Very few things in this world had the ability to pull Liánlí away from an evening of fun baking with Huanxi and some of their housemates. Not Heibing, who had turned up absent with a little note on his pillow that had read “Felt restless, back later”—but Dewey, Ryla, and Imnolu had all still been invited, as had Hayden, Ming-er, and Qiye-jie. Sharing things like this with the alien senshi who’d come into his life—most especially but not exclusively his zhiyin—felt like one of the best possible uses of Liánlí’s winter holiday season time.

They’d just put in a batch of almond cookies when Liánlí’s phone had gone off with a text—one from Kiyoshi, but lacking pretty much all of the sparkle that texts from him usually had.

Need your help, it had read. Magical business, but please come powered down. Huanxi can come, but it might be unsafe for more people than that.

Not that Liánlí didn’t trust his friend because he did, but it had felt only prudent to do his due diligence by texting back, What kind of business? Why would more backup be unsafe?

Kiyoshi’s answer had come quickly: Hope Our inquiSiTive knight hAs Good Elocution and SImply doesn’T UnderstAnd ThIs Obviously farcical Nothing.

On the surface-level, patent nonsense.

But the cypher wasn’t difficult to parse. Liánlí had introduced Kiyoshi to this particular style of encryption when he hadn’t quite understood that some of his TikTok comments were calling him various homophobic and transmisogynistic slurs, rather than actually celebrating his drag. At first, Kiyoshi had been too willing to believe that the seemingly random capitalization had been down to people typing without looking at their phones or having wonky keyboard settings, and Liánlí wished that Kiyoshi could have been right.

But just as his offensive, shitty commenters had spelled out slurs with their own seemingly random capital letters, so too had Kiyoshi spelled out something that made Liánlí’s blood run cold.

HOSTAGE SITUATION.

Order culprits. Kidnapped a friend of mine. They can’t turn him, forcible purification doesn’t work.

Another reply of nonsense followed: Prepared dO a dissuade be so whateveR steepest. Yet her beyonD looked EitheR day wished nay. CUriosity you expLained PeRnIcious calamiTy diSpatch.

ORDER CULPRITS.

Reading that part, Liánlí had gently tugged Huanxi aside, away from everyone else. Not that any of them were untrustworthy? Sure, Ryla, Imnolu, and Heibing had apparently done a lot of s**t during the heyday of the Silver Millennium, all kinds of heists and assorted crimes, but those days generally seemed to be behind them.

A kidnapping situation where Order were the offending party, though? Liánlí didn’t want that information leaking to too many people. If Kiyoshi had texted him about it rather than someone like Kerberos or Princess Ida, there had to be a reason. Offhand, Liánlí could think of two: 1. he didn’t think that taking hostages like this sounded like something that Order should have been doing; and 2. Kaifeng’s signet ring could help Kiyoshi get in touch with someone from the Negaverse or Dark Mirror, to get the poor Chaos soul help.

Still, Kiyoshi had said that Huan-ge could come with, so Liánlí felt like it was probably alright for his emotional support zhiyin to sit with him in Liánlí’s studio right now. Better for him that way, because he needed Huan-ge’s steady, stabilizing presence beside him as he texted back, Anyone I know?

IDK, Kiyoshi’s response read. Even weAtheR THings maKe uNderwater Genuflection HoT & Caress Your amBling Eruption untiL EvilS QUestIon RadiancE.

I don’t know. EARTH KNIGHT & CYBELE SQUIRE.

With an immediate follow-up, typed out normally, the way that Kiyoshi’s texts tended to be most often: They’re the ringleaders. Others are here too, though.

Leaning against Huanxi, head on his shoulder, Liánlí sent back, How can I help?

Need your ring, Kiyoshi’s next message read, apparently eschewing the cypher in favor of speed and efficiency. Mark is a friend of mine. I know who to contact for help getting him home, and I know that you know enough for your ring to let you contact that person.

Liánlí stopped in the middle of typing out a reply as a second message came in: Full disclosure: the person we need to contact is Faustite. IDK if he’ll show up in person or not. 100% understand if you want to back out or bring Huanxi for safety concerns. But if you do come, anyone more than Huanxi might attract attention or make Faustite think we lured him to an ambush.

It wasn’t entirely the point, but Liánlí still frowned over the thought that Faustite—who had known Murikabushi for considerably longer than Kaifeng had, and had to know that Kiyoshi-Muri tended to be earnest in ways that a lot of the world didn’t like very much—would be so paranoid as to think such a thing (or at least, that he would, even hypothetically, think such a thing about Kiyoshi specifically).

Like, Faustite also had to realize what kind of power he had, right? He had to understand that people, even people who currently wanted to help him, taking an abundance of caution in dealing with him didn’t mean anything about them trying to ambush, undermine, or sabotage him? This?? This all seemed very straightforward and simple, right? Even if you accounted for Order and the Negaverse being opposed to each other in the magical girl war?

But………in fairness, Liánlí-Kaifeng had never spoken to Faustite personally. If he’d ever met Faustite in a powered down, human glamour, then Liánlí hadn’t realized it. Maybe Kiyoshi’s point of view on Faustite was biased, but he admitted to his biases and at least tried to account for them when assessing Faustite’s behaviors and how he was likely to react or not in any given situation.

Better to trust Muri’s judgment about how Faustite might or might not take things, then. After all, he had the actual experience with Faustite, while Liánlí only had hopes and ideas that, all up, amounted to Liánlí making sparkly, pleading eyes at reality and insisting “Come on, nobody’s THAT heartless.”

Steeling his nerves, Liánlí texted back, Where are you? As soon as Kiyoshi answered with the address, he followed up with, I’m on my way.