The Play Stops

The Play Stops
Date of Scene:	30 January 2016
Location:	Mitakihara - Downtown (inside a shield, under wreckage)
Synopsis:	During Walpurgisnacht, Kunzite and Sailor V briefly vanish under tons of rubble. Which is also on fire. The two of them manage to make the confined space - somehow - into a stalemate rather than a murder attempt. (The murder attempt will still come later.)
Cast of Characters:	Minako Aino, Kunzite

---

Kunzite has posed:
There's the minaret, burning. There's the wall behind her. There's smoke and fragments of flying stone and --

There's sudden gray in the corner of one eye, white in the corner of another, and something small and half molten is deflected off Kunzite's cape before it can strike in V's hair.

Darkness and silence fold just over their heads in the instant before the stone would strike. It's colder than it should be; his power always showed as shadow in the old days, not as this. But the cold isn't trying to kill her. It's just there.

Somewhere outside the shield, above them, around them, tons of rubble press down. She wouldn't know, from in here.

There's no delay, and however much the strain, Kunzite doesn't let it show in his voice. "I can't take us back to the field unless you let me. Will you?" Or will she take advantage of being on the inside of his defenses to cut him down here and now? It's an interesting question. Either way. He'll find out.

Minako Aino has posed:
Minako doesn't realize anything about defenses.

At least, not right away. She just made a clever minaret reference, so she's full of quips.

"Not the field, huh? How unlucky for me. Where CAN you take me? Some Dork Kingdom prison?" she suspects.

Kunzite has posed:
"Nowhere, if you're fighting it." It's an honest answer. It must be; if Kunzite could teleport people against their will, the Dark Kingdom would have had far more of an advantage. "You can let me, or we can wait in here till someone gets the rock out of the way, or you run out of air, or the Queen looks in to see what we're doing. We can't blast our way out. Moon and Endymion were too close."

Minako Aino has posed:
Minako momentarily seems confused. "Until *I* run out of air? Did you give up on breathing now? Just dropped it like a bad habit?" she asks, fighting back the temptation to just blast Kunzite now and be done with it.

It seems like a pretty good sacrifice, although the advantages the current Walpurgisnacht battle reduce that evaluation somewhat. It's still a good thought and a tempting one.

On the other hand, a greedy part of her wants to live and survive, even just a little bit more.

Kunzite has posed:
"If she'd left me with a human body, it would've been harder to keep me under control. Ask Mercury." Quick and matter-of-fact, with no emotional load. Not for that first moment. Not till --

Not till Kunzite's not the one in control of the place anymore, even inside his shields.

Despair seeps through. The air warps. The ground under their feet bleeds violet upward, shedding a disturbing light that casts Kunzite's uniform in the tones of an aging bruise, Sailor V's outfit in worse. The General tenses. "Watch for the familiars. They can turn up anywhere in here; my shield won't stop them. There's still pressure; it took the wreckage in with us. Will you let me get us out?"

Minako Aino has posed:
"Yeah, I'm not human either. I'm half goddess," Minako remarks.

But when she eventually gets around to answering the question, she wears snarls and bitterness as a mask for even worse. "Nmmmmmm... fine. Today is all about selling out. At least I have a halfway good reason," she comments.

"But not just yet. Soon. Hah. How long do you think it'll make 'til somebody cares that I'm gone?"

Kunzite has posed:
"That explains everything." The hint of familiar humor in his tone might be the worst part.

Or the quieter note after. "They care right now. But Endymion can tell that I'm alive the same way he could tell that Jadeite was. And he knows that if I am, and I'm still in here, then you're alive and conscious."

Unconscious people, after all, can't resist much of anything. It would have been a simple way out of the problem.

He didn't take it.

And then the world warps a second time, and the ground they're standing on is just gone. Rubble falls away around them. The shield they're standing in, one of Kunzite's dark spheres, stays in place. Leaving the two of them floating in hell with the others.

"Not what I was expecting," Kunzite mutters. But it will, apparently, do.