1850/Mind Spelunking

Mind Spelunking
Date of Scene:	22 August 2016
Location:	Earth Court Frat House
Synopsis:	After a particularly awful Wraith attack, Naru lets Endymion help her fix her emotions.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Naru Osaka

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Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Nothing is apparent on the surface. There's just Endymion with his fingertips lightly touching Naru's temples, with his face blank and his eyes closed.

Inside, he's looking for Naru as he picks his way through the empty ruin that should be her surface feelings. Naru? You know you far better than I do, his voice calls out in her mind, bold and businesslike, but kind. You're going to have to tell me where to put things.

It's odd, the sensation: she can feel his fingertips on her head, on the one hand, but that's very much a background thing. More immediate is the idea that she's enfolded in a cape, like Zoisite's or Kunzite's, shielding and solid and lightweight. There's no sense that he's touching anything, no sense that he's stealing in or trying to change anything, but it's certainly as awkward as if she were taken to the emergency room without the chance for new underwear.

The mental image of him is of a dark-skinned prince in beautiful embroidered clothing, red and gold; a long coat and loose trousers, leather shoes, also embroidered. His hair is the same that she knows, his eyes are the same that she knows. He's quite serious. And if you don't know what you need re-grown first, I'll take my best guess.

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru's mind is a rolling, boiling sea of thoughts and experiences, memories and assumptions, of identity and sense of one's place in the world. What it does not have are the threads of emotion that should be running through the different bits, twining things together into a cohesive whole. There is one emotion that she's managed to cling to even while most of the rest of them were siphoned off, some more quickly than others. Rage. The feel of it seeps through, a red thread glinting over and through things, making for sharp replies in her mental space. It's calm now, for the moment. Soothed by what appears to be habits so ingrained into Naru's psyche that they are as automatic as breathing. Finding her calm. Invoking zen. Tucking emotions off to the side, to let her deal with other emotions, or situations. Right now, however, there are no other emotions.

There are islands in that sea, touchstone places that shape the landscape, key points in Naru's self, shaped by the waters that swirl around them, all the experiences and assumptions and situations. Some are so mutable that one can almost seem them change, even as one watches, others are rock solid, only the slow persistance of erosion are likely to reshape them.

Naru is on the main one of the islands, although she's equally everywhere, all at once. She's even more petite in her own mind than she is in reality, but dressed neatly in skirt and blouse, plain enough to be immaterial, ignored, forgotten. Currently, I can only guess on what emotions should get threadeded into things, and I don't want to let go of this one, in case I lose it too. Her voice is just as calm as it is in reality, informing Endymion of the current status of her thinking, as irrational as it might be for the moment.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Wise," says the Prince, because now that Naru's given him a focal point to communicate with, he doesn't have to broadcast so widely. That's strange, too, because although mind-to-mind she can understand him, that word isn't in Japanese, nor are any that follow. He's not thinking that way right now. He's not quite the boy she knows, though the core of him is the same. It's so very clear, here, where constructions don't hold, where a lie doesn't even show its face.

Stepping onto the island upon which Naru stands, he surveys what's left and thinks about the Naru that Mamoru knows, about what he's felt from her on a receptive empathic level when healing her, and what he's read on her face like any good psychologist or diplomat might. There's sympathy and understanding there in him, but no pity: only that Mamoru's known this kind of emptiness. Gradually, gold light seeps in, wisps and curls of it, glowing at its heart like the core of the Earth.

Endymion lifts his hand, there beside her, and the wisps and curls straighten out as they come from outside and within her, and they connect to that raised hand. With every shimmering thread that resolves, there's more of a sense of connection: not between herself and this beautiful dusk-skinned prince, but between herself and her home, her environment, her origin, her community, her planet.

Then he lowers his hand, the threads woven around it like a glove, webbed to the edges of and the innermost parts of her mind, and he takes her hand with his free one and transfers the 'glove' to it. Abruptly the web of threads resolves into a glimmering golden outline of structures above the islands, connecting them and lighting up the ragged black holes inside them where real emotion had lived. It's like a blueprint. Here: love goes here, embarrassment goes here, fear and doubt over there, joy and ferocity there, satisfaction and humor, shame and sympathy and happiness and sorrow; creativity threads through them all. They're all quite distinct, but they're nothing more than outlines until Naru looks at each of them, when they begin to fill in.

But they're all gold. They're not her yet. They're a map, and when she views them, the dimensions and depth begin to shade in. "These are the shapes of what was torn out. You told me," he says 'me' but there's a distinct sense of other; they both know she told Mamoru and he's not the entirety of Mamoru, "that you could falsify them before because you knew what they should be, you just couldn't generate them. I offered to let you fill the spaces in with mine, and you didn't like that idea, and I agree: but that would be even less of a good idea now, because of what I'm missing. I'm on reserves. Luckily, even if you can't guess at what was in these shapes, the bleeding emptiness still holds the edges open, and nothing's begun to scab over and obscure the outlines yet."

He'd been gesturing with his hands; now they fall to his sides and he looks down at Naru. The webbed glove begins to glow brighter. "I'm giving you energy to fill those shapes in. The reason some of this gold is coming from you is because our lives both come from the ground we stand on and the air we breathe. All I'm doing right now, this moment, is giving you more of it. What I'm about to do is open myself up so that you can see my knowledge of what those emotions are like, and my memories of you that are associated with them, either in person or from Usagi's or Zoisite's descriptions. If you try to paint something back in and can't remember the color, look to me and I'll hold out the associated reference for you to take."

The faintest smile lifts one corner of his mouth. "And this is your mind. These are your thoughts. Change the tools I give you into your own. They're for you to use and keep, so they'd better be things you know the weight of, in your hands."

Naru Osaka has posed:
The internal Naru is closer to the external Naru than the Prince is to the boy, but there are differences, as there can't help but be. Masks, skins, lies that are so useful to hide behind are gone, leaving such a petite little Naru, who watches the shifts and changes and threads moving in her own head with a calm as much her own as for the lack of others. Steady.

Naru follows the paths of those golden threads, watching them highlight and fill up the empty potions, holding them open like bracing for all of the places where there needs reinforcement. A web of golden scaffolding of emotions, proving the most elaborate connect the dots.

I don't want to be you. I want to be me. Naru agrees on the notion of taking any of Endymion's emotions to fill in her own, when she can't. I can't be you. She adds after a moment, her hand reaching out for that glove as its offered to her, the touch startling her oh so faintly.

Naru doesn't wear the glove, she takes it into her hand and squeezes, the energy squishing like plasticine in her hands as she doesn't need a second reminder to change it to something familar to her. Gloves are not familiar, the trappings of being a Prince are not hers. A paintbrush is hers, wide for getting the basics of a painting into the canvas quickly enough, not yet worrying about the fine detail work that will come later.

Naru looks down at the brush in her hands, and there's a sense of her pausing and taking another of those slow calming breaths, the ones that she uses so often to centre herself, and get a handle on her thoughts and emotions. This time, it soothes thoughts only, to attempt to quell some of the overthinking of it all, and simply start filling in. Endymion's offered energy is her palette. I don't want some of them back. Naru notes, absently in passing. I know I need them, but I don't want them.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The faint smile of the Prince's grows more broad as Naru takes her agency in her hands and steps up to the canvas, and then he takes a step back-- literally and figuratively-- to let her work. He'll only do as he said: keep the flow of energy steady, keep the latticework strong until she fills in the blank spaces, offer references for when she needs them and try to keep the slow background reconstruction of Mamoru out of her way, when and if she goes for those references in his head. He'll show her how to do something if the goal eludes her methods, and she'll be able to create a method of her own to fit what he shows.

Again: he won't put anything in her head; he's a careful guest, he does not litter, he does not reorganize. Anything that goes in there to stay, she'll choose on her own and take and be able to repurpose.

"They were taken from you, too. Whether or not you choose to discard them once you have them back is up to you, but you need them back first," he answers her observation mildly. "You can't make a decision about it when you're not all there, or you may lose something you wanted after all." He's silent for a moment, then offers with a slight tilt of his head, posture relaxed but incredibly composed, "In a week or so, when you've resettled, I can show you how to reinforce yourself and your mental and emotional structures, then start teaching you maintenance and self-defense. There are ways to build walls of your own, and ways to fortify your foundations so that you can rebuild without assistance if you're attacked in the future in a way you haven't learned to defend against yet."

Naru Osaka has posed:
Let it not be said that Naru shies away from doing what needs to be done. Painting is a familiar muscle, one that is well exercised and already infused with the habits and familiarity of chanelling emotional energy. To begin with, Naru has to reference from Endymion frequently, to even get a feel for the most basic of situations. Broad strokes, the great washes of happy and sad, fear and surprise and disgust, the core colours, the building blocks that make up the foundations. Anger is already threaded through, the one constant that doesn't need a reference, that doesn't need to be carefully dabbed back into her memories and thoughts and self.

"I would like that." Naru agrees thoughtfully, her attention mostly upon her work, but the distraction of conversation letting her not overthink too much, to let the flow of emotional colour work organically, rather than forced. "I hate having things mess with my head, I would really appreciate knowing how to better keep them out."

The 'colours' shading over her internal self tend towards the darker ones, the brilliant spots of happy highlighted for their relative rarity.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Not even the slightest hint of interference -- and like a mirror reflection of sorts, behind the references Endymion's laid out for Naru to take, in the background of Endy's mind there is the slow and painstaking process of reconstruction. With him, it's not filling in paint: it's taking sharp and glittering shards of colored glass and fitting them together like puzzle pieces. Sometimes, edges fit, and they're filled in with molten gold, like kintsugi. More often, they don't quite, and they need to be laid aside again until another piece is found or re-cast. The process of finding remaining pieces also proceeds calmly alongside the fitting-together, with breaths of sea and air and land, of greenery and concrete, of stone and dirt and strawberries and sunshine all wisping in with the shards and sections and full panes of bright glass.

Endy's paying it no mind; it's on autopilot, given directives; his focus is on Naru, and it's of a mentor attending a student's first practice of new technique. But it's there nonetheless, and its shape is familiar.

There's a glimmer of bright amusement in Endymion's blue eyes, and he clasps his hands behind his back. "I hope this is less messing with your head than you'd feared when we initially spoke on the subject." His tone loses the implication of laughter, then, and is only serious. "I took your concerns to heart and I'm doing the best I can -- I hope it's enough."

The more Naru works, the more detail she gets into, the less visible the golden threads outlining the structures get. Eventually, they're absorbed into the body of what she paints, dispersing into energy. Still the brush glows bright, as do the fingertips of the hand holding it. The girl may be crashing off her own adrenalin, but the Earth's energy is holding her up and supporting her, just as the Earth's ground does when she stands on her own two feet. After all-- Endymion only borrows it, doesn't he? Or perhaps it borrows him.

"Let me know if you need a break, and I'll lock the lattice where it is so you can put the brush down for a little bit and catch your breath."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"You're not messing in my head." Naru confirms with a grateful note to her voice. The fact that there /is/ a note to her voice is progress. "You're holding my head together until I can fix it myself, and I am grateful to you for that in ways that I can't articulate. Thank you."

The idea that Naru can pause, that it doesn't need to be all done in one take makes her pause and she turns to Endymion, to watch him a moment at her thanks to him. She looks past, to the painstaking rebuilding of the shards, watching the play of light on glass, the images reflected back at them.

Naru turns back to her own reconstruction, holding the paintbrush slack for the moment, looking over the broad and medium strokes that have coloured the threads, filled in many of the easy sections. Not necessarily easy emotions, but the sections where the lines are the least complicated. "I'm still sorry that you have to be here, though, and watch my mess unfold."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The storybook prince, regal in red and gold, black hair possessing that same flyaway curl and blue eyes bright in his darker face, looks at Naru with a very wry smile. "Anyone who thinks they haven't got a mess has got a really, really big mess," he tells her, and glances back over his shoulder and then at Naru again. "By myself, like this, I'm just a ghost. I'm only part of the whole." He turns back to look at what Naru's doing, clearly paying more attention to her technique than the content. "Apparently Lacrima got a good taste of what she likes best from Kunzite, and what she likes best is identity. Fortunately for me, I'm good at rebuilding that-- but, ah, don't let her at you again."

Then he laughs, and it's easy and bright. "But even at my best, I'm hardly one to judge mental messes. You can look when you're done, if you want."

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru laughs softly, and in doing so, startles herself only slightly, a smile creeping up to come along with it. "There's something different between knowing you've got a mess, and inviting others to come and sit in your mess."

There's a quirk of Naru's head at the mention of Lacrima and identity, and the curiosity is not quite fully back yet, at least in her expression, but the questions are. "She shattered your identity?" A gesture of her hand, not holding the brush, towards the shards. "How? She's only ever stolen energy from me, and conversation, which doesn't count as stealing, it was freely given."

Naru muses on that as she turns back to her painting, a little breath of a break before she settles into another layer of granulation, smoothing out some of the jarring edges, where broad stroke basic emotions aren't exactly the right fit, and nuances are needed. Slower work, but needed in the whole.

Wide swathes of isolation grey, although as the infamous book states, there are many shades of grey as the details fill in. Content alone. Proud independance. Desperate lonliness. Steely resiliance, all twine in amongst the greyness, adding depth.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Mm. As I said, she tasted Kunzite; he was doing an experiment with her to see what, exactly, it was that she thrived on -- in order to find a way for her to get it without harming people, primarily. So he threw different things at her, and identity was the one she latched onto the most. So now that she knows what she's looking for, she goes after that in specific," Endymion answers, hands still behind his back; he rocks back on his heels a little as he glances back at the careful reassembly once more. "She didn't shatter it. She ate parts of it. In order to keep her from eating the rest, I broke it and hid it in the rocks and dirt and trees, in the underground rivers and the wild places where the city's overgrown."

A small smile at Naru. "In other words, I panicked and acted out of desperation; I made a bigger mess than I knew. But at least I can gather the pieces again. The parts she ate, I have to wait for them to regrow. It doesn't take that long, with help, but--"

Looking away again, he watches the shades fill in as Naru paints, examining the aesthetics rather than the content. "While I -- Mamoru -- was growing up, his identity was centered on finding his identity. Until the time I was six, I knew who I was. I remembered everything. I was Endymion. On my sixth birthday, I was in an accident that claimed the lives of my caretakers and the entirety of my memory. The paperwork in the car identified me as Mamoru Chiba, which was the legal name they'd devised for me; that's who the doctors told me I was, when they told me that they were very sorry but my parents were dead. Two years ago, I first started being Tuxedo Kamen -- because a princess in my dreams told me that if I found the silver crystal and gave it to her, my memory would be restored."

Quick flicker of a smile to Naru there. "Then last year, everything changed. Because of Usa and the Senshi, I finally began getting hints." Stepping away from Naru, he reaches up to hover a lovely dark long-fingered hand over one of the golden threads still connected to the brush, and absently feeds it more power, brightening and strengthening it. "I met Nephrite and Jadeite-- and Jadeite especially made me realize that I was supposed to be together with them. The girls pieced together who I was, and told me -- but I still didn't remember. I had two identities that were things people had told me, and one identity that was wholly my own, and he wore a mask. And then the Dark Kingdom took me, and shattered all of them and put a falsehood in place which rang of the truth.

"Despite that, the core of me -- my soul, tied to this planet -- was strong enough to begin rebuilding anyway, hiding the work behind a facade, and carefully compartmentalizing my mind so that I knew subconsciously which topics to avoid thinking about so I wouldn't be noticed. Then Beryl found out, and found out I'd been working on my men, bringing them over to my side -- and that Kunzite had been protecting me -- and she erased me and damaged Kunzite so that he forgot."

His hand drops, and he's still not looking at Naru. "So I have a bit of a complex about keeping who I am intact."

Finally, Endymion looks over his shoulder at Naru, and he grins very crookedly. "How's that for a mess? You are cordially invited to sit in it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a vacation spot. More like a Metro station you're afraid to touch anything in and are happy to get out of."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Waiting for things to regrow is frustrating, at least if identity is anything like waiting on emotions to grow back." Naru comments quietly. Most of her attention is upon detail work, fleshing out and filling in, adding depth and nuance and pulling only periodically upon the store of memories and experiences that she has to recreate from, rather than simply remember.

"That is a heavy weight for a six year old. And a sixteen year old." Naru's voice is still quiet, listening as she lets her hands work without the interference of her thoughts, which oddly works far better than her usual overthinking it.

"To an outsider, it is hard to believe that its only been a year, and just how recent and new and barely healed it all /is/. How close the ten of you are highlights so vary clearly how much destiny there is. You being you is important, through everything. I'm glad you're you." Naru comments quietly, a gentle note through her tone, and she turns to look at him at the end.

Naru's smile back to him is a touch lopsided. "Possibly not a five star resort, but more fascinating because of it. Complex, and rich wins over bland vacation spot any day."

Naru turns back to her own thoughts, experiences, past and present and the emotional thread that she's been adding subtle complexities to as they've talked. "Are you still investigating? To find out more?

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"The ten of us?" Endymion doesn't quite guffaw, but it's definitely an inelegant laugh, startled and disbelieving. "It's less destiny and more-- we still have jobs to do, and now we more or less remember what they are and can start figuring out how to do them. Gods, we need all the help we can get." He glances at Naru again, moving back to stand by her side once more, then sticking his hands in his pockets. Casual prince is casual. "I'm making Kyouko one of my Shitennou for real. She's earned it, and she wants it. She thought we were made of destiny, too. But that would mean we had no say in our lives, our decisions, who we could work with, who we could love.

"The Senshi were chosen by Queen Serenity to be guardians for her daughter, but friendship isn't destined. The Princess saw me from the moon and was fascinated, and was already in love with my planet, so she came to meet me and we fell in love -- and that's not destiny, it's chance and choice. I chose my Shitennou, one by one -- my mother chose Kunzite, but if I hadn't also chosen him, and he hadn't also chosen me, he wouldn't have stayed. That's not destiny either. Friendship and love aren't destiny at all, they're choices we make every day, they're things we have to work at, they're things we can lose if we don't. This -- this life, this getting to try again -- Queen Serenity gave her life and soul for it. But it was only a second chance. A chance doesn't guarantee an outcome. We've achieved what we have, and lost what we've lost, because of the choices we've made and the work we've done. And we can still lose it. Calling it destiny or fate or anything that implies something is so because it's meant to be so -- that devalues us as people, as individual souls; it devalues the work we've done and the work we have to do; it removes any possibility of adding to what's come before."

He leans and nudges Naru with his elbow, not taking his hands from his pockets. "You know about this junk now, and you choose to take an active role in understanding and dealing with it. I regret to inform you that you're no longer an outsider."

Then he finally sighs and lets his shoulders drop a little. "Yes, more or less, on the investigating. Kunzite's doing more of it than I am. Apparently Usa's father's been trying to investigate since the accident. Kunzite thinks it wasn't an accident. So does Tsukino-san. I'm inclined to agree, given the evidence which has been presented to me -- and it's still relevant, since whoever was behind it may still be around, may still be gunning for me, for the guys. At the moment I'm more concerned with investigating the guys' pasts in this life, since none of them really remember anything prior to the Dark Kingdom."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Eleven of you, then. Now you've a football team." Naru comments with a flicker of a smile and a nod about Kyouko. "I admire her." She doesn't elaborate on that, simply lets it sit and bit its own notion.

"I dont think destiny is that rigid, for what its worth. I think it guides and nudges and present situations that you can respond to, but you can also ignore it, and turn away. You can still be you, and love as you see fit, but it nudges." Naru has thought about that, it might seem. "And perhaps what you call chance, is how I'm using destiny, and what you call destiny, I don't think is a thing, because I agree utterly on choices, and growth and people getting to make their future themselves."

Nudged, Naru flickers a half smile. "More outsider than not. I don't fit very well. I'm not Senshi, or Shitennou, or Keeper or Guardian or Cure or anything else that would make my Virtue record not have the 'other' box checked."

"Kunzite would be good at that sort of investigating. Of your past, and theirs. I should offer to help him, if he wishes it." Naru muses thoughtfully and then looks back to the work ahead of her, in her own mind. "Although currently, I am probably not much help to anyone, until I sort myself out."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"You're helping me," Mamoru says immediately, and the flavor of the thought in Naru's head is Japanese. "Letting me help you sort yourself is helping me. I can explain how in detail if you want me to, but the gist of it is that *I* know you. Me now. The whole me. And you trusted me enough to let me help you, and you don't trust much."

Beside her, he looks indefinably more like Mamoru, though his physical mental image is the same.

The grin he gives her is quick and bright. "And you're in Virtue now? Thank the GODS. That makes things a shitton easier. Please, for the love of all that's good and holy, post to the board introducing yourself so people know they can trust you, trust information from you." There's a laugh, then, and he rocks back on his heels again, and he's wearing a goddamn bootleg Tuxedo Kamen t-shirt someone made using the 1960s Batman logo, under the brightly-colored and beautiful hand-embroidered royal coat. "You know I first joined as just Mamoru, because I've never been much of a fighter, but I knew everyone and I was really helpful as an information and networking nexus. I've been too busy being evil and then sick and then in recovery and then playing Pokemon Go lately to be much help to Virtue anymore, but damn, that's a job you'd be so much better than me at anyway."

Another laugh, then, and he's shaking his head. "You know how Ami-chan is always using chess as a metaphor? In chess, the King is the least powerful piece, and everyone else on the board has to protect him. But you-- you're a Bishop. You move diagonally; you come at things from an angle no one else does, an angle that's desperately needed. You do unexpected things in unexpected places. And you've chosen not to take any of the paths to magic you've been presented with -- and I'm convinced that means you know, somewhere in you that maybe you don't think you're allowed to acknowledge, that you have your own way. Which is so very you, isn't it?"

Naru Osaka has posed:
"It wasn't much of a contest when the options were to exist in that state of not existing, not coping, not having my art, or trust you. Sort of a no brainer there." Naru points out with a little smile and then she pauses thoughtfully. "I hadn't considered that I don't trust much. I suppose not? Most say I trust too much, or too easily at least. I've been accused of that by more than one person who has ended up draining me."

"I am in Virtue." Naru nods her confirmation and looks entirely sheepish. "I.. feel like I snuck in on a technicality, but I have a phone and everything. I don't think Virtue is what you remember it being, not that I've seen so far, but I haven't wanted to make a lot of waves or poke too much." She laughs and shakes her head. "You know everyone. I only know about half of everyone, possibly not even. If I was much of a fighter, we wouldnt be having this conversation right here, right now, while I was attempting to put colour back in my own brain." Naru points out with a gesture of her paint brush. "Its frustrating to need rescuing all the time."

"I try and beat the snot out of Wraiths with a bookbag." Naru points out at the description of her as a bishop. "Which makes for a fairly pathetic chess game." She is quiet a moment, after that quip, thoughtful on his comments, her painting slower, but still present. "None of them felt right." She admits. "Nothing felt like how most describe it.. not the puella.. their experiences are so fraught, I don't even. Others though, mostly describe their magical experiences as so much a part of them, a natural progression, and everything has felt forced." She pauses then, letting her brush drop in another little pause. "Which might mean I'm simply too much of a chicken to do what you all do. Which might mean it's not for me, and I need to learn how to live with that."