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 Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 7:35 pm
Saying that Murikabushi enjoyed taking people up to his world was an understatement. Ever since the first visit with Fang, he’d been coming up pretty much every time when his senshi-phone said that he could. Whenever those moments presented themselves, Muri liked to bring somebody with him. Most of the time, that had meant Yuki, but a handful of others had come up with him as well, and Muri had a mind to get several more people he liked up to his little asteroid eventually. If he had to bribe them with snacks or something, he wasn’t above doing that.
Maybe it wasn’t much. Maybe it was kind of a mess in several places. But it was Murikabushi’s place—his special place of power—and simply teleporting up there with Sonora, thanks to his phone, made everything feel right in a way that defied description. As when he’d come with Fang and Yuki before, coming up here with Sonora put them in the middle of a beautiful, sprawling garden, itself sitting in the middle of a city square. Unable to help himself, Muri took a few steps forward—ahead of Sonora and toward the bronze statue of Airan, atop its black marble dais, the ancient garlands of black roses still intact around his neck and wrists (and all the offerings inside the fountain’s basin left intact because Murikabushi hadn’t had the heart to move them)—then, with a deep breath of the remarkably clean air, he held his arms out and twirled.
In his gay little brain, he was thinking, 🎵Show yourself~! Step into your power~! Grow yourself into something new~!🎵 like the shameless Disney b***h he was.
But Murikabushi cut himself off with only the one twirl. He and Sonora had work to do.
“Sorry, sweetheart, sorry, I still get excited about coming up here,” he said, falling back to stand beside her. With a broad smile, he gestured at the city around them, at the garden where they stood, at the statue. “Isn’t it great, though? Strictly speaking, a realm in the Mirrorscape is a little bit safer for self-defense training, Mirrorspace generally tries not to let you get too hurt? But there’s the fundamentally untrustworthy issue of Mirrorspace itself to worry about instead, which obviously isn’t an issue up here, and the grass is pretty soft, at least.…… Plus, everything up here is infinitely more interesting than any of the bullshit lies that Mirrorspace peddles to people—not least because it’s actually real.”
Leading the way onto said grass—specifically, toward a patch of it that conveniently had a rock platform people had once sat on, which tiny little Sonora could now stand on so as to actually reach his face if necessary—Murikabushi asked, “So, just to get us started, what sorts of self-defense stuff do you already know?”
With someone else, he might’ve added a note to please tell him honestly if the answer was “none whatsoever”—but that didn’t seem like it would be any kind of issue for Miss Sonora. She was a sweet girl. Earnest. Forthcoming with things, especially when those things were important.
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Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 8:53 pm
To get to see other worlds was, in Sonora's opinion, probably the most magical part about the entire magical girl deal. She had always known, of course, that the sky held significance, that the movement of the planets and the flow of the universe's energies affected the people of Earth and affected those most in tune with them most profoundly, but this was...beyond her wildest imaginings.
Perhaps it, like Sonora the Wonder, was somewhat abandoned, but that certainly didn't make it any less wondrous.
This, Murikabushi, was a place, and a person, and so very alive. All she needed to confirm that, in her heart of hearts, was to watch Sailor Murikabushi twirl in pure delight upon introducing her to his world.
"I can see why," Sonora said, very sincerely. "It's incredible. So very vital, even if we're the only people here." She hoped she brought the same sort of energy to her Wonder, because in truth, she loved it very deeply, and hoped to see it thrive again. "I'm sure nothing bad will happen to us, here. Your world would never want its Senshi harmed. I believe that."
Surely no world ever did, or would.
She moved over to the rock, and sat on it, for the moment, and sighed. "Basic stuff. I know how to throw a punch, and I know that if you dig your nail into someone's wrist just right, it'll make them let go of you. I don't like using it, but I have older siblings, and they and my parents made sure I knew the basics." She kicked a foot, briefly, tapping her bare heel against the rock. "I usually carry pepper spray when I'm powered down, just in case, but that's not really helpful when I'm magical." She sighed, heavily. "But I don't like fighting. I don't want to have to hurt people. Isn't my magic enough?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 10:14 pm
Muri listened to Sonora with an open mind and an open heart, nodding along in both understanding and sympathy as she explained what she knew, and why she didn’t really like using that knowledge. Not that he could claim to be the same kind of pacifist as Sonora; he couldn’t and he knew that very well. Murikabushi took very seriously the duty of a drag queen to protect other queer people, especially at queer bars and especially given that he was blessed with great height, broad shoulders, and (when he was eating right and working out properly instead of eating as little as possible) a pretty solid musculature. This duty required him to be ready to throw hands or to throw bricks as necessary.
But that didn’t mean that Murikabushi enjoyed violence. He really didn’t enjoy it, and he did not enjoy being put in positions where it was necessary.
“Yeah. I may be more willing to throw down with somebody, but I do know that feel—and I think it’s a bad b***h move to consistently choose the path that’s more challenging instead of the path that’s as easy as violence,” Murikabushi told her, earnestly, warmly, and gently, because he was about to say something that she probably didn’t want to hear, but that he felt she needed to hear. “But there’s a way that my Obaasan—my grandmother—explained things to me when I was a kid. ‘It’s very good to want to change someone’s mind non-violently. But in order for that to work, your opponent must be open to having their mind changed.’
“She was paraphrasing the late, great Black Panther Party Prime Minister, Kwame Ture, when she said that. His original quote said that one’s opponent must have ‘a conscience,’ which was appropriate in the context of civil rights organizing? But a lot less so in the context we’re working with. Plenty of people in the Dark Mirror Court and the Negaverse have perfectly functional consciences. It’s just that they have different values and priorities that make it easier for them to justify what they do, to see it as, if not righteous, then at least the lesser of the current available evils. For some Dark Mirror senshi, energy-draining is the price they pay for a way to escape the war and protect their families. I think they’re fundamentally misguided and that Mirrorspace is lying to them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a conscience.”
Folding his arms over his chest, Muri heaved a sigh. “It does, however, mean that they’re not very likely to be open to having their minds changed. And sure, some of them won’t try to hurt you unless they get aggroed first, but some of them have a really loose definition of ‘aggro.’ Some of them think asking them not to drain more energy tonight is the same as calling them a slur and throwing a brick at their face.” Not that Muri was naming any names, Lete. “And if your magic pool runs out in the middle of a fight? You do not owe it to anyone to let them beat you up, throw their magic at you, throw a youma at you, kidnap you, torture you, kill you, or anything else.
“If you try everything and somebody still won’t back off? You’re not less of a pacifist for fighting back to protect yourself or someone else. You aren’t betraying your ideals for protecting people. For me, anyone who thinks being a pacifist obligates you to roll over and let someone else hurt you or kill you or whatever else? Sounds like they must have a really nice life. As my favorite Star Trek Captain, Benjamin Sisko, says? ‘It’s easy to be a saint in Paradise,’ and I’m very happy for the people who judge others as ‘lesser’ pacifists that they get to be safe and look down on others who are just trying to survive. It’s great for them that they don’t have life-or-death situations to deal with on a regular basis.”
Giving Sonora a small smile and a sympathetic look, Muri concluded, “But we do deal with life-or-death situations. It is not—and will never be—a mark against you or your commitment to peace if some b***h ******** around and, with all your options exhausted, you fight back so they won’t kill you.”
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Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 10:52 pm
Sonora couldn't help herself--she did fluff up a little bit, when he complimented her choice of preferring nonviolence. It always felt good that people recognized it as not easy, and especially, she felt, in this kind of situation.
The unfortunate thing was, his grandmother sounded a lot like her grandparents. And her parents. And her older siblings. And it made Sonora sigh and kick her foot again, which was a little petulant, she knew, but she found the whole situation frustrating.
"Yeah, my family said something similar. That they agreed that violence was never a good answer, but....sometimes other people don't understand no and you have to be able to protect yourself from them." Her shoulders dropped. "I don't think I'd ever want to let someone get hurt just because I didn't want to fight. That's.....not right at all. And sort of an abdication of the whole duty we're all carrying as Senshi and Knights."
She looked over at the statue, adorned with flowers and surrounded by offerings. These people had loved their Senshi, once.
"I guess....it's always been easy to just say no to it before. To never have to try and fight. Because, you know, I always had other tools, like if some guy was being creepy at a party I could start crying and get other people to help me. But I can't just...cry at the Negaverse, can I?"
....She could probably cry at Cryptomelane. He seemed like the kind of guy who was weak to tears.
So, with a heaving sigh, she stood up and got up on the rock.
"Show me what you want to show me, and I'll do my best to learn."
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 12:16 pm
“Yeah, most people in the Negaverse aren’t going to go for tears,” Muri agreed with a soft sigh and a nod. “Some of them might? But the way that their Chaos works on a starseed, it can get pretty unreliable. Honestly, there are even quite a few Dark Mirror senshi who won’t be swayed by tears? But most of them can at least be swayed by the fact that they don’t want to choose violence. A lot of them are with the Court because they don’t want to choose violence, it’s just……”
He shrugged, with a bit of an air like Eh, nothing to be done about it. “Some do want that. Hell, even some people with Order need somebody to stand up to them and stop them from choosing violence unnecessarily. Fortunately, it doesn’t need to be all bad.”
Briefly pausing, Muri motioned for Sonora to stand up on the rock instead of sitting on it. She wasn’t going to reach him from down there, and that was just not going to work. (Wanting to help other people learn their way around self-defense might have been easier, Muri considered, had he not been so outrageously tall. But oh well, he had to work with what he had.)
“Double fortunately, you have some good basics, it sounds like,” he said, then held up one of his own hands. “One note I’d give you? Out in the field, I’d try to avoid throwing a punch if you can. It’s way too easy to slip up about forming the fist and end up hurting yourself more than the person coming for you. Going for a five-finger slap—” Muri firmed up his hand and spread all his fingers, trying to maximize the coverage he could’ve gotten from slapping someone, “—or taking your nails up around someone’s cheeks and eyes? Safer for you, and there are some people who might be too shocked by you going for quote-unquote ‘cat-fight’ tactics to respond for a moment or two. In a fight, a single moment can make all the difference. If you get the drop on someone and get them knocked down, you can end the fight with as little violence as possible.
“Another good way to end a fight as quickly as possible……did you ever see Miss Congeniality?” Muri really hoped that Sonora had seen it, but she was enough years younger than him that he didn’t feel he could be sure one way or the other. “The ‘SING’ mnemonic that Sandra Bullock displays for her beauty pageant talent portion? That’s very real. Solar plexus—” Muri gestured to the different spots on his own body, “—instep, nose, groin. Those spots are all very sensitive. Hitting someone there is a really good way to end a fight. And it’s easy to double up on them if someone is particularly insistent, like stepping on their foot and kneeing them in the groin. Using your fan to whack someone on the nose could work very well, and give you a bit of extra reach if necessary. These tactics may only get someone off-guard for a moment? But again, sometimes a moment is all you need to get the decisive drop on somebody.”
Taking a deep breath, he shifted into a stance from which he could have easily attacked Sonora. Instead of doing that, though, Muri held and told her, “Pretend I’m coming for you. Scene: I’m a Nega-senshi, I’m coming for you, I just starseeded somebody and I’m going to take yours, then probably someone else’s, too. Your magic pool just ran out. You need to stop me. How do you want to do that?”
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 3:49 pm
It sucked, to have her suspicions that her genius tactics of crying a lot and aggressively applied guilt trips would not, generally, work to deter the Negaverse. Or the Dark Mirror. Or even some people on their own side that were way, way too zealous. She sighed, heavily.
"Man, this all sucks so much. Why do we even have to fight? A Nega told me some story about Prince Endymion and Princess Serenity, but even if two kids in love was really the root of this whole conflict, they've been dead for like a thousand years, so....this all seems really stupid."
She wondered if she could talk to the Code about it. Or an older Knight, or....somebody. But did anyone really know?
Maybe the answer was the one that felt kinda obvious on the face: there was a war because Chaos made one, because it drained energy and fed on people.
Ugh. Gross.
At least he agreed that she had the basics, and she nodded along as he explained more.
"Miss Congeniality is my oldest brother's favorite movie, so I've seen it a bunch," she said. "He always has to pause it and cry about that one scene when the contestant calls out to her girlfriend? It's really cute, he gets so emotional about queer stuff."
SING. She could do that. And a quick disable to get away and protect whoever she needed to protect--that made sense, didn't it? The least amount of violence necessary to resolve the situation?
"Okay," she said. "I can do that." She took a breath, and let it out. "I think," she said, and she moved to demonstrate, hopping off the rock so they were actually at their real height difference, "I'd go for the SING. Or, well," she moved to stomp her feet on his instep, landing just next to it, and then swung her fist at his general solar plexus area, though her actual hit was more of a tap. He was here to help her, she didn't need to go all out.
"Half of it, at least? And since usually hitting someone here," she tapped her fist against his solar plexus again, "usually knocks the wind out of them, that should work? For distraction?"
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Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2024 2:52 pm
The whole conversation about the war, the history, and all the miscellaneous intricacies thereof—Murikabushi loved this kind of conversation, and he easily could have gotten caught up in that instead of focusing on what they were actually here to do. He also could have sworn, for a moment, that he saw, out of the corner of his eye, something flitter in the nearby bushes. Fortunately for what they needed to work on, Sonora was better at focusing than he was. At least, she sure was right at this specific moment, which was what mattered most.
And even if she didn’t hit him hit him—which Murikabushi would’ve been overall fine with, even if Sonora probably wasn’t—it needed to be said: “Very good assessment of the situation. Good plan of attack. Getting into someone’s personal space to go for the instep can also work to disarm them on two fronts. The shock of pain in a sensitive area, for sure, but also? A lot of people get weirded out by somebody getting in their face like that. As long as you’re careful with it, right? Because on the one hand, being confidently confronted by a petite young lady will disarm a lot of people on its own. But on the other, they might move as quick as you do about grabbing at you or something.”
Depending on the situation, Sonora could have worked a flirty angle on her approach, but……by the same token, she didn’t really seem like she’d be entirely comfortable with that. And if Murikabushi was wrong in that assessment, then he still wanted to give her the room to make her own choices about what she wanted to do in any given situation.
“As for why we fight……” Murikabushi took a deep breath and carded his fingers back through his hair. “I’ve heard the story about the Moon Princess and the Earth Prince being in love, too. I heard it from this guy I care about, Elsa? He’s another senshi who left the Mirror, and he told me his version before I was even ready to get out of there. His hot take at the time—” With extra emphasis on at the time because, even though Muri hadn’t asked Elsa about this, he didn’t want to make it seem like Elsa still thought this way when he didn’t know, “—was that the Negaverse and the White Moon are both locked in this thousand-year-old conflict about the Princess and her Prince Charming and a bunch of people getting big mad about them falling in love. The Court was supposed to be the best option there because, allegedly, we weren’t bound up in all that. When I was leaving, Mirrorspace tried to sell me on a similar idea, all kinds of ‘why do you want to throw your life away on something that has nothing to do with you and people who don’t even care.’
“But none of that is really how the war works now, is it?” With a soft sigh, Murikabushi gave Sonora a small, uncertain smile. “When Elsa told me his version of the story, it was just like ‘Okay? But who cares?’ How many people actually know or care about that history? Not that it doesn’t matter at all, because it does, but at the same time?” Murikabushi shrugged and shook his head. “Princess Serenity and her boy-toy are scapegoats for the underlying problem in the same way that individual Negaverse officers and individual Dark Mirror senshi can be. The real problem is that Chaos hurts and lies to people, and gets them to turn around and hurt other people. All Chaos wants is to devour and destroy, and when its current incarnations in Metallia and Mirrorspace have no more use for the Negaverse and the Court? They’ll devour and destroy their loyal soldiers, too.”
Murikabushi thought of Acubens-oneesan, who just wanted to be safe from the war. He thought of Remarque, who just wanted to protect his children. He thought of Lete, and how she might not have been so obnoxious, annoying, and trigger-happy if Angelica hadn’t attacked her and threatened to kill her on one of Lete’s first outings as a senshi. He thought of Albite, who had a husband and a family in the Negaverse. He thought of Arsenolite, who was and would always be a jackass, but that didn’t mean that he deserved to be shat all over and thrown out like used tissue paper. He thought of Faustite, who’d only even been offered another option when he’d thought that he was either dying or fully youmafying.
More than anyone else, though, Murikabushi thought of Kerberos. Specifically, he thought of Alex Masters, the old friend who Kerberos had been once, before he purified and became Keiran. Muri thought about how much the Negaverse had hurt Kerberos and taken from him before he’d gotten out with a little help from Cosmos and Hvergelmir. But he had gotten out, he’d even achieved transcendence (so cool, so awesome, something Muri would never achieve himself because obviously, why would he, but he could still be happy for everyone else who got to bond with their worlds like that), and the life that Kerberos had now was a ******** inspiration.
(It really did seem obvious that transcendence was never going to be in Murikabushi’s cards, though. Awakening into the Court specifically had been just Dumb b***h Syndrome on his part, massively exacerbated by the presence of Cute Boy. But regardless of what faction had gotten him first, Muri had Awakened so late, and there had to be some kind of reason for that. Even if the people of Murikabushi had wanted him to come back, that didn’t mean their world cared for him, or that the planet didn’t think that it could do better for a senshi.
Murikabushi hadn’t even started seeing bugs or spiders or anything around here, yet. He’d seen cellphone pics of Kaifeng’s silk-moths, and butterflies, and spiders, and the little brightly colored, wiggly invertebrates who lived down by his Wonder’s river. But nothing had shown up like that for Murikabushi yet, and he had to wonder: was he doing something wrong? Was he not loving his planet enough? Not loving it in the right ways?)
Shaking his head again—mostly to bring himself back into the moment, Muri thought he saw something rustle in the bushes again—he almost thought he saw a flash of black and pink amidst the green—but……really, it was probably nothing. Best to focus on Sonora. “Solar plexus is, I think, probably your best bet on the whole,” he said. “Some unfriendly Negaverse hotties have pretty sturdy boots and you can try to get them in the instep? But I wouldn’t even bet on my pumps with some of them, and there’s a not-insignificant chance that with bare toes and heels? You’ll get hurt worse than the Negas by stomping on their boots.”
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Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2024 3:54 pm
Sonora wasn't sure how to feel, being told that she had a good instinct for how to hurt people. She didn't like that--didn't like that such a thing was apparently within her. But perhaps it was good, because maybe it meant she'd be able to end fights more quickly?
She didn't know. All of this sat kind of ill with her. If she never had to use these tricks, she'd be a lot happier, truth be told. But that was unlikely, it seemed.
"I'll be careful, I promise," she agreed. And frankly, she didn't want to be getting up in people's faces and hitting them anyway. Challenging them, maybe, but event hat made her feel like jelly. Why did all of this have to be conflict?
She plopped down to sit on the rock she'd been standing on, so she could listen to Muri's explanation of the story they'd both been told about Serenity and Endymion. But he was right, in the end, that whatever happened with them, it really didn't matter.
"I guess how much it matters depends on the telling," Sonora said, "Like, my Negaverse friend--he made it sound like Serenity was this evil imperialist who was seducing Endymion so she could take over the Earth. But there's earth Knights, right? So it's not like Earth was this uninvolved kingdom totally free of any magical influences or whatever. They clearly worked with the Code. And it'd be kinda weird if Earth and its literal moon didn't have some kind of diplomatic relations going on. In fact, if we're honest, I fail to see how a union between earth and its Moon wouldn't be beneficial to everyone," she said, and then she stopped, and coughed. "Um, you know. Just. That's how I see it. But Chaos...I guess you'd know? What it does to people? So maybe it made the people that joined it back then see outsiders as a threat."
....It felt a little uncomfortably close to home, and Sonora casually set aside thinking too hard about that.
"Anyway, it's all....I guess it makes sense that there's one side at fault, and it's probably the people that eat souls as snacks for power."
Like, that just felt logical, in the end. And she'd said as much to Cryptomelane.
Her eyes drifted to the bush, and she swore--there was definitely something there.
"Yeah, I'll watch the fancy boots," she agreed, but she was a little distant and distracted. "Hey, by the way, what's that in that bush? I could've sworn I saw something moving."
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Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2024 12:17 am
The intricacies of power and the politics of the war—even in terms of ancient history that most people fighting this war didn’t have any awareness of anymore—they truly were fascinating. Muri could’ve talked about them all day, especially with Sonora, who was far more insightful than most people tended to be. She tried to downplay it and brush it aside, like she didn’t want anybody to see her disagreeing with them or thinking for herself, but Sonora really did have a sharp mind.
But at the moment, something else had come up to distract them from any talk of self-defense.
Muri had been prepared to write off the rustling as nothing, but if Sonora was hearing it, too.…… Carefully, Murikabushi tried not to disturb anything around them, maneuvering closer to the bushes as if he were handling an irreplaceable ceramic vase that had been ancient when his hundred-times-great-grandparents hadn’t even been iotas of thoughts in their parents’ minds. He kept a similarly light touch while handling the leaves and branches. Whatever he and Sonora had seen, who was to say that it wasn’t dangerous? Or that it might not bite if startled?
Reality was to say both those things, as it turned out. When Murikabushi nudged enough of the branches out of the way, a rush of fluttering wings surged out of the bush before him and Sonora, seeming to leap into flight. With a gasp, Muri looked up to watch them: a kaleidoscope of butterflies, their wings painted with different patterns and balances of black, pink, and red, blazing and beautiful under the glow of early evening in the capital city, yet all of them, somewhere, seemed to have spots that looked like……no, surely that couldn’t have been real. Murikabushi must have been imagining things.
Reaching up, he intended to fuss with his hair—but instead, one of the butterflies caught him, landing on the back of Murikabushi’s hand. This one’s wings had only one shockingly pink heart shape each, but both started at the bottom of the wings, near the butterfly’s thorax, and reached all the way up to the opposite edges. Muri’s eyes went wide, bright and sparkling over having found them all……something real, and vital, and alive. Out here, on his own world. After seeing evidence and hearing tales about the life on other people’s worlds or at other people’s wonders, finally, someone had come back to life on Murikabushi’s own.
“I……” Murikabushi’s breath hitched in his throat, and his mouth fumbled around different syllables, overwhelmed and trying to string actual words together. “Do—? D’you have a camera in your subspace? Or your phone? I—I really want to show this to my best guy, Blossom, and Fang when we get back?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2024 12:22 am
Sonora gasped.
This. This was what it was all for. All the work and time and effort they put into their worlds--it was all for moments like this.
She'd yet to see anything on her Wonder, but she suspected that once she had things more stabilized there--once the dirt was cleared of old rot and new things could grow--she'd start to see more. And that....that was what she looked most forward to.
Seeing her Wonder come alive.
This wasn't even her world, but she was awed by it--and she nodded, when Muri asked about a camera, fumbling to pull her phone from subspace and starting to record. Photos wouldn't do, she was sure.
"Yeah," she said, after a moment, "we can play this for them when we get back."
How incredibly special. And how lucky she was to be here to see it.
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