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 Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2023 2:05 pm
The parks around campus, Lete had found, were incredibly useful during finals season. If Order senshi and their weird little Knight guys were going to have Some Kind Of Problem about Lete just doing her job as a Dark Mirror Senshi, then it only made sense to move around some. Normally, that didn’t bother Lete much—patrol routes were reliable for this—but finals season meant so much extra work. Which meant not having nearly enough time to account for those Order weirdos and their utter lack of manners by trekking all the way across town just to avoid them.
Hence, the appeal of parks. Lete could use one of them one night, hang out around the quad the next night, and then sneak into a different park the night after that. All within a few blocks of her dorm, all perfectly full of people for the draining.
……And a Negaverse aura, from the feel of things tonight.
As she’d tried to do some weeks previously with the weird fish lady, Lete had sat herself on top of the slide in the children’s playscape section of the park. Although she’d been tapping away at a paper on her Normal Non-Magical Tablet, Lete had mostly taken care to watch out for where any wraiths she summoned went, and to painstakingly tell each one not to drain people too much. Hit each civilian once, then move on. Take a little from a lot of people and hopefully avoid attracting any notice. Now, though, Lete had a mirrorwraith out in the field somewhere, and a Negaverse aura coming her way, someone more powerful than she was.
Maybe they’d be cool about everything? But also, maybe the two of them should coordinate so they’d be less likely to get in trouble with the White Moon freaks, if any of them were lurking around. Making herself useful and helpful seemed like a good way to avoid getting into trouble with the Negaverse, and to maybe make an actual friend out here (excluding Demeter, who was special and different and deserved all the seasonally appropriate cupcakes she could want).
Following the aura brought her to a very tall, very blonde senshi who wouldn’t have stood out too much from the extras in a production of Les Mis. “Hi,” Lete said to him brightly. “I’m Lete of the Dark Mirror Court, hoping to help a fellow Chaos senshi avoid any trouble with the White Moon? If you like?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:07 am
There always felt like there was so much to do, as a soldier of the Negaverse. Energy to drain, people to fight, and especially with his General having gotten an exciting new promotion, Valjean felt as if he had to live up to….well, something. And, frankly, he wanted to impress Faustite, earn his promotion, and work on a new team with Ingrid. Finding their own underlings would mean they would have a lot more freedom, and a lot more space to do whatever they wanted. Plus, more control over who they took on.
To a degree, of course; the General-Sovereigns would still be overseeing them, but….well. The more freedom, the better, and Valjean hoped, at least, that if he proved himself sufficiently competent, it might earn him and Ingrid a lighter hand when it came to oversight.
He was more than a little lost in thought, wandering the park and doing the sort of idle, casual draining that was more brainless than not. So he wasn’t paying attention, right up until there was a voice calling out to him. It startled him, and he blinked, but smiled politely.
“Valjean, of the Negaverse,” he introduced himself. “A pleasure to meet you, Lete. I’d be happy to work with you. Just by sticking together, I imagine we’ll have less trouble.”
He hoped, in this case, that she would be more helpful than Murikabushi. But she already seemed pleasant, and Valjean wasn’t going to hold his most recent encounter with another member of her court against her.
“Have you been having trouble, tonight?” He hoped not, because he really did not want any for himself.
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Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:38 am
“Not in so many words, no—or anyway, not tonight.” A patrol that involved actual patrolling, rather than sitting quietly somewhere, letting the wraiths do all the work, and doing some assignment or other for class. Not that Lete had never done such things before—it was, after all, how she’d found Demeter hanging from that awning a few nights back—but she’d never gotten to do so with a partner.
Still, as they continued through the park together, she explained, “It’s just been the White Moon senshi and their Knights, y’know? I’ve seriously only met one who wasn’t terrible, rude, presumptuous, acting like they know everything about everything.” She was too cute to be allowed, honestly, and it was super rude of reality to throw a curveball like Demeter into Lete’s life when Lete had absolutely not been ready for such a precious angel to swoop in and completely ruin her ability to pretend to be cool about anything, ever. But none of that was relevant to the discussion. “Aside from her, all the White Moon lunatics I’ve met will attack you for just doing your job, even though the people you’re draining from are totally fine. Or, like, will be, if you give them some espresso and some B-vitamins or something.”
Conveniently, the path they were on brought them across the mirrorwraith that Lete had out and working at the moment. After passing through some teenager on their phone, it was almost entirely visible, full up of energy, and came skulking back to Lete. “Thank you for your hard work,” she told it, as it slipped back into the mirrorshard. Looking back up at Valjean, she smiled. “That’s sort of what I had in mind to share, actually. Pointing out the people my wraiths have gone at already so, y’know? You won’t think somebody might be ripe for targeting, just a little tired, and drain them to death unless you mean to do that. Fewer bodies and more plausible deniability, the less trouble everybody has with the White Moon, right?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:55 am
Oh, thank goodness, she was reasonable. Valjean liked Lete already; she had her head on straight, and she understood that the White Moon were a bunch of self-righteous idiots. Unfortunate that she’d had enough trouble to learn that lesson, but it meant that they were operating from the same baseline of understanding.
“Sometimes I can’t believe I used to be one of them,” Valjean confessed as they walked. “I’ve found that they refuse to acknowledge that Chaos requires energy, and that it’s much more valuable for us to take care, and ensure that our…mm, donors continue to survive.”
It was easy to pull a little, take some off the top. While Valjean wasn’t entirely opposed to killing, he certainly wasn’t going to do any murder in front of someone else who had expressed a desire to keep ordinary people alive. She might take issue with it, and they were having such a nice conversation.
“Not that it always matters, since the White Moon seems to enjoy throwing themselves into every situation, but yes, much better to not have bodies to clean up.” He sighed. “Always better to avoid the self-righteous nonsense.”
And it was always agonizingly self-righteous and truly, deeply nonsensical. The White Moon refused to acknowledge that things might be more complicated than “energy draining bad, Negaverse and Dark Mirror evil,” and that was always the problem. As if “good” and “evil” meant anything outside of children’s cartoons.
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Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 1:08 am
Lete cringed at Valjean’s mention of where he’d been before the Negaverse. “Well, good for you that you got out, then,” she said, nodding along and hoping to maintain this pleasantness. Getting to work with somebody instead of fighting them? So nice. Getting to talk to somebody who didn’t treat her like some kind of ignorant pain-in-the-a** just because she did not agree with their White Moon nonsense about……well, whatever the spicy redhead, the ponytail guy, and the fish lady had thought they were on about.
“I’m really hoping to give something like that to the White Moon senshi I’ve met who isn’t terrible,” Lete said, with a bit of a wistful sigh, followed by a brief pause to point out a group of frat guys she’d already let a wraith hit. “She’s so sweet and innocent, y’know? And cute. Really cute. She’s too good to be wasting herself on the White Moon, and she’s already gotten herself in trouble by picking fights with the wrong people……” Like whoever had thrown poor Demeter and gotten her stranded on that awning. Just the thought of it made Lete shake her head. “With a little convincing and some exposure to the reality of the situation? I’m really hoping to get her in the Court. Hopefully before one of the fundamentalist weirdos on the White Moon side sells her on some garbage like ‘better dead than with a Chaos faction’ and turns her into a weapon.”
Ugh, the thought of somebody doing that to poor Demeter? Lying to her like that? Manipulating her until she stopped seeing Dark Mirrors and Negaverse agents as ******** people? It made Lete’s blood boil, and she didn’t even have evidence that it had happened anywhere outside her own little coconut head.
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Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 1:45 am
Valjean gave a brief nod of acknowledgement. It was good that he'd gotten out; the circumstances had perhaps been less than ideal, but this was so obviously better that he couldn't really imagine caring about that.
Her description made him laugh, briefly. Not maliciously, but it certainly felt familiar. "Ah, I hope you can win her over to the right side. My partner used to be White Moon, too, but she was willing to listen and hear out the benefits of the Negaverse, and she joined us eventually. I'm sure that your girl will make the right choice, too."
The obvious one, really. And if Lete was as lucky as Valjean, she'd end up with an excellent partner indeed.
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