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 Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:27 pm
Getting to patrol with another person happened so rarely for Reiki, he couldn’t help but be grateful that, when he’d texted Olivia earlier, she’d been up for going out with him tonight. Especially in light of what he’d been doing lately—double especially the newfound way that mirrors would start to feel ominous and menacing if he didn’t drop what he was doing and humor them with a jaunt into Mirrorspace—Reiki just……really wanted to be around people right now.
Walking back to the bench in Lafayette Park where he’d left Bélénos, Reiki the trip as Reiki. Same as when he’d left: he’d ducked into an alley to power down so he could head over to Java Hut in peace. With her drink (some multicolored, “fruit-adjacent but mostly sugar syrup”-flavored blended nightmare that he did not even begin to understand, with extra whipped cream) and his own (two-bag green tea with no flavoring, no honey, no sugar, and all of the caffeine) in hand, Reiki really didn’t need anybody bothering him. Since Bélénos knew him in his civvies and as Murikabushi, he just brought the drinks back to her, then powered up in some nearby topiary, over by the statue of Destiny City’s first mayor.
“It’s really nice to not have a crisis going on here this time,” he said with a sigh, sitting back down beside her and reaching for his tea. “The shrubs where I just powered up? Last time I was here, right over there? Some Negaverse officer had drained this White Moon senshi until she was practically dead. Then, just abandoned her in the snow. And she’s okay now, I made sure of it, but……what the ********, right?”
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Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2023 10:29 pm
Bélénos squealed with glee as sweet, precious Reiki approached, holding the drinks and handing her hers, before he vanished to power up safely inside the bushes. Now that was clever, she hadn't thought of that one before. Good hiding spot. She sipped at her drink, loudly slurping some of the whipped cream off the top like the heathen she not so secretly was, and nodded to his comment. Yeah, for sure, no crisis occurring was pretty damn nice. "Whoa! Yeah, what the ********!" she echoed, jaw dropping as she stared at Muri. "God, <********> the Negaverse. That's just awful. The poor thing, she was okay?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2023 11:15 pm
“Mhm, thank someone’s god, goddess, or invisible pink unicorn.” Reiki crossed his legs at the knee and sniffed at he tea. Not steeped enough yet, alas, but oh well, some things were worth waiting for and properly steeped green tea was one of them. “Two of the Order senshi I know have this thing they can do? Like, we get our power from Mirrorspace, but they get their power from their senshi homeworlds, up in actual space. We have those, too, but I guess they don’t want to talk to us or something.”
At least, per what he understood from Kerberos, the Chaos involved in Awakening someone to either the Negaverse or Mirrorspace……got in the way? Made it so their homeworlds couldn’t talk to them anymore. But it stood to reason, Reiki figured, that their homeworlds hadn’t wanted to talk to them anyway—especially in his case, since he got Awakened so late—or else they would’ve Awakened Order in the first place. (This did, he supposed, also sort of include Kerberos, except that it really didn’t because Kerberos had given him the bulletpoints on his initial recruitment into the Negaverse, and it wasn’t his homeworld’s fault that Kerberos had been lied to and seduced.)
“Anyway,” Reiki sighed. “So, Ida and Kerberos are not just empowered by their homeworlds like other Order senshi, but they’re also super-close with their homeworlds in ways that give them extra magical abilities. If you see an Order senshi or a Knight with glowing tattoos? They’re the same way. Transcended, they call it.” Quirking his shoulders, he gave his tea another sniff. Nope, still not Just Right. “And one of the things Kerberos and Ida can do is share loads of energy with people. They’ve both done it for me before, and……well, Kerberos has a set place where he likes to hang out, so? I took Miss Demeter to see him and he used his energy-sharing thing to fix her up.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:18 pm
Belenos frowned at that. Huh. A whole planet, up in space? But it couldn't talk to them anymore... Because of the mirror coating. That... seemed really sad, actually. Imagining a lonely planet, yearning for its Senshi, its personal hero, and yet unable to talk to said Senshi now that they were... someone else. She silently sipped at her drink some more as she listened to him, nodding along. "Well, that's good. I wonder if we could do something like that. Bonding with Mirrorspace enough. I like that idea. Hm, well, I guess we could ask Rem next time we see him. I'm glad that Kerberos helped her."
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 6:35 am
“Miss Lady, I don’t even know,” Reiki admitted, shaking his head and trying very, very hard to Not Pull A Face. It wouldn’t have been fair to go pulling a face and acting squicked out by the idea of bonding with Mirrorspace like Ida and Kerberos had done with their worlds. Like, a planet up in space was one thing. It had a whole history to it, and probably natural features like jungles or waterfalls, and probably ruined cities with signs of the Chaos-infections that had laid the planets to waste back in Ye Olde Times, when the Murikabushi starseed had belonged to someone called Airan, who’d had a robot friend named Kima. Who even knew who Liv’s starseed had belonged to, back then.
“I don’t know if there’s enough in Mirrorspace to bond with,” Reiki said with a sigh. “Like, I’ve been going there every night since New Year, right? And for the most part, it’s just endlessly shifting hallways that are all the same non-committal, anemic-looking shade of whitish-gray, and they all look basically identical. And sure, you can pass through this other mirror into someplace that looks like a city park. There’s a citadel in it, and Acubens has, like, a guest book in there?” Reiki had yet to write anything in it, but he’d seen it and the note explaining what it was. “Then, the first time I went into the Citadel—there’s a mirror in the floor, right? And it sent me to this little island out in some weird black void?”
Pausing for a deep breath, then a sniff-taste of their tea—then decided to take a sip. They were getting closer to Perfectly Steeped, at least, and the warmth felt good on Reiki’s throat. Still, he looked to Belenos with the most singularly unimpressed expression. “Honey, the islands it gives us look like baseball fields covered in heroin. There’s nothing on them except for this powdery, white dirt, and it’s just like…… ‘Okay, Mirrorspace, let me ask you a very fair question: what do you do successfully?’”
Slouching a bit, Reiki slipped off one of his pumps, then curled that leg up so he could rest his chin on it. “…I just wish I knew why my planet didn’t want me. Which—that’s probably not a problem for you or anything? You got Awakened at an actual appropriate age. But one of the Chaos Mauvians who’d been helping me with my magic? He said that I was like this-close—” Reiki illustrated his meaning by pinching his thumb and index finger together, “—to not being able to Awaken at all. So, like, for you, I’d guess it was a matter of luck? You got found by the Dark Mirror before the other two factions could get you. Nothing more, nothing less.”
But……being left like that for so long that Soya had said What are those Order cats even doing? about how he’d been languishing…… “A Starseed has to sing, or shine, or whatever for the Mauvians to find it, right? So, if mine wasn’t bright enough until I was in mortal peril, there’s probably a reason. From what I’ve gathered, things going wrong with a senshi’s planet can really mess things up? And Kerberos talks about his world like it’s sentient, which implies a certain amount of will on its part, so I figure any planet probably could decide that it doesn’t think whoever has its starseed is worthy……” Reiki shrugged, glumly staring down at the grass. “Mirrorspace is fine? It’s whatever. I just wish I knew why my planet didn’t want me.”
As far as he knew, Mirrorspace would take ******** anybody as a senshi. But there was only one planet Murikabushi, and wanting so badly to be a good magical girl and help people apparently wasn’t enough to convince the stupid rock that Reiki even deserved his starseed.
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:38 pm
"Well," Belenos started, humming thoughtfully over her monstrosity of a so-called coffee, "Maybe there's not enough in Mirrorspace because there's just not enough of us willing to try to bond with it like that. I know you've been working hard, but I definitely haven't." She slumped, feeling glum. "And I'm afraid I don't know anyone else... So I don't know what anyone else is doing." Patting his leg when he pulled it up, she smiled gently at him. "Maybe it's not awake? I mean, if we're sure it speaks to us directly, right, maybe it just... gave up, before you could be born. Maybe it didn't know you were there until your starseed got awakened, and now it's... well, it can't talk to you. Which, I realize is kinda sad, but... Better than thinking it didn't want you? Or maybe it just couldn't reach you for some reason. You said your starseed didn't sing until you were in mortal peril so maybe your planet couldn't make it sing. Maybe even your starseed was meant to remain dormant; I mean, what if you weren't supposed to be an Awoken Senshi during this life, so your planet didn't expect you just yet? There's all kinds of factors that aren't 'I'm such a sad little sack of misery that my planet hates me', y'know? Maybe even now that you're awake, your planet is begging for you to come back, but you can't hear it because of the mirror-coating." All these theories just poured out of Belenos without much thought to what it might really mean, just treating it as a thought exercise, really. She liked being a Dark Mirror; it felt pleasant and soothing to her. She didn't think much about her own planet—She'd just been kinda vibing on the day that Soyala had come and gotten her. If her planet had wanted her, it would've called out to her before the Chaos cat got her. Without being in mortal peril or anything, that was all she could assume for herself, anyway.
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Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2023 12:43 am
Hearing Bélénos abruptly burst into so many theories about the how’s and why’s of Mirrorspace, Reiki was first struck by the thought: Is this what talking to me is like for Faustite?
But without dwelling on it much, he filed that thought away for later—mostly because it wasn’t conducive to listening or having this conversation right now in the present moment, but maybe a little bit because……he actually liked hearing Belenos’s theories about things. Faustite didn’t seem to enjoy too much talking under most circumstances. You had to get a happy medium with him, where either you exercised verbal restraint and could communicate with each other effectively, or you chattered away until he could hear you more or less as white noise. Bélénos had so much enthusiasm about all of this, and it was really heartwarming. Made Reiki smile, even if it was a sort of small, wobbly smile.
“I don’t know any of the answers about the starseed stuff? Like, admittedly, my theory is just based on all of my own conclusions that might not be true? We’d probably have to ask someone like Soya about it.… She might know more?” Reiki was still Concerned about the way that Soya had been so…perplexed? About him thinking she was more? Than a repository of wisdom and a fluffy vending machine for henshin pens? But……Tama and Faustite had a Contentious relationship, and Reiki and Faustite has parted on Distinctly Bad Terms after the “what your magic does and how to magic less badly” lessons. On top of that, Reiki just……had more of a real relationship with Soya.
He could’ve had one with Tama, given enough time to build one, but Tama’s responsibilities to Team Spicy Eggplant made that whole business somewhat a smidge difficult. Either way, Future Reiki’s problem, for now.
“As for Mirrorspace—I mean? You can’t beat yourself up about it, sweets, okay? Please don’t do that.” He pouted at her in a manner not entirely unlike the pleading face emoji, eyes all a-sparkle and begging her to treat herself like she deserved. “Mirrorspace is ******** level-locked. To get there, you have to go like you’re gonna mirror-walk, right? But instead of going to wherever your destination is, you slow down kinda, and it feels sort of cold and weird—like, clammy, in a way? And when Acubens-oneesan took me and Morpheus to check on Mirrorspace, she said that first-level senshi can’t go on our own for some reason? Then, you know the room with the Black Mirror? We can’t go in there until we’re Eternal senshi like her, and Elsa, and Sappho’s big brother. I’ve tried the stupid doors so many times and they won’t budge. Not even half a centimeter!
“On top of that? There are so few of us, and we’re all so scattered and disorganized.” Which was honestly kind of depressing, like? Reiki genuinely knew more people in the White Moon than in his own Court. He was pretty sure he knew more Negaverse operatives exclusively from Faustite’s team than he did people from his own Court, never mind including other Negas like Arsenolite, his and Monoceros’s General, the b***h who’d drained Demeter, and Sailor Huge Tits of Who-Cares from last summer. “If Mirrorspace is level-locked, and it is, then the obvious solution is to have supers and eternals taking firsties to visit, right? But I’ve only met two other supers, Morpheus and Logos. The latter of them?”
Reiki arched both brows and let his eyes bulge comically, puffing up his cheeks in a way he hoped conveyed a sentiment of gurl, you don’t even wanna know. “Piece of ******** work, that’s what Logos is. Little Miss Can’t-Be-Wrong, doesn’t play well with others, thinks that having friends and allies with the White Moon is oooooh, so ******** dangerous but doesn’t want allies or friends in the Negaverse either, and like? No? I know too much about history to think that the definition of isolationism is any kind of feasible long-term strategy. If she’s gonna have such a bug up her a** about not getting the Court destroyed, then she should try behaving in ways that hopefully won’t cause that. Which is what isolationism always does, in the end.”
Frankly, if Logos really wanted to get in the weeds about it, Reiki was doing more to help ensure the Court’s survival than she was. He talked to people. He learned things. He got a sense of their goals and behaviors, and tried to share intel where he could, even if it was just among the handful of other Mirror senshi he knew personally, so they could better plan things and protect themselves. What did Logos even do successfully, except for complain, condescend to people, and throw a ******** tantrum when someone disagreed with her and/or she didn’t get her way? Seriously.
Still, with a huff, Reiki calmed back down again. “Morpheus was okay, though? A little pouty-faced and reclusive, but from what he said? He had some kind of amnesia thing going on, so like……yeah, that’s valid, fam. A literal head injury ******** you up like that is a totally fair reason to not be, like? The most socially outgoing person, or eager to be a bus to Mirrorspace for first-level senshi. I assume there are more of us, but it doesn’t make a difference if they’re hiding in a hole, or I don’t know, had to leave town and spend five years living in a haunted mansion in order to collect some huge inheritance from their late confirmed bachelor uncle. Which leaves us with our eternals, and…?”
Reiki shrugged. “Remarque is busy with Prince business. Elsa seems to do a lot of recruitment missions. I think Acubens does a lot of internal maintenance with Mirrorspace? But she also seems to like, act as a den mother to the literal underage teens in the Court—which……good. Somebody needs to look out for the kids. Then, I know that Elsa has a sister who’s married to Acubens, and Sappho has an older brother, and he has a husband? And they’re all with the Court, at Eternal level, but……?” Glancing around the park, he made an impatient, sort of sarcastic impression. “Again: it doesn’t really help out the first-level senshi who need rides to Mirrorspace if they aren’t powering up and helping people visit.”
Rolling his eyes, Reiki gave a heated sigh, but tried to modulate it somewhat……make it less of what it was. Frustrated with all the arbitrary rules of Mirrorspace, sure, he absolutely was. But so much of it was too exhausting to get properly angry about. As he wilted with a sigh, though, an idea occurred: “…You could maybe come with me to Mirrorspace sometime, though? Like…I might want to get a little better at the slowing down part of getting there—you know me, you know that ‘slowing down’ and I are not on speaking terms, just conceptually? But give me some time to practice on that and I should be able to get both of us there?”
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Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2023 11:22 pm
Belenos listened patiently as Murikabushi infodumped to her, nodding along with everything he said and making a face when he brought up how Logos was kind of just... rude. And not great. Which sucked. Man, they really needed more people in their court willing to do the work like Murikabushi was! "Yeah! I'd love to visit with you," she enthused, practically vibrating out of her seat with excitement. "Maybe we'll figure some weird stuff out together! That'll be so much fun."
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