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 Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 7:06 pm
Getting separated from Helene on patrol was always a bit of a crapshoot, when it happened. Both of them knew what to do and where to reunite when it happened. But some youma had a certain cleverness that could get an unsuspecting human—or an unsuspecting Helenian, as the case might have been—in trouble without taking enough care. Worse, the standard for what constituted “enough care” varied pretty widely, at least in Kaifeng’s experience.
He’d thought that he was taking enough care tonight. He really had. The youma he’d gone off to take care of had been able to……not quite fly? But it had jumped from lower points to higher ones like a character in a puzzle-platformer video game. In doing so, it had led Kaifeng first onto the children’s playground in Eastside Park. Then, onto the rather tall climbing structure that made up the centerpiece of said playground. Then, off of the landings and stairs of said climbing structure, and onto the top of the slide.
Getting up here had taken considerable balance. Ideally, it would have also involved patience, but the youma didn’t seem to have much of that, and so Kaifeng had needed to move quickly. All the way, he’d tried to avoid looking down. The playscape went up quite a ways, and even if it wasn’t that high, relative to other places that being a magical knight could take a person, this was a bit of a delicate operation, and looking down threatened to add stress that Kaifeng did not currently need in his life. He simply needed to focus, and move delicately through his approach, and not go too wildly crazy as he pushed himself ahead and swung his club at the youma……
On the plus, Kaifeng dusted the youma quite handily.
On the rather significant downside, though, he seriously misjudged several aspects of his balance. As soon as the youma disappeared, Kaifeng toppled off the top of the playscape. With way he’d thrown himself at the creature, he’d unwittingly yote himself hard enough to fly past the nearest parts of the playscape. Hurtling forward, fully expecting to hit the ground and need Huan-ge to carry him to the ER, Kaifeng preemptively winced and closed his eyes.
The ground did not aggressively rise up to meet him.
Several moments passed and Kaifeng still didn’t hit the ground.
It……felt like he was swinging, actually?
Opening his eyes again, Kaifeng found the playground rather upside-down.… Or more accurately, he found himself upside-down and looking around at the playground. Several inches below him, one of the playscape’s lower landings lurked, waiting for whatever it was that metal with protective cushioning ever wanted. Angling his neck around, Kaifeng spotted what had caught him: the plastic-covered chain monkey-bar bridge that went between the slide and one of the playscape’s other parapets. Well, this was quite the lucky save, if Kaifeng did say so himself.
Except that the chain had tangled around his ankle.
Grumbling, he wanted to be grateful for time he’d logged at the gym and for Hayden making him take Things Other Than Cardio seriously after the whole “stabbed by a Negaverse General” incident……but trying to reach his ankle meant flailing. All that extra motion made the tangle feel dangerously unstable. Too much swinging made the platform below him seem too likely to rush up fast and involve an ER visit. So Kaifeng stilled, trying not to upset the delicate balance here.
Thinking he could send Helene a note to please come help him, Kaifeng reached into his subspace pocket……but his current pad of Hello Kitty stationery dropped to the platform, just out of reach. The pen he tried to grab not only fell out of reach, but mocked him by rolling over toward the steps back down to the ground.
…………s**t.
“……Help?” Kaifeng called into the night, feeling slightly pathetic but hoping very much that whoever found him was either on the White Moon’s side or at least not actively looking to hurt him. An uninvolved civilian could’ve worked? Or maybe a Mirror senshi who acted more like Muri had before he’d gotten out? Or……somebody? “Heeeey? Is anybody there? ………Help? Please?”
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 7:25 pm
Madriu had been hunting the aura of a youma before he heard the cries for help. Yeah, sure, there had also been a Squire's aura nearby too, but one never knew when a situation might arise that resulted in somebody needing a little extra backup, regardless of their effective power level. So it had seemed prudent to hang around, just to make sure nothing went too wrong.
When the youma aura vanished, he'd planned to go somewhere else. No need to provide unasked for and unnecessary backup, when people could get weird and proud about that sort of thing. But then there was a voice, calling for help, and--well, what was Madriu supposed to do? Ignore it? Swan off into the night like a complete jackass who had no concern for other people?
His ears flicked up, then down, then back, and he exhaled, turning towards the person calling for help.
He followed the calls to the open area, with all the strange equipment that looked made to climb on, and there--
There was a surprisingly familiar Knight, in a situation that didn't exactly feel like deja vu? But it certainly felt like it absolutely could have been.
"Oh, this would happen to you," Madriu said, with basically no care whether or not the new Kaifeng understood what the actual ******** he was talking about. "Are you okay? What do you need me to do to help you get down?"
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:03 pm
Even upside down, Kaifeng could tell that the senshi who’d shown up to help him was another one like Huan-ge, Dewey, Daedalus, and Grieve. One of the long survivors, who’d gotten stuck on their worlds while Chaos had run amuck and come to Earth from outer space. Nothing else would have explained having a suspiciously fluffy tail that wasn’t attached to a belt and matching ears that seemed very much alive, rather than part of a headband or senshi tiara. Despite the objectively unideal situation into which Kaifeng had fallen, he did his best to smile at his rescuer. Didn’t hurt to be kind, especially when somebody was helping you.
Even if the senshi in question initially greeted him in a way that……certainly suggested a few possible intended meanings. Kaifeng didn’t disagree that this was the sort of thing that he got himself into pretty easily, but this particular alien senshi had only just met him, so……could he have meant Xingyi-ge? Better to solve the problem first and then ask about the ancient past, though, so Kaifeng filed that note away for the moment.
“Aside from being a bit tangled up, I’m okay,” Kaifeng confirmed after taking a quick moment to assess how he felt in the interest of giving an honest answer. “Misjudged my balance after chasing a youma up the playscape. Fell over in a pretty spectacular way. Considering some of the alternatives? Like ‘broken back’ or ‘skull shattered into a puzzle you can’t put back together and brains all over everywhere’? I’ll gladly take ‘temporarily tangled in the monkey bars but otherwise okay’ and be grateful.”
Insistently smiling in spite of his situation, Kaifeng let slip a small laugh. But only a small, quick one, since the problem still remained to be solved.
As for the best way to solve the problem…… Kaifeng hummed, looking up at his ankle. Then, he looked down at the platform.…… This felt like the sort of thing Muri would likely be better equipped to handle. Having finally gotten to see some of the videos of the drag numbers he’d done before purifying, Kaifeng could verify that Muri had the experience in dance and gymnastics to catch himself pretty easily after being let loose from a snare like this. Kaifeng himself………well.
If he’d ever had any talent for gymnastics as a kid, Huang Zhìháo’s parents and paternal grandparents had swiftly ruined it. Designed things in a way that had relegated him to an entire education of being picked last in phys ed and avoiding anything that looked like it for fear of shame and embarrassment. All so they could use one of their children to deflect any suspicions about how they’d treated all of them.
But—briefly closing his eyes, Kaifeng took a deep, meditative breath. He held it, then slowly let it go. Repeating this process a few times, he swiped all of those thoughts off his own mental table like a cat who had, in their restless boredom, decided to commit Crimes. Maybe those heartless ******** up in Boston had made it so he wouldn’t care to try gymnastics as a child, but he’d been working on handstand pushups for fun lately, just because they were different from the regular sorts of pushups, therefore shiny and interesting. He knew how to hold his arms for that, and the platform wasn’t that far away.
Looking back up at his rescuer, Kaifeng said, “I need you to untangle my ankle from the chain up there, please? The position’s unideal, but if you can untangle me, I can slip out, catch myself, and put myself right.”
And then, he could introduce himself more properly and ask who this senshi and potential Old Friend Of Xingyi-ge’s happened to be.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:51 pm
Madriu's ears flicked as he contemplated the general situation--and how to best get Kaifeng out of it. "Good. I'd hate to have to tell Helene something happened to you." It would have been a miserable end to their story, for Helene to lose Kaifeng again.
A quick glance around told him that if he wanted to get up, he was going to have to do it the obvious way. Fortunately for him, the obvious way was pretty easy. He took a few steps back, gave himself some extra room to get a little bit of a start, and then ran forward and jumped, pulling himself up onto the strange equipment with ease. This sort of physical feat wasn't anything particularly new to him, though it had been a while since he was in his peak condition.
"Shouldn't be too hard to get you loose," Madriu said, and he grabbed Kaifeng's ankle with one hand, to provide a little extra stability, setting about undoing the twisted chain with the other. It wasn't too tangled, at least, and certainly wasn't long, so unwrapping it took only a moment of focus, and then-- "I'm letting go," he warned, before unwrapping the last of the chain and, indeed, letting Kaifeng fall the few inches to the padded surface below.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:19 pm
Not that Kaifeng wasn’t already paying attention to things—he was—but he perked up extra, hearing Helene’s name. Partly, that was simply the Huan-ge Effect: mentioning Helene, in any context, tended to get Kaifeng’s attention, and he knew it. On the other hand, though, he also had to notice the fact that this particular space gege knew enough about Kaifeng to associate him with Helene and to know that Huan-ge would need to know and be devastated if any ill fate were to befall Kaifeng. So, that made “old friend or associate or some such thing of Xingyi-ge” seem even more likely.
Still, better to wait just a few moments longer. They were nearly done with the disentangling process. For the time being, Kaifeng needed to prepare his arms and wrists, and keep his eyes on the important task.
When the space gege announced that he was letting go, Kaifeng was ready. The fall didn’t last long, caught and broken by Kaifeng slipping easily into a handstand. Really, it wasn’t terribly different from doing handstand pushups at the gym, or in between sessions of editing a video. The biggest change was that Liánlí usually had some kind of pajamas or workout shorts on while doing it, rather than Kaifeng’s long skirt. Still, needing a moment to balance before he could get himself rightside up wasn’t that bad. Everything could have been a lot worse. He could have gotten seriously injured tonight, rather than minorly inconvenienced.
Once he was back on his feet, Kaifeng smiled up at his rescuer. “Thanks for the help,” he said, reaching into his subspace pocket for a bottle of water, which he held up as an offer toward the very kind wolf-looking senshi. It wasn’t much, as far as thanks went, but last Kaifeng checked, pretty much everybody needed to stay hydrated. “From how you were talking……it sounds like you already know that I’m Kaifeng of Saturn? Probably from having met Xingyi-ge in some capacity?”
The thought of meeting someone else who’d known Xingyi-ge always sent excitement buzzing through Kaifeng’s nerves. He tried to hold it back somewhat, just to avoid overwhelming the very helpful wolf-senshi. But he still felt the excitement.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:25 pm
Madriu remained seated where he was, until he was sure that Kaifeng has caught and righted himself, and only then did he drop down and land, with an ease that made him feel a lot better about how much he'd been doing things since getting to Earth. He knew he wasn't as fit as he'd been, once, but he was still capable enough.
"You're welcome," Madriu said, and he otherwise wordlessly accepted the bottled water--always a nice thing to have on patrol--and unscrewed the lid to take a quick drink. "Yeah, I knew Xingyi." His ears flicked. "I understand you've met Grieve? I used to run with the Nameless, her mercenary crew. Xingyi's cousins were part of it, too, and he and Helene bailed us out. A lot. Much to their continual annoyance. In return, we suffered watching them pine. It was ******** terrible. Please tell me it's true that the two of you have sorted," he twirled the water bottle in a circle, "all of that out?"
It was like talking to an old friend, even if Madriu wasn't sure if Xingyi would have counted him as one. Relaxing, familiar. Even if this particular old face was new, like Murikabushi's--it was an old face anyway.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 10:40 pm
The truest challenge of the evening lay, at least for Kaifeng, in trying not to vibrate with excitement while getting the chance to learn more about what all had happened a thousand years ago, and how Xingyi-ge had been, and what sort of hijinks he’d gotten up to. Sure, Liánlí-Kaifeng had drawn a few initially incorrect assumptions about his predecessor that had left him a bit ill-at-ease (such as his mistake in thinking that Xingyi’s workspace, where he’d prepared corpses before burial, had possibly been some kind of serial killer torture dungeon). He’d also come to a few conclusions that had been right on the money in very depressing ways (such as about Xingyi-ge and his drinking problem).
But getting more actual accounts about Xingyi-ge—whether from awakening his memories up at Kaifeng the Wonder, or from people who had known him—would always be preferable to trying to guess. The more Liánlí-Kaifeng learned about Xingyi-ge, the more he wanted to know. And the more he studied his starseed’s last reincarnation, the more he recognized himself in Xingyi, or saw pieces of Xingyi in him. Certainly, he recognized more of himself in Xingyi-ge than he did in Zhìháo (quite a feat, considering Selenga’s whole point that the Liánlí of today wouldn’t have existed in the first place without Zhìháo, and in a much more direct way than with Xingyi-ge).
But thoughts like that belonged in the mental trash compactor, like pretty much everything about Zhìháo. (Dimly, Kaifeng thought that Selenga wouldn’t be happy with him for thinking like this, but hey, Selenga was neither currently here nor telepathic.)
Madriu, on the other hand, was here and he had tales to tell. As he went on, Kaifeng met said tales with bright-eyed nodding, a knowing wince at the mention of pining, and finally a good-natured laugh. “Yeah, uh. We sort of skipped over the pining this time……thanks to me very seriously misinterpreting things,” Kaifeng explained, chuckling again. “So, I’d had a couple of flashbacks to some of Xingyi-ge’s memories up at our Wonder, right? All of them had this tall, gorgeous alien senshi who looks at Xingyi like he’s the moon and stars while trying to ask him to please take care of himself and care about what happens to him. And Xingyi aches like crazy while looking at the tall, gorgeous alien senshi, just so much yearning. And in the first memory I’d unlocked…Kaede? She guilt-tripped him into mercy-killing somebody for her by going like ‘Are you a Kurogane and a Knight of Saturn, or are you just Sailor Helene’s little wife’—which is obviously derogatory, yeah? But I thought……with how they looked at each other, y’know? Maybe it was also literally true?”
Making a face like hey, what else was I supposed to think?, Kaifeng shrugged. “So, when Helene first got here, he immediately found me, and I think he and Xingyi-ge were actually married, so I just kissed him and asked him to come home with me? And then actually listened to him about his own feelings when he wanted to stay?” He grinned, a little bit sheepishly but mostly very pleased with himself, and rubbed the back of his neck.
But……as fun as most of the story was, after the memory that had resurfaced during the ritual to resonate with his Code Piece and all the little signs of Xingyi’s devotion to Huan-ge that had preceded it, Kaifeng did feel compelled to add, more seriously, “Not saying it to excuse anything about Xingyi’s side of the pining, or any of his other behaviors? But I think at least part of why he didn’t make a move on Huan-ge was……the alcohol. I don’t have all the story yet, but some of what I’ve seen at our Wonder? Makes it seem like Xingyi-ge wanted to be sober before he’d let himself try to go for anything more, especially because Huan-ge often wound up hurt by his drinking. He just didn’t… He never managed…”
Kaifeng swallowed thickly and sighed. “Sometimes, you can want to be free something so much it hurts, but wanting it doesn’t make breaking the habit any easier. Y’know?”
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 11:31 pm
Madriu laughed, hearing the story. It was so utterly the opposite of the Helene and Kaifeng he'd known--but in the best possible way. "Oh, I bet he was surprised. That's adorable, I'm really happy for you two." He meant it genuinely, too; the entire story was incredibly sweet, and even if it had taken them a thousand years and a reincarnation, it was good to know that Helene and Kaifeng had thoroughly managed to sort out their relationship.
Not least because Madriu had heard what had become of Helene after Kaifeng's death. How he'd shut himself up, lost in grief. How Madriu had thought that...if Anthy ever died, he might do the same.
(Anthy was probably dead, and he hadn't. So maybe that spoke well of his resilience, or something. Maybe it just meant that the longer he went without seeing Anthy's reincarnation, the more he could hope that maybe, just maybe, he was still alive.)
The rest, though. That made his ears and his shoulders drop, and he nodded.
It wasn't alcohol, no.
But Eithien had been that way.
Sometimes, a vice was actually a person.
"Yeah, I absolutely know." He exhaled, and shook his head. "Do you want me to walk you home, or to somewhere you're meeting with Helene? I feel like I should return you to him."
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 6:50 pm
Madriu had a very nice laugh, if Kaifeng’s opinion counted for anything. And there was a sense of relief in hearing it, frankly. After what all of the long-survivor senshi had been through, trapped on their planets and made to suffer the whims of Chaos for a thousand years, it was good to know that any of them could still laugh. Just like how there was always a moment of softness and gratitude when Kaifeng got to see Huan-ge smile—very rarely a large smile, but Huan-ge didn’t need to be as loud with his feelings as other people for Kaifeng to understand their intensity.
He softened, at the confirmation that Madriu had some kind of experience with trying to walk away from something bad for him and tripping up. Part of Kaifeng wanted to ask—but he took Madriu seeming to move on as an indication that Madriu would have preferred that he didn’t. Even without knowing what, exactly, Madriu had been through, Kaifeng felt that was a fair enough request. It wasn’t as though he made a particular habit of talking about Huang Zhìháo’s parents and grandparents, either. Huan-ge had heard about them more than Qi-jie and Ming-er, both of whom had actually met the people in question. Even then, it wasn’t very much.
But with a small, soft smile, Kaifeng nodded. “Yes please, Helene should be nearby. We were patrolling together and only meant to separate so none of the youma we found got away.” Picking up his Hello Kitty pad, his pen, and finally his weapon, he hopped off the playscape and onto the ground. “Maybe not tonight, but some other time? You should come over for dinner, too. Most of what we’ve planted in the garden hasn’t had enough time to grow yet, so we can’t offer meals that are homegrown and home-cooked? But I like to think Huan-ge and I can still put a nice meal together.”
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