1218/Glorious Misunderstandings

Glorious Misunderstandings
Date of Scene:	01 March 2024
Location:	Downtown Tokyo
Synopsis:	After seeing a flash of elemental light magic in the sky Lacuna arrives to interrogate Glorious Beacon, fresh from defeating a Vilekin, thinking she's a newly minted Lux Tenebrus. The two speak past each other long enough to infuriate Lacuna enough to use force, at which point Stellar arrives and things start to go downhill even faster.
Cast of Characters:	Sachiko Yamashiro, Fuyuko Yuuhi, Kyouka Inai
Tinyplot:	The Game

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Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    Galactic Guardians is an obscure trading card game from the mid 90s that despite only ever having been a minor cult classic has remained in limited production, getting new booster pack sets every four to five years. Despite having been almost forgotten by the youth in the 2000s and 2010s, the latest release had been surprisingly popular with the current youth and it was experiencing a resurgence, with several local tournaments being held with plans for larger, more organized play currently in the works.

    As with all hobbies some people became very passionate and invested in them, tying their self worth into this latest fad. Unfortunately for one such individual a particularly bad thrashing when playing with friends had her considering whether she should even bother playing. Whether she could even bother doing anything at all when she was so bad at something she cared so much about.

    Things were going to get even worse for her, though, as these negative thoughts and emotions were noticed at just the wrong time. A surge of black magics later, and rather than a self doubting teenage girl there was a hulking monster howling in rage! A few empty cars got stomped, numerous civilians screamed and ran in terror as it pointed at them screaming. "Galactic Guardians! Galactic Guardians! I'll crush you all at Galactic Guardians! Play me now and choose your doom, on or off the card table!"

    Some distance away Sachiko Yamashiro was walking down the street, hand to her mouth and stifling a yawn, the sun having recently set. Suddenly a small, flaming humanoid figure appeared hovering over her shoulder, "Sachiko Yamashiro! A new Vilekin has appeared, shouting about 'Galactic Guardians' and challenging people to card games. As our Champion, this is your time to shine." By now the Flamen had realized suggesting fighting was a chance to show off was a better motivator than reminding the youth of her duties and obligations.

    "Galactic Guardian's, huh? I've heard of that. Don't worry, Buster, I've got this one on lock!" Rather than producing her Spark and transforming she pulled out a brilliant Diamond Credit Card and dashed off towards an exclusive game shop she knew about.

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
=============================== TWO HOURS LATER ===============================

    High up on the flat roof of a skyscraper the beautiful and amazing Glorious Beacon stood across a table from purple-black monstrocity twice as tall as she was. She stood with legs apart in a power posture, looking confident despite the state of the playing board. A great fist smashed down with enough force that any normal table would have shattered, and the Card Game Vilekin bellowed laughter that echoed into the sky, "Bwahahahaha! With this your fate is sealed! I play Terra, Heart of the Solar Empire, sealing my control over the Orion Arm. What a fool you are to attempt to play a Stellar Deck against my Civilization Deck. The stars were meant to be populated and conquered! In two turns the Galaxy will cede to my by default, but I won't need more than one more turn to wipe your puny remaining stars from the board!"

    Indeed the board state looked grim for the determined 'hero' and Buster silent while looking through the Byzantine rule book. Glorious Beacon, however, looked undisturbed and in control despite being clearly right on the edge of losing, something that would massively empower the Vilekin and make it incredibly difficult to defeat alone, which she currently was.

    "You're right," she noted, "you'll win for sure on your next turn." A small smirking smile played at the corner of her mouth, "That's why I'm not going to let you have another turn."

    "Bluster and lies! There's nothing you can do with a single, pitiful star."

    Glorious Beacon looked at her cards, each shimmering slightly with a translucent hardlight sleeve to protect them, something that had proven quite necessary when the Vilekin forcibly swept her cards from the table after defeating them. "Not with a single star, no. That's why I'm playing Stellar Cartography, allowing me to place two White Dwarf stars directly from my deck from my deck." She looks through through her now very thin deck, revealing and playing two cards before shuffling the deck afterwards and setting it down.

    "Three White Dwarves are no better than one, Beacon," the Vilekin retorts smugly, reaching up as if to push glasses up it's nose, only to realize it doesn't have any in this form and running a hand through it's long hair instead.

    "Nope! But I can sacrifice all three of them to play this! The most powerful Star in my deck: A Blue Supergiant!" She pulls the card from her hand and slaps it down on the table, swiping the three White Dwarves and setting them in her discard pile.

    The Vilekin laughs, slowly at first but then uproariously, "Blue... Supergiant? That might have won you the game five turns ago, but even a supergiant is nothing against my amassed fleets and armies. Terra alone will destroy your pathetic Supergiant. This game is mine! Bow before my--"

    "Not so fast! I haven't passed my turn yet, Vilekin. I still have one card to play in my hand." She waggles the card, rolling it between her fingers before turning it face up and slapping it down on the table. With a burst of magic the card glows and shimmers, casting rays of light that extend up into the sky. "I play Gamma Ray Burst! Imploding my Blue Supergiant into a Black Hole and annihilating your most populous planet and every unit assigned to that! But, ohhh, you just played Terra last turn, didn't you? I guess that means all your units are attached to it. Which means you have no units left on the board, and I win!" She spins around, giving the Vilekin her sauciest wink and a V for Victory sign.

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    "WHAT!?" The monster cries in absolute outrage. "That's completely unfair! Nobody plays Gamma Ray Burst, it completely invalidates Civilization cards! You cheated!"

    "Ahh, but we agreed to tournament rules, didn't we? This isn't some chill game between friends, we're playing for keeps."

    "There's no way! It's a fake! You cheated! There were only ten Gamma Ray Burst ever printed. They're worth 100,000 yen!"

    Glorious Beacon holds a hand to her mouth and giggles into her golden glove, "It's a trading card game, Vilekin. Having enough money to afford all the best cards is a valid part of this Skill!"

    "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" The beast finally accepts it's fate, dropping to it's knees and crying out into the sky, clawing at it's face and tearing out tufts of it's monsterous, unkempt hair. It screams and screams in a single, impossibly long syllable, the skyscraper shaking as the table and it's own cards crumble to dust.

    Glorious Beacon scoops her own cards up and slips them into a pocket, these being very real and very expensive. She then flips backwards once, landing on her feet, flips again with a graceful handstand before leaping into the air, twisting around exactly three times with her arms tucked in, eyes closed as her golden hair floats about her head, naturally tidy for all the movements.

    Her arms wave about herself as white light suddenly surges up around her and she winks towards the Vilekin, again making a peace sign next to her closed eye. Impossibly bright golden white light winks into existence around her hand, swirling about it and up her arm, "Brilliant......!" Her hand sweeps around again in another flourish as she spins, the skirts of her dress lifting and twirling, swishing about her legs as she comes to a stop the motes of light trailing up her arm and leaving copies of themselves over her body, "Sparkle.....!" Her arms raise above her head and as she stops turning the sparkles of light continue to circle her, growing in size and power, flooding the entire rooftop with enough light to white it out and send deep black shadows across the skyline. "Crusher!" she finishes, extending her arms out towards the Vilekin almost as if she was going to give it a hug. The sparkles all rush forward, spinning and swirling and dancing around it. The cry of rage and infuriating becomes one of terrible pain as the light becomes intense enough to scour and scourge the dark energy infused monster, the corruption already starting to burn away. Then the sparkles make contact, surrounding the creature and compacting it inward, the touch alone enough to cause parts of the monster to break off and fizz away into vapor and dust. The sparkles then suddenly triple in size, physically crushing the creature while bathing it in searing, purifying light.

    Up in the sky the undersides of the few clouds are lit up as if producing continual lightning strikes, even the reflected light almost bright to the unaided eye.

    When the lightshow finally starts to fade Glorious Beacon twirls a lock of her hair around a finger, "It sure is nice being immune to my own magic."

    Buster, despite being a creature of living flame, had turned his back to the magical onslaught. "Yes. It must be," he replies drily.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
It's been a perfectly reasonable winter day, and now it is a perfectly reasonable winter night, and after a shining period of peace and quiet, with no greater annoyances than were typical when working for a large conglomerate, Fuyuko Yuuhi has finally, almost returned to the status once described in passing by one Kyouka Inai 'as normal as she ever gets, I guess'. She's walking down the street, intending to hit a conbini for dinner (what, even the well-paid can lack the drive, energy, or desire to cook their own meals), sit on her couch, and contemplate the fact that really, Corona was too small to make for much of a fur-skinned rug anyway.

It's all smooth sailing. She's debating the cost benefit analysis of hot dinner vs cold dinner. She's considering putting a movie on to ignore while she catches up on a little more paperwork. She is, vaguely, thinking that it's been a while since she heard from Sunbreaker, and that she'd have expected to be seeing a lot more gloating over the current success of her first Eclipse Zone.

And then the sky lights up over a single skyscraper, as if lightning has struck a dozen times in rapid succession, the dark clouds nearly taking on the silver radiance of bright day.

Fuyuko has seen the signs of many mahou battles. She keeps an eye out, always, old habit and professional responsibility joining hands.

These are new and unfamiliar.

That is light, bright and powerful enough to shine like a new day in the dark of night.

That ragged creature is going to be a new rug after all.

In an instant, Fuyuko Yuuhi becomes Lacuna, and then she is gone.

In the next instant, she is on that light-bathed skyscraper, pools of liquid-esque darkness swirling around her hands, sharp eyes scanning the rooftop.

Lacuna is no taller than Fuyuko - though at 5'6, Fuyuko isn't short - but she feels taller, feels like a woman cloaked in all the power of darkness and the night, particularly with the roiling pools of darkness swirling around her clenched fists, glittering faintly with swallowed light. The black of her dress blends well with the darkness of night, the only color visible the white earrings in her ears and the purple and white striped leggings just barely visible under the skirt of that black dress.

Her sharp face is cold and hard. Her dark eyes are searching.

Her lips twist when she doesn't see what she's looking for, and in an instant she is in front of the golden-clothed magical girl, having teleported to her.

"Where's your partner?"

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    It would be wrong to say the Vilekin had completely disappeared, because it hadn't. Completely destroyed, surely, but with the purifying nature of Glorious Beacon's magic there remained on the roof a nerdy teenaged girl, currently out cold and mildly smoking from the remnants of the powerful attack. A monster defeated, and a human saved! All in a night's work for the Champion of the Flamen.

    "I'm just the best, aren't I?" the golden haired magical girl praises herself, while submitting an actual question.

    "Your skills and talents are indeed very mighty, Glorious Beacon," comes the reply from Buster.

    "Great! I beat this one without a scratch, and all it took was some pocket change. It was a stunning victory! So stunning that the rest of the Flamen should definitely know right away how amazing I was. Don't you think, Buster?"

    The white eyes set within the flicking flame head narrow slightly as if with suddenly drooping eyelids. "Yes, I suppose that is so. I will inform my kin of this... glorious victory." With that there's a burst of strange, otherworldly magic that envelops the hand sized Flamen, which slowly shrinks away to nothing

    "Woohoo! Oh, don't forget to bring me back their praise..!" Glorious Beacon manages to call before the dimensional magic is fully faded.

    Not a moment later there's another teleport and Glorious Beacon, still standing on the raised edge of the rooftop, has to blink in surprise, and then tilt her head. "My partner? Oh! You must mean Buster. Yeah, he just left. He'll probably be back to sing my praises in a few hours." A short pause, "Well... I was ~extra~ awesome today so it might take him longer than usual to collect them all!"

    Lacuna might get an idea of how the golden magical girl's mind works as it's only now after she's replied that she actually bothers to take the time to look the taller woman over, Beacon herself only being 5'1". Her head tilts to the side, lovely golden waves flowing forward over her shoulder, "Say! You wouldn't happen to be one of those 'Dark Magical Girls' I've heard about, would you?" Then she blinks, look at Lacuna's face a little closer, and laughs.

    "Sorry, sorry! You definitely couldn't be, no one would mistake you for a girl. My mistake! Dark Magical Auntie is more like it." She waves her hand in a semi apologetic, mostly dismissive gesture, "So, Auntie! Is that evil black magic you're using there? It doesn't... quite feel the same as Vilekin. Though you're obviously not a Vilekin since you actually have some sense of style, even if you fit the color scheme, so maybe it doesn't need to. Hmm!"

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
Buster.

Stupid name for a mahou, but she'd heard stupider. It wasn't unthinkable that a pair would split off with the enemy defeated (as the faintly smokin girl lying unconscious on the roof attested), but it was - slightly unusual.

Or maybe Fuyuko and Kyouka had been weird.

Then Glorious Beacon continues speaking, and Lacuna's eye twitches. Insufferable, arrogant little brat, utterly full of herself, high on her own smoke and power, disrespectful to a fault -

She was the perfect candidate for the Light side of Lux Tenebrous. The literal bitch of a mascot creature had actually gone through with it. She'd actually ressurected their long dead origin, she'd actually -

AUNTIE?

It was wrong to strike children, she'd read that once. And the girl, unlike Lacuna, had full access to her offensive power. Lacuna would have to play this casually.

"Your partner should have told you all about the magic he has, but then again, you're such an arrogant little shit you probably didn't listen to a word he said," she closes the space between them, leaves mere inches. She raises a hand dark with the void, and as she clenches her fists the faint lights within wink out. "If you'd listened, you might have even heard about me."

There's the urge for violence, the old blood lust, the old hatred and rage that had roiled through her for years, and looking at this arrogant little snot of a girl -

It's too much like looking in a funhouse mirror. The urge to take her gem and crush it between her hands is so strong. Leave her powerless. Leave her -

Helpless? After her eyes are already open?

Damn, damn, damn, she'd thought she would have more time!

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    It's not that Glorious Beacon doesn't recognize that she's angering the magically empowered woman in front of her. She totally does! The issue is that she's supremely confident, fresh off absolutely dominating a foe who never saw it coming, and literally can not imagine herself being in any actual danger.

    There's also the fact that there's a disconnect between what the two thinks is happening and what actually is. Lacuna is making assumptions, and Glorious Beacon is likewise making her own.

    So when Lacuna uses foul language and notes that she should have listened to Buster's description of his powers she actually snorts in surprise before laughing again. "What? Buster? Listen, Auntie, Buster definitely has some cool powers but I'm the main attraction here." With her left hand on her hip she raises her right arm and flicks her wrist, a transparent bubble of light flows up before morphing into a brilliant white butterfly of purifying light magic that flaps off slowly into the sky.

    "I won't knock the guy, he's a great partner. But let's be honest; he doesn't even play second fiddle to me. He's not even in the orchestra." She closes her eyes, looking off to the side, smiling as if a ray of sunshine is casting warmly down upon her face from the sky-- no, check that. She wields light magic so there 'literally is' a ray of golden light casting down upon her face from the sky. "I love working with Buster, I couldn't become what I am without him, but he mostly shows me where to go and ~I~," she raises her hands in the air, briefly posing as if a ballerina, prima no doubt, "do all the real work."

    She opens one eye, peeking down towards Lacuna, because she is standing on a slight ledge. She doesn't speak but there's a mixed question and accusation on that cheeky glance.

    If Lacuna's powers are similar to Buster's, surely she also has a far superior 'partner' to support.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
Misunderstandings are such fun things.

Glorious Beacon thinks that she's talking down to the least cute mascot any mahou ever had, and as such is even more exceptionally confident in her power than usual.

Lacuna thinks Glorious Beacon has just admitted that she finds her partner - her other half, the darkness to her light, the shadow to her shine - to be barely anything more than useless. Not even worth second fiddle.

Lacuna wouldn't admit it on pain of death, but Kyouka is the most person she has in her life. Her parents have been cut off since Kaito's death, since she walked out of that house with inheritance - taken forcefully from a couple who had stared at her, realizing the lamb they had tried to drown was a viper ready to strike. Chiharu, with her plants and her garden, her uncomplicated smiles, her prattle about the games they used to play, might as well have been dead.

There was only Kyouka left. There was only Kyouka and there was only Fuyuko, to remember any of it. The weight of the world on their shoulders, every enemy, every ally, every win and loss -

Partners.

And this ignorant little brat -

Later, Lacuno won't really remember moving. She'll remember what she did, of course. She'll remember what she said.

But the decision to move? It's hardly even a decision.

It starts with a single inhale, the emotion leeching from her face, leaving her blank and cold, the emptiness of the void, of the space between stars, the chill of the end.

Then she actually moves, a single uncomplicated motion, swift and decisive, stepping up onto the ledge, crowding Glorious Beacon to the very edge, even as one hand sweeps forward to grasp the front of her dress and the other flattens against her chest.

A shove with barely any effort, and Lacuna stands tall on the ledge, the muscles of her arm taut and clenched as she holds all of Glorious Beacon's weight with a single arm, leaving her dangling over the edge of a skyscraper.

Lacuna's hair blows in the wind, swept back. Her eyes are hard. The darkness flowing about her clenched fist eats away at the fabric bunched there.

Slowly. Thread by thread.

Eating through the only thing keeping Glorious Beacon still instead of in freefall.

"And she thought I was a disgrace."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Across town, Kyouka Inai is having a reasonably quiet evening. Work is over for the day, she has her own pre-packaged conbini dinner (this isn't even her being particularly lazy. It's the normal amount of lazy), she has a 6-pack of beer to get her through the weekend in her mini-fridge. Yes, things are looking up for Kyouka. The next day and a half of time off is going to hopefully be full of slacking and relaxing, with absolutely no major crises brewing that she is aware of.

    All that comes crashing down in an instant when a newly-familiar but definitely unwelcome voice cuts into her manufactured peace. "There's something you should know." It comes from the window, which is closed of course because it's winter and it's cold out. But behind the glass, the vague, dark shape of a lupine figure can be made out sitting atop the railing there. Somehow, it's voice can be heard through the window without any apparent trouble.

    Kyouka tenses, freezing in mid-movement to sit down at her kotatsu. Grey eyes narrow, though she heaves a long-suffering sigh and says flippantly, "I'm not really sure that I want to know anything you have to tell me, Corona. I'm tired of hearing about what a mistake we were."

    "Oh, it's not thaaaat." The voice says, with an almost-amused sounding vocal fry drawing out the last word. "Although I suppose it is related. Honestly, I don't know what I expect you to do anyway, but I thought given the opportunity maybe I could help save a girl's life tonight.. you know, like heroes are supposed to do?"

    Kyouka had finished sitting down, and was setting out her food, but when Corona mentions saving a girl's life, she looks up again sharply. "What are you talking about? Who needs saving?"

    "Well, the thing is," Corona is still just a dark silhouette on the other side of the window pane, all details obscured by the night and the poor-quality glass. "Your old partner has cornered some new girl downtown and is going crazy on her. This girl has light-based powers, or so it seems, and I'm afraid dear Lacuna is jumping to conclusions." There' a long, drawn out sigh of disappointment before the creature continues, "I really think she might kill her."

    At first, Kyouka had been listening with attentive suspicion. By the time Corona had finished speaking, her expression was one of hard, sharp anger. "Where is she? Can you show me?" She asks quietly.

------------------------------------------------------

    She arrives like a thunderbolt. Teleporting onto the rooftop, appearing with no warning, an ear-splitting crash of thunder tears across the sky at the moment of her entrance. Golden lightning arcs through the low clouds overhead as Stellar, already in henshin and mid-stride, walks out of the cacophonous nothing. Stalking across the rooftop towards where Lacuna confronts Glorious Beacon her grey eyes spark with gold-and-orange glimmers as she shouts, "FUYUKO!" her voice cracking like the thunder itself. "Put her down! I will not allow you to murder that child simply for the crime of making a poor choice!" She is Stellar and that is Lacuna, but when it's between them, about them, it's always just Fuyuko and Kyouka.

    Golden lightning chased with orange crackles sheathes her forearms as she paces closer, her gait unhurried but implacable. "How can you jump so easily to killing?" She sounds angry, seething. "I thought you were getting better!"

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    It happens so fast Glorious Beacon doesn't even see it coming. That's as much do to the fact that her guard was down to the point of being nonexistent as it does Lacuna's speed and action. She only just notices the sudden change over the woman's features that tells her her words bit deeper than intended, not to say they didn't intend to bite at all, and then she's dangling over the edge of a skyscraper.

    Dang it! She was going to have to talk to Buster about learning to fly sometime in the future.

    Held in such a way the only sound she can get out is a strangled, "Khhhh-!" She dangles helplessly for a good several moments, magical clothing slowly giving way. A lot of that is shock, the girl deeply surprised something like this could even happen. No, she doesn't think 'I let my guard down!', or 'I let this happen!' she thinks, 'How could this happen to me!?', because how could something bad possibly be her fault?

    Yeah. She has a lot to learn.

    After those moments of shock she reaches up and grips onto Fuyuko's forearm with both of her own hands, teeth gritted as she attempts to put her weight on them and take the strain off her dress, which consequently is mildly choking her by being gathered so tight. Does it hurt grabbing onto an arm channeling the cold, heartless power of the void? Possibly, but even if it does she isn't letting go. Sachiko Yamashiro is used to forging onward through pain, even if it's usually the kind self inflicted through strenuous physical effort.

    It also occurs to her that in this position, she is hardly without options. She could, quite easily, channel her own, highly offensively focused, magic and make Lacuna seriously regret holding onto her in such a manner. This would surely cause her to fall, quite possibly to her own death. Glorious Beacon considers this option for longer than is probably wise.

    Then things, in her mind, get worse. There's a crash of lightning and suddenly some redhead sheathed in lightning is demanding she be let down.

    Oh . Oh god. Someone is trying to save her. This is... so embarrassing.

    Doesn't that girl know that she is the one that's supposed to save others??

    Her teeth clench for another reason. Maybe another lightshow isn't such a bad idea after all...

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
That ear-splitting crack of thunder is so familiar that Lacuna smiles, her face splitting like a crack in porcelain. For a single instant her grip slackens, the swirling darkness swirling excitedly, and Glorious Beacon nearly falls to her death as bunch fabric is allowed to go slack.

Nearly.

At the last possible second, Lacuna tightens her grip and then turns on her heel, casually tossing the girl - on the solid side of the ledge, letting her tumble to the ground or catch herself as she will.

"Kyouka," she drawls, spreading her arms wide. She doesn't drop from the ledge, but instead stands there, wind blowing dark hair and dress alike, eyes glittering with darkness. Arguably, with madness as well. "Always with the assumptions."

She could defend herself. She could say she hadn't come with murder on her mind, that she only planned to break that arrogant spirit until the girl before her respected her partner, not kill her, but excuses, defenses, have never been Fuyuko's style.

She owns everything she is and everything she's done. Only the word better cracks her composure, cracked smile turning bitter and vicious.

"That sounds like a you problem."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Stellar is furious. It can be seen in her face, that snarl of uncontained anger, the steel-like hardness of her grey eyes amidst the tempest which rages in them. It's that same old self-righteous fury that Lacuna knows so well. Stellar has decided she is right, and someone else is wrong, and as is so often the case that someone else is Lacuna. And as is so often the case, once Stellar decides you are wrong, there's simply no talking to her anyway. Which might just be at least part of why Fuyuko tries to make no defense of her actions. She knows how little it would matter.

    She marches right up to where Lacuna stands on the edge of the building, sparing only a glance for Glorious Beacon tossed aside like she doesn't even matter. Stellar is here to save her, right? For all that, the glance she spares is passing in the extreme. Oh good, she's not actually dead, anyway back to what really matters here.

    "You're right." She grates, standing in front of Lacuna as she remains on the ledge. The darker girl is the taller of the two to begin with, and with the extra height from her perch she towers over Stellar, but the redhead doesn't seem to notice, her glare undiminished. "You are my problem. Since the day we fucking met, you've been my problem, and just when I think I have it maybe solved, or at least am seeing glimpses of the answer, you have to go and pull this kind of shit again!" An expansive gesture at the discarded younger girl.

    She raises a hand, golden luminescence crackling around her fingers and forearm, and jabs it at Lacuna like a threat. "I can accept you working for that misery factory. I can live with the fact that you teach kids how to be assholes for a living. I will not accept you killing someone merely for the crime of existing in a fashion you don't approve of."

    There's an ominous pressure in the air, a heaviness that speaks of the charge before a lightning strike. In those stormcloud eyes that stare up at Fuyuko, there is anger, judgement, and deep within- pleading. Don't make me do this again.

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    Well this just isn't very dignified at all, is it?

    Now that Stellar has appeared Glorious Beacon seems to be second place in Lacuna's attention. The fact that she's being dangled over the rooftop of a skyscraper somehow actually makes it grate more in her mind than if they'd merely been talking. It's almost enough to make her do something stupid to make the woman realize who she's dealing with. Almost.

    Lucky for her this seems to have been more of a threat and scare tactic than it was the wind up to a murder, even if Sachiko can't actually be certain about that fact. This brings us right to the next moment of indignity though, as she's flung away onto the rooftop, discarded.

    'How rude,' is the first thing that goes through her mind. The next is that it's actually a very different thing to control yourself purely with your own, expected, momentum than it is to reorient yourself from a complete lack of control. So the nimble, graceful, magical girl who is an elite level gymnast even without magic goes crashing and rolling along the surface of the roof, bits of dirt and grime now marring her previously pristine form as limbs flail about before she slides to an undignified stop, face down.

    She's going to have to practice her recoveries.

    It's perhaps for the first time in her life, and certainly for the first time in her magical life, that Glorious Beacon is actually glad she isn't currently the center of attention. Even crashing and burning in Gymnastics is an expected learning experience. Being tossed away like yesterday's trash, however, certainly is not.

    A moment later she gathers her arms under herself and pushes herself up, lifting her head. A brief glance is given to the other two as they antagonize each other. Whatever, let's focus on what's important here. She looks at her gloves and grimaces. A flash of light that might be mistaken as the prelude to an attack-- but no, the gloves are now clean. Which means she won't feel disgusted running her fingers through her hair and putting it back in place. There. How's that? Better, better!

    This taken care of she finishes hopping to her feet, without the extra flourishes she might have used a few minutes ago, and looks towards the edge of the roof where light and darkness stand off against each other. "I see your better half has arrived." She then looks away again, dismissively. "I'll have to remember to be nicer to Buster. He certainly doesn't need me around to act as a minder."

    In the back of her head the sense that she's forgetting something starts to tingle. Elsewhere, near the center of the roof, the poor girl that had been the Card Game Vilekin begins to stir.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"She wouldn't learn her lesson from dying," Lacuna says coldly. It's probably not the answer Kyouka is hoping for. It's certainly not a refutation.

Glorious Beacon's recovery - or lack thereof - is utterly ignored. Never mind that the girl's very existence is what drew Lacuna here, now that Kyouka is here she is as irrelevant as a single errant drop of rain.

"A self-inflicted problem, given this was a private a conversation."

Never mind that Kyouka arrived to a child being dangled over a building. Never mind the history of successful (one) murders and unsuccessful (many) attempts to the two of them have lived through. None of that matters to her, not with Stellar's fierce gaze, her self-righteous fury. She would never believe she was wrong and Lacuna feels no need to defend herself from those burning eyes.

"Corona sure knows how to pick them," she snorts, hearing Glorious Beacon's petty remarks. "She's the worst of both of us. An arrogant little shit to be sure. But even you didn't think a little lightshow made you first string."

And then she's gone, in a swell of dark tendrils that writhe from the ground to swallow her whole. In the next instant, she's at Glorious Beacon's side, looming over her, cold facade replaced by the vicious smile.

"Did I say we were done? Before we were so rudely interrupted, were talking about Buster. Where does he live?"

Blunt. Cold. A part of her still aches to crush that gem, to leave the girl - helpless? Weak? Without power? Shut up thoughts - but with her and Corona for partners, she'd be better off finding the dark side of these new Lux Tenebrae. What would she do then?

She would think about it later.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "This isn't about lessons." Stellar spits, anger causing her to vocalize thoughts she's harbored but wisely refrained from actually speaking to her erstwhile partner before now. "It's about you being unwilling to admit that the Lux Tenebrae are not yours to rule over. You don't get to decide whether the line ends with us or not- you thought you could by killing Aurora, but it turns out that was just like so much of your tantrum-throwing- pointless. So how about you back down from the attempted murder before you force me to remind you how it always goes when we get physical?"

    There were several statements there that were unfair, based on assumptions or long-held misunderstandings. Not to mention exaggerations. But that's how it always is with Kyouka. It's a good thing none of her students are here now, to witness Stellar at her worst rather than the face she projects in front of them, the experienced and well-meaning counselor. This is Stellar as Fuyuko has always known her, the vindictive, arrogant, judgmental thunderbolt, striking without consideration or hesitation.

    And then Fuyuko is gone- teleporting across the rooftop to menace the girl again. Nevermind that Glorious Beacon is proving to be exactly what Lacuna claimed. Nevermind that she's no longer in any immediate life-threatening danger. Stellar is Right and Lacuna is Wrong and that's all that matters in the moment.

    She's there beside Lacuna in a moment even as the dark-haired girl is asking her question, her movement quick as a flash. And before Lacuna even has a chance to acknowledge her, Stellar snaps her arm up to just straight-up backhand Lacuna across the side of the head. "No, bitch, I was first string because I'm the best at what I do."

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    A pithy little comment, yes. She'd already made the direct, acerbic comments earlier. More of the same would likely bounce off the exterior of an already coldly hating heart. The subtle, gentle push, however, might slip past those defenses and sting.

    Magic flares and Lacuna is next to her again. Back in the spotlight? Good timing; she's composed again, and now it's her turn to snort. "You're comparing yourself to him and you don't even know? He went back to Xenia to report on my progress after tonight's triumph."

    Once more her hand is on her hip, and she lightly flips some of her once again immaculate golden hair, "A little light show. If that's all it was you might have a point." Now she sets that raised hand back on her hip and rather than seeming afraid of Lacuna and her aggression she rounds on her, eyebrows suddenly angling downward in the center. "Do you even realize who you're talking to? It is I, Glorious Beacon! Bearer of the light foretold, Champion of the Flamen, beacon in the night and the last and final hope to push back the Tide of Darkness!"

    Her hand raises and is set forcibly upon her own chest, over the golden, heart shaped gem set there in it's blue ribbon, the cloth around it damaged and missing from the Lacuna's earlier magic. "The fate of a people, of an entire civilization, of an entire world rests upon my shoulders." Her voice rises as she continues and rather than backing off, she actually moves forward, imposing herself into Lacuna's personal space bubble and glaring up at her, heedless of whatever differential exists in their heights, their powers and their experience.

    "The hopes and dreams of the Flamen have been invested solely in the person of myself, so excuse me if I place myself at the very pinnacle; anything else would be abdicating my duties. In the world where the sky has lain shrouded for generations I will be the Sun. I am the scion of hope and peace! I am the one to turn back the tide of destiny! I am the wielder of the purifying light! I am the Glory Seeker! I am Glorious Beacon!"

    When had she closed her eyes? She doesn't remember. But when she opens them again, having delivered her heartfelt speech, Stellar is there too, having rudely stolen the spotlight from her, right in her defining moment of oration!

    She looks at Stelllar with a look of peevishness and disgust, "Wow! Going to steal my thunder? Just like that? If she's comparing me to you no wonder she wanted to throw me off the building."

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
Stellar is not the center of the universe. Lacuna, is not the center of the universe. Their problems are not the focus the world revolves around and Fuyuko has always known that -

So Fuyuko can ignore Stellar, the way she couldn't when she was a child, because she has something more pressing to deal with. Something that she -

Has been wrong about, clearly. Every word that Glorious Beacon speaks is a gust of wind from her sails, the depths of her misunderstanding weighing her down, sanity crawling back in tentative, embarrassed bursts. Of course Buster was a stupid name for a Mahou. It was a name for a mascot. This girl wasn't one of the Lux Tenebrae, she was another dime a dozen preppy new mahou.

And before the realization can properly crest into gritted teeth and shamed apologies, there's the crack of flesh meeting flesh ringing in the air, and any even minimal chance of this all going away evaporates like mist under the sun.

Lacuna lifts her hand to swipe away a trickle of blood from her split lip, dark eyes fixed on Stellar. There's a long silence between them, as Glorious Beacon sputters in hapless fury at being effortlessly upstaged, and then -

She laughs.

And laughs.

And drives her fist into Stellar's gut.

"You've always been such an insufferable little fuck," she exhales, "God I'm going to enjoy this."

Because Stellar is the one who regrets their misbegotten youth, who fears for the instability of those days, not Lacuna, who doesn't regret a damned thing and never will, never will, sees the blood on her hands from tearing apart the only person she has left on the days that are bad and knows she would never do anything different -

"You should have taken a page from my book and killed me if you wanted to stop worrying about this day."

The day when Lacuna snapped again, the day when she went for blood again, wehn she killed again.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Stellar spares a glance for Glorious Beacon right after she sent Lacuna reeling back with a split lip. "Honey," She says, "I am the thunder."

    But then Lacuna is laughing, and Stellar knows that laugh and doesn't like it because it brings back all the bad memories. But at the same time, it tells her she was right. It tells her that she was justified in coming here because Lacuna was going to do it again- nevermind that if she hadn't hit first nothing might have come of it. It's too late now and the proof is in the pudding.

    And she also feels it in her gut, remarkably similar to a fist punching her there, because that's actually what's just happened. She grunts at the impact, but before Lacuna even has a chance to withdraw her fist, before she's even finished delivering her pithy line, Stellar, teeth gritted, has grabbed the other girl around the forearm. The interaction of their two magics shrieks a horrible voidsong as Light and Dark meet and devour each other in a cacophony of howling feedback, but it doesn't stop her from turning and pulling on Lacuna's arm, dragging the taller girl closer to her before going for another strike to her head with her other hand, using the momentum of the pull to add force to the collision.

    "I've been an insufferable fuck?" Stellar spits, though that gutpunch has left her sounding breathless, "You're really going to tell me that I should have killed you rather than worry about you, you selfish overdramatic weepy emo hag!" She attempts to follow the first punch with another, and another, though it's likely that years of fighting her means that Lacuna is able to predict her well enough to avoid them. "I'm not like you! I don't.." Punch "..use violence.." Punch "..on my friends!"

    Don't think about how almost every bit of invective thrown at Lacuna could just as easily apply to herself. Don't consider how the two are so much more alike than they ever were different. Just ignore the tears in her eyes, because this isn't what she wanted, but she feels trapped by Fuyuko's stubbornness and by her own anger and by years and years and years of piled-up baggage.

Sachiko Yamashiro has posed:
    It would have been so good. It would have been amazing.

    To watch as an angry false accuser recanted their misdeeds, to be able to tilt her head up and look smugly down at someone having to retract their words and statements, to admit, even without using the exact words, that they were wrong and she was right.

    An adult, no less, who saw her as a child. That would be the best part, to know that all that age and experience that 'should' have made sure she knew better than to jump to conclusions made the error all the greater.

    All that expected feeling of moral superiority that she knew was coming vanishes in a moment with a punch to the face and a split lip. Because the error, humiliation as it might be, was a simple misunderstanding of words, and now direct, physical violence has escalated the conflict to a place where simple embarrassment can be washed away in a rush of heat and passion.

    The verbal exchange between two people means little compared to a physical altercation between one of them and a third party. Perhaps if Glorious Beacon had started shooting it would be different, but no. She had taken the moral high ground and 'it was going to work', but the mountain had been sundered by a stroke of thunder and leveled to emotional irrelevance.

    The passion she had built in puffing herself and her ego up deflates slowly, and as Lacuna retaliates she lets out a half exasperated sigh.

    'I am the thunder'? Darn it! She tossed that one underhand and it got knocked out of the park. A long, building speech outdone in a single, cocky one-liner.

    Her moment of brilliance is gone. She should probably go see how that girl is doing. She moves away at a slow pace, circling around what she expects to be a brawl. There's still something to salvage out of this, she realizes. There's still some scrap of moral high ground to take, even if it's but a mole hill compared to the mountain of before.

    Calmly, with great grace and dignity, she walks to the fallen mundane girl with the glasses, making sure her path allows her to turn her back directly to both Lacuna and Stellar. While the adults in the room, on the rooftop really, reduce themselves to cursing and fist fighting, Glorious Beacon crouches down over the girl, putting on her gentlest, kindest smile, not one she practices much to be honest, and quietly asks, "Good evening. You seem to have gotten into a bit of trouble. Are you alright?"

    Again the subtler, gentler dig will have to be the one to make it's mark. To be honest though, in the state they're in Glorious Beacon isn't sure the other two will even notice.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
Light and Dark meet in a screeching wail as they devour each other cycle, repelling each other and yet defined by each other - light etching out shadow, shadow defining light. Punches are thrown and dodged, the upperhand of surprise vanished now that they're both fully aware of what they're getting into.

"Yes!" Lacuna snarls, ducking under a punch and having her own kick deflected, "If you're going to hold it over my head for the rest of our lives! If you're never going to be able to see me angry without looking for a body, then yes! Because you're not worried about me, you're worried about being my keeper for the rest of your fucking life Kyouka, and it's fucking exhausting! I didn't even hurt the little shit, I barely even scared her considering all her pity little comments, and here you are, ready to cry on her grave!"

She breaks away from the fight, darkness roiling from fists to shoulders, and spits blood.

Catches sight of the groaning civilian, the mahou leaning over her, and shakes her head. There's no way in hell the kid is getting an apology today.

Instead she looks at Kyouka and flips her the bird. "You want me to have been someone different. Someone who made other choices, who wanted other things. Well I'm not and I never will be and I'm not sorry for any of it, Kyouka."

And then she's gone, in a silence as heavy as a grave.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Stellar and Lacuna have fought each other countless times. Before that they fought together countless times. The result is two combatants who know each other's style, moves and instincts inside and out. The result is every time they fight, neither of them gets the upper hand for more than the instant it takes the other to adapt. Nobody comes out unscathed, nobody walks away the winner. Its just move, counter move, strike, counter-strike until someone gets frustrated and quits.

    The victories Kyouka can count generally come in the form of managing to distract or frustrate Fuyuko long enough to prevent whatever murder or mischief she was attempting to perpetrate. But to say she ever beat the other woman would be a gross exaggeration. And this time was no different than any of the others.

    Stellar is gasping for breath by the time Lacuna breaks away from the conflict, that initial strike to her abdomen having knocked wind out of her that the flurry of blows following has not allowed her time to recover. She's got a gash over one eyebrow and can feel several deep bruises already developing on her arms, magical shields be damned. "Well fucking crucify me for caring Fuyuko!" She does her best to inject the words with venom but her breathlessness leaves them sounding more a plea. "Once you cross that line once, you can't walk back to the other side! I'm not worried about being your keeper, I'm worried about failing at that job!"

    "I want-" but Fuyuko is gone, evaporating like shadow when a light is switched on, and the rest of her sentence whispers out to only the empty air, "-you to be who you were before Kaito died." But that's a stupid thing to want. She knows it. Because Kaito is dead, and he's not coming back. Miracles do happen, sometimes, but not for people like them, and not so many years after the fact. Too much has been done and said that even if the boy who died was somehow miraculously returned to life, nothing between them would change. But stupid or not.. that's the truth. It's probably better that Fuyuko had already left before she could hear it.

    Grunting, Stellar falls to one knee, an arm folded across her midsection, trying to catch her breath. She cases a sidelong glance to where Glorious Beacon kneels over the civilian. She'll have to apologize to the girl for... all of this.

    Once she can stand straight again.