It's getting late, but that doesn't seem to have cracked the humidity at all, even if the temperature is back down to something vaguely sane now that the sun is down. This chunk of downtown tends to be quiet quite this late, few enough people roaming about now that the stores are closed and its just people coming home.
Not so very long after the texts, Naru emerges out of the private stairwell to the apartment above the store. After one has been running for a while, there is a distinct lack of self conscious in favour of the comfort of spandex capris. There's a looser tank top over the spandex at least, although the deference to the humidity makes the little spots where her skin is still angry at Shiniko's frosty embers hard to hide.
Naru looks up from poking at her watch, something she doesn't wear day to day, and around to find where Kunzite is lurking, or soon will be if he's not already. There's no bright smile for him tonight, just a solid facade of calm.
There are entire lists of things to do and not to do when running at night. Almost every one of them includes 'wear reflective or brightly-colored clothing.' Kazuo, apparently, disagrees. His arms are bare, granted, and that white mane might serve for visibility to traffic all on his own; but for the rest, he's dressed in black.
She knows by now where to look for him, though, at the edge of a patch of light where he's just visible against both bright and dark. And yes, he's already there, studying her as she comes clear of the building.
"Interesting night," is all he says. Something she can pick up or let drop as she chooses.
There is some sort of law of the universe that makes running clothes, and most especially shoes, for women range from day glo to mind boggling dayglo. If nothing else, Naru's shoes will ensure that they are found, possibly from orbit.
"I figured if I stayed home to paint, there'd be a text message or a ping. Running seemed a better bet." Naru comments as she sets off.
Naru's neighbourhood, she has a preferred route, clearly. Based on the solid pace she's started with, she hasn't cooled down all that much after the fight, or she'll pay for it tomorrow.
Not Naru's usual reaction to an incident, no. Generally, she stays calm. Having enough negative emotion to need to work it off rather than risk it channeling itself is ... new.
Kunzite says nothing about this, not now. He reaches up to tie back his hair as she's talking, that's all, the same way he does when he's lending Makoto (or Naru) a hand in the kitchen. And he paces her, thereafter. Following the path she chooses is a natural way of keeping from outdistancing her, and lets him keep more of his attention on general awareness.
After all. If she's there might be an attack if she paints, there's a nonzero chance that something not created by her will pick up on the same thing. And twice in a day has happened before.
They'll talk later, most likely. When she's burned enough of it off.
Letting Naru choose the path also helps to mitigate the reality that it takes two or three of Naru's strides to keep up with one of Kunzite's.
It's a quiet run, for a healthy chunk of time. Fortunately, quiet between them is a normal and natural and comfortable thing, and that reality isn't changed by the fact that this quiet is broken by the sound of feet on pavement rather than the sound of pages turning, or pencil on paper.
Anything that might have a thought to inturrupt their run either is already busy being obnoxious elsewhere, or re-evaluates their life choices when presented with having to get through Kunzite to get to Naru, and shows a significant improvement in life choices by deciding that perhaps it isn't such a good idea after all.
Normal. Natural. Comfortable.
All of these words occasionally have nonstandard definitions, and that all three of them might at the moment is really not a vast concern to the pair. Other people can keep their own meanings to themselves.
There's an art in this, too, after all, if an art where the medium is transience itself.
Still. Human bodies have their limitations, and over time, by slow stages, more of Kunzite's attention is transferred to Naru -- keeping watch as the meters and their thousands pass by, taking advantage of passing streetlights to watch for signs of tiring or strain.
Rhythm. Cadence. Movement as art.
Naru's form and stamina has improved dramatically over the last number of months, letting her movements look normal. Natural. Comfortable. Still, in tiny measures, she slows her pace. The reality of emotional energy finally burning down, and quite how long a day it has been emerges.
Eventually, Naru is down to just walking. A far more reasonable place for conversation to happen.
"When you next meet Shiniko, don't prove Jiaying right by destroying her, please." Naru doesn't exactly open with small talk.
Walking, and likely long enough walking for her breathing to be even. To carry her through a sentence that long. She's had time to think that one out, too.
And it's not a sentence Kunzite was expecting from her.
"Unlikely on multiple fronts." He doesn't sound concerned about the possibility, granted. "First, Shiniko tends to absent herself quickly. Second, our powers are too similar for mine to be at their best against her. Third, there is evidence she may be cursed or possessed, in which case the ideal method for dealing with her is to lift the curse or remove the possession. Endymion would be disappointed, otherwise. I've spoken with Jiaying about it. Advised her to try to isolate likely causes; she seems to have had some social contact with Shiniko, which gives her a better position to attack the problem from."
"She does. She wasn't even there." Naru agrees, as they walk. "I'm pretty sure she's cursed or possessed, and I agree. On all fronts." Her voice is quick, staccato really. There certainly has been thinking.
"I'm not sure what social contact anymore." Naru continues. "But apparently me in a fight, means that you guys as a whole will turn up and /somehow/ turn into entirely different people bent upon not lifting curses, removing possessions or generally y'know, doing what you guys /always/ do."
Kazuo's shrug might be visible in her peripheral vision. "She's a fox," he says. "It's in her nature to give offense without caring that she does; to take offense where none was intended; to despise any authority or order she has not herself chosen; to view the world as an alternating sea of things to which she's entitled and things that are likely to hunt her down. We don't fit in either category. She doesn't know what to do with us."
"It was a straw." Naru acknowledges after a few more paces. "Last straw for my patience today, apparently." She takes a slow breath in, much eaiser to do while walking than while running. "Alex last week, Lacrima and Jiaying today." She glances over towards Kazuo, a sidelong look before back out where they're walking. "At least I just walked away."
"The wiser course, in the long run. If less immediately satisfying."
Kazuo falls to silence for a little ways, perhaps a third of a block. At last, he says, "I haven't dealt with the both of them at the same time for long. Neither of them thinks like a human, and in different directions. Trying to adjust to both at once would be ... difficult."
Alex he does not mention. Which makes it almost a certainty that the name was not missed.
"I didn't try and adjust to either of them. I mostly worked with Amu to deal with the bats." Naru takes another breath, slower yet again, calmer. "Lacrima was justified if misinformed. She didn't yet know I had any skills at all, so she was trying to protect me. Valid."
There is a distinct sense of thinking aloud in the way Naru's voice pauses and starts again, ticking off points as she speaks them and then silence as she processes again. "I get angry way easier than I used to."
"Do you?" Kazuo asks. "Or do you only let it surface more often, now?"
"Hunh." Naru considers that a moment. An option that she clearly hadn't entirely put forth.
"That's hard to say." Naru decides after a few more paces. Stopping is not in the cards, clearly, walking is a cool-down. Or there's still comfort in the movement. "Both, I think. No. I got pissed at the Wraiths the first time, enough to drive one off. So no, not more, but easier?"
"It's still a question," Kazuo says. Scanning ahead of them rather than looking toward her, watching out of habit for shadowed corners and faint rooftop shadows. "If it's your emotions surfacing more easily, that's in some ways to be expected, and something that can be understood and brought to a degree under your control. If it's something else, that might be more troublesome for you in the long run. Such things can often compound."
"An interesting question." Naru nods at his words and then is quiet for a few paces, and then a few more. "More interesting in that I can easily come up all sorts of handy excuses for why my emotions .. why angry and frustrated and cranky and those emotions surface more easily now than before." She adds after a moment. "I don't think I'm possessed or cursed this time, nor full of dark energy. So that's something. I still have control."
"Then it's possible you may only have become more honest with yourself about your reactions. Less willing to compromise without question. Still a danger, but a danger that is wholly your own, and with the chance for reward in the long run."
That may, perhaps, be easy for Kazuo to say. Has Naru ever so much as seen him angry? Or anything more than 'mildly annoyed at Nephrite'?
"Thank you, Mister Marble Statue." Naru comments dryly, as she glances sidelong to him, a touch of a smirk hitting her lips. "Unfair to just blame the Wraiths wholly, I suppose, hmm?" She comments after a moment.
Kazuo's not looking back at her, but his expression holds the shadow of a mirror to her own all the same. "Clay statue, thank you. Marble had the requisite carbon content, but not in a form particularly easy to reorganize into amino acids."
Three paces to consider that question. "Not impossible that they were responsible, in some fashion. Not impossible that this is the equivalent of healing tissue, either. I don't think even Endymion could sort out the difference right now."
"Marble's got the right colour for your hair." Naru protests lightly.
"Endy tends to imply that there should be no functional difference between the new ones, and the ones that remained. One, that remained." Naru comments, glancing absently though the bars of a closed shop window. "I suspect he's guessing with optimism, but I don't know if I want to feel a difference, or if there is. I am in no way, shape or form objective in this." She lets a couple more steps of quiet pass and then notes. "It's a convenient excuse, but a lazy one."
"Pyroxene, not carbonate," is the answer. "If I were a marble constituent, I'd likely be an invisible sniper with an affinity for seawater and shells. Entirely different."
Teasing aside, he considers the other matter more seriously. "Or perhaps he merely thinks that you would have approached the matter the same way he would have. He'd integrate that kind of thing with no question, once he was certain it would achieve the results he wanted. You have a different aesthetic. What makes you angry, now? Beyond people attempting to protect you against your will?"
/Entirely/ different. Of course.
"It's not even precisely protection against my will." Naru starts, although she stops again, and has to think about it, sifting through and reorganizing thoughts and emotions into something properly considered. "Sometimes against my will is valid. That being said, implying that I cannot assist in my own protection, I suppose? That I should passively wait to be rescued like a damsel in distress. Which is nothing /new/." Naru points out. "I balked at that until I got chipped like a stray cat. Invading my head without permission, that'll piss me off in a heart beat. Implying that my friends are thugs, even if Alex proves that right about half the time."
"Still wound up in protecting. Yourself. Your friends." Kazuo reaches aside to trail his fingers against a rough concrete wall, as if that, too, were somehow part of the conversation. "And in being able to contribute, and having that ability acknowledged. It seems reasonable that you might be more easily roused on that subject, lately. Your ability is increasing. Having it slighted will irritate you more, so; and may continue to do so until you are satisfied with yourself. One way or another."
"Are you satisfied with yourself?" Naru asks after a pause to let those words settle into her thoughts.
The pause before he answers is not even half a breath too long; not even a quarter. "In some ways. Anyone who is satisfied with himself in all ways is a fool. But I know what I can do, and I know a number of ways to use it, and I know my own competence and limits with them; that's enough that others' estimations may at times be abrasive, but not infuriating."
"I'm glad." Naru answers to that. Another slow breath. Calming. Soothing. The sort she wasn't taking earlier. She's quiet again, thoughtful, lost in her own head for a little while. "Thank you, by the by, for coming for a run with me."
That doesn't win her an answer out loud. Just a brief glance her direction, and after a moment, a brief nod.
There may perhaps be a fraction of a second in which it occurs to him that that's not so much more communicative than Alex, but he doesn't actually do anything to solve that problem.