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 Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 5:56 pm
Kaifeng didn’t really go out of his way to run into Dark Mirror senshi. But when he did find them, he also preferred to meet them with an open mind. Aside from Loudmouth Lete-meimei and her refusal to use words correctly, Kaifeng had had pretty good experiences with Mirror-senshi. Overall, he didn’t think their approach to the magical life sounded right for him—not that it was an issue unless Dark Mirror Knights were a thing and he hadn’t learned it yet, but hiding in Mirrorspace didn’t sound like his style and he couldn’t imagine his life without being able to access his Wonder anymore—but he understood that other people had different perspectives and different needs.
So, when he felt a Dark Mirror super aura while patrolling, Kaifeng kept his weapon low, trying to make it seem less threatening. He and Helene had split up to cover more ground, and they’d agreed to meet back up soon. If anything went amiss and this Dark Mirror weren’t actually on the level, then Kaifeng wouldn’t be without backup for long. Fortunately, as he caught a glimpse of that pink hair and the green tones in that fuku, he didn’t think that would be the case. He hadn’t caught the Mirror senshi’s name when they’d run into each other back in the winter, when a mysterious and very angry snow-lizard had decided she’d looked tasty and tried to attack her, but she’d seemed like a really sweet girl.
“Hey, meimei,” he called to her brightly, smiling and waving ‘hello.’ Should he have gotten out snacks to share? Maybe? Then again, he didn’t know offhand if she had any dietary restrictions or anything. Maybe he could just play it by ear. “Hope the night’s been treating you well! Nobody’s given you any trouble, have……they……”
Now that he was closer to her, Kaifeng noticed—really noticed—the pear-shaped brooch on her bow, and the trio of golden pears on her skirt. That trio symbol in particular, he knew he’d seen it before, on the bottles from Xingyi’s wine cellars that Helene had identified as being the pear brandy from another world.…… “Hey, this might be a weird question? And I promise, I can explain why I’m asking? But……your name. It wouldn’t happen to be Bélénos, would it?”
If it was, then……Kaifeng had to wonder if she wouldn’t be interested in something from her home-world.……
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Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2024 2:43 pm
Bélénos loved walking around at night, enjoying the fresh air, and letting her little mirror critters run out and obtain energy. It was simple, easy, and nobody died. Nobody had to die. She liked that. People would just go home and sleep and everything would be alright in the morning. She bent to usher a returning wraith into her shard, startling a bit at the sudden appearance of an aura on her radar—she hadn't noticed the blip until it was too late, but thankfully, it seemed a friendly face was the one finding her tonight. Waving at him as she came upright, she beamed. "Sure is!" she informed him, swishing her skirt. "Nice to meet you again, Saer Knight!"
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Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2024 1:04 pm
Kaifeng blinked at the Mirror senshi briefly, first caught off-guard by the fact that she didn’t ask for an explanation (or entirely seem to think that it was weird for him to have known her name), and then by how she addressed him.… The latter point twigged a memory quickly enough at least—Yuki and Kiyoshi had brought it up while they’d talked Dungeons and Dragons, Kaifeng felt pretty sure? he felt like he recalled them saying that it was a polite and gender-neutral form of address in Faerûn?—and that made Kaifeng smile.
“Nice to run into you again too, meimei,” he said warmly. He didn’t really know how to banish his weapon or otherwise make it temporarily go away—if such a thing was even possible—so instead, Kaifeng kept it out in front where Bélénos could see it but visibly held down, pointed at the ground instead of at the nice girl. Present because he couldn’t get rid of it, but held low and in a way that he hoped made it clear he had no intent to use it. “And, uh. Just so we’re clear? My guess on your name was just a guess? But……oh, how best to explain this……”
Kaifeng sighed softly and tapped a finger against his chin and lips. “So, a friend explained to me a while back that Mirror senshi, you guys get your power from Mirrorspace.” He decided not to name the friend in question. Without knowing whether or not Muri and Bélénos knew each other, Kaifeng couldn’t guess if Bélénos might not take it hard or in a bad way, hearing a Knight call Muri a friend. “Well, like I said after we dealt with that nasty lizard, Knights get our power from our Wonders. And some of us, like this other friend of mine, inherit them from an ancestor, but others, like me, we’re reincarnated in the same way senshi born on Earth are.
“So, when I visit my Wonder, sometimes, this really cool thing happens? I’ll be doing one thing—like, cleaning up in the little cottage where my past life self lived, or finding a cool new room in the tower he built? And in the middle of that, I’ll get like, a flash? Of one of his memories?” Illustratively, Kaifeng pinched his fingers together, holding them up by his temple, then made a little gesture like an explosion and whistled. “And Xingyi-ge, in a few of the memories I’ve recovered? He’s been drinking different pear-based alcohols from a world called Bélénos. I’ve found a few bottles of them down in his wine cellars too—uh. My partner? He’s not from Earth, and he recognizes a lot of the old labels on things? And……”
Making a soft noise like I don’t know, Kaifeng shrugged. “I know Mirror senshi do sort of your own thing? But I’ve heard a little bit about the realms you guys have in Mirrorspace?”
……Admittedly, he’d heard about this from Murikabushi. Who had mostly seemed very negative and disenchanted about the whole thing, in ways that Kaifeng honestly didn’t think were fair. It was one thing for Muri to feel more drawn to his home-world than to Mirrorspace and not to trust Mirrorspace, but it seemed to Kaifeng that there had to be more possibility in the Mirrorscape realms than Muri was really allowing to exist in his mind. Plus, even though Muri thought that he was only throwing shade at Mirrorspace and only intended to throw that specific shade, it felt at least a bit rude and dismissive of the other Mirror senshi’s agency for Muri to act like the biggest reason any of them chose to be Mirror senshi was that they were being lied to.
“And……I don’t know,” Kaifeng went on, trying to wrap things up. “Regardless of faction, you’re still the only person alive with any ties to the world of Bélénos? So, the Belenesian things I’ve found, I feel like they should be with you, if you want them? And I wouldn’t really recommend drinking thousand-plus-year-old bottles of twice-distilled pear brandy or anything? But maybe they could make some nice decoration for your magical Mirrorspace realm?”
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Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2024 3:54 pm
Bélénos wondered briefly if she shouldn't have addressed the Squire the way she had when she noticed his brief confusion, but then he smiled, and Bélénos felt a lot better about it. She liked trying to be a little silly with her gender neutral address, and it seemed this Squire had twigged it after a few moments. Good. And then he started speaking, so she shut her mouth and paid close attention, nodding along. She didn't really mind that he'd learned her name, somehow—from some ancient alcohol bottle his alien boyfriend had recognized, as he explained—she didn't particularly feel as though her privacy had been violated or something like that. If someone shouted Bélénos at her when she was just being Olivia, on the other hand, well... That. That would be a problem. But this wasn't that. he was telling her some stuff about Knights that she found fascinating, and she really wanted to ask more, but she shelved that thought for now. It wasn't like it would apply to her, anyway, unless she got entangled with a cute Knight boy or something. "Aw. You're sweet," she told him, nodding. "Yeah, you know, I'm not all that invested in that ancient history thing or whatever? But I wouldn't mind having some cool decoration centered on pears and all that hanging around!"
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Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2024 5:01 pm
Oh, good! Having the whole situation explained for her didn’t seem to put Bélénos off any, which was good. Though, before he went any further with anything, Kaifeng had to very quickly add on—“Oh, I—I’m Kaifeng of Saturn, by the way.…… Doesn’t seem fair for me to know your name and you not to know mine.”
Still smiling, he gave her a little wave, even though a “hello” wasn’t really necessary when they were already talking to each other. “My partner’s name is Helene. He’ll probably want to come too, if you don’t mind meeting up with him? He’s not always very talkative, and he can be kind of shy? But he’s open-minded overall. Plus, he met a couple other Mirror senshi pretty early after getting to Earth and one of them made a pretty good impression, at least.”
Not so much for loudmouth Lete-meimei, but……ehhhh, holding that one against the rest of the Dark Mirror Court felt incredibly rude. Sure, Muri did seem to be a weird little outlier who didn’t reflect on the whole of the Court either—not least since he’d purified—but the other, non-Lete Mirror senshi largely seemed to be pretty decent. Chaos-aligned, sure, but not bad people or anything. Didn’t seem fair to judge everybody in the Dark Mirror Court by Lete’s example.
“And, uh. If you don’t mind that part……” Kaifeng shrugged. “I’d also love to hear more about how your Mirrorspace realms work? I’ve heard some from a friend, but……” He cringed a bit, and tilted a hand back and forth in the way of indicating that something was a pretty mixed bag. “Said friend isn’t always the most reliable narrator? And a lot of what he had to say sounded like it was colored by him personally not liking Mirrorspace very much?”
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 12:08 pm
Bélénos nodded at his name, stifling a little laugh. Aw, he was adorable. And he had a powered partner! That was lovely—she hoped she could have something like that, one day. "Oh, yeah, Murikabushi, huh?" she asked, sympathetically. "Yeah, he wasn't happy with it after a while. I love him. He was a good friend. Is. I just miss hanging out with him outside of 'work', you know?" She made air quotes, gesturing to her outfit. "As for Mirrorspace, uh, I haven't learned anything much deeper than we all get our own rooms, basically, to decorate as we please, we can walk through mirrors, uh, there's gems we can find to grow cool decorations without bringing stuff to Mirrorspace, Muri gave me some before he left and I've just been lazy about it, haha."
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 2:41 pm
Hearing Bélénos correctly guess the identity of the friend in question, Kaifeng nodded. “Yeah, I got the sense that Mirrorspace wasn’t really for him either,” Kaifeng agreed. “But he’s doing pretty well on the other side.…… Learning how to make content for Youtube and TikTok, outside of magical work, which is a struggle for him?” To say the least, considering the crying breakdown that had happened after working all day on his video set to “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan. “He says he’d really rather be performing at a bar? But he’s really happy with things on the magical side.”
And learning more about Mirrorspace was certainly cool, but…it felt somewhat more important (on a personal level, at least) to add, “Y’know, if you want to for sure arrange a way to see him? It won’t be outside of work, but Knights can use our signet rings—” Kaifeng held his hand up and out a little as they walked, letting Bélénos see the silver ring with the raised Saturn symbol in the center, “—to contact anybody, regardless of faction. I’d be happy to help arrange things for you guys. And Muri would probably love to show you his world up in space. He and his queerplatonic person-guy have apparently been working on cleaning the place up, and Muri’s really excited about everything to do with it.”
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 2:50 pm
"Aww! I'm happy to hear he's still got that guy of his in his life," she said, only a little bit freaked out by the way she couldn't remember his name. Of course she couldn't, though. That was how the magic worked. She could never be friends with Not-Murikabushi again. "You're very sweet. Sure, why not. I'll ask him if he'll have time to meet up," she agreed. "Thank you."
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