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 Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2023 6:03 pm
For as many self-defense classes as he’d taken and as many times as he’d needed to throw down, the thought of trying to teach any of what he knew to someone else……? Well, Reiki had been up to his neck in Google and Youtube to prepare for this, as soon as Liv had indicated that she wanted to take him up on the offer.
As he kept their arms linked, slowing down so they could get into Mirrorspace proper, be didn’t feel especially prepared for anything—but at least he’d gotten better at the “getting into Mirrorspace” part.… It still felt cold and clammy and inhospitable in the worst possible way, like the very space itself didn’t want people there (despite people’s presence of lack thereof inside Mirrorspace being a Real Big Deal—ugh, exhausting.)
“So, there’s the throne room entrance that’s completely useless to us,” Reiki narrated as he and Bélénos made their way through. For extra effect, he gestured at the doors like a tour guide who’d mentally checked out of the job five years ago and hadn’t had her “please make me capable of tolerating children” coffee before leading a bunch of snot-nosed brats around the Smithsonian or whatever. “Here’s the mirror that takes us where we need to go.…”
On the other side of it, in the alleged city or whatever it was supposed to be, he went on, “Then we’ve got some happy little trees.… One imagines they’d be happier if they could get any natural light, but at least the place isn’t completely lifeless.… We’ve got this happy little pathway that takes us to the happy little citadel.…”
And inside the citadel, they had the happy little mirror in the floor. When they stood on it together, it dumped them—“And this is my happy little baseball field.”
Reiki huffed, crossing his arms as he surveyed the kitsunebi floating in the corners and lighting up the place, the thicket of black roses that he’d put up wherever because you could never go wrong with black roses, and the hideous, visually offensive……sand? Dirt? Whatever the white junk all over the floor here was.
“You know the White Moon’s Knights? At least some of them have wonders that are way bigger than this,” Reiki said aloud, without thinking to stop himself. The fact that he had Bélénos with him this time didn’t change how talking to himself without much in the way of verbal filter had just become part of How He Did Things in Mirrorspace. “Then White Moon senshi get their entire planets full of history to find, and rebuilding to do, and bioluminescent bunnies, and what do Mirror Senshi get? Baseball fields that look like Anakin Skywalker’s worst nightmare.”
Idly kicking at the sand, Reiki huffed. “At least it’s a safe space for sparring on, though. Or trying to assess what you know how to do in a fight and help you out with it. Nothing really hurts in here, as far as I’ve noticed. So……” With a shrug, he tried to smile. “You ready to take chances, make mistakes, get messy, and so on?”
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Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2023 9:55 pm
Bélénos had to hide her giggles, amused by the whole tour guide schtick that Murikabushi had going on. It was cute! She did her best to pay attention, though, because it probably was at least somewhat important. "Ugh, I can't imagine having so much space. I can barely think of what to do with something so small anyway! And then a whole planet? Blegh. That's just... so, so much. It's not for me. That amount of like, responsibility n s**t? Nah. I can barely handle knowing all of what Earth's been up to, and my father is some kind of crazy historian who knows everything about everything plus a few conspiracy theories. Not the racist kind, like aliens built the pyramids, different stuff. But also, Anakin Skywalker?" she asked, tilting her head in confusion.
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Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2023 10:19 pm
“…Uh. You know?” Tilting his head right back at Bélénos, Reiki gestured vaguely and at nothing in particular. “From……Star Wars? The hottie who grows up to be Darth Vader and can’t flirt to save his life? I mean, honestly, the biggest miracle of the entire franchise might be the fact that Luke and Leia even exist at all, considering their father’s idea of a smooth romantic come-on for the woman he’s been in love with for years? Goes all ‘I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere’? But, y’know, somewhat more importantly, I’m—?”
Not knowing Star Wars, he could forgive. But the rest of what Bélénos had said—so much of it made him feel a need to pace. “What ‘so much space’ are we talking about, hun? Seriously? This place is so tiny and stifling. I know there’s basically nothing in it, but that just makes it even more stifling for me, just…… I’d love to have an entire planet, y’know? And all of its history? Digging around those ancient places to find out exactly who the people were, and to learn what their society was like, and to learn how everything went wrong when Chaos showed up and sent everything to Hell, and to figure out how to fix things? Ugh, that sounds like Heaven. Or if not that good, then at least it sounds way better than this void made out of nothing-burger.”
As he came to a stop, Reiki shook his head and hugged himself. As he looked out at all the other equally hideous, equally un-miraculous white islands of nothingness in the endless, freezing cold void of Mirrorspace, he sighed. Would’ve been nice to be an actual, correct senshi who’d Awakened on the actual, correct senshi team and who consequentially deserved to have a special place of their own that actually mattered to anybody in the ******** universe, except for that one senshi personally.
Ugh, how was he supposed to live like this? Knowing exactly how little anything he could do while forced to cosplay as Murikabushi mattered to anybody, how little ability he actually had to help anyone with anything, while the USELESS ******** a*****e magical realm that gave him his powers didn’t give a single damn, just kept shoving his face, over and over again, into the horrifically ugly white dirt of this bullshit island, demanding “Are you happy yet? Are you happy yet?? ARE YOU HAPPY YET?!?!”
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Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2023 8:30 pm
"Oooh, you're a puzzle solver," she said, nodding her head slowly. Well, that was... kinda cute. But... just not for her. Mirrorspace was enough of its own puzzle, let alone some ancient civilization she didn't really care about, y'know? Ah well. She sensed saying any of this out loud would make Murikabushi upset, so she let it go. "Okay, so, are you ready to—" And without finishing her question, she lunged forward and went to slam her fist straight into his solar plexus, trying to take him by surprise.
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:19 am
“Not really a puzzle solver per se, I just like—” Reiki did not get to finish that thought.
The fist slamming into his solar plexus caught him sufficiently by surprise. Knocked the wind out of his usual ability to talk forever and ever. Didn’t quite knock him off his feet, but it did manage to knock him back a couple paces. As it really set in for Reiki what had happened—what Bélénos had done and how effectively she’d caught him off-guard—he couldn’t help but grin at her.
“Yes! Excellent!” He gave her a polite burst of applause, then shifted back to taking the moment more seriously. “My one big criticism, though? Punching is generally not gonna be your best option. I don’t blame you for going with that right off the bat, because it does tend to feel like more powerful? Like, not to get all Game of Thrones? But back when that show was good, they invented a scene that wasn’t in the books, between Queen Cersei and her husband.”
They’d also given an actual good bit of dialogue and characterization to one of Reiki’s least favorite characters in the entire World of Ice And Fire, but that was beside the point. “He asks ‘Which is the bigger number, five or one?’ She guesses five. So Robert goes, ‘Five.…’” Reiki held up his right hand, all fingers splayed open. “‘One.…’” In contrast, he held up his left hand, curled into a fist. “‘One army—a real army—united behind one leader with one purpose.’ Which is great in theory and as a visual metaphor?
“But when it comes to actually hitting someone in real life?” Reiki shook his head. “Punching people is a good way to hurt yourself more than you hurt them. In the heat of the moment, without any protection besides being a senshi and therefore more durable? You might not curl up your fist properly. You might not keep your wrist locked in firmly enough. Whoever you’re trying to hit might move, so you end up putting more of the force in your punch into the knuckles on your ring finger, index finger, or pinky, instead of the middle finger’s knuckle, which is the strongest and most durable one.”
Looking at Bélénos earnestly and very seriously, Reiki gestured to each of the knuckles on his left hand as he mentioned them. “But, you do have more options than punching. So, what’s another way you might try to hit me? Or, y’know, whoever you’re trying to hit?”
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:49 pm
Belenos took a deep breath, letting the advice wash over her. She nodded to him as he spoke, giving him the once over. Okay, so, she'd never gotten the hype for Game of Thrones, but she got what he was saying. How to hit him, then? Kicking probably posed many of the same problems... A broken wrist could be pretty well handled, but a broken ankle really took you out of the game. She surged forward, twirling to get the right angle, and swung her elbow straight for his eye. It was a bit of an awkward reach, but she was tall enough to make it work, thank God.
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Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:36 pm
A lot of different options had sat before Bélénos, in Reiki’s mind. She could have gone for an open-palm strike. Could have tried to kick him (which did have some risks, but at least in Reiki’s experience, it tended to be easier to learn the safest ways to kick somebody). Could have tried stomping on his feet, grabbing him by the hair and/or tiara, grabbing him by any part of his fuku for that matter (any fabric was good for grabbing onto, and especially with the semi-translucent overlays that Dark Mirror senshi had, they offered would-be attackers a lot of potential hand-holds).
Instead, she went with the elbow to his face—and while Reiki managed to dodge her breaking his glasses, she did still knock him in the cheek. “I think you undersold how prepared you really are, Liv,” he told her brightly, with an eager grin. Maybe she hadn’t taken any classes or anything, but she definitely knew some of the things to do to protect herself. She had, however, left him with a very exploitable opportunity. “But show me,” he said, grabbing at the wrist whose elbow had come toward his face, “what would you do if someone got you in a hold like this?”
His plan: take her by the wrist and hold it so her hand pointed upward. Difficult to wrench out of that position without hurting herself, so she’d need to look for another way to get herself free.
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Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2023 10:47 pm
Bélénos grunted, hissing at Murikabushi as he bent her arm up and squeezed it. Damn, this sucked. Okay, uh... She had two hands. With a vicious snarl, she sucker-punched him in the solar plexus and followed up with kicking at the side of his knee—not enough to really do much, but it would hopefully make him want to move away from all of her swinging limbs.
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Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2023 11:18 pm
The punch connected hard, knocking the wind clean out of Reiki. Then, her kick got him in the knee. As he dropped into the soft, white sand-or-earth-or-whatever-it-was of his Realm, three thoughts flashed through Reiki’s mind: 1. Bélénos might have had a hard time remembering NOT to punch people, probably a good idea to go over good ways to protect herself while punching, having a sprained hand when you worked with horses was probably Bad News Brenda; 2. thank ******** SOMETHING in Mirrorspace was proving useful, because the sand-or-whatever really was quite soft, if he could’ve made the stage at Scandals out of this stuff, he’d have been a much happier queen; and 3. s**t ******** GODDAMN OUCH OUCH ******** ******** OUCH.
Regardless of the sharp pain radiating up from where Bélénos had kicked him, Reiki looked up at her with a grin. “Yeah, you definitely undersold how ready you are,” he said. “If you’re gonna keep punching people? First thing, do. not. wrap your fingers around your thumb. Keep the thumb on the outside. Helps protect you from spraining or breaking your poor fingers. Second thing: do. not. let your wrist go slack. Keep it firm or you’re way more likely to sprain it. And third thing?” He smirked. “Think fast.”
Swiping at Bélénos’s legs, Reiki grabbed for her ankle and tried to yank her feet out from under her.
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Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 12:22 am
Bélénos beamed at him. "Really? I just watched a lot of fight movies," she said, feeling kind of lame. "I've never done any fight training or anything. Maybe I should do some legit stuff... If I ever get the time for it. Horses are a lot of work, after all." She nodded at his advice, looking down at her wrist and tensing it, too distracted to realize what was happening until she was flat on her back and out of breath. "You b***h," she wheezed, coughing and laughing as she tried to inhale huge gulps of air.
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Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 1:24 am
Part of Reiki felt a little bit guilty for cutting Bélénos off like that……but he could only feel so guilty, honestly. “Hey, you can’t expect anybody else out there to always play fair, y’know?” He tried to smirk like a mischievous kitten, but her laughter truly was contagious, and set him snickering, which in turn made it impossible to keep up the smirk. Giving Bélénos a grin, he went on, “You’ve got feral twelve-year-olds with magic geese running around out there. Cat-girls from outer space with very firm ideas about right and wrong. Jackasses who think they’re ******** Hawkeye because the Negaverse gave them a stupid bow, and who are totally down for a little murder. Cute boys who are literally on fire for magical Negaverse reasons.”
At least, that seemed like an easier summation than actually trying to explain half-youma right now, when Reiki’s own understanding was pretty limited to Faustite’s specific experiences and what he’d shared with Reiki concerning his feelings on the matter. Extending a hand to help Bélénos up, he said, “So, you wanna close out tonight on ‘Always stay on your guard’ and go get milkshakes at Gertrude’s?”
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Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 1:29 am
Belenos wasn't sure who all he was referring to, but clearly, Murikabushi had had quite an interesting time so far, meeting all kinds of people. "Haha, yeah. Milkshakes sounds perfect," she said as she stood with Murikabushi's help and dusted herself off. Not a bad day.
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