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 Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2023 10:02 am
Quote: The Calling (12) : A beautiful melody drifts on the air from somewhere far away. The vocals are in a language you don’t quite recognize, but feel somehow familiar to you. Something about the song calls to you, but no matter where you go, the song seems to sound the same distance away. The longer it goes on, the more emotional the song becomes--and the more emotional you become. Something about the song is possessive and consuming, like it’s all you can think of. Something resonates in you as the song crescendos, and the feeling is at its strongest--be they good, bad, anything, but suddenly the song fades, and there’s only an emptiness inside of you. The feeling of loss is strong, and can leave someone feeling emotionally numb. Someone out there was calling to you, and you couldn’t find them.
Thinking about how easily former Mirror senshi could blend in with Order senshi who’d always been that way gave the #AestheticBitch part of Reiki’s brain so much pause about the idea of even leaving the Court at all. Would he really fit with a choice like that? Was he sure it was the right decision for him? Like, absolutely, one-hundred percent certain? Because no matter how right it felt for him in general, he had seen the way that Order senshi dressed.
Sure, those doubts told him in a voice that he couldn’t help imagining with a smug, insufferable know-it-all drawl. Sure, maybe you’d be happier as an Order senshi, with the Mirrorcoating off your starseed, and maybe it would feel overall better for your mental and emotional well-being, but seriously? Are we being completely serious right now, Reikiya? Those Order senshi will probably want you to wear white just like the rest of them, and you know how terrible you look in white? All the murder that it wreaks on your complexion?
Helpfully, those doubts sounded so similar to the same nasty little head-voices that told Reiki lies about how much better he would feel about everything awful going on in his life if he simply didn’t eat today, or worked himself hard enough at the gym to cause actual physical pain, or at least abused himself in such a way that he would swoon into Albite’s arms, though mostly because Faustite’s were a fire-hazard if he wasn’t wearing his cincher. Those head-voices Reiki could usually logic into submission by pointing out that he couldn’t guarantee Albite and Faustite would cross his path on any given night, so what would happen if he fell off a roof instead?
He didn’t have so much logic on his side with the head-voices who liked to complain about the overall aesthetics tied up in being an Order senshi. Mostly, his arguments consisted of telling them to shut up and throwing himself headlong into something else.
Which was fine and all, but god, Reiki itched to just get all of this over with already. Even knowing how many questions he had in mind to ask an Order Mauvian—for example: were there any extant plans for transferring someone’s prescriptions or getting new ones for them? what about health insurance? would Reiki need to endure the whole humiliating process of getting evaluated for ADHD all over again, because he already suffered that at five years old, it was bad enough back then, he really didn’t want to do it again at twenty-seven when he had meds that reliably worked for him and didn’t enjoy being cut off from them?—and even without answers, Reiki……wanted to know what he needed to do to get out of the Mirror already.
Except……former Dark Mirrors looked like any other Order senshi. And Reiki didn’t have a reliable way of finding Order senshi to begin with. He could only follow the bright, shiny auras when they popped up on his senses, and then hope beyond all hope that he would end up finding one of the rational, reasonable Order senshi. One of the ones who wouldn’t attack him for existing. Trying to pick out which Order senshi had also belonged to the Dark Mirror Court once upon a time? Yeah, no, Reiki felt honestly kinda ******** in that regard.
Even that wasn’t what fate had had in store for him tonight.
Out in Ramsett Park, wandering wherever the patrol took him, Reiki’s ears pricked up at the sound of……a song? He couldn’t tell what the words to it were. They didn’t sound like they’d come from any of the languages he spoke with any reasonable fluency, but the song still kicked Reiki in the heart-strings. Something about it compelled him, begging him to come find it. Following it, however, didn’t seem to help. Reiki moved through the park, trying to chase down the source of the voice, but it didn’t seem to get any closer.… A White Moon aura, on the other hand, flared up on his senses, and moving toward the voice made that aura feel brighter, warmer, closer.
He could only hope that whichever Eternal or Knight he’d run into this time would be reasonably chill.
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Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 7:42 am
Encke had heard the song, and it was enough to distract him from his usual patrol route to attempt to find the source. Did he find it, though? No. Something about it had seemed so sad, and with the festival going on, he found himself between wondering if this was a performance on one of the small stages, meant to move its listeners to tears, or if it was something bizarre and magical afoot since he couldn't find the source. He couldn't find the language in his mind, either; he was fluent in English and Spanish, but he was aware those were only two of a tapestry of languages. Still, though, he had some loose idea of what most language families sounded like, if just because he heard them in his movies... Perhaps it was best to ignore it for now. He had enough sadness on a day-to-day basis, what with all the reminders he kept running into and kept finding. His hands were no longer green to him, and they had long since healed since the brief exposure to Faustite's diminished flame--a flame that had apparently grown brighter with the b*****d not being a youma at all and instead being a general-king, but his anger over that fact was neither here nor there--but the relapse it had started hadn't quite diminished. The nightmares were back to some degree, even if they were focused more on the youma transformation than the box itself. The names echoed in his head every day; if it wasn't Elex Yorke's name, he heard the name of his classmates, both lost and found. He heard the names of some of those he knew who worked at The Autumn before Benitoite and his team burned it down. He heard-- Better to ignore it, he supposed, in favour of the one he felt approaching. Chaos, and specifically Dark Mirror, so while he relaxed he didn't go entirely off his guard until he got a better view of who it was. ... Oh, good. He was wondering how he was doing. "Muri!" greeted Encke, waving to the other in hopes of perhaps easing him if he was hearing whatever this song on the wind was. "How are you tonight? Did the music bring you over here too?" It was his best guess, but also a test to see if he was hallucinating that himself or not. If Murikabushi heard it too, at the very least, there was further proof that it was either coming from a performance or it was some universally magical bullshit and not just a result of him running himself ragged between his mind and the final recording days for his film-- He wondered if Murikabushi had gotten closer to the point he'd hoped he could help Murikabushi get to. Encke had figured from the moment he had met the other that Murikabushi was ultimately too soft for the side that tried to claim him when he awoke. While ideally Encke would have everyone purified--and he'd be forever sad that Caedus' laser had never gotten to do what it should do--Murikabushi had been someone Encke wanted to try with.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 10:05 pm
The more Reiki followed the song, the less everything made sense to him. Nobody singing made themselves apparent. The song seemed, one moment, to grow closer and clearer and louder, only for it to seem further away than before in the next moment. None of the words came together as anything that Reiki understood, but something about them drove him on, even with the White Moon aura getting distinctly, inarguably closer. Something about the tone of the singing—or maybe something that Reiki simply wanted to hear—made him feel like he needed to find whoever was singing.
At least, when someone else called out in his direction, a distinctly more familiar voice found Reiki.
He called the only name by which he knew Reiki. Still, it took Reiki a moment to shake himself out of the music’s spell, to turn and face Encke—and to sigh in relief at the sight of him. Silly of him, probably. He’d recognized Encke’s voice, so acting like this over finding himself face-to-face with Encke…… Reiki wanted to shake his head at himself, at his own nonsense. But it might have sent the wrong impression, so instead, Reiki dragged his fingertips through his bangs as he went over closer to Encke—closer to the real person here, because maybe being close to him would keep Reiki more grounded in actual reality.
“Encke, hey, I……” He started, and quickly trailed off. “Yeah, I—the music? Trying to find the source, but……?”
This…… This would have been the ideal time for Reiki to smile and insist that he was fine, wouldn’t it? Honestly, he did it all the time. Reiki could perform the ******** out of selling somebody on how Completely Fine he was. It came to him so naturally……same as he could swallow all his objections to casting directors thinking themselves brilliant for putting the flamboyantly, fabulously femme queer boy in the Designated Villain’s role, choke back how badly he wanted to play Johanna or Louise or Cinderella instead, and milk every moment of “A Little Priest,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “Rose’s Turn,” or “Last Midnight” for whatever he could get while silently thanking any god who’d listen that at least Stephen Songheim wrote all his Difficult Women with nuance, and pathos, and heart.
Never mind how the objective best song in the show lost so much of its luster when people told you over, and over, and over again how they thought the character singing it was the only one you could do.
“Yeah, I—I’m sorry? For…” Reiki gestured vaguely in a direction that probably wasn’t anywhere near either of the hospitals in town. “You know, running off with Fang so abruptly, last time we saw each other? But I…… Yeah, I’ve……”
Reiki swallowed thickly, wondering why he couldn’t just……make himself say what he wanted to say. About how he was fine, and life was fine, and everything was always fine in this, the best of all possible worlds. Sure, getting through the familiar lie had been a skosh harder ever since Cybele had gone all princess on everybody—ugh, because the universe really needed a princess who’s ******** feral, Reiki thought bitterly. Almost immediately, he bit his lip and drowned in a freezing cascade of guilt for feeling like that when it wasn’t as if Cybele had <******** asked to have Faustite shove his hand into her chest and somehow turn her into a princess. Besides, more specifically, Reiki had struggled worse than ever with pretending to be okay since <******** Langite had hit Reiki with his godawful b***h ******** magic.
Maybe that struggle was what had worn him down. Too much insistence to too many people that he was fine and that anything remotely Not Fine, he had completely handled on his own. So, now, when Reiki didn’t want to burden or upset someone who obviously (to Reiki) had all kinds of more important things to worry about, he couldn’t make himself do it.
“I’ve been, uh……surviving.” Slouching, Reiki shook his head. “Sorry, it—it’s about the best thing I can say for how it’s been, right now. Have you……” Reiki hoped, but maybe he shouldn’t have? Right about now, Faustite not being dead or full-youma felt like one of the only examples of things going relatively okay for someone Reiki cared about, and even that came with all sorts of fine print and caveats attached. “How have you been, though?”
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Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2023 2:16 am
Murikabushi somehow seemed sadder than he had the last time they had crossed paths, that time at the bank he was responding to his sister's emergency call. Encke couldn't say he didn't sympathize. Everything in general felt awfully grim, from the reminders of youmaification to the fact that their purification attempts had somehow failed worse than he could have imagined. Everything in general felt grim, from the fact that the Negaverse was still there to the confirmation of his own paranoia that literally everything was infested. Encke had long-learned that he shouldn't trust anything newer, the confirmation bias ringing in time and time again, but to see it happen to an institution like a bank felt particularly... well, heinous, not that banks were much of anything but that naturally. He didn't want his money going to some Negaverse scheme, but evidently, he may not have a choice in the matter. Ugh. Only the icing on a particularly terrible pastry he didn't want. "You don't need to be sorry for that," replied Encke, shaking his head. "Made sense for you to get out of there, honestly. I get it. Just happy you were able to find a friend to leave with." Especially because he hadn't really seen any dark mirror senshi, especially since that was an order senshi, especially because Fang did seem to see Murikabushi as a person and not just a threat. Something felt terribly true about surviving for him too, and it hurt. It hurt to see Murikabushi feeling that badly--although perhaps this was the perfect opportunity to try and get him to leave that life--and it also hurt to realize perhaps they were in similar states, but he wasn't sure how much he could reasonably say about it. How did he even begin to explain he was having a bit of a trauma relapse without necessarily explaining what it was, and without Murikabushi feeling worse? And why was there still no source for that music-- "Glad you can hear it too, for one. Was worried I was hallucinating it there." As a mirroring of what Murikabushi once did for him, Encke pulled a water bottle out of subspace and offered it toward him. "But how have I been is a complicated question. Seen a lot over the past few months that have brought some bad memories back, to be honest." He felt so far away from that moment he finally broke the box in his mind. "Did you want to talk about what's weighing on you? I'd love to help if I can." His smile was a bit more lop-sided than he'd like it to be, but he'd blame that on the melancholy of the music. "Helps me to feel helpful, honestly." Encke had spent a solid month hardly leaving his room when he thought he had witnessed Faustite becoming a youma. It turned out to be much more complicated than that, and it some ways worse than that, but he wanted to do something that felt like it was having an impact, and wasn't just futile. Like so much else had been. ... No.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2023 2:31 pm
The idea of not apologizing for having abruptly run off after a pretty messy, stressful battle……briefly made Reiki tilt his head in confusion? But if Encke was going to insist—“I’ll just be sorry that you’re dealing with a lot right now too, then,” Reiki decided, “especially with it all being a mess in the present and bringing up bad memories for you.”
He didn’t know exactly what memories Encke meant, but considering how ******** up so many aspects of this magical gang war could get? And how they could get so ******** up, so very easily? Reiki could imagine that Encke’s recently dredged up trauma was probably even worse than he wanted to let on by describing it in such neutral terms.
The offer of talking things out with Encke hit Reiki with some conflicted feelings—but before he could fully think to stop himself, he nodded. His mouth had ideas and wanted desperately to share them, even if his heart had certain objections to that idea.
“The Cosmos Squire who was there, Amsvartnir? He’s a good friend, too,” Reiki said without needing to think about it because……yes? Any initial disagreements aside, Ams had been his friend for a little over a year by now? And for all a part of Reiki hissed and screeched at him to keep his own problems to himself instead of bothering anybody with them, talking was always easier for him than not talking—sometimes to Reiki’s own detriment. “It was just……Fang was the friend who needed help right then.”
Pouting more than a little bit, Reiki added, “I didn’t get him all the way to the hospital, though. Some Saturn Knight showed up and started giving me a hard time, and okay, I wasn’t my best self with him either? But the first thing he does is call Fang ‘cargo’ like he isn’t even a person—or at least like he thinks I see Fang like that—and then he gets all bossy with me, which……” With a shrug, Reiki gestured up and down his own torso as if this perfectly explained his general point about him having the same contrarian streak as his Obaasan. “So, I don’t take him bossing me around very well, and whatever Pendour did with her magic is massively wearing off, so I’m back in all the s**t feelings that Langite stuck me with when he went to kidnap Daedalus, and……”
Reiki sighed, blinking at the bottle of water for a moment before letting himself nod and take it. “Thank you,” he said as he cracked it open. Encke’s offer had a good point to it, honestly: Reiki needed to take a moment and calm down. Hydrating while he did so made it an even better idea, all around. After giving himself some time for a long drink and a few deep breaths, he went on, “Langite is the Negaverse senshi whose magic ******** me up so much that night. Daedalus is another space senshi, like Fang? But he’s more of a cute dragon-boy than a cute chrysocyon-boy. I don’t think? I’m really at liberty to say? Why they’re interested in each other? It’s Daedalus’s story to tell, not mine, y’know? But it was why Langite was carrying him off, and probably part of why Langite attacked me to stop me getting at Daedalus. And his magic was just……”
Reiki shuddered and shook his head. “I guess the whole thing with whatever his sphere is? It makes people yearn for something they can’t have. And really ******** them up about it. That night would’ve been messy enough for me, seeing Faustite there—still half-youma, not all youma, like Kerberos said happened? And then him bringing out those new tricks like whatever he tried to do with Cybele and her starseed? And……”
Sighing softly, Reiki looked away from Encke, down at the grass. Never, in any of the times they’d interacted, had Encke given Reiki any indication that he was an especially judgmental person. On the contrary, Encke had been one of the White Moon senshi and Knights whose behavior toward Reiki had most made it sting that others in their ranks—like Angelica, like Michel, like that obnoxious twink Neptune Squire who needed Pendour-oneesan to teach him some ******** manners so he wouldn’t look so damn stupid next time—judged Reiki guilty before giving him a chance to do anything one way or another. Sure, it made sense that people in the same faction didn’t always agree with each other, but it still stung that people in the same group as Encke, Ida, Kerberos, Fang, and Lysithea could undermine their own alleged cause with so much pointless cruelty.
(Except for Anser, who deserved better than all the things that had traumatized her, and had, as far as Reiki was concerned, done nothing wrong ever in her life.)
But even someone like Encke had to have limits, right? And the part of Assorted Faustite-Related Boy Feelings that hovered on the tip of Reiki’s tongue—surely, that had to cross some kind of line with Encke, didn’t it? Reiki hadn’t even told Kerberos about this particular fact. He hadn’t spoken it out loud to anybody, definitely not anyone he liked among the White Moon’s ranks, because……what if didn’t matter that Reiki had had no idea that Faustite would’ve ever done something like that for him, much less done it so publicly? What if it didn’t matter that Reiki hadn’t asked for or expected anything like that from Faustite? Or that the most important things he’d ever asked of Faustite had been for him to take care of himself and stay alive?
What if none of it mattered anymore because a Negaverse General-Sovereign had as good as given Reiki a declaration of protection, even if it was only just the once, in front of so many people, and nobody’s intentions really counted worth a damn because accepting that protection made Reiki just as bad as so many people thought of Faustite?
Still. If Reiki didn’t say it himself, someone else might have told Encke about it for him. Only thing to do was bite the bullet and admit, “What Faustite said? When he summoned all those youma? ‘Kill anyone who isn’t us.……or the cute boy in the purple skirts over there.’” Absently, Reiki smoothed his free hand down his skirts, by way of highlighting that they were quite notable, and the gauzy overlay was, indeed, very purple. “…I would’ve been enough of a dumb, gay mess over that part? But then Langite had to go and make it worse, and dredge up things that have been bothering me since that nightmare on Astraya—” If not longer, really. “—and I’m just……”
Reiki shrugged, water bottle crinkling as his hands clung to it more tightly. “I’m really not over it, y’know? Any of it.”
The closest he’d come to that had been accepting that Faustite remained alive and himself. But that was easy than trying to deal with knowing, clearly, what he so desperately wanted—but not knowing how to get it or how getting it would affect everybody else.
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Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2023 9:10 pm
Encke settled, then, when Murikabushi started talking, quite happy to focus on anything else except for the terrible mess that his mind was as of late. The melancholy in the air wasn't helping, the state of others he knew wasn't helping, the reality wasn't helping, but being a helpful ear to someone he hoped would leave chaos? That feel like something he could affect. Muri wasn't wrong. If he could even begin to explain what was affecting his mind, he wasn't sure if he knew where to start. It was fortunate that he had known how long Sadie had lived in Destiny City because at that point he could just show her the proof and let the conversation go where it may. But that was the tip of the iceberg, in a way. There was so much underneath that he didn't want to burden anyone else with. Amsvartnir caused him to nod in recognition. Murikabushi had left with Fang, but Encke had stayed behind and offered to get him out. They had left together, and in some way perhaps that was for the best. If Murikabushi had a friend who needed him that evening, his Cosmos squire friend had a way out, too. "Pendour's magic is very comforting," he confirmed, with a quiet chuckle. "Almost too bad she can't bottle that feeling up to give out." Almost, because Encke would rather see Pendour themself, to be honest. "If it helps, I offered to take Amsvartnir away from the bank myself." ... Why was a corrupt senshi kidnapping a senshi? He bookmarked that one for later. "But it is understandable why you would react like that. It's all about somebody making the wrong impression of what you were doing, and that always sits pretty uncomfortably, no matter the circumstance. And the Saturn squire was assuming you were using him as cargo." Encke was fairly sure that certain people wouldn't take him just casually talking to a dark mirror senshi terribly well either, but it was what it was. Bad impressions were just that. Probably would have taken him working with Faustite badly too, but that was a whole can of worms. He left that rest though, as Murikabushi hydrated. He nodded with a smile, taking a sip of a water bottle of his own while he waited. It sounded that the story between the corrupt senshi and the alien senshi got even more complicated. Whatever made them interested in each other was severe enough to make the other kidnap him, and in his experience when a corrupt senshi was interested, that wasn't really a good thing. If he ever ran into Daedalus, he might see if he could suss out what was happening there. A yearning magic sounded ******** up and he winced for what that might have caused. Encke had a loose idea of what effects it might have on him and he wanted none of them--oh, perhaps a yearning for the teenage years he lost, at this rate-- But Faustite. That was an element he had a lot of feelings about. And Murikabushi was right that Encke had limits, and he wasn't even wrong with the presumption that Faustite himself might be one of the things he had an issue with. But that was Faustite himself, not Murikabushi. And Murikabushi was openly acknowledging that Faustite had done some ******** up things that day--presumably knew he had done more than just that in his life. But being a potential gay a** over someone offering to protect him was understandable, even if Encke had no love lost with Faustite, only a love lost for what could have been. Langite making everything worse and hit harder with his longing magic was understandable too. "Seeing Faustite there took me by surprise too, to be honest," Encke started, with his gaze sliding to the side briefly. "Was one of the people who was trying to help him get out, get rid of the youma as he worded it. I knew it would take a lot for him to leave, so I suppose in the end it doesn't surprise me that he didn't. I saw some of that chaos starting to fade from him, and even though there was an ambush by chaos that complicated matters further, I actually had hope it would work. I was the one helping him over there before he suddenly backed away and said it was too late, and we all kind of presumed he disappeared to become a youma." Encke looked down at his hands for a moment. He clearly hadn't. He was a general-sovereign, and to be honest, he wasn't sure that was a better result than the youmaification. Perhaps it would have been easier if he had just died. Perhaps he should have just refused to help him in the first place, although would it have made a difference? Why did everything feel so bleak? He looked back up from his hands so he could rub at his ear as if it would quiet it. "But you didn't expect him to be there, and you didn't expect him to be so kind to you on top of that. Maybe he just thinks you're cute, but," he chuckled, "glad the youma left you alone. You don't need them coming after you like that." And no one did, but Murikabushi was already going through enough that evening. One less of them getting attacked, the better. "Astraya was a nightmare, I agree with that. I met one of the robots that was actually on my homeworld, and we talked a lot and bonded over that commonality, but one of its fellows tried to withdraw my starseed. Strapped me down and everything. It didn't work," he gestured at his markings as an indicator, "but killing a sentient robot of all things because of that doesn't feel any better." For a while, it had ******** him up. "Being magical like us is a lot, and it's complicated, and it's hard to navigate. It's sometimes hard to figure out what is right and what is wrong. I've come to some conclusions of what is definitively wrong, but everything you've said is understandable. I've been at this s**t for somewhere near fourteen years and it hasn't really gotten any easier to navigate, I've just adjusted and shifted for it. And it's introduced me to great things and people, too. Pendour, Kerberos," he chuckled, "you, for instance. You're a good guy, and nothing anyone says to you changes that. "I am sorry for how Langite's magic affected you. That sounds like a brutal attack if it dredged up so much."
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 3:23 pm
Listening to Encke……both helped and didn’t. On one hand, having someone else to talk to made it easier for Reiki to ignore the strange music coming from gods-knew-where and, more importantly, to tune out more of the longing, yearning, and sense of something missing that it apparently wanted to make him feel (as if Reiki hadn’t gotten more than enough of that back at the bank, all thanks to Langite). What Encke had to say, however, mostly didn’t offer any comfort. Some parts did—as confusing as it was that Encke was acting normal about all of the everything with Faustite telling the youma to leave Reiki alone.
“I’m sorry,” Reiki offered gently without thinking about it or how it might sound until the words had left his mouth. “Kinda feels like everyone is really going through it, these days.… Like, I heard about what happened secondhand from Kerberos, but you and him—you two were actually there when all of the drama exploded. And then, having it dropped on you out of nowhere that Faustite survived in the form we most easily recognize, and didn’t become a full youma? There’s the shock of it all, maybe the feeling like ‘So what was I grieving about if you’re a more powerful you but also still yourself, we’re all of those feelings for nothing,’ and needing to compartmentalize all of it so you can focus on what’s going on immediately in front of you, because if you don’t focus, innocent people might end up dead.…”
Idly, Reiki thought about those teenage girls with their phones who’d been there that night. He thought about how close Faustite had been to them. If Reiki hadn’t wandered in—if he hadn’t distracted Faustite by being a Boy who wanted the girls out of harm’s way—then would they have even made it home? Or would they have followed Faustite’s other youma back to the Negaverse’s space and instead started calling the Rift their “Home” and the other youma their family?
Would they have tried, as youma, to go back to the homes they remembered, with families they would have recognized but who would no longer recognize them back, only to find that those places could never be “Home” for them again, that there isn’t room for youma to scroll through Tiktok, seated on their twin bed and surrounded by posters of their favorite K-Pop idols, and roll their eyes when their sister busts into their room and waves a leg in their face like “Oh my god, Becky, I just finished waxing and the skin is so smooth; oh my god, Becky, FEEL”……
As with most things about youma, Reiki obviously didn’t know.
Still, thinking about such things was easier than the thick gulp and the admission, “I met a robot from Murikabushi, too. He called himself ‘Kima,’ and I think……” Reiki glanced down and aside, his plastic water bottle crinkling as he fidgeted nervously. “So, I found this vial in Mirrorspace, a while back. It, like, unlocked some memory of Airan’s, the last Sailor Murikabushi? Kima was in it, even though he didn’t do very much.…… But he was Airan’s friend, I think? A robot, but a friend. Didn’t seem like he had very many friends outside of Kima—at least, not on his own planet? Because whatever friendship he had with Daedalus or anybody else off-world, his life at home seemed pretty lonely.…”
Lonely, painful, miserable.… Reiki’s stomach lurched, just thinking about how much Airan must have been through to make him say something like “When my time is over and my starseed next leaves the Cauldron, I pray that that Sailor Murikabushi never awakens. Let the Mauvians completely miss their starseed and give them a happier life than mine.”
But unfortunately, Kima having been Airan’s friend wasn’t the whole story of what had happened on Astraya: “……He did manage to steal my starseed,” Reiki told Encke, skin crawling as if admitting this broke the rules or violated some kind of sacrosanct trust, “but Blossom—Kerberos, that is—he didn’t have to do much work to get it back.… There was just something……” Reiki sighed, pointing at his chest and tracing a circle in the air around his heart. “Not that I’ve actually seen my own starseed, since……obviously? But I’ve seen a couple when Negaverse operatives have yanked them out of people. They’re always so bright, so full of life and color……but not mine.”
Reiki hadn’t admitted it out loud before. He’d thought about it. He’d sometimes wanted to say it. Part of him—probably the same part of him that had seen Faustite grabbing at Cybele’s starseed at the bank that night, and nevertheless insisted on feeling like You don’t understand, okay? He really has a lot to be upset about—wanted to ask Faustite or Albite to pull it out, take a look, then put it back and tell him what they thought.
None of that, however, was the same as the heavy kick in the chest of saying the words out loud: “And yeah, Kerberos could’ve saved me without much trouble anyway? But……I actually got my starseed back because there’s something wrong with it.” Laying one hand over his heart—over the starseed in question—Reiki shivered despite the summer heat. Something inside of Reiki twisted like talons digging into him. “Blossom thinks it might be what Dark Mirror Chaos looks like on a starseed: no light, no color, just this dead, reflective silver.”Seiana_ZI ……you ever feel like “i’ve had enough of this dude” about your own character, bc that’s me and how hard muri’s been making it to just write his damn tags ;___;
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