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 Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 12:16 am
Some people just didn’t understand how the world worked, and frankly, Lete was over it. Granted, she had certifiably been over people who didn’t appreciate the need for the Dark Mirror to drain energy since her first-ever meeting with a White Moon senshi had involved the b***h threatening to murder her and Muri throwing a cupcake at her head. Certain events involving certain people—not even exclusively the tall, annoying traitor in the sleeves and the stupid ponytail—had only made Lete even more certifiably ******** Over It.
Heading out into Southside Park and all of its inexplicable geometries tonight, she was in no mood to deal with anybody’s bullshit about “blah blah blah, you can’t do that, blah blah blah, it’s ontologically evil because we said so, blah blah blah.” All she wanted to do was set up in the park somewhere—tonight, as on so many other nights, this meant that Lete sat atop one of the picnic tables—and read a book while sending her Mirrorwraiths two by two. After a while, some weird, skinny little White Moon twink with messy blue hair and a fuku like a slutty neon Viking got some delusions of being able to make her stop.
Maybe she could’ve gone easier on him, but he’d made the mistake of invoking Murikabushi’s name. For that, he’d needed to pay, and the fee was Sensory Hell, courtesy of Lete’s magic.
Once the annoying twink cleared out, Lete settled back into A Clockwork Orange. Honestly, super rude of that White Moon senshi to bother her when she was reading a novel that was mostly written in the novelist’s completely made-up teenage psychopath con-slanguage. That was basically another language from either of the two she spoke and read fluently, so like……maybe ******** off and let her read?
The pair of Mirrorwraiths who came back to her on a chapter break knew how to be nice about this. One looked like a unicorn but a giraffe instead of a horse, and the other looked like a little snake with wings. Easy as breathing, Lete called on two more wraiths to go out and drain up some energy. Then, she returned to her book.
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 12:58 am
Madriu felt the itch of a strange Chaos aura, and given that, it felt like an itch he needed to investigate. There was so much that he was unfamiliar with, but it reminded him of how he'd had the Dark Mirror described to him--slippery. Cold. Wrong. The same way that girl who had broken into his shelter felt.
Ugh, he hated Chaos. Hated finding a whole new world that was still alive and finding that disgusting pollution here, too. He wanted, badly, to find a way to root it out, but that was likely beyond one person. But besides that, he'd felt another Order aura nearby, and then it had run away, and that suggested that maybe someone needed help and/or backup, so....time to go figure out what was going on here.
And as soon as he laid his eyes on this particular Chaos Senshi, Madriu narrowed them, because there was something about her bearing that made him feel. Very displeased. The idle way she was casually sitting, reading a book....like she didn't have a care in the ******** world.
Apparently, Madriu needed to give her some.
"What do you think you're doing."
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 7:02 pm
Chasing off the White Moon twink who looked like he’d slept in a dumpster last night, apparently, was not going to be enough to get Lete through the night. When she felt another White Moon aura coming into her general vicinity, she hoped very much that it would just go away. Maybe they could be a coward, or somebody with enough common sense to understand that the hottie reading a book did not want to be bothered. They weren’t powerful enough to be Muri, who maybe might have left Lete alone because he openly disliked dealing with her (in her opinion, based on her own read of the situation), but perhaps, they would have had parents who’d raised them with some ******** manners.
Alas, not so.
Alas, the White Moon aura not only came closer to Lete, but whoever belonged to it decided to snap at her. Keeping her place marked by holding her finger between the pages, she rolled her eyes and deigned to look up. As soon as she clocked the fluffy tail and head-attached little ears, Lete wished that she could roll her eyes hard enough to send them down the ******** block.
Great. Another of the weirdos from outer space who loved to hate on her.
“I’m doing my job, not that you care,” Lete drawled, shaking her head and dismissively waving her free hand at nothing in particular. “And claro, whatever you wanna say about it, I’m sure all the other White Moon skanks think you’re very smart and intimidating. They’re gonna give you such a good grade in ruining my night.” A thing that was both normal to want and possible to achieve. “But I don’t wanna hear it, so, por favor, maybe do both of us a favor and just scram?”
Go run to the traitorous slut in the legs and the ponytail and the sad sparkly eyes about half-youma General-Kings who are literally on fire, she thought, glaring at the space-wolf senshi as though it would will him to do so. Murikabushi probably would’ve enjoyed that. The way he talked about the interloping space senshi, it was probably a miracle that he hadn’t eloped with at least five of them yet. Slut.
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 7:08 pm
Madriu had to admit, he could respect someone this committed to sassing her perceived enemies. Running his mouth was a favored weapon of his, too, even if he didn't understand several of the things she was saying, especially given that at least a few of the words were definitely in a language Madriu did not speak.
Huh. Fun. Interesting. Maybe he'd ask Kaifeng or Saiph or someone else who knew how Earth languages worked. Not actually important, though.
"And your job is what, exactly." He put his hands on his hip[s, straightening his posture to really show off how tall he was. "Because if it involves taking people's energy or anything like that? We're gonna have problems."
Whether she wanted problems or not.
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 7:50 pm
“Ugggggghhhhh, of course we’re gonna have problems,” Lete groaned without needing to think about it, because why bother doing that when the White Moon skank of the moment had already decided how he wanted things to go. “Because of <******** course we are. Because even though Mirrorwraiths don’t hurt anybody, and they never drain enough to kill someone like the Negaverse’s people can, and Mirror senshi leave everybody else’s starseeds the <******** alone, all you guys with the high-output LED lightbulb auras run around and act like we’re all the <******** same.”
And some traitorous, long-legged sluts with stupid ponytails who deserved to remain nameless forever really thought that joining the White Moon ******** was the best idea!! Could anyone even believe!! Like, seriously, what the ******** was so broken in aforementioned slut’s stupid, gay little brain that he not only wanted to go to bed with somebody who was LITERALLY ON FIRE, MURI, ******** COME ON, but also wanted to run off and join the ranks of the senshi, who simped for outer space like it had ever done anything useful for anybody, and the Knights, who largely seemed like Negaverse officers but not as good at anything. Why was Demeter literally the only person in the White Moon’s ranks who wasn’t some kind of heinously judgmental b***h?
Slouching and glowering at the space-wolf senshi in the way of a youngest sibling who very much did not appreciate being corrected on their behavior, Lete huffed. “Why do you weirdos always have to show up and meddle like ‘Oh no, you can’t do that, bad Lete, baaaad’?”
Gently thwacking at her own cheek like pretending to slap herself was probably not necessary and probably counted as being too dramatic. But on the other hand, Lete didn’t care. She was seriously over it with these self-righteous assholes sticking their noses into other people’s business as if literally anyone had asked.
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 7:56 pm
It had taken him time to recognize the style in front of him--the all black and the way the Dark Mirror distorted the design hadn't made it easy, and there could certainly be plenty of Senshi with lilac and seafoam color schemes. But the brooch--that twigged something in his memory.
And then she said her name, and Madriu's ears perked. He knew that name. Hated that planet, all things weighed equally.
"Well, you're a lot livelier in this lifetime, Lete," he deadpanned. "Are they feeding you different drugs, in the Dark Mirror? Or are you just like this, all by yourself?"
The planet of decadence had never sat well with him. It had always been one of his least favorite places to end up. Reminded him too much of what he was pretty sure some of the Arcalian nobility really, really wanted their world to be like, and Sailor Lete's state--well. He imagined that the idea of shutting him up by topping him full of so many drugs he forgot his own name was probably appealing to a lot of people who would have liked Madriu to stop causing so many ******** problems for them.
Not exactly a pleasant possibility. Being reminded of it was not one of his favorite things in the universe. But hopefully things were different, now.
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 8:27 pm
……Well, that response at least got Lete to shut up for a minute before she said anything. Wrinkling her nose and tilting her head, she tried to throw the space-wolf senshi a seriously unimpressed expression, but mostly she wound up looking confused. A little bit annoyed about it, but the confusion definitely came through more clearly.
“The <********> are you talking about? What drugs?”
Okay, he’d said ‘this lifetime’ as though it meant literally anything, but like……reincarnation didn’t mean anything, right? Muri had said some s**t about it before, and acted like Lete had any reason to care that, at some point over a thousand some-odd years ago, her starseed had belonged to some other Sailor Lete who hadn’t even been from Earth, who hadn’t had abuela, or meemaw, or Leandro, or Tía Maria, and so on and so forth.
Which, honestly, sounded kind of stupid and pointless. Like, seriously, was the traitorous slut in the legs and the annoying superiority complex genuinely any happier or more fulfilled in his life because he knew all kinds of depressing s**t about some femboy space-elf from a thousand years ago who’d spent his whole life being miserable and probably died that way too? Not that Muri had asked for her opinion even before he’d gotten all ******** up on wanting to leave the Court, but Lete didn’t see how that was possible.
“I mean, if you want drugs, I know people, but none of them are senshi or Knights as far as I know? So they have nothing to do with the Court? And *I* don’t really like using drugs very much, so……?” Lete shrugged, making these statements about as simply as she ever said anything because……well. They were pretty straightforward facts, as far as she was concerned. Theater kids at universities all over the United States always knew where to find the drugs. “Anyway, Prince Remarque wouldn’t drug anybody to make them stay in the Court or do their jobs. Because he looks out for us and cares about everybody there, even if some people don’t appreciate that.”
……Was the space-wolf senshi going to take that personally if Lete didn’t clarify anything?
……Maybe? She didn’t know? But he was acting like tough s**t in a way that felt like he didn’t actually think he was (something with which Lete definitely had plenty of theories but exactly zero personal experience ever in her life because she was never ever insecure about anything, ever). So, like, maybe he’d be hypersensitive and act like she was insulting him and go into feral beast mode about it or whatever.
“‘Some people’ here meaning ‘a very specific selfish, two-faced slut who abandoned the Court when we didn’t even do anything except support him and offer him the freedom to be his own person instead of having to care about the dead b***h his starseed used to be,’” she explained, slipping her bookmark in where her finger had been. With her place marked, she sat up straighter and rested her book in her lap. “So, like, that kind of ‘some people,’ not you, the wolf-senshi in front of me, ‘some people.’”
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 8:41 pm
Madriu tilted his head to the side, in the way of a dog that sure was hearing you say a lot of words in his general direction and was trying to piece throguh them. At least it didn't sound like she was in the same position as her predecessor, which was a step in the right direction.
"It's a long story, and if you're not interested in your past life, I won't tell it, but I knew the previous Sailor Lete." He wrinkled his nose. "For some definition of the word. Her planet was all...galas and parties and let's dress everything up pretty to hide the rot underneath. Not the worst place in the universe, by a long shot, but not my favorite place to visit."
Remarque. Madriu tried to remember if he knew that name, but it came up blank--maybe he had, but he'd known a lot of things and a lot of people.
"Anyway, I'm glad your Mirror Prince isn't like that." His ears dropped, unhappily, and he regarded her for a long moment.
He had a guess as to who she might be talking about, but if there were problems between her and Murikabushi, that was not his specific business at this specific moment.
"Look. I don't like you taking people's energy without their consent. So why don't you take some of mine, and you leave the civilians alone, and we both walk away thinking we did some good work tonight."
Maybe it was residual pity for the last Sailor Lete. Maybe Madriu was getting tired--he hadn't really let himself rest for....a long, long time. Maybe it was something else. But if he could get out of this without a fight, maybe that actually sounded okay.
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 11:11 pm
For all the space-wolf senshi said that he wasn’t going to tell Lete any stories about her past life, he sure did have a suspiciously non-zero amount of words about it. But it also wasn’t a “Murikabushi babbling, half in drag queen slang and half in academic buzzwords he’d allegedly learned from his grandparents” amount of words. As far as unwanted story-time went, it could’ve been a lot worse, and……eugh.
It was a lot easier to aggressively not care about past life reincarnation ******** when Lete knew exactly zero things about it, rather than like……two-and-a-half things about it (which was more than zero, which made it just enough things to be kind of annoying).
“Not gonna lie, Lete the planet sounds like it sucked,” she said bluntly, looking down at the book and the Mirrorshards in her lap, considering what to do or not. “I mean, I like parties as much as the next twenty-something? And I guess I understand not wanting to deal with things? But like, it is pretty obviously no actual way to run a society, and if anybody in the modern world did it, we’d be like ‘Okay, that’s just tyranny, then’? Plus, keeping your senshi drugged up on, what, ******** space-opium or something? That just sounds like the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, this week. Especially if senshi are supposed to be, like……special protectors of your people or whatever you guys guilt-trip people about not being.”
………This was really not how most of Lete’s encounters with Order cops went.
It was different. And confusing. And especially with offering to let her drain energy off of him instead of just sending the wraiths out to hunt like she always did, the space-wolf senshi was making her think too much about things that fell outside the realm of Stuff She Needed to Think About For Class, which was making her brain itch in ways that she really didn’t enjoy. Why would she want to watch them drain this guy? It wasn’t like he was being a d**k, not really. Ugh, it felt like Lete had slime all over everything and ew, ew, ew, she needed to blast some classic Kesha and take a shower.
Stashing her mirrorshards and book in her subspace, Lete shook her head and hopped off the picnic table. “……I probably got enough for tonight, okay,” she said, moving cautiously, in case the wolf-boy got any ideas. “I’ll…… I’ll just go home.”
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