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 Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:01 pm
Patrolling honestly didn’t feel too different as an Order senshin than it had as a Dark Mirror senshi……but Murikabushi supposed that that made sense. As far as Dark Mirror senshi had gone, he had done very little that made them any different from any other kind of senshi. Only going into Mirrorspace when he ******** had to, confronting people right to their busted faces if they were causing trouble, protecting people from harm as much as he could instead of using them as energy sheep.……
Honestly, “an Order senshi with enough self-respect to wear black” hadn’t been that far off as a description of him and his behaviors, so he guessed that, aside from ridding himself of Mirrorspace, not much had changed.
Muri had face-planted into a distinctly non-zero number of mirrors since purifying. Nobody had been around to see him do it, but he knew.……
Yuki also knew, because Kiyoshi had told him about it, but that was beside the point.
So, okay, fine. Getting used to not being able to simply walk from one mirror to another was an adjustment. Knowing that, if he ran into anyone he knew in the Negaverse, it was probably on-sight with all of them except Albite (maybe…… hopefully…… Muri really liked Albite, and he didn’t want everyone to hate him for needing to take care of himself)—another adjustment. A far more serious one, too, with considerably higher stakes. If Albite’s General-King husband were out and about, and if Muri wound up dreadfully wrong in choosing to trust Faustite to keep his hands to himself because him dragging Muri to the Negaverse probably would’ve shattered Muri and fundamentally broken him as a person…?
A forcible corruption into the Negaverse could’ve been in Muri’s future and thanks, he hated it.
At least another aura was out in Palisades Park tonight, keeping him from getting too far into his head or too lost in his own thoughts. As he got closer, Muri felt someone with less power than himself, somebody who it probably couldn’t hurt to check in on. Even if they weren’t having any trouble, making himself available might help.
When he finally saw the young Page, Muri couldn’t simply stand back and watch. He recognized Ida’s colors, sure, and that meant something important to Muri—but more importantly, the young Page looked perfectly miserable right now. Sitting on a bench by himself, looking like he might start crying at any moment.
“Hey, there,” Muri called out to the young Page, stepping out from behind one of the pointlessly decorative columns in this part of the park and coming closer. “Rough night?”
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Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 8:16 pm
If Lanting looked miserable, it was because, bluntly, he felt miserable. Everything with Dunnottar was still swirling in his head, and it felt like a sticky web he needed more information to really start pulling apart, and he couldn't even get more information because he was a stupid Page and he couldn't go to his Wonder as often as more experienced Knights.
Probably he shouldn't be sitting around moping powered up, but it was better than sitting around moping in his apartment, and if he was gonna mope in the middle of the night, it seemed ideal to mope somewhere relatively safe, with actual magical powers in case a youma or some....Negaverser or whoever came sniffing around.
He still hadn't met one of those. He was only half-sure they even existed.
He jolted when he heard another voice, looking up to see a very, very pretty Senshi looking down at him.
"Uh," he said, and he wilted, a little, "yeah. Kinda. Rough couple of days, really, if I'm honest?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 10:53 pm
……Oh. Oh, no, this poor kid.
(It felt weird and more than a little bit condescending to think of him as a kid, Muri had to admit to himself, considering he looked old enough to drink, just a bit skinny and innocent. But something about the young Page radiated younger brother energy and it made Muri want to mama duck him a little bit. Also made him want to paint that pretty face and turn him out, but a lot of people wouldn’t be into that and he had no indication that this Page was one of the folks who’d be interested.)
Being careful with his skirts and tucking them a bit to the side, Muri joined the Page on the bench. “Well. My name’s Murikabushi,” he said, reaching into his subspace for one of the chilled bottles of water he kept there. As remained his custom with people, he held it out to offer it to the Page. “It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it with someone you just met? But if you do want to talk, I’m good for that. And if not…” He shrugged. “I’m also good at distracting people.”
Maybe breaking out his civilian phone and the Scandals official youtube page would help, if the young Page wanted distraction. Personally, though, Muri hoped that he’d be more open to talking. Whatever was eating him, he wouldn’t help himself by keeping it pent up inside.
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Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 1:10 am
Lanting wasn't sure if it was wise to dump his whole slew of problems on some very nice random Senshi who was offering him water--which he gladly took, and as recompense, reached into his subspace and produced a package of fancy fruit snacks that he'd gotten from a sponsored snack box he was still working his way through, and offered them to Murikabushi.
"I'm Lanting," he said, and he paused, for a moment, wondering if that would provoke some kind of hostile response. "I....it's kind of complicated and a little stupid? Very much magical girl drama that could only happen with magical girls gender neutral?"
He exhaled.
"There was this Page I was getting to know, and I thought we could be friends, but...did you know about the whole messy business that was happening with Knights, recently? With magic being strange and our weapons breaking and stuff?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 3:38 am
Aww, that was cute, the Page—Lanting, apparently—having his own snacks available to share with people. Muri took the fruit snacks with a small smile, and considered them, both the semi-translucent little shapes that looked like different fruits (strawberries, grapes, peaches, oranges, and pineapples), and the label. While the largest two characters could have been kanji—Murikabushi recognized them: 果 ka meaning “fruit” and 糖 tō meaning “sugar”—they weren’t how he would’ve expected a Japanese label to read for snacks like these, フルーツグミ furūtsu gumi, “fruit gummi,” written in katakana.
Okay, so, the characters were probably Chinese, then. Seemed pretty unlikely that they’d mean anything but an indication that the fruit snacks were anything but gummy fruit candy. So, he decided to chew on one of the strawberries as he listened to Lanting.
“For what it’s worth, I always use ‘magical girl’ as a gender-neutral term. I don’t think I’m the only one in town who does, but it’s also not that common? Then again, I’m also biased in thinking ‘magical girl’ is gender-neutral because I pretty much dress like this,” Muri gestured at his fuku, “all the time in my civilian life. Plus, I’ve spent most of my life preferring to be called ‘princess,’ and not minding much about using femme terms like ‘girl.’”
Unless it was somebody deciding for him that being a feminine boy in a dress or a drag queen inherently made him a trans girl, when……no? There could be overlap there, the categories weren’t nearly as fixed as some people liked to pretend, but Reiki had never been a trans girl and Kiyoshi still wasn’t one either. The issue was how many people saw fit to talk over him about who he knew that he was instead of believing him about it.
But of more immediate importance, Muri nodded at Lanting’s question. “Yeah, one of my friends messed himself up pretty badly on it.” Maybe it was a bit of a stretch to call Kaifeng a “friend,” but “person I do friend-adjacent things with even though I like his partner more, because I want his partner to like me” was way too complicated a relationship status for the time being. “He wanted to take me up to his Wonder, but we couldn’t get there. He’s doing alright now—he and his partner did make it up there, and Kaifeng did a meditation ritual with his Code Piece? But……did something happen for you and this other Page? During all of the mess?”
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Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 3:34 pm
Lanting laughed, a little--this Senshi, Murikabushi, seemed really nice, and Lanting had to admit, he appreciated it. It definitely made it a little easier to open up about...everything that was going on.
"That makes a lot of sense, yeah," Lanting acknowledged, "and I don't really dress this fancy? But I do usually wear more dresses and skirts when I'm powered down. It's nice, I like it." He kicked his feet a little, scuffing his toe against the grass under the bench.
"Anyway, yeah--that whole thing. So when we went to our Wonders we had these really intense memories, and my--" Lanting swallowed. "The other Page, I guess he remembered the last Lanting killing him. His past self. And he was....really upset with me about it, and I'm used to people deciding they don't like being around me for whatever reason? I'm kind of annoying, it's fine, I'm used to it? But deciding to hate me for something I did in a past life is um. A new one."
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 9:30 pm
Hmm. If Lanting usually wore skirts and dresses when he wasn’t powered up, then maybe he would be at least some degree of open to the idea of letting Kiyoshi put him in drag and turn him out.… The idea certainly appealed to Murikabushi, but he knew that was more on him than on Lanting, ultimately. Being cut off from the drag family hurt just as much as being cut off from his blood family, and while adopting a new drag baby wouldn’t replace them, it couldn’t hurt either, if Lanting liked the idea.
But Muri could think about that later.
For the moment, he nodded along as Lanting explained the trouble that he’d had with this other Page. “That kind of memory makes sense for him to be upset about. However,” Muri said, quite pointedly and giving Lanting a soft, sympathetic expression, “blaming you for what your previous incarnation did sounds like he is the a*****e in this situation. For one thing, past life memories don’t always have the whole story of what happened in any given situation. Kaifeng’s partner—if you meet them, you’ll see? But Helene is an alien, and he had some kind of endless pining thing going on with Kaifeng’s previous incarnation.
“I don’t mind telling you this because Kaifeng tells it to pretty much anyone who will listen on his own. But he thought, based on some past life memories he got at his Wonder, that Helene and the Kaifeng of thousands of years ago were married. Having seen them show up in a memory that I recovered up on my world, I can understand why he thought that. Didn’t make him any less wrong, though.”
Nor did that understanding make Muri feel any less sympathetically irritated on Airan’s behalf, given the whole……past life Kaifeng being wasted and calling Airan “Your Worship” on a holiday that had been meant to commemorate the anniversary of the Revolution.
“More importantly, though,” he added, “you are not your past life self.” Hoping not to overstep any boundaries or make Lanting uncomfortable, Muri tapped on his own chest, just over his brooch. “Our starseeds give us the chance to be Knights and senshi, sure. We do share a soul with our past life selves. But our souls have been reincarnated and gone through different experiences in this life. That fundamentally makes us new and different. It……”
Muri sighed, a little exasperated with the analogy he was about to make, but proceeding with it anyway: “If you watch anything Star Trek? It’s a lot like the experience that joined Trill have when they access the memories and personalities of their symbiont’s previous hosts. We might have some things in common with our previous incarnations. The Murikabushi of a thousand years ago had great hair, a natural flair for drama, and a desire to use his power to help people, just like me. But that doesn’t make us the same as them, or responsible for what they did. The Kaifeng of a thousand years ago might as well have called Helene ‘my sun and stars’ but never told him outright that he was so in love, it made him look stupid. But the Kaifeng I know kissed Helene within five minutes of meeting him and hasn’t slept alone since.”
A bit uncertain how to wrap up the impromptu mini-lecture, Muri shrugged. “And I’m not saying the other Page has no right to be upset about his Wonder, like? Trauma-dumping on him out of nowhere, or something? But if he can’t take a few minutes, pause, and recognize that you are your own person, and then not lash out at you over his own feelings? Then……yeah, he is the a*****e in that situation. He doesn’t have the right to take his pain out on other people.”
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 10:12 pm
Lanting felt....really really glad that this particular Senshi had decided to stop and talk to him. Murikabushi seemed kind, and also like he really wanted to empathize with what Lanting was dealing with, and generally like someone Lanting wanted to know. Every once in a while, it seemed, the universe decided to be a little nice to him.
"Aww, that's really sweet," he said, involuntarily. Having memories that made you think you had a gorgeous past life lover.....getting to find that person in the present....what a dream, Lanting couldn't help but wish that something similar would happen to him. "Like, it sucks that they weren't actually married? But it sounds like it worked out for them in the end."
Anyway.
He scuffed his foot against the ground again.
"That's what I told him--that we couldn't really know and we didn't have all the context--but he um. Really didn't like that answer? Kinda yelled at me more about it? Shoved me on the ground when I tried to get him to stay and talk instead of just storming off?" He wilted, distressed. "I just....my past self, his name was Zhiheng? And from what I've seen, he wasn't nice. But I don't think he was murder-another-Knight shitty, you know? But I've only really seen a couple flashes of his life, so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about."
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 10:41 pm
Listening attentively to Lanting’s additions to his story, Murikabushi nodded. “You may not know what you’re talking about, it’s true,” he agreed. “Neither does the other Page, though. For all any of us know, Zhiheng was trying to save his previous incarnation but got unlucky and couldn’t manage it. And even if Zhiheng does turn out to have been murder-another-Knight shitty, the story might be more complicated than it appears to be. Maybe it won’t absolve him, exactly? It might not be a situation where this other Page’s past incarnation was, like, dying of some mystery space-plague and asked Zhiheng to kill him quickly instead of letting him suffer? But whatever happened, and why-ever Zhiheng did what he did? There might still be an internal logic to it worth learning, even if he winds up being in the wrong.”
Murikabushi didn’t name the person he was thinking of, because frankly, Faustite wasn’t relevant to the situation right here, right now, with Lanting. Bringing him up would have derailed things considerably, and not necessarily in ways that would actually help Lanting. Still, as far as examples of “your behavior has internally consistent logic, but that doesn’t mean you’re always in the right” went…… Muri could personally think of nobody better.
“But……I was raised in the untamed wilds of an academic library by three feral history professors, two engineers, a political theorist and sociologist, an artist, and my drag mom,” he went on, waving a dismissive hand at nothing in particular. “So, basically, don’t let me start trying to analyze the behaviors and stories of people who’ve been dead for a thousand years, because I absolutely will. The most important point is that you are your own Lanting of Ida, not some carbon copy of Zhiheng, and you get to decide what you want to do with this life. The Page who treated you like garbage has apparently decided that he wants to be an a*****e. But there are other people involved in these magical girl hijinks who will think you’re great, and won’t treat you like garbage based on a knee-jerk reaction to an out-of-context clip from a significantly longer story.
“Like me, if you’re open to it.” With a small smile, he pulled his senshi phone out of his subspace pocket. “I can’t exactly give you the number this phone? My civilian phone, absolutely, but I know Knights don’t have phones, so the phone number won’t help you much? But if you use your signet ring to send me a message, it’ll show up on my phone as a text and—”
As if on cue, Muri’s phone buzzed with an incoming message.
Conveniently, it was from Kaifeng. A simple message, one of his usual hello, friend, hope you’re doing well and staying safe tonight notes. Something nice and inoffensive that Muri didn’t mind letting someone else see for the sake of helping him learn a cool thing.
“Signet ring messages show up on senshi phones like this,” Muri explained, angling the phone so Lanting could see. “And then, I don’t know how senshi texts look when we send them to Knights? But I have it on Kaifeng’s authority that my texts back to him do show up. So, if you ever need anything, or want to hang out? Powered up or not? Use your signet ring and we can stay in touch.”
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 11:28 pm
Maybe it was because it was exactly what Lantin g wanted to hear, but all of this felt really, really good. Like, yes, exactly, he didn't know anything--but neither did Dunnottar! "He said he hadn't really been interested in his Wonder before, so I think that was his first time going, even? So like, I get it, traumatic first memory, but the first thing I remembered also seemed pretty awful and I didn't just....decide I knew everything!"
Like with Zhiheng's mentor. Something about him gave Lanting the heebie jeebies, but he'd only sen the man once, in a fragment of a memory. So it was impossible for him to judge for real what he'd been like, or what Zhiheng had actually thought of him.
But! It seemed that he successfully had someone who wanted to be around him, for now.
"Your family sounds really cool," Lanting said, "and you're totally right. I'm Lanting now, and I'm me, and even if I was him, I'm not anymore. So if Dunnottar wants to just...decide that he hates me because of what somebody else did literally a thousand years ago, that's his problem."
He felt proud of himself, for saying it.
He wasn't sure he believed it, but he was proud of himself for saying it.
"Oh, that's really cool!" Lanting held up his hand to show off his delicate little signet ring. "I can totally send you a message, then, and we can meet up again and chat. Thanks, Murikabushi, I....really needed this."
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