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 Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 6:44 pm
The singular camp light was all that still lit the room. It created such a heavy gloom that Aelius had come to prefer to sit with his eyes closed than strain under the meager lighting. At least the light had been moved a bit closer to him and sat on the stool to his left. Though it made the rest of the room all that much darker past it’s glow.
It did a good job though of hiding the carcass of a dead rat that lay in the room with him. A gift left from his last visitor.
He was so tired. Mentally and physically. The cold ate away at him and he could do nothing to readjust the blanket that sat precariously around his shoulders. Not that the blanket did much, but it was something. Still, despite how drained he felt he wasn’t about to show the exhaustion anymore than he could help. Not with yet another person standing in front of him. Studying him.
This one was familiar though in his purple skirts and long-sleeved white fuku. “Hello, Muri.” His voice cracked on the name. He paused to clear as he attempted to stretch upwards as far as his restraints would allow to help his aching lower back. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” The stretch didn’t get him far and he slouched back down with a wince.
Aelius wasn’t sure what to expect from Muri. A part of him hoped for some sympathy, but Aelius was also clearly aware his own animosity towards the man as of late certainly didn’t award him any kind feelings. Did Aelius regret it? Perhaps a little, but that was more in his own self-interest at the moment. He still didn’t approve of the mans choice in sides.
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Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2024 5:41 pm
Debating with Yuki the merits of magical girl patrol detail so close to Christmas had felt a bit like a losing game. At the heart of the issue, he and Kiyoshi as yet disagreed about how much time Kiyoshi liked to spend, on average, doing things as Murikabushi. Efforts at establishing his own life and sense of self outside of magical girl bullshit had been rewarded with a mild-to-moderate loosening of the leash, Yuki allowing Kiyoshi more time to power up as Murikabushi and go out on the town to feel his magical girl fantasy.
Regardless, the central disagreement lingered. Its focus had shifted away from “You just endured a major traumatizing life event that required you to junk practically everything about your civilian life as it had previously existed and start again from square-one, at age twenty-eight” and onto murkier, less definition-ready subjects like self-care, but……still. No matter what specific terms you used or how exactly you wanted to slice things, Kiyoshi and Yuki remained in perpetual negotiations about this issue. The longer said negotiations lasted, the more serious the inherent threat of that adjective, “perpetual,” felt.
Yet, it wasn’t all losses on Kiyoshi’s end. He was, after all, still allowed to spend an infinite amount of time with Hybris without it counting double against his weekly allotment of magical girl time (because even though Yuki hadn’t met Hybris before, he’d heard enough to know that Hybris was more a danger to himself than to anyone else). Likewise, Kiyoshi had made decent headway on the “personal time management and how to spend enough of it on himself instead of working endlessly for others” front of late. Mostly, he’d made said headway by leveraging the fair and reasonable point that he wasn’t planning and orchestrating a big holiday show at Scandals this year, but he was still doing less magical girl stuff than he had when he did have those kinds of responsibilities.
“Telling me how right I was to make you take more You Time isn’t the c**t-serving argument that you seem to think it is, ********> Yuki had told him, his tone and expression both flatter than most queens’ unpadded asses. “But……point taken, I guess. As long as you do still make time to do actual person things instead of acting like you only exist to throw your magical powers around for the sake of other people who don’t appreciate you.”
Going out on a plain, simple winter holiday season patrol after a shift at the bakery, Murikabushi didn’t expect that much trouble. Some, sure, because it was Destiny City and the winter holiday season tended to attract nonsense like magical rabbits made of snow and little floating lights that giggled and caused mischief. But something felt distinctly off as Muri wandered into one of the neighborhoods that several people in town wanted to gentrify—had Madriu settled in around here? Where was he staying these days? If Madriu was still squatting somewhere with the temperatures dropping so low, then Muri was going to need to at least offer him somewhere warm to stay for as long as he wanted it. Maybe Madriu wouldn’t want it, sure, but he could have the offer out there as an option.…
Didn’t take Murikabushi long to figure out what, exactly, felt wrong about what he’d walked into: a whole-a** gaggle of Order aura signatures had congregated out here. A mix of power levels, too: Knight or Eternal senshi, Squire or Super senshi, Page or Noob senshi, all with multiple representatives of each, even a Mauvian—the whole spectrum of power was represented, short of an actual princess. As he followed the auras to where they felt strongest, Muri frowned. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to walk into something horrid.
Getting up to the second-floor window wasn’t difficult. Nor did getting into said window prove terribly challenging (wasn’t really much reason for things to be locked out here, Muri guessed). But what he found waiting for him, bound and illuminated by just a camping lantern? That part, Muri struggled to swallow—especially when the other man spoke.
“I’m sorry I don’t recognize you,” Muri said gently, keeping his hands out and visible as he moved toward the chair. Carefully all the way, didn’t want to cause this poor man any further alarm. When he was close enough, Muri took a knee. “I’m guessing you’re Chaos when powered up? And whoever all the other energy signatures belong to, they brought you here because of that?”
Although Muri didn’t explicitly voice his horror at the implications wrapped up in this whole situation, his soft, somber tone spoke to them instead. How could Muri not recognize what was happening here, when he so greatly feared the same situation happening to him but in reverse? Either somebody had snitched on this guy to Order (not impossible, but that didn’t feel like the Dark Mirror’s style—in fact, Remarque probably would’ve skinned anyone who did that to a fellow Mirror senshi—and the Negaverse seriously punished that kind of treachery), or (worse and therefore far more likely) somebody with Order had stalked him until he’d powered down, then gotten the jump on him.
Still—whoever this guy was when powered up, he deserved more explanation, Muri thought: “I just felt like so many powered auras all together couldn’t possibly be good, no matter what quote-unquote ‘side’ they’re on.… Really disappointed to be right, but—what happened? What have they been doing to you?”
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Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2024 7:00 pm
Aelius almost laughed. Or, he did but it came out in a small cough. Gods damned, he was likely also getting sick and that was concerning considering the situation he was in. Hard to tell though yet. Perhaps it was just the cold playing even more into his misery. With the type of luck he tended to garner, that was an unlucky outcome.
"Not part of the party in the other room?" He questioned finally, as he tracked Muri's movements.
It was still odd, seeing the ex-mirror senshi draped in white. Aelius had secretly hoped Muri would have joined the negaverse. The femme man had been one of the few that Aelius felt comfortable around right off the bat. Well, as much off the bat as they could considering the circumstances of their first encounter. Now though, he struggled with conflicting thoughts for Muri. And since Muri's shifted, the corrupts actions around the Senshi of Hunger were fueled by frustration and engrained beliefs.
Aelius watched as Muri studied him. He fussed a bit with the zip-tie restraints in an antsy habit. It was sobering, to say the least, to have Muri see him like this. To be at the senshi's mercy. Especially considering the animosity Aelius had been throwing at him. In fact, he almost didn't offer his name up, but what good would that do him? Muri could easily walk through that door and find out.
Aelius was too tired and trodden at this point to hope that maybe, just maybe, Muri would help.
He heaved a heavy sigh. "Heliodor." Aelius watched as the glamour that had been protecting him for years shifted for Muri, connecting Aelius's two identities.
"Good guess. Two of them out there brought be here a few nights ago. The rest showed up tonight. Last I heard before they left me here they were discussing what to do with me now." A visible shiver ran down his spine. Whether it was for the discussion he had heard or the night's cold bite was left for Muri to surmise on his own.
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Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2024 5:48 am
With the revelation of the prisoner’s powered identity, Murikabushi felt something shifting in his mind. Suddenly, it was as if someone he recognized as a friend had materialized before him, coalescing together out of the familiar traits that still hadn’t looked quite right. True, Heliodor was a friend who had, of late, been in a bitchy mood with Murikabushi, but by the same token, he’d had his reasons for that. Not entirely unfair ones, either (even though Muri didn’t entirely enjoy admitting that they were fair).
The recognition only served to soften Murikabushi’s expression. He’d already sympathized with the prisoner more than with his captors. Order or Chaos didn’t matter nearly as much, in Muri’s mind, as the fact that torturing people like this was MORALLY WRONG, period. Full stop. Do not pass “Go,” do not collect two-hundred dollars. Compromising on basic b***h moral questions like this made Order no better than some of the literal, non-magical ghouls in the universe whose actions helped make people feel like they didn’t deserve better than the way that Metallia and Mirrorspace treated ******** bullshit,” Muri hissed, not directing the sentiment at Heliodor—or whatever his name was when he couldn’t power up—but rather, at the captors who weren’t currently in the room. A quick glance over his shoulder at the door showed nobody making any moves toward the side-room—or at least the door wasn’t opening and Muri couldn’t hear anyone shuffling in this direction—which meant that Muri was free to Judge And Condemn however much he wanted. Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Murikabushi radiated judgment in the way that usually preceded him reading someone to filth. For the moment, he kept himself limited to, “Gurl, basic rights and dignities violations, honey.… Far too much.”
Not that simply disapproving of what had happened would help Heliodor much. Shifting behind the chair, Muri frowned at the wounds on Heliodor’s wrists. He couldn’t see much from the light of the camp lantern, but what he could see, didn’t look good.
“You’d think the fondness that white supremacists and literal cops have for zip-ties would make it pretty clear that magical bitches shouldn’t be using them, but……eugh.” A bastion of maturity—and a consummate performer, even when Heliodor currently couldn’t see him—Muri emphasized that sentiment by sticking out his tongue. “I guess there’s probably no rule that says cops can’t be magical girls. Can’t really expect Cosmos or whoever wrote the rulebook to account for the existence of militarized police forces in one specific country on one specific planet in an unfathomably massive universe. Even Miss Alpha and Omega magical girl of the universe can’t be omniscient……or expected to share sociopolitical opinions with one specific annoying, contrarian, queeny gay guy.”
Meaning, Muri himself. Not that he’d met Cosmos herself—and for all he knew, she’d had exactly ******** to do with making any of the rules—but from what Kerberos had had to say about her before? Miss Magnificent Sailor Cosmos-hime of the World probably had some too-big view of the universe and what happened in it, the sort of perspective that by necessity would end up removing her somewhat from the microcosmic scale element of things, the level on which humans, half-youma, humanoid aliens, Mauvians, and whoever else existed as ******** people. In all likelihood, Cosmos did not, per se, have sociopolitical opinions because she didn’t need to and her position in the universe left her with too many other things to worry about.
Which, unfortunately, did nothing to change an admission Muri wasn’t proud of: “Of course I wind up here when I need to refill the first aid kit in my subspace,” he said softly. Even unable to do something helpful for those injuries, though, he cupped a palm around one of Heliodor’s hands. Gently, trying to go for reassurance, Muri squeezed the other hand around Heliodor’s fingers. “But I’m not just gonna leave you here, okay? I can’t contact Faustite on my own, but I have a friend who can. He’s a Saturn Knight. He’s helped me get in touch with Faustite before, and there’s no way he and his man are out there. Both of them hold themselves to higher standards than this garbage.”
Granted, Helene and Kaifeng’s higher standards might’ve involved them making out all over one of Destiny City’s public parks, possibly heading for something distinctly more explicit. But getting horny for each other in the middle of magical girl work was more of a potentially awkward quirk than, like, a literal human rights violation. Neither Helene nor Kaifeng was going to be okay with others among Order trying to torture Heliodor into purifying—or, worse (because literally anything about this needed to be worse), simply torturing him as a way to hurt Faustite with no concern for Heliodor himself. True, they both opposed Chaos, but not like this.
Muri sighed softly. “Have they been giving you any water? Anything to eat? I can take care of those basic needs before I go get help.”
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2024 12:08 am
Muri was….well, Muri. The man was vocal in his thoughts and if he wasn’t vocal, his face said what he was thinking. The straight disgust that was displayed was refreshing in comparison to the straight animosity that Aelius had been subjected to the last few days. It helped chisel away at the heavy wall he had put up around himself to protect himself. Aelius let his spine collapse more and shoulders round as the tension that had been ever present eased some.
Despite the side of the war Muri stood on, it was clear that in this moment, he was friend and not foe.
“Yes, well, not everyone much cares how they get things done as long as they get results. And let’s be honest here, as frustrating as it is to sasy, zip-ties do a damn good job holding people. There’s a reason they’re used by cops.” Aelius’s voice lacked the bite of defensiveness now. Instead, he sounded tired, even to his own ears.
With his hands and legs zip tie together, Aelius wasn’t able to reach anywhere without moving his entire body to do so. Reaching the blanket that had fallen off of his shoulders and now pooled on the ground behind him was an impossible task. He looked back at the grey fabric and was just about to ask if Muri could assist him with it when he felt the gentle touch.
At first he jumped at the touch. Most physical contact as of late hadn’t been to his benefit. Sure, the Cybelle squire had tended to his wounds a bit earlier, but that had been an exception. The warmth of Muri’s hand felt lovely in comparison to his own, even if it reminded Aelius how cold he actually was.
But what really brightened him up was the mention of Faustite. It was the bit of hope he needed to revitalize himself. “I am not even sure if he knows I am missing. It’s only been a few days.” Though, if Waru had been at the apartment there was hope that he had reported Aelius’s failure to return home, but the chances of them being able to find him were so miniscule since he gave off no aura as a civilian. But, he couldn’t drop Waru’s name and he wasn’t willing to expand on the relationship he and Waru had with Muri. Even if using powered named.
“Not that I don’t expect him to believe you, i know you two have some sort of friendly relationship.” And to be honest, Aelus had no clue if it went beyond that, but no need to bring that up. “But let him know it’s Aelius that’s in need of help? That should clue him in a bit more into what is going on here before he arrives.” While Aelius was effectively useless, he could at least help the strategist out a bit by dropping the hint not to count on Aelius himself.
He squeezed Muri’s hand back in thanks.
“Oh gods. Water. Please.” The still fresh memory of beady eyes, fur, and scratching nails being shoved unceremoniously into his mouth haunted him. He avoided looking in the direction that the second rat’s corpse lay. While it wasn’t easy to see, Aelius knew it was there. Rinsing his mouth out would help ease the feeling of the intrusion and memory of the dead rat that Grieve had so wanted him to eat.
His stomach churned.
“Just water.”
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Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2024 4:05 pm
Aelius. Muri committed the name to memory, already trying to think of what to tell Faustite exactly. He was, in effect, snitching on Order to the Negaverse and creating a situation where several people were likely to get hurt, and Muri didn’t like that fact? But he liked the idea of allowing this situation to stand even less. Besides, Faustite would find out that Aelius had gotten in trouble eventually, whether Muri snitched or not. Actions had consequences, and sometimes those consequences looked like a half-youma General-Sovereign, literally on fire, coming to wreak unholy vengeance and get one of his Boys back home, to his own people.
“Really have to wonder what sort of results these people think they’re gonna get here, though,” Muri said, as gently as he could, because he wasn’t upset with Aelius, just with the situation. “If they’re just taking you to hurt Faustite, then they’ve got a world of pain incoming. Not that I think they’d care that I don’t support that s**t, but……treating people like means to an end is always reprehensible.”
Said with all the weariness of someone who knew good and goddamn well how living up to that ideal was often easier said than done, but thought it better to at least try. Even if you fell short, making the effort was always better than nothing.
With a soft sigh, Muri let go of Aelius’s hands and picked up the blanket off the floor. As he returned it to resting on Aelius’s shoulders, he added, “And if they think they can forcibly purify you, then……” Muri inhaled deeply, pursing his lips and letting his eyes go wide in disbelief. “I mean, I don’t really see that working out for them. First, they’d have to convince any princess in town to go along with the idea and I don’t know that any of them would.”
Cybele, maybe? But even that guess felt like a stretch. She could be sort of unhinged and she had particular mutual beef with Faustite, but also, maybe she wanted to keep her head down and not get even further on his bad side for a while? Enlightened self-interest was valid as long as it kept her from trying to force Aelius back into Order when he didn’t want that.
“But even if they did get a princess or Cosmos herself?” Muri shook his head, reaching into his subspace for one of the bottles of water he kept there, reasonably chilled and closed so people could trust that it wasn’t poisoned. The seal cracked as Muri twisted off the cap. “I seriously don’t know if it would work? Like, who knows, maybe I’m wrong? Being wrong is, like, a talent of mine. But when I left the Mirror, Mirrorspace did this whole ******** exit interview, trying to convince me to stay. Another senshi I know, who purified out of the Negaverse? He thinks that Chaos is empowered by your devotion to it. Considering how wiped out the princess who helped me was after an eager, enthusiastically consenting purification?”
Muri shook his head. “I don’t know for certain. I really don’t. But I feel like all they would accomplish is hurting you and whichever royal they convinced to try purifying you by force. By their own factionalist logic, they should at least care about hurting people on their own side, but……well, I guess that’s asking too much of some people, huh.”
But with the bottle open and ready, Muri shifted his position to a better one for slowly pouring it into Aelius’s mouth. He held it up to Aelius’s lips, ready to pour when he was ready to drink.
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Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2024 3:59 pm
“I am not sure why they even bothered to ask me about it.” Another cough interrupted him. He did his best to divert himself away from poor Muri and paused to clear his throat before continuing. “Taking someone hostage then offering to fold them into their group isn’t the best strategy. I doubt they really wanted or expected me to say yes to purifying.”
The warmth of Muri’s hands was instantly missed as the other retrieved the bottle of water from his subspace. “I don’t think they much care how much damage they do to me considering most of them were talking about killing me outright. Clear up any possibility of me reporting each and every one of them.”
As the water was offered, Aelius gratefully took his first mouthful. Water dribbled down his chin a bit, but he didn’t care as he swished the water around vigorously in his mouth. If he could he’d take ******** soap to his mouth right then and there for the lingering taste and whatever else that could still be in his poor mouth. The thought of the rat made his skin crawl. Aelius turned his head to the side to spit the water out before turning back to for another mouthful. This one he swallowed greedily.
“Thank you.” He said softly. He was fully aware how much he was going to be in Muri’s debt after this. It was an odd feeling knowing that the man was willingly turning on those of his own faction to help someone who, in all intents and purposes, was on the opposite side of the war than him. Muri’s moral compass was obviously the thing that directed him most ad be damned with anyone who didn’t fall within range. In some ways, that was an admirable feature.
A creak of the wooden floor came from the hallway outside. Aelius stiffened as his attention turned towards the door.
“They’ve been taking turns watching me. You need to be careful if you don’t want to get caught.”
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