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Prompt 5 (Ice Bath): Rainfall is rare in Destiny City during Winter; there have been a few light showers between the occasional snow but it’s never been enough to be significant. In some places, it’s just enough for a thin layer of ice to cover the ground and make it a little slippery, but ultimately it’s not enough to worry about. In an inconspicuous place in town, you step into one of these icy puddles and the thin layer of ice shatters. The hole itself seems maybe three feet wide and if you’ve ever been in the area before you know it’s just a pothole a few inches deep at most.
Except, when the ice shatters, you fall, plummeting into it as if it were a lake of icy water. It’s pitch black around you and only pale blue lights shimmer above you. The darkness is never ending and you can’t make out the details of anything except the shrinking hole above you. Maybe you remember how to swim and pull yourself out, maybe you black out and feel someone else pulling you out--either way, your frozen, soaking body is pulled from the puddle. The chill is immense, but if you look at the hole after being pulled out, all you can see is the ground below. There’s no sign that what you just experienced is real--except for the fact that you’re still soaking wet.
Except, when the ice shatters, you fall, plummeting into it as if it were a lake of icy water. It’s pitch black around you and only pale blue lights shimmer above you. The darkness is never ending and you can’t make out the details of anything except the shrinking hole above you. Maybe you remember how to swim and pull yourself out, maybe you black out and feel someone else pulling you out--either way, your frozen, soaking body is pulled from the puddle. The chill is immense, but if you look at the hole after being pulled out, all you can see is the ground below. There’s no sign that what you just experienced is real--except for the fact that you’re still soaking wet.
Reiki didn’t know what he was looking for, going out and patrolling in the rain like this. Maybe something, maybe nothing. Maybe he wouldn’t know until he stumbled into trouble and had to wriggle out of it as he’d gotten so accustomed to doing. Maybe he just didn’t want to accept the idea Yuki had low-key been on about since learning what was what with magical girl anything, wherein the best course of action was sometimes for Reiki to do nothing. To let himself have more time in which he didn’t get up to any high-concept magical girl nonsense and let it all be somebody else’s problem.
Rankling extra was the fact that, tonight, he’d said so while they were chilling at home, watching Star Trek.
Not any old Star Trek, either, and not even Wrath of Khan (which would have undermined Yuki’s entire thesis in a different way—specifically vis a vis Spock’s sacrifice to save the entire Enterprise crew—while, on another hand, giving him some support through other aspects of the story). Worse, Yuki had made this argument while they’d been watching one of Reiki’s personal favorite episodes of Deep Space 9.
Of course, because Yuki couldn’t simply have a bad take but instead, needed to commit to having his bad take in the worst of all possible fashions, the episode in question had been “Our Man Bashir.” Even more damningly on his entire case, he’d tried to make his point in the middle of the pre-climax argument between Dr. Bashir and Garak. Talking over the episode, Reiki could forgive because it wasn’t really a crime, at this point; he knew the dialogue in this one as well as he knew how to apply the contours in his standard show beat. How could he not, when “Our Man Bashir” was part of the shipper bible for Garak and Bashir?
But with Yuki tonight? Chiming in over top of Garak’s “There comes a time when the odds are against you, and the only reasonable course of action is to quit”? Moreover, doing it just so he could throw Reiki a Look so pointed, it could have doubled as an icepick and pop off like,
“You know, he’s kinda right, ********……… Yeah, that really bothered Reiki.
It was one thing for Yuki to object to Reiki’s whole complicated Thing about Faustite, where the specific nature of their relationship and even his own feelings steadfastly defied Reiki’s attempts at labeling them, but he knew that Romantic Doki-Doki ******** Feelings were involved, and that he cared quite a lot for Faustite. As much as Reiki did care, he couldn’t begrudge Yuki any exasperation or objections, there. Even with the things that Yuki didn’t know about Faustite because Reiki either didn’t know them or had refused to tell him, honoring the confidence in which they’d originally been shared, Yuki knew more than enough to reach the wholly sensible, painfully logical conclusion that Faustite was Probably Bad News in most situations, and absolutely someone who deserved the mad, bad, and dangerous to know moniker. All of Yuki’s objections on the Faustite count, Reiki could not begrudge him.
But objecting to the entire premise of Reiki being a magical girl? Objecting like it was somehow bad for Reiki to go on patrol to protect people when that was one of the central parts of the whole magical girl business? Reiki very much could begrudge his best guy that.
Hence, why he’d powered up and gone out after dinner and some deeply self-indulgent snuggle-time with Cersei.
Hence, now, why Reiki remained out and about on the rooftops around Westlake Park, in the freezing rain, rather than simply going home. Maybe he, a normal human who simply happened to have a henshin pen, didn’t much enjoy being out in the rain. But youma didn’t break just because the weather got a little bit unpleasant. More enterprising Negaverse operatives would be out and about, stealing energy from hapless innocents regardless of the weather. Reiki’s fellow Mirror senshi might not be up to no good like that when they could flutter off to Mirrorspace instead, but all the same, an enterprising magical girl had more than enough work to do.
Feeling a White Moon aura nearby, Reiki moved toward them. Most of the people he liked among their ranks were already full Knights or Eternal Sensh, so somebody moving around who felt like they were on Reiki’s same level or thereabouts? Maybe it was somebody he knew regardless—could have been Amsvartnir or Monoceros or Fang, very easily—or if not, it could be a new person who needed some backup.
Peering from atop a record store—well, records, CDs, and miscellaneous kitschy claptrap, since so few people really bought physical music anymore—into the alleyway below, Reiki spotted the person who seemed to belong to the aura.…… Wasn’t enough white on the uniform for a senshi, so they were probably a Knight. He didn’t recognize the color scheme offhand, but the symbol atop their hood was the sigil for Mercury in all kinds of old astronomical and alchemical texts. Considering the Saturnine symbols all over Kaifeng and Michel’s uniforms, it stood to reason that the guy down in the alley was a Knight of Mercury.
Fighting himself to stay calm and not do anything rash, Reiki held back. From his perch on the roof, he watched the Mercury Knight, feeling too much like a curious bird for his own comfort. Always, always, always, Reiki preferred action to waiting—but Yuki wanted him to be safer, and until Ida helped him and Haruhi get out of the Mirror, maybe that had to mean waiting.…… Waiting and observing, holding back until he got a sense of whether or not the Mercury Squire below would attack him for Existing While Dark Mirror.
Seiana_ZI
