1575/Cookies, Carpets, and Calculations

Cookies, Carpets, and Calculations
Date of Scene:	08 June 2016
Location:	Earth Court Frat House
Synopsis:	Kunzite calls Ami over to get a sample of alien blood. Ami does something more alien: asking for help.
Cast of Characters:	Kunzite, Ami Mizuno

---

Kunzite has posed:
There is almost no sign of any chaos in the kitchen of Mamoru's apartment. (Or, as it is beginning to be, the primary kitchen of the boys' place.) There is a new door, but it's been there for at least a few days, there's no construction dust in the air. There are a substantial number of dishes and pots and pans still in the drying rack. There is a lingering array of wonderful and complementary smells; Makoto must have been here today.

But there is also an odd, alien scent that does not originate from the kitchen; it's drifting in from the living room. And it is not at all the kind of thing to be an artifact of poor housekeeping.

Ami Mizuno has posed:
The air slices open and separates until a swirling vortex of subspace is visible through the slice. It's just large enough for a person to step through, and indeed a person does indeed step through. From a nearby alleyway, Ami Mizuno steps through into the kitchen. Today she sports a pair of red shorts, a white blouse, and a blue vest, with short socks and sneakers on her feet. Nothing special, but cool enough in the warmth and humidity of the coming Summer.

She sniffs curiously, then reaches for a cookie from a nearby pile and smiles. "Kunzite," she calls, "I'm here." Then she sticks the cookie in her mouth and peers through the new doorway curiously.

Kunzite has posed:
The new doorway opens into a corridor that belongs to an entirely different apartment. The base treatment of the place is similar, white walls and professionally neutral tones, but without the faint hints of wear and personality that several years of habitation give even the most magazine-photo of residences. There's plastic sheeting hung at one end of the hallway to intercept dust, and a hint of brightness beyond. Work in progress.

Steps behind her, and a voice in the older doorway. "Thank you for coming. And for your contribution to reclaiming the apartment from the sea of baked goods." The latter is never going to be an actual complaint.

Ami Mizuno has posed:
Ami lets out a startled squeak, and spins around suddenly. The bluenette's eyes are wide with surprise, and her face has all the hallmarks of a child with their hand caught in the cookie jar. Not that she has any reason to feel guilty!

Nibbling on the cookie, Ami uses it to help calm back down, then smiles at Kunzite, swallows, and says, "Don't worry, I'll take a few with me when I leave. It looks like she made enough to feed ten times as many boys as live here. Are you multiplying?" she asks, teasingly.

But she knows better, and the joviality fades quickly. "How's he doing?" she asks as a more serious inquiry.

Kunzite has posed:
"We're playing host to a Puella or two, one of whom is a recovering Kyouko Sakura. Also, Moon is likely to be here on a regular basis. Planning for fifty instead of five is simply a wise precaution." Kunzite says that as deadpan as ever. He's dressed as seems to be becoming usual for him when out of uniform: jeans, a white button-down shirt worn with collar open and sleeves rolled up. Something has happened to his hair; either it was hacked off, or outright shaved off and left to grow back in undisturbed, though if the latter's the case it's growing in faster than it has any right to. Which might be a good thing, since otherwise it'd take years to get back to its customary length.

The more serious question is met with a pause, rather than an immediate answer. There's no sigh. There's no wince. Only a silence where one or the other might go, or where the answer might be considered carefully ahead of time.

"Staying in the palaces gave him a buffer against it for a while," he says, "but they don't have the energy to spare to protect him anymore, so that's gone. Moving hurts him. Contact hurts him. Painkillers still help a little. Codeine, mostly. We're trying to keep him from trying to walk."

Ami Mizuno has posed:
Ami considers the answer thoughtfully for several moments, as she finishes off her stolen cookie. She glances past Kunzite towards the door to the livingroom, then sighs. "At what point should we consider inducing a temporary coma?" she asks curiously. "I've got the knowhow to do it, and could probably get my hands on the necessary anesthesia ..." she trails off quietly, then shakes her head.

"Sorry, here I'm trying to solve everything, again," she notes softly. "If it does reach that point, let me know. I'll help," she promises. "But I think legally you're his Guardian," she notes, not even sparing the time to smile weakly at the joke.

"But this isn't why you asked me here," Ami says softly. "How can I help you?"

Kunzite has posed:
If there's offense taken at the suggestion, it doesn't show; it's considered for a moment, instead. "If it does reach that point, one of us will tell you. But he still has other kinds of strength. As long as he can still heal, I doubt either he or his body will cooperate with an attempt."

Kunzite makes a small follow-me gesture with one hand, at her last question, and steps out to the living room. The place is not much more cluttered than Ami saw it last. One couch is empty; the other is occupied with an unconscious Mamoru. From the look of him, conversation in the room is not much more likely to wake him than conversation in the kitchen was.

And a wide swath of the carpet is stained green, mostly dried, in places still with a gloss that hints at stickiness.

"Fiore tried to kill Kyouko last night," Kunzite says conversationally to Ami. "This went as well for him as might have been expected. After she gutted him, he teleported here. There were ensuing incidents, including new information about the thing possessing him and what it's actually done to his body. I apologize for not having arranged for an uncontaminated sample, but we were slightly busy trying to keep people from dying at the time. And most of today. Would any of what's left be useful to you, or is there no point in trying to extract it?"

Ami Mizuno has posed:
Ami's eyes flicker across the room, cataloguing everything swiftly. Two couches? One occupied. Mamoru asleep, and deeply so. Stained carpet on the floor, and the smell of something heady; woodsy? All that in the span of Kunzite explaining that Fiore tried to kill Kyouko.

With her brief evaluation of the whole room complete, Ami reaches up to touch at her earings. There's a brief flicker of energy a pair of transluscent blue goggles flash into existence over her eyes. Ami approaches the carpet curiously, then leans forward to get a closer look. Careful not to touch it, she studies the carpet in depth for a few moments, then makes a face.

"I'll need to get some time in a lab to really analyze it," Ami explains to Kunzite thoughtfully. "I think I'm going to need something better than Seishou's chemistry lab. I really need a mass spectrometer," she notes thoughtfully. "Though I think I ruined my chance of using the one at Infinity for the near future. Maybe Miss White ..." she trails off thoughtfully, mumbling.

"Do we have any rubber gloves around here? Preferably unopened ones," she notes, glancing towards Kunzite. She could transform, but that would be an unnecessary waste of energy. "I'd like to put it in stasis, but I can't do that without touching it. The atmosphere seems to be burning off the ... we'll call it blood, for now."

Kunzite has posed:
"Yes." Kunzite turns without more explanation than that and leaves the room for a few seconds. The box that he returns with is also unopened. "I don't have access to a mass spectrometer to offer you anymore, though." Lesser assistance, yes. Major lab establishments, no. It's a tradeoff he's willing to accept for some reason.

Ami Mizuno has posed:
Ami glances at the box, then nods and rips the perforated top open, breaking the seal. She pulls out one of the gloves and hands the rest of the box back, then kneels down next to the carpet and makes a disgusted face as she picks up some of the goo and smears it between her fingers.

A few more moments of analysis, and then Ami flicks her wrist just slightly, and the goo vanishes into subspace.

"You should probably get someone to clean up the rest," Ami notes to Kunzite. "I doubt it's safe for Mamoru for this stuff to just be lying around here. Sailor Moon should be able to purify it, at least."

Stepping away, Ami stands again and banishes the goggles back from whence they came. "I'll find a place to get it analyzed and figure out what's going on," sh e says, then hesitates a moment, frowning.

Some decision crosses her features, and although see seems unhappy with it, Ami explains, "Listen, Kunzite. I know ... you're busy. Really busy ... I've got at least eight major 'save the world' projects right now, and I suspect you're twice as busy as me, but, I ..." she trails off, then sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose. "I need help," she admits to him, barely above a mumble. "I need someone who can do some of the legwork on these things for me. Things like digging through archives, or analyzing the trajectory of interplanetary ballistic projectiles. Mass calculations, and predictive analysis. There's no one else in Virtue really good at these things, except maybe Mamoru, and the one person I thought I could rely on turned out to be a lying jerk."

She's trying, really hard, not to tear up right now. "I've been trying to do this alone ever since the Orphanage, and combined with too many doses of dark energy, it's had a really negative impact on my ability to make rational decisions. Nothing major, yet, but ... well ..." she trails off, then takes a deep breath. "Right now, I need help with the meteor. I just haven't had time to sit down and work out a prediction model for whether it will hit Earth, what impact it will have if it does, whether we can deflect it with a Sailor Planet attack or if we need to go up there and destroy it with something more explosive. I also haven't even finished digging through Eternity MAIN's databases on the thing to see whether destroying it would be better, or if we need to confront the Xenian that lives there. I can probably get Luna to do that part. Maybe. If sh e isn't busy."

She trails off again, then looks up to meet Kunzite's eyes. "I know. You're busy. And Mamoru needs you. But ... if you get a little extra time? Or if you think one of the others could help ..."

Kunzite has posed:
"The rest of that patch will be torn out tonight," Kunzite answers her with a nod. "I'd planned just to burn it, since there's so much general contamination at this point, but you're right. We don't know if the primary flower is different from the rest, and that thing has grown into Fiore's body; it would be negligent not to purify it before burning."

Still burning it anyway, though.

'I know... you're busy' does not, perhaps, get the reaction Ami is braced for. It does get him turning toward her, paying close attention -- and he was paying attention from the start.

Sometime around 'trying to do this alone,' there is a hand placed briefly on her upper arm. Not for long. Maybe a second of light pressure; maybe a second and a half. Four syllables, or six, before the contact's broken.

"Jupiter told me about what her talk with you," he says. "Yes. She's willing to help, too. Nephrite will already have observation records, and he has the math and the astrophysics to fill in anything you need that he hasn't already put together for himself. For the archives -- I have time on my hands; for simpler first-pass situations, or for other tasks that require more time and human attention than intelligence or specific skills, Naru Osaka might be willing to help, if you're willing to let her. She's had enough exposure that she's not forgetting anymore, and I suspect she'd prefer to be able to do something more than be a walking target."

Metal-gray eyes are steady on water-blue. "We're all willing to help. You're better at this than any of us. But if we can take tasks off you and leave you free to take better care of yourself, to rest and enjoy yourself when you can so that you're at your peak for the things that need your intelligence, then that's better still."

Ami Mizuno has posed:
Ami seems to diminish, a little, when Kunzite admits Jupiter beat her to the asking. "Oh," she mumbles. On the one hand, that means she took way too long to work up the nerve to ask. On the other hand, he not only said 'yes', but provided her with a list of additional helpers, and a summary of their particular areas of usefulness. It's a short list, but it's still more than herself alone.

It takes her a moment--about the span of three short breaths--and then she gets over feeling sorry for herself. "I'm not very good with people. Can you ... talk to Nephrite for me? Get him to work out how much energy it would take to divert it, destroy it, or allow it to burn up in the atmosphere?"

Naru, however, she doesn't respond to, right away. She just grimaces in uncertainty and self-recrimination. "I'll talk to Naru," she agrees eventually, voice a little dry. "Is there antyhing else you need from me, in the short term?"

Kunzite has posed:
It's a short list. It's also a list that's edited for the immediate problem. Can he talk to Nephrite? "Yes." There's a moment in which he almost smiles -- then when he lets that almost-smile turn up the corner of his mouth briefly, so that it's enough for her to see it. "Telling Nephrite what to do is part of my job. Never found a way to make him listen consistently, but Jupiter might be able to handle that."

Her reaction to the mention of Naru's name wins a more serious expression again. "Naru knows," he says, straightforward. "She was attacked twice on Friday, by two independent sources -- one was Fiore targeting her as a friend of Moon's, the other was apparently random opportunism. The possibility that there might be residual effects, from Melanite or from the other incident, had to be brought up. She's not upset with you." He hesitates for a moment. "Forgive me for asking; it's prompted by the possibility of Agera's having misjudged the matter, nothing else. Have you checked yourself for residual contamination?"

Ami Mizuno has posed:
The look on Ami's face is roughly akin to what she might look like watching a freight train run over a kitten. It is emotionless; completely dead of comprehension of the words, 'Naru Knows'. How can she possibly know? Obviously because someone told her, but that makes Ami doubly late to her responsibilities, and she is failing to cope with that right now.

For several moments, she just stares at Kunzite thus: uncomprehending and confused. Eventually she manages to work her way back to his question, at which point she offers a faint nod. "Yes. Unless it's gained a more subtle means of affecting me, such as causing hallucinations while I analyze data about it, then my natural metabolism has already worked through it. I'm 'clean'," she promises. "But I will understand if your trust in me is guarded until I've earned it again. I guess that means you know that Takashi and I broke up," she says.

Kunzite has posed:
"Good. It's not impossible for judgment to be swayed on these things -- redefining what normal levels consist of will always be a risk -- but I doubt that you could possibly have had enough exposure to make you sabotage your own analysis. Not without Mars having reacted to it." When they met in the shrine, a couple of weeks ago.

There's a brief shake of Kunzite's head to her statement about guarding trust. "You recognized the problem. You found a way to resolve it. You followed through. That was doubly difficult to do; you had both emotional and magical pressure working against you. At this point, there's nothing to earn. My concern about residual contamination was that you're having trouble now; if part of that could have been easily resolved, it would have been worthwhile."

Ami Mizuno has posed:
Ami shakes her head faintly. "No, my only trouble right now is figuring out how to save face, save the planet, and somehow save yet another of Mamoru's misguided friends." She glances towards the gunky green carpet meaningfully, then sighs.

"Just once, I'd like one of the villains to be irredemable," she notes to Kunzite. "Not because I don't like the whole redemption thing, but because it'd be easy for a change."

She glances at him, just a little bit of amusement back in her eyes, then says, "I've got a long night ahead of me if I'm going to find a lab to analyze this. I'll call you in the morning before class. You'll call me if you need me?" she asks. Of course he will. That's why she's here. But she's offering anyways.

Kunzite has posed:
"I will. I'll send you the rest of what we have while you're looking." That's not going to be pleasant, either. Though if there's information on the flower in Eternity MAIN, then Mercury may already know about what its roots are doing to Fiore. "Send me what else you need taken care of, if you can. Tonight is likely safe. But after this -- you need rest, and we need to find ways to help you get it. And be careful; with Fiore targeting Moon's friends, he'll try for the Senshi soon enough."

Ami Mizuno has posed:
Ami considers the warning carefully, then nods slowly and starts back towards the kitchen. "I'll be careful," she agrees softly. But there's a look on her face that speaks to a brief bout of recklesness. Spoiling for a fight? Or perhaps just anticipating one.

"Good luck," Ami says to Kunzite, before holding up her hand towards the wall from whence she appeared. A little bead of light appears in her palm, then expands outwards until the tear in reality forms once again. Ami sticks a cookie in her mouth and steps through.

Kunzite has posed:
That's not an expression that Kunzite is about to argue with. What little moral high ground he has on these things would be completely lacking, there.

But when that tear in reality closes again, he watches the space where it was for a long time before he goes to start typing up information for Mamoru to forward her via Virtue's network. A long time.