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 Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:02 pm
Reiki didn’t want to do this.
Well, no, he did.
More like, he knew, as he paced around his room and tried to make himself go down the hall to Asher’s, that not doing this was a really garbage way to treat a friend. Running off to get his Mirrorseal and leave the Court, becoming an entirely different civilian person in the process, without warning and then coming back home as if nothing happened? It would have been garbage for any friend, at any time, but it felt even worse to consider doing this to Asher, when he’d had such an unstable life for so long.
Reiki may not have known everything about what Asher had gone through, refusing to press too much and figuring that Asher would share whatever he wanted from his backstory if and when he felt ready to do so. Pushing Asher for more of his backstory before that time would only end up hurting him and making Reiki undeniably The a*****e in the situation. What he did know about where Asher had been before Destiny City, though, made Reiki feel certain that “running out without a word but not really because he’d come back” would’ve been even worse to do to Asher specifically.
Really, more than anything, Reiki wanted to just go ahead to North-End Park to meet Kerberos as Reiki for the last time. But the thought of doing that to Asher just felt so wrong. Bringing him into the magical girl life, even tangentially as a civilian friend who knew what was up, that also felt wrong, in its way? But the thought of not telling him the truth felt even worse.
Pausing in his paces, he glanced over to Cersei, curled up on his bed with her favorite, well-chewed plush dragon toy (which, by some miracle, still had a working squeaker in its tummy, but probably wouldn’t for too much longer). He had sort of hoped for her to give him a Knowing look about how much better than this she knew he was. Instead, she big-yawned without rousing from her nap. As she snuggled closer to her toy, Reiki sighed and grabbed his henshin pen up off the desk. Because he’d made the pink-and-black plaid skirt he wore himself, Reiki had been able to add pockets and his henshin pen wound up in one of them.
A few moments later, nerves itching to get this over with, Reiki knocked on Asher’s bedroom door. “Hey, Asher,” he called, “it’s me.… D’you have a minute? I just wanted to talk to you about something?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:03 pm
Asher looked up from his computer, photo editing software still booting. He'd gotten home from work about an hour ago—grocery stores tended to take anyone, even twenty year olds who never finished high school—so he hadn't fully had time to just unwind after a shower or anything, but… This sounded like it was going to be something important.
"Yeah, come on in," he called out, then grimaced at his boxers—right. He quickly grabbed the oversized shirt he would throw on if he needed to cross the house to get water in the night or something and tossed it on, not caring very much if Reiki saw him binderless, but caring very much if he saw him totally shirtless. Ugh, top surgery couldn't come soon enough.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:03 pm
Taking a deep breath didn’t help Reiki to feel any steadier, but at least it pushed him into actually opening the door. A quick glance around the room said he’d probably caught Asher in the middle of……something—probably some part of his “unwinding after work” ritual”? Guilt twisted around his throat at that. “Thanks, I……” Reiki mussed his fingers through his bangs, which also didn’t really help calm him down any. “Hopefully this won’t take too long?”
……Both of them probably knew that was a really distant hope, considering Reiki’s involvement. Try though he ever so occasionally did, he had been blessed with the gift of gab and an only selectively useful filter for any of it.
“So, uh, possibly a weird question, to start with, but…?” That felt like it was a really shitty start, not to mention awkward in ways that Reiki normally didn’t like to imagine being true of himself. As he leaned against the wall by Asher and his desk, though, it was the opening line that Reiki had available to him. “You’ve noticed the copious s**t that happens in this town that just doesn’t seem like it should be normal, right? Like, the strangely high rates of missing persons and inexplicable comas? Or the reports about street dogs and similar that sound more like what monsters should be?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:03 pm
Asher raised his eyebrows as Reiki started, and then had to struggle not to laugh as Reiki continued on—oh yeah, he was completely aware. He fully knew. But this was clearly something important for Reiki, he had some secret to tell about it, so he kept his mouth shut about it and nodded slowly.
"Yeah, definitely. I don't regret running away from home, but I definitely regret coming to Destiny City," he joked.
He didn't, not really, not when he was a Knight with a Purpose and he felt better about himself now than he… ever had, probably? But still. He wasn't about to spill his own secrets, not until he knew what was going on here for sure. For all he knew, Reiki was about to try to recruit him to the Negaverse. Not that that seemed very likely, but still, better safe than sorry.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:04 pm
Okay, good, at least Reiki and Asher were on the same page about the magical weirdness in this town. Reiki couldn’t manage much of a laugh at the joke right now—while he understood where Asher probably meant to come from with it, Asher running away to anywhere but here would’ve meant that they’d never met each other or gotten to be friends, which sounded awful to Reiki personally, thanks so much for asking—but he did give Asher a nod and a knowing smile. One of his hands dropped to his skirt pocket, preemptively curling around his henshin pen.
“Glad I don’t have to break everything down for you in some, like? Weird powerpoint about why the way things work in this city isn’t normal,” Reiki said with a soft sigh. “But—all of the magic, and the monsters, and all of that? Would you believe me if I said that I’m involved in all of it?”
That probably would’ve been enough on its own, Reiki thought? But on the other hand, if Asher knew more than he was letting on, then he’d probably know about the different factions. Or maybe he didn’t know more than he was letting on but had an inkling about the factions anyway. Or maybe a lot of things.
What mattered more, though, was rushing to add, “Like……what if I had gone my whole life, feeling like there was something more that I was supposed to be doing, right? Some kind of calling in my soul, and I didn’t know what it was. And then this guy I like—smart, funny, passionate, a local activist, really cute—swoops in and saves me from one of the aforementioned nasty-a** monsters, and there’s a talking cat who says I’m special. And this guy does the Aladdin bit with me, y’know? Extend a hand, and smile, and ‘Do you trust me?’ And I do trust him, so I nod ‘yes,’ and the magic mirror he whisks me away to is like nothing I’ve ever seen, so I’m just floored with awe……”
Reiki sighed. More heavily this time. Leaning against the wall shifted more so into wilting. “……Except,” he said soberly, “it then turns out that there are a lot of hidden clauses that were not made apparent to me during that recruitment? And they wear on me for way too long? And—and I have plans to fix it, and a friend who’s going to help put things right for me, and…… Would you believe that story? Or would you think I’m totally losing it?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:04 pm
Asher leaned back in his chair, staring at Reiki. What? What? Reiki was… a Dark Mirror Senshi? He swallowed heavily and nodded at Reiki slowly, feeling unraveled.
"I'd believe it if you believed in a story about a homeless boy, getting charmed by the idea of free room and board, and all you have to do is touch a few strangers every once in a while and take their energy, it's no big deal. Safety, security, comfort—a pretty boyfriend for a short period of time."
Albite. His heart squeezed. Should he even tell the rest of the story? Except… it sounded like Reiki didn't like the Mirror. Planned on leaving, maybe. Plans to fix it?
"Everything was pretty good for him for a while, and then he looked deeper into what he was really into, and found a cult of murderous losers and he got the hell out of dodge as fast as he could to become a pretty-boy knight, breaking his heart but knowing it was right—doing the best he could to repair what else he'd broken, doing teshuvah and fighting to save as many people as he could. Would you believe that story?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:04 pm
While Reiki’s nerves didn’t entirely settle after telling his story, he at least managed to listen decently.… On its own, the story made sense enough. In all likelihood, it had played out in this town more times than Reiki would ever know. Even if the specifics weren’t the exact same as what Asher was saying, Reiki knew more than enough about the Negaverse and how it lured people in. He could guess that plenty of other people in Destiny City had been in similar dire straits before, gotten taken in by promises of having their basic needs met for once, and maybe they’d gotten out? But maybe they hadn’t.
The only thing that didn’t make sense, at first, was the idea that this had happened to Asher, of all people……but after a moment, Reiki had to laugh. There wasn’t anything cruel about it, and he wasn’t laughing at Asher, but it also wasn’t a happy sound. The sheer absurdity of this situation—of Asher, who wasn’t, in Reiki’s mind, supposed to be involved in all of this magical bullshit—was ******** heartbreaking in the way where one of the only responses in the face of it was laughter.
As he tried to calm himself down, Reiki nodded and took his henshin pen out of his pocket. Holding it up for Asher to see, he managed to say, “What kind of Knight are you, now? Maybe we’ve seen each other around before.”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:04 pm
Asher grinned at him. "Cosmos. Wanna see?" And without waiting for an answer, he stood, did a little dramatic and unnecessary spin, and faced Reiki once more, this time as Amsvartnir. He twirled his staff a little bit with a big grin.
"Amsvartnir, at your service."
In a blink, his wolf—his dire, Feilan—who usually stayed back on the Wonder for Takoda, decided to show up. He guessed he hadn't spent a lot of time on his Wonder lately… And of course Feilan missed him.
"And this is Feilan. Guess he wanted to visit. Good boy," he cooed, scratching behind Feilan's ears.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:05 pm
If he had been given the chance to answer, Reiki would have said that yes, he absolutely wanted to meet Asher in his Knightly form.…… But then he actually took the very familiar form in question, all fancy whites, and golds, and pastel rainbows, carrying a staff topped with a wolf’s head that, in Reiki’s opinion anyway, matched very nicely with the wolf who had decided to appear beside Amsvartnir.
Reiki blinked at them silently, watching Ams bestow skritches on his good boy.
He blinked at them another time.
Then again, for good measure.
All this blinking did nothing to make his brain stop feeling like stock footage of screaming car crashes set to some inappropriately upbeat dance-pop song like “It’s Raining Men” or Icona Pop’s “I Love it.”
“Oh………my god,” Reiki managed to mutter, grip quivering around his henshin pen. “The last time I felt this stupid, I figured out that Greg was cheating on me.”
By way of explaining what he meant, Reiki clearly enunciated the phrase he knew all too well, at this point—Murikabushi Star Power, Make-up!—and powered up. Once he was out in his full effect, he crossed his arms and resumed leaning against the wall. “Guess that makes explaining the plan somewhat easier,” he said, trying to act like he wasn’t internally beating his head against a wall in frustration, “since you know who Kerberos is.… I’m going to see him tonight, then he’s gonna call Ida-hime-sama. Then Haruhi—ne is also a Mirror senshi, by the way—we have to do this insane-sounding quest into Mirrorspace before it will let us leave. It all sounds terribly dramatic, but……”
Shaking his head, Reiki came to the point with a sigh. “Point is, we’ll be coming home from that? But it’ll be as Kiyoshi and Kyoya Sakurazawa, instead of Reiki Rokugin and Haruhi Tatsuhana. And……” Reiki shrugged. “I just……wanted to let you know ahead of time.”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:05 pm
Amsvartnir powered back down into Asher before anyone nefarious could sense the odd pair of auras and come running. The last thing he wanted was for his civilian cover to get blown. He rather liked his life as it was.
"That sounds intense," he said, sitting back down in his chair. Feilan had stuck around, the silly thing, and he nosed at Asher's now-bare knee for more attention. Asher chuckled slightly and gave him one of the cheese cubes from a sack by the computer he'd gotten out to snack on just before Reiki's visit.
"I'm glad you'll be coming home. Both of you. Nobody deserves to have Chaos trapping their soul," he said, laying a hand over his chest. Over his starseed. "I'll be glad to meet Kiyoshi and Kyoya."
Feilan shuffled over to Murikabushi to beg for attention, sitting back and lifting both his front paws with a very sad whine.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:05 pm
Reiki nodded, listening to Amsvartnir but primarily focused on ruffling his hands up and down Feilan’s thick neck. For being a wolf, he really was just a big puppy, when you got down to brass tacks about it. It was incredibly endearing, and a source of comfort right now, this moment. Right on the threshold of everything changing so massively, anything remotely familiar felt so soothing.
“I’ll be glad for you to meet us as the new us too,” he said, looking over to Asher with a small smile. Although he also powered down (in the interests of safety, really), he kept his hands on Feilan, giving him all the attention and affection that he could want. “At least, and I don’t know about Kyoya? But I’m gonna need a three-day nap when this is all over. After that, though?”
With a small shrug, Reiki nodded. Maybe it didn’t necessarily indicate anything in particular, but under these specific circumstances, he liked to think that his intent was clear. Namely, that Asher understood how the nap would be the only thing waiting between them getting to know each other again, once Reiki had become Kiyoshi.
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