334/Charge of the Dream Brigade

Charge of the Dream Brigade
Date of Scene:	23 August 2015
Location:	Dreams
Synopsis:	Seishi and Shiori ride into Mamoru's recurring nightmares at his request to try and get him the ability to sleep a full night through.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Shiori Sato, Seishi Tamashige

---

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
EARLIER:

So the way it turned out was, Seishi didn't need either the rose that Mamoru gave her or the rose that Endymion did, and Mamoru didn't need the red ribbon that Seishi gave him: she was able to get away and come over to the absurdly expensive yet generally coldly minimalist penthouse that the upperclassman lives in for what could quite possibly be the most awkward sleepover party premise in the history of ever. Granted, Mamoru wasn't quite expecting a dream-eating mythological tapir to show up with the two dream warriors, but he was just as much of a gracious host to O-Yasu as he'd be to any moon cat that deigned to grace his flat.

NOW:

Proximity makes it easier. Seishi's already familiar with the rose garden, with the pure and fantastically too-real colors of the sky and the greenery, with the ornate beauty of the ancient structure behind it. The paths through the garden are broad and well-tended, and the mountains in the distance are sharp and fresh, crisp through the clean air, younger by hundreds of thousands of years than the mountains of the modern day.

Today the dark and regal boy with the same piercing and canny blue eyes as the upperclassman they're familiar with, almost identical but for the genetic drift of locality, is standing on the steps of the palace, watching as the sun sets. He's in armor, dark blue leather with light silver-blue designs on it, metal plates in someplaces, a black and red cape and a bastard sword in a beautiful scabbard.

He looks really very surprised to see the dream riders, and starts down the steps as the scenery shifts around them to a garden with white roses, lit by the light of the Earth in the black sky above; the stairs belong instead to a palace made of luminous white stone, graceful and impossibly thin and tall.

"You came back. And-- friends? You brought-- you found him, didn't you."

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
"Yes." The lines between identities are blurred here; it's hard to say by looking at her if she's Akashimaru ,the samurai in red, or Seishi wearing Akashimaru's clothes. Maybe the distinction is academic. She inclines her head politely to the prince as he comes down the stairs to meet them. "I did."

The horse is the same horse, the dark bay gelding tacked in an incongruously modern mounted-police-issue saddle and bridle that look all the more out of place in these kinds of surroundings. The horse is anxious - or rather, Seishi is anxious, and the horse expresses it by refusing to quite stand still, hooves scraping against the surface of the path as he shifts and sidles in place. "I might have told him more than you wanted me to," Seishi admits. "I wasn't sure how else to explain. I came back--" she pauses, corrects herself with a glance toward Shiori, "--we came as a favor to him."

Shiori Sato has posed:
But /is/ it Shiori? Much like Seishi, 'Shiori or Akahana' is difficult to determine. It's definitely a ninja, clad in black with brown colored armor pieces and a red sash around the waist. Long, dusty brown hair pulled into a ponytail. Face covered from the nose down. But those are Shiori's eyes, so there's that-- dusty brown, same color as his hair.

He's also mounted on a horse, a plain-looking thing with an unremarkable saddle. Though he's mounted sort of... half-sidesaddle, with one of his legs folded before him on the saddle instead of both down either side of the horse's sides.

For his part, Shiori remains quiet for now. He doesn't really know what is going on, and this isn't his dream. So apart from a nod of greeting, there's not a whole lot he can add at the moment.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The armored boy nods in greeting to Shiori-Akahana as he comes closer, a polite thing that belongs to someone who only bows to his parents. "I appreciate that," he says seriously, though his glance over Shiori is more curious. Perhaps it's a 'who has this power' look; perhaps it's wondering if this is a soul as out of place-- but there are things to address.

"It's all right," the young prince tells Seishi-Akashimaru finally, shaking his head as he stops in front of the two riders. "I think he's getting there anyway. This never lasts, but--"

He turns back to look at the sound of someone's voice calling for him, a chiming voice, as clear and sweet as the pealing of a crystal bell. The name is hard to make out, and the figure is indistinct, appearing as she does at the top of the stairs he just descended.

What's clear from this distance is that she's dressed in white and gold, and her hair is long and silvery-white, pulled into twintails that seem to drift like the gauzy fabric of her gown. She looks like she's made of light, ethereal and nearly weightless, young and laughing as she lifts a slender arm to wave a greeting of her own.

She looks like some kind of goddess, a stark contrast to the solidity and rich color of the dark young prince.

There's no mistaking the amusement or the affection mixed in with the adoration on the boy's face as he waves back.

That's when the moment shatters, a fireball exploding in the palace behind the shining white princess.

"Goodbye," the prince whispers to the riders, and the scene shifts again--

--they're on their mounts in a corridor, smoke filling the high arching ceilings and bright orange light flickering on the moonstone walls. There's a balcony above and ahead of them, up a wide staircase, and the armored prince is running away from the two of them, toward it-- his cape is already tattered, his armor dented and, in placed, sliced; he's smudged with soot and determined.

The sounds of battle echo around them.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
They're here for a reason, and Seishi knows they're on a time limit. But even so, when the bright figure of the girl appears at the top of the stairs, the sight of her does what even the sight of the Earth shining in the sky overhead did not - it stops her. Even her horse stills its anxious fidgeting, and for a moment she can only sit and stare upwards in unexpected awe.

(A bubble of memory surfaces somewhere in the back of her mind: a priestess in white and red, clean and untouched by the dust and mud of the roadside, leans down to offer a hand up. And smiles.)

Then flames erupt and the moment is gone, the narrow window of opportunity slamming shut. Seishi snaps out of whatever it was that seized her with a shake of her head, teeth bared. "Damn it!"

Without any further hesitation, she grasps the reins in one hand and yanks the Shinken from her belt with the other. "Not this time," she vows to herself, before her heels press into her horse's sides and the gelding leaps forward, iron-shod hooves ringing against the floor. "Let's go!"

Shiori Sato has posed:
Shiori looks up at the shining princess. It's hard to tell, but her radiance seems to almost blind him, and he narrows his eyes. But he took remembers something. The same priestess as Seishi remembers... Though in Shiori's case, he remembers her gently pushing a blade away from his throat... but also offering a hand to him. That gesture was so familiar.

But then suddenly there's an explosion, and the scene shifts. Shiori's broken out of his reverie, drawing a sharp breath of surprise. Suddenly... a corridor? Battle? That in itself, the sounds of battle, are enough that training he would have questioned the existence of at any other time rises to the surface. Survey. Where are the exits? Where are the enemies? Where are the allies?

Seishi moves on ahead, calling him to follow, and he nods. "Hai," he returns, the word a clipped, staccato syllable that wastes no breath. There is suddenly a sword in his free hand, pointed downwards as he rides after Seishi.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Down the corridor and up the stairs behind the prince, who's already bloodied and sweaty and worn from battle; there's no jarring detail of what it might be like to ride a horse up the stairs, there's only the swiftness and the sound of crashing masonry, of screaming and roaring fire and shouts of fury, of clashing weaponry-- and through it all, the focused tunnelvision of the prince:

They're privy to and part of the memory-dream, they can see the threats for what they are and dispatch them as they charge toward the boy and the riders themselves, but the primary sound and knowledge pervading the consciousness through which they ride is the Moon Princess crying, her half-heard panicked breathing and words, the sound of his name on her lips.

Closer they ride; the boy vanishes around the corner ahead and suddenly they're riding in the open on a wide, flat patio above the furious and bloody battle below.

Endymion is already in front of Serenity, her glow dimmed from terror for his life and from the fighting that the peaceful Moon Kingdom has never seen in her memory; he's fighting five warriors from Earth, and the bodies of soldiers from both sides lay around, gashed and dying and dead.

Below, familiar faces in familiar uniforms fight against their former friends or would-be loves, trying to get to their princess, to help Endymion defend her, to defend them both, but it's too much and too fast and everything's happening at once, and the sky roils purple and black and red, and Earth hangs from it like a sooty, reddened mass of hellfire as riots destroy what both royal families would have protected and preserved.

Endymion can only spare a fraction of a glance toward the two riders, but when he does, a brilliant flash of recognition flares behind his blue eyes and he's visibly Mamoru Chiba in armor, defending his dream princess with his life for the hundredth time.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
"Get to Chiba-san!" Seishi calls to Shiori. She's dropped the reins entirely; the Shinken in a red-strung bow in her hands, sending heavy black arrows whistling ahead of her to drop rioters who'd block her path. The reins are superfluous anyway when the horse is just an extension of her will, focused wholly on the same single goal. What the gelding can't trample over, he clears in mighty leaps.

They may not make it. The other defenders, she knows from the last time, can't make it in time. But she and Shiori are outsiders, not trapped by the foregone conclusions of this echo of a past life. Maybe it'll count for something. She has to believe it'll count for something.

"This has to stop!" Two voices cry out in unison over the din of battle, a man's voice echoing over Seishi's. A phantom image overlays her as she charges through the fight, her hair and the sleeves of her red kimono flying out like banners: a young man, long black hair in a high samurai ponytail, red kimono torn and bloody, eyes wild with desperation. "You can't just keep repeating the past!"

Shiori Sato has posed:
Fighting from horseback is actually not all that hard for Shiori, particularly since he's keeping a move-on and not letting himself be trapped. The sword in his hands flashes death as he rides past so fast he doesn't register the movement. It's not until they catch up with the prince that Shiori is even aware of where he is.

The change in Mamoru triggers a change in Shiori as well. He has been, up to this point, mostly influenced by Akahana, only influencing her appearance in this dream enough that he was recognizeable.

But seeing Mamoru changes something. That's a friend. And he's in trouble.

The shift happens without fanfare. First there was a ninja of indeterminate gender. Then one blinks. And there is Shiori in his ninja henshin-- dark blue outfit, light blue hair with the short punky ponytail.

He's already moving by the time Seishi calls out, not bothering to waste words. He leaps from the back of the horse, hoping to clear the enemies facing Mamoru. If not he will cut through the enemies as well as he can, aiming to get to Mamoru's side. Speedy and quick, he'll try to dodge, but if he takes wounds, he's not going to stop.

And just as Akashimaru seems superimposed over Seishi, as he moves, the translucent image of a long-haired ninja seems superimposed over Shiori's form as well.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The two riders approach at breakneck speed, leaping over or crushing the fallen, cutting down those who try to bar their way or otherwise harm them. Closer and closer -- the battle presses; the palace their patio is attached to is a raging inferno, and people stream out the doors to fight or run away; there's a heavy pall of fated doom hanging over the place.

Mamoru's cut down three of his attackers, four join to replace them. In moments, he and his princess will be overwhelmed--

--the glitter of her tears on that hard-to-see face is blinding, casting brilliance to pierce through the darkness, like lenses or prisms focusing and scattering her light: everything is cast in sharp relief and the Japanese high-schooler in front of her is silhouetted.

Soon enough, both Seishi and Shiori-- his friends, here on his behalf, here to help-- are close enough to join in the wicked fast and bloody fighting around him, are close enough to thin the ranks of the attackers, are close enough to keep more from drawing near.

Mamoru's voice is near tears with relief, though his fighting never wavers, never slows: "You guys! You guys! You're here-- Princess, we have help--"

But the cerulean eyes of the white and gold and silver light moon princess are wide in horror as she looks to her left, shielded in front by his cape and the strength of his arms and by his friends.

There's a break between the two horses, even as the last of the soldiers are dispatched with alacrity. And like an oncoming storm, like an extension of the lurid clouds above, a woman too tall to be real, with a streaming comet-tail of abundant blood-red hair and a black and purple gown that flows like a death shroud--

--she's flying up the steps, fast and furious, and she's headed straight for the ethereal little goddess. Mamoru turns to see what she's staring at, and everything slows down as he firmly steps in between her and the approaching doom.

The choked cry of panicked disbelief as the enormous sword bears down on her, and then on the prince who defends her instead, is the only sound in the entire world.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
The short bow in Seishi's hands disappears in a flurry of red sparks, becoming a tessen with which she lays about fiercely to one side and the other. The fighting here is too dense even for her horse to bull through, and when her forward progress slows and stalls, she throws herself without hesitation from the saddle, vaulting over the heads of a couple of combatants to land near Mamoru.

Not a moment too soon. She's scarcely had a chance to square her stance from the landing when hell breaks loose in the form of a red-haired woman with a sword seeking blood, and Seishi knows how this ends, she saw it the last time she was here. "No--!"

Without a thought, she darts ahead of Mamoru, smaller and faster, a flash of red with tessen upraised to meet the sword before it can pierce his chest.

The heavy blade strikes the side of the closed tessen like the toll of a bell. For a single instant, there's a flash of brilliant light, pure white, an arc curving outward from the Shinken like the blade of a sword--

--then it's gone, and there's only Seishi, both hands braced against her weapon, struggling to hold up against the unholy strength that drives that massive sword, and failing by degrees. Slowly, inexorably, the sword's edge presses down over her head.

Her voice pants out of her, breathless with effort. "Not... this time...!"

Shiori Sato has posed:
For each warrior they fell, two more seem to take its place. It does seem hopeless... but that's what this is-- it's a memory of something horrible that happened. Maybe in one of Mamoru's past lives, like the dreams Shiori keeps having. they are in a similar vein. But that doesn't mean Shiori's going to quit fighting. Mamoru is depending on them both to do their best, no matter what the outcome. Suddenly the dark woman flies up to the balcony, intent on the glowing princess...

...Mamoru gets between them, to take the brunt of the attack himself...

And a memory stirs. A powerful memory of a similar sacrifice. His own. A katana aimed at a priestess busily casting a spell that would hopefully contain the evil all around her... she only needed a moment more, but it didn't look like she'd get it...

"...You will not harm her... while I yet draw breath..."

The voice comes from somewhere in the sky, carried by a sudden breeze that, oddly... carries the scent of tulips upon it. It is not Shiori speaking. It may not even be real. But it's real to Shiori. And to Akahana, whose lips spoke those words, centuries ago. They are as real as the memory this evokes within him.

The translucent image of the ninja girl superimposed over Shiori's ninja henshin is suddenly more real now... it's hard to see him past it. Sharp features, what of her face can be seen... glossy black hair pulled back in a ponytail that whips in the breeze of her suddenl movement like a pennant... eyes like steel ball bearings narrowed in concentration.

She moves with a practiced kind of synergy, in time with Seishi's movements. As Seishi moves forward to intercept the sword, the ninja slips past Mamoru, leaving in his ear a quick, near-whispered, "...Go now. We are here." just a reminder that this time, he's not alone. It's a woman's voice, low and husky. And it's recognizable. It's the voice that spoke those words on the wind.

She slips past Mamoru and then ducks down into a slide on her side, sword in each hand, trying to pass by the woman with the unholy strength while Seishi still has her occupied. Should she manage to make it past, the ninja girl quickly kicks-up to her feet, then aims to plant that sword in the red-haired woman's back as deeply as she can, with as much force as she can muster.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Time is so slow, it's almost stopped, and the Princess' cry echoes--

From the prince's perspective

From Mamoru Chiba's perspective

the ringing call of denial of fate, denial of the past: there's that brilliant flash of light and the sound of sword on tessen, because suddenly Seishi is in front of Mamoru and the Princess and holding her off, and there's the scent of tulips mixed in with blood and death and roses, and a voice from everywhere and nowhere, and Shiori-- Akahana?-- is whipping through the space between, grabbing Mamoru's focus briefly.

Go now. We are here.

The words and the actions of his friends shock Mamoru out of the patterns of the past, the visible interruption of the flow of time and fate and the despairing lockstep of history repeated spur him to action, to real action, real agency, real choice and decision.

Even as Shiori's moving around to stab the nightmarishly tall spectre's back, even as the blade cuts through her, he's grabbing his princess' hand and nodding firmly, eyes shining.

Seishi's seen this before: he'd stay and fight with them, if it were only himself-- he'd help, if he weren't bound to protect the one who cannot fight, to keep her from harm. His first priority is her safety.

Mamoru turns to run with Serenity and the blade cuts through the rage-filled queen of death and destruction, and for a half-second as the monstrous queen disintegrates into roiling smoke and choking ash, their figures are faintly different--

The Princess' streaming twintails are spun gold instead of silver moonlight, and it's shiny dress shoes visible below the black and red cape instead of armored boots, and the Princess' hands are covered by elbow-length gloves and she's running as determinedly as Mamoru is.

Then they vanish into the smoke hanging over the whole area, and then the smoke covers everything and lightens, brightens. The sounds of battle fade and everything is white, a warmly lit mist surrounding the dream riders.

There are footsteps from everywhere and nowhere, a single person's, slow and steady; a figure resolves slowly in the whiteness. Is it Endymion? He carries himself like the dark young prince.

No: it's Mamoru, maskless, in a white tie and tails. His face is wondering, bewildered, and amazed. Like dreams do, in the moment that the focus is on him, the area around them resolves into having been the public library all this time, though the shelves stretch up endlessly and the aisles go on forever. "That was impossible," he says, eyes wide. "But you did it. How did you do it?"

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
Seishi's breath pants out of her, arms trembling a little as they drop to her sides. That was a close one. If Akahana had been a little less quick to act, if the dream hadn't resolved itself when it did... but it did, and it seems they've all come through unscathed, somehow.

The Shinken's familiar heft still weighs in her hand. She lifts it, regarding it for a moment as footsteps resound from somewhere in the indistinct whiteness. What was that, just now?

The tessen is just a tessen, offering no explanations in the smooth metal surface of its outer ribs. She slides it back into place in her belt, and brings her hands together in front of her to tuck each one into the depths of the opposite sleeve.

Mamoru's amazement draws a hitch of breathless, embarrassed laughter out of her. "It wasn't really..." she begins, ducking her head a little. "I just didn't want to let you get killed again. I guess maybe breaking the cycle was all that you needed?"

Shiori Sato has posed:
As the smoke and death begin to disappear around them, the shape of Akahana fades with it, the heaviness that brought forth the memories that forced her into control disappearing along with it. It's Shiori again, still in his ninja henshin. The traces of Akahana are back to being as subtle as they usually are. And Shiori looks completely confused!

Still, though, he looks to Seishi and offers a thumbsup, his eyes narrowing and crinkling in the grin that can't be seen behind his mask. Mamoru's appearance comes as a surprise, but he doesn't seem overly jumpy. There's something about the environment now that puts him at ease.

He nods to Seishi's statement, and adds, "I think you did. It was your dream, even if you were dreaming about a memory. We just reminded you that you were in charge, that's all. That you weren't locked into the memory. And you let us take it off the rails. If you hadn't, I don't think we could have affected it."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I wanted it so badly to go off the rails," Mamoru says with almost embarrassing gratitude; he bows, deeply, hands pressed together. "But I couldn't do it alone. And given," he continues with a quietly wry note to his voice, straightening up, "my very active life, I don't know how much longer I could have gone on not sleeping well without serious consequences. I owe you both. I owe you both a lot."

His white-gloved hand skims across the surface of a library table, past a short stack of books with indecipherable titles, and he looks around, seeing it for the first time. "Not to mention homework when school starts up again. I can't have my grades tanking like the end of last semester."

It's not shyness, it's just the uncertainty of how to handle a lucid dream, and one with guests. He smiles a little, crookedly. "Feel free to stay over into the morning. I got breakfast things, I don't know how early either of you is up, generally, but if you wake before me -- and I sort of hope you do, I do need the sleep -- definitely help yourselves."

It's not that he's kicking them out, not after the tremendous amount of effort they just put in on his behalf, it's just that he's an introvert -- apparently even in dreams -- and desperately needs uninterrupted and not-socially-anxious sleep.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
The thumbs-up gets a distinctly relieved grin from Seishi; she dips her head in an answering nod, mutual acknowledgement of a job well done. "I think Sato-kun is right," she tells Mamoru. "You only needed us to help tip the scales a little."

She bows, deep and deliberate, to Mamoru and comes up smiling gently. "I'm glad it worked," she says. "Rest well, Chiba-san. I promise not to wake you up if I get up before you."

Then she turns toward Shiori, tips her head to the side in a nonspecific direction. "We should get going," she says. "Are you ready?"

Shiori Sato has posed:
Shiori lets the henshin go now; with Mamoru's statement of sleep and homework, the danger is past, and he doesn't need to defend himself any longer. He appears as he did when he arrived, bland and ordinary-looking, casual clothes, and glasses. "Just glad to help, Chiba-san," Shiori replies, with a friendly smile.

He nods to Seishi's words of leaving. "Yeah. Do you know the way out?" he asks. He's still new to this dream-riding thing, after all. He got in, but he's not sure he could get out by himself.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
"No idea," is Seishi's immediate reply, but she sounds cheerful about it rather than worried. "I've mostly gotten kicked out by people waking up before it gets as far as finding my way back. But I think we'll be all right."

With no further ado, she starts walking, long confident strides off into the seemingly endless shelves and the mists of dreams beyond. And, in truth, her confidence seems to have been more justified than she knew, because the library has just begun to blur around them when a line of red resolves itself out of the haze - a red cord, leading the way back to where they should be.