“New Year, New Me” was a fundamentally stupid phrase, if you asked Vanya Renault, because nobody ever meant it, nor did they stick to anything they theoretically committed to changing about themselves with this or that New Year’s resolution. Even so, he was trying very hard to make a habit out of powering up into Farbauti after work and doing something more or less akin to the patrolling that other senshi and Knights did.
Yes, this meant needing to ride his bike, which was not always the best for noticing any Nefarious Magical Things that were going amiss. Yes, powering up after work also specifically meant in the tiny skirt that accompanied his senshi fuku, which was not always the most comfortable arrangement. But—well, it wasn’t like Vanya had any other means of conveyance, nor like Farbauti could change his skirt or shove his bike into his subspace pocket. Maybe if he’d had a collapsible bike……but Farbauti had never actually owned or dealt with a collapsible bike, so he didn’t even know if that would work out.
At least, he figured, his normal bike was nondescript enough to not be traceable. Even the container in his basket—which he used to keep orders warm when delivering them during the winter months—didn’t have an identifiable logo or anything.
Passing through Prospect Park, he finally picked up on another aura, but it helped that: A., they were Dark Mirror, rather than Negaverse (maybe not all of the Mirror senshi treated people decently all of the time, but enough of them seemed to do so, as opposed to Negaverse operatives, who generally didn’t); and B., they felt like they were on Farbauti’s same power level. He chained his bike up to a rack real quick before following the aura, just……if they did need somebody to ask them not to drain so many people, he should probably try to do that? And if they maybe needed some help or backup instead, he should probably have also tried to do that?
Getting closer to the Mirror aura, Farbauti felt another aura crop up on his senses, and it said that tonight would be more of a “help or backup” kind of night. Youma.
Although he was still a bit off from both auras, he could see them clearly by now: the Mirror senshi in their pink hair and green accents all over their fuku, minding their own business as far as Farbauti could tell, and the youma, some oversized wolf-looking beast with three snakes coming out where it should have had a tail, loping toward the Mirror senshi on chicken-looking legs, like Baba Yaga’s hut. As much as Farbauti wanted to run in the opposite direction, he steeled his nerves as much as possible and ran toward the Mirror senshi too. Maybe he could intercept and put himself between them and the youma.
genovianprince
Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:46 am
Bélénos didn't love winter. it was fine and all, useful for the environment or whatever, blah blah blah—it was important, but she didn't care right now, because the snow was just atrocious and preventing people from being out at night so she could rob them of their energy! It was soooo homophobic and transphobic of snow to do this. Absolutely rude. She had stuff she wanted to do! But nooo.
Ugh. So completely and totally uncool.
At least she had a good book tonight. Something called Hunger Pangs from some cool new author named Joy Demorra. It was a fascinating book, and seeing more cool queer novels with disabled characters made her super happy.
Then she heard the growling behind her.
Awww, crap. She took back all her previous complaints about the night, actually! This quiet was good!! She turned, wielding her book, and smacked the thing across the snout with a feral shriek, backing up as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately for the Mirror senshi, she noticed the youma before Farbauti could reach them. Moreover, she decided to be brave about lashing out against it. While some part of Farbauti could absolutely appreciate that kind of courage and nerve—he, himself, was more or less terrified of everything, so he couldn’t relate, but he could appreciate it when other people were brave—he also cringed about it. Didn’t stop running toward the Mirror senshi and the youma, no, but cringed about it all the same.
Seemed to him like he had a perfectly fair reason for cringing, too: the youma flinched briefly over being hit with the book, but that didn’t last. Although the Mirror senshi managed to put some distance between herself and the youma, the youma turned that space to its advantage, lunging at her. The outrage over being smacked must have thrown it off somewhat, because it missed the first attempt at attacking her. Seemed like it put too much force into its movements, like it overshot how much effort it really needed to expend on getting her. Instead of hitting its target, the youma dove past her and landed face-first in a snowbank.
That bought some time for Farbauti to close the distance, but by the time he reached them, the youma had dug itself out of the snow. Shaking itself off, it almost managed to look like a puppy. At least, it did until it noticed Farbauti, and turned its glowing red eyes on him.
His magic hadn’t exactly been on the best terms with him since Ash had Awakened him. Sometimes, it came out too weak. Other times, it didn’t hit the person whom Farbauti tried to target with it. Occasionally, it didn’t go off at all. But stopping just shy of the youma, Farbauti made himself focus hard on getting the magic to play nicely with him. He didn’t know if he was close enough to get it working on the Mirror senshi and throwing it at the youma seemed like the stupidest idea he’d ever had this week.
So, he looked to the Mirror-senshi. “Get back,” he called to her. “Or get up that tree if you can!”
Wouldn’t exactly accomplish what he’d come here to do if he finished the youma before the magic wore off and wound up hurting her, too. As he called the magic to his hands, Farbauti slapped himself across the cheek.
“Rage Outburst!”
A fire swept through him immediately. Burning hotter than he thought he’d intended, Farbauti rounded on the youma. Whether or not he’d meant to go this hard no longer mattered. Neither did whether or not the Mirror senshi had listened to his advice. All that mattered was the youma before him, snapping its jaws and letting its snake-headed tails hiss at him. With a scream of primal rage, Farbauti charged the beast and started pummeling it.
genovianprince
Farbauti selects one target within ten feet (ally, enemy, or himself) and waves a hand toward them as if slapping them. Instantly, they feel possessed by a powerful rage: pre-extant negative feelings are magnified; everything is liable to piss them off; any physical pain inflicted on them only enrages them further and they seem to fight through it as though nothing happened; and they can only focus on releasing that rage. For the duration of the magic, their physical and magical attacks will hit somewhat harder, but they will feel less controlled as the rage overpowers them. Until the magic ends, they will find it harder to discern friend from foe, and very difficult to calm down.
This attack lasts for 30 seconds and Farbauti may use it three times per battle. The effects of any physical injuries incurred during the rage will set in when the magic ends, and may be exacerbated at player discretion.
Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 11:11 am
s**t, s**t, s**t. The stupid thing was just so stupid and angry and oh dear God it was going to—she dodged its first attack, suppressing any delight she felt at seeing it fall face first into the snowbank, because she was clearly still in much danger. The youma stood itself up—and then it spotted something else.
Someone else. A White Moon senshi had appeared on the scene, one she hadn't sensed until it was nearly too late, and... he was screaming at her to run?! Well, shoot, she sure wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, here, so she took his advice, eyes scanning the area before she picked a suitable tree and leapt up into the branches—hey, it worked faster than physically climbing the thing, and it worked well, to boot. She watched from her safe spot as the guy cast his magic on himself and went into... What she could only call, like, some kind of... barbarian rage mode?? She scrunched her face up some and watched him beat the living s**t out of the wolf-like thing, even as it bit and clawed him, definitely drawing blood in multiple places. What the s**t, surely this guy was getting hurt, right?
But soon enough, the youma clearly took enough damage, and it exploded into a cloud of disgusting youma dust, scattering on the wind. With a sigh of relief, she hopped down from the tree and rushed over to check on the idiot that had saved her life tonight.
Farbauti did not often use his magic on himself. Not that it had never happened, because it had, but frankly, something deep and fundamental about his magic freaked him out. Made him feel all ******** up and broken on the inside, even without him needing to use it. Just the word rage filled him with the sense that he’d done something exceptionally wrong in his life, ending up with that for the theme of his magical powers.
(He realized, however vaguely, that this simply was not How Things Worked. Senshi powers came from their starseeds, and those had been part of a senshi before they’d been born. So, how could Farbauti’s own actions have determined anything about his magical powers? They couldn’t have. Pure, simple, logical.
But as he knew all too well from riling people up online, feelings did not care about facts.)
None of that mattered anymore, however. Or if it did, it only mattered in that thoughts of it flaring up while he pummeled the youma made Farbauti’s fires burn that much hotter. Claws dug at his arms and his exposed midriff, hitting him easily because any thoughts of defending himself wound up quashed before they could begin existing properly. As the pain flared up from those gouges, Farbauti felt different words he’d heard in his life burning inside him: Failure. Disappointment. Idiot. Weakling. We wouldn’t scream if you would just do better. Failure. Stupid. What else can we really expect from him, it isn’t like he’s good at anything. Failure. Weakling. Why do you make your mother drink like this, think about someone other than yourself for once. Idiot. Disappointment. Our lives would be so much happier if we’d never bothered having you.
Failure.
No, the youma wasn’t saying those words. Even before Farbauti landed a solid kick that knocked its jaw clean off, he didn’t think this youma had been one of the ones who could use words to communicate.
But as the rage flowed through him, the youma might as well have had the smug face and French Creole drawl of Shreveport’s Dr. Jacob Renault.
The youma’s snarls and barks—which soon gave way to whimpering and yowls of pain—might as well have sounded like Margarita Bulgakova Renault’s hollow, phony laughter as she threw back another tumbler full of Polugar Classic.
As Farbauti finally got the youma on the ground, he could practically feel Uncle Grisha’s hand brushing through his hair, but only to hold his head in place so he could hiss that Vanya wouldn’t tell anybody about Uncle Grisha’s “card games” with his friends—not his teachers or the school guidance counselor, and definitely not the family’s priest—because if someone found out about those, then the feds might find out shortly thereafter, and then Uncle Grisha wouldn’t be able to keep things stable in the house, and Vanya would get thrown into a nightmarish foster home where they’d hurt him every day, maybe even kill him.
Hadn’t the house in Shreveport been like that on its own, though?
At least the youma, unlike Vanya’s parents and his ******** uncle, went down easily. By the time Farbauti’s magic subsided, the creature couldn’t handle any more. It gave up the ghost and dusted with a final whimper, leaving Farbauti on his knees in the snow, his breaths heavy and his body shaking not from the cold or from the injuries that he distantly realized hurt and were surely bleeding, but from the sheer overwhelm of it all.
He hated being the senshi of rage. Why couldn’t he have been the senshi of something nice, like butterflies, or flying cars, or giant, sassy talking spiders that might eat you, sure, but at least they wouldn’t grind a soul under their boot-heel in the way that <******** rage would do?
genovianprince
Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 12:08 pm
Yup—once she was up close, she could see... She winced.
"Sit down, before you exhaust yourself, you self-sacrificing idiot," she snapped at him. "Hopes and Dreams!"
Quote:
The sweet scent of pears fills the area. Allies (regardless of faction) will feel bolstered and more hopeful that they can achieve their current goal. They feel revitalized, like they can manage to hang on a bit longer, and everything will be okay. This lasts for 20 seconds, has 3 uses, and has a radius of 10 feet.
Fortunately for the Mirror senshi and her strained-sounding nerves, Farbauti did not need to be told twice. The fallout from calling on that rage seemed to be exhaustion, at the moment, and he easily dropped into sitting in the snow. As he looked up at her, it vaguely occurred to him that she could probably have attacked him or set one of those Mirrorwraiths on him, if she’d felt like it.
But double-fortunately, she didn’t feel like it. Instead, everything started smelling very……really nice. He couldn’t identify the scent exactly, but whatever it was, it made Farbauti feel better. More energized, for what little that was worth at the moment.…… With a deep breath, he reached into his subspace pocket, pulling out the first aid kit that he’d been smart enough to pack in there.
“Thank you,” he said, voice not unemotional exactly, just……very tired. “Two questions: one, are you okay? And two……d’you think you can help me wrap these up? If I can at least get them wrapped……there’s another senshi, over in North End Park? ……Murikabushi, from your team? He’s helped me out before? And he says the blue-haired senshi in North End Park has healing magic that could help right now?”
genovianprince
Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 12:34 pm
She nodded, taking the kit and starting to help. "One, yes, I'm good, and two, yeah, I've heard about him. I'll help you get there, I promise," she said. She wouldn't let this guy get hurt and stay hurt, just because he was protecting her. even if they were both basic senshi, two heads were better than one, just in case another youma appeared tonight.
Then, maybe afterwards, they could, like... talk, or something, because this felt like a lot of stuff to do without getting to talk. But there was a bit of an emergency situation at hand, so it would have to wait.
