37TH ♫ | so i'll say “hello” again, “hello – just who have i become?”

[mytarget]

YUURI WAKSA CMO POST

BECAUSE I'M GOING TO BE NICE TO YUURI EVEN WHEN CANON ISN'T!!!

you all know who rii-san is by now anyway this is just a fresh and spicy update to her usual CMO so i can throw it at people to make her play them with me. Like my usual CMOs, I'm totally happy to roll with assumed CR, AUs, setting transplants, BASICALLY ANYTHING YA LITTLE HEART MAY DESIRE, I'M HERE TO GET ON WITH IT

PROMPTS:

Random Scenario Meme Prompts
Jamjar CR Meme Prompts
Murdergame Meme Prompts

Comments

what the fuck is up

[burninglight]

[It was, without a doubt, an incredibly special day. Not just because it was a normal one without any sort of horrorplague apocalypse, but because it was practically an interdimensional holiday.]

[And because the scourge of the stars, accursed Adagium, chancellor of a fallen empire, was squinting at a cookbook with a streak of flour on his face, midway through putting together what would eventually be a cake. Hopefully.]

[After all, it would have been horribly unreasonable to let his daughter's birthday go uncelebrated.]

[serrata]

[ So, after being divebombed awake by a pair of very excited sisters, Yuuri thinks she has an idea about how this day is going to shape up. She's not fool enough to expect a quiet birthday considering, well, every single person she knows but she can at least try and prepare herself for it a bit – if only because she doesn't think her heart can take any more surprises.

So once she's up and dressed, she slips out of the apartment and down to Ardyn and Church's door where she knocks and then just immediately lets herself in because that's just how we do things around here, really. ]

I'm not ruining another surprise if I come poking my nose in here, am I?

[burninglight]

[Just so long as we knock on every other door.]

I suspect it will come as no surprise to you at all, my dear princess. I presume you smart enough to know what I'm likely to be doing.

[serrata]

[ Deadpan: ]

Another apology cake for the neighbours, of course.

[ She's kidding. Mostly kidding.

... She's probably kidding. ]

Did you really get up so early just to make this, though?

BIRTH

[nojohnyouare]

[Mai arrives with a gift like the rest, but hey, she didn't bring another cake. There is a card, though, with a lion on it and "Look Who's Turning 3" whited out and covered with Yuuri's actual age. The gift is better, though, at least -- the scarf may have a cat print, but it's a cream-and-brown subtle cat print that actually goes with much of Yuuri's wardrobe.]

Birthday. ...I hope it's good.

[serrata]

[ Good lord, she's surrounded by cinnamon rolls. ]

Thank you, Mai-chan! It couldn't be anything but good when everyone's made such an effort. I feel spoiled rotten.

[ She says this as if she's not the worst culprit for spoiling people on their birthdays. Don't believe her lies, Mai. ]

[nojohnyouare]

You deserve it.

[She looks away, embarrassed.]

You're kind on ours, too.

[serrata]

We all deserve it, don't you think? Especially on a day like your birthday.

[ It's certainly not cold enough in the apartment for Yuuri to need a scarf, but you can bet she's putting it on right now anyway. It's cute, and Mai got it for her. Of course she's going to wear it. ]

It wasn't any trouble to come and see us today, was it? Oh, sit down – I'll bring you something to drink.

[ the fuss machine has no breaks and will never stop. ]

[nojohnyouare]

[Mai shakes her head. She does sit down, though, it's rude not to.]

You should be taken care of. Rather than take care of us today. ...Unless that bothers you.

i'll save hibiki launching herself bodily *through* the window for daybreak

[priforprince]

Your sighs are like doves escaping into a clear blue sky.

[ Here, Yuuri. A bouquet of purple roses, passed through the window. By someone in a prince costume, on horseback. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT ANYONE RANDOMLY SELECTED IN A LOTTERY TO WIN AN AFTERNOON WITH A CELEBRITY WOULD WANT TO SEE, CORRECT?

YUURI IS OBVIOUSLY THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD. ]

I wish they would come home to roost with me.

[serrata]

I... suppose that's certainly one way of putting it.

[ Dear god. Why is she here again?

Oh, that's right. Because Kurumi and Yuki wouldn't let her back out of it. She only put in for the lottery because the two of them were doing it and she never expected to actually win. She'd fully intended to pass, but the two of them (Miki had wisely refrained from joining this particular brand of nonsense) had made it clear that if she backed out, they'd never let her live it down. So here she is.

At least the flowers are nice. ]

Are you coming in... through the window?

[priforprince]

No, I'm here to invite you out.

[ Hibiki extends a hand to Yuuri, once said hand is no longer full of flowers. ] Now, take my hand. An afternoon of supreme elegance awaits - devoted just to you.

[ The Prince's eyes are alight with not only shoujo sparkles, but also expectation. Shikyoin Hibiki wants YOU! This is a priceless sensation. Were the Projan War to be rewaged, it would be for just such honors!!! ] You'll accept gladly, correct?

[serrata]

[ Yuuri looks down at the offered hand and finds herself immediately wondering if it's still too late to back out. She can claim illness or injury or some sort of emergency, but deep in her heart, she knows that if she pulled any of that, she'd subject herself to even worse ribbing from the two troublemakers who got her pulled into this in the first place. So really... she doesn't have a choice. ]

I really can't say no to that, can I? [ She really, REALLY can't. She takes Hibiki's hand – and then hesitates. ] Um, just a second – am I coming out through the window?

[ Forgive her if that sounds hazardous and also deeply embarrassing. ]

[priforprince]

[ THIS IS THE PUNIVERSE'S MOST TRUSTWORTHY SMILE

as Hibiki draws Yuuri closer to the windowsill ]

Don't worry. I'll handle you carefully.

[ Hibiki reaches with her free hand for Yuuri's side, to help her out. ]

[birthday intensifies]

[daughterofthemark]

[Yuuri might have noticed an odd quiet in the days leading up to her birthday. Her little sister and her bigger little sister weren't missing, certainly, but suddenly the minute-by-minute updates on their lives slowed down to daily, and they went on some errands on their own, one or two of them even offworld apparently.

It was all probably very suspicious.

Will Yuuri remember all this now that she's suddenly being woken up early? Only time will tell.]

Good morning, Rii-san! Happy birthday!

[serrata]

[ It says a lot about a number of factors that Yuuri's response to being woken up out of the blue at an hour like this isn't quite a full-fledged heart attack on the spot. That's the nice thing about not living in the apocalypse and/or a murdergame anymore: normal emotional reactions to things like being startled out of sleep by troublemakers.

Yuuri sits up slowly, looking a bit less put together than she usually likes to present herself, and rubs her eyes for a moment before giving Arianna a look of pure bafflement. ]

I... good morning, Arianna... is something happening?

A Simple Request

[littlestsurvivor]

Nee-chan, I want to go hunting.

[It'd been a week since Ruu had been rescued from the ruins of what was once Namekawa Grade School; and nearly a week since she nearly charged them all with a spear before realizing her sister was one of them. It was clear that Ruu's experience in the apocalypse had been... harder than their's. She was always on-guard and paranoid, usually not leaving her sister's side.]

[Ruu did not understand fully how her sister and the others had survived; she didn't understand the people who holed themselves up, but she assumed that at the least, they had to hunt for fresh meat, right? They hadn't survived 9 months just eating canned stuff and veggies? And this was the perfect chance to show everyone she wasn't just some kid to be babied!]

[She couldn't speak, but she still enthusiastically wrote it down on a piece of paper.]

Let me go hunting neechan! Give me a few hours and I can capture a few rabbits and we can have some fresh meat!

[serrata]

[ Ruu is safe.

Every few hours during the day, Yuuri stops what she's doing to repeat those words to herself and just try and absorb it. Ruu is safe. Even now, she's not fully convinced she's not about to blink awake and realize the whole thing was a dream.

It's not been perfect. Even she can see that – or rather, she's better equipped than anyone to see it. Ruu's still quiet and timid, just as she remembered, but there's a difference to it now. It's like the softness she remembered has been ground down and sharpened to a razor edge and it makes Yuuri feel off-kilter when she sees it.

So maybe, considering all that, she shouldn't be so surprised by the message Ruu gives her. Ruu had to have survived somehow out there at the school alone, but seeing it still makes Yuuri feel winded, like she's taken a blow to the stomach.

It takes her a second to make her voice level and, she hopes, keep her expression neutral if not completely calm. ]

Hunting... for animals, you mean. [ Of course that's what she means. It's right there in the note, but Yuuri has to say it out loud to confirm it for herself. ] Is that what you'd been doing back– back at the school?

[littlestsurvivor]

I might be able to kill a few of the dead guys too. Keeps everything safer. I just need a clean knife for the food!

[Ruu had changed.]

[The way she talked about these things, or rather wrote them, were natural to her. Killing zombies and hunting animals; she wrote it as casually as before as when she talked about getting new toys or making origami.]

Yeah! Along with scavenging! The birdies and bunnies are easier to capture, but the birds have too many feathers and I don't like eating those. The really nice thing you can hunt is deer! But you need more people to bring them back. One deer feeds your group for a long time though!

[Oh, they had done so much more than just that... but Rii didn't need to know that. Right now, she just wanted to get food for the Living Club and prove she didn't need to be babied! She was gonna show these lockers how it worked out here!]

[serrata]

[ And there it is. Put so matter-of-factly, Yuuri can't pretend it's anything but what it so clearly is, no matter how badly she wants to. It makes her feel queasy to think of Ruu not just hunting, but being so familiar with it that she has preferences to express – but that's selfish.

She'd been safe, locked up in Megurigaoka and Ruu had been on her own. Yuuri should be – and is – thankful that she's alive to tell the tale. Hunting is probably the least she's had to do and it's naive on Yuuri's part to reel so at the idea of it.

So she stoops down slowly, putting herself on Ruu's level properly – this feels like a capital-T Talk and not one they should have with Yuuri stood over her. ]

Ruu-chan, I... right now, I don't think it's a good idea. Not– not right now.

[ Maybe not ever is the obvious subtext there even if Yuuri can't bring herself to say it outright. ]

[littlestsurvivor]

Not now? Then when?

[Ruu was confused. She knew lockers didn't usually like hunting and stuff; but she was offering to do it...]

I can totally do it though! You gotta trust me, neechan! We've been eating canned stuff only for days!

[She wrote down quickly. She was sick of this canned stuff; she wanted meat, real meat, and she wanted her sister to eat good too! She didn't feel happy knowing her sister had to keep living like this...]

Rii, if you don't eat good stuff you'll get sick...

Scavenging

[littlestsurvivor]

[Ruu wanted to be useful.]

[She loved her sister and was... getting used to her friends, but they were such lockers it was unreal! They had apparently dug around the mall before (Ruu flinched upon hearing of it for some reason) and found some useful stuff, but Ruu was sure she could do just a little better.]

[Just like before, Ruu was always running off on her own. This time, Ruu was scouting out the nearby buildings. And it had been her lucky day too; in this abandoned building some wildlife had started coming in! She had already killed two rabbits; once her neechan saw her good she was at it, maybe she'd lean up about this stuff already...]

[Two rabbits, some batteries, a little knife, even some unopened crackers! That was a good haul in her book!]

[But then her head snapped up at hearing someone call for her. The plan was to make it back before Yuuri woke up, oops... but! She ran out of hiding, waving over at her sister in alarm! Yelling was bad. What if dead guys heard her? She rushed over to show she was OK...]

[serrata]

[ When Yuuri wakes up and finds Ruu gone, her first thought is a fleeting, hysterical and half-formed conviction that she had never been there in the first place. Ridiculous as it might have been, it was a fear that swam under the surface of her thoughts often – that perhaps she'd just gone the way of Yuki, convincing herself that her little sister was fine and along for the journey and the others hadn't yet worked up the nerve to tell her the truth.

She scans their faces desperately when she tells them the news, dreading the signs of hesitation or skepticism she was certain she was about to see, but their concern was immediate and it soothed her heart – to a degree. Because even with that fear dismissed, it didn't do anything to ease her panic at the fact that Ruu was gone.

By the time she finds the girl, Yuuri's already convinced herself of every possible worst case scenario. She'd been in such a panic to get out of the van and look that she isn't even dressed properly, just her cardigan haphazardly thrown on over her pajamas and her shoes tossed on like an afterthought. But then she sees Ruu running over to her and – she doesn't even have the time to feel relieved. She runs over and instead of pulling her into a hug, Yuuri grabs her by the shoulders. ]

Ruu-chan! [ Fuelled by panic, her voice is harsher than she wants it to be. ] I've told you– I've told you not to go out on your own! What were you thinking, just disappearing like that?!

[littlestsurvivor]

[This really wasn't supposed to turn out like this.]

[Ruu's heart sunk when she saw how panicked her big sister was, still barely dressed. Just like before the Outbreak it seemed Ruu would always be worrying her elder sister; it felt worse now though, given how much more dangerous the world was. She was in her head more of a mother than their actual birth mother had been, so it especially hurt to see her so distraught.]

[What a kick it would have been, she mused, for so many to see the former Commander of Namekawa so distraught, especially her former friends.]

[She opened her moth, closing it when nothing came out.]

...

[The look on her face was a clearly guilty one, however. She showed her sister her spoils; the rabbits, the batteries, and the crackers in hope that showing she had found useful things would in turn would help lessen her disappointment. But still she did not let her sister (or any of her friends, as Miki had noted) actually look into her backpack for more.]

[She waited for her sister's response, mouth opening once more, eyes widening upon hearing something.]

Hey. Nobody ever teach you it was rude to trespass before all this?

[She looked over to the intruding voice, that of an adult man, not particularly happy at the sight.]

Maybe this is my shelter. Maybe that's my rabbits and food you got.

[Ruu narrowed her eyes at that. This place was goddamn filthy; it was clearly abandoned and nobody was clearly living here and the rabbits were wild. Ruu was used to this trick (having done it herself), pretending you lived somewhere when you didn't to try to claim someone was stealing from you. Her hands went back to her signature makeshift spear, keeping him in her sights.]

Whoah, whoah, now... come on, not here looking for violence. [the man said, now putting on a fake grin.] Just saying... there seems to be some kind of misunderstanding. That little girl there clearly has my supplies, and I'd like them back...

[Ruu looked up at Yuuri, shaking her head, trying to signal to not buy it.]

[serrata]

[ For a moment, Yuuri's heart twisted with guilt of her own as she took in the look on Ruu's face. Her outburst of anger had been fuelled by panic and, as much as she loathed to admit it, frustration. Even when things had been safe, normal, it would only have taken a second of Yuuri turning her back for something awful to happen to Ruu. And now things were different, the world was crawling with monsters, undead and otherwise, and Ruu had crept away in the night and left Yuuri unawares. Logically, she knew that Ruu might have been safer alone. She was small and quick and she had the experience of scavenging and fending for herself. But her heart, beating hard enough in her chest to knock the breath out of her lungs, didn't know any of that. All her heart knew was that Ruu had disappeared in the night and anything could have happened to her and Yuuri would never have known.

It can't happen again. It won't happen again. ]

Ruu-chan... [ She's fighting to keep her tone level, but the effort it takes is clear by the tremble in her voice. ] I know you're trying to help. And this– Th–these are all useful things. It's good for us to have supplies. But you can't... y–you can't just–

[ Whatever else she was about to say, Yuuri doesn't even know. Not that it matters. She doesn't get a chance to get it out before they're interrupted by the arrival of this strange man and everything about him makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It's bad enough for her and Ruu to be out here alone when there's zombies... a human survivor is much more dangerous. She'd been stooped down to talk with Ruu face-to-face, but now she slowly stands herself up, keeping Ruu close. Her eyes are narrowed and her gaze is cold and a little fierce.

He might not want violence, but Yuuri has no doubt he'll be quick to use it if he thinks he'll get what he wants. And she doesn't want to risk that while Ruu is here. ]

Ruu-chan. [ Her voice is quiet and firm, in a tone of don't argue with me. And though she's addressing her sister, she hasn't taken her eyes off this other survivor. ] Whatever you took, give it back.