It's a fine afternoon in Tokyo. Certainly it's getting colder--sweater weather, even! But colder doesn't mean uglier, and Ami is certainly not afraid of the cold! She's texted all of her friends, inviting them to a lovely little cafe she knows down by the waterfront, to share dinner after school.
While waiting, Ami is seated on the ground in front of the statue of four dolphins, dressed in a pair of bluejeans with ballet flats, and an orange-and-yellow striped sweater with purple sleeves. Cute, right? She's got a book in her hands that deals with the topic of planetary phase alignment and is dutifully reading with glasses on her nose, when her phone makes a cute little beeping noise. "Hnh?" Ami responds curiously. Placing a bookmark in her light reading (anyone else would probably call it a textbook), Ami digs into her leather shoulderbag and digs out her cell phone.
Tumblr update!
Ami glances around like she's worried someone might catch her looking, and when she thinks she's secure and alone, she hastily clicks the phone to bring up the image, then makes the biggest doe-eyed face. "So cute," she squeaks out quietly as she spies a picture of an alleycat living in a box with a trio of kittens. "I hope someone takes care of them."
Mamoru 'Aggravating' Chiba's been just floating on the edge of brooding for the past couple days, and he and Usagi haven't been quite as joined at the hip as usual-- though when they are around each other they've been just as determinedly and casually tactile as ever-- and today when Ami invited everyone down to the harbor for dinner, he looked actively uncomfortable but didn't actually complain.
He actually hasn't complained about anything at all lately.
Right now he's walking along with Rei, glasses on and nerd-dar keeping him from walking into anything as his attention's on his phone's screen. He is slightly less broody than he was a minute ago, because as they were walking he spotted an alleycat living in a box with her kittens, and just had to crouch there for a moment, holding up a finger, to take a picture.
But now they're coming up on the designated meetingplace, and he pockets his phone, chewing on his lip.
Rei Hino is walking alongside Mamoru Chiba, also quiet. She takes a moment to glance at the kittens, go "awww", and even wants to reach out to pet them...
... Wait, something's wrong.
In the time it took for Mamoru Chiba to take the picture and upload it, something disturbs Rei. She gasps, softly. Mamoru can probably only hear it because the two of them are huddled around the same box of kittens.
When she stands back up, having forgotten about petting kittens, she looks at Mamoru and says, "... something's wrong. I don't know what... but we should have our guard up just in case."
Now that Rei knows that Mamoru actually has a henshin that can take a hit (and she has seen it take serious hits before) she's a bit less worried about having him around danger.
She continues walking down the way towards Ami's meeting place, though now a bit more wary.
Usagi slumps down the road toward the fountain Ami asked everyone to meet her at. (Unlike Ami's sensible attire, Usagi is wearing a pink sweater and...short green shorts. Because she has a coat and if nothing else, lap blanket!)
She isn't slumping because she's going to see her friends.
She's slumping because she's still sore over that whole White fight. (Even though Ami helped a lot with that right after!)
And if she's going to get through this without worrying her friends, she must get in a healthy dose of Sulk!
As she draws closer, she spots Rei and Mamoru.
Her steps get quicker until she is in a dead run.
As sulky as she is, and as much as he's (unknowingly) the reason why she's sulky, MamoHugs are still a part of her balanced breakfast. (Even though it's almost dinner.)
So, full speed, Usagi crashes into him, arms tight around his waist, and within the span of two seconds she has gone from Sulky Tense to Content and Relaxed.
There's even a contented sigh!
"That wasn't the thing I was worried about," says Rei, "Unless Usagi's suddenly started giving evil hugs."
The alleycat and trio of kittens are indeed cute! Perfectly framed in the box, perfectly caught mid-tumble, with one kitten's paw on another kitten's head, and three sets of huge eyes in tiny fluffy heads. Mama Alleycat is less fluffy and more crankily resigned, but that just makes it cuter, and her eyes are caught and illuminated from within by a flash of light. Perfectly, luminescently green.
Or is that perfectly, luminescently gold?
It's surprisingly hard to tell, and surprisingly difficult to look away from trying to find out. There's a steady draw back toward the screen of Ami's phone, pulling at her eyes and her attention, pulling at something else, something that makes the day seem a little colder. And, at the same time, that draw makes the added chill seem a little less relevant.
Oh. That's what color Mama Alleycat's eyes are, in the photo. The same color as the kittens' eyes. Perfectly, luminescently dark, a blackness deep enough to fall into forever.
Makoto is running late. Fortunately, long legs take long strides; dressed in jeans and a fluffy pale pink cable-knit sweater, breath puffing lightly in the crisp air, she hurries along at an almost-jog toward the place that Ami's text said to meet.
She gets within earshot just in time to catch most, but not all, of what Rei just said, and makes a phenomenally baffled face at the mental image that comes to mind. "What would an evil hug be?" she wonders aloud, looking about between her friends. "I don't think there's any such thing."
A few weeks ago, Luna might have been extremely pleased with herself for Usagi's sulk regarding Mamoru. Obviously this just proves that she'd been right all along. Now, however, after so many weeks living with Ami, the little black cat is more worried that she has upset Usagi by being upset with Usagi for so long.
As Ami gets drawn deeper and deeper into the picture, she hardly notices the furry shape that had been reclining against her back peering around her. Luna watches Usagi rush across the square to hug Mamoru, and there is a moment where the little cat seems uncertain whether to rush out and apologize, or be quietly irritated. Ami doesn't notice the hug at all. She's deeply invested in catpictures. Deeply invested in those eyes that seem to draw her into their infinite depths.
"They really do look cute together," Luna grudgingly admits. "Oh, Ami, I shouldn't have been so upset with her. Do you think she'll forgive me?"
It's the voice, so very near, and the call of her name that draws Ami back out of those infinite wells of darkness. "Hnh?" Ami asks, blinking for the first time since she opened the picture. Ami somehow manages to tear her gaze away from the picture to look down at Luna, then follow the cat's gaze towards Usagi and Mamoru. A smile crosses her features--a wicked and knowing smile--and then she closes her phone and drops it back in her handbag before scooping the cat up into her arms.
"Hey, everyone!" Ami calls as she rolls to her feet and rushes to greet her friends.
And anyone actually /paying attention/ to Ami -- instead of, say, to Usagi's crash into Mamoru -- would have been able to see a flicker of something around her eyes in the moments before she pulled her attention away from the phone: a faint haze of shifting colors, green and gold and shadows.
Mamoru tenses when Rei speaks up, and he widens his senses-- then braces for impact.
A second later and he's laughing, folding over Usagi to return the hug. Two minutes total to go from on the edge of brooding to perfectly happy, even if it's just for a moment. "Usako," he says, smiling into her hair.
Then Rei, joking as she is, reminds him that there's still something wrong; he squishes Usagi a little as he looks across toward Ami and frowns, and then he straightens up, finding her hand to lace his fingers through it. Then there's Makoto jogging up and he says seriously to both of them, "Rei-chan says there's something wrong. I think we should go collect A--"
He breaks off as he glances up to look at Ami and Luna again, and his eyes narrow behind his glasses, which he reaches up to take off and pocket. Something was...
But she's already on her way over with Luna, and there's nothing wrong with her now. "Careful," is all he says.
Rei focuses on Ami when she sees her, since she was headed that way and her hairs are standing on end already. It doesn't look like Ami notices them at first, so drawn into... something, but that's no big deal.
Then Rei thinks she sees something dark around Ami's eyes...
Could she have imagined it? No, no Rei is not the kind of person who just imagines things like that.
She approaches Ami with a wary smile, waving widely in greeting.
"Hey, Ami-chan! How have you been? Are you... um... feeling okay?"
Something is very wrong. Rei isn't pleased. The fact that something evil is latching onto one of her friends only makes her more angry.
And just like that, she went from content to happy! (She really is far too easy to please. Just give her a MamoHug and she'll be happy for hours!)
Her fingers lace through his, and she looks between him, Makoto, and Rei in confusion.
And, uh oh! Luna and Ami and...
Rei's talking to Ami, and though she doesn't leave Mamoru's side, she waves.
It's not quite tentative.
"So, ah, cafe?" Maybe, hopefully, things aren't as people think they're...seeming to...be?
But still, just in case, she lowers the wave to gesture her guardian to come to her. "Luna! I haven't seen you in awhile!"
Makoto was mostly looking at Usagi and Mamoru, and that brief little flicker escapes her notice; as Ami approaches them with Luna in tow, Mako greets her friend with her usual easy smile.
But--
Her brows draw together in vague concern at the way Rei and Mamoru seem to be on edge. Suddenly uneasy, she glances from one to the other before Usagi mentions the reason they were meeting up and Mako nods, looking back toward Ami again. "Is this all of us, or are we waiting for Minako-chan or anyone else?"
"USAGI-CHAAAAAAAN!" Luna cries as she leaps out of Ami's arms towards the other girl. "I'm so sorry, please don't hate me!"
Ami smiles at Luna's crying antics, but doesn't comment on them. Instead she looks up to Rei and tilts her head. "Really good, actually," she replies with a nod. "I met ... another friend, earlier today, who is off to try and solve a lot of problems she caused. I'm really proud of her. And I visited another friend in the hospital. It's been a really good day, but now I am very hungry." Ami leans into give Rei, and then Makoto, hugs. She'd hug Usagi, but cat.
"Minako-chan didn't say she was coming," Ami continues once hugs are distributed. Mamoru doesn't get a hug, just a smile and a wiggle of her fingers. "The restaurant's just a block away, so if you all don't mind walking, we can head there, now. I'm really hungry."
It doesn't entirely rid his face of its troubled look, but Mamoru returns Ami's smile and holds Usagi's hand a little tighter. "Yes, let's." Then he pauses and glances sidelong at Usagi as they start walking, considering whether to tug her back to see the kittens in the alley now or show her later.
No! No. Later. Strange things are afoot at the Ichi-no-Hashi park, and he says mildly to no one in particular, "Are you hungrier than Usa, Ami-chan?"
Rei holds out her arms and brings Ami in for a hug. When she pulls away she takes a moment to look her over. Nothing -seems- wrong, now.
She glances at the others, shrugging, and then says, "Alright, let's go!"
Rei is still a bit unsettled by all of this. The -lack- of feeling, after something so noticable is a little disturbing of itself. She hasn't quite made the connection to the phone yet.
"I'm glad to hear you've had such a good day so far, Ami-chan!" says Rei.
She scratches the back of her head, "Whatever it was that I felt... I don't feel it right now. Strange... it's like it was only there for a moment."
Still, something was wrong with Ami's eyes. It's putting Rei on edge.
Usagi catches Luna in her free arm and hugs her hard and tight.
She didn't realize until just now how much she missed the cat!
"I could never!" She assures her.
Luna continues to sniffle as she curled around Usagi's shoulders, tickling the girl's neck with her whiskers.
"Your day sounds like it was fun, Ami-chan!"
She giggles a bit at the tickling, hand still snuggly wrapped around another.
Then she flashes Mamoru a Look. "Please. I doubt there's anyone who can be hungrier than I am."
She shrugs at Makoto. "I don't know who else is supposed to be coming."
She hopes they don't have to wait.
Her tummy roars at the thought.
Back a ways, well behind Rei and Mamoru, there's a boy about Mamoru's own age wandering down the street. Aimless-looking. Lazy sweeps of eyes covering the other passersby. Hands in pockets, the picture of teenage insolence. There is absolutely nothing to mark him out from the crowd, except that he happens to be absently watching the little gathering when Luna leaps for Usagi. And he twitches, hard, just once, and his expression settles into a headachy scowl.
But he's a ways back, and doing nothing else whatsoever to draw attention to himself.
Not like Ami's phone, or Mamoru's, both of which are starting to be ... easy to dwell on. It'd be so quick to take another look. Wouldn't it?
"You felt something?" Ami asks Rei curiously, keenly aware that the priestess's 'feelings' are often as accurate as a weather vane at telling the direction of magical wind. She grins at Mamoru briefly, then shrugs. "I doubt anyone could be hungrier than Usagi-chan," she parrots her friend, "But I am very hungry." Ami starts leading her friends towards the cafe.
Did her phone just beep? Ami reaches down into the pouch and pulls it back out, then glances at her friend to make sure they aren't looking at what she's looking at. She slides the lock over and, oh look, there are those cats again! So cute! So cute. So ... cute. She slows down with every other step as the cats consume her once again.
"Fine, fine," Mamoru laughs at Usagi's protest, both hands his own again now that Usagi's holding a desperately apologetic Luna. That means both hands go in his coat pockets, and his glasses come out of one and his phone comes out of the other, and glasses go on and phone's unlocked. It's still on his tumblr app's activity screen; he sees a reblog from someone who always has amazing tags and thumbs it to load it up.
Before he even gets to the tags, though, he can't help glancing at the picture again, and the rest of the world fades out by increments. He doesn't notice he's walking slower. He doesn't notice when all the girls, with shorter legs than his, have passed him. He doesn't notice when Ami's slowed down ahead of him, stopping between himself and the rest of the Senshi. He doesn't notice when he himself comes to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
If something in him is railing against the total absorption of his attention, he doesn't notice that either.
There's that haze again. Flashes of shining green, of consuming gold, the colors of the bright tapestry of proteins that gives cats their nightsight. But most of all, a gathering shadow about Ami's eyes, about Mamoru's, as they slow and stop. Intense enough for the darkness itself to seem radiant. A fainter, answering darkness shimmers up from the little screens in their hands, as if extending questing tendrils in their directions.
And there's Rei's feeling, all right, stronger than when the photograph was taken. Not that she particularly needs it anymore to point at Something Wrong.
Rei follows along towards the cafe, thinking that maybe whatever it was has passed. She's not completely settled... just because she can't feel it doesn't mean it's not a threat! ... but also if she can't find it then she can't find it.
Then Ami takes her phone out, and Rei's attention immediately goes to her. She was looking at her phone when they came up to her, right? Rei sneaks up behind Ami, looking over her shoulder. What is she looking at?
Ami slows, and Rei slows behind her. Mamoru starts to look at his phone, and Rei's attention goes to him, too. "What are you two looking at?" she asks, bluntly. Maybe a bit loudly, too. Worry is making her voice a special kind of tense.
The feeling rises in her gut, the haze appears in their eyes. That's all Rei needs to see.
"Evil spirits, BEGONE!" shouts Rei. Ofudas for Ami and Mamoru, each. And their phones. Look paper is really easy to carry and she has a lot of those, okay?
On each contact, the darkening haze sparks into the colors of flame, dissipates in smoke. The human beings might be staggered by the purification. Phones -- well. Phones reboot. It's what they do when they're shocked that hard. But not quite before the people looking at those phones absorb a particular piece of information, though it might take them a moment to process it well enough to react to it.
The picture's been up for a whole couple of minutes.
Eighteen reblogs and counting.
Usagi is noticing the MamoVoid next to her when she almost bumps into Ami. Looking back and between the two, she gets a very distinct feeling that she's somehow been transported into some scary movie, and this is the part at the beginning that foreshadows the doom coming their way and--
When Rei casts her Ofudas, Usagi yelps! And then she's hiding behind the miko. And then she tugs Makoto closer. For her protection! Yes! Safety in numbers! No other reason, promise!
"A-are you guys okay?!"
"Rei-chan?!" Makoto yelps when the ofuda come out, instinctively angling herself with arm stretched out to cover Usagi even as the blonde tugs at her. It takes her a couple seconds to process what's just happened, and then her look of wide-eyed alarm turns immediately into one of concern.
"What happened?" It's a quick shift through a spectrum of reactions, settling into hard-eyed business mode. Mako's about two inches from going in search of whatever-it-is to punch it if only she can figure out where - but not before she's sure her friends are all right. "Ami-chan, Mamoru-san--?"
Ofuda to the face! Is that twice in one month, or a little over that? Too hard to tell, the days are just packed.
Mamoru's a little staggered; not nearly so badly as he was in the Fruits Parlor, but as the paper drifts from his face, spent, his hand's up on his head and he's regaining his footing, staring at his dead phone in shock. "K-kuso--" he trails off, then looks up at the others, blue eyes wide behind his glasses. "Eighteen... no no no, it's rolling," he says frantically, waiting for the screen to turn into his lock screen from the white background with the apple on it, uselessly shaking his phone.
"No no no deleting it won't even..." he says to himself, voice starting to edge on something close to panic. "Ami-chan! If it's doing that to everyone who looks at it, that's not even the biggest-- those are only the people who hit reblog right away! I have thirty thousand followers--"
The screen comes up and he opens tumblr up again, activity screen refreshing. Scrolling down and down, there's only notes for that picture. He hastily covers the top half of his screen with one hand before hitting the screen that'll bring up the post, so he can't see the picture but he can see the trash icon; delete, even if it's too late to stop the already-reblogged from being further reblogged. "I can't stop it you have to stop it! Tumblr is possessed!"
The sharp crack of an ofuda to the face startles Ami, and she staggers backwards a step. "Hnh?!" she asks, confused and uncertain of herself. Her phone is rebooting. What was she looking at? Oh right, cute c--
Ami drops her phone into her bag instantly and dips her fingers in. Out comes a teal coloured tablet computer with a golden inlay of the astrological sign for Mercury around the camera. She doesn't even say a word as she plonks down cross-legged onto the ground and startsd pulling up her programs.
It is, perhaps, a little terrifying that Ami Mizuno has on standby access to a network of hundreds of personal computers the world over, all tied to a virus crafted on a computer that has no MAC address, and isn't tied into any conventional internet. The application she uses looks entirely custom, as she sends her swarm of compromised home computers out to begin taking down tumblr systematically from every wealthy country in the world.
"Okay," she says a moment later, "Tumblr's going to be offline, but they use a really good anti-dosing system. We've got thirty minutes. Maybe an hour. And then it's going to be back up." She looks up to Mamoru uncertainly. "I ... could try and hack tumblr."
Rei watches as her ofudas fall, and Mamoru and Ami spring into action. Well, at least those two are back in their right minds again. She still isn't sure what's going on.
"Alright, so... you've deleted the picture, and tumblr is down. From what I felt and what we saw, there wasn't any threat as long as you weren't looking at it."
She rests her chin on her hands. "Still... I wonder how the picture got cursed to begin with. I don't think I know anything about excorcising .pngs..."
"Maybe... it's something about the subject?"
Rei's eyes go back the way she came, looking for that box of kittens. She didn't feel anything wrong about them... but...
Phew! It looks like neither have been possessed! (Can you be possessed through the phone? Oh THANKS brain! Let's just add THAT to the list of nightmare fodder!)
She sidles around Rei and tries to peek at Mamoru's phone. "What? Tumblr?" Wait, he has a Tumblr?
Wait. Possessed?! Tumblr is actually possessed?!
She looks over at Ami and blinks. "Well, I don't think the users will think anything too weird is going on. After all, Tumblr goes down like...every other day?" A bit of an exaggeration, but that's what it feels like!
TUMBLR IS POSSESSED?!
Is she obvious with how she's shivering because WHY IS SOCIAL MEDIA GETTING POSSESSED WHO WOULD DO THAT THE FIEND!!!
Back down the street, the box of kittens is cast in a heavy shadow that it hadn't been before.
Also back down the street, maybe halfway between the senshi and the box, the teenager with his hands in his pockets glances over the group again -- except Usagi, with Luna -- and focuses for a lingering moment on Ami's sudden trip to the ground, with something teal and rectangular and a familiar size.
(Somewhere else, a pale figure considers rates of return, and the way that they're suddenly falling; considers what his half-possessed spy is reporting; calmly reaches to begin to collect that first great burst of energy, less than he'd hoped for but still more than he'd invested, and set it aside to help pacify his Queen. It's scraps of information that he intended to win, anyhow; the energy is merely a bonus.)
"Did you just--" starts Mamoru, looking slowly down from his phone at Ami, staring in shock.
He hands Usagi his now-safe phone, a little pale but significantly calmer. "She just DDOS'd Tumblr with no preparation," he says reverently to Rei, and Usagi is so close and he's shaken so it's clearly every reason in the world for him to slip his arms around her waist, shoulder-cat and all, right? Right. But his eyes are still bright with worry as he looks to Rei again, and then Makoto, Ami's uncertain look at him weighing heavily on his attention. "It could be the subject. But if it's the subject, maybe-- maybe you should take some precautions before checking out the kittens?"
He looks down at Ami, expression a little pinched. "You'd have to do it when it's back up, right? Maybe we can fix this in half an hour and you won't need to..."
Makoto, it must be said, is only halfway following some of this stuff - but she's gotten the important parts, and she looks from Usagi to Ami to Mamoru with grave eyes. "We'll check it out," she says immediately, in a tone that makes it sound a lot more like '*I'll* check it out.' "Where should we look?"
Luna squawks a little at the sudden arm, but this is okay. She just shifts and moves to another spot.
That this other spot just so happens to be Mamoru's shoulder, well.
(Also, this will likely earn her brownie points with Usagi!)
For Usagi's part, she looks at Mamoru with concern for a moment before snuggling against him. And it's mostly to provide Comfort! (She's growing as a person.)
His phone is now in her coat pocket.
Usagi has no idea what Ami had done, but she knows enough to know it must have been impressive!
"Is there a way to...well, since this picture is...probably dark? Is there a way to replace it with...light?"
Rei looks at each of her friends in turn, and then back to the shadowy box of kittens. Something has to be -done- about this.
Mamoru states what Ami has done. Rei says, "Yeah I know right? I'm glad she's on our side."
She speaks in a voice that's low enough to be heard by her friends but not so loud that others can casually overhear. "I'm going to take a closer look at those cats. I don't know if I'll get attacked or not, but... yeah, I think I should go henshin first."
As Makoto asks, Rei says, "From what I saw, it was the kittens we found just before you showed up. I'll show you."
Rei does as promised, ducking around a corner, vanishing into a doorway. Once she's sure she's unseen, she henshins, and comes back out again. She leaps up to a roof, walks towards the opposite edge, and jumps back down and lands near the kittens.
She can get a closer look this way, anyways.
Ami glances back down at the computer, then looks up at Mamoru. "Err, maybe," she says. "I could probably get in under my own DDOS, but that would make it easier to take down my network in the future." In other words, she wouldn't be able to do this quite so casually again. At least not for a day or two.
Putting the Mercury Computer back in her bag, Ami rolls back to her feet, then follows her friends towards the curious kittens, not even noticing the boy. She's too busy dwelling on how to get the evil out of a series of ones and zeroes.
Awww, the kittens! The box is still there, and the kittens are still there, crawling over each other and Mama Alleycat. Not so visible, now, with that shadow cloaking them; they meld into it till it's hard to tell which body is which. One of the kittens blinks reflective eyes up at Sailor Mars, glints of light appearing and disappearing in the darkness, and squeaks at her. Which makes Mama Alleycat open lazy eyes and lift her head to look up at her.
And lift her head.
And still lifting her head, absorbing her shadows back into her body, growing -- the kittens are growing in size, too, their coats turning black, then turning that deep, radiant dark, their eyes deeper still, devouring any light that falls on them. Till Mama Alleycat is an alleycat the size of a panther, the weight of a human, and the three kittens that crowd around her eighty or ninety pounds each. The shadows are gone, absorbed into the youma, except for filaments of darkness that weave twisting lines (indirect and rerouting like the Internet connections fighting to push through Mercury's attack) connecting the mother-demon to her kittens. Four tails lash in unison, and the gesture tosses four balls of ghostly green-gold fire toward Sailor Mars, in case she wants to get a closer look at that.
That will probably answer Makoto's question, anyhow.
The teenager freezes for a moment, turning to look back at the Senshi facing the cat-youma; starts to glance back toward Usagi and company, and catches another full-on glimpse of Luna and her crescented head. Twitch. He looks away hastily, and starts on the better part of valor, making tracks for the nearest business with an open door.
Cat on his shoulder now, Mamoru reaches one hand up instinctively to scritch Luna under the chin even as he bends a little further to whisper next to Usagi's ear, "Keep that in mind."
Then he straightens up and takes her hand again, pulling her away around the corner. "Come on, let's get out of here--"
And then there's that flare of not-light back in the direction of the alley, and he grimaces and henshins as soon as they're where no one's looking. Thankfully for the Luna on his shoulder, the high-schooler's transformation doesn't generally involve much in the way of spinning or disco lights; it's just a seamless shift between steps taken.
"Go shine a light on the darkness," he says to Usagi in a low voice, leaning in to kiss her really quick. "I'll be in the wings, watching your back."
"Right." With a sharp nod, Makoto takes Rei's example, finding a spot to duck into out of line of sight long enough to transform so that she can follow Sailor Mars to the spot.
Questions thus, indeed, answered.
As those balls of ghostly flame go flying at Mars, Sailor Jupiter's response is immediate-- "Flower Hurricane!" She throws out both hands as she cries out, scattering petals into the wind that surges up and out from around her to blow the projectiles back toward the youma and engulf the cat-things in a barrage of swirling color and dizzying perfume.
Mars smiles down at the kittens as she approaches them, leaning over to get a closer look at them. So cute! Then things start taking a dark turn. First there is the literal, actual darkness, which causes Rei some confusion. Then there's the strange, shining eyes, after which she decides to stand up straight. When the cats start growing... and growing... and growing, Mars starts to backpedal.
Well... at least they found what they were looking for, right?
"Guys!" she shouts out. She's not really looking at them in particular, but the meaning is pretty clear: PLZ HALP!
The green and gold fire is launched at her, and she raises her arms to brace for the impact. Fortunately Jupiter came along, and Mars is spared from that pain. "Thanks, Jupiter."
She focues back on the cats, and points at them. "Bad kitty!" she shouts. "If you wont behave, then in the name of Mars, I'll chastise you!"
She holds her hands out in front of her, palms forward, launching her own firespheres in response.
Luna is NOT tilting up her chin and pressing into the scritches! Just like she's not purring!
She so is.
Usagi nods and follows him into the alley, and after the kiss (and heart flutter) she's smiling at him as she turns to henshin herself.
Everything is going smoothly until the end.
It's silly how common place the movements of her henshin has become. How every move is memorized into an almost calming dance.
This time, though.
"Usagi-chan?" Luna's standing on Kamen's shoulder.
As she stops, her fingers press against her bare forehead, tiara having been broken a few nights ago, and she spins to face Tuxedo Kamen, her eyes wide and frantic.
"I can't, it's still not-- how do I--"
She presses the palms of her hands against her eyes for a moment before takes a deep breath and rushes out of the alleyway. "Right, then."
She can do this.
Not knowing what she'll face, but hearing the sounds of fighting, she scoops up armfulls of dishes yet to be bussed from the cafe.
After all, she doesn't have a tiara, but she can still throw stuff!
She yelps a bit when she sees all the kitties -- big scary kitties... -- and hurls a few saucers their way!
Ami was busy dwelling on how, exactly, to remove the evil from a computer when she heard Mars' call. Luckily, Jupiter was already there to help. That's a relief! Ami, however, doesn't waste any more time dwelling on maybes when there's evil afoot.
"Mercury Power, Make up!" she calls, as she pulls out her transformation pen in an area wher no one can see her. A moment later, Sailor Mercury emerges from the alleyways, rushing to join her friends.
"They were so cute when he took pictures," notes Mercury when she spies the oversized alleycats. "Poor little guys. Mars, can you purify them?" she calls. Meanwhile, Mercury reaches up to her earings and presses one of them. A blue visor emerges from her tiara, and rapidly begins displaying information from the Mercury Computer into her field of vision. If the world had Augmented Reality like this, war would be a very different affair. Hastily, she begins analyzing the energy readings coming from these creatures. But even so, there's a very important thing that needs to happen first and foremost: Make sure no innocents will see this and come over to investigate.
"Mercury Aqua Mist!"
A fog rolls in off of the Tokyo Harbour, rapidly obscuring the area.
Sailor Jupiter's hurricane drives the cats' creepy fire back toward them, sparing Mars, but the hope for a double dose of luck falls through: the four cats merely catch the fire again, holding it glimmering along their too-long tails and along the fur of their arched backs where it stands upright. The /petals/, though -- those are wholesome colors, brightnesses, and they etch stark lines through the green-gold flames and through the living darkness. Where they've been, the shadows are scratched away, leaving traces of the faint patterns and colors of the kittens in the photograph.
The yowl of pain is, of course, quadrupled.
Mars' follow-up lights that corner of the street brilliantly, and though the cats weave and dodge in a bizarre pattern that has them seeming to pass /through/ one another, /Mars'/ fire consumes more of the ghostly flames, and eats away at the shadows connecting the smaller cats to the larger. one of the ties dissolves completely, and the tremendous 'kitten' dissolves into a haze of smoke like that that the ofuda produced earlier. It hangs quietly toxic in the air, absorbing fire and flung saucers alike, until Mercury's fog rolls over it -- then the smoke coalesces into a black rain, and falls silent to the pavement, sinks into it, is gone.
Gone except for a kitten lying senseless in the middle of the fight, anyway.
This does not make the kitten's siblings or their mama happy. Another bit of crockery shatters against a kitten's shoulder, and it whips around to glare at Sailor Moon with those more-than-black eyes, beautiful, hungry, consuming. Tail-lash, and an arc of that green-gold flame whips outward at her in turn, as if it were taunting her with being able to throw /more/ than she can.
The other remaining kitten rounds on Sailor Jupiter, trails of shadow streaming from its face, and lifts a paw -- catches at the tattered shadow connecting it to its mother -- flings it outward, a ribbon of darkness cast to tangle her limbs and try to keep her from gesturing again.
And then there is Mama. And Mama Demoncat leaps forward toward Mars, its jaw unhinging and opening impossibly wide. The nature of these things is to /consume/, and this one seems to have a meal in mind. Probably a last meal, but if it can take a Sailor with it --
Mercury can see the energy conduits that these youma represent. The struggling, choked-off, denied channels that were feeding energy /to/ them, fading into unreality as they bridge the connections to the Internet through the photograph's image. The channels that weave all four -- three, now -- of the feline hosts into effectively a single tainted entity. The channels that feed their harvested energy elsewhere - somewhere that would undoubtedly be only too happy to swallow up the energy bound in Rei and her henshin, if it could.
And the single slender channel of dark energy /not/ coming from the cats; there, inside that building, the young man watching the fight but not participating. Not as choked in darkness as the youma. But shadowed by it. And watching.
Rei's eyes dart down to the fallen kitten, then back up at the monsters they are still fighting. So, these are just normal cats after all. Cats turned by dark magics.
"Tch!"
Mars keeps up the pressure as her fireballs, Jupiter's petals and Moon's plates do a number on the monster. When the fog rolls in, Mars takes the moment to retreat a step or two... but things are only getting worse from here, especially as she notices the mother coming after her.
She stares, wide-eyed, at the opening jaw. Mars is starting to notice in detail just exactly how many teeth this youma has, now the mother's breath smells, and how-- nope nope not thinking about it!
Instinctively, she drops to a knee and rolls to the side, letting the monster mom bite into empty air. After Mercury brings it up, Mars says, "Well... I could try!"
One more ofuda is launched at the head of the mother demoncat. After all, if it turns out that the problem can be fixed that way, then why not?
Sailor Moon fretted, but then squared her shoulders and ran, and something deep in Mamoru Chiba's heart flared bright and true and fierce: pride in her.
A second later and he's gone up atop the building overlooking the alley, and is carefully bending to let Luna down off his shoulder onto the low wall hemming in the roof. There's not so very much he can see in the shadows and mist, even with the moon rising overhead in the early darkness of late November, but he can see the senshi, and he can see the flashes of light and radiant dark. He leans over, squinting, trying to watch them all, but his main focus is the same as always.
Watching her back from the wings.
And then there's an arc of green-gold flame headed straight for her and her hands are still full of dishes, and he lifts his hand:
A deep red rose is whipped downward to intercept the path of the flame, a crackling red bolt trailing it and lighting up the mist as it goes, and it sticks stem-first in the ground in front of Sailor Moon.
Tuxedo Kamen stands above, the moon above and behind him, and he calls out
(ringing through the night, the words of encouragement come from a voice both ancient and confident)
"Sailor Moon! Show the strength of your heart to the darkness itself!"
It's a good thing he can't see the poor kitten. Then he'd legit flip and it would be totally counterproductive.
Oh dear! Bad kitties! Shoo, shoo, shooAUGH WHY IS THAT ONE ATTACKING HER?!
There's a an attack heading her way and she drops the dishes, shards of ceramic and--
If she were honest with herself, a large part of her kind of wants to run right now.
But she can't - won't - because friends and kitten and--
A rose!
Sailor Moon turns to look at Tuxedo Kamen.
Her heart, which had been sulky as of late, suddenly grows warm and full and the comforting weight of it is--
Now on her forehead?
Reaching up, she takes off the shiny new tiara, and--
No time to study it now!
"Mars!"
In reflex, she raises her hand and the moon catches on the gem and--
Moonlight absorbs into it, swirling, before a shaft of moonlight flashes through the alley.
One day, probably, youma will learn to stop trying to entangle Sailor Jupiter in things that also connect back to them! But today is clearly not that day.
The ribbon of darkness sweeps outward to snarl around Jupiter, ensnaring her arms and hindering her movement. It does nothing to hold back the aura of electricity that suddenly crackles around her, threads of energy searing bright against the dark energy as Jupiter's power chases the binding back to its source.
"Jupiter, get the little one clear," Mercury begs her friend immediately, as she continues to analyze the lines of power. Mars already knows what to do with that Tiara; she's seen the two attack together before.
So instead, Mercury calls out, "Tuxedo Kamen, castle the pawn in the lobby to your left." Hopefully he'll get the message, but there's no way to convey her meaning to him more directly when he's so far away.
As Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars prepare their double attack, Mercury waits for the perfect moment to add her own power to it. "Mercury Bubble Blast!" she declares, sending a spray of freezing cold water chasing after Usagi's tiara--and probably Mercury's fire. Only one element remains available, at the moment. "Jupiter!"
That deep red rose, and the crackling bolt that it trails, intersect the arc of ghostly fire -- and slice it neatly, opening a gap. That opens further. The flames actually bend away from the rose, as if bowing. It is not a tremendous space of safety that Sailor Moon stands in -- but there are three or four inches between her fingertips, her toes, the trailing tails of her hair, and the fire that threatened them.
The mother-cat slams into the ground, teeth slicing into the pavement; it spits out gravel and heaves itself back up, rounding on Mars just in time to shove its head into the path of a seemingly unimportant slip of paper. Blue light crackles, clean and bright, and the mother-cat yowls again and rears up --
Mercury's icy water dashes out at the cats --
-- perfectly timed, begun even before Mercury's cue and thus ending in perfect synchronicity with it, Jupiter's electricity arcs along the shadow-ribbon, then along Mercury's own blast, dancing between the shadows, amplifying the blue-white purifying fire of the ofuda --
-- and between them all, moonlight burns.
Shadows scatter and vanish. Smoke fades. Ghostly flames settle to no more than the blinking that accompanies a tiny, exhausted, complaining mew from the one kitten that was already loose among the mess, scooped up into Jupiter's arms and safety.
That kitten and all its siblings are certain that this has been a very long day.
With that quick encrypted message from Sailor Mercury, Tuxedo Kamen glances in the indicated direction, then vanishes from the rooftop, leaving Luna up there by her lonesome.
Where is he? As instructed, the dashing young prince in formalwear has leapt up over the street and to the roof of the building across the way, then dropped down to the alley behind. There are people inside; he could break in, but that would cause a ruckus-- even just slipping in the back door would. On the other hand, he'll certainly hear a ruckus inside if the kid starts shoving his way through the employees-only area toward him.
So he waits by the back exit, twirling his cane and waiting to trip anyone who flees through the door next to him.
The cats are dealt with, and while Mercury would like to make certain they are okay, Sailor Jupiter is far more up to that task than she is. Mercury rushes towards the front of the store where she saw the energy reading attached to an individual.
Heading inside, she allows the mercury computer to lead the way towards the teenager in question and points, "Hey, you, we need to talk!" she calls to the teen. Sure, he's older than she is, but Sailor Mercury doesn't have time for being overly polite. Tuxedo Kamen is out of visual range, and every moment none of the girls have a visual on him is a moment he is in danger.
The store employees seem to find nothing odd with Sailor Mercury rushing in. There's no-one where she saw the sign before, but the Mercury Computer lets her track her target - there's been little effort made to conceal the possession.
(Scraps of information that he'd intended to win: how close could he send someone like this to Jadeite's miko before she noticed? Not too close. But close enough to be useful, to a degree.)
He's made his way into the back. He's making his way through the stockroom. He's not looking back at Mercury's first call; he's opening the back door --
The teenager's face is vaguely familiar to Tuxedo Kamen. Not in any of his classes; perhaps Mamoru Chiba's seen the boy in the halls, or perhaps the boy has a sibling that he's met in passing, or perhaps he was going to another school and just attended one of the same dances. Vaguely familiar, that's all.
The slow, edged smile that the boy shows as he glances back and forth between the twirling cane and the senshi in blue closing in behind him? That's vaguely familiar, too, and not teenaged at all. "Learning to communicate," he comments. "Who would have thought it. Well played, then."
There's a moment where Tuxedo Kamen is caught flatfooted, too-blue eyes behind his mask stark with the ice suddenly forming in his heart. It's not at the vaguely familiar face of the teenager.
It's at that expression. That tone. The wording.
But he doesn't let it affect his motion, his stance; he just keeps watching the boy in front of him as Mercury approaches. "What have you done?" he asks, voice low, something else building behind his eyes and in his own tone, something which takes the ice as a shroud to hide itself, to hide its bright fury.
"Turned kittens into kaiju," Mercury replies on behalf of the teen they've trapped. She emerges from the door just behind him and scowls. "You've got nowhere left to run," she points out. "We have you trapped. It's over."
About now, systems engineers have been woken up, and the DDOS is being analyzed. Somewhere in America, a very wealthy president has been awakened with a phone call to notify him of the situation. Time is running short.
"Will you talk with us peacefully?" Mercury challenges the boy. "We don't want to harm you."
"And here I thought you'd appreciate the kindness," the boy says back to Marcury, conversational, almost lazily confrontational. No polite forms here. "Very well. If you're so upset about the kittens, I'll make it human children next time." He glances to Tuxedo Kamen, and that edged smile sharpens, a certain precision to his consonants, an intensity focusing in. "After all. There are so many of those to spare. So many that no-one will ever notice."
"Why should we care if you change your targets? None of them deserve it, and all of them are precious," Tuxedo Kamen says coldly. He stands utterly still, framed by moonlight, tall and unmoving and no longer moved. There's a glitter behind the luminous white mask, and his hair is--
--and his stance, his face--
--it's not arrogance. It could be mistaken for it by someone who didn't recognise it in some way.
"The social media aspect was very clever, I'll give you that. Sly, unforeseen, clandestine and, had we been less well-armed, potentially catastrophic. Not at all like the direct attacks of one of your more -- hands-on compatriots, is it?"
"It doesn't matter who or what you attack," Mercury echoes Tuxedo Kamen as she frowns at the teen. "It doesn't matter where you go. If someone is in need, we will notice, and we'll be there to stop you." She glances to Tuxedo Kamen uncertainly, then back to the boy. "Evildoers never have figured out the reason why we're so strong, and you never will. But we are strong; stronger than you could possibly imagine. Why are you doing this? What could you possibly hope to gain by fighting against us?"
"Ah, I amend." The teenager inclines his head to Mercury in the parody of a bow. "Learned to communicate, but not yet to write your own speeches. One step at a time, I suppose." And then his expression warms, after a fashion. Which does not make it better. Because beneath that cool edge was lying a savage joy. "And, for the sake of courtesy, I'll correct you. I hope to gain nothing. There is nothing left to gain; you've already lost. The rest is just the amusement of watching you twitch and writhe as you go through the motions of learning how."
Somewhere in those two sentences, it stopped being just Mercury he was talking to.
Tuxedo Kamen sucks in a breath, short and abbreviated, the only tell for Mercury as to exactly how toweringly furious he is right now. The glitter of his eyes behind his mask has turned into something flat and burning.
He still does not move.
"We," he says in a quiet, even voice, which carries all the rage of a murdered and consumed kingdom inside it, "will save all of you from her. Now get out."
Mercury has had enough. She's not enraged like Tuxedo is, but she's very much done listening to propoganda from the enemy. They aren't going to get anything further from him, and she's certain of it.
He wants a speech? She'll give him one. Sailor Mercury reaches up to banish her Mercury Goggles, allowing the cold certainty in her eyes to come plainly visible. "I am the agent of Love and Intellect, the pretty sailor suited soldier, Sailor Mercury! Douse yourself with water and repent!" And at that, she raises a hand, summoning forth the waters of the bay.
"Mercury Blizzard Spray!" she calls, drawing forth the same power she used to kill a witch several weeks ago, but far, far less. She won't create an iceberg in the bay, but she will utterly soak the boy with water cold enough that it would freeze in seconds if the air weren't warmer than the water itself. Enough water to fill a hot tub. Water enough to purify and cleanse even the deepest of stains.
Somewhere inside Kunzite, buried deeper than he ever wants to know, is the remnant of a reaction that was once nearly reflex. When given an order from that voice -- obey.
Somewhere. Not here.
The boy that is his puppet straightens, arrogant and cold as Mercury's power, and his eyes narrow with an icy hate. He has the time to say five contempt-laden words.
"You shouldn't have touched them."
And then the water hits him, cold, pure, too pure for the power inhabiting the boy to bear.
There's a shadow shaped like a dragon, dark purple and snarling, that ghosts up from his head -- it goes from tiny to about hand-sized to about chest-sized, becomes translucent, and dissipates into the air.
And the teenager crumples like a marionette with his strings cut. He lies still on the ground, on the border of hypothermia, too exhausted and too drained even to shiver.
The water freezes the demon-dragon out of the boy, but the words freeze the wrath out of Tuxedo Kamen.
Face white and pinched, not addressing anything even coming close to resembling the hot mess of emotions he's shoving away, the former gentleman thief gets down on one knee and tugs his gloves off, reaching for the shivering teenager's neck.
There's a golden glow as his fingertips touch the skin over the civilian's jugular, and warmth and healing, stability and sustaining energy flow forth, carried rapidly through the circulatory system to the extremities.
Mamoru says absently, "We should drag him inside and leave him there. He'll be found relatively quickly."
And then he's getting back up and pulling his gloves on once more, face expressionless.
Mercury abandons her own guize with a sigh, and shakes her head faintly. "Agreed," she says, as she moves to help Mamoru carry the boy inside. Sure, she'll be a little wet, but it's best for the boy.
Once they've finished getting the boy inside where it's safe, she slips out the back again with Mamoru, then sighs and heads back to join the others. "I'd hoped we could learn something useful," she tells him sadly. "But yet again, they're ahead of us. Mamoru-kun, I'm worried," Ami says. Pulling out her tablet, she pushes the cancel button on her attack on tumblr, then picks up her phone to verify that the picture is no longer possessed.
Finally dehenshined with Ami, Mamoru ghosts along silently beside her on their way back to the rest of the Senshi. There's nothing he can really add to that, nothing he can say to make any of this better, nothing he can say to lighten the burden Mercury is carrying.
Finally he says, just before they rejoin the others, "He knew me. Implied things. Cited things. I think they know who I am."
Ami's footfalls cease at that news, and she looks up from the Mercury Computer to stare at Mamoru with a calm, simple expression. "I know," she says softly. "That boy was possessed by the same power that Rei banished from you," she points out gently.
"You are not safe, Mamoru-kun," Ami says faintly. "And if we don't find the Princess and the Crystal, none of us will be, either." She licks her lips, then shakes her head and follows him.
Dinner is not going to be a fun affair for Ami Mizuno tonight. Even at her favourite cafe, there will be a chill on her heart; a pressing need to have information she quite simply does not have.