Another night, another visit to Mirrorspace, and Reiki was frankly forced to conclude that Mirrorspace had not appreciated his rendition of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” nearly as much as Reiki had enjoyed singing it while tending the thicket of black roses he’d crystal-grown on his little heroin-colored baseball field made of nonsense.
Not that Reiki had actually gotten any particular vibes while he’d been visiting, nor that anyone was truly forcing him to do anything……but what else was he supposed to think? When Mirrorspace spat him out through a mirror in some place he didn’t immediately recognize (and distinctly not his bedroom, with his Best Girl to snuggle and his laptop for Netflix)?
……In fairness to Mirrorspace, Reiki didn’t know its life, its story, or anything like that, and more and more often, he felt like he simply didn’t understand anything about it. Maybe there were reasons for this other than “Mirrorspace didn’t match Reiki at all in his appreciation for iconic Angry Girl music of the alterna-rock persuasion.” But after a long-ish run of getting spat out in places that, if not exactly where Reiki wanted to be, had gotten pretty close to where he’d meant to go? Here they were again, back to Mirrorspace spitting him out in some random dirty alley, more or less indistinguishable from any other dirty alley in Destiny City until Reiki skulked out and got a look at the street-signs above the nearest intersection.
Vine Street and Magnolia Avenue.… Okay, yeah, Reiki knew where he was, at least. Not that he came out this way terribly often, but one of Yuki’s former neighbors lived in a building around here. The guy wasn’t very tech savvy, didn’t have a lot of people in his life, and he lived alone on top of it, so Yuki sometimes came out to fix his computer and make sure Dave was doing okay. He’d brought Reiki along a couple times before.… Maybe it wasn’t exactly good magical girl etiquette, showing preferential treatment to certain people, and maybe it wouldn’t prove necessary—Reiki didn’t even know if Yuki was in this neck of the woods today—but still, given what Reiki knew of the magical weirdness in Destiny City.…
Wouldn’t hurt to check, he figured. So, with a quick hop-skip-jump up someone’s fire escape and onto a roof, Reiki headed toward the buildings that looked more familiar.
The fix that Dave’s computer had needed today hadn’t even really been as big an issue as he’d thought it was. Judging from his texts, Yuki had packed up his bag with several potential problems in mind, some of which might’ve involved needing to take apart the monitor or the hard drive……only for it to end up that Dave needed to replace his old cables. His old cat had gnawed and scratched at them at a few different turns, and because they hadn’t given up the ghost and quit working, Dave had continued using them. All that use had done several numbers on them, and finally, last night, they’d given up the ghost and just quit working.
So, it had required a trip to go buy new cables and then a little finagling to make sure that they worked right. They did, thankfully. After that, Yuki had hung around for a while; Dave had two new cats, sure, but still, not a lot of people who checked in on or spent time with him, like, ever.… Yuki might have even stayed a while longer, but Dave worked a significantly more conventional job than Yuki did, and he had to be up for work in the morning. More than fair enough, really. Besides, the problem with his computer had been resolved and he seemed to be doing alright. No doubt, Yuki would end up checking in on him again later. For now, he could head home and let Dave sleep.
Hitting the sidewalk outside Dave’s place, turning north so he could walk back to his bus stop, Yuki paused to tie up his scarf and adjust his bag’s strap on his shoulder. The scarf was one of ******** creations for him, lovingly crocheted with five long, blocky stripes of dark emerald, a lighter limey shade of green, white, gray, and black. (Yuki regularly thanked someone’s god—whichever one(s) may or may not have been listening—that he’d gotten so lucky with Reiki. Most romantically inclined boys, in Yuki’s personal experience, didn’t understand or appreciate that not reciprocating the romantic feelings as romance did NOT mean that Yuki didn’t care about them. Reiki, meanwhile, not only understood, but loved and treasured Yuki without being romantic on his end either. Then, he had his way of acting like this simply made sense and was what anybody else would’ve done, just because it was how he felt people should have treated each ******** was special like that. Even if he didn’t see it that way.)
Mm, it wasn’t very late at all. Maybe ******** would be down to let Yuki come over, if he texted while waiting for his bus.
At the sight of a familiar figure (shorter than Reiki but still fairly tall, fully cherub-cheeked, soft and chubby all over) in a familiar scarf and heavy jacket, Reiki felt all smiley and pink in the chest. Even inclined to retract his previous complaining about Mirrorspace (at least, the stuff he’d thought while coming over here). Maybe this hadn’t been where he’d planned to end up, but maybe Mirrorspace had figured that he could use some time with his Yuki, even if it took the form of Reiki tailing him, darting across rooftops as Murikabushi and making sure that Yuki made it to his bus stop without any major incidents. (More likely, Mirrorspace itself had had nothing to do with any of this and it was simple luck of the draw, but Reiki shelved that perfectly rational and sensible excuse on the grounds of it being boring and chalked this happenstance up to “Mirrorspace decided to be nice to me tonight.)”
—Good thing, too. They made it a couple blocks without incident. A nice, brisk walk with the QPP, who didn’t know that Reiki was out here with him. Then, around when he knew that Yuki would need to turn left and make his way from Clarendon back over to Vine, the feeling of a youma whacked into Reiki’s aura-sense with all the care and compassion of an anvil falling on a cartoon coyote’s head. Red eyes flared up bright within the shadows of an alleyway. Under the mix of streetlamps and moonlight—however faintly they managed to penetrate the alleyway—Reiki couldn’t see much of the youma, but he had a good sense that it was Big and probably nasty.
Please don’t turn this way, Gorgeous, Reiki hoped very loudly in his general direction, praying that Yuki might pick up those general Vibes and go up another block, just take Hazelton Street instead of turning here, down an alleged shortcut.…
And he groaned into his palms when Yuki went exactly where Reiki had wished he wouldn’t.
Hands in his coat pockets, Yuki fought valiantly against the impulse to just take out his phone and text ******** right now. That was one of the little things he got on Yuki’s case about sometimes. It had been vaping when they’d first met (until enough rounds of the pouty puppy-eyes face and intense, concentrated concern for his well-being backed up by compelling evidence had motivated Yuki to give it up). Other times, it was blatantly lying about Not Being In A Good Emotional Place himself, all to get Yuki to come to the gym with him despite Yuki’s personal belief that going to the gym was cruel and unusual torture, and something that only happened to other people.
Right now, he could practically hear the Concerned Voice that ******** broke out with him: “What am I gonna do if you slip on black ice while texting and walking, and you fall, and split your skull open, and die? I’m too young and cute to be a widow without even being married. Plus, guys like you don’t grow on trees.”
As he yielded and un-pocketed his phone, willing to let ******** be annoyed with him if it meant seeing him sooner, Yuki could even almost hear that adorably frustrated groan that Reiki did when called out about how he’d decided on something without fact- or reality-checking it again.
……No, wait.
That sound had not been inside his head.
Something else was groaning.
Abruptly stopped in his tracks, Yuki looked up from his texts app. He blinked up into a pair of glowing red eyes that stared back at him, full of hunger, while a slobbery tongue—long and dextrous like a snake’s but dripping saliva like Cersei’s did when she attacked Her People to bestow kisses—traced lasciviously around a gaping maw. The beast’s head and neck looked like those of a feral hyena, but its jaw had to detach and expand, as serpentine as its tongue and the long, scaly tail dragging behind it. Teetering on four spindly-looking Bambi-legs, it advanced on Yuki. Menacingly, it clicked the vicious, curling talons coming off the paws on its stumpy, Tyrannosaurus rex-looking baby-arms.
Yuki probably could’ve out-run the thing……if he’d remembered how to work his legs. ……If he’d even felt them beneath him, felt anything at all, except for a twisty, pounding dread, far colder than all this winter’s cold snaps put together. The beast made a cruel, pleased kind of sound and clacked its baby-hands together like giving a polite applause to the other kids in Yuki’s niblings’ talent shows (no offense to the other kids, they were probably great, but Yuki only cared about his sister’s two little ********, he wasn’t going to see them again. Nor ********. No more awkward encounters with Haruhi, either, where ne just wanted to leave for work with minimal annoying obstacles but happened to catch Yuki dressed in just a towel, leaving the shower after spending some private time with Haruhi’s cousin.
The beast reared back like cobras before striking. Shivering, Yuki closed his eyes—but the sound of something landing on top of a nearby dumpster drowned out the beast’s next roar. No blows landed on Yuki at all. He opened his eyes to see what kind of something, exactly, had given him this stay of execution.
……Not a something, apparently. A someone.
A someone with legs for days, drapey purple swishing all around his outfit, and a little black dress that ******** would’ve killed him for, if given half-a-chance.
“Hey!” Yuki’s savior snapped at the beast. “You like starseeds? Come snack on a senshi’s!”
Some of those words made sense individually, but……starseeds? Senshi? The latter, Yuki recognized as a Japanese word he didn’t have occasion to use very often……but it meant “soldier,” which was distinctly not the word Yuki would’ve used to describe the boy who’d leaped in to save him.
Oh, thank ******** the youma to turn around had been easy.
……Now, Reiki just needed to get the stupid thing dusted before it got any funny ideas about his offer being genuine.
Something not easily managed while jumping off the dumpster and onto a nearby fire-escape. For all the youma’s arms looked as pathetic as a T. rex’s, its claws rent through the metal as easily as tissue paper. It roared in frustration, but at least it stayed focused on ********, he was used to fighting these things alone. It was one thing to hit them with his magic when he was the only one around. Presumably, they got hungry for starseeds, so Reiki only needed to stay out of their way until they tore themselves apart, trying to eat their own soul-crystals since they couldn’t get at his. But Yuki was still there, frozen. Reiki couldn’t take that kind of risk.
As he leapt out of the way of another attack—landing this time on a balcony with a boarded up window and no guard-rails or walls to keep people from falling off—Reiki glanced over to Yuki.
He glanced down at Yuki’s hands……at Yuki’s <******** phone.
“Oh my god,” Reiki groaned before he could think to stop himself. “Hasn’t anybody ever warned you about texting while you walk!”
Rhetorical question—Reiki had done that. He’d warned Yuki about it more times than he cared to count.
Still, though. Tonight, vindication felt less like a satisfying rush, more like desperately jumping to avoid another attack—and this time, landing on the youma and kicking down, jabbing one of his pointy heels at the center of the creature’s skull.
Shiningamisgirl
askdlfbtlb, SORRY FOR THE KINDA LONG START, lmk if you & Albite need anything changed! heart
Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2023 6:28 am
The Aura that blipped alive on his radar out of nowhere ******** zoomed; turned Albites head from a few stories over where his mouth was three quarters full of a regrets-sandwich and his extra choice of stress-eaters soup, accompanied by a very modest side salad (if he did say so himself!). The sandwich and salad were cold, the soup would surely go cold by the time he got back to it. He’d learned his lessons about keeping non-preserved and unsealed food stuffs in subspace. It was always the worst sort of clean up later — no matter how good an idea it was in the beginning.
All that hustle in a bustle — the ******** was actually going on?!
Oh—oh-hello operator number nine!! Albite knew that tactic, heart and soul. Knew it well because he had used it a tad more dramatically the one single time he’d used it at all; as a bright a** and exceptionally shirtless basic Senshi!! Except he’d full force ‘******** you we can both die!’ pulled his entire self loose, goddamned carelessly. When he did a nice long hot take and gave a last look to his very pretty, out of his chest, starseed. Insanity ploy of the frustrated and cursed that he’d done in front of Cracky-McKraken (the kind of lamprey sort of squid quasi eel monster?) and Shovel-Knight-Uranophane the former General of Fancy-Free-Fringe-Hats.
It’d been an entire night at the reservoir— he could still taste the runoff from jet skis and his own sand-sifted blood….
All in all? It’d been a damn good time!!
This, however? Was not that, and Muri was not him and the youma— wasn’t tryna drown anyone so much as it was tryna get a snack while making a mess of billboards and trash alleys alike. ******** that thing had nasty claws and a mug only a mother could’ve loved. Albite was nobody's mother, not tonight, and especially not that things!! So for all that he loved every youma that creeped n crawled? This one, he decided, needed a time out.
*In the Rift.*
Given by him—- Hell — it’d be nice to blow off some steam? Right? Just a little easy, peasey, youma-queasy Al-dust-a-b***h-at your service!!! The ******** else was all that Eternal oomph good for?!! He only hoped Muri would see it that way, hoped it double n triple as he watched his swoopy dark mirror counterpart slide in with a heel to the monsters backside. Watched the billboard fall like wax candles to a thousand degree butcher knife — then Albite was shaving grip off the soles of his thick heels, vaulting the nearest rampart, teleporting in above like a bat outta hell.
Noise, sound, action!!!
As if Big and Loud was the only way to have it out while dropping in on the larger than average youma. Albite all excited to play as he was to please, and his magic half ******** starved to tangle round what it could reach — which, at that moment? Was a bisected tongue lashing in a wide set jaw— easy reach of muscle become something for his magic to latch on; cartoonishly bungee’d his weight, while he yanked against the rippling appendage with gravity and Praxidike on his side. Till the tongue nearly severed n snapped itself over all those snake maw, sharper than Gordon Ramsys insults, teeth. The creature seemed less n ******** happy with this…..A downside, surely. But on the upside? Albite hoped it meant he got to smack it around a little more!!
Maybe it’d dust all slow in pieces — maybe he’d take a tooth home!! Like Radon’s claw, and mount it over his fireplace of a husband in their office. Who knew— he was cackling about the idea though, to excited to even say ‘hi’ for what brief levity his abilities gave him in that adrenaline fueled moment.
Passive Enhancement: Radons Echo
When Albite wills it, he is accompanied by the distant and unnerving sounds of a metal tipped skitter-screech. It sounds like an army of rusty blades being improperly unsheathed, the noise married horrifically to the the steady buildup of icepick insect tipped feet careening along a cliff-side. It can be unnerving and unfamiliar, and create a sense of uncertainty and dread. This effect is particularly prominent when Albite is using the Rugose Pendant. An item which has become part of his routine to wear for how often he uses it.
Super Sailor Scout Attack: Choking Retribution!
Albites tattoos appear to come alive, slithering off his harm like ethereal magical ribbons. The tattoo ribbons wrap around his intended opponent (pick a body part) and tie the two together for a duration of 20 seconds. The bindings slowly begin to tighten on said opponent, squeezing a bit like a boa constrictor would. Neither is able to escape the other until the magic is ended, or the weak ribbons are severed. He can now use the attack twice in battle, but can still only focus on one target at a time. Effect: Instantaneous Range: 6 Feet Duration: 20 seconds Number of uses: 2 Number of targets: 1
amorremanet
Never!!! I’m sorry this took me so long!!! Wanna move it up to after the HeManDumpedCrusade for extra drama and feels!! N I love giving these two all the plot pertinent points to talk about~
Weird s**t went down in Destiny City, kinda all the time. He’d learned that pretty easily within his first few months here. Hard to mistake the lesson when it had come in the form of ********, out at a park with him one night, listing off how many members of his graduating class had disappeared without a trace. How many of his friends had gone missing, or fallen into mysterious comas and only maybe gotten better. How one of said friends had lost his twin sister, she’d gone missing like so many others, and then he’d fallen into drinking too much, and then when things briefly seemed like they were getting better, his boyfriend had gone missing too and finally, he’d disappeared as well. Pretty recently, at that.
“Their parents still have their big sister and the two younger ones,” ******** had said. “But losing the twins like that? And going through it without any semblance of closure? Because maybe they’ll be fine, and maybe they’ll come home, but maybe they’re just dead and unless someone finds a body, it’s not like they’ll ever know? That’s horrible, nobody should have to lose people like that.”
And then, when Yuki had tried to offer him comfort over losing a friend like that, ******** had smiled sadly and told him, “It’s okay, Gorgeous. Worse things than that happen in this town. My family hasn’t gotten hit by anything where we’ve gone missing or whatever, so I should just be grateful.”
—But there was still a considerable difference between intellectually understanding that Weird s**t happened in Destiny City so often that, after growing up here, ********, his siblings, and his cousins seemed more or less resigned to this Weirdness as a fact of life, even if it hurt them………and understanding what in the ******** was going on here this day, with the monster, and the pretty boy in the skirts, and now, the big guy in the floor-length dreads.
And the monster.
The very big monster that was apparently being restrained by the big guy’s tattoos.… While the pretty boy in the skirts was bounding down from on top of the monster’s head—leaving behind what sure looked like an awful lot of blood and viscera where his heels had slammed into the skull—and going to join the big guy.
……And excuse Yuki, but he was running to the other side of the dumpster now. Somewhere out of the way, where he could hide.
Seeing Yuki unfreeze and do the smart thing—going to hide—Reiki heaved a sigh of relief. Not that he could enjoy it for very long. For one thing, whatever horror movie Hell-noise Albite had brought with him? It made Reiki’s skin crawl and left him feeling more than slightly nauseated from the dread lurching alongside someone he otherwise surprisingly found himself happy to see. For another, significantly more important thing, the youma still required dusting.
“Can you keep its arms bound?” He looked to Albite, eschewing a proper greeting for the moment. The close quarters gave Reiki some concern here, but……he could do this. His magic hadn’t hit Arsenolite in similarly close quarters before, even though Reiki had nothing nice to say about Ceros’s ******** brother in the bad Hawkeye cosplay. He hadn’t hit Faustite while practicing on the roof with Tama—not until everything had gone inexplicably sideways and he’d intended to hit Faustite, anyway. Explaining himself and what he currently had in the way of a plan, Reiki told Albite, “My magic makes this kind of youma tear themselves apart to get at their own starseeds. Keep its arms bound, I’ll keep it off of you, we’ll get it to use that unhinge-able jaw on itself.”
And, well, Albite wouldn’t have earned his tramp-stamp wings—nor, as far as Reiki understood, managed to survive in the Negaverse—without some capacity for teamwork and general plan-following. So, focusing hard on the thought Yuki and Albite are Friends, NOT targets, Reiki jerked his hand down, tugged the invisible cord he always kept in mind for summoning his magic, and called it out, “Ravenous Hunger!”
Quote:
Super Sailor Scout Attack: Ravenous Hunger. Enemies within 15 feet of Murikabushi are wracked with an intense hunger—the sort of hunger that gnaws at your insides, like you haven’t eaten all day. The craving can be for anything—food, drink, affection/intimacy, alcohol or narcotics, the answers to the math homework, etc.—and enemies are compelled to satiate it, but find it even more difficult to do so than they would expect. In addition to the intensity, this hunger makes them feel somewhat sluggish, making it harder for them to think, decide what to do, and see any actions through to completion, even those that they believe will satiate their hunger. Affected targets are still capable of acting and fighting back—though people may react to Murikabushi’s hunger differently—but until the hunger abates, they will struggle.
Shiningamisgirl
Many much things and so much more for them to discuss, just as soon as Big-n-Nasty goes down for nap-time! Muri is so genuinely glad to see you here, Eternal Husband Al-bite-you-if-you-ask-politely. emotion_bigheart
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 10:12 am
"Anything for you sweet-skirts!" hollered with viscous glee, because Albite would've given most of anything to see that happen. The absolute cruelty magic could bring on another, youma, person, anything-- More importantly? Hearing from Muri' how utterly aware he was currently of his own function and form. Albite liked that Mr. Muri ******** s**t up knew that about his magic now, all the ways it boded oh so well from however long it'd been since they'd last met. Had it been a week? A month? A year? Every new day felt like several new lifetimes, nothing ever stopped, or halted, or even paused -- time moved and he moved with it and seeing Muri now---sounding confident, looking like he knew what he was doing for once!
It was glorious -- he was glorious -- Albite wanted to cheer him on as eagerly as he wanted to aid him in bringing down the beast. Holding the gnawing, clawing, b*****d of a big big big boy still long enough for the rend-n-tear portion of the magic act to take hold. Albite listened for the signal, verbal magic at it's finest, the kind of 'watch your a**' warning he was waiting for, because his a** was big n watchable! The kind of a** he definitely didn't want in the way of anyone's Ravenous Hunger---
Especially with the *look* that crossed the Youmas face as it hit, he'd never seen a look like that before on a creature that was usually so utterly passive in nature--so bland and single minded--to watch its features twist like it was ready to go to war with itself; and as it twisted one way Albite snapped his choking binds across the rest, pulled on his own center of self and thought, lightning quick--
'Praxidikes Exacting Justice!'
Because it was always faster to think the words than it was to say them. To think that thought on the heels of his other thoughts and whoop for the way one bout of magic died and his next newest attack redoubled on itself; flaying free of his form like snarled chains painted every true emo's favorite color or matte black; pitch enough that nothing would reflect back off of them, fifteen feet of wiggle room that wrapped, and wrapped, and held---even as the creature twisted to show its teeth.
Albite snarled back, dug his heels in and yanked, determined to hold the line just like Muri'd asked. It was the least he could do!
Eternal Sailor Attack: Praxidikes Exacting Justice! All of Albites tattoos appear to tear from his skin, lashing him to his three nearest enemies. They weigh like chains, and can squeeze to the point of bruising. The magic in the tattoos creates the feeling of being choked and beaten by a heavy hand; giving an opponent the sensation of being driven down and short of breath. Albites opponents can still move/fight, but remain bound to Albite until the magic is ended, or the bonds severed. The tattoo tethers are still magical and so can draw no blood. No physical or lasting damage is done, unless the target’s player wishes it. The illusion ends after 25 seconds. In which the bindings vanish along with the sensations. Range: 15 Feet Duration: 25 seconds Number of uses: 1 Number of targets: 3
Passive Enhancement: Radons Echo When Albite wills it, he is accompanied by the distant and unnerving sounds of a metal tipped skitter-screech. It sounds like an army of rusty blades being improperly unsheathed, the noise married horrifically to the the steady buildup of icepick insect tipped feet careening along a cliff-side. It can be unnerving and unfamiliar, and create a sense of uncertainty and dread. This effect is particularly prominent when Albite is using the Rugose Pendant. An item which has become part of his routine to wear for how often he uses it.
