained why someone so young had already gotten drafted into the Negaverse’s ranks, at least.
Xenia nodded, and reached out to take the water bottle with the zero hesitation that could only be afforded by someone who assumed, by default, that anyone in black was her ally. She opened it, and took a sip.
"Thanks," she said, holding up the bottle and wiggling it a bit,a s if there could be any ambiguity about what she was referring to. Another sip, and she shrugged at the question.
"Yeah," she said. "I mean, she's my adoptive mom? I started on the other side, but it totally sucked, so when I decided to come over, she took me in, whixch was great, because I was fifteen and did not, like, have? A plan? For what I was gonna do with no identity except what the Negaverse faked up for me? And I could have stayed in the barracks or whatever, but ick?"
Too many people. Too much shared space. No ability to power down, really. Gross. And there were the dorms at Romano's, but perhaps smartly, she kept her mouth shut about that. No need to spill that particular secret.
amorremanet
Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2022 3:36 pm
To her thanks, Reiki just nodded. Regardless of anyone’s team, it was really nothing to share his water with people. About the only reasons he hadn’t offered it to Faustite were: A. most of their encounters had gone other than well; B. who knew if Faustite might not take an intended kindness as an insult; C. would a bottle of water even survive getting so close to him, given the furnace in his chest; and D. some part of Reiki was still considering the efficacy of a spray bottle to make Faustite behave if their paths crossed again and he started lashing out instead of staying away.
(Then, Reiki only held off on that idea because he didn’t really want to hurt Faustite, he just wanted to stick to the plan of leaving each other be.)
Still, the more Xenia said about the Negaverse and how she’d joined them, the more uneasy Reiki felt about the whole arrangement. Okay, he didn’t know all the circumstances—how could he, when he and Xenia had only just met and Reiki only knew what little she’d chosen to reveal—but that handful of facts sure sounded like a Negaverse operative taking advantage of a teenage girl (and at least her dissatisfaction with the White Moon, if not also some unfortunate circumstances in her civilian life) in order to sway her opinions and lure her away from the best team in all of this high-concept magical girl nonsense. Even if that wasn’t entirely what happened with them, her adoptive mother had still been party to her selling out their entire planet.
Still—what had happened to her wasn’t Xenia’s fault, and……Reiki really had no room to judge. Reminding himself that he’d joined the Dark Mirror so a boy would like him and he’d never guessed a thing about Faustite struggling with an addiction (despite having experience that meant he should’ve known better), Reiki forced himself to keep up a neutral expression. Polite. Even-tempered. Attentively listening, but trying not to seem overly invested, lest it come across as weird.
“Kind of her to have your back like that,” he agreed, while the heart inside him wailed, What did she do to influence your decision? Was any of it on her? Does she actually have your back at all, or would she sell out her own daughter if Metallia asked her to? “I’ve met some people who changed teams and didn’t have anything lined up—which? I get the desperation, but……man, that’s a rough way to go, especially with having to forge all the documents you’re expected to have just to register for high school or go to urgent care these days, much less anything else.”
……In that way, he guessed it was sort of fortunate that Xenia had switched sides so young. Still deeply skeevy. Still crawled along his skin like slime and made his stomach lurch. But—even if her adoptive mother had taken some kind of advantage, hopefully she’d also helped with all the paperwork required to just exist as a human person in the twenty-first century. Some of that s**t was an unfathomable labyrinth even for adults; he couldn’t imagine how it might have seemed to a fifteen-year-old who had probably lost at least some of her memories, if things worked like they had for Kerberos and Lysithea with White Moon to Negaverse side-swaps (at least, more willing ones than Monoceros’s had been).
Offering Xenia a small smile, he asked, “You gonna be good to get home to her and your girlfriend? Or do you want someone to go with you a while longer?”
Xenia didn't really take any notice of any indications that Reiki might seem conflicted about her story, or...anything at all, really. Mostly, she was concerned abut rehydrating, and about taking one last look around to make sure those dogs weren't back.
"Yeah, it was super helpful. Would have been a total mess figuring everything out without her," she said, honestly. "Because let me tell ou, before she offered I was gonna go over anyway, but I had zero plan or like, anything, at all." She shrugged. "It all worked out, though."
She screwed the cap back on the water bottle, and gave a jaunty little wave.
"Anyway, I'm good! Thanks again, see you around!"
She turned, to jog off into the night. Best to finish her patrol and get home as fast as possible, before she ran into anything else weird.
