Inspiration was a fickle mistress.

Bad enough when this happened in pretty much any situation, but it proved far worse, in Kiyoshi’s mind, when it happened to him in the only area of his life that rivaled senshi business and being a magical girl for importance. Maybe those parts of his existence had more potential significance for other people: he had the power and therefore the duty to protect others in Destiny City. His world returning to life was part of a larger pattern that was of some interest to Kerb’s tragic beautiful alien man friend who was so strong, and sad, and brave (though, really, anyone but Murikabushi himself had fair reason, in his mind, for treating his world as little more than a statistic).

Drag didn’t matter to saving any particular sad, beautiful alien home-world from devastation. It couldn’t stop a Negaverse General from pulling someone’s starseed or punch Mirrorspace in whatever it had instead of a face. But anything feeling remotely out of joint for Magdalene Yotsuya Wilde made everything feel out of joint for Kiyoshi, for Murikabushi. So, struggling to feel inspired about the new looks he had coming together on his dress-forms back home in his craft room? That was a sign of everything being wrong (potentially, maybe, at least until such time as Kiyoshi inevitably said so out loud and Yuki flicked his fingers into Kiyoshi’s forehead like “Your dramatics aren’t being constructive, let’s get you some fruit”).

“At least I got lucky in terms of my home-world,” he said, his pumps clacking against the cobblestones as he made his way down a street that he hadn’t explored very much prior to this visit. “The people who lived here so long ago, they seem to have had their fashion game together.”

The companion of the moment was not Yuki, nor Elsa, nor anyone who could respond to Kiyoshi with words. Instead, one of his world’s chimeric beauties walked alongside him: its body and legs resembled the deer that had recently moved into the capital city and the gardens around the palace, where Muri, Fang, and Soyala had found the dragon-wolves. Even the white spots on the fur seemed the same, except that most of said fur had the same deep black and shiny quality of incredibly expensive ink. The bigger difference, though, started at the neck: matching black scales, so fine that they felt almost soft to the touch, leading up into a long neck, somewhere between a serpent and a giraffe in its construction. This creature’s draconic face, all bright-eyed and friendly, sat amongst a mane of vivid purple.

While it couldn’t use its words to talk back to Murikabushi, it could peer up at him and make an eager little squawking noise. Didn’t sound much like any deer Murikabushi had heard before, and it didn’t sound the way that he imagined a dragon would sound. But really, that didn’t matter so much.