Getting to where Kiyoshi had pointed him was not, strictly speaking, that difficult. A quick bus ride and a few briskly walked blocks, since Kiyoshi had told him to come powered down to avoid any trouble. They were, he’d said, going to be at enough of a risk while powering up just to send the note to Faustite—and frankly, if there were as many Order types gathered as Kiyoshi had indicated? Yeah, Liánlí could see that.

Liánlí didn’t come to this part of town very often, though. He made good time, he thought, but something about the environment itself felt ominous. All the unoccupied buildings seemed to loom over him, glaring down in silent judgment. As he moved through the streets, looking down every alley for the absurdly tall queen who’d called him here, Liánlí struggled to take the sort of deep breaths that promoted calm. His head wasn’t exactly spinning, but he didn’t feel super great right now, either.

Or maybe that was just the fact that Liánlí was here to, technically speaking, help snitch on Order to the Negaverse. Even given the situation and what Kiyoshi had said was happening—even given that he wouldn’t lie about that; he might’ve been flippant and snarky about a lot of things, but not a situation so serious as this—something about that underlying idea didn’t feel quite right.

Fortunately for Kiyoshi, Liánlí didn’t make himself very difficult to spot. Very few other people Kiyoshi knew would wear a deliberately tacky holiday sweater with a Galarian Ponyta on it while coming down to help with a hostage situation. Knowing him, Liánlí probably would’ve preferred a Shedinja sweater, which might have been more trouble to spot, given the more neutral color palette that his actual favorite Pokémon had going for it. But tonight, his mix of pastel mint and magenta—plus the unapologetically clashing purple plaid skirt—stood out all bright and vibrant among the mix of grays that permeated this part of town.

Flagging him down drew Liánlí into the alley where Kiyoshi had been waiting. They were close to the building where the Earth Knight and her little coterie of miscreants had Aelius held. Close enough that, when they powered up, their auras would be felt—but hopefully, not so close that they would strike anybody else as a threat. For all the Earth Knight who’d organized this knew, Murikabushi and Kaifeng would simply be two fellow members of Order, an Eternal and a Squire, off doing their own thing. Hopefully, nobody would bother investigating anything or assume that they were a threat. Working on things quickly was for the best……but getting a better look at Liánlí, Kiyoshi had to pause.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into something so miserable,” he said gently, taking in the deeply unusual slouch and hangdog expression that Liánlí had on. “You’re the only Knight I know who I was certain would object enough to what’s happening to help me get in touch with Faustite.”

“Yeah, no, that’s fair,” Liánlí agreed, nodding without really thinking about it.…… Yet, for the first time in several minutes, he managed a deep breath, only for it to come out as a heavy sigh. “I just……really wish we didn’t have to do this, y’know?”

Not least because Liánlí……had several doubts about whether or not staying in touch with Faustite was actually good for Kiyoshi. He knew better than to voice them at the moment. Right now, it risked delaying things further because Kiyoshi would feel compelled to pause, and to sigh dramatically, and to explain in the most exasperated tone of voice that he knew perfectly well that Faustite did terrible, reprehensible things a lot of the time, he just empathized with Faustite anyway, and had a lot of feelings about him, and he was really very sad and was it so bad if Kiyoshi wanted to show him kindness when most of the world had never bothered.

Which was all well and good in theory, but like……Liánlí had no reason to trust that Faustite respected any of that? And personally, he preferred one of his magical friends to remain free of any attempts at forcible Corruption or anything like that? Third-degree burns on the mouth from trying to kiss someone who was literally on fire?

“Yeah, I wish we didn’t need to do this either,” Kiyoshi agreed. He didn’t need to think about it. As uncomplicated as he felt the situation was—torture was wrong, taking hostages was wrong, none of this situation made any sense with his magical girl fantasy and there wasn’t any point in Order quote-unquote “winning” the great magical girl forever war if they ******** compromised everything about themselves and their values to get there—that straightforward nature of things didn’t entirely feel good. “More than anything right now? I wish that the girlies who pulled this off had just minded their own damn business and not created this situation.”

Huffing, he pushed his glasses back up his nose. “But even in that scenario, they’d still know my friend’s civilian identity, which would still be ******** awful. And they still could’ve used that intel to ruin his life.”

Not that it was even remotely the point, at the moment, but Kiyoshi couldn’t help thinking that the Earth Knight who’d put this little shindig together thought too small.

Granted, Kiyoshi kinda hated the part of himself that could even remotely think this way……but there would’ve been so many more options for ruining Heliodor’s life from knowing his civilian identity. She could have used the power of Internet stans against him, for one. While waiting for Liánlí, Kiyoshi had researched enough to learn that Aelius had worked for years as a dancer and a model, so he probably had at least a modest fanbase. Kiyoshi would need to check if he’d gotten a canonical character tag on AO3 and, if so, whom Aelius got shipped with. Dancer RPF and model RPF fandom seemed like they’d be small but steadily mighty, in the same way that the fandoms for Formula-1 Racing RPF and figure skating RPF were.

The important thing, however, was that having fans also meant having anti-fans, in the sense of people who didn’t like you or want you to succeed. Spreading the right negative rumors against Aelius to those people could have mobilized them to start running doxes and putting him in the position where he couldn’t work without seeming like a liability. Fandom teens online had lost people their jobs over less than nothing before. For the alleged crime of shipping the wrong pair of unrelated adults, teens like that had put people in the position where they couldn’t go outside without feeling unsafe but also couldn’t stay at their homes without actively being unsafe. Given sufficient motivation, they could have done Miss Earth Knight’s dirty work for her and taken away Aelius’s entire livelihood and civilian life while also stressing him out enough to make him a huge, active liability to Team Faustite.

Then again, what she and her little gang had already done would do enough damage.

For all he generally leaned toward implicitly trusting his friends and trusting their judgment, Liánlí hesitated in the face of Kiyoshi’s cold expression. It looked like he was thinking hard, and with Kiyoshi, that……could have meant a lot of things? Not always bad things? But with some members of their own faction so badly going against Kiyoshi’s personal sense of morals, the way things had gone tonight? Liánlí didn’t feel secure, betting that it meant anything good for his friend to have his jaw set so firmly, or for his eyes to narrow as he stared down at the pavement.

“……Everything okay?” Liánlí rolled his lower lip under his teeth, hoping that the answer wasn’t terrible. “And, uh. We should……probably get this over with, right? Better to move fast?”

“Definitely, yeah,” Kiyoshi agreed, taking his henshin pen out of the pocket of his own cute little skirt. Even knowing that somebody back at the house where Miss Earth Knight With Terrible Ideas For Your Nerves could have detected him, he felt it best to reach into his subspace and get out the little notebook he had with the bunny stationery. Faustite had seen it from Murikabushi before—last year, when Muri had borrowed Kaifeng and his signet ring to send a passel of holiday gifts to Faustite and his team—so it felt like added insurance of trust.

As he dashed off the note, Murikabushi glanced to Liánlí. “You’re still a Squire, right?”

………Well.

Muri did like hitting someone with an unexpected question sometimes, didn’t he.

Liánlí swallowed thickly. “Do I wanna know why you’re asking that?”

“The Earth Knight and Cybele Squire behind this kidnapped one of Faustite’s Boys,” Murikabushi explained, speaking quickly because they did need to get the lead out but doing his best to keep his tone patient. Liánlí didn’t really know Faustite as a person. Any knowledge he did have was secondhand, from an admittedly biased source. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know these things. “I don’t know for sure that he will show up now? But in case he does, I don’t want him to expect an Eternal aura and a Squire aura, only for you to actually be a full-fledged Knight now. It’s gonna look like I lied to him and that’s a bad way to open things, right?”

“Ohhh.…… Yeah, that makes sense, I guess? If someone in the Negaverse were snitching to Huan-ge that somebody had me, and he expected an Eternal and a Captain, then showed up to an Eternal and a General.……”

Liánlí trailed off, but nodded in understanding. By way of giving Muri an actual answer, he powered up into Kaifeng. “Pretty great upgrade, yeah,” he said with a bright grin (lit up by Kaifeng’s desperation for something about this situation to please, please, please be significantly less terrible), shifting his staff to show it off a little. “So, uh. You should tell him there’s a Knight with you.”

Muri didn’t answer with words, but with a silent nod and his pen moving across the page. “Knight” written down instead of “Squire.” Maybe not the most important difference in the universe, but……in case Faustite did show up right now? Better that he knew exactly what to expect. Even by an accidental poor choice of words, Murikabushi didn’t want to lie to Faustite if he could help it, especially when something as serious as Heliodor’s safety was at stake.

With the rest of the message finished, Murikabushi added two quick notes to the back. First, he scribbled the address of the building where Aelius was being held hostage. Second, brief notes on where to find Murikabushi and Kaifeng, if Faustite came now. If he didn’t, it wasn’t necessary. But in case he did, he’d know where to find them.

Handing the message over to Kaifeng, Muri told him gently, “I really do appreciate you coming out here to help me with this. Whatever you need me to help with, you know you can call me for it, right?”

Kaifeng hesitated a moment, torn between the impulse to tell Muri not to worry about it and the knowledge that……it was fair to expect a return favor. Sending word to a General-Sovereign that technically betrayed the implicit trust of other Knights and Order senshi wasn’t exactly on the same level as providing backup against a nasty youma. Part of Kaifeng didn’t want to make a whole Thing out of this, or ask for anything from Murikabushi, but……on the other hand, he thought of Huan-ge.

In the next few months, Huan-ge was probably going to have enough Liánlí-related stress to deal with. Getting back in touch with Xiuying meant that Qiang-er would probably reach out eventually. From what da-jie had said, Liánlí had missed their grandfather’s death and something or other about inheritances had gotten hung up because nobody had known where to find him but nobody had wanted to have Huang Zhìháo legally declared dead. That reluctance had worked out in Liánlí’s favor, since his parents probably would’ve found out about the name change and shortly thereafter found him. But that would all change soon, and the Family could get all over everything…… Huan-ge didn’t need any more stress in his life, coming from worrying that his zhiyin wasn’t properly caring for himself or allowing himself the kindnesses that he deserved.

“There’s some stuff I’ve been investigating up at my Wonder, actually,” Kaifeng said as he used his pink glitter gel pen to write out the addressee’s name. “Helene and I have been looking into it together. Selenga of Ida—my cousin’s husband—has been helping, too. But I could absolutely use another set of eyes and another keen analytical mind. And if what we find ends up being some kind of messy, which I feel like it will? Somebody who can handle himself in a scrap would definitely be welcome.”

Murikabushi listened attentively, and as Kaifeng stamped his signet ring on the note, he nodded. While the message disappeared, making its way to Faustite, he said, “I’m in. Let me know when you want me to come up and take a look.”

As far as return favors went, helping Kaifeng with something at his Wonder felt like getting off easy. Compared to what Muri had asked for help with, Kaifeng really could have asked him for more than that. Still, the fact that Kaifeng wasn’t just blowing him off about it felt encouraging. For now, though, Muri could only hope that, however messy things went as soon as Faustite knew what was happening, Aelius got back to his own people safe and whole.

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Quote:
Faustite,

Order shits snatched Aelius. An Earth Knight & a Cybele Squire pulled off the kidnapping. Bitches KNEW who he was, even through glamour.

They've had him two days & nights. I found him tonight, because they've got a bunch of friends who came out. All debating what to do with him. Haven't fed him much or given him water. They must have his henshin pen. Address where they're holding him on back of page. If you come now, I am NOT alone, but I promise Kaifeng is safe. He's a Knight, he doesn't agree with the others either. We just want to get Heliodor back to you & the team safely.

Always, Muri.


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