Prompt 5 (Snow Fairies): On a cold winter night, when the moon is nearly full and bright in the sky, you hear laughter. At first, you can't place it, but then you feel little pokes and prods, tugs on your hair, your clothes. Sometimes you think you see something out of the corner of your eye--a small, icy body. Sometimes you hear wings flapping in the night. As long as you are out in the cold, you feel eyes on you and you find yourself the target of small mischief from what seems to be icy little fairies, though they move too fast for you to see or grab. They never speak, only laugh. When you go inside, or venture anywhere with too much light or heat, they seem to disappear and do not bother you again.
Reiki probably should’ve learned his lesson from the ghost dogs.
Two run-ins with those guys—once as the victim running from them, and once charging in with a flashlight to rescue Miss Xenia—and that honestly should’ve been enough of a clue to stay away from certain poorly lit corners and alleyways throughout Destiny City. Unfortunately, taking his role as a senshi seriously—at least by his own definition, if not necessarily that of anyone else—meant that he had to visit the places that youma (or more troublesome Negaverse operatives) would, so he could take them out if necessary, and that meant more than his fair share of dark alleyways, full of all manner of nasty little things who could theoretically cause immense amounts of trouble for him.
At least the ones doing so tonight hadn’t been youma, which was a blessing, he supposed. But on the other hand, he hadn’t managed to get a good look at them. One moment, he’d be trying to feel around for auras, sensing if any other Chaos operatives were out and about—and then he’d feel tiny bursts of cold as little hands grabbed at the new sleeve-looking pieces on his fuku’s overlay. The next moment, he’d be examining a scene as much as he could in the faint, ambient light of the city, looking for anything that suggested Nonsense or Games being afoot—and then he’d feel a push at his back, like something trying to test how well he could balance in these heels.
Even listening for any screams, any growling, or any of the telltale crackling he knew to associate with certain infernos contained within the chests of Certain Troublesome Negaverse Boys, ultimately proved to be pointless—because right when the night got still enough for him to really focus on the listening, whatever little ******** had taken to following him? They’d chitter and laugh like squirrels on nitrous oxide. Or they’d flap their tinkling little wings just enough to throw off his focus. And whipping around to try and catch them helped exactly not at all; they moved too fast for him to get a grip on them. Mostly, his attempts just made Reiki feel like a complete lunatic.
At least music always kept him grounded. Even in the face of whatever little nightmares had followed him into the dark this time, even with it looming over him that he would not be returning to campus for classes when they reconvened soon, one of the precious things Reiki had in common with his Dad was music. Idle humming or singing, not even necessarily to any tune in particular, always helped chill Reiki out or feel his feelings more fully so he could get them over with, steady his nerves so he could focus, and put himself in the best headspace he could manage at any particular moment. If he didn’t know any better—
“If I could begin to be half of what you think of me, I could do about anything, I could even learn how to love…” Reiki sang softly. Audibly, yes, but it wasn’t as if he wanted to announce his presence to any youma or Negaverse operatives more than his aura and his starseed already would. “When I see the way you act, wond’ring when I’m coming back, I could do about anything, I could even learn how to love like you…”
—and if he didn’t know any better, he’d almost think the music was getting the impish little brats tagging along beside him to chill out, too. Idly, paying very little attention to where in all the alleys he wandered, Reiki thought he felt a powered aura nearby, but aside from discerning that it didn’t have all the sharp edges and latent emotional trauma that seemed to stick to the Negaverse’s soldiers, he didn’t pay it much mind. He’d dug himself into this Disney Princess hole when he’d started singing. Who knew if the fairies would even let him stop?
“I always thought I might be bad,” he continued before the fairies could start getting restless, “now I’m sure that it’s true, ‘cause I think you’re so good, and I’m nothing like you.…”
genovianprince
Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2023 9:33 pm
Demeter wasn't quite sure what to think about the little bitey fairies. She tried being nice to them, talking gently, asking them to stop, offering snacks—nothing seemed to work for longer than a moment, other than stepping into the light that they seemed to hate. But she had to stay in the dark, trying to navigate back home without getting seen by anyone who would jump her for energy again. She didn't really want to re-experience that! It had sucked! A lot!!
But then, she caught someone singing, and sensed the aura of a Dark Mirror—it felt familiar, so she moved towards them. Upon seeing Murikabushi, she beamed, joining him on the song.
"Look at you go, I just adore you, I wish that I knew what makes you think I'm so special! If I could begin to do, something that does right by you, I would do about anything, I would even learn how to love..."
She giggled, pausing at the natural point in the song to wave vigorously.
The owner of the aura he’d felt soon made themself apparent—and oh, Reiki couldn’t help but let himself smile. Miss Demi had perked up and seemed alright after he’d taken her to Kerberos for some energy healing, but seeing her up and about again gave Reiki a sense of relief. For one thing, it meant that she hadn’t let herself get too down about that run-in with the cowardly Negaverse chick who’d left her to die in the snow……that she wasn’t going to stop trying to grow as a senshi. That kind of plucky spirit warmed the heart, it really did.
Also helped, right now, that she had a lovely singing voice.
“Hey, Miss Sugar-and-Spice,” he said with a smile and a little wave—and a wince and gasp as one of the fairies decided that his ring finger looked ever-so-delicious. “Motherfu—have these guys been giving you a hard time tonight, too? They’ve been on me like ugly on a politician for the past half-hour.… Singing at them’s about the only thing I’ve found that worked—oh, for the love of—”
Reiki fumed, trying to swat one of the fairies off of pulling on his fuku’s overlay like they thought they were some bodice-ripper boyfriend. Rolling his eyes, he rushed to soothe them with the first thing that came to mind: “Look at this stuff. Isn’t it neat? Wouldn’t you think my collection’s complete? Wouldn’t you think I’m the girl, the girl who has everything…?”
Shaking his head, he gave Demeter a hangdog look like You see what I’m dealing with.
Idly, he wondered if having two of them might not accomplish more than they could alone. But lest the grabby little shits get any funny ideas, Reiki felt compelled to press on, “Look at this trove, treasures untold. How many wonders can one cavern hold? Lookin’ around here, you’d think ‘Sure, she’s got everything.…’”
genovianprince
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2023 8:59 pm
Oh, how cute, he'd nicknamed her! She beamed at him and giggled, reaching out to take his hands and shake some of the fairies off. "Singing is fine and all, but come into the streetlights," she told him as she gently tugged him towards the light.
Gosh, his singing was beautiful, though! Too bad she couldn't ask him if he did covers on youtube, or something. He sounded so gosh darned good!!!
"Though, don't take this to mean I want you to stop," she added quickly, giggling, "You sound amazing, and you can't go wrong with Disney, either!"
Reiki blinked at Demeter bemusedly for a moment, first at her helping in a way that involved reaching into his personal space (which he decided that he didn’t really mind, he simply found confusing without warning), and then at her idea of what to do for the fairies.… Wait, the streetlights?, he thought. You mean just like the…… Oh, for ******** sakes.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Reiki groaned. “Thanks for the compliment on my singing, sweets. Ugh, that makes way too much sense,” he said, letting Demeter tug him toward the lights. “There were some ghost dogs running around the alleys back around Halloween? Much louder and scarier than these little guys. Sticking to the shadows like they did, though, and chased you around. You also needed light to get them to go away.”
Reiki shook his head as they slipped out into the street—into the light—and he felt the fairies disperse in a chorus of irritated chittering. “You know those little lamps they make for you to wear around bike helmets? I got one of them cheap and kept it in my subspace for a while……but then the ghost dogs stopped showing up, so? Guess what I left at home?”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:16 pm
"Oh, I didn't encounter them! I wasn't, um, as cool as I am now just yet," she said, giggling. "Sounds scary, though! I love dogs. Fairies, maybe not so much now. We'll see how I feel if I ever need the Tooth Fairy's services again!"
She giggled again when he asked her to guess just what he'd left at home—a real mystery, to be sure! Absolutely puzzling, in fact! "Well, I'm going to say definitely not one of your feet," she teased. "Probably that little headlamp, though. Oh well, you'll be able to get home soon, right? Maybe we could stick together—oh yeah!"
She pulled her senshi phone from subspace with far too much glee for such a tiny circumstance and flipped on the flashlight app, turning it up to max brightness and waving it at the ground.
"And we can use your little, like, walkie talkie mirror to amplify it if need be!"
“Aw, no, honey,” he told her easily. “I’m sure you were just as cool as you are now. Maybe you hadn’t found the right talking cat to whisk you off into the glamorous life of a magical girl? But the henshin pen and the magical powers don’t change anything about you, the person.”
Advice that Reiki honestly needed to internalize his own damn self, but—he’d work on that later.
Reiki couldn’t help a good-natured little laugh, just from……everything about Miss Demi, really. She didn’t seem to be much younger than he was, strictly in terms of years, but she was so……innocent. Pure. Genuinely enthusiastic about things in a way that most people weren’t because it was so much easier to be irony-poisoned and ******** Over It about everything (something of which Reiki himself was often guilty……oops.…… And on reflection, it probably had not helped him any while trying to deal with certain troublesome Negaverse boys. How could Faustite know how to take his behaviors when they oscillated so wildly between starry-eyed earnestness, what’re you gonna do? STAB me?? sarcasm, and some other, secret third thing that refused to commit to being one way or the other?)
The smile on Reiki’s face melted ever-so-slightly at the communicator that Demeter pulled out, though. Not in a sad or moody way, but in a way of confusion about the fact that her intra-faction comms device……looked like an actual phone. “Y’know, it’s so weird,” he said, pulling out his compact in case it did prove necessary to keep the fairies at bay. “Negaverse agents have these, like? High-tech tablets? Then you Order senshi have those phones. I’m……admittedly not too sure about Knights? The one I see most often, we usually don’t have a reason to page anybody, but……”
Reiki tilted his compact around. It was cute, sure—looked like a mirror image of his brooch: silver with the perpetually unsatisfied ouroboros engraved and done up in a rich violet hue—but as he explained, “The discrepancies in our Factions’ relative tech levels really do stand out when they’re next to each other like this, huh? Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just……definitely something.”
At present, his best guess was “a sign that his Court was so bad at Doing Actual Things, they couldn’t even catch up enough to get senshi phones.”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:39 pm
Demeter hummed. "That's sweet of you, Murikabushi," she said, smiling at him and deciding not to correct him on how she meant what she had said. It wasn't that big a deal, anyway, and she didn't want to make him feel bag.
"I'm not sure, I haven't met a Knight before," she mused. "If I do, I'll ask 'em, though!"
She suppressed the desire to skip as they walked together, even though she really wanted to. It probably wasn't really the right time for it.
"I wonder if you could get upgrades from the Mirror, or something," she suggested. "Maybe it'll listen to you guys! I don't know anything about it, though, the cats are who touches our stuff, haha."
“Hmm, that might explain things, if it’s the cats’ doing,” Reiki supposed. Granted, it explained things in a way that meant he could no longer blame the situation on his Court being collectively inept and allergic to Doing Actual Things, but……okay, fair enough, maybe it wasn’t actually their fault.
“With the Mirror, we don’t really have our own Mauvians? We kinda have to share them with the Negaverse, and it’s like…? As I understand, the Chaos Mauvians are all officially employed by the Negaverse? Some of them like the Dark Mirror better personally, and they all have, like, a sacred duty to look after senshi, regardless of what team they’re on? But the Negaverse could theoretically have some rules about, like, ‘We can’t stop you from helping Dark Mirror senshi learn how to do senshi stuff, but don’t go sharing our tech with them, grrr, argh, blargh, Nega Nega Nega.’”
Was it necessary to hold up his free hand, fingers curled up to resemble claws? Was it necessary to scrunch up his nose and contort his face into some weird parody of an oni mask? Was it necessary to pretend to growl, albeit in a tone of voice that felt singularly Over It? ……No, no, and no, all the way down. But it was amusing.
“I hope you do get to meet one of your team’s Knights sometime, though,” Reiki said, dropping the silly Negaverse-mocking and going back to being genuine, the way Miss Demi made him feel more compelled to do. “I haven’t met very many, granted? Four, offhand? But they’ve all been really great. They all have some magical affiliation with a planet out there—or with the Cosmos? or maybe it’s supposed to be with the Sailor Cosmos who, like, watches over starseeds and helps people leave the Negaverse? Don’t know for sure. But I’ve met two Cosmos Knights, a Saturn Knight, and a Neptune Knight, and they’ve all been great.”
—Although, a thought occurred, a memory of Astraya…… “There was one Knight who I kind of saw but didn’t really meet, once? And she seemed really aggro and not very cool? I don’t know what her planet was or anything, but there was this bad situation, a bunch of us from all kinds of different teams got pulled into it out of nowhere, and she turns around to start blaming it all on some nice aliens who were just minding their own business. Kerberos and the Neptune Knight I know had to break things up before the totally un-chill knight got people hurt. But other than her, my experiences with Knights have been A+, definitely recommend making friends with them.”
genovianprince
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:48 pm
"Man, that sucks! Technology should be shared," she said, frowning slightly at Murikabushi in a sparkly-eyed, sad way. "That's so silly..."
She brightened at the mention that he'd met a bunch of knights, though. "Well, I'll try to avoid the aggro one," she said with a slight laugh, "I don't want to go around making friends with someone who'll just attack people on sight! But hey, if we're ever not super busy with stuff, maybe you can point me in the direction of one of the nice ones."
“Right? You get me. Especially since it’s the Mauvians inventing the tech, like? Who do the Negaverse Generals even think they are—allegedly—for not letting the Mauvians share their own tech with the Dark Mirror, in this hypothetical explanation that I made up based on some logical inferences but do not know how true it is.”
Yes, it was a pretty massive self-drag, but Reiki stayed upbeat about the delivery. Mostly because he realized that he kinda, sorta, very much deserved a call-out like this. Anyway, if he couldn’t read himself to filth, then did he really have any business trying to read anybody else?
Either way, he returned Demeter’s smile with one of his own. “If you run into them out in the world? Erytheia of Cosmos, kinda skinny blond boy with a bow, looks like he’s straight out of some magical fairy realm. Pendour of Neptune—she’s so glamorous? About my age, I think? Her dress looks like a mermaid sort of style, long wavy hair, and she has these glowing tattoos? They’re a sign that she’s bonded really close with her Wonder, the things that give the Knights their power. She’ll probably be easier to find once the snow lets up? She likes planting things in the community gardens at different parks around town, so.…
“Then, Kom El-Shoqafa of Saturn—he’s a little bit older than me, but not like, ‘old enough to be my father’ old? Probably in his early 30’s. He’s a little short but agile and strong, white ponytail and glasses. Saved me from a youma once before I got Awakened, and he just seems like a really good guy overall? And personal favorite for last?” Reiki shrugged with a bashful look. No sense in pretending he didn’t have a favorite here. “Amsvartnir of Cosmos. He’s only about nineteen, but his goatee makes him look older? Done up in really dapper-looking white with gold trim and most of the outfit being, like, this gorgeous pastel rainbow gradient.… He’s a sweetheart, honestly. And a really good friend.”
Ruffling a hand over his bangs, Reiki wasn’t sure how to end this thought now, so he just let his mouth take over: “And, back on your magic? I can’t really do much about that, it’s on your starseed mostly? But if you ever want to learn some self-defense stuff to keep in your back pocket? I’m not a trained instructor or anything, but I’ve taken some classes……both officially and in the classrooms called ‘I got bullied all the time in school’ and ‘I’ve had to help protect folks around some of the local queer bars.’”
He shrugged, giving her a hopeful little smile. “Hit me up if you’re ever interested, okay? Being tall and loud and colorful makes me hard to miss.”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2023 9:26 pm
Aww, he had so many friends! That was definitely a good sign. She beamed at him as he rambled about them, resisting the urge to coo about him having a favorite. That was also cute, dangit.
"Hmm, well, self-defense could never hurt. It's not something I ever really thought about," she admitted sheepishly. "Thank you for the offer. I'll try to catch you sometime, yeah?"
She waved goodbye and took her leave, heading towards home.
