1246/Teleportation Will Never Be Kazuo

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Teleportation Will Never Be Kazuo
Date of Scene: 15 March 2016
Location: Nephrite's Palace
Synopsis: Mamoru is angsting: Usagi tanked a dark energy sword, Kunzite still hasn't got a body, and everything is wasps and suck. Nephrite is super great at distraction, and the terrors of teleportation provide the perfect conversational divergence. Mamoru still absolutely blows at it, though.
Cast of Characters: Mamoru Chiba, Nephrite


Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Unbeknownst to Nephrite, Mamoru and Usagi had a completely mystifying fight after he left. Zoisite took Moon to Mercury because there was something weird going on with her injury that Mamoru couldn't heal; Mamoru, currently not being spoken to by Usagi, went off to do calculus homework.

Mercury said she'd text with updates. She hasn't sent any yet. This is not actually surprising, since it's literally only been half an hour since Usagi went off with Zoisite, but despite the caracal Mamoru's been leaning against, he's been completely unable to actually focus on calculus.

He just keeps seeing that look of inexplicable hurt cross Usagi's face, and then her jerking away and stalking off towards Zoisite.

So it's really also no surprise that the prince has left his calculus textbook somewhat accusingly on Kunzite's planter-slash-sarcophagus and slunk off to Nephrite's palace to angst at someone who can answer back and isn't a giant cat who dgaf.

Along with the intrusion into that primeval forest is a distinct golden "meh" in Nephrite's head.

When -- if -- Nephrite gets there, Mamoru's popped a gravol and is grimly practicing teleporting from a high-ass platform to the ground. Well. That's his intent. It looks rather more like he's considering jumping, and he's not in henshin.

For the love of god, he's wearing a nondescript hoodie that's too big for him.
Nephrite has posed:
It's been an odd night.

A late-night stakeout. An attack on Usagi. Nephrite thinks he's beginning to understand what it must have been like for all those allies who answered the call to take down Kunzite. It's not easy to take it on authority that somebody is secretly a good person while they're determined to skewer your friends.

And now this.

Nephrite stands behind Mamoru a moment, noting the unfamiliar hoodie that is so unlike his regular attire, and his choice in absurdly high platforms, and his proximity to the edge. Yet more new puzzles for him to evaluate the implication of.

One thing he knows now: opening a conversation with what the hell are you doing is likely not the best approach.

"If you're hoping to get a ride, don't bother. I already asked." He strolls up, easy smile on his face. Puts a hand on Mamoru's shoulder that could be casual camaraderie or a safety line. After all, the loose fabric of that hoodie would be easy enough to quickly latch onto if he suddenly found the need to pull Mamoru back.

"You wouldn't believe the look the Thunderbird gave me when I suggested it. Like Kunzite, but with a beak."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
At some point, Nephrite will reflexively ask Mamoru what the hell he's doing and get a laugh instead of a house of ranting card-shaped justifications, and Neph will have a new puzzle. To be fair, the results of the last time he asked, while unpleasant, were also the results that needed to happen.

The hoodie, it should be noted, is a dark brown color. Similar to, but not quite, the color of the insides of the boys' golden age capes.

The contact is truly and ridiculously welcome; Mamoru leans back and in toward Nephrite once the hand's on his shoulder. "That's a terrifying mental image. Bet you Usa could convince it, though. If anyone could sweet-talk a guardian deity into giving up its dignity to please her, it's her..."

He trails off. After a second, "Maybe when she's talking to me again. Hannah came at her with the sword and I was all ready to leap her away, and she shoved me. She shoved me away and I tripped on something and she took the hit. Almost freaking hit her spine. The damage isn't too bad, except she said it itched when I tried to heal it, and then she got really hurt-looking and angry when I asked Zoisite to teleport her to Mercury to get it checked out. Ami's on it, but... I figured I'd take some anti-carsick medicine and try practicing. After the last time I tried teleporting her and we ended up four hundred feet up in the air, I didn't think it'd be a good idea, you know?"

There's a quality to his silence that says he's not done, after that. Still leaning on Nephrite, he fumbles in one of the hoodie pockets and draws out a passport. "Takeba Kazuo," he says, holding it up for Neph to take with his free hand. "Tomorrow."
Nephrite has posed:
That's an awfully long stream of cares that Mamoru just handed him. Nephrite thought things were supposed to get easier for them both now that the Dark Kingdom is gone, but apparently life has different plans in mind.

Lacking any other indication of which of these matters to tackle first, he looks down at the passport. "Wait, who?" Taking it from Mamoru, he flips it open. And stares at the photo inside. "...Oh. This... he..."

He was just a boy.

A boy with a life. A name, a birthday, a country of origin.

If he didn't recognize Kunzite by his distinctive hair, he would know him by the sharpness in his grey eyes. He chuckles--a bittersweet sound. "Was he ever this young? I always imagined that he sprung from the womb fully grown, with pre-formed frown lines."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
'Long stream of cares'-- that's literally just Tuesday. Have girlfriend, have problems regarding figuring out why girlfriend is mad. Girlfriend is superhero, have problems with girlfriend making weird tactical decisions. Girlfriend is magical superhero, have problems with why equally magical healing doesn't work right. Nephrite's prince is probably always going to be something of a mess when it comes to Usagi Tsukino, but would any of them really have it any other way?

Ami's looking after Usagi, though, and there's really no use in him trying to go to see her if she isn't even talking to him-- it's just reasoning for what he's doing here on a high platform. Notably, he is still putting off that practice, Gravol and all.

Endymion's quiet as Nephrite looks -- quiet and shifting a little, sort of leaning his head against the bigger teenager. "He was that young physically, but... look at his face. He didn't get to be young after I was born."

Unspoken, it's obvious he's moved past 'oh god' to 'this is my fault' to 'it's fate's fault' and right back to 'it's my fault'; there's a shiver of threat from his slumbering temper in the prince's emotions, not hidden or walled off from Nephrite, and when the blame's internally reassigned to the teenager again, the meltdown is once again belayed, averted. "But... tomorrow. Tomorrow we can start teaching him to have fun or something, I don't know."

Even more subdued, and almost afraid, and much quieter, "Do you remember your name?"
Nephrite has posed:
Nephrite slings an arm around Mamoru, the better to lean into each other. "I'm not sure he was ever young before that, either. This is Kunzite we're talking about." He regards the photo, the almost combative-looking boy staring back at them. Wonders if Kunzite, of all people, ever had a rebellious phase.

His name. What an odd thing. To know the name he carried in another lifetime but not the one he was born to in this one. Not Masato Sanjouin. Something else that itches at the back of his mind, out of use and forgotten like a childhood story that he remembers the feelings he had for but not the contents of. He's not sad about that, exactly. Doesn't know enough about what he's missing to be sad. But it is an uneasy kind of feeling. Even though Mamoru will sense that, he shrugs nonchalantly anyway. "I've got time enough to learn it. Or I'll come up with a better one. I just got back one life. I'm not in a rush to track down all of them."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's a little laugh. "Sorry, didn't mean to rush you," says Mamoru, indeed leaning more effectively with an arm around him. The solidity is cherished, the Neph-ness of Neph, and that comes through -- it's embedded in the air, the sounds around them, the platform they stand on. The prince won't take any of them for granted, if he ever did.

"If you want to look at any point, I'll be more than happy to help. Or to help you come up with a new one-- even a temporary one," he says, going from matter-of-fact to sly in less than three syllables, "so you can register for school in a few weeks."

But then Mamoru slouches and turns his head in. Nephrite's not quite taller-enough for him to hide his face, but the inclination's definitely there. "Why did she push me away? Did she really think I was going to just stand in front of the damn sword? It's been months since I did something like that on my own recognizance. Like at least six! I'd just jumped us out of the way, why would she do that?"

He has a lot on his mind all at once.
Nephrite has posed:
"Ugh," he groans. "School. Can't I go back to everyone thinking I'm 30?" He sighs. "I wouldn't mind your help with that, though. Maybe not right away. Let's worry about digging up grumpyface out of the dirt first. There's some stuff I have to sort out on that front."

He pulls his arm tighter around Mamoru. "Endy, do you honestly think 'at least six months' is enough time for her to get over you standing in front of a sword for her even once? If that's a thing that's happened, she's probably freaking the heck out at the thought of you being anywhere near a sword. Maybe she just panicked. Rationality isn't something that most people have when the person they love is at risk."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I... can't really argue that," mumbles the prince after a long moment in which he's obviously trying to find any possible way to do just that. "Even though it wasn't swords this lifetime, there was a long time where I'd just-- I'd tank anything for her, just so long as she wouldn't get hurt. I didn't realize that me doing that hurt her anyway, hurt a lot of people. I just didn't think I mattered that much to anyone. I ended up having a lot of people yelling at me for it."

That's not a sniffle, it's just a weirdly thick laugh, all combined with a tight ball of strictly compressed riotous conflicting emotion. "And I can tell you for damn sure that rationality was really hard to come by at D-Point. We took turns having to drag each other away from people we loved dying for us at every turn. So yeah. I get it.

"I got mad because it took so much time and effort for me to get out of that mindset -- and hell, it was Kunzite that ended up actually pounding it through my thick skull, before he even remembered who I was, while he was still trying to set stuff up to kidnap me -- it took so much effort that I guess I assumed since it wasn't a thing on my plate anymore, she should know that. Especially since she'd just seen it, I'd literally just dodged with her instead of taking the hit-- but panic, I get panic. I just wish..."

Finally Mamoru reaches to take off his glasses and scrub at his eyes, laughing that weird dumb laugh again, rueful and maybe a little congested, self-deprecating. "Screw it. I'll teach her how to dodge properly when she's shoving someone out of the way of an oncoming pointy missile. Once we fix this."

A beat. He turns his head up to eye Nephrite, a little red-eyed (obviously from the scrubbing) and definitely kind of sidelong. And there's a better smile in the corners of those eyes, and in his voice; the rest of his expression is deadpan. "And Neph. Are you telling me you don't want to be in class with me and Jadeite and Zoisite?"
Nephrite has posed:
"Heavens," Nephrite exclaims. "Was it that bad? Do we need to talk about getting you a kevlar vest?" It is a joke; his voice is just as light as ever. But a part of him is horrified. How many close calls was he never even aware of? How many disasters could have been averted if he and the other Shitennou had been around? How long did he go thinking he didn't matter?

"Well I'm glad someone got through to you, because you matter a hell of a lot to me and her and a whole lot of other people. And if it took you that much work to get past that, it will probably take her just as much effort to get over her fear that you're going to keep doing it. So yeah, dodging lessons might be a good call. If only to make it clear to her that this is how you plan to do things now."

A slow grin crosses his face at the idea of the three of them in a class together. "Oh. That's bound to give somebody ulcers. Hey, do you think Kunzite would sign the letters our teachers send home?"

He stretches, long muscular arms stretching out wide behind Mamoru. "Speaking of lessons. Most people would prefer to start the teleport practice on solid ground. Makes it less complicated when you only have to think on the horizontal."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's honest shame tucked underneath Mamoru's flippant waving of his hand; it percolates in the background when Nephrite jokes about the kevlar vest. They're on the same page, at least as far as Mamoru's previous level of self-worth goes. He almost says something else about it, but he really can't. So instead he just leans, Nephrite's arm around him, and fusses with the zipper of the hoodie. "Dodging lessons it is. I'm sure there are plenty of Senshi willing to throw stuff at her for training purposes."

Then he looks up and sidelong at Neph again, and he's at least got a lopsided smile again. "It'll be amazing. And seriously useful. You and Kunzite weren't the only teachers there with ulterior motives. I was considering switching schools, but if I've got you all there with me, I won't have to keep inconveniencing all the middle school magical girls with trying to watch a high-schooler's back."

Nephrite stretches, and Mamoru takes it as a signal to straighten up-- and then he grimaces profoundly. "I was hoping you wouldn't remember. Fiiiine. Would you mind getting us down there? I won't yark on you."
Nephrite has posed:
It seems absurd for a teenager of Nephrite's size to sulk, but somehow he manages it, slumping dramatically and scowling. "There are uniforms, aren't there? And homework? Can't I go back to being a teacher? You're allowed to be eccentric when you're a teacher."

But he brightens at the prospect of the teleportation lesson. "You promise? I suppose this can be a trial run to see if you'll handle it okay. If you can't deal with it when I'm in control, it's not going to be much use for you to do it yourself." He takes Mamoru by the hand. Returning his arm to his shoulders would work just as well for transporting them both, but with the skin contact, he can track Nephrite's thoughts and feelings better, perhaps learn what it is that makes the process so different for the two of them.

"Alright. I'm going to jump us over to the blue sandstone, right?" An image of the giant earth symbol floats in his mind--specifically the particular angle it can be viewed at when one is standing right on the edge of it. And of course it is not just a picture, because thoughts are more than visual. It is heavy with the meaning of that symbol, tangled with the memory of its discovery. "It's an easy target because it's so memorable. And I've been there, so I can picture what it looks like when I'm on the ground, where I belong."

"Okay," he says, giving Mamoru a beat longer to brace himself than he normally might, hoping that might ease the weird motion sickness issue. "Ready? Here we go." And then he jumps. It's a short distance, and so they are only in transit for a few seconds. For Nephrite, it's that same feeling he got when he first tried teleporting after leaving the Dark Kingdom--the rush of exertion, the mingling of his power with his palace's as he reaches out to it. And then they are on solid ground, standing on the edge of the Earth symbol, precisely where he imagined them being.
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"You can be an eccentric student," Mamoru insists, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and trying to pretend he's not fidgeting. "I can get away with an awful lot. Ask Jadeite. He was posing as a transfer student after you vanished. We skipped class sometimes and usually actually left the building for lunch. Not to mention even before that, I did a lot of mid-class 'whoops, gotta go' and then got in henshin fights and whatever. Just as long as you're a polite and helpful overachiever, you can basically get away with anything."

He's totally stalling.

When Neph grabs his hand, he pales a little, swallows, and grips back white-knuckled. He shuts his eyes tight. "...okay," he says, like he's going to get a shot. Or get shot.

That skin contact also brings Mamoru's-- Endymion's-- own thoughts and feelings into much sharper focus. Perhaps distressingly, there's very little focus at all. A lot of him is running on autopilot, an incredibly well-crafted machine that artfully manages to pull coherent conversation out of his current sloshy mess of emotions, knowledge, scattered memories, scars, and the miasma of needly anxiety that agitates them. It pulls things out and presents them in something resembling order, but it can't filter out all the damage.

The cracks show without the contact. The hurricane of instability, of incompleteness, of a wretched determination to keep himself together for as long as it takes-- and the cast iron will backing it-- and the knowledge that cast iron is brittle--? Well, at least he's not even within screaming distance of 'as bad as things were in front of a whiteboard in the dark kingdom'. The concept Neph introduced back then is one of the things reinforcing him, but there's still--

This is a split second. At the end of that split second after contact is established, he's managed to latch on to a solid focus: paying attention with stunning clarity to what Nephrite's showing him and walling all of that off so it can't distract him. He was doing this during D-Point. He was probably doing this all throughout his cognizant career in the Dark Kingdom. He's good at it. He's just exhausted.

"Okay," he finally says, grabbing hold of the image and its associations, but keeping his eyes closed. "Go."

It totally doesn't matter how short a time they're in transit. By the time they get there Mamoru's managed to attach to Nephrite like a baby monkey, having completely lost his nerve in a sea of cognitive dissonance, vertigo, and bizarrely unfounded cosmic abandonment issues, and scrambled for purchase while they were nowhere at all. He's paper-white. Very small voice: "...no-sorry-that-still-sucked."
Nephrite has posed:
The disjointed slurry of feelings that Nephrite senses in Mamoru does more to explain why he's standing on the edge of a high platform than anything Mamoru has said to him yet. He shouldn't be allowed to stay that way. If Nephrite were any kind of friend, any kind of decent human being, he would sit Mamoru down and make him start talking, stop walling it away, stop pretending it's not there.

But the unspoken (half-spoken) agreement still stands. He's allowed to keep this unhealthy charade up until things are actually finished. D-Point may have passed them by, but Kunzite is not yet returned. So tomorrow. Tomorrow he will stop pretending he does not notice when the prince's cracks show. Tomorrow he will start acknowledging the wounds he's been hiding, the unstable frailty, the need to actually let himself fall apart before he can start building himself back up again.

For now, Nephrite does not miss a beat when he notices, even though it makes his stomach churn just as teleportation somehow does Mamoru's.

For now, he can help him keep the mask on a little bit longer. He can be a distraction, because that is what he's good at.

And surely nothing is more distracting than whatever has Mamoru literally attempting to climb Nephrite like a tree.

"Huh," Nephrite notes, staring down at a prince who is now firmly attached to him. "Okay, so I think we can rule out healing Zoisite as the cause that one time. Apparently teleportation just does this to you." He wraps his arms around Mamoru, reassuring and solid. "Let's sit down and work this out. What exactly was so bad about that for you?"
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
At least, knowing his prince, Nephrite can judge by patterns from a previous life that he'll only take off all the masks when he feels safe to-- but the moment that safety is assured, it'll all come tumbling down. It fits that; it fits the smaller variations Neph's seen in this life, the condensed versions, the moments of absolute panic fought back and swallowed and then let out in fits and starts when there's a second to breathe and someone he feels safe with. It's all been duct tape and patchwork, loose emergency stitches and band-aids and rubber cement to rebuild after miniature breaks, fractures-- but it's still a pattern.

This is certainly a miniature break, but it's also, thankfully, completely out in left field.

Mamoru lets a slow breath out and sheepishly lowers himself, not shrugging out of that reassuring hold but also pretending he has dignity and not acknowledging it. He thunks his head against Neph's shoulder, then laughs shakily. "Um-- okay."

He'll sit wherever Nephrite goes, then-- in lieu of pulling up grass and picking it apart-- worries absently at the cuff of one of the hoodie's sleeves. "There was nothing out there. Just you. It was kind of like freefall in the dark with no sound and most of my body was gone. Proprioception was completely off. I couldn't tell where I was and it was like just my head going over a cliff in a spinning barrel..."
Nephrite has posed:
Nephrite leans back against a mossy tree, listening as Mamoru describes the ordeal. The sun shifts subtly behind them, the perfect height at which to offer warmth filtered through the leaves without blinding them. His brow crinkles. "What do you mean, your body was gone? You still felt my hand when you had it in a death grip, didn't you?"

He turns the problem over in his mind, seeking some kind of sense. "The freefall part I sort of get. The ground vanishes beneath you and you have this terrifying moment where you think you're falling. But you're really being pulled towards your destination. It's a bit disorienting for me, but not like that. More like jumping into a pool and having to take an extra moment to make sure you know which way is up."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"...yeah..." Mamoru says slowly, puzzled. He sits crosslegged, hunched over a little, elbows on his knees-- he's close enough to almost be touching Nephrite, but not quite; the color's coming back into his face.

He shelves that mystery for a moment, latching on to the next part Neph addresses. He even opens his mouth to say something, then closes it and frowns.

"Well," he says eventually, picking at a thread, "what if you jumped into a pool of ethanol and the lights went out and you had an ear infection? You wouldn't have any of the ways you'd normally use to tell which way is up. You'd be more dense than the liquid you were submerged in, so you couldn't just hold your breath and wait to float up; you wouldn't be able to see which way was up because everything was dark, and vestibular neuritis will make damn sure even your internal gyroscope is radio silent."

He looks back up at Nephrite, chewing on the inside of his lip. "I couldn't tell where anything was. I can't really explain it. Because you're right, it doesn't make any sense, feeling like..."

There's a thin smile and Mamoru looks down again, actively pulling at the threads holding the cuff to the rest of the sleeve he's fussing with. "Part of it was a little like being in the Dark Kingdom while I wasn't hopped up on Dark Energy. D-point wasn't as bad because there were enough other people there... for a while... anyway Sailor Teleport also wasn't so bad because there were a bunch of people. I can tell where I am relative to them. Can't get any parallax if it's just you and I'm mostly not there."
Nephrite has posed:
"What if you what?" Nephrite laughs at the extremely specific set of circumstances. "Okay, I think I'm understanding what you mean. Complete disorientation, loss of senses and equilibrium. Why would you feel that in the Dark Kingdom too? It can't just be about dark energy, because that's not what we're using anymore. And why would it be any different with more people?"

Nephrite crosses his legs and rests his elbows on his knees, frowning at the grass. Puzzling over what the common link is between all those things. Part of him feels like he should know this, and that is what is frustrating about it.

And then a shadow drifts languidly over them. Nephrite glances up in annoyance--he didn't order clouds! But what passes overhead is instead the elusive monstrous Thunderbird. It alights on the huge lightning-struck tree and begins preening its feathers. "Symptom, not a cause," its booming voice mutters, like distant grumbling thunder.

"I'm sorry?" There are not many who Nephrite would be so polite to.

The enormous beak swivels around to point at Mamoru. "Expand your scope. A fish does not know what water is until it has been removed from it. A creature that sees only light would panic at its loss, not knowing that others live their lives at nighttime. It is not only this that you experience differently."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's a near thing, but Mamoru manages not to call the intimidating guardian deity 'Yoda'. Instead, he gives the enormous Thunderbird a faintly wry look and draws himself both up and in, sitting straighter but giving a more narrow profile as he pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around them.

He's silent for a second, looking in the direction of the genius loci but not at it, perception drawn in another direction. Several of them. His brow furrows.

Then he looks away and up at the tree Nephrite's sitting against, craning his neck. "Oh," he says, bewildered. "I usually see the forest and the trees. Well, 'see' isn't the right word..." The nonplussed expression dissolves, replaced by sheepish irritation. "Yeah. You're right, I'm so used to-- I knew growing up that I don't perceive things the same way as other people, but I integrated it and forgot, because that's just the way things are."

He glances back at Nephrite, reaching up to rub at the back of his head and ducking a little. "It's all senses, the way your nervous system processes input. Disorientation-- I always know which way is north, not just which way is up or down. Loss of equilibrium, of senses-- I've been in the dark before, been in profound quiet, been in water that's body temperature; that's stuff I can explain, there's experience for it.

"The parts of the Dark Kingdom that used to be part of Earth weren't as bad as the parts that had never been; they had place memory. I told Usako, back then, in text-- I told her they were lonely, that I could keep them company. The parts that were really bad were-- the walls that moved, you remember? They also screamed, continuously. Not out loud, but I could sense it, even if I was walled up inside myself with a cask of Amontillado.

"When we went back there with everyone, I could at least orient myself on them, on the people we were with. I can always tell where you guys are, where Usako is. If I look for people I know, I can find them. In that place, where there was so much corruption, I could find even the people I didn't know too well, because they stood out. I could feel them, bright spots I could navigate by, bright stars of Earth--

"These spaces, your palaces? They're not technically on Earth anymore, but they're more connected to it. They're also connected-- home. Where it's more Earth than the surface is. I'm more than fine here. It listens to me, it talks, somewhere in the back of everything. Just because I'm not always paying attention doesn't mean I don't know it's there. Doesn't mean I can't always feel it in the background."

Mamoru looks to the Thunderbird again, expression one part grave and two parts self-deprecating. "Teleporting, I can't feel it. I can't feel any of it. If I'm with someone, I can focus on them, but it's still terrifying because I can't sense the planet at all. In a bigger group, I can orient myself via multiple points, get something resembling three dimensions. Right?"

Again to Nephrite; now Mamoru leans over a little and reaches for Nephrite's hand, then digs his other hand into the grass, the packed soil beneath the leaves. "It's-- Kunzite called it land sense, back then. Teleporting, even if we can all do it, I'm cut off from my planet. Not from my body, but from Earth."

And there it is: instead of the other things Nephrite's seen when Endymion's touched something and opened his senses and channelled the input to his guardian, this time he'll see other places, images and sensations and things he can't normally feel-- the lifeblood of the planet, hollows and pockets, cities and dens, lakes and rivers and the fish in them, airy mountain peaks and storm-wracked oceans and plains. Veering off to orient on Usagi where she is, then more difficult since there's no direct route for him, where Makoto is. And even when he withdraws his sense from all that, made easier by where they are, there's still the awareness. It's literally the golden warm connectedness that happens when he reassures someone by touch, heals someome-- it's awareness. It's a sense. It's background noise to Mamoru, like an attic fan that's always on or the sound of electricity humming through wires.

"Panicking because something that's always there suddenly isn't. I don't like being cut off."
Nephrite has posed:
For Nephrite, the difference between experiencing the world through his own senses and seeing it through Mamoru's is indescribable. Like seeing colors he never knew existed. His brain can only filter the information through senses he already knows--touch, smell, sight--but it is all of these and none of them at once, overlapping and weaving together. It's overwhelming, smothering, a cacophony of stimulation. Like an entire orchestra colliding with a monster truck rally on top of a roller coaster.

Just as Mamoru emerged from teleporting in less than solid condition, Nephrite emerges gasping for breath, red and sweaty and shaking. This is not like the time that Mamoru showed him the horror of Kunzite's subconscious, trapped in his own hell. He does not fight it, does not instinctively pull away. It is, after all, that same golden energy that heals, that breathes life into the very trees around them. An energy that, after so long in darkness, he craves. But after riding out the entirety of the whirlwind, he feels like he will drown if he spends a moment more submerged in it.

"That's what the world's like to you all the time?" Nephrite pants, grasping at a tree root to reassure himself that it's not going anywhere. "How do you get anything done?"

It's not an accusation or criticism. It's incredulity, with a healthy dose of respect. All the subtle ways that Mamoru demonstrates his power are really just glimpses into how much is happening beneath the surface. The sheer magnitude of his awareness, of his connection with the entirety of the planet beneath his feet, is so much more than healing, so much more than sparkly golden light.

"So when you say cut off--that's not your body, that's the planet. You wear the Earth like an extension of yourself. And then losing that..." He looks up at the Thunderbird for confirmation. Thunderbird, for its part, is no longer deigning to look at them, having returned to preening its lightning-sharp feathers.
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"...like I said, it's background noise," Mamoru says a little uncomfortably, shifting in place a little and resisting the urge to scratch at the back of his neck. "I mean, you read about people who weren't sighted before abruptly gaining the ability to see, and for a while their brains just haven't developed the requisite neural connections to make sense of the sudden influx of visual data; nothing they see makes sense. There's just too much going on.

"Or like if you go into a stadium and the crowd talking is just an indistinguishable roar, and you have to make an effort to determine even what the people near you are saying. It's just a matter of fishing the signal out of the noise. I filter it out to the point I literally don't notice it. So like... don't think it's amazing or anything," he finishes with a small frown.

Finally he shrugs, stretching his legs out and leaning forward, making his back pop. "Sounds about right. I mean it makes sense-- like suddenly going blind and deaf. So the question is..." He glances up at the Thunderbird, and grins crookedly. "Thanks," he tells it. Then he looks back at Nephrite and says very seriously, "The question is, how long will it take me to figure out how to cope with it to the point I can get better at it without wanting to crawl out of my skin? The anti-motionsick thing at least helps with not puking."
Nephrite has posed:
Nephrite laughs, his breath finally returning. "I'm not dissing it, alright? What you can do, how you see things, it is amazing, even if to you it's just the way things are. And yeah, you're probably onto something with blindness or deafness. For me, experiencing your perception of the world is like seeing for the first time. The sensory overload is too much for me to handle. For you, it's the opposite, right? And the way you use the planet as an extension of yourself, it's more than just one normal person sense. So it's not like just going blind or deaf. It's like losing everything at once."

He leans back against the tree again, staring thoughtfully up into the leaves. "I mean, I think it's worth trying to find some way that you can manage it. The whole puking thing isn't really fun for anyone. But this is pretty ingrained in you, isn't it? I'm not sure you'll ever really be comfortable with the whole thing."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's a faint smile when Nephrite laughs, and Mamoru finally shifts over to slouch against him. "Yeah, I know you weren't dissing it," he says, and then he's quiet for a moment.

"I don't think I'll be comfortable with it, either. But I should be able to do it well enough not to keep screwing it up. So I guess it's probably just a matter of repeated exposure. Building up a tolerance, conditioning my reflexes to account for the unpleasantness, wire my brain into knowing what to expect. There's plenty of stuff I really don't like doing, but I can make myself do it if I have to."

Like getting a shot, he doesn't say, because wow no.
Nephrite has posed:
There is a moment of indulgent silence, allowing Mamoru to lean against him, to enjoy the closest thing to comfort that he might find before tomorrow comes. Then Nephrite grins. "So what you're saying is, you need to practice. Probably before that gravol wears off."

He sits up and slaps Mamoru's back with a resounding thump. "Alright then. Let's see if we can get you to the nearest totem pole without anybody falling in the ocean."
Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Uggghhhh," groans Mamoru, extremely reluctantly sitting up and laboriously, long-sufferingly, getting to his feet.

Oh yes, he begrudges Nephrite's good cheer.

"Beer after," he insists, then closes his eyes, screws up his courage and his face, and...

vanishes.

A second later, there's muffled indignant yelling and a really, really big gopher pushing up the forest floor nearest the totem pole.

Well. That's what practice is for.