Naru in the Dark
| Naru in the Dark | |
|---|---|
| Date of Scene: | 22 February 2016 |
| Location: | Dark Kingdom |
| Synopsis: | Naru wanders the Dark Kingdom, encountering hostile youma and Zoisite. Weapons-grade obliviousness is definitely deployed. Or, as Mamoru's player put it: "the forces of the earth and moon kingdoms are arrayed to rescue you and sailor moon is a blubbering mess and you're having tea parties, omg" |
| Cast of Characters: | Naru Osaka, Zoisite |
Zoisite has posed:
Maybe Melanite left the exit from her quarters accessible. Maybe someone else interfered with it. Either way, Naru Osaka has found her way out from that half-sheltered spot tonight (today? Impossible to tell), into the caverns and passages of the Dark Kingdom as a whole.
This is definitely more interesting, but may not have been the safest choice in the world.
For one thing, the purplish stuff covering the walls seems to be organic. Sometimes leathery, sometimes slime, sometimes masquerading as rock but moving when she's not looking.
For another thing, some of the phosphorescence seems to be following her.
For a third, the corridor behind her when she looks back is not the same as the one she walked down.
And it is ever and always, unrelentingly, cold.
But of all those, her real problem is the girls.
There are three of them, their skins various shades of greens and olives. They're part-dressed in more greens, part in other colors - one a deep purple, one a hot pink, one ... dressed in nothing more than leaves growing out of her skin, really. They look like murderous half-plant refugees from a performance of Peter Pan done by a particularly ragged 80s media street gang.
This would in and of itself be fine, if they weren't in the process of cornering her and discussing what to do with her.
"She's free energy," the one with the violet tones and the prehensile, spear-sharp root tendrils for a hand is arguing. "Just divide her up and have done with it."
"Someone's already got her marked," the leaf-clad one protests.
"So we bring her in," the third states firmly. "Let Her Majesty sort it out. Get someone else in trouble for once. And if whoever it is doesn't have a good reason, well then. We'll get the credit for her energy and for taking care of a spy."
Naru has posed:
Safe is distinctly overrrated. This is FAR more interesting! There's purple stuff, that feels wrong, and changes and moves when she glances away and then back again.
It was the purple stuff that confused her, and made her think that she was keeping track of how to get back. Naru tried to use it to remember her path and when she turned to find it different.. well.. clearly going on will get her somewhere, and somewhere is better than just lost.
Naru glances down at her goosepimpled arms, cold as she's been for ages now, as if expecting to see the mark that she's just overheard she apparently has. The mention of 'Her Majesty' has her turning to look at the girls. "Who is Her Majesty?" She asks, in all innocence.
Zoisite has posed:
"Queen Beryl," the one dressed in leaves says firmly.
The one with the near-floral pink slash across her torso purrs, "We'll take you to meet her. Won't that be nice?"
"Come on!" the third complains. She flexes her not-quite-a-hand, and thorns sharpen. "It's right here. Drain it and -"
"Girls." The fourth voice is lower, laughing, and not a girl's at all. "Please. You're getting a little overexcited, don't you think?"
Its source materializes behind the trio of plant-women: a boy not much older than Naru, physically. Maybe Mamoru Chiba's age, smaller than him and more lightly built. Strawberry blond hair is worn long, tied back in a slightly unkempt ponytail; a couple of escaping curls frame his face. He looks entirely human, except that he's casually perched on nothing whatsoever, seated on air with legs crossed at the ankles and a bright, only gently malicious interest in his eyes.
He's also dressed in a gray military-styled uniform, and those bright green eyes don't look like a seventeen-year-old's at all.
"This young lady is obviously someone's guest," he continues. "It's only polite to see her back to her host." He leans forward and offers a hand to Naru. Somewhat reluctantly, the aggressive girl in violet clears out of the way. He seems to take this for granted.
"My name is Zoisite," he says to Naru. "What do you call yourself? And may I ask who your escort here was?"
Naru has posed:
"Oh!" Naru startles at the new voice adding in, as she starts to vaguely work out who all the different girls are, and who the Queen they might speak of is. She takes a half step back, her attention caught by the new arrival.
"I.. oh." She blinks a couple more times at the green eyed young man, who is very likely neither actually young, nor technically a man. Instinctively, she reaches out to take his outstretched hand. "I'm Naru. It's a pleasure to meet you, Zoisite. You're.. " She's distracted from what she might have said by the shift in the phosphoresce behind him, catching her eye. "It's so odd, to watch the walls and lights move. Is that normal? It's fascinating."
She really should probably be frightened, especially if she thought of exactly what the girls were saying, but fascination has taken hold.
Zoisite has posed:
"It's normal," the young man or close enough to it assures her. "Not always safe, but normal."
Rather than drawing her up into the air, he drops down beside her, neat and light as a gymnast. "There are some dangerous things down here," he continues, paying a practiced lack of attention to the not-girl flexing her thorns. "Shall we take you back somewhere safer for now, Naru-san?"
Thorn-girl mutters, "The throne room anyway, with his record lately."
Hot Pink narrows her eyes at Thorn. "He's done all right by us so far. Worth the investment."
Thorn-girl glares back at her. "At this rate, that's an investment in -"
"Grape. I am listening." The young man's voice is still light, and he's smiling, but Thorn-girl shuts up at once. This may be an improvement on the whole.
Naru has posed:
"It's beautiful." Naru asserts as she watches the purple shift and flex and change. "I'd only meant to go a little ways, but I did lose track of where I'd come from.." She admits with a little rueful smile to the green eyed man.
"Are they actually plants?" She asks, with that continued note of utter curiosity, rather than horror or distress. "I'd half hoped I might find something to eat, as lovely as the milk is, I think I'm getting hungry."
She barely notices it as she rubs her arms, warming them up a bit, although it hardly helps the pervasive chill.
Zoisite has posed:
"Some spaces down here only go one way," Zoisite tells her. "It's not like the surface; it's easy to be lost, or trapped, if you don't know your way. Better to have a guide. You are from the surface, aren't you? You look it. Your skin and your hair, they've seen the sun."
Her question about the plants wins a laugh from him, musical, bright as everything else about his manner. "They used to be. These are Grape, and Balsam, and Lily-of-the-Valley. Girls, you've been introduced now, it's not polite to murder. Would you see if you can find out where she comes from, please?"
He angles his head to give Naru his most charming smile, clasping her hand between both of his now. "We don't keep much down here you'd find palatable, I'm afraid. But if you'd accept my hospitality, I'd be pleased to offer you a meal. I've been to the surface often enough to know what you'll find acceptable."
Naru has posed:
"How can a doorway only go one way?" Naru asks curiously. "I mean, it might be awkward to come at it wrong.. ooooh! Or it's locked the other way, oh that makes sense." She nods at having talked it through on her own, even if she hasn't actually met much in the way of doors to support her theory.
She nods to his question as well, still a touch distracted as she attempts to work out the plant to human conversion. "I am from the surface, yes. I.. well. You clearly are not. You've the same colouring as that other silvery man. It's like mushrooms, although I suppose that sounds faintly rude. I don't mean to be rude, it's quite handsome.." She trails off as brain catches up to mouth and she gives him a faintly shy sort of sheepish smile.
"You're much more sociable though." Naru gives his hand a squeeze as he takes hers. "You're as lovely as the lady whose name I've forgotten already. I think she told me, but I keep forgetting. It's horribly rude. I'd be glad of your hospitality, please."
Zoisite has posed:
"I didn't say anything about doorways, did I?" Zoisite laughs again, and presses her hand lightly between his. "There you are, girls. Check in with Melanite and see if she's looking for our guest, would you please? I'd love to hear the story behind this one from her."
The trio of plant-girls don't have time to respond, though, because something else is happening. There's a breath of soft, sweet air, the scent of flowers, and out of nothingness overhead a rain of cherry blossom petals sweeps into a tight, geometrically perfect spiral around the pair of them. The petals stay. The world fades. For a moment, there's nothing around Naru but the boy holding her had and the whirling curves of flowers; out beyond that is something darker and worse than nothing, something inimical to life and heart and hope. Something that regards her with a tone as far past hatred as the heart of the sun is past a candleflame.
The boy's flowers deflect that consuming, corrupting presence as much as Melanite's magic did, and a moment later, when the petals dissolve back into the nothingness they came out of, they're in another place.
Still inside the Dark Kingdom - the place is too similar to where they left for that. But the cavern this time is of deep bluish stone, and while there's some of the purplish over-layer, it's held strictly to certain places, kept as something decorative rather than allowed to overrun everything else. There's formations that might pass for furniture, for all that they don't ever seem to have been shaped by human hands: ledges at convenient heights for benches or tables, beds of something (flowers? fungi?) glowing a soft warm violet to light one area or another, places where hollows have been filled in with topsoil and more genuine flowers spread great fleshy red petals. Here and there, trinkets glitter from niches, an eclectic collection of pretty things and nursemaided potted plants in various stages of prolonged and woeful demise from lack of sunlight, or sometimes of prolonged and woeful transormation into something that can bear that.
The chamber is warm. Not just that the lighting is warmer than the cold phosphorescence, though it is, but genuinely warm. Almost summery. The air is fresh, renewed by the improbable plants. The entire place is, like the rest of the Dark Kingdom, violently unnatural ... but at least it's more livable.
"And you've met Kunzite, too," the boy continues as he lets go of Naru's hand. The comment about mushrooms is allowed to pass. For the moment. "Are you from Tokyo, then? Or did Melanite find you somewhere else entirely?"
Naru has posed:
The sudden arrival of flowers is enough to make Naru's face light up and a little gasp of delight. She'd forgotten little things like the scent of flowers, the flutter of them around them both. She is focused enough on the petals not to consciously note the world beyond that swirl of pink, but the primal of that piques something deep within, and she steps just that tiny bit closer to Zoisite, squeezing his hands, without ever realizing the why of that little frisson of nerves.
"Oh... Oh!" Naru's eyes widen as they step into a place entirely unlike where they just were, and she turns to look behind them, as if there will be a doorway in spite of the lack of one. "Oh!" She smiles, easily and natural as she looks around. "You're a gardener!" That simple thing seems to give her as much delight as anything and she moves a little closer to one of the plants currently thriving, somehow, in the warmth and odd light.
Naru shivers, just the once, as if the warmth of the room has reminded her body of what warmth should be, and a need to rid her sensations of the chill she had almost managed to start ignoring. She brushes her fingers oh so gently along a petal. "I'm from Tokyo, yes. I go to school there. I.. forgot my knapsack at school. I'd forgotten that."
