Endymion appears mid-sentence, wearing a dark grey peacoat and a light grey scarf, black leather gloves, a dark grey newsboy cap. Winter boots, too. (It's cold and slushy and grey in Paris.) He's got a fistful of Kunzite's sleeve, but he lets go once they're up there on the rooftop. "--but I'm keeping an eye on it anyway. I figured maybe you might be able to pin it down."
He jams his hands in his pockets, bespectacled face turned away slightly, now. "The other reason I tagged you was because of the Warblepurgenaught meeting. I was about to bring up some compromises that might've made them more comfortable when her mother called and everything went to hell. I'm pretty sure the only way they're going to be able to handle us being there without being distracted from the actual gigantic monstrosity of a problem is if we're in sight the whole time. So they can see us. We need to take point."
Minako Aino/Sailor V is hanging around on rooftops, avoiding having to talk to friends, simmering in a terrible stew of her own thoughts and fears. She shivers just a little bit, from emotions more than temperature, worrying she comes across as a paranoid delusional to others whenever she tries to explain what seems like obvious concepts.
Like why she's upset at essentially being ambushed by murderous enemies in a roomful of people ostensibly claiming to be friends.
When the same exact happens *again* and she sees familiar faces and hears familiar voices, in kill-or-be-killed range, she's a combination of teary and terrified and livid. And confused.
It's mostly the confusion that keeps her from some panicked fight-or-flight reaction, struck dumbfounded and standing in the open. She's out of line of sight, though, her only movements being a shiver.
Slowly slowly, so slowly she would bitterly criticize herself for it later, she slips behind cover, the only sound to give her away a single calming breath and the touch of fingertips on concrete wall.
Greys for the both of them, unsurprisingly; Kunzite doesn't match Endymion's choices precisely, but he's a hell of a lot less obtrusive than he would be in uniform. Or he would be, if he didn't have that hair, and if they weren't on a rooftop. He and Endymion are arranged, even on arrival, so their fields of view cover different areas. Minimizing the risk of Endymion, at least, getting suddenly stabbed in the back on arrival. Echoes of habits from another lifetime, just like the way they staged their entrance to the meeting - Kunzite taking the risk of any initial attacks, leaving the younger man free to react unhindered.
"Mn. Possible. The witch-hunters are better suited in purely practical terms. With Nephrite not on hand, Zoisite better at shorter range, and half of what we'll be facing unaffected by half my attacks... we'd be strictly more useful for defense. The best configuration I can see for your plan would be you and Zoisite concentrating on clearing the thing's pets out of the way for the hunter girls, Jadeite and I primarily watching your backs. We'll still be in the way, since the hunters are primarily solitary hunters; they're not used to having anything between them and their target that they don't want to shoot through."
He pauses; glances aside at Endymion; adds in a familiar dry tone. "Then again, half of them do want to shoot through us. So they'll probably take you up on it."
The black-haired boy pulls a face at the last, locking his elbows at his sides with his hands deep in his pockets. "I can understand not trusting us; they have no reason to. But the city's important. Even to Her. The way Akemi put it -- talking to me like I was five, by the way -- was 'if the city goes down, you lose your hunting grounds, too'. Something like that. She's desperate. We've seen why. And I don't understand a mindset that wouldn't use all readily available resources to tackle a problem that's literally a problem for everyone on every side, too big for any one group to handle on its own."
Endymion would be huffy at this point, but he's too frustrated; his instincts are ground in too deeply and his worry is too real. "So they'd take me up on it, maybe, but we'd be less effective, and efficacy is going to be paramount in prevention of losses. I'm in agreement on the defense aspect; either taking out the Familiars or covering for the girls. I'm also not especially ranged; if just shooting dark energy at the thing won't do anything, then the only other thing I can throw is better for stopping attacks or creating diversions, and if it's as mindless as all that, diversions won't be much use either."
Shoulders slumping, Endymion takes one hand from its pocket and rubs at the back of his neck. "All of this is provided Zoisite isn't just panicking from looking at me. I wish we could talk to someone tactical on their side and coordinate this shit. Where is Jadeite, anyway? I haven't seen him around since he freaked out and teleported out on me."
"I killed Jadeite."
She mouths the words to herself, mostly to see how they would sound, imagining the reaction and considering if it should be a battle cry or just a test of what the Dark Kingdom boys are up to.
If it's a trap. If they're surprised. If they're angry. If they don't actually care about Jadeite or if they *need* Jadeite more than she would assume.
She contemplates transforming right then and there. It 'feels' safer, to be a soldier rather than a spy, but she doesn't. She just stays quiet for now.
"Given the number of wildcards on their side - people who won't take direction at all, like the girl who started shouting - not to mention the uncertainty about exactly when and where the thing will make worldfall... there's a strict limit to the amount we can plan in advance, yes." Kunzite probably isn't consciously mirroring Endymion; but there's a hand at the back of his neck, at the same time. And an annoyed look given at nothing in particular - just at a patch of air, and not even one particularly near Minako's hiding place.
"Realtime coordination would be better, but probably impossible. The Akemi girl would be wasted on it. And I haven't seen tacticians among the rest of them, outside the Senshi; some of them have a little ability on their own, but they haven't shown any sign of handling groups. Mercury seems to be trying her hand at it, but she expects events to follow rules -- she'll be looking for the wrong kind of patterns, and something will eat her while she's trying to find a logic that isn't there."
He folds his arms, frowning at that patch of air. "Venus would be better; she has a ..." He trails off for a moment, hunting a way to avoid using the word 'visceral' in that sentence. "A feel for the kind of thing Witches tend to use in place of logic. And when she's taking a fight seriously, she's good; probably the best they have. If Mercury fed her information and figured out a way to handle a relay --" He laughs outright then, sudden and sharp. "Of course, Venus's second priority would be handling the monster mountain, and her first priority would be maneuvering us into places the thing was about to drop a skyscraper on. So that has its drawbacks, too."
Which brings him up to Jadeite. "Mn." Twice in one conversation, for that sound. It's a particular sound, encapsulating meaning. Indicating a topic he's displeased with, but still has half a hand on, for the moment. "Jadeite gets ... unstable, over time. He's about due for another treatment. But there are leads he'd have lost if She brought him in right now; so I sent him off to try chasing them down. If it pans out, well and good. If it doesn't, maybe it'll settle him down. If not. Well. She'll take care of it. The problem for this is, the assignment requires quite a while with a consistent human face. If he's working on that when the evacuation hits, and the wrong person latches onto him -- one of the people he's chasing isn't susceptible to influence."
"...treatment?" echoes Endymion faintly, all thoughts on Walpurgisnacht momentarily hung in favor of what Kunzite's saying about Jadeite. He looks at the white-haired man, red-grey eyes searching his face. "I... don't think... I like the sound of that. If what he's assigned to do isn't any good for him, then-- he should be doing something else. If you mean--"
He stops, and then reaches up to scrub at his face tiredly, closing his eyes, knuckling his glasses out of the way. "Fine. Keep him away then. I don't want him losing time. If he can help us during the fight, good, but don't-- don't tell him to do that if it'll mess him up. Just tell him to keep his head down and stay safe. I need him. Even if--"
Here's where the glasses get readjusted, and Endymion crosses his arms tightly, shoulders inward; he looks past Kunzite at the skyline. "He said 'not like this' when I said he belonged with me. What I couldn't see at the time was that it wasn't actually-- was that he meant there is a way he does. I have faith he'll find it."
Endymion chuffs out a breath into the cold winter air, briefly closing his eyes. "Sorry. Yes. Well. It's more useful to have Venus coordinating, then, and we'll just have to be mindful of skyscrapers being chucked at us. But I'll be watching your backs anyway, and I know you have mine. The problem is she'd hardly agree."
She tries. She can't resist. She lets her picture catch in the wind to flitter to the ground and drag to their feet.
She knows she needs to take out the general and try to recover the lost prince. She knows it. But after all she went through, all her 'friends' putting her down, she tell a lies to herself: just once, I deserve something for ME.
"I don't agree."
"I killed Jadeite."
She quotes Kunzite - not so much a 'quoting' him as imitating him, speaking evenly in tone and cadence. Formal. It makes it easier to stomach the words when it sounds even remotely like not-Mina's. Less cruel when somebody else says it. She lets the picture take attention before continuing. It's of Jadeite (he's unaware of the camera, but clearly healthy and happy), lipstick and red marker drawn in a crude 'X' over his face - she planned to leave that after a long series of love letters for Kunzite if this particular trick were needed, but this is as good of an opportunity as any.
"That's his fate. To fight and die. There's only one fate for Dark Kingdom generals. As Saior Venus, I am your enemy. My fate is to keep fighting."
She quotes Danburite. Exact quotes, speaking confidently with a touch of cocky that's ridiculous for someone of her gender, tone, and size, but unmistakably Danburite.
"Venus and Mercury found out something better than 'coordinating'. How to track you and follow you when you teleport. If you come back one by one, -this- will happen again," she says, vaguely referring to scrapbook pictures on concrete floors. "You all come back as a package or you come back piecemeal as a funeral," she says, hoping just this once to see all of her fears and upsets and rages and heartbreaks and terrors on somebody else's face than her own.
"Otherwise, leave my girls alone."
Those first three words have Kunzite moving on the instant -- turning toward their source, taking a couple of quick steps to half-shield Endymion from the Crescent Beam that at this point he's practically conditioned to expect to come with that voice. He starts to lift a hand, to pull darkness from nowhere into a shield --
-- that the next three words shatter.
Whether or not she can see the expression on his face, her imagination can fill it in from the sharply indrawn breath. Whether or not she consciously remembers it. There was a moment, once, when his expression had been all malice and bloodthirst, taunting smile and hatred that almost bled into the air; when that changed in an instant, openmouthed in horror, gray eyes clearing into a sanity that shattered again on contact with reality, and took every defense he had with it. This is only a shadow of that moment. But it's enough that the half-formed shield skitters from his control, dissolving again, and his head snaps around to look back at Endymion.
(She's lying. She lied about the rose-youma. Mercury told him what happened. But Mercury could lie to him, if she needed to, with an open expression and an unburdened heart. And there have been days since then, when the situation could have changed.)
Endymion doesn't even hear most of what Venus says.
He's on his guard when he hears the third voice, yes, taking a step closer to Kunzite and half-turning, reflexively moving to watch for ambush from behind while their attention's meant to be drawn toward her voice.
But if Kunzite's face is horrified and he makes such a sound in reaction to the claim about Jadeite? The lost prince is frozen, color drained from his face; his hands start to tremble. He's utterly silent.
In his stillness while Venus continues speaking, all he can hear is the thunder of his blood in his ears; in his ghost-white face, the color is even leached from his eyes. Grey, and then--
a flash of blue with mingled rage and frightened grief and then he's ripping his gloves off and jumping over the side of the building.
(Down below, should either of them look, he did not in fact just commit suicide. His bare fingers are dug into the cracks in the pavement in the alley, buried in the slush and ice and frozen dirt.)
It doesn't take long. He's teleported back to the roof and there's no grief, only hurt and fury and wet hands and a slushball, which he hurls in the direction of Venus' voice. "WHY WOULD YOU FUCKING SAY THAT. You're SUCH A LIAR!"
Minako Aino hears the rippling of clothes and how they flutter on a falling body. She can't say anything. She expected aggression, bargaining, the remote chance of compliance, but not random suicides.
She's relieved to hear Endymion's voice after the return teleport and its accompanying snowball fight invitation, but she's incensed at being called out for lying, not sure what gave her away.
She takes a moment to compose herself, not speaking for a long uncomfortable time. She tries to relish the upset in the boys' voices but she's too sympathetic and only feels 'bad' at having caused it. Automatic compassion.
But bitterness. Bitterness helps. So she laughs.
It's a Zoisite impression.
"That's what *I* said. But you weren't lying to me."
It might sound weird as a reply to Endymion's question, she means 'you' in the plural sense, addressing the generals as a whole. "Anyway, that's my bargain. You know what I can do. I want all of you or none of you. That's my princess' orders. It's what everybody wants. I want an answer before Wall-purge-is-snatched. You seem to have guessed what I'll be doing then," she says, agreeing with the assessment of how she'll act during future fights.
She's willing to let Tokyo burn for this.
Also, cursing to herself for her pronunciation.
There are dozens of things that come to Kunzite's mind to do or say in this moment. Exactly one of them would not destroy everything. And that one ... he's already tried. Saying any form of it again, especially one safe to speak in front of Endymion, would burn anything he might have any chance of rebuilding with this girl.
That shouldn't bother him. He's fairly sure there's nothing left there to burn.
He stands silent, instead, and tries to renew the mask he usually uses for an expression. He keeps his back to Endymion. Because it isn't working, and for once, Endymion might be distracted enough not just to know.
Endymion doesn't get it. Whether it's because there's no context for him in general, or because he doesn't remember anything and he's exactly as lost and shattered and flailing and trying as he seems to be, or because he very well could get it but it would start him thinking about things he's not letting himself think about--
He doesn't get it.
Instead, his face is red in the wrong places, and his grey-red eyes are too-bright, and his hands are dripping on the rooftop, and his voice is shaky and furious and defiant. "FINE. FINE. I'll go FIND Nephrite then! Even if he's in a STUPID POCKET DIMENSION IN THE OORT CLOUD or something!! And then you'll have all of us and you'll HAVE to let us help without trying to kill us!"
He looks desperately at Kunzite-- at Kunzite's back. And in a fit of extreme pique, he drags his wet and sandy-salty hands down Kunzite's back, drying them off on his coat as he grits his bared teeth. "He's not on Earth. Jadeite is. I'm going to go track him. Neph I mean. Where he last was and whatever! I don't care! I'll check in with you. Don't let Venus kill you! Venus don't you dare kill him!"
And then the prince is just gone, him and his goddamn signature-less teleports.
Minako Aino doesn't deal with being the comforting one very well. Her entire repertoire of techniques to deal with upset people is patting them on the back like she's making pancakes while saying 'there there'. She does even worse with upset people being frantic who are ostensibly hostile.
She shuts down. It's easier to ignore upsetting things and go on auto-pilot. Treat it like an acting game. "Mercury, track him now," she says to the darkness while Endymion does his disappearing act. She waits a proper amount of time before continuing.
She's more V than Mina now, even without her transformation. Mentally, she's ticking off a list of 'I told you so' boxes - why it is important not to talk in front of your enemies. Now she knows either Nephrite is gone or it's a test to see how bold she'll get with lying.
She's already committed to the lie game so she goes all in.
"Ohoo." A Zoisite sound! "Suggest he look in the hospitals. It doesn't matter if he finds Nephrite or not. Let's just say he's in the sort of condition that taking him out won't be good. He's not fighting for Beryl *or* for me any time soon."
"It's just the rest of you." She doesn't even know how many 'the rest' are or how many allies Kunzite has, so she leaves it vague. The fewer Generals they're trying to wrangle up, the better? Or so she thinks as she prepares to escape and not push her look much more, not expecting anyone to want to talk to her now.
She receives another answer all the same. "Venus." Quiet, calm, cold.
But there's no malice in it, and no threat. Not just restrained; none at all. And still no footsteps, not even an attempt to come closer or to bring her into view. Still no cold beyond the ordinary cold of January.
"Hurt me all you like," Kunzite says. "I've earned it. But not him. I did enough of that already."
"That's a big request you ask me. Real big. After all, I just wasted my whole life, lost all my friends and loved ones, and tracked you across the *entire* planet just so I could make you feel what loss is like. And the terror of putting a Sword of Damascus over your friends' heads."
"I asked the *same* thing, Kunzite, every time Dark Agency operatives found me. Nobody respected it. You all killed my... ah... I fought them all. They all screamed when they melted." She tries to make it sound like something triumphant or a threat.
It doesn't sound that way at all.
"Then I got you and the rest of the generals' message. 'The people and the country you love. All destroyed by your enemies.' Remember that? Funny! And then, what was it? Something about not having to worry about having *any* loved ones for ETERNITY? So I can just fight?"
Now she sounds threatening. "All I gotta worry do is worry about fighting. Your words. Not mine. You got what you wished for."
There's silence for a moment - not forbidding, but waiting. Listening, perhaps. Seeing whether something is going to happen.
And then there are quiet sounds, small motions. Still not changing locations. He's settling down on the rooftop, that's all, ignoring the snow and the melt from the building's heat.
He does not say 'Damocles.'
He starts to say something, then. Starts to; she can hear the indrawn breath --
Hear the moment of sudden, shocked silence afterward. Well. The shock isn't audible then. Just a trace of it in his voice when he does speak again.
"Is that what you're doing? Why you're pushing the other Senshi so hard, why you're refusing to trust your princess's judgment? Are you honestly afraid that if you let yourself get too close to them, they'll die? Venus. That's Metallia talking. Don't --"
And he stops again, and this time the laugh is brief and helpless and despairing. "And you still have no reason to listen to anything I say."
"From my perspective, it seems we're ahead. Not so far ahead that Metallia is trying to contact me for a peace agreement, but I'm feeling pretty confident!" She dismisses the thought right out.
"Anyway, I'm not like you Dark Kingdom guys. So here's my first mercy. Consider this! You're here, Zoisite is not, and Jadeite is accounted for, but I got him so upset he ran off to find Nephrite. And of course he goes to the 'last place we saw him'."
She lets that sit and then stresses the implications a little harder. "By himself. Alone. After I got here. I don't want him dead, just not well enough to hurt us."
'Get out of Paris a while, generals, for a little while,' or so she thinks to herself.
"He can't help that. The last place we know Nephrite was, was talking to Mamoru Chiba. He is the 'last place we saw him.' He just doesnt know it." The implications are heard, and understood; that's not said out loud, but it's implicit in turn, in Kunzite's tone of voice, in the pacing of his words. It doesn't seem to worry him. There are things that might suggest, about Endymion's ability to defend himself, or about Kunzite's estimation of Sailor Moon's capacity to actually fight him with anything more damaging than sudden tears.
He straightens up from where he'd settled, though, coming back to his feet. "You said you wanted me to know what loss was like. I was watching. I saw Serenity come back to herself. I heard her. I remembered. I remember watching everything I had ever cared for either die around me, or kill me, and knowing it was my fault. I remember having a second chance. I remember watching my brothers go mad because they knew everything was wrong, but weren't permitted to know they knew it. I remember watching one of them do that over and over again. I remember --"
A briefer silence.
"Be careful. Please. Be better than I was. I hate --"
Seeing you hurt this much? True. But not useful.
"Seeing you lonely enough to talk to me."
And it's his turn to be gone. No more sounds on the rooftop, except hers, and the echoes of what he didn't say.
Minako Aino thought it was clever to turn a Shitennou ambush into a convincing ploy that senshi were now hunters, able to strike them down at any time. But they still got in the last biting remarks that make her livid with rage.
She wants to just hit somebody but realizes it's all her fault - she chose to chat instead of fight.
"At least Paris vacations will be fun and Shitennou-free! Time to go beat up Dark Kingdoms and catacombs. Or catacombs and Dark Kingdoms."