Losing Sight In A Changing World
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The world was changing. No, it had changed and Mieru didn't want to lose sight of it.
Taking the cards from the crisp, plasticky packet, she inspected them. Black frames over the greenish-blue she was used to. XYZ Cards over her precious Ritual Cards. She felt… bad about it. It felt as though she were betraying a part of herself but that's not right. She knows that is not right. She isn't abandoning a part of herself, she is expanding.
Times were changing. No, they had changed. She just couldn't see it before until destruction had brought all the dimensions to dust; to one.
Many people had mixed decks now because the universe was mixed. It wasn't just, Fusion or Synchro or XYZ or Standard Pendulum. People are allowed to try new things in new and eclectic combinations. She was one of them even though she had brought herself to a single fact of self where anything outside of what she knew - mysticism, tarot, rituals - felt alien. Not her.
It's hard. Terrifying, even. And so is he.
"You want me… to teach you to XYZ summon?" he asked.
He had a low voice. He sounded as though he were still in mourning. More likely than not, he was. Mourning for his past, mourning for his future. This was not the world he had known, and this was not the world he used to know. This was something different. Something entirely new – to them both, actually.
He continued: "They have classes for that, you know. At LDS."
"I know." Mieru replied. "But, as you are aware, I am not allied with LDS."
Allied was a strange word to use but this was a strange context. There were other words - affiliated, for instance, would have bode better by Mieru's vocabulary - but he was of a post war mind, so, she supposed so "allied" fit better to his vocabulary.
"No, you aren't." he supposed.
"Please, I want to change. I'm scared. You're… not."
"Scared, pfft? More like petrified."
Of losing friends, of losing family, of losing homes, of losing homelands, of losing integrity.
"It's a good fit for you, though. I think." he nodded. He crossed his arms then relaxed, as though something was wrong with how it felt; not enough padding, perhaps as he no longer wore his long coat.
Mieru's eyes lit up but she tried not to seem happy. After all, it felt as though it would be insulting to his understanding; happiness seemed to trivialise the severity of his statement. Mieru knew the lore. She understood there was sorrow both to it and to him.
"Two, maybe three, souls being sacrificed to bring forth the power of one." he mused.
He glanced down at her. Yellow eyes glinting in the sunlight and then he looked upwards like he was trying to find an arc. Or so Mieru hypothesised. Perhaps his eyes were scrying the lucid particles in the still air, trying to find the dazzling arcs like comets that surrounded his Monsters in battle. This was not battle, though. This was a civil conversation.
"That," he said, "is also a ritual."
"Yes. I agree." Mieru replied mutedly.
"I think you're weak." he said.
"I think so too. I was strong but in a small scape." Mieru agreed.
She was aware of her circumstances of strength and she was here to learn how to circumvent them.
"But, you're not useless. You can learn, become stronger." he sighed. "Fine. It's not like I have anything better to do with my time."
Mieru smiled. It felt odd to have won the apprenticeship of Kurosaki Shun. But, she was glad they had. He held an interesting soul in his body, Mieru would know.