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 Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2023 5:13 pm
At least Reiki knew the way to Kerberos’s bench pretty much by heart, at this point. Aside from how close North End Park sat to Yuki’s place, there was the plain, simple, and wholly undeniable fact that, if he wasn’t out on an active patrol, Reiki spent most of his weekly Powered Up Senshi Time………right there at that specific bench. With Kerberos. Gabbing about whatever was on anyone’s mind—most often Reiki’s—and determinedly treating Kerberos like any other person because him escaping the Negaverse only to become a transcended Eternal senshi made it so easy for people to put him on a pedestal.
Hard for Reiki to not know that, considering he’d once done it himself. But as he led Miss Sonora of Ida toward North End Park—with only a brief pause to pick up some boba from one of the places in town that didn’t much mind (or at least didn’t seem to indicate that they resented) when Senshi and Knights showed up to buy their drinks—Reiki tried to keep things as upbeat as he could manage. The poor girl had had a rough enough night as it was. She didn’t need any further hardship to get dumped on her just from walking to someone who was supposed to help her and hearing about all kinds of magical war drama. Give it a little bit before throwing her right in the deep-end.
“That’s him over there,” Reiki said to her, carrying his green tea and Kerberos’s brown sugar milk tea. “His aura might feel intimidating, but I promise, Blossom’s a great guy, very chill with most people. And he can call Ida for you.” As they got close enough for him to not need to raise his voice, he looked to Kerberos instead: “What’s up, slut,” he said warmly and fondly, proffering Kerberos’s boba. “I met a new Ida Page over in Palisades Park. She’s a sweetie.”
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Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 11:21 pm
The whole experience felt completely surreal. Sonora was half-convinced that she was going to jolt awake in the back room of the shop, because she'd sat down and accidentally passed out and all of this was a remarkably detailed dream as a result of her encounter with Kaifeng and Demeter. An imaginary story where she got to be magical, too.
She followed on after Muriakbushi, and her wisp appeared again to press up against her cheek for a moment before vanishing. That steeled her, for a moment, made her straighten her spine. It didn't make the experience less surreal, especially not when Murikabushi handed her a strawberry milk tea and she had to just Accept that this was a thing you could do while a magical girl.
When she spotted this friend of Murikabushi's, her eyes widened. He was casually sitting on a bench, and all around him was a bloom of flowers that matched the lovely white ones all over his delicate, fancy outfit.
"....Hi," she said, more than a little awed. "Uh. I'm Sonora?"It was always a pleasure to see Murikabushi, and tonight, as he approached Kerberos's bench, he wasn't alone. Kerberos brightened, and waved, and when Murikabushi came over and offered his bubble tea, he laughed.
"Always good to see you," he said, and he took in the very confused-looking Page as he accepted his drink. "Come over here, sit down, you look stressed. Rough first night?" He asked, sympathetically.
"Thanks for bringing her here, Muri. We can get her eased into this whole Page thing with some friends." Which obviously included Murikabushi. "Hang out, I bet Ida would be glad to see you too."
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Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2023 11:00 pm
“Miss Sonora of Ida here apparently powered up when she met a pretty nasty youma,” Reiki explained, then paused for a sip of his tea, trying to still the fluttery, weird-a** feelings he had buzzing around inside of him like radio-static. Whatever they were, Reiki didn’t like them. He didn’t enjoy feeling as if everything inside him could catch fire and he wouldn’t have minded much, just so long as it didn’t impose on anybody else by setting them alight as well.
Keep it Reiki’s problem. Not anybody else’s. The way things were supposed to be.
Tea didn’t really help Reiki feel any less Messy inside, but……well. He knew what he needed to do about that. He knew that, in all likelihood, he’d never feel Right about anything again unless and until he made it out of the Mirror. Then, he could at least hang out with his White Moon friends as something other than Murikabushi, even though he might not exactly be Reiki anymore. But……none of that was the point tonight. As he motioned for Sonora to take a seat next to Kerberos, the only thing for Reiki to do was keep things focused on the new girl who needed some guidance.
“I wound up handling the youma, and I tried to give her a run-down on what they’re about,” he told Kerberos, idly pacing in front of the bench and through Blossom’s perpetual bloom of asphodel. “There’s probably a lot that I missed about them—” For example, Reiki hadn’t even begun to cover half-youma, despite very well knowing better, “—and about what she’s gotten Awakened into in general, but, uh.……” He sighed, briefly pausing his pacing to give Kerberos a small shrug. “This Crowley needs an Aziraphale to help ease Miss Sonora into things, y’know? Maybe *I* ran headlong into the deep end, but that doesn’t mean I’d recommend it to anybody.…”
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Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2023 8:12 pm
There was something about the way Murikabushi was moving that had Kerberos feeling more than a little concerned. A tension in him, like a spring coiled and ready to snap.
Perhaps it was the sudden thrust of responsibility for someone from another faction. Sonora certainly looked borderline terrified, like she was basically holding herself together with willpower and the friendliness of a familiar wisplike creature. (What would hers become, Kerberos wondered briefly? And did Almadel know those glowy little buggers were still all over the city? Ah well, he wouldn't be back until next summer, based on previous evidence, and the wisps seemed harmless. friendly, even. So not particularly relevant.)
But that didn't really feel like the full story, and Kerberos made a note to himself to talk to Murikabushi about whatever was going on as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
"Alright, well. What do we know, and what can I help cover? And do you want me to call Ida now?"It all felt terribly surreal, to Sonora. But, well, here she was, and with a little wobble, she plopped down on the bench and took a long sip of her strawberry milk tea and tried to pretend that this was somehow less wild than it was. That wasn't working very well, though, because....it was exactly as wild as it seemed.
"Uh! I know that I'm a Page of Ida. And I guess Ida is a person? A Princess?""And a planet, actually." Kerbers interjected, politely. "And since you're Page Sonora, there's a place on planet Ida called Sonora, and you're the guardian of that place." "Okay, and a planet. In space. And as a Page, I serve...that planet." She nodded, slowly. "And there's somewhere on Ida called Sonora, and I'm the Knight of that place and it's my job to protect it?" That seemed easy enough, at least. Like something she could do. Especially since it did not sound like it involved hitting monsters with magic that made them scream in pain like Murikabushi's had done, and like...well, she didn't know. Like hers might? If she ever got any? She didn't feel like she had any yet, but she supposed that could change."Yep, you got it!" That was good. At least the basics were coming easy. Well, at least she was getting the basics down. That was good.
"And youma are....monsters. And they want to hurt people. And as a Knight, I'm supposed to stop them, but stopping them doesn't kill them forever, it just makes them go away for a while." Which...didn't really soothe her conscience.
She stared down at the bubble tea in her lap, and frowned.
"....Is there a lot of fighting involved in being a Knight? Because if there is, I don't think I'll be a very good one. I don't like fighting. Violence is pointless, all it does is beget more violence. And I don't want to be going out every night and hurting people. That sounds really miserable. Especially if it really is people, and not just...you know, monsters, because people are people and..."
She stopped. Shook her head.
"It doesn't sit right with me, hurting people over some kind of magical conflict."
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 5:06 pm
For all he stayed on his feet and kept pacing, unable to properly settle down, Reiki did hang on the lessons that Kerberos was imparting to Miss Sonora, Page of Ida.
Although he’d had run-ins of all kinds with Knights before and even liked a couple of them, Reiki had to begrudgingly admit that he didn’t know how Knighthood worked as well as Kerberos did. He knew that Knights were affiliated with places in space, that they got weapons, that the weapons would allow them to channel magic someday—maybe not with only the power of a Page like Sonora and the other Ida Page who Reiki had run into before, but for sure when they leveled up to Squire like Amsvartnir—but the “how”s and “why”s and “huh, wait, what”s of Knights were not exactly something Reiki understood.
The relationship between Knights and Senshi in particular, Reiki had been pretty unclear on until just now, hearing Kerberos spell it out and walk Sonora through the steps about how Knights primarily served their Wonders, not the senshi. Miss Stirling of Lysithea had sort of seemed to think of it a different way?
But maybe that was just down to her feeling a sense of personal loyalty to Lysithea, rather than feeling like her identity as a Knight was bound and subservient to a Princess senshi. Making Knights subordinate to senshi like that didn’t sound fair to Reiki, conceptually speaking, and he was glad that Cosmos—or whoever had established how Knights worked and what their whole deal was—had made them their own, unique sort of magical warrior who could take care of themselves, rather than people who existed to be lesser than and to serve senshi.
He stopped pacing, though, and emerged from his own thoughts as Miss Sonora’s last point. Sighing softly, Reiki nodded. “There are a lot of people caught up in all this who feel the same way, sweetheart,” he told her gently. “I’m not that fond of using my magic because I know how badly it can hurt people. I’m the senshi of hunger, so my magic induces feelings of hunger, but it can be hunger for anything. I’ve unwittingly triggered people with it in the past, before I really knew what it did.”
Guiltily, he had to force himself not to glance at Kerberos, because that might have cut too close to home and risked outing something that it wasn’t Reiki’s business to out. “What I can suggest? Is to keep that good heart, because the non-magical people in town need folks who care looking out for them. But try to remember that not everyone in this war feels the same as you do, and……”
He sighed softly. “Just—you should be ready to protect yourself, in case you run into one of the people who doesn’t care if they hurt anyone, or who does care but only in that they enjoy hurting people.”
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 8:52 pm
Kerberos exhaled. "I've known people who chose not to fight." Well, one person, but Hvergelmir had stood as such a fine example that it was hard not to think that others had followed in her path. "I think it's admirable, to want to find a peaceful solution. I know the Negaverse too well to believe they'd be amenable."
He smiled, but it was tired, bitter.
"You have to understand, Miss Sonora, that it's all very well and good to want to avoid fighting as much as possible. And I'm sure you'll find an officer or two who sees things your way. But the Negaverse...it makes people into their worst selves. Makes them want to hurt other people. Makes them stop seeing other people--especially civilians--as human beings with lives. And it is our duty, as magical warriors, Senshi and Knights, to protect people who can't protect themselves. And I think you can do that. Can't you?"Sonora didn't like this. Didn't like anything of what she was hearing. It made her deeply uncomfortable, to think that there was any chance she might have to fight people.
But, if she was honest? She also didn't like the idea of letting other people get hurt just because she didn't want to fight. That was just passing the violence buck, wasn't it? And it was kind of cowardly besides.
"Okay," she said. "I don't like it, but....I understand."
She would just have to find ways to talk people down, or keep them from hurting other people. It was...it would be fine. she could totally do this Knight thing.
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