1651/Information By Way of Cookie

Information By Way of Cookie
Date of Scene:	23 June 2016
Location:	Earth Court Frat House
Synopsis:	Naru bribes Kyouko with cookies to tell her about Witches and Puella.
Cast of Characters:	Naru Osaka, Kyouko Sakura

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Naru Osaka has posed:
There is a distinct lack of Makoto in the Frat house these days, for.. well.. Reasons. There is, by extension, a distinct lack of Makoto's cooking as well. Which is hardly about to mean that anyone here is going to starve to death, except possibly in the same way that spoiled housecats are Starving. To. Death when they can see the bottom of their food dish.

Tragic. Really.

Somehow, however, there is the smell of baking in the apartment. Banana bread, at a guess. With chocolate chips.

The cookies are already cooling on a rack next to the meat pie.

Someone has been busy.

That someone would be Naru, who leans against the counter, watching the oven, holding a can of fizzy water. An apron still on, which oddly has more dried paint on it than flour.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko doesn't call when she wants to come to Mamoru's place- she just drops by. It's her second home.. or perhaps third, considering she probably spends more time at the conbenie where she works than at either the Frat House or her actual apartment.

    So it is that she opens the door and walks in- no fancy henshin-jumping for her, not when Grief Seeds are in short supply and she's been unwisely wasting energy on fighting anyway. Conserve conserve! At least, as long as she remembers to. She pauses inside the door to pull off her shoes, glancing around. Nobody in evidence, though that's not any particular surprise. It's always a crapshoot who you might find here.

    It does smell good, though, and Kyouko's highly-developed food-sensing nose leads her towards the kitchen. She wonders if perhaps Mako-chan has been recovered, though she assumes she would have gotten a text or something if that were the case. That being so, she is not surprised to see someone else in the kitchen, though she pauses in the doorway and tilts her head at the sight of Naru.

    "Oh.. hey Naru-chan." She greets. They have never spoken extensively, but Kyouko is apparently used-enough to the other girl being 'around' that she has no problem being familiar with her. Not that Kyouko is one to stand much on formality in any case.

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Oh!" Naru startles just a little out of her thoughts as she turns at the voice. "Hi!" She grins and gestures towards the cooling cookies. "Want a cookie? Oatmeal raisin." She explains briefly. "I didn't know how solidly anti-raisin this household was, but /I/ like raisins."

"If you're looking for someone in particular I.. er.. I have no clue where everyone is. Sleeping, school, stuff. Things." Naru erms softly, quirking her head as she realizes momentarily just quite how little help that actually is.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko is not one to say no to food of any description, and cookies actually rate quite highly near the top of her list of edibles. She moves forward and snatches one off of the rack, biting into it and making a brief noise of pleasure at the baked delight. "Mmn, you make a good cookie, Naru-chan." She compliments, rapidly devouring the rest of it. "Anyone who says otherwise, raisins or not, don't know what they're talkin about."

    She leans back on the counter and crosses her ankles, shrugging. "Eh, s'no big. I was just stoppin' by. Used to this place being either full to burstin' or a ghost town.. usually one or the other. Wasn't lookin' for anybody in particular."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Thank you." Naru smiles at the compliment to her baking, even if she's not currently eating it, taking a sip from her fizzy drink instead. "I enjoy baking, I don't do as much of it as I used to, but I figured at the moment, this place might be a little bit lacking in baked goods."

Naru nods emphatically about the pendulum swings of people. "I'm rarely here when its this quiet. It's a little weird, actually. I keep feeling like I've snuck in wihtout permission. Immaterial of the fact that it's not true." She looks a touch sheepish and then crouches to peek in the oven door's window, to check on the bread and then straightens.

"You.. work closely with the crew here, don't you?" Naru offers a touch hesitantly, not quite certain of the conversational topic yet.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "I ain't gonna be the one to tell you to stop." says Kyouko, with a lopsided grin, showing single fang. "Long as I keep getting cookies out of it." Saying so, she snatches another one off of the baking sheet. Kyouko often finds it hard not to eat food if the food is just there for the taking. Old habits from when food was legitimately hard to come by and she never knew when she was going to get her next meal.

    "Ehhh, you know the guys don't mind," She says, shrugging. "Mamoru likes having a busy house, I think. He always was a people-person.. even if he did his best to pretend he wasn't."

    She chomps on the cookie, then raises a brow at Naru's question. "Well they ain't payin' me and it's not like I have a job title, but I guess you could say that. I don't have much family of my own, and for whatever reason these guys seem to tolerate me hangin' around and moochin' off of theirs, so.."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Based on the state of the fridge, I don't think any of the boys are going to protest too hard either." Naru comments with a wry note. "Either that, or they've all gone on an all sauce diet based primarily in hot sauces and soy."

"Between Endy and Usagi, I am pretty sure that they know everyone in Tokyo, and I've told them both that. Both of them are wow, people sort of people." Naru shakes her head a little. "That many people, all at once.. I'd rather have much smaller numbers. Or just listen. I'm alright with just listening instead."

Naru finally claims a cookie of her own and leans against the counter again. "You're a puella, right? Like Momo is?" She ventures, a touch hesitantly, as she continues, eternally, to try and get a handle on who fits in where in Naru's suddenly very rapidly expanded universe.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "Well, Usagi maybe." Kyouko says, smirking a little bit. "But she'd make friends with a mailbox, so I'm not really shocked about that. Mamoru just has this thing where he can't keep from helpin' people.. even people he really shouldn't." She falls silent for a moment, maybe because she would have placed herself in that category once upon a time. "Generally glad he does, though."

    She shrugs her shoulders and nods her head as she finishes off another cookie. "That's right. You met Momo?" She shakes her head slightly in wonderment. "Girl gets around.. guess she's makin' up for lost time. I should worry, probably, but I think that'd be a waste of time. I dunno what she gets up to while I'm at work. Probably better that way."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"If she's managed to make friends with a mailbox, I wasn't there for it. There /was/ the reading box in grade two, where all the story books were kept? I'm pretty sure she made friends with it." Naru grins brightly. She has plenty of Usagi stories. Plenty.

Naru nods. "Mmmm." She agrees on having met Mamo. "She and Cure Spark kept me and Dog from spending what I think was supposed to be forever, unconscious in some sort of mirror." She sounds pretty matter of fact about the potential of spending forever in a mirror. "Apparently it was her first non-witch fight, but I dont' remember any of it, I was unconscious." She sighs softly. "That was a fairly awful day, although meeting Momo and Dog and Cure Spark were high points." She takes a drink of her water. "She left before I could ask her about witches, though."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "Hopefully that was before this whole Grief Seed issue, or else I'm gonna have to have words with her." Kyouko mutters, then, seeming to realize how that sounds considering the girl was saving Naru, quickly adds, "Not that I ain't glad she helped save you or nothin'. She's just.. a bit reckless." Look who's talking, Kyouko, although it's a lot easier to see flaws like that in other people than in yourself, a lot of the time!

    She shrugs her shoulders again at the latter comment about Witches. "Just as well.. Momo's a newbie still, relatively speakin'. I don't think she knows much more than you do.. well, I been tryin' to educate her of late, but then again there ain't any Witches around right now, so I'm not sure how much it's helping.. or even if it's necessary. All you really gotta know is that they're bad news."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"What's a Grief Seed?" Naru asks and then smiles a touch. "No no.. I get it. I mean, I'm also glad she saved me, although if she hadn't, at least I wouldn't have known. There's some advantages to the ones that knock you unconscious. Some disadvantages too, you don't get to talk with them."

Naru mmmms softly. "Most people know more than I do. An occupational hazard of being one of the boring normal ones." She takes another sip from her drink and then sniffs the air before bending to peek at the bread again, opening the oven door to stab the loaves with a skewer. "Are there supposed to be Witches around? In.. labyrinths?"

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "Sometimes," Kyouko says, with a slight twist of her mouth, "I long for boredom. Not often though." She really wouldn't change much, even if she could- well, some very big things in the past maybe, but as far as her situation right now she's actually remarkably content. Minus the whole famine thing, anyway.

    "A Grief Seed is what a Witch leaves behind when you kill it. We Puella need to use them to purify our Soul Gems.. kinda like recharging a battery." Not really, but its an apt enough comparison for the process, given the conversation. "And yeah, there's supposed to be.. or rather, there always have been. Without 'em, we can't purify our Gems, which means we can't use our magic, cause if we run out.." She makes a 'pttthb' sound and gives a thumbs down. "That's it for us."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"A lull might be nice, it feels like it's been non-stop crisis for the entire time I've known anything of what's going on. That's hard to maintain." Naru comments as she shuts the oven door again, the bread not quite done yet. "I don't get the sense that Tokyo is ever actually truly boring."

Naru frowns a little. "Wow. That has to be really worrisome for you guys! No wonder you wondered if she was using magic to free me. I hope it was before." She sounds sincere about that, a little thoughtful. "I guess asking if you knew why is silly, because if you did, you'd be trying to fix it."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "Eh," Kyouko says, with a mild shrug of her shoulders. "There's always gonna be some kinda crisis. Thing is, for as many people around, magical or otherwise, who wanna do good there's just as many who wanna use their powers for somethin'... less good. The scale of the crisis may be different. Not everybody's out to blow up the Earth. But I don't anticipate runnin' out of scraps to get into anytime soon."

    She makes a slightly sour expression, shifting where she leans against the counter as Naru questions the reason behind the shortage. "Well, we do know the reason.." She's not quite sure how to explain Kyubey and his issues to Naru without launching into a four-hour diatribe though, so she settles on saying, "Somebody's tryin' to wipe us out, and figures cuttin' off the supply is the best way to do that. Issue is we're not sure what to do about it yet. All this crap with Fiore isn't helping anybody focus on the problem either, though luckily it ain't urgent just yet. It'll get there, though, at some point."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"I'd be alright if the energy draining and mind control could at least schedule themselves for no more than twice a week or so." Naru comments dryly as she sets her empty can to the side to be recycled. "Twice in a day was nuts."

Naru hunhs softly. "That.. well that /sucks/. A lot. Like a whole lot. Why would someone want to wipe you guys out?" She harumphs softly, indignant on their behalf. "Fiore isn't helping anything with anyone, no."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "Because," Kyouko says, making a face, "Some of us don't like playin' by the rules. The whole Puella thing, see, its a big game, goin' back thousands of years. There's a system which Kyubey runs, with a specific goal, and it has rules. In the past, people played by those rules and he let 'em be. But a couple of us in more recent times have figured out ways to cheat.. either cheat, or just not go as mindlessly along as he'd like."

    "So he's tryin' ta reset the system.. at least, that's what Homura told me. I ain't heard it out of his mouth straight but it seems to fit the pattern of what's going on. He wants to get rid of the troublemakers, starve us out, so he can start over fresh." She shakes her head slightly. "Ain't gonna work, of course.. just haven't figured out exactly how we're gonna stop him just yet."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Who's Kyubey?" Naru asks, listening and hitting upon specific points to ask further questions. Worse than a toddler, really. At least this toddler bakes cookies.

"There's a whole lot less blind following of rules in modern society than there once was, so he might not have much luck, even if he just starts over fresh. And besides, that's /awful/." Naru shakes her head.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "Little white guy, likes granting wishes. If he asks you, don't listen to 'im, by the way." Kyouko says, with a grimace. "Looks kinda like a cross between a cat and a rabbit, big red eyes, talks without movin' his mouth. Some kinda alien or somethin' I think, I dunno."

    "It is awful, but there's a lotta awful crap in the world. I guess from his point of view we're the awful ones, messin' with his perfect system and crap." She shrugs her shoulders. "Either way, when it comes down to it, I ain't gonna just roll over so.. if it's gotta be one of us, it's gonna be him."

Naru Osaka has posed:
There is a flash of insight that one can practically watch light above Naru's head at that description. "OH! Does he make contracts with people?" She asks and then nods a few times. "I think I've been warned against him. A lot. Like by everyone who found out I was starting to remember things. Some of them twice."

"There is a lot of awful. And some of the awful is the same stuff that other people think are absolutely right." Naru agrees with a little shrug. "But you're here. And you're Endy's friend, and Usagi's friend, and so I tend to agree on the choice of you or him, I know you."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "Yeah, that'd be him. Don't surprise me you've gotten the warning over and over, though honestly if he's never approached you yet you're probably safe. If you had enough potential to interest him, he'd probably have sought you out a long time ago." She pauses, realizing that might sound kind of mean, and adds, "Sorry.. didn't mean to sound all superior-like. Magical potential, I mean."

    Kyouko smirks a little bit, but it's not for Naru, it's a self-reflective smirk. "Yeah, you gotta pick a side, one way or the other. I'm happy with the side I've chosen.. regardless of who's standin' across from me."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"It's okay. I'm pretty comfortable with the whole not magical thing." Naru assures with another little shrug. "Like, a lot of people don't get to pick, and that could still happen to me, I suppose, but it seems way more likely that I'm just boring. A little less boring, cause I stopped not noticing after the dark kingdom, but I don't /do/ anything."

Naru pauses in her explination about her lack of doing things to open the oven and stab the banana bread again, this time satisfied enough to pull the two loaves out of the oven and reach to turn it off. She sets them on top of the stove to cool a bit before moving to get a tupperware container to put cookies away in.

"Do the puella all work as a team?" Naru asks, offering Kyouko another cookie in the midst of putting them away. She did make lots, although compared to the many teenagers who live here and practically live here, lots doesn't go nearly so far as at her house.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko shrugs her shoulders a little bit. "Noticing is more than most people do, or least it seems that way to me." She says, accepting the cookie. "And you do do stuff.. I mean, you're makin' food, an' that's more than I can do, at least with any skill. Magic ain't all there is to the world.. though it might seem that way to some of us, sometimes."

    She snorts a bit at the question about Puella. "As if. No, usually we fight amongst each other more'n anything else. That's what happened when you need a resource to survive and it's in limited supply. Although sometimes we do work together.. I work with Saya-chan quite a lot, and Momo of course, and I've worked with Homura and Madoka in the past, though I've always worked against Homura just as many times. Certainly not a team."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"When being held up by thorny vines, having one's energy drained and being woken up to be told exactly why.. I promise that my ability to bake cookies does not cross my mind as something useful to /do/ right about then." Naru comments with a little chuckle as she leaves out another for Kyouko and one for herself before sealing up the container and setting it somewhere easily spotted on the counter.

"I suppose I hadn't considered it that way, and all the more so when they were just getting rare rather than gone." Naru hunhs softly, picking up her cookie and slowly shaking her head at the litany of unfamiliar names. "Wow. I really do not take after Usagi in knowing everyone in Tokyo. I don't think I've met any of them. Except Momo, of course."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko shrugs her shoulders, accepting the other cookie and chomping into it with a grateful look. "Believe me, I've learned that non-combat skills can be just as useful as the kind that involve stabbin' and shootin'.. just in different situations of course."

    "Don't really surprise me that you haven't met many Puella.. a lot of us tend to keep to ourselves. Kinda surprised you haven't run into Homura, as she's friends with Mamoru too and I know she's been here, but I guess not as often as me in recent times. Still.. like I said, s'not like we're a big happy family, so.."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Totally different situations, and your'e right, but I still get to feel helpless a lot, and that sucks." Naru wrinkles up her nose and then shrugs. "But I can bake cookies. So I do."

Naru mmms softly and then shakes her head. "I'm not here as much as many others. I try and stay out of the way, mostly, but I'm hoping to actually get started putting some base coats down on the walls and doing some pencil, so I'll probably be here more often. Perhaps I'll meet her sometimes. Or I might meet her somewhere else too, I'm not completely a hermit, just mostly." She smiles a little.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko nods her head, and shrugs again. "Well, you know all the right people.. lookin' at it one way, anyway. Chances are you will eventually." SHe pushes off of the counter and steps away, inclining her head. "Anyway, thanks for the cookies. If nobody else is here, I'm gonna go find Momo and make sure she ain't gettin' up to any more trouble."

    She smiles. "Nice talkin' to ya, Naru-chan." And then she's stepping out of the kitchen to reclaim her sneakers and head for the door.

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Thanks for answering my questions. You give good answers." Naru declares, a good thing, to judge by her tone. "See you later!" She waves before turning back to the kitchen.

There's a few more dishes she could do, and a bit more tidying up, and perhaps, just maybe, she might even cook something else.