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 Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2025 11:50 am
Quote: Winter Star Poinsettias: (6) : Poinsettias are common during the winter seasons, so it isn't unusual to see them decorating windowsills and local establishments. What is unusual are the unique Winter Star Poinsettias that seem to have accidentally mixed into the bunch. They look like ordinary Poinsettias reflecting a bit of glow from nearby lights--only, the leaves themselves are emitting a soft, silvery glow. They look like they are covered with a fine morning dew, only with fine silver glitter peppered in to give it a unique sparkle. They seem to have gone unnoticed by most of Destiny City and the landscapers, and it's not clear how these plants were selected, but anyone with a keen eye might recognize them as the catastrophe of Destiny City Botanical Garden's 2016 Winter Extravaganza. Thankfully, these variants are far less dangerous than their counterparts, however, these plants have a strange pollen that acts like an allergen and can cause agitation, oversensitivity, and sneezing to anything with much of a strong smell. Anyone who comes into contact with these plants may also find themselves suffering from flu-like symptoms such as fever, coughing, fatigue, and nausea and no medicine will relieve it, but the symptoms gradually fade. The leaves of the poinsettia are sharp and can sting like a papercut, so be careful! ...If you're worried about an all-out attack again, it might be a good idea to destroy these poinsettias--if you can manage to do so without getting caught.
And thus it was that she found herself walking along the streets of the city center, in the middle of the night, unable to get to sleep, admiring the decorations that were still out.
The city's landscapers had really outdone themselves, lights and greenery and poinsettia abounded. But, mixed in among the rest of the poinsettia were a varietal she'd never seen before, the leaves emitting a soft, silvery glow, and the whole plant seeming to be covered with a silvery, sparkling, glittery dew. Those ones were truly beautiful, and she longed to know where the city had found them, and if there was any way of getting some herself next year.
As Fontainebleau approached the glitzy poinsettia, she sneezed, and sneezed again. Rubbing her nose, the page noticed a post nasal drip that hadn't been there when she'd set out, but the weather had been cold lately, and she had gone from a warm apartment to a freezing cold outdoors, so maybe that was doing it.
Unconcerned with the odd implications, she leaned down to admire them...only to notice there were a few patches in the display where poinsettia had been removed. And she could hear a sound like the sound of pruning shears.
Was someone removing the poinsettia? In the middle of the night? Why? And why only some of them? Was someone stealing the sparkly ones? Fontainebleau could understand if someone just wanted some of their own for decoration, but there had to be better ways to go about it.
Stepping toward the clipper, she was startled to see a girl not much younger than herself, dressed in medieval clothes, shades of green accented with shades of gold, bearing motifs of holly leaves and a four-spoked wheel, industriously removing poinsettia and shoving them into a burlap sack. The girl had on goggles, gardening gloves, and a facial mask, which seemed a bit extreme for someone expressing discontent with the display, which seemed to be exactly what was going on.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" she called, crossing her arms, ready to defend the honor of the poor, defenseless flowers.Green Chapel had been through the city center a few times this Christmas, mostly traveling with family members to events and concerts at the theaters, and she had done so often enough to notice the bizarre impacts of hanging around a strange, glittery poinsettia the city had intermixed in with the regular poinsettia this year. It seemed to cause temporary flu-like symptoms that wore off after a few hours, and seemed to completely ignore any medications anyone might take.
Worse, she thought she remembered hearing something about some similar happening almost ten years ago, that had involved the Botanical Garden, back in 2016. If these poinsettia had anything to do with what had happened at the Botanical Garden...well...these poinsettia needed to go.
And there was no good time or manner to remove them. The page's best bet was the dead of night, ideally after Christmas, so people would be paying less attention, and to treat the poinsettia as if they were allergenic. According to her mother, the pollen from some plants could be rather hazardous, so she'd gotten some gardening gloves at a hardware store that she absolutely planned on depositing in the dumpster later, a bandana and goggles she could wash thoroughly, and went out in her knightly garb, since it could probably clean itself between usages a lot better than she could.
Thus it was that she, armed with old pruning shears her mother didn't use anymore, and a burlap sack that had been sitting ignored in the garage, had gone to do battle with some dangerous poinsettia.
What she didn't anticipate was company, as she industriously removed some from the display around one of the big sculptures that dotted the city center.
Whirling around, she was startled to see...another knight? Dressed mostly in shades of orange and yellow, with splashes of red and the faintest pink, looking like nothing so much as a French musketeer in the wrong color scheme, carrying an unstrung shortbow over one shoulder. Her hat was decorated in masses of fluffy feathers, and her pearl-and-gold jewelry bore the Circle and Cross of Venus. A Venusian knight? Green Chapel hadn't seen one of them before. The Venusian knight wasn't wearing a signet ring, so...did she not have hers yet? Was the other girl a page, too?
Standing up and dusting herself off, she said, quite honestly, "Removing a hazardous plant from a public display so it can't hurt ordinary people anymore."
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Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2025 11:59 am
Fontainebleau stared at the other girl. "Well, you don't wanna go around eating poinsettia, but they're not dangerous plants!" she almost shouted, before remembering that the two of them were standing outside in the middle of the night, having an argument about defacing public property. Insofar as defacing public decorations counted as defacing public property. Which it probably did.
If you squinted.
She sneezed again, and shivered. Had the temperature just dropped again?
"Anyway, you need to stop. What you're doing is wrong, and probably illegal."
Green Chapel eyed the other page. "Yeah, it's probably illegal, but, sometimes, doing the illegal thing is the only way to keep people safe. And I'm pretty sure these poinsettia," she said, indicating the sparkly ones, "are hyperallergenic, or something. People keep on coming down with flu-like symptoms that are unresponsive to medicine whenever they hang around these poinsettia for prolonged periods of time, and normal poinsettia doesn't do that. Ergo, the sparkly poinsettia is to blame, ergo, it is a public health hazard, ergo, it has to go."
Shaking her head and taking a deep breath, the page said, "I think we got off on the wrong foot. Hi, I'm Green Chapel, Page of Earth. I'd offer to shake hands, but these gardening gloves are coated in glittery pollen, and I think you're already on the wrong side of these poinsettia," she added, as the Venusian knight sneezed again.
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Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2025 12:16 pm
Fontainebleau sniffled, and then retorted, "Like I said, poinsettia are not--"
She was interrupted by another sneeze, bigger than before, and a sniffle. Poinsettia didn't set her off. It never had. It had always been part of her Christmas. But, she noted as a strong shiver passed up and down her spine, none of the other plants were allergenic for her, and this felt a bit like a bad case of hay fever mixed with the flu. Which suggested that pollen was, in fact, to blame for this.
"Okay! Fine! That makes sense. A lot, really." And that was the thing that rankled. It did make a lot of sense. The other girl--Green Chapel--had spotted a public health hazard, recognized complaints would do far less than action, even if it was illegal, would, and established that the best way to fix this problem would be to do it like a thief or vandal would. It wasn't okay...but it was the right thing to do.
Clicking her heels together, she swept a flamboyant bow. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Green Chapel of Earth. My name is Fontainebleau, Page of Venus." She didn't know how she knew, but she did know, with absolute certainty, that her rank was also page--wait. Green Chapel was also a knight. Could she...?
"I'm...kinda new to all of this...so, if I help you deface the public displays like this, and help you remove the evil poinsettia...could you explain the whole knighthood thing? Because life in Destiny City seems really weird to me."
Green Chapel nodded. "It's nice to meet you, too, Fontainebleau of Venus." She had been right, the girl was a Venusian knight, and a very new page, at that.
"You don't have any protective gear right now, so I'm going to ask you to hold the bag and try to avoid touching the poinsettia. I think the leaves have a sharp enough edge to give you a paper cut, and I don't think either of us wants to deal with a paper cut infected with glitter and unknown magical pollen," she added, handing Fontainebleau the burlap sack and resuming to carefully remove the offending poinsettia from the display. There fortunately wasn't much more around this sculpture, and some displays didn't have any, but there was still only so much they'd be able to remove from the city center tonight. Hopefully, other people would have identified this poinsettia as trouble, and were doing similar elsewhere in Destiny City.
"I've only been a knight for a few months, so there's a lot I'm still learning, as well, but here goes. There's a really big cosmic war that's been going on for approximately forever, fought between Chaos on one side, and Order on the other. About a thousand years ago, Chaos started succeeding in killing off or corrupting the forces of Order, and people living on countless planets in this Solar System and untold numbers of other star systems in outer space all died. Only a few planets survived, and we've had extremely limited contact, so it's mostly Earth fighting on its own. With me so far?" she asked, aware that she was kinda dumping information on the poor Venusian page's head.
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Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2025 1:01 pm
Fontainebleau nodded, gingerly taking the burlap sack and listening intently to what the other page had to say.
And the implications were frankly horrifying. Chaos sounded like they were the baddies, and they clearly didn't give a damn about collateral damage, or civilian casualties. Not if they let billions die needlessly, just so they could defeat enemy combatants. It was aggressively Not Okay. And the page knew immediately that she had no intention of letting others suffer in the present as countless so clearly had in the past.
"I'm with you so far," she said, still considering the ramifications, and getting angry about the state of affairs.
Green Chapel nodded, stealing a glance at the other page. "From what I understand, though, not every bad thing is Chaos' fault, just a lot of it is. Order is served by knights, senshi--magical warriors, kinda like magical girls--and Mauvians--aliens in the shape of cats who serve alongside the senshi. Chaos is served by senshi who have gone rogue, knights who've gone rogue--really, anybody in a magical uniform calling themselves by the name of a mineral is probably highly suspect--and monsters called youma. You may have met one of them when you Powered up for the first time."
The page got to her feet and brushed off her knees. "Done with this patch. Let's find the next sculpture."
As they continued on toward another sculpture decked in dangerous flora, Green Chapel kept talking.
"Not all worlds had knights, but those that did have knights had multiple. Knights like us serve something called the Code, which protects special places on a planet called Wonders. Those Wonders are the source of our powers, as a senshi's source of power will be their entire planet, or asteroid, or comet, or other heavenly body. We have weapons that will be magical at some point, I think, among other stuff, like signet rings, which allow us to communicate instantaneously with other people. Have you been to your Wonder yet?" she asked. "If not, you should really check it out. It's probably not much to look at yet, but, with love and dedication, you can restore it to its former glory."
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Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2025 1:40 pm
"So watch out for anybody with a title matching a gemstone, defeat youma at any opportunity, got it," she said with a bit of a grin. That...sounded rather do-able. It couldn't all be, if it turned out the universe was like a magical girl anime, or some kind of super sentai show, then she'd have to grow, which meant not all threats stayed something that could be beaten to dust with a chancla. But, in the meantime, with her bow in the state it was, the chancla was still a viable alternative.
"I haven't been to my Wonder yet. I didn't know about it. How do you get a signet ring? It didn't show up for me when I transformed the first time," she said, wondering what kind of Wonder was hers. She was dressed like one of the Three Musketeers, so maybe 17th or early 18th century palace of some kind? She couldn't imagine a planet called Venus being anything other than obscenely pretty and picturesque, though maybe her Wonder was more outdoorsy than most? After all, she had a bow, and her clothing looked like it was meant for riding or going on an adventure. Sure, it was lacy and brocaded, with pearls and fluffy feathers, but that didn't mean that the Wonder of Fontainebleau wasn't an outdoorsy kind of place. Maybe it was outdoorsy, but in an incredibly fancy and floofy kind of way.
"So, how do some people get to be knights, some to be senshi?" she asked curiously. Sure, she could kick butt and take names as a knight, but how did the universe choose who got to be what kind of magical warrior, or even who got to be magical at all? She wasn't disappointed at being a knight over a senshi, the page just wanted to understand what was going on.
"I think the signet ring's supposed to be somewhere on your Wonder. Mine was removed by some of my ancestors to keep it safe, and then passed down the family tree to my grandfather. I got it from my grandmother as a memento of my grandfather. Nobody knew why it was special, just that it was very important and very old. I don't think you'll be able to even recognize your signet ring unless you're Powered up, and you definitely won't be able to use it. Oh, and it'll have a bit of magic on it, other than sending messages. I don't know what kind of Aspect Venus has, but if you touch your ring and focus on the call of your Planetary Allegiance--to Venus, in your case--you should be able to activate it."
Reaching the next sculpture, she got down on her knees, and resumed clipping away the offending poinsettia from the unoffending poinsettia.
"Senshi are always reincarnated--once a senshi, always a senshi, as far as I know. As for knights, I think most knights these days are reincarnations of old knights, but some knights are like me--we're descendants of the last knight to hold the post. A thousand years ago, knights trained at the Knight Academy on Earth. Today, we're kinda going on intuition, past life memories for the reincarnated knights, ghosts of the last knight to hold the role for descended knights--descended knights probably aren't reincarnations of old knights, because our old knights had unfinished business, so didn't move on after they died--and whatever people who've been doing this for longer than we have can tell us about how everything works. I think sometimes the senshi have it worse--they have no ghosts to help them, and they have to restore whole planets, instead of just one Wonder. Plus, they don't have a weapon to fall back on. On the other hand, they don't have a ghost there that they may find to be an unpleasant person," she added, thinking of how Sylvain had proven to be potentially racist during their first meeting. And hostile, because he'd assumed the Chapel was being invaded by a thief. Yeeeaaahhh, not dealing with a ghost who'd been dead a thousand years was sometimes a major plus, in her opinion. Even if they could--and would--happily demystify the whole knighthood experience. Joyeuse Garde seemed to get along with hers--would Green Chapel continue to get along better with hers?
This sculpture had fewer poinsettia, so it didn't take long to get rid of the offending flora.
"I'm guessing you don't know which you are yet--oh, wait. I forgot. I think I remember hearing there are one or two worlds that didn't have knights in the past. So not all knights are reincarnated or descended from the last generation, so those knights are flying by the seat of their pants, unless they know someone else," she added, thinking of Edam, one of the newly minted pages of Cybele, a thing Sylvain confirmed had not been a thing in his day (he had also indicated the Moon had had no knights, so if she discovered that the Moon now had knights, that would be a new development), and Edam's twin, Blarney, a Squire of Earth, with the history and experience to guide Edam's beginning as a knight.
Fontainebleau, as a Venusian Wonder, would have the history to ensure some kind of chain of knowledge to support a Venusian knight, but what shape that knowledge would take, she couldn't say. "Any other questions I can answer as we go along?" she asked, reaching into subspace and pulling out a blanket she managed to not get coated in dewy glitter, or glittery pollen, and tossing it to the other page.
Fontainebleau gratefully accepted the blanket, shrugging it on, and considering the wealth of information she was being presented with. Clearly, next time she wasn't busy, she'd have to follow up on this lead, and go to her Wonder on Venus, see if she could find her signet ring, find out what kind of a knight she was, but, in the meantime....
"Let's start by you explaining what Mary Poppins pocket dimension the blanket came out of, and go from there, I think?" she asked as the two pages continued to clear the rest of the sculptures in the downtown area of the dangerous poinsettia, finding an incinerator to drop the now-bulging burlap sack and thoroughly glitter-bombed gardening gloves into before heading home.
The Venusian page had a lot to think about, including taking a nice, long, hot shower, returning the blanket to the very nice Earth page, and sorting out her next steps as a page.
Green Chapel, for her part, smiled warmly, and launched into an explanation of subspace, among other things, happy to help a fellow page find their sea legs as they made even this small part of the world a better place.
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