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 Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2024 12:35 pm
Trying to power up into Farbauti and patrol after work was getting to be a habit for Vanya, but he honestly wasn’t sure that he liked that very much. For one thing, pedaling through town on his bike while powered up never managed not to feel kind of weird. Sure, he could try his best—he generally made the effort or something adjacent to it—but it was still weird. Farbauti’s tiny skirt and crop-top mixed with the bike about as well as Vanya’s general offline temperament mixed with stress, which was to say “Not very.”
For another thing, even when he managed to pull something off—like, for example, luring a youma into following him and getting it hit and dusted by a delivery truck—it didn’t really feel like he’d accomplished anything. As much as Farbauti wanted to just go back inside, get out of the cold, and call his nights done, it too often wound up being the case that something made him feel motivated to, like……go back out, after he’d gotten his bike back home. Something kind of like envy, he guessed, because he was jealous of all the cool senshi like Daedalus, Asmodeus, Fang, and Murikabushi, who knew what they were doing—or at least seemed like they did—but……it was envy that made Farbauti wish he could do better.
As he trudged through Prospect Park, Farbauti somewhat doubted that he ever would do any better than he had done previously. Not for lack of trying or anything, but……well. It was an unfortunate side-effect of being a useless good-for-nothing who’d somehow, by some accident of fate, wound up having a starseed that had MAGICAL DESTINY written all over it, or like, however this all worked. However much he tried, and however much of his most “best”-adjacent efforts he felt like he gave something, Farbauti didn’t have it in him to do anything great or special with himself or his magical senshi destiny.
Still, though, he had to try or, like……what was the point? And as he felt another White Moon aura somewhere in the park, Farbauti decided that, tonight, “trying” meant going over to investigate………whatever was going on over there. He didn’t feel any youma or Negaverse auras nearby, so maybe there wasn’t any immediate danger? But then again, maybe whoever the other White Moon aura belonged to needed help for some other reason?
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 11:47 am
Achird grunted into the snow, slowly pulling himself up into a sitting position and clutching at his ankle. Damn it all. His ears flicked back and forth, listening for threats as he attempted to determine how much trouble he was in. Then... he detected the aura of another senshi. Another White Moon senshi, uncorrupted by Chaos. He jerked his head, looking for them. "Help, over here," he called out into the night.
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 12:10 pm
Following the aura proved much easier when whomever was attached to it piped up and called out for help. Gave Farbauti a much better sense of where he needed to go, at least. With the extra help, he soon found his way to a relatively quiet place in the park, and another senshi.
Another space senshi, to be more specific about it. That much was obvious from the antlers coming out of his head and the brown, fuzzy-looking ears that looked so very much like Bambi’s. The vibrantly ginger hair could’ve belonged to an earthling senshi, but everything else about the guy down in the snow said that he must have come from space.
Including the way he was holding his ankle.
“……Hi,” Farbauti said cautiously, reaching into his subspace pocket for his first aid kit. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to completely fix the issue here, but he could at least wrap this guy’s ankle until they could find another senshi or a knight who had healing magic. “My name’s Farbauti. Did you—rough landing? I’m guessing?”
He hadn’t encountered space senshi so close to their arrival on Earth before, but……being nice to this guy felt like the best option for helping him maybe feel less……bad about the whole situation.
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 2:40 pm
Achird tilted his head at the senshi that had appeared. He didn't look like much, in Achird's opinion, but that didn't mean a lot. If there were surviving senshi, that meant they had to be tough to some degree. Even if their outfit didn't suggest it. "You could say that," he said a bit dryly. "The name's Achird. Pleasure to meet you, Farbauti. Could you tell me where I am?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:50 am
“You’re on planet Earth, if that means anything? I……? don’t know? If it was called anything different a thousand years ago or not?”
Although they were on good terms so far, Farbauti remained cautious as he came to kneel beside Achird. However he’d wound up here and however rough the landing had been, he’d probably endured more than enough stress for the next………considerably long while. Wouldn’t be good to welcome him to Earth by coming on too strong and freaking him out.
“This specific place is called Prospect Park,” Farbauti went on. “The town we’re in is called Destiny City. And the larger, like, geo-social-whatever-ish area around us is the State of Virginia, but that part probably isn’t as relevant as, like……more immediately important things? Like where you can find food around here, and the fact that my place is nearby, since……? I mean, going home with the senshi of rage is better than sleeping outside in the park, right?”
As he fussed about trying to unwrap the athletic tape from the first aid kit (which probably would not have been a struggle, except for the fact that he had gloves on and their fabric made things very slippery), Farbauti shrugged and tried to give Achird a reassuring smile……but it quickly faded as he realized, “……And I’m gonna need to take off your boot in order to wrap up your ankle. Oh.…… Oh, that’s…………a complicating factor.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2024 2:08 am
"Earth? Really?" Hmm. Achird looked up at the stars at that, squinting. Huh. It sure seemed to be the truth. Even with all the unnecessary detail that the strange senshi was spouting. Usually so much detail was suspicious, not commendable. But he supposed it was not every day a strange senshi dropped in on someone else's planet like this. And then got themselves infuriatingly hurt. His ear twitched a little as the senshi babbled on, clearly nervous for some reason. It wasn't as though Achird had dropped in and attempted to declare war or something. He huffed a bit. "Why should it be a problem?" he asked, yanking his own boot off and suppressing a scream of pain. "Even if I powered down, the boots I had been wearing in my natural form were far more elaborate. Would have been more difficult."
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Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2024 3:59 pm
Even though Achird bit back his scream of pain, Farbauti had to flinch, watching the other senshi yank off that boot. He couldn’t help it. Just the thought of how much it had to hurt, doing something like that, upset him terribly. Partly, Farbauti wound up imagining the pain as if it were happening to him personally. On the other hand, he partly ached with the sense that Achrid might have been making even bigger problems for himself by yanking off his boot like that.
Yes, fine, he needed to get it off in order to get his ankle wrapped……but ******** still. Putting yourself in that kind of pain? And without even screaming? Farbauti did not understand.
The shock left over from that moment remained quite visible on his face as Farbauti looked back at Achird, wide-eyed and trying not to start shivering like a terrified rabbit. “I mean, I don’t think I can carry you,” he said, holding up one of his arms by way of showing off why he didn’t think he could carry Achird anywhere (though Farbauti quickly returned to trying to get the tape open). “And humans aren’t really used to seeing people from other planets anymore? There—we’ll have to talk to one of the Mauvians in town? There are a lot of them around, so it won’t be a huge issue, but they have little tools they give out to the senshi like you in town, to help you look human when you power down so you can have a life and stuff? But……for now, it’s the carrying thing, mostly?”
If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with trying to open the athletic tape, maybe Farbauti would have noticed the approaching Chaos aura.Patrolling cut into Reiki’s time for doing other things; this much, he knew. It was a problem when several of the things that he needed to do were so crucially important, but at the same time……he needed to do his job as a magical girl, didn’t he? Why bother with the trouble of leaving the Court if he was just going to ******** around? Why make any sort of deal out of anything if he could just power down and pretend nothing was happening?
Sensing two White Moon auras out in Prospect Park wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Even if both of them were basic, Reiki might have been in hot water if they decided to get aggro with him. Nevertheless, Reiki hadn’t found his own rhythm as a magical girl by ignoring the potential of people in need, so he followed the auras, just to check and see what was going on. As he got close enough to get an idea, he silently thanked himself for having thought to come.
Whatever the Hell was going on with the newly arrived space senshi, the skinny little rabbit in the ice-blue hair was out of his depth. Stifling the urge to sigh, Reiki came closer to both of them, with his hands out in the open, where both people could see that he was on the level. “Farbauti,” he said calmly, “what’s going on?”Eep!
Farbauti startled and gasped. Someone saying his name behind him sent a shock straight to his core. Several of his instincts wanted very badly to just run away, now. But he managed to calm down slightly when he turned and say that it was just—
“Muri,” he sighed, “I……yeah……hi? ……I? This is Achird? He just landed?”“I can see that,” Reiki pointed out. Brow arched, he looked to the space senshi instead. “Apologies for the disgusting Chaos aura; it’s a temporary state of affairs. I’m only here to help. Can you please explain what’s going on?”
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 9:30 am
Achird's ears perked up the moment he heard the footsteps crunching softly on the ground, whipping his head to glare at the cause. A Senshi, bearing the signs of Chaos. Reeking of it. He bared his teeth, ears pinning back in spite of the explanation the senshi offered. "I'm not sure it could be any of your business, Chaos-Bearer," he snarled. "I don't care if you're 'here to help'—" And here, he put on a high pitched, mocking tone "—I don't need it from you."
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 9:48 am
Reiki wrinkled his nose and arched an eye down at the space-senshi with the apparently ******** up leg, who was busy baring his teeth. Clearly, he didn’t come from a society that had valued manners or decent behavior very much.
“You really want to think you’re doing something but you can’t even come up with a better insult than Chaos-Bearer? I call myself at least seven worse things than that before breakfast most days, and my only crime is that I trusted a boy who was just passing on the lie that he got sold.” Honestly, Space Bambi’s offering of indignation was almost endearing in how pathetically stupid it was.
Reiki went on, “Anyway: Murikabushi of Hunger, and I already told you that the Chaos aura is a temporary state of affairs. Getting rid of it is going to mean leaving my family, though, and both of my sisters travel a lot for work.” Yes, Hina’s work was kicking around a little black-and-white ball while acting like Move, I’m gay!, while Nariko’s work was landing triple-axels and performing immaculate step-sequences to Saint-Saëns’s “Danse Macabre” and the “Meditation” from Massenet’s Thaïs—but it was still work, and Space Bambi had no right to know all the details. Especially not if he was going to act like an impolite little ********. “So, you’ll understand that I’ve needed time to corral them into a room so I can tell the family what I’m doing, instead of just running out on them.”Wait, why *can’t* you just run off on your own, Farbauti thought, but responsibly kept to himself, folding his hands in his lap. If it had just been him and Muri, maybe he might have asked—especially since people tended to appreciate it when you showed, like, an interest in them?? and their personal details?? and this was the most backstory that Farbauti had ever heard out of Muri, who mostly tended to act like a fabulous gay angel by swooping in out of nowhere to offer up assists whenever someone needed help—but, like……
Farbauti didn’t want to undermine Muri right now. Not in front of Achird.…… Not when Farbauti definitely could not carry Achird home by himself and Achird was acting like kind of a d**k.
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 10:04 am
Achird still scowled, but his ears cautiously perked forward again. Hmm... Well, obviously the Chaos-Bearer was completely uncouth, but there did seem to be truth in his words. Though he hardly thought that this Farbauti had good sense of character, this didn't seem to be some kind of trap. He'd start biting if it did. "Achird. Aubergine," he said shortly. The scowl never left his face. " You might stand to understand the position I'm in, as well. I'm a stranger to this planet, who came under the stress of waking up to a corpse of a planet. Caused. By. Chaos." Not to mention waking among the corpses of people he'd thought to call friends. His throat constricted, but he didn't let his face change. "So, my magnanimous apologies to you."
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 10:27 am
……Wait, aubergine? Like……?
Achird meant aubergine as in eggplants, didn’t he? ……He must have meant that. Oh. Ohhhh, good lord, Hybris’s whole “My name is Hybris, Dark Mirror Senshi of Eggplants” jig was gonna be completely up soon, wasn’t it? As much as Reiki felt Completely Over It about the way that Lete and Hybris had literally sat around, munching on popcorn, during the battle at Augusta Bank, part of him wanted very badly to do the same thing, whenever Hybris and Achird ran into each other.
Maybe Reiki would need to take a moment and warn him before making his exit from the Court……or perhaps after? He didn’t know how telling Hybris would work out or not, but maybe some advance warning would be good, before he ran into Achird in the wild and possibly got his a** handed to him by a spoiled, entitled rich boy Bambi from outer space.
“Makes perfect sense and I’m sorry that you went through all that,” Reiki agreed, his tone both generally earnest and earnestly committed to not suffering any bullshit just because Achird had a tragic backstory full of Chaos inducing mass extinction on his planet and being raised around High Society Snobbery™ (or so Reiki assumed from hearing more of Achird’s speech patterns). Sorry, but the position of Cute But Extremely Traumatized, Non-Human Magical a*****e Who Makes His Trauma And His Outrage Into Everybody Else’s Problem in Reiki’s life had already been filled, whether the person in question liked it or not, and Faustite was significantly cuter than Achird. “Still doesn’t excuse talking to a fellow senshi like that. But my sincerest condolences, and apology accepted.”
Provisionally, anyway. If Achird didn’t shape up, Reiki reserved the right to change his mind.“For what it’s worth,” Farbauti hesitantly piped up, “Muri’s really underselling his character? Like, he ran headlong into danger to save me a bunch of times before a Mauvian found me and helped get me Awakened?” ……Was that dangerous to admit? ……Eh, probably not. Muri was apparently leaving the Dark Mirror Court in the first place. Anyway, he likely didn’t remember Vanya at all, considering how his whole Saving People Thing seemed to extend to anyone and everyone who stood still long enough. “Never asked for favors back or anything, he just……? Saw somebody who didn’t have magic at the time, who was in danger from one of the different monsters in this town, and he ran in to protect me just because he’s like that?”
There was also the matter of the Dark Mirror Court being, like, the Some Secret Third Thing between the White Moon and the Negaverse? But Achird had already gone through a lot to get here, and he had, as he’d said, only just seen his entire world decimated by Chaos. Bringing that up right now felt………like a bad idea.
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 10:35 am
Achird nodded, relaxing his shoulders a bit. Fine, fine, this was all fine. An ear twitched a little. He needed to keep it together. "Fascinating," he said, looking between the both of them. It seemed he would have no choice but to trust them. "Alright. Then... what, exactly, is your plan with me right now?" He raised his eyebrows. "Given neither of you are here to hurt me, I assume you'll be helping me instead?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 10:45 am
“My place is nearby,” Farbauti said, nervously fidgeting with his fingers as he glanced between Achird and Muri. “It’s not much, but it’s safe. Warm. There’s food and places to sleep, and a roof over your head, so it’s way better than being out in the cold? But like I said, I……sort of don’t think I can carry you myself?”“Which seems like where I should come in, because I can carry you by myself.” Reiki nodded, both to affirm that he was indeed here to help, with no ill intentions underlying anything, and to agree that……yeah, he didn’t think that Farbauti was going to carry Achird anywhere by himself. “Plus, you probably should power down before letting Farbauti wrap your ankle. I don’t know offhand if the wrap will stay on once you power down, so better safe than sorry.”“Oh.… Yeah…yeah, no, that…that would be bad.” Swallowing thickly, Farbauti slouched a bit. He felt stupid for not even having thought about that possibility. Considering that every superficial thing of Vanya’s totally disappeared when he powered up into Farbauti—and vice versa—it probably made sense that a wrap on Achird’s hurt ankle might disappear when he powered down. Even if that didn’t happen, it was still better not to make Achird find out. “Is it safe for you to help us get him back to my place, though?”Reiki shrugged. “Probably not exceptionally so? But plenty of people with the White Moon like to patrol around here. I can get you guys started, then hand him off to someone who can actually power down with you. That way, nobody can follow you home with their aura senses.” Looking to Achird, he asked, “Does all of this sound okay to you? Anything you’d like to add or request?”
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 10:52 am
Well, actually, he had several things to add, none of which would help the situation. He was tired, despite having slept for centuries, hungry, which made sense, and quite thirsty—but... he doubted any of them had anything on them, right now, and he could stand to wait until he made it into Farbauti's home. He needn't make any enemies here. The last thing he needed was for them to turn his genuine complaints into babyish whining. He had no power here, and he resented it. "I... appreciate the help," he managed to say without a sneer. "Thank you."
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2024 10:59 am
“You’re welcome,” Reiki said earnestly, with another nod.
There. That was some progress. Farbauti certainly seemed encouraged by Achird getting through saying his piece without acting like a complete jackass—and honestly, Reiki did too. As much as he Did Not Want to endure any entitled bullshit from Achird, his natural tendency with any space senshi was to be gentle with them, knowing that they had to have been through a lot in order to make to Earth in the first place, and knowing how much they’d lost on top of that.
So, hoping to encourage more good behavior, Reiki was exceptionally careful and gentle about hoisting Achird up into a bridal carry. “If we get lucky, I might be handing you off to Kaifeng and/or Helene.” With a glance over to Farbauti, he explained, “Saturn Knight and the space senshi he’s in love and sleeping with. Running into them would be lucky because Kaifeng likely won’t ask too many questions, and Helene may not always be gentle but he’s definitely polite.”
Really, Reiki would’ve preferred just running into Helene himself (whom Reiki personally found much easier to handle in large doses than Kaifeng), but those two were so attached at the hip that it didn’t seem entirely likely to happen.
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