It's been a while since she's transformed into the formidable Lunatic Charm, other than a couple of times when she and Norie had to fend off a bunch of rough men who tried to attack them, and wasn't that a whole lot of fun? Honestly, she missed those days. But tonight..Tonight is her her practice run, time to get back into shape and start catching more X-eggs. She's been far too relaxed lately and soon she wont be able to see Ikuto again.
She stands upon a certain rooftop, overlooking Unimari city's harbour. There are only a handful of people down below, and she seems to focus on one in particular, a lone teenaged girl who seems deep in thought about something. If she's lucky, she wont even have to do any X-egg extraction. If she's lucky, the X-egg will come to her. Maybe then, it wont make her feel so bad.
"C'mon, Utau-chan! It's time for some action! What are we waiting for? Let's just pull it outta her!" But she waits still, hesitant to strike, still tormented by her recent recurring nightmares, and her encounter last night with the boy whose heart's egg shone so brightly, whose dtermination and gentle voice nearly touched her heart.
"Ikuto...." she sighs, hands clenched into trembling fists, "Is there no other way...?"
It's been a long day, and a dull one, but those are acceptable, sometimes. Last weekend's events drained Kunzite's energy reserves down to the dregs, and he doesn't have the old ways of recharging them. Not the Dark Kingdom's, thieving energy from humans or casually instituting blackouts. Not the Golden Kingdom's, tapping into deep currents of power, helping to keep that same energy moving through the world rather than lying still, becoming stagnant and strange and twisted. Not even through his prince's grace, not when his prince is exhausted and ill from the things beginning to leech the strength of the world.
Instead -- well. It irritated him more than a little that, after exhausting himself fighting what amounted to a building and a couple of plants, the best way he could find to recharge was to locate an appropriate rooftop (large, without windows overlooking it) and spread his shadows to soak up the sun like leaves.
Evening now, though. No sun suitable for harvest; and the warmth and light still linger in the back of his awareness, brightening his mood a little in an almost literal way. Time to go home.
... time to see a bat-winged silhouette on a rooftop.
He hesitates for a long moment, searching other vantage points nearby, making sure she's alone. But her fists clench, and that might mean his time is up; he moves, landing lightly and sure on the edge of a roof nearby. He looks -- almost the way he did when she last saw him so briefly. Same uniform. Same cape, bone-white lined with earth-brown. The ghostly white hair's been shorn down to not much more than fuzz; that's the only real difference.
His voice carries just enough to reach her. But a curt "You all right?" might not be the greeting she'd expect, if she expected to hear one up here at all.
Lunatic narrows her eyes, completely focused upon the teenager below, hesitant to strike, hesitant to let yet another one go. But she's an experienced fighter, enough to know not to drop her guard..And when he calls out, she spins around to face him, eyes narrowed. He's not close enough to be a threat and so she doesn't attack. Yet..Something is vaguely familiar about him, even with that new (and rather unflattering) haircut..
"You..You're..That guy from the battle a while ago..?" she searches for a name, but doesnt recall him ever giving her one. He did protect her from some of Riventon's youma, however. And that causes her to relax a bit. Until she realizes he's probably an ally of Kukai's and a member of Virtue. "Did 'he' send you to check up on me?" she frowns, shaking her head, not sure how else to respond to such a strange question.
But he hadn't attacked her yet..And that's a good sign, right?
Eyebrows arch, though whether that's clear at this hour and at this distance will depend on how sharp Lunatic Charm's vision is. Kunzite would bet she could see it, were he asked. The devil being forever in the details. "Which 'he'? Tuxedo Kamen? No. Riventon? Hell, no."
He crosses the distance between his rooftop and hers in another leap, taking two steps to dissipate the momentum, but stays well back from her once he's there. "Your shoulder heal up all right?" It looks intact. That doesn't mean it is intact, necessarily.
He seems not to know who she might be talking about, and as he lists off every name except the two that really matter, Lunatic's eyebrow twitches. "...You know..Kukai.." her eyes seem to darken a shade as she mentions his name, as if bringing it up brought up a hell of a lot of pain, and openned old wounds. "He did, didn't he? Keeping an eye on me, are you?"
Naturally, she seems annoyed at that. Wouldn't that be so like Kukai, treating her like a rabid animal, but not having the guts to show up himself. Perhaps Norie was right about him..As for her shoulder wound, it seems to have mostly healed up, although, due to a recent run-in with thugs who tried to shoot her and Norie down, it was re-openned, and still looks newer than it should. Clearly, she ran into another spot of trouble since they last met.
He steps closer to her, and instinctively, she takes a step back, uncertain if he comes as friend or foe. Afterall, she only ran away with 'the enemy' and hadn't been seen since. Who knows what sorts of assumptions they cooked up since?
"I'll survive" she says with a shrug, "More importantly, what are you doing here? Were you following me? Are you even a member of Virtue..?"
Definitely no closer than he is, then. Talking without the gap between buildings in the way is all he's getting. He stays in place, spreads his hands, lets her see them to either side of him against the darker lining of his cape. "All questions, aren't you. Fair enough. You asked who I was, last time, though there wasn't a chance to answer; my name is Kunzite. I wasn't following you; I've been in this area for hours, and happened to see you -- you have a distinctive silhouette." To say the least. "I'm not a member of Virtue, though I know several."
Given her expression, and a couple of Kukai's reactions, the next might be trickier. "And no, Kukai did not send me to check up on you. I don't work for him. I have talked with him about you, peripherally. About your brother. He didn't say much."
Lunatic frowns softly as she narrows her eyes, seeming to size him up. So. He didnt send him, but he did this on his own, and he's not a part of Virtue? "So..Just in the neighborhood, eh? How..Convenient.." then he talks more of Kukai, and she seems faintly..Perplexed? "How..Is he? I heard he woke up in the hospital..No..Forget it.." She shakes her head. She doesn't want to think about him anymore.
"No, wait!" a small angelic fairy looking creature pops out from seemingly nowhere. "Eru want's to know how Kukai-kun and Daichi-kun are! Eru is so glad they woke up! Did Utau-chan's music help? And, thank you, Kunzite-kun, for helping Utau-chan out the last time! Utau-chan can seem cold, but really she is quite sensitive!"
Lunatic shoots her a glare as she says that, looking back at Kunzite. "Kunzite, eh? So...You're an allie of Virtue, I gather? Then, what can you tell me about them..? Can they really be trusted?"
The pale stranger turns his attention to the little angel, and says gravely, "Hello, Eru." There's no surprise; there's no searching for the name; he already knows the little chara, at least in passing.
Granted, he was a ghost when they met, and Utau wasn't there.
"He's awake," he tells Eru, addressing her questions before Lunatic Charm's. "He should be out of the hospital by now. I didn't visit often enough to know whether the music helped, but I know that the last time I visited, the CD's case was out in sight. And thank you for helping Kukai, the last time I saw you. I think he needed your help then more than he needed the hospital's help this month, and he needed the hospital's help very badly."
His attention lifts to Lunatic Charm again, then; his eyes flicker to the tails of her hair for a moment, then back to her face. "From what I understand, asking whether Virtue can be trusted is like asking whether Tokyo can. It's not a monolith; they seem to have few if any policies, other than a shared general intent. Individual members make their own decisions, and other members choose whether or not to help them carry those decisions out. Those members I know are human beings like any others; they try to make good decisions, but sometimes they fail. Some more often than others. In the long run, on the whole, they seem to do better than most. But there's no perfection in this world."
Eru beams and nods. Seems more happened at D-point than Utau learned about, but one thing she knew and was happy about, was how Eru sacrificed herself to protect Kukai. But of course that was in the past..
Lunatic just nods, expression hardenning, doing her best not to show signs of her oft sensitive nature. "I see.." her hands clench and unclench. 'He' has always been a sore spot for her. "Don't thank me. I did nothing more than run away, after I promised him I'd help him out, and prove to him, to everyone that I really AM a good person.."
She sighs, "Now he probably hates me and thinks I betrayed him or something, but..The truth is, when I saw Norie again and remembered her plight, I realized that she was the only one there who truly understood me..And I wanted to help her, and maybe I wanted her to believe in Kukai again, like I've been trying to..." But damnit, she said 'his' name again, and that makes her all mad and confused again.
Lunatic turns her face away, the soft breeze fluttering her pigtails. For a moment, she doesn't look like the cold, battlehardenned devil that she's dressed up to be like; Just a badly hurt girl who's trying desperately to survive. "Heh, and yet they'd endorse stuff like what 'Sky Jack' did, blowing up a facility full of innocents? Can they really be as 'good' and perfect as they claim to be? Can I really trust them to...Help me out, or was my faith in them misplaced? I guess the only Virtue member I know is 'him', and so far his last actions have left me a bit..Uncertain..."
Whether it's Eru's sacrifice, or her joining Kukai in prayer before that, Kunzite doesn't speak to. Eru saw his ghost at the latter, nothing of him at all at the former; but he was aware for both, bodiless, silent in his stone.
Utau is where his attention lies now, for all that his expression changes very little. When she talks about running away, and about Kukai thinking she betrayed him, though -- Kunzite's eyebrows twitch again. "Of course he was angry," he says, as if he were saying 'of course it rained a few days ago' -- both that matter-of-fact about something obvious, and attributing about that same amount of importance to it, namely practically none. "Because he's an idiot who thinks you should've attacked him to get Riventon off your case. Since Riventon is not an idiot, that wouldn't have worked in the first place. You took one of the better options available. He's getting over it; nearly had, last I talked to him."
Norie. That's not a name he recognizes, so he can't speak to whatever plight she's thinking of.
And then there's that question.
"I'm not aware of Sky Jack blowing up any facilities full of innocents," he says evenly. "I'm aware of two recent building collapses; one only had one seriously injured victim, and was his fault only in that he prodded others into attacking him; the other was a warehouse that had no workers within when it fell, and the politics around that one have been sorted out. If there was another, I'd be interested to know. If it was as you describe, I'm reasonably certain that there would be a number of members of Virtue wanting to have discussions with Sky Jack, some of which would probably involve their fists and his face."
He gestures outward, toward the city. "People remain people. Nothing in this world is perfect. People who try to do good will still make mistakes. And Virtue is, above all else, a loose network of people. They look out for each other. They try to keep each other from making mistakes. But any one of them can always go out and do something stupid on their own.
"I can't say whether you can trust them, or whether they'd help you. I don't know much of your situation. I can tell you that they helped my brothers. And that some of them want to help yours."
Eru blinks slowly at Kunzite, then nods and smiles sweetly as she remembers what happened at D-point, "You're welcome, Kunzite-kun! Eru is glad she could be of help!" she beams as she flutters down to rest on one of Lunatic's shoulders.
Utau however, knows little of what transpired in D-point, except that she had purposely sent the little angel to watch over Kukai. Still, there is a connection there. Eru is a part of Utau, afterall, even if she often tries to shove the gentler, more sensitive side of her persona away at times.
When he explains Kukai's point of view of that day, Lunatic just blinks, looking quite surprised. "Wait, what...? He WANTED me to attack him?! Is he crazy? Why would I..." she sighs and shakes her head. But of course, the only logical reason would be not to blow her cover, or get in trouble. But did that mean he still cared about her..?
She bites her lip, looking away. No, too many false promises, too much false hope. She's had enough. Utau's gaze hardens again as she folds her arms, surveying the scenery below; The girl that she had been stalking from afar has since left, and her heart sinks. Another failure. She's that much further away from seeing Ikuto again. Drawing a deep breath, she turns away from the roof's edge. Forget this hunting for tonight, it's never gonna happen.
"Oh, you know, when he attacked Miss White's building, looking for those X-eggs..So he acted alone, huh? I just wish he'd have contacted me first if he was looking for them. Didn't he realize that I would have been able to tell him exactly where they were? Or does he still not trust me?" One can almost see the steam shooting out of her ears. Yeah, she's mad again. Something that often seems to happen between the two of them..
What Kunzite says next has her thinking, however. "I know..Kukai wants to be a hero, and he wants to do good by helping others, but..He often sees the world in black and white. He wants to defeat the bad guys, but..."
She sighs, "Sometimes the line between good and evil can be blurred. And sometimes, people do the wrong thing for the right reasons. That doesn't always make them evil, just desperate and hopeless. Norie was the vampire girl at that battle, helping Riventon. I ran away partly because I couldn't stand fighting someone else who was forced to do terrible things because she had no choice..Because she was in a similar situation to me, and Kukai had offered to help her too..But he let her down.."
Utau's frown deepens as she ponders this. "If Virtue only sees the world in black and white heroes and villains, then I dont know if they could help me..But then, maybe it was foolish of me to think they could..Maybe I was going about it wrong all along. I just need to get stronger, then I can free my brother on my own.."
When Kunzite speaks about his brothers, Lunatic turns to him, arching a curious brow. If there's one thing she can understand, it's having a sibling she cares about. Would Kunzite also understand her plight? "You have brothers? And they helped them? How..? I mean, I suppose your situation probably was different from mine..You're probably just another good guy whom Virtue can understand, although I'm curious to know why you're not a part of Virtue in that case.."
The look that Kunzite gives Lunatic Charm when she sputters that 'is he crazy?' about Kukai is probably better than a yes. He did use the term 'idiot,' after all.
"I don't know if he acted alone. It wasn't a topic of conversation last time I saw Miss White; she was more irate about the warehouse than about anything else. So I imagine the damage may have been less than was described to you. I'll see what I can find out. Also, I suspect that as a general rule, if you start a sentence with 'didn't Kukai realize,' the answer will be 'no, he didn't.' He tends to think in direct moves, and forget he has resources."
He falls quiet, then, and lets Utau talk, watching her with that same lack of expression. Still enough that the smallest changes are visible: eyelids dropping a fraction at 'Virtue only sees the world in black and white,' a trifle more at 'I just need to get stronger.' Eyes opening to their previously normal degree when she turns back to him. Then lifted heavenward for a moment at 'just another good guy.'
"First," he says, "you need to stop thinking of Virtue as all having the same opinion. It's not a corporate entity. Every team that works within Virtue has a different approach, and a different viewpoint. Every individual on that team has her own perspective. The same story that will leave one of them in tears and determined to help, might leave another one eyeing the storyteller suspiciously and wondering whether they're being set up for a con. They don't agree on everything. They probably don't agree on most things. They're set up so that they don't have to."
He lifts a hand to adjust his hair; it's betrayed as a habit to buy himself a moment to think, because he doesn't have that hair anymore. Fingers run along what little's left, instead. "There were five of us," he says instead. "Not brothers by blood, but -- family. Tuxedo Kamen was one. The other four of us --" How can he put this in a way she'll understand, without delving into far too much history? "We made bad decisions. Wound up working for someone who could lock us into those bad decisions. Control us. Tuxedo Kamen convinced a part of Virtue that we might not be past saving. It took months, and a lot of risk and pain, but they were able to get each of us to the point where we could make a different choice again -- and then get us out before Beryl noticed and just killed us herself."
Lunatic Charm just nods in agreement to at least some of what Kunzite says. "Direct. Heh. That's the word I'm looking for." And now she's rambling about 'him' again, which makes her madder. And sadder. As evidenced by the clenching and unclenching of her fists, that doesnt really seem to match the sad look in her amethyst eyes.
"Well, maybe you're right, and I just have a skewed impression of them, because the members of Virtue I did meet were restricted to the Guardians, who, so far as I've noticed, are pretty narrow minded, impulsive, and wrapped up in a lot of personal, petty issues." Issues that she herself got caught up in by proxy. Issues that caused her much grief and pain.
"Well, I'd love for you to prove me wrong. However, enough about that..I'm more curious about these brothers of yours.."
Lunatic Charm tilts her head, actually stepping a little nearer to him as he speaks of experiences that almost seem to mirror her own. Perhaps, if only a little, Utau is starting to trust this man, more than she did when he first ran into her up here. "Family, huh?" she nods, "But I can understand what that's like, being trapped working for an evil organization, with no way out. Doing the bad things when you know you shouldn't. And yet...Virtue came through for you, in the end?"
Utau raises a curious brow at the mention of a 'Tuxedo Kamen'. "Oh, is he the tuxedo clad man who swooped in with you during that battle? And he is one of your...'brothers?' But then, what convinced you to go on a different parth? How did you get out of that evil organization in the end?"
There are things that Kunzite knows, here, that he's not talking about. Kukai lamented to him about the way people thought he thought, set against the way he thought he did; it might have cleared some things up for Utau -- but that discussion was more than half in confidence, and he doesn't speak. The Guardians ... there are things he suspects about them, about the way all of the Chara Bearers are affected by their powers. But those are their weaknesses, their almost literally internal problems. He doesn't speak to that, either, doesn't tangle himself in Utau's disputes with them.
Tuxedo Kamen, one of Kunzite's brothers -- he makes a gesture with one hand that explains nothing, but summons no magic. "He's the one I fought beside, yes. The word will do. It's the wrong one, but all of them are -- my brother, or my master, or my prince." The word he uses for 'master' is as much in the sense of teacher, or superior in skill, as it is anything else. "We wound up on that path twice. Once out of ignorance; we didn't know who we were bargaining with. Once out of choice; we thought that the gentler path Kamen advised was a fool's path, that he'd been deceived, that that route would leave us all dead or worse. We were wrong.
"One of us got out by fleeing quickly enough, by surrendering and flinging himself on the mercy of someone with the power to clear Beryl's magic from him. One was drawn out by people who cared about him, and then hid for weeks till we were ready to strike. One didn't trust the people trying to reach him, thought they'd get him killed; but Kamen came under Beryl's control, and met him again, and won his trust himself even though they didn't remember each other."
Kunzite glances aside at the Lunatic's shoulder, and offers Eru the smallest of smiles. "As for myself -- they had to kill me to get me out; that's why I looked so odd when you met me." Back to Charm. "I don't recommend that route, either. Particularly not for your brother. It wouldn't have worked if Beryl hadn't ripped my soul out first, and I haven't heard anything about that happening to him."
If one were to understand the true nature of chara-bearers, it would make Utau's two personas all the more frightenning. As if dealing with one guardian character isn't bad enough, she has to deal with a literal angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other! No wonder she can be so volatile at times!
But of course, Utau doesn't surrender this information towards the white-haired man. He may have earned a bit of her trust, but he's still a stranger as far as she's concerned. Enemy? Ally? She's still working on figuring that one out.
"I..See." Lunatic states simply of Tuxedo Kamen. What an odd name, what's his deal, anyways? But she's not about to voice her thoughts no that topic aloud, because it seems a bit of a personal question.
Kunzite then explains the various ways that his 'brothers' were freed from their captives, and she considers all of these in turn. "I see. So all but one of you, had to rely on the charity of others to free yourself from Beryl's evil control...But not all of us have such allies, or...People who care enough about us.."
That last part is stated bitterly as she stares down at her clenched fists, wrapping her wings protectively around herself. It seems none of those are viable choices for her, save possibly the last. And she'd rather not die for her cause.
"Fortunately, Easter is not as powerful as this Queen Beryl, however, they possesss a different kind of power. They own most of the major companies and chains, they have eyes and ears everywhere. And tons of money for research and development.."
"For instance, they produced a powerful warrior by the name of Death Rebel, who's taken on many opponents and shrugged 'em off like nothing. Cant say I was strong enough to take him on myself in order to free Ikuto, but it doesn't mean I'll give up either..I just..Dont have a lot of other choices. But I think I've already said too much.."
Lunatic Charm smirks as she steps to the edge of the rooftop, spreading her wings. "But I do want to know something, Kunzite. Whose side are you on? If you're not with Virtue, does that mean you wont try and stop me if I try and steal more X-eggs in order to free Ikuto?"
Not all of them had such allies. Kunzite gives her a level look. "That's an interesting statement. Tuxedo Kamen offered Ikuto help, some time ago. He turned it down; he didn't want anyone else to get involved on his account. I understand that he's no longer in condition to make that sort of decision."
He shifts his stance, following Lunatic Charm's movement. "I can't answer your last question. I don't know what an X-egg is, let alone the consequences of stealing it. But if it's harmless, why should I care? If it's not, who's to say there isn't another way to free him?
"As for whose side I'm on? My prince's side. Always." Still that level tone, there, no different from any of the rest of their conversation. But in those last few words, just for a moment, the steel under it shows. "He made an offer that's still open. He can't carry it out himself just now. But I can, so long as he doesn't call me away. And for some reason -- we both have a particular grudge against groups that coerce obedience."
Lunatic Charm looks about ready to fly away, although she pauses a moment, listening, and quite surprised to hear what Kunzite says about Ikuto. "Is that so...? I suppose it's hard for people like us to feel like we can trust anyone.."
She sighs. "Ikuto probably felt as I did, that I would be hurt if he reached out to someone for help, and vice versa. Even I refused to trust anyone, right up until I met Kukai. But I guess things between us are different now. I'm not even sure if he still wants to help me, and I've been waiting for so long to hear from him, but.."
She shakes her head, "No, forget it. Perhaps you should ask him, or one of the other Guardians more about X-eggs. I..Have to go. I've wasted enough time as it is."
Lunatic glances only briefly at him one more time - and there is confusion and desperation in her eyes as she does so. A part of her wants to hang on just a little longer, hoping that there truly is another way, that Kukai and the others really will help her. But she's also spurred by desperation, and things haven't improved for a long time.
"Til next time, Kunzite-san. I really hope we wont be enemies!" and with that, she leaps skywards, casting an eerie silouhette against the bright moon..