The time has been decided. The plan has been set. The Help No One Asked For is about to be given. Kyouko has met Homura outside of the arcade where Mamoru and Usagi and everybody often hang out. Seems like as good a place as any. Notably, Kyouko arrived on a motorcycle, which she then parked in a space near the front of the arcade. This is notable because to the best of anyone's knowledge, Kyouko doesn't own a motorcycle and doesn't have a motorcycle lisence.
When Homura arrives also, Kyouko walks up to her, glancing around. She's not in henshin yet. "Well, I guess it's time to see how this works, right? Bear with me here.. I ain't used to using my illusions like this."
She turns, gesturing for Homura to follow her, and steps into the alleyway between the arcade and the next building over. Then she henshins in a flash of red light. Then she screws up her face in concentration, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth.. and snaps her fingers.
An illusionary copy of Mamoru shimmers into being where Kyouko was standing. It looks pretty good, but she's made him too tall- probably because she's used to him towering over her, and overcompensated. The illusion-Mamoru is at least 7 feet tall. Also it speaks in Kyouko's voice, although the mouth movements match the words. "Well? How's this?"
Homura arrives on foot, out of henshin. While she's perfectly capable of driving a car, she doesn't have one, and doesn't want to deal with the complication of having one. A car that mysteriously needs to be refilled despite no one in her house legally being able to drive... yeah. She doesn't want to deal with that.
Aside from that, the walk to the Crown is one she's used to making. She sees Kyouko, follows her into the alley, and silently watches as the red-haired Puella attempts to imitate Mamoru.
When she sees Kyouko's impression of Mamoru, she frowns. She steps up to her, almost too close, and looks up. She points to a spot on Mamokyou's chest and states, "You're too tall. His eyes should be around here. Also it'd be better if you didn't talk too much."
She steps back, placing a hand on her hip and looking Kyouko up and down. "Other than that, looks good enough."
"It'd be better if you didn't talk so much, but I'm polite enough not to say so most o' the time." Mamoru mutters under his breath in Kyouko's voice. Then Homura points to 'Mamoru's' chest, but since it's a non-solid illusion with Kyouko inside, Kyouko gets poked in the eye. "OW! Hey, watch it!" Mamoru squeaks girlishly, backpeddling.
Then he sighs. "Fine, fine." There's a moment of silence which is clearly Kyouko concentrating, and then the Mamoru illusion shrinks a size which, if not exact, is enough in the ballpark to fool anyone without a tape-measure. "Better?"
Assuming assent is given, Mamoru then appears to nod. "Alright. Well, let's go.. do Mamoru stuff I guess. Hopefully this doesn't take too long, I don't want to have to use the men's room." 'Mamoru' then proceeds out of the alleyway, trying to be noticable by stretching to full height and loitering outside the doors.
Homura sticks out her tongue at Kyouko's grumbling. She'd yell at her to take it more seriously, but telling Kyouko what to do is akin to telling rain not to fall on things. Homura looks 'Mamoru' up and down for a moment before shrugging and saying. "It'll do." They aren't exactly trying to win an Oscar here.
When Kyouko rounds the corner, Homura actually waits a moment before following after. Stalker habits are hard to break. She remains out of henshin for now, wearing a simple Infinity Middle uniform. When 'Mamoru' loiters outside of the doors, she stops, moves behind a street lamp, wonders to herself 'what am I even doing?!' and then walks up to 'Mamoru', leaning against a wall and crossing her arms.
"Mamoru stuff. So what... like... studying? Eating milkshakes? Browsing cute bunny pictures on your phone?" She's not going to bring up dancing because there's no way she's going to dance with Kyouko, especially not when she's wearing Mamoru's face.
"I don't imagine you've actually brought text books."
"Don't all books have text in them?" Kyoumoru asks, still in Kyouko's voice because her power is visual illusions, not auditory ones. At least she's speaking quietly so that in the hustle and bustle of the busy arcade, people not right next to her probably won't be able to hear and wonder about the discrepancy.
Then she smirks. "I know what you meant. But hell no, I don't have text books. I did bring this." She reaches.. inside of her own abdomen because again, non-solid illusion. Hopefully no one is looking too closely. Anyway, she pulls out what appears to be a register log from the conbenie. "Maybe this'll be good enough to fake it. It's got lotsa numbers like a text book."
Then she pauses. "Although the milkshake-eating plan sounds good too. That definitely seems like something Mamoru would do."
Homura raises an eyebrow at Kyouko's response, and then silently stares at the register log with cold purple eyes. "I don't remember him being so sarcastically philosophical, but it's not a bad look on him." She frowns at the log, but it's hard to tell if she disapproves or not because she does that to pretty much anything.
Her shoulders slightly lift in a shrug as she speaks in a low voice, "Well, if he's close enough to notice then he's close enough to be noticed." 'Close enough to be nabbed' is what she means, but she doesn't want to say that out loud here.
Homura looks inside the Crown, walks through the door, and her hair swishes behind her as she turns her head to look back at Mamokyou. "Well, 'prince'? I don't have a red carpet to roll out for you." She turns to walk further inside, not really sure where to go but making sure that she's at least going somewhere.
Kyoumoru looks around outside the arcade for a few moments more.. scanning the crowd. It may look like she's looking over their heads, but her eyes are actually still at illusion-chest-level, as previously mentioned, so it's less a good vantage point than it appears. Still.. she has to wonder if going inside this mysterious alien stalker won't be able to notice and fall for the trap.
Of course, Homura had said milkshakes. Milkshake is statistically one of only four words that have been known to make Kyouko move when she doesn't necessarily want to. That powerful pull is enough to get her to turn and, with a sigh, follow Homura through the doors and into the arcade.
Kyouko knows this arcade well herself- it's her DDR stomping grounds, after all. Her eyes turn towards those machines, and she idly wonders how odd it'd look for Mamoru to suddenly be pulling top scores on DDR, though her feet keep carrying her in the direction of the milkshakes.
Homura imagines that a stalker would probably check inside, too. Especially if this is a place that Mamoru supposedly frequents. Stalking is so inherently awkward that typically only the most desperate people do it for the most desperate reasons, and when you hit that point no amount of effort is 'too much'. Or at least that's how Homura sees it.
Aside from that, hanging around outside while talking in a girl's voice isn't very Mamoru as far as Homura knows. Or is it? She hasn't seen him much lately. Who knows what he's up to.
She glances towards Mamokyou to see 'him' coming along, and she moves her way up the stairs to the second floor where the food is. "I almost wonder if I shouldn't be in hiding somewhere. You'd be more... approachable if he thought you were alone."
She looks ahead. "Then again, a study group is generally not paying attention to their surroundings. Do we even know what this guy looks like, anyways?"
Kyouko doesn't know much about stalking, unless you count 'stalking prey'. The only stalking she's ever done was stalking Sayaka while she was Apatite, and she kept getting noticed so clearly she wasn't very good at it.
She follows Homura up the stairs. At least the illusion is pretty good- it doesn't look awkward moving around, despite her real proportions not being very Mamoru-like. "Nah, it's probably better if you're here. Maybe he'll think we're on a date and fly into a jealous rage. That'll make him easier to nab." Says Kyouko, for whom logic is often a stranger.
When asked if she knows what the target looks like, her off-handed reply is "Alien, probably attacking. Look for anyone like that."
Homura visibly twitches when the notion of dating is mentioned. It's usually hard to tell if Homura is actually angry or not. Right now, it isn't. What if someone other than their target came to that conclusion? God, that would be so much trouble for both Mamoru and Homura. She might not even be able to look at him again if a rumor like that got out. She'd be more comfortable openly admitting to kidnapping at that point.
"That's not what we're going for!" she practically growls. "It's just a study group! Or something. I don't know. Shut up and drink your damn milkshake."
Homura reaches up to pull on her hair, then lets out a sigh. "In any case. If he's stalking this place, he's probably seen Madoka and I making out here. Or he's seen Usagi and Mamoru making out here. Either way I doubt he'd just assume that."
Homura's assuming a level of logical thinking on Fiore's part that he may or may not have.
Kyoumoru gives Homura a look. "You guys make out here? Don't you have any shame? Jeez." She walks over to the counter and orders a milkshake, doing her best to make her voice sound low and manly as she does so, which makes the clerk give her a weird look but at least she doesn't call her out on it or anything. Of course, as she walks back to rejoin Homura, she runs into the issue of the fact that her mouth is not actually at the same level as the illusion's mouth, which would make it look as if she's putting the straw into Mamoru's chest in order to drink the thing.
She puts that problem aside for a moment so she can point out, "Look, anyone who knows you and Mamoru knows you're friends with him. They won't jump to 'dating' just because they see you two together, any more than they would if me and him were together somewhere. But this stalker guy is allegedly crazy and a stalker, so he might jump to that conclusion, that's all I'm sayin."
She then glances around, turns to face the wall, and slurps at the milkshake quickly, hopefully before anyone notices the straw placement.
Homura's still pouting. "Shame is for people who aren't as hot as me." So basically no. No she doesn't.
When she orders her milkshake, she apologizes for 'Mamoru' by saying he's got allergy problems today. This surely won't lead to any awkward conversations in the future where Motoki wishes that Mamoru will get well soon and Mamoru sits there going 'wtf are you talking about?'
While they're sitting down, Homura notices the straw, sees the problem that Kyouko is presented with, and shakes her head. She drinks her own strawberry milkshake, looking away from literally everyone and out onto the arcade below. "So how crazy are we talking? Like... on a scale of Sailor Mercury to Hannah Sharpe."
"I'm not sure that's correct because I've got some." Kyouko replies acerbically, revealing that she thinks she is as hot or hotter than Homura and also that she thinks she has shame, either of which are assertations the other girl would be justified in questioning.
On the topic of the target, 'Mamoru' shrugs. "I dunno, I've only heard second-hand, although apparently he's brainwashed and dangerous enough that Mamoru is afraid to go outside without multiple bodyguards. I'd say that's more towards the Hannah Sharpe side of the scale, although possibly even more violent." Does the scale go to 'Kyouko Sakura'? Past-Kyouko maybe.
Homura raises an eyebrow at Kyouko. She's certainly questioning one or more things that Kyouko has just claimed. Whether or not any of those questions are voiced out loud remains to be seen.
Instead, she flips her glorious, gorgeous, hair, letting the locks fly up and fall down, silky smoothness shining in the artificial lighting of the arcade.
"You know, I remember a time when that boy could walk around freely and not have to worry about that kind of thing." Homura stirs her milkshake with her straw. "What happened to those days? Those were nice days. He hasn't been safe since..." Homura thinks back. "... since his identity was compromised."
Kyoumoru looks momentarily dazzled by the hairflip. Kyouko's hair, while it does challenge Homura in the 'amount' category, tends to range from 'bird's nest' to 'hay bale' in terms of well-kept-ness. At least she washes it regularly now that she has an apartment. But then she recovers herself, and 'Mamoru' seems to scowl, perhaps feeling slightly insulted for some reason which is beyond words.
"He wasn't safe before that either," She says, grumpily, "Although safe-er, yeah probably. But look, the only way he's really gonna be safe is if we make it so dangerous to come after him that anybody else who thinks about it'll decide it ain't worth the risk." This is a very Kyouko solution to the problem, but then again it might actually be one Homura agrees with.
Homura, for once, smirks at the scowl on 'Mamoru's' face. It is the cockiest damn smirk. It's the kind of smirk one wears when she knows that whenever she walks into a classroom, every single boy and girl is having trouble maintaining their composure and she's the sole reason.
Well maybe not the only reason. Nephrite goes there, too.
She sits up straight, sips the rest of her milkshake and looks down at the now, empty, foamy, pink remains of her snack. That didn't last.
"You'd think between the... what... Shitennou, the Senshi, us, and like... all of the friends he has. You'd think between all of us people'd take the hint. You know, maybe the problem isn't that we aren't making it dangerous enough. Maybe the problem is that we aren't making enough examples. Like... maybe if we had Queen Beryl's head on a pike somewhere..."
Jokes on you Homura, Kyouko doesn't even go to school.
"Well, I think yer half right." She says, discreetly turning towards the wall to sneak another mouthful of milkshake, which is only not-gone because she's doing her best not to make it super-obvious that her straw isn't actually going anywhere near her 'mouth.'
"The problem is obvious that this jerk is an alien from outer space and crap, so he doesn't know who any of us are. Examples don't hurt, but we also gotta advertise, y'know. 'If you wanna date Mamoru, you gotta go through us first!' or somethin'."
She pauses, obviously reconsidering her choice of words. "I mean, I'm not suggesting they date us first.. or that anyone who'd want to date Mamoru is necessarily evil.. or.. well, look at the track record!" She huffs. "Precedent is pretty damning. Other than Usa-chan of course. Then again, she can be pretty evil, too." A faint flush, no explanation given.
"Advertise?" Homura considers, leaning her elbow against the table and her cheek against her hand. She's not against the idea, persay. "We'd have to do it pretty regularly, and it'd probably be about the same either way. Aside from that, Mamoru knows well enough who he does or doesn't want to allow in his circle of friends, the problem comes from those who don't take no for an answer."
"It's pretty weird how 'dating' is the first thing that these people jump to. Like... they gotta have it all. They have to date him and they have to drive away all of his 'terrible'" air quotes "friends and they have to own and possess him completely and... like..."
She looks off to the side, then up at the ceiling. She takes her straw and ponderously eats the small bits of strawberry that are still dripping off of it.
"It's weird how much one can insist that they love someone and yet they don't even respect them as a person. That's not how you treat a friend. That's how you treat an enemy. You isolate them from their friends, single them out, and destroy them."
"It's all about street cred, Homura." Kyouko says with Mamoru's face, in an extremely confident tone. She clearly thinks she knows what she's talking about- and maybe she does, at least to a degree, although whether or not the experience of a street-dwelling Puella can translate to immortal space aliens is a different issue.
"Once people are aware that Mamoru's got the Terror of Kazamino on his side.. and.. uh.." She eyes Homura for a moment, considering, "Homura the Time Lord, or whatever.. and all them other guys too, they'll think twice about messin' with him."
She waves a hand in dismissal of Homura's philosophizing a moment later. "It's all about that posession, man. People think they can't really own a guy unless they own all of him, and that don't leave room for anybody else. People mistake the love they feel for stuff with the love they feel for people and that kinda shit happens. I seen it lotsa times before."
"I even respect my enemies more than that." Homura can possible attest to this personally.
'Homura the Time Lord'? She isn't sure how she feels about that title, or even how she feels about having a title at all. She's been doing just fine without a nickname and she'll be perfectly happy continuing to go without one.
Even weirder is seeing Mamoru talk like that. She has to remind herself that she's talking to Kyouko in order to get over the mental dissonance of that. Still, what she's saying make some kind of sense. It's admittedly an aspect of being a Puella Magi that Homura never really got into.
"Well, I don't know about being called a 'Time Lord' but building a reputation doesn't sound like a bad idea. Someone comes along for Mamoru, sees or hears about a small army protecting him, and then maybe they think twice about it. If still they decide to be foolish about it, well, we were going to have to fight them either way."
Homura stares at Kyouko when she says she respects her enemies more than that. She's not sure she can completely agree. Well, she can agree with part of it at least. "You don't typically claim to possess your enemies, no." Turning people against them, though?
"Mamoru-kun."
The voice is quiet, composed, not at all angered yet somehow sharp enough to cut neatly through the conversation. Its source isn't difficult to find: a young man of about high school age, neither alien nor combative, stands next to their table, his hands stowed awkwardly in his pockets and his wrinkled shirt nearly sliding off one arm, as though he had no idea how clothes sizes worked when he picked it out.
His dull blue-grey eyes shoot to Homura for a split second, but he says -- and does -- nothing.
(How long has he been standing there?)
"I haven't seen you in a while," he remarks when he has their full attention. "Have you been ill?" From any other person, this might seem like innocent concern, but there is something so off about the way he holds himself, and about the overly saccharine lilt in his voice.
Perhaps he is not violent now, but on a scale of Sailor Mercury to Hannah Sharpe, Fiore's in a class of his own.
Kyouko is about to reply to Homura in a fairly indignant manner, something along the lines of 'what's that supposed to mean', when she's saved from the possible irreperable damage of their already fragile non-enemyship by the arrival of a strange young man.
She freezes at the intial greeting, turning to face Fiore slowly, Mamoru's eyes peering at the guy with a narrowed suspicion that is very un-Mamoru-like. Honestly, although Kyouko's illusion is good enough to fool the casual obseserver, and likely the obsessive stalker from a distance, up-close someone intimately familia with Mamoru might notice that this version of him seems a bit 'off' as well, although it's hard to describe exactly how.
A glance is shot back towards Homura. She doesn't want to talk, as her voice would obviously give away the ruse, so she makes a series of frantic head-gestures before remembering that they have telepathy. <<Is this the guy? I think it's the guy. Does he look alieny to you? Tell him I lost my voice! Er, Mamoru did. You know what I mean!>>
Homura doesn't notice the approach of Fiore right away, but she does hear the call of Mamoru's name. Her eyes immediately go to the new stranger. Immediately she is on guard, wondering just what exactly is going to happen here.
No greeting for Homura? Rude, but not damning in of itself. Whoever it is, they're certainly focused on 'Mamoru' and not anyone else.
Hasn't seen Mamoru in a while? So, they don't know that Mamoru is hiding again. This doesn't disqualify them from being the alien, but it doesn't disqualify a normal person either.
Something being intuitively off about this person does most certainly disqualify this person as 'normal' however. Homura does trust her intuition, after all. She has reason to. It's kept her alive. Kyouko's telepathy tells her that the other veteran is thinking along the same lines.
"Ill! Yes. That's right. Mamo-kun's been ill. It's a little hard for him to speak right now. Actually we are just about to leave to go... take a walk. Yeah. But you should totally come with! Say, I didn't catch your name..."
Homura stands up as if she intends to leave. She gives Mamokyou the biggest fake smile, as she responds telepathically. <<We should make sure, first... but this might be who we're looking for.>>
...Fiore *had* thought it strange that Mamoru reappeared without one of his ever-present captors at his side. At least now he knows the reason why.
As soon as Mamoru -- no, not Mamoru, whoever is pretending to be Mamoru -- narrows his eyes, he knows. This isn't like him, even in his compromised and broken state. Mamoru doesn't look at him like that, cold and calculating and unfamiliar. No brainwashing is strong enough to damage their friendship that terribly.
This Mamoru is an imposter, and this setup is more than likely a trap.
All pretense of attempted friendliness disappears, deflating the pleasant if awkward young man into a predatory feral thing, one step away from dropping his human disguise altogether.
"You're not Mamoru," he says simply, and with a wave of his hand, a surge of rose petals like a violent wind shoots toward the both of them, with enough force to strain and nearly tear the table out from its booth in the wall. This done, he leaps forward, arm extended to seize the imposter by the throat before he can even hit the ground. "Tell me where Mamoru really is. Now."
Well, at least that answers the question of whether or not this is 'the guy'. A surge of violent wind slams into Kyoumoru, and with a decidedly feminine-pitched sqwuak 'he' is thrown backwards by the gust hard enough to slam into the wall and leave several little cracks through it. The arcade is not empty, and there's a flurry of exclamations and people moving away, unsure of what exactly is going on, only that they suddenly want to be somewhere else.
Fiore darts forward to grab the imposter by the neck. However, there's at least two problems with this plan. The first is, as previously established by milkshake shenanigans, Kyouko's head is not where the illusion's head is. This means the attempted grab at her neck simply passes through the illusion-Mamoru's neck, perhaps brushing the top of Kyouko's head, maybe not even that.
The second is that he has now turned his back on Homura.
Kyouko banishes the illusion in an instant, revealing her, in henshin, crouching against the wall with teeth bared, fangs glinting as Fiore's hand closes on empty space. "Get him!" She shouts, before just off and slugging Fiore in the gut as hard as she can, unless he can react quickly enough to dodge the blow.
Homura watches as her own friendliness is ignored, and Fiore's friendliness fades away. She isn't in henshin when the violent wind rises up, so she gets pelted by so many magical flower petals and slammed against the wall. The fight has just barely started and she's already heavily bruised and cut. Dammit.
She lifts her ringed hand, and the ring becomes a purple orb. The orb splashes over her like water, covering her and becoming her henshin as she shield appears around her arm. That shield would have been nice a few moments ago.
"You just picked the wrong fight," she mutters, gritting her teeth and picking herself up. Kyouko's punch comes, and Homura... actually doesn't go for a gun this time. Instead she lifts her shielded hand, firing a small purple ball at Fiore's back. Compared to shotgun blasts, energy attacks are easier to clean up or explain away.
A moment later, an ebony black bow appears in Homura's hand, adorned with purple gems. An energy arrow is nocked back, but Homura doesn't fire. Yet. "I'm giving you one last chance to come along quietly."
Somewhere between the blast of wind and his leap into the air, Fiore's dropped all pretense -- including the human face he begrudgingly wears for these visits. The hand that reaches out to strangle the false Mamoru is not ashen, as it had been moments before. It is green, with spindle-like fingers ready to crush the life out of the one who'd deceived him.
Unfortunately for him, he's not the only one who deals in illusions. His hand passes bodily through 'Mamoru's' neck, finding empty air instead of flesh and bone, and the moment of surprise is all the two of them need to overcome him.
(This power...he's seen it on other worlds, hasn't he? Must every blasted kind of magic be on Earth as well?)
His thoughts are cut short by the fist that drives into his gut, and Fiore gets his first taste of physical pain. Like fire lighting him ablaze from the inside, needles stabbing at his lungs where the air was driven out -- he has only known pain of the heart, he is not prepared to deal with this horrid *thing* his body is doing to him. He curses, eyes sealed shut in anguish, casting about wildly with his fist for the red girl who did this to him -- only to be hit from behind by some magic and sent hurtling down the stairs.
When he opens his eyes, kneeling in a crumpled huddle on the ground, there's an arrow in his face.
"Come quietly?" he repeats, seething. "So you can torture and brainwash me, like you did Mamoru?" Around him, a breeze picks up, carrying on it more noxious pink petals that certainly weren't there before. "I don't think so." And Fiore's on his feet again, hands thrust forward towards the fools who attacked him -- the petals explode outward at his command, a hail of razors, beauty perverted into something terrible.
Kyouko's punch lands. She might be a teenage girl of no particularly spectacular build, but she's got a lot of experience at punching and she's mahou as shit. The two combined make this particular punch probably more significant than most, and surely only leads to an increase in Fiore's sudden discomfort.
Then Homura shoots him in the back and he's thrown down the stairs. Sure would be nice if they had one of those Nanoha barriers or whatever, but since they don't, people start fleeing and screaming and stuff as the green-skinned alien bounces down the stairs and crumples in the middle of the room. The police are probably going to get called, but it'll probably take 'em a few minutes to get here.
Homura nocks an arrow and threatens, to which Fiore responds belligerantly. Who didn't see that coming? Apparently Kyouko did, because she's not waiting for answers. Fiore throws his hand forward to send sharp little needles towards his attackers, who in this case would be Homura, because Kyouko isn't there anymore.
That's because she's leapt up to the edge of the stairs and then bodily thrown herself down, so that even as Fiore is blasting flower petals up towards Homura, Kyouko barrels into him from the side with a shoulder-check like some kind of goddamned rugby player, using the interta of the story-long fall.
"I said get him, not give him options!" She shouts at Homura at the same time.
'I don't think so!'
"Well then you should have thought a little harder." Homura doesn't hesitate once the flower petals appear. She's been in enough battles to know what they typically mean. In the same moment that they appear, Homura fires her purple arrow, the projectile flying between razor sharp petals. The first few petals land, slicing off bits of hair and drawing small strips of blood as the wind violently whips her hair back, but after a half-second of delay Homura's shield turns and then she's gone.
"You're the one who's hurting him." Homura's voice gives away her new position, a few feet away from Fiore's side, still holding her bow and having nocked another arrow. "He's been alone for so long, and now that he has friends you want to come back and take all that away from him."
She glares down at the alien, no longer even pretending to be a human being. Whatever she's going to say next is cut off by Kyouko trying to shoulder-check the alien. She frowns for a moment and hesitates. Shooting Kyouko, even by accident, while somewhat tempting is probably a bad move tactically. The bow, and its arrow, vanishes into a glow of purple and Homura runs up from the side, sending a swift kick at Fiore's side.
The wind is Fiore's shield as much as it is his weapon. Homura fires her arrow, and she fires true, but he is too much in his element, in the eye of the flowery vortex. With a wave of his hand, a resurgence of wind flings it away, its magic breaking apart and dissolving, like so many violet fireflies.
Truly, however, he hardly even notices. What he's focused on are her words, so violently blasphemous that he can't abide them going unanswered.
"Take *what* away from him?" he shouts, the gale whipping his hair into a frenzy as much as it is the girls'. "The delusion of royalty you planted in his mind? That little viper who hangs off his arm and whispers lies in his ear? This planet that's let him suffer alone for so long?"
(*/Fiore -- behind you./*)
With a flicker of his will, he summons his sword to his hand, turns on his heel, and gives the charging girl something decidedly more unpleasant to run into.
"I'm not taking anything away from Mamoru. I'm freeing him," he declares, before sidestepping the kick aimed at him and slashing his blade towards Homura in retaliation. Without surprise, it seems, it's much harder to get the drop on him. "You're the ones who made him forget me! You're the ones holding him prisoner!"
Instead of a fleshy impact of body into body, Kyouko is instead met with the fleshy imapact of body into sword. With a grunt, the sword pierces straight through her side and comes out the back in a spray of blood. Her inertia carries her all the way down the sword.. which, as Fiore suddenly tries to turn and slash at Homura, Kyouko uses to her advantage.
She doesn't let him, instead grabbing the hilt of the sword while it's still impaled through her and jerking it the other way so Fiore can't turn it on Homura. When she speaks, her voice is tight with pain, but being literally run-through doesn't seem to be slowing her down in any other way. "You're out of date, bud, we already killed Beryl!" This apparently in response to the line about the viper hanging off his arm and whispering lies. Well hey, it's like, impossible to imagine he's talking about Usagi!
Then she twists herself around on the sword, still holding onto the hilt, so she can wrap her legs around his neck and attempt to use her weight to drag him straight down onto the ground. With the sword still through her because YOLO.
Homura Akemi's eyes rapidly dart around. They're still basically fighting in the arcade. People have fled. This... really isn't the kind of place she wanted to damage. This is probably the worst battlefield the two Puella could have chosen, but here they are.
Fiore stabs Kyouko with his sword, and Kyouko drives it even deeper, which prevents Homura from even needing to deal with the sword to begin with. Still, the words annoy her. "It's not a delusion, it's who he is, and I don't even know what 'viper' you're talking about." It's hard for Homura to imagine that he means Usagi. Is he talking about Zoisite? Even then 'viper' is a bit unfair, isn't it?
"He's surrounded by people who love him and care about him. He's not a prisoner. He's hiding from you because you're scaring him."
Almost as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she knows that Fiore won't listen to them. "You crazies are all the same. I don't know why I even bother."
Homura is suddenly somewhere else again, appearing on a side of Fiore opposite of Kyouko. When she appears, she's already mid-swing, a bent-up golf club shining in the light of arcade screens as it descends towards Fiore.
Damn -- damn it all! Fiore's eyes shoot wide as he sees the red girl not only survive the impaling, but purposefully worsen it, throwing off his strike intended for Homura and impairing his balance for a split second. He fights off her attempt to drive him to the ground -- there's a good reason his strength is inhuman -- but his mind can't be everywhere at once. Suddenly, the dark-haired attacker is at his side, already swinging some crude club at him, and its weight has slammed into his stomach before he can react.
How did she just *appear* like that? Teleportation? Damn these puella magi and their tricks. In no other magic user has he seen such a variety of power, nor such a casual disregard for safety.
The alien stumbles backward, struck for the second time in his ribs and unable to speak momentarily as he fights to fill his lungs with Earth's poisonous air. (His sword follows him, of course; Kyouko's no longer impaled on its length unless she chooses to be.)
"Beryl?" he spits between gasping breaths, hunched over and clutching the hilt of his weapon with both hands. "I don't know any Beryl. If she hurt and lied to Mamoru, then I'm glad she's dead -- but I won't rest until he's freed of all the liars and thieves who want to steal him away from me." Shakily, ignoring Homura's appeal to his reason, Fiore rights himself, sword at the ready. "That includes the insufferable blonde parasite that *won't seem to die.*"
Really, she's had that flower for *how* long now? And the plants say that she yet lives?
"I've had enough of you two," he says, a wild spark in his eye as vines burst through the floor, a writhing mass of green that flings shrapnel of tile in every direction. "It's time I shut you up for good." Shut up indeed: the vines loop themselves into nooses and great rope-like coils, then shoot towards Kyouko and Homura, ready to choke, to tangle, to steal and smother.
Everything that a weed does best.
Kyouko doesn't manage to take Fiore to the floor, but at least she throws him off balance so that Homura can thwack him a good one, causing him to stumble back. She lets him pull the sword with him, the length of metal exiting her with another small spray of her blood, but the flow ceases almost immidiately- she doesn't heal quite so instantly as Sayaka can, but give her an hour or so and there won't even be a scar. (Of course, her Soul Gem is rapidly growing murky as she channels the magic necessary to heal the wound, as well as fight).
Her red eyes narrow as Fiore continues to rant.. blonde? She scowls. Is he talking about Usagi? "Oh, you alien mother effer." She growls. "You don't touch Usa-chan, you got me? She gave me a kickass coat."
Then vines are exploding through the floor, a hhuge mass of them heading straight for the two Puella, intending to crush them completely. But Kyouko is mad now. Threatening Mamoru is one thing- she'd die for her bro. But threatening Usagi too is like... that's a different level. Kyouko holds her hand out, and her spear materializes in a flash of red, fingers closing about its haft. "Homura.. I got this." She says, half-turning her head. "I'll give you an opening. Take him down."
And then she pulls her spear across her chest, and it fragments, exploding into short pieces of wood linked by red, glowing chain.
And then there's a crackle of red lightning. Each segment of chain between each segment of haft spouts a dozen little spearheads, each replicas of the large one at the end of the separ. Dozens and dozens of tiny spearheads on dozens and dozens of chainlinks.
"Listen up, asshole!" She shouts behind the veritable wall of floating, swirling metal and wood. "We already iced one fool tryin' to mack on our bro! You better step off if you don't wanna join her!" And then the whole mass begins to rotate.. faster and faster, the segments of spear spinning into a whirling mass of bladed chain. Essentially, a giant weedwhacker.
When the vines hit that, it'll be shredded leaves in all directions.
'Insufferable blonde parasite' pretty much confirms it for Homura. Really she should've known who Fiore was talking about. "Wow you really despise Zoisite, don't you? This isn't some weird rivalry thing because you both use flower petal attacks, is it?" Homura's long given up on trying to actually understand how Fiore thinks at this point.
Then Kyouko mentions Usagi, and suddenly it falls into place. "Wha- Oh wow. You're mad at Usagi-chan?" Homura's face contorts as she tries to imagine Usagi as a viper, and the closest she gets is the image of a literal snake wearing tiny bunny ears. She laughs, both at the mental image and the assertion that Usagi is in any way a bad person. "Holy shit. Okay. Wow. I needed that."
The vines come out around her, and she leaps into the air. Black bow appears in her hand, and a purple rain of arrows flies downwards, joining in with Kyouko's whirlwind to cut down the plants. At the peak of her jump, her shield turns again, and time stops. She lands, taking a moment to study the fierce-looking Kyouko frozen in time. Then she walks past the vines, ducks under the spear, and between the falling purple arrows. She finds an angle from which she can fire a clear shot, and brings up the black blow. She nocks a purple arrow, holding it back. The arrow grows, a purple flame ignites at the top of the bow, and Homura's face is washed out by the brilliant magic shining in her hands. She lets loose the arrow, where it shoots towards Fiore for a half-second before it too is frozen in time.
She flips her hair, and time resumes.
Fiore smiles as Kyouko puts the pieces together at last.
"That's right. Darling Usagi-chan," he says. "It'll be such a pleasure to finally kill her."
In truth, he isn't used to battles continuing for this long. His last encounters, while not truly successful (in that he didn't secure Mamoru's safe passage from this planet), at least ended quickly, and with more injury to his enemies than to himself.
Perhaps this is because he hasn't yet fought anything in henshin. And pride goeth before a nasty fall.
He'd considered the battle won as soon as he conjured his vines, and this is his fatal mistake. Yet again he underestimates the puella magi, forgetting the titanic amount of power they can command on a whim. Fiore wastes a second of involuntary awe as the behemoth of chain and spear rises into the air and tears into his plants, ripping them to shreds and showering the arcade in acidic sap. But he grimaces, gathers his mind, and reaches for the Xenian inside himself. A setback -- nothing more. He can still win this, he just has to use this power sooner than he thought --
No such luck for the unfortunate alien. In his wildest imagination, he couldn't have accounted for a girl who stops time; his trump card, it seems, is trumped. Before the Xenian can lend him her power, Homura fires an arrow from the safety and surety of her time stop, and the battle is all but finished.
Fiore's eyes can widen only a fraction of an inch before the purple magic slams into him, propelling him into the far wall of the arcade, where he crumples to the floor and falls silent, covered in a fine layer of plaster dust and rubble.
Earth, it seems, will not go down without a fight.
*BZZZZZZZZZZZ*
That's the sound of a swirling mass of chains and blades as wide as a person literally eating alien vines. Sap and leaves and all kinds of plant goo fly everywhere. Well look, Homura is rich. She can probably send them a check for the cleaning bill. Other than that and the hole in the floor, the place is mostly intact.
It's pretty obvious when Homura's attack strikes home, because the vines suddenly stop their assault. In the following instant, Kyouko halts the massive spinning weapon, and it shrinks and snaps back into a basic spear-shape like the world's most terrifying set of tinker-toys. Then she banishes it in a flare of red sparkles.
Seeing Fiore crumpled on the ground by the far wall, she nods her head, as if to say, 'damn right'. Then she grunts and sinks to one knee, her hand going to the hole through her entire body. "Ow." She mutters. Her red soul gem, perched high on her chest, is covered in tendrils of murky darkness. Her hand slips into her pocket and retrieves a Grief Seed, which she presses to the gem, sucking out that gloomy black and restoring it to bright red lustre.
Then she stands and tosses the seed over to Homura. "Here. You got some rope or somethin'? Let's tie his ass up and then tell Mamoru all his problems are solved."
Only then does she seem to realize she's coated in green, slimy plant-goo. "Aw, gross."
It bothers Homura enough that Fiore is targeting Mamoru, but to target Usagi on top of all of that... Really? Usagi? Sweet little Usagi who has never once been mean to Homura? Never once failed to see the best in her? One of the few who actually makes Homura feel like a good person?
It's hard to tell which ticks her off more, targeting Mamoru or targeting Usagi, but it's enough to know that right now, Homura is incensed. Looking at the cold rage behind her purple eyes, the tenseness of her eyebrows and eyelids, and the slight baring of her teeth, it'd be hard to miss it.
She walks past the mulch, the hole in the floor, the arcade cabinets covered in plant goo, and right up to the now-downed Fiore, regarding him with a silent frown. She catches the Grief Seed and looks at it, tapping it against her Soul Gem to let some of it out. Using her copy of Madoka's bow is useful at times, but it does sap her magic more quickly than enchanted bullets do. Her Soul Gem shines, and she looks at the Grief Seed, tossing it back to Kyouko. "Thanks."
She reaches into her shield, pulling out a thick rope. "Yeah, I have some. Give me a moment." Homura drops to her knees and sets about the task of tying up Fiore, wrapping the rope tightly around his arms and torso, making sure the rope is taut before she ties the knot. She pulls out another, shorter rope and ties his wrists together. When she's done, she turns to Kyouko. "So... now what do we do with him?"
Kyouko looks at Homura for a moment, standing there with a stab-wound the widge of her torso and dripping with alien plant-blood. "What do you mean, what do we do with him?" She asks blankly.
"Mamoru told me not to kill him. I guess.. uh.. maybe we should have thought this through beforehand." She glances around- in the distance, the wail of police sirens can be heard. The entire fight took like two minutes real-time, so it's not like the cops are slow or anything, just that magic fites are often blindingly fast.
Hearing them, Kyouko jerks her head. "We should get outta here one way or the other. Grab him, we can find someplace to stow him and then find Mamoru. Also, I need a shower." She turns and hobbles towards the door, hand pressed to the stab wound, leaving gooey green footprints.
Homura looks at Kyouko's wound, then up at the back of Kyouko's head. She hears the sirens too, but she doesn't care about them. After all, she has a perfect escape route as long as she's in henshin, and she's in henshin.
You'd think that carrying Fiore would be difficult for an average teenage girl of her size, but when she throws him over his shoulder (no princess carry for him) she stands up and walks like it's not even a big deal. She walks up to Kyouko, grabs her by the shoulder, and stops time again. Colors are muted, the sirens are silenced, and in this frozen instant they have all the time in the world. "Let's find a place to hide, first. We can call Mamo-kun after that."
She looks down at Kyouko's stab wound. Even for a Puella Magi, that looks pretty nasty. "Are you going to be alright? You're crazy, you know that?"
Says the experienced stalker.
Kyouko almost punches Homura by reflex when she's grabbed by the shoulder, but she manages to fight down that particular snap-reaction to having somebody's hand land on her shoulder without warning. She blinks when time stops, but she's seen this before so she isn't as startled as she might have been.
She glances down at the wound for a moment as Homura asks about it, then shrugs her shoulders. "I've had worse. It's only a flesh wound." As opposed to a Soul Wound, which are the really bad kind.