Something is...wrong.
Not that something hasn't been wrong. For the past couple weeks she's been unable to keep her eyes open, especially in this apartment. Now, though, she's well beyond exhausted and lethargic. It's a physical pain to open her eyes, to lift her arm. Despite having overslept after an early bedtime and the nap she just woke up from, there's that bone deep ache of the completely exhausted.
She did manage to make it almost into the kitchen, her legs draped across the carpet of the living room while the rest of her decided the floor was gloriously cool.
The flower, of course, has been moved several times since she got it. In the bathroom for awhile, in her purse, in the closet. Now its on the kitchen counter, its seemingly innocent petals slightly glowing if one looked at it in the right angle.
She has out her phone, because she's a girl of today and its all but glued to her hand. She has strength enough to hit speed dial, and then she's fast asleep.
It's honestly a good thing it's Sunday, since Mamoru's been determined not to miss school, and the fiasco with Nephrite's house took far more out of him than it had any right to (literally ha ha ha), and he's been sleeping on and off most of the day.
He happens to actually be up when his phone rings, but--
He's already alarmed before the 'it's Usako!' ringer (a recording of the melody played by the locket he'd given her (well, meant to give her; Homura'd given it to her when she found it in his stuff (when he wasn't himself (because the Dark Kingdom doesn't have Snickers)))) sounds, and he doesn't wait for a greeting before the phone's at his ear and he's asking, "What's wrong?" in an overly calm voice.
He comes out of the kitchen, nearly hitting the doorjamb on the way, then leans against it as his voice starts to match his expression. "Usa? ...Usako?"
His eyes are closed now, and he holds the phone and listens intently, silent. Listens, and prods at their link, hard. Wake up. Wake up.
Then he's henshined and making a grab for Kunzite's hand, eyes still shut. "She won't wake up," he says flatly, and teleports.
It's a remarkably quiet day all around, really. Mamoru's been sleeping on and off. Nephrite has a great deal to go through, only some of which is accumulated and then rescued stuff. Kunzite did his usual trick of applying whatever the mental equivalent of duct tape is -- granted, Mamoru is all too aware of how much of his function is basically made up of that by now -- as a temporary patch, but it took time out of his hypothetical sleep. Gpd only knows how much coffee they've collectively been through.
Enough so that a white-haired head comes up at the tone of Mamoru's voice, without having to be in the same room.
Enough that 'Usa?' has him crossing that room, winding up a step away from Mamoru's side.
Enough that it's already a gloved hand that clasps Tuxedo Kamen's, braced for anything that might go wrong with the teleport this time.
But it's still almost a relief. They've been waiting for the other shoe to drop on this for long enough, now. Maybe this will be the time they can learn enough to do something -- and if not. Maybe they can still hold.
She won't wake up.
The flower situated on the counter glimmers on and off in the glare from the window, wisps of light drifting up from the tiny, collapsed body beneath it to nestle in between its stamens.
She's put up quite a fight -- *quite* a fight, much more so than he'd expected -- but at last, she won't wake up. Only a matter of time before she won't wake up ever again.
Fiore's smile widens as the ball of glittering energy in front of him grows. A few moments more, to ensure she is well and truly dying, and he will appear to bid her farewell as she slips from this world.
Mamoru wouldn't want her to die alone, after all.
For once-- for once, nothing at all goes wrong with the teleport. Tuxedo Kamen is nearly as white as his mask, but they arrive literally right next to her in a flash of golden light, feet on the floor. The masked boy instantly lets go of Kunzite's hand to discard his gloves as he crouches to pull her the rest of the way out of the kitchen and pick her up, cradling her in one arm and touching her face with the other.
He knows this black hole. He knows how much energy he spent last night. He knows-- "Five seconds, ten at most."
The rest is unspoken.
The rest doesn't need to be spoken. Kunzite lifts his hands, and shadows rush in around them. They flock thickest around Tuxedo Kamen and Usagi's unconscious body, cohering enough to reflect energies -- not energies directed against them, but energies drawn from them. Mamoru's contact with Usagi bypasses the barrier easily enough. But any other drain on her ... unless it has a way to bypass the shadows as well, it will have to contend with a sudden obstacle. Not a perfect solution, no. But lessening or perhaps even stopping the drain on her might buy a little more time.
The rest of the shadows that flood the kitchen are an energy drain of their own. Drinking a little of the light, a degree or two of the ambient heat. A trivial thing. What they do, for the most part, is give Kunzite a chance to feel where energy might be moving, where it might be concentrated. To give him an idea of where to look, what to look for, more quickly than he could search it out by eye -- while he's still looking up and away from where Usagi fell, while her prince is still trying to pull her out of the way.
There is one flaw in how quickly he enacts this plan. It's reflex-fast, without time for thought. His reflexes are still in part those of a different sort of being altogether.
It hasn't occurred to him, quite yet, that it will leave him the closest and brightest energy source to any predator in the room Usagi collapsed in.
Then again, given the mood he's still in -- if it had occurred to him, he'd probably have done it on purpose, instead.
Where --
The energy cuts off drastically, a steady (if faint) siphon from the girl tapering away into nearly nothing. It's enough to make the plant *jump*, a few inches to the side of the counter, mirroring her master's movements hundreds of thousands of miles away.
"No!"
The ball of vital essence in his hand begins to waver -- it is incomplete yet, if the draining stops now, the girl will live --
"Find her and FINISH HER!"
Sprouting thick nearly insectoid legs where roots should have been, the Xenian wobbles to life, shooting like a kind of horror movie jump scare at the brightest source of energy it can find.
He likely already knows who he is, so while getting attacked may not be much of a surprise, it will still be far from pleasant. Especially when the rootlegs, with spear-like sharpness, aim to plant themselves in the tender flesh of his neck.
There. Something moved. The kinetic energy isn't absorbed by the faint shadows in the kitchen, but it is registered, appears to Kunzite's senses; he turns toward it, taking two quick steps and reaching to grab the flower in a gloved hand.
That leaves the other hand free, fortunately, when it makes its distinctly unplantlike leap.
The main body of the thing smacks into his palm, but close enough that the tips of the rootlegs score his skin. He closes fingers around it and tears it away, hoping it doesn't have time for those things to grow -- either in length or into him. Either way -- the kitchen's small. He turns sharply, reaching with his free hand to twist a dial on the stove, bringing one of the burners to life; shoves the infant youma petals-first into the ring of blue flames.
This is not the disastrous idea it sounds. There's less of a chance that it can absorb the fire than that it can absorb his own energy attacks. And his shadows are already loose. If the fire starts to get out of control, he can swallow it.
It's the best and fastest chance he's got of killing or crippling the thing before it can grow into any further stage.
Most of his attention is on Usagi, cradled in his arms, still and cold; most of his focus is on maintaining her vital functions, connecting her system to his so that he acts as a literal life support system for her, rather than the panicked outpouring of energy he'd done at Makoto's apartment. That was very inefficient. That was throwing energy out into a void, into an abyss. This, here, this means that yes, some of the energy is taken, but most of it is not-- and Kunzite's shielding means that that, too, finally ceases.
The last thread of energy that wisps toward the orb in front of Fiore is silver twisted with gold, before it stops. It's a familiar signature, by now.
Kunzite's attention is outward, Mamoru's attention is still on Usagi. Safe, for the moment. Finally, he carefully starts actively replenishing her energy stores. She'll be able to wake up in moments--
--and then all of a sudden, something's moving, then Kunzite is moving, and before Mamoru can even tell what's happening -- as scattered and distractable and split-focused as he is -- Kunzite is holding a baby flower youma in the open flame of the temporary apartment's gas range.
There's a surge of fierce delight and pride and joy, visceral and complete, and not one single worry in all of creation, just for this second, just for this tick of the clock. So the prince takes it, grabs hold of that surge and that safety and the sudden and encompassing knowledge that no matter what, he does have everyone he needs, and he bends his head to kiss Usagi.
The energy he gives her through that kiss is different from the healing he usually does -- it's wound throughout with that joy, with that fullness, and with that heady and ferocious glee he's allowed to have, allowed to share with her, because of her; it's burning with a planet's worth of sheer, focused love.
Wake up, Bunbun. No lying down on the job. Kunzite is protecting us to give you time. Come back and join us, it's not much of a party without you there~!
It may have been able to resist a human -- may have been able to dodge or even overpower the best of humans. But, much as he might like to think otherwise, Kunzite is not human. Not fully. Not like the other people of this world.
The plant stands no chance. When thrust against the heat of the stovetop, it may not burst right into flames, but the edges of its petals begin to hiss and smoulder, filling the kitchen with caustic fumes that smell of death and acid, the air dyed a sickly and eye-watering green. And this is without mentioning the creature's screams.
Yes. Though it has no mouth, the flower is screaming. High-pitched, piercing, more animal than human, all fragile things in earshot begin to tremble and fracture. Cracks snake along the window panes; a stack of plates bursts into pieces. Kunzite is killing the creature, but she will not go quiet into that good night.
And neither will her master.
Fiore gives no warning of his entrance apart from a wisp of pink petals -- clearly in Mamoru's sight, and Usagi's once she awakens, but nowhere between the Shitennou and his deathgrip on the plant. So swift as to be invisible, he darts out his hands to seize his head and slam it down onto the stovetop, as close to the open flame as he can manage. He grunts from the effort, and more than a little from his frustration.
Perhaps most unnervingly of all, he makes no other sound beside this.
It'd be good to be able to say that Kunzite felt some doubt, at the screaming, or some remorse. That he had even an instant's worth of second thoughts. It would be good to say all of that. It would also be a lie. His teeth show, white; his eyes hold something feral and deadly in the instant before he shuts them tightly, keeping them from taking too much of that acid, too concentrated, too close. The fog stings in the cuts, too, tinting the welling blood an indescribable color. And all the while he holds the screaming little flower-monstrosity in place.
It hurt her. It hurt him through her. No. There are no second thoughts.
And there is no warning, not for him.
There's a loud, metallic hollow sound as his head strikes the stovetop. Flames flicker suddenly high and redder, and burning hair joins the increasingly horrid mingling of smells in the kitchen.
That's not the way he wanted to be holding the thing in the flames. But the pressure of hands against the curve of his skull leaves him, paradoxically, able to risk letting go with one hand, striking hard and sharp and blind with an elbow toward his unseen attacker's midsection, following it with a kick at where a knee might be. Then he struggles to try to straighten --
The terrible thing for him, too, is that he makes no sound. It's stifled, a desperate attempt to keep from breaking Tuxedo Kamen's concentration.
And a wasted one. They're too close, and linked too closely, for Endymion not to know when that much pain flares.
Usagi turns her face against that warm, warm hand before she even registers Mamoru's there. There's touch, warmth, the familiar glow. Kissing -- she very much likes the kissing.
It's his joy, though, that pushes her from unconscious to awake, nearly giggling as her hand slides in his hair.
Her eyes snap open at the sudden rush of adrenaline caused by fear and panic, not yet her own. With a gasp, she jerks and pulls away, jerking her head around as she tries to find out what's happening.
She sees red.
Standing, she gives a low growl, wobbling a moment because she just woke up.
Three things are clear.
1) Kunzite's probably gonna need a lot of aloe after this
2) Mamo-chan is panicked
3) Fucking Fiore
Balanced regained, she bolts forward. It's a middle schooler who starts the lunge, but the fist aimed for Fiore's cheek is gloved in white, a golden tiara in her hand. She may be tired, but she's got adrenaline on her side.
"Get the hell away from him!"
Honestly, Mamoru should be used to this by now -- and if it keeps happening, he might start getting twitchy about unbridled joy.
The tick of a second-hand on a six-pointed golden star is a monumental span of time, powerful and complete and contained within itself, able to drown out the screaming of youmas and the shattering of glass.
The problem is the self-contained part.
It's not quite panic: there's unreasoning terror that he's going to lose the possibility of that moment ever coming again, clamped down on hard in the instant it roils to life; there's shooting, screaming pain in his head and in his heart and echoed through to his fingertips with the surge of adrenalin that accompanies it; there's the well of everything the Earth is screaming about this invasion crashing in again and fiercely compartmentalized in a quarter of a second; there's a towering fury to match both Usagi's rage and Kunzite's lack of remorse.
Usagi's transforming as she hurtles across the room, and Mamoru stands and swings his arm out in one motion--
--red lightning trails after a rose flung as quickly as it takes to think of its shape, its aim straight and its flight true, never in danger of intersecting with the Princess or the Guardian.
"FUCK OFF!"
It may not look it, but Fiore is strong -- strong enough to keep a Shitennou pinned under his fists, even as he struggles. The blind flailing of the elbow finds its target, jabbing into the torso of the alien, but either his armor is thicker than it looks or he has a remarkable tolerance for pain, for he doesn't so much as flinch. The kick finds nothing but empty air. In fact, he's about to take advantage of Kunzite's brief lack of balance, lashing out to knock his only foot out from under him --
When something strikes him from the side, bone digging into flesh, lighting up his vision with stars. And he's flying several yards back, stopped only by the plaster wall that cracks and groans upon impact.
"What -- ?!"
It takes only a moment for the still unspoken question to be answered.
He knows that tiara. He knows that collar.
He knows that godforsaken hair style.
"A *Senshi*? You?!" Fiore can't contain the look of disbelief on his face -- how could such a vapid little snake as her wield the magic of a planet? "How?!" His voice trembles from the frustration of it all, as he rights himself from where he fell against the apartment wall. The figure he cuts right now may not be especially intimidating, hunched over and shaking, but the fury in his eyes is unmistakeable.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what she is, he supposes, not really. She will end up dead either way. She was dead the moment she took Mamoru away from him.
Mamoru. Mamoru, his only friend.
Mamoru, the boy who saved his life.
Mamoru, the only reason he does anything he does, the only reason he's alive.
red--
("Fiore...don't leave! Don't leave me alone!")
--lightning
There's a dreadful stillness then, for several moments. The rose, which found its mark without resistance, stands at an angle, buried in Fiore's chest, as two petals detach and drift silently to the ground. The bud next to it, pale pink and yet unopened, stirs now.
"Mamoru..." Fiore whispers, choked and barely audible, his eyes trained anywhere except the scene in front of him. They might as well not exist. They do not deserve to exist, to bear witness to this moment when his spirit is bared and defenseless.
A tear rolls down his cheek, then another.
"Mamoru-kun threw a rose. At me."
If he dares to look at his oldest friend, he will see shock -- fade into bonechilling sorrow -- fade into an emotion he knows quite well. One that another here has inflicted on him, perhaps this unexpectedly. Perhaps this intimately.
Betrayal.
A green hand closes around the rose, red turns to black, and it all crumbles away to dust.
And the stillness is broken by tangles of thorns and vines, crawling up from the sink, the outlets, every miniscule crack in the wall, bursting through every window and light fixture, filling the room with the sound of breaking stone, creaking plaster, glass clattering to the ground -- the low laughter of a woman, who peaks out from the newly opened Xenian Blossom on his chest.
Fiore himself is silent.
Something isn't right. Minanko can't quite put her finger on it, but something isn't right...
She dreamt last night, a vivid dream. Of the end. She only ever dreamt like that the night before a battle. She wants to ignore the feeling, and just be a girl today.
But that's not her fate.
She tries calling Usagi, but there's no answer. The line even appears busy. Which is odd.
She tries the communicator. Still no answer. And now she worries.
She tries Mamoru.
No Answer.
That can't be a good sign.
Tuxedo Mask is, in fact, looking right at Fiore. He's looking right at Fiore as he yanks his sleeve up, rage painted all over his face -- painted over the paleness, over the shadows under his eyes, over the barely-perceptible shakiness of his stance. He's meeting Fiore's eyes as he activates the communicator on his wrist and says sharply as he moves towards the window, phone buzzing in his pocket, "Fiore attacking. Moon is here. Kunzite maybe down. Come now."
Then he drops that hand and lifts the other, and maybe Fiore won't see him propping himself up against the wall next to the window, maybe Fiore won't see the crease at his forehead while the vines burst forth from everywhere and Mamoru's everpresent headache takes a level in badass. Maybe Fiore won't see that even as Mamoru begins gathering the remains of his energy in a floating white-gold ball in front of his hand, his hand is trembling.
"How dare you," he hisses at Fiore-- at his flower. "I only just got my family back, and you're trying to take them away. We only just saved my planet from destruction, Sailor Moon only just saved me from the monster that took my mind from me, my life from me, my agency and my memories, and you're corrupting Fiore, lonely hurting Fiore, to do this just so that you can destroy my planet like you've destroyed so many others. YOU CAN'T HAVE IT. YOU CAN'T HAVE US."
Sailor Moon...never really expects her punches to land. It comes from a lifetime of being a klutz, of tripping over her own feet.
Normally, she'd do a little cheer. Instead, her fury matches Fiore's. "You get your mojo from a flower, I got mine from a cat."
It's not the best line ever, but it'll do.
She moves toward Kunzite, hand steadying on his back.
The rose strikes Fiore and there's a moment -- just a small one -- where she feels bad for him. Then Mamoru speaks, and most of that goes away. (There's still some, because Usagi.)
Then vines! Vines everywhere!
With a shriek, she grabs the dishes she'd half washed yesterday dammit and starts hurling them at Fiore. And his creepy laughing flower thing.
Cupboards! Coffee mugs! Chocolate ba--no, that's back on the counter. Can of carrots! Everything!
That kitchen is a less and less pleasant place to be. Seethingly murderous alien. Attack vines. Inhuman screaming that is cracking the glaze on the mugs Usagi's throwing; the window behind Fiore was already a maze of cracks before the vines came. Acidic green fumes that are only growing more intense, the deathly smell of them masking other things best not thought about --
-- because Fiore slamming Kunzite's head into the stovetop never made him let go of the little youma.
Moon knocks Fiore out of the way, and Kunzite shoves himself upright, his free hand making a fast clawing gesture that pulls his shadows back toward him, cloaks him in them. The bright flame in, of, his hair makes an awful contrast to the blue of the gas ring; makes a dim contrast behind those shadows -- goes suddenly out, leaving glints of silver and the black of char behind.
Unlike the little flower-youma, heat's a form of energy he can use.
He turns, and between those first shallow wounds on his neck and the slashes the youma's sharpened roots made against his shoulders and chest as it thrashed ... there's a lot of blood darkening his uniform, but he's moving, it must be relatively superficial. His face -- his shadows conceal that better. There's a moment where he can spare a gesture, a crackling slash of pale-colored energy to knock a tangle of thorns away from where it might threaten Usagi's back; then the vines start to burst out around the stove, and all his attention's on those, and on the burning youma, and balancing time to kill the thing with time to escape with time to kill the gas before Fiore's plants set the building on fire. Those safeties are made to handle earthquakes. They can probably handle the vines. Probably.
Fiore stands, cold and motionless as Mamoru sends his summons, what little light his eyes have all but extinguished. There must be *some* life within him still -- his vines continue to writhe and tear at the apartment from its foundation, the half-matured youma struggles in Kunzite's hands -- he must be relaying his orders to them somehow. But were it not for that, the alien might have looked to be dead on his feet.
Perhaps a part of him did die, speared through by the rose and choked by the weed in his heart. Perhaps the child Mamoru knew is gone forever.
Coffee mugs, dishes, kitchen sundries, even parts of the kitchen itself hit him squarely in the chest. Still Fiore does not move. He does not even blink when a splinter of wood catches him on the forehead, tearing open his skin and sending rivulets of thick green ichor trailing down his face. He does not blink even when his own blood drips into his eyes.
When he speaks, his voice is joined by a woman's, deep and seductive.
"You're wrong," the Xenian says. "I can have whatever I want."
Vines like rope shoot out from the mass that is steadily destroying the kitchen and living room, targeted specifically at Kunzite and Sailor Moon, to stop them interfering. Nooses of green, thorn-covered and thick, shoot towards wrists, ankles, waists, necks, prepared to kill as much as restrain.
The husk of Fiore lunges for Tuxedo Kamen, with all the unnatural swiftness his mistress grants him, seizing him bodily by the lapels and pulling him in close, close enough that he might see the glint of Xenian red in both her eyes and his.
A storm of petals kicks up, a split second before the teleport they are between worlds.
The Xenians are legion and impossibly many, their pink stretching far beyond his eyes can see, under the empty black dome of space.
In that split second--
--a hand plunges through the storm of petals, a long white glove edged with vibrant green. Mamoru is shouldered to the side, wrenched free of Fiore's grip, and that gloved hand clamps onto Fiore's throat and yanks, dragging him bodily through the shattered window inone powerful surge of motion.
On the other side of the window, twenty stories up, Sailor Jupiter hovers suspended in an upwelling column of petal-strewn wind, collar and skirt fluttering wildly, hair whipping around her face. And she is pissed.
"That's enough out of you!" she snarls, eyes blazing, and then Jupiter swings Fiore upwards by the throat with both hands, gathering momentum to spike him straight down towards the pavement below with all of her considerable strength.
Now that the civilians were clear, it was time to focus on battle.
Trust Jupiter to take the direct approach.
She took aim with a Crescent Beam
"Allright Flower Boy! Looks like you're about to get plucked!"
"BURNING MANDALA!"
Jupiter isn't the only one who's angry. Sailor Mars is on the roof of a nearby building, a building with a much lower roof that is far below the level that the second apartment is currently on. However, aside from those who arrived with her (or at roughly the same time as her), the senshi of fire might not be the first thing that one notices after Jupiter makes her entrance.
No, the first thing that one might notice are the eight globes of fire launched into the air, each one of them weaving around Venus's Crescent Beam and converging upon the now-falling Fiore.
"That's enough out of you, jerk! Leave our friends alone!" Yes, Mars is perfectly audible. Damn if she doesn't have a set of lungs on ehr.
Sailor Moon starts to rush toward Mamoru and Fiore, but her momentum is halted in quite a painful fashion. "Eek!" Vines are...everywhere. "W-what! I--!" Gosh, she really wishes she hadn't accidentally clicked certain links on the internet. Imaginations can be dangerous!
Her rambling thoughts are cut off but the arrival of a very familiar, very angry girl. She gasps, hearts pulsing in her eyes. "Jupiter~!"
The hearts intensify as she hears Rei. "Mars~!"
Of course she has heart eyes. Her girls are being very much Bad Asses.
That tears it! She's not gonna just sit idly by (ow ow ow thorns why)! She's been doing that for ages! Heck, it feels like she's been in another country for the past month!
Irritation and determination well in her chest and she does the best thing she can think of.
"CHOM! CHOM! >:E" Rabbits have deceptively sharp teeth.
Tuxedo Kamen's eyes are wide behind the mask, and then there are flower petals everywhere and Usagi and Kunzite are getting thorn-vined and oh holy god in heaven is this what we're up against and for a split second his heart's frozen because he thinks: this is it
He thinks: again
He thinks: there must be some kind of protective dome because even space flowers must need oxygen and there's no apparent atmosphere because the stars aren't twinkling
He thinks: I'm sorry I'm such a problem, everyone
--and then Jupiter's shoving him away and there's glass everywhere in addition to flower petals everywhere, and he hears Minako and Rei, and he remembers how to breathe, and he's on his hands and knees, and he's so tired and everything hurts and the everpresent scream in the back of his mind is so loud, and--
Mamoru pushes himself unsteadily to his feet and stumbles over a meter to the cutlery drawer, pulls out a knife, and moves to cut Usagi free while Fiore's distracted.
"Try," he says as he works, "to get that flower off him. To destroy that flower. It's controlling him. It has a thing in space with so many of those things. Kunzite I'll be right there..."
Vines creak at the stove, pulling at the connection; Kunzite reaches and kills the gas, pulling away from the thing and the walls and the growing green. The charred thing in his hand is still twitching, but that's not where his attention seems to be --
Fiore.
Petals.
"Endymion!" It's what he means to shout, anyhow, but neither volume nor clarity are granted him at the moment. He reaches to try to channel something, but green wraps around his wrist, disrupting the magic. Well. There's magic he can work without his hands free, of a sort. Stolen power --
Sooner or later, Kunzite turns everything into a weapon. This time, it's having been on fire. The flame that erupts around the dying youma is the same color as the one he absorbed a few moments ago; when he opens that hand again, the thing that tried to kill Usagi has finally stopped twitching.
When his hand closes again, there's a blade formed from his own energy in it, and he focuses on trying to slice the tendrils wrapped around his throat without either letting their thorns tear open the wounds already there, or slicing himself open. Jupiter's here. Fiore's out, the vines might not be so well guided. Endymion's safe. Endymion has Moon. He can worry about himself for an instant.
As long as he doesn't let himself notice how much it goddamn hurts to move. But that's an old and familiar problem.
They're halfway home, he's a hair's breadth from fulfilling his promise -- and then a grip like iron is at his throat, crushing the poisonous air from his lungs, and then --
He's plunged to Earth like this once before.
Somehow, engulfed in the might of three senshi, betrayed by the only person that matters, conscious while his body burns and crumples against the pavement, it is even worse now than it was then.
Up in the apartment, the dread flower disappears into cinders and the vines go slack, separated from their master and easily severed now that they are more plant than monster. The Earth deplores being manipulated in this way, twisted by a foreign magic to attack its prince and the guardians who call him their ally. Perhaps he can even sense this, as he slices through Moon's viney prison and dirties his tuxedo with sap.
(The vines, for the record, taste absolutely terrible.)
Meanwhile, Fiore meets the pavement with a thunderous *crack*, concrete splitting and caving into a crater from the momentum of a twenty-story fall. His cape partially burned off by the Burning Mandala, his skin scorched and puckered from the heat of the Crescent Beam, he lies face down: smoking, unmoving, a bedraggled bundle of limbs at unnatural angles.
This time, he knows, no prince will come to save him.
Her Senshi still had it, even if she hadn't always been there to lead them. And the fallen foe before them was proof of what they could accomplish together.
She strode up to the crater.
"Looks like you're pushing up daffodils!"
Sailor Mars watches as Venus starts walking up to the crater. In case something happens, it's best if they aren't all standing in the same place. Or at least that's what Mars thinks, and that's why she's staying on her rooftop perch.
She looks over the edge of the roof, watching Fiore closely. An ofuda appears in her hands, held between two fingers. Mars isn't even sure if she'll use it at this point, but she knows that she has it ready, in any case.
The moment Fiore hits the pavement with that terrible crack of shattering pavement, Sailor Jupiter feels a rush of misgivings. It's not his fault, any more than the things they did under the control of the Dark Kingdom were Mamoru or the Shitennou's faults. He's being controlled; she knew that.
In her rage over what the thing that's controlling him has done, did she kill Mamoru's friend?
The swirl of air and petals bears Jupiter downwards, gliding down towards the spot where Fiore hit ground. Venus will get there first, but Jupiter's heart is in her throat - she needs to know.
Freed, Usagi takes a moment. She presses a gloved hand against Mamoru's cheek and leans her forehead up against his. We're fine. We got this. She hopes her confidence is the only thing going through. After all, she's not the one with telemarketing abilities.
"Don't worry." A quick kiss, warm and sweet, and she's pulling back to head for the window. Before she jumps out, she blows him a kiss.
She's a pinball between buildings, and though her momentum is greatly lessened by this, her landing is far from graceful. "Oof."
She staggers a bit, and studies the motionless Fiore. (Fortunately, he was too unconscious to see that. She hopes.)
Carefully, she creeps forward, slow at first. Then she's darting forward, aiming to take that darn flower away from Fiore. Maybe then she could talk or beat or noogie some sense into him.
A kiss; there's no energy transfer the way most would recognise it, but magic of a different kind lends strength to both Moon and Mask in the bestowing.
Mamoru gives Usagi a wry little smile which holds all the love and all the apology it could, and his back straightens a little. He kisses her back, brief and meaningful, then calls out, "Do your best!" as she leaps for the window and blows him a kiss.
He's already moving toward Kunzite as she vanishes, and the current silence of at least the local screaming in the back of his head gives him a respite; it's with a significantly less pinched expression that he helps Kunzite get free of the last of the vines, careful of injuries and careful not to snag thorns on Kunzite as he pulls them away.
In less time than a heartbeat, his gloves are gone and he has his bare hand on the side of Kunzite's face, though the darkened shield obscures the sight of it.
Unbelievably, the energy is there: he never let go of it when he'd been preparing to smoking bomber Fiore. He'd always rather use it to heal, anyway. Behind the mask, his eyes are bright even if his face is tired. "Venus and Mars came with Jupiter," he says quietly. "They've got this."
Fiore doesn't want to move. His mind has been dark and empty since the rose pierced his chest, just inches from his heart.
(-- his heart, his *weak* heart that allowed the Xenian to take root, his heart that's violated worse and worse yet with each passing second, would that he were put out of his misery --)
His mind has been dark and empty, and he hasn't had any thoughts at all, except that Mamoru betrayed him, and that his promise hadn't been enough to shake the lies and brainwashing of that despicable girl. He's in pain, great pain from the fall, but even now he feels his body closing up his wounds, from the bones split upon impact to the gash on his forehead to the puncture of the rose --
(-- Mamoru is scared of him, something is horribly wrong --)
The familiar scent of spice and perfume fills his senses, and whatever thought had been bubbling up in his head is carried away in puffs of pink smoke and tender, unseen caresses.
*/Fiore,/* the Xenian whispers, */now's your chance./*
He looks up -- or something turns his head up, he can't really tell which -- and there are the huge blue eyes of the guilty one, so very close, her hand outstretched toward the flower he promised to Mamoru.
Rage alone forces him up again.
Swatting her away with a growl, Fiore shoots to his feet, as hale and hearty as he was when he first appeared in that flower shop, and in some blurred movement faster than the eye can track, his hand is closed around her throat, tight enough to crush her windpipe, high enough to suspend her feet from the ground.
"YOU!" he cries, and it seems no one had to worry -- life never left poor Fiore, nor did betrayal break his spirit. "This is all *your fault*!"
From triumph to heartbreak in just seconds. Never assume the bad guy dies from the first hit.
she tried to line up a Crescent Beam but she couldn't risk hitting Sailor Moon.
"Put her down! NOW!"
Disentangling is one thing. Trusting that the slackened plants will stay that way is another. But cultivated paranoia is interrupted by a different sort of practicality, and by a hand touching skin -- the shield doesn't bar Mamoru, no more than it barred Kyouko before. Kunzite stands for a few moments, wordless in that golden glow; but when he can open both eyes easily, when the acid poisoning the burned flesh is banished -- his own hand comes up, clasps over Tuxedo Kamen's for a moment. "Enough." It's the nearly the same tone that Mamoru used to him a moment ago. Not abrupt. Quiet, almost gentle. "Save the rest, in case he hurts one of them more."
Tacit agreement, at the same time: their part in this is largely done. They held out long enough for the Senshi to arrive. That's all they had it in them to manage. And they can trust it will be enough.
She's almost there. Almost completed what she set out to do.
And then his hand is tight around her throat and she can't breathe.
She's been here before, only she's pretty sure Fiore doesn't taste like an empty coffee mug.
Panic, and of course pain, and then she's slamming her mind shut. (Does it count as self preservation if you're doing it for someone else?)
"AKURYO TAISAN!"
Mars's shout isn't hard to understand, or at least the intent behind it isn't. She flings her ofuda through the air, and it flies downward towards Fiore. There's a chance that it might hit Sailor Moon, but even if it does it won't hurt her that much. Hopefully it will hit Fiore and Moon can get away.
"Moon-chan, are you alright?"
Mars isn't just staying on her perch, either. She's hopping down to ground level, and rushing to Fiore. There's a lot of pity that she can have for the guy, but right now he's attacking her princess and she is absolutely incensed.
"Let her go, right now!"
"--no!" Later there will be time to kick herself for letting her guard down too soon. Right now, with Sailor Moon in Fiore's grasp, there's time only for action. Sailor Jupiter drops the last few yards to the pavement with the abruptness of a falling stone, lands solidly only to spring at Fiore.
The lightning is there to call, but she won't risk shocking Usagi. No, Jupiter's coming at him fist-first, knuckles sparking, a girl-shaped battering ram.
There's silence in the street below, and there's silence in his mind. It's a different small smile Mamoru offers Kunzite than the one that's Usagi's alone; it's a remarkably similar kiss he leans up to brush against his guardian's lips.
It ends differently, though, with a flash of pain and panic from Usagi twenty stories down: Tuxedo Kamen abruptly tenses with a super familiar expression and starts for the window-- but the panic's over almost before it's begun, and not in unconsciousness or blinding agony, and he can already hear the distant voices of the Senshi yelling out in fury, so she must be okay.
Which is awesome, because "enough" was the right call. Just the sudden movement's enough to nearly make the masked boy pass out, and he catches himself on the back of the shredded sofa to wait until the room stops spinning.
Then decides he'd better wait it out on the floor.
The prince doesn't make it all the way to the floor. Catching him is still not a pleasant experience, nor is lifting him up, but Kunzite was on his heels as usual when he moved with that expression. Spoken quietly: "Let's get you into clean air." Instead of what's in there, dissipating slowly through the broken windows. It's far less of a clawing at Tuxedo Kamen's mind than the possessed plants were ... but it's still poisonous, acidic smoke. It can't be helping.
There's no mercy left in him -- the last of it, if it ever existed, was shattered at the tip of that lone rose. Fiore presses ever harder on the delicate throat in his hands, his eyes wide and glinting with fury as he digs his thumbs into her flesh, willing the stubborn thing to *collapse* already.
But he did not think this through. There are three other Senshi here, battle hardened and sworn to the little blonde runt, and they are two powerful to face without his weapon drawn. One hand drops when the ofuda strikes it, the flesh beneath it sizzling in what must be some sort of karmic punishment; the other falls when he sees the soldier of thunder leaping towards him with her own balled fists, and he must drop the girl to parry her blows, lest he be knocked into yet another series of walls.
Usagi Tsukino has an annoying habit of living on when he's trying to kill her. She's out of his grasp today -- Mamoru is too, it would be foolish to deny it, twenty stories down and surrounded by four Sailor Senshi who don't intend to let him go anywhere without resistance.
He won't resist them. In fact, he will leave them a parting gift.
Fiore's not even finished fighting off Jupiter when a veritable storm of flower petals envelopes him, twice as thick and many times more noxious than that of his usual teleportation magic. In a moment, his body fades away, lifted from the reality of Earth -- but the cyclone does not fade away with him. No, this is a different sort of magic, invasive and unnatural; the petals swell in number and speed, coalescing above the crater their master lay in only moments ago, biting into everything they catch in their wake --
-- until they *explode* --
-- and in the aftermath there is a massive, ropy vine, anchored visibly in the Earth by too many roots to count. Along its body are dozens of Xenians, some opened to the air, some still in their buds, and with each passing moment, the terrible alien thing inches almost imperceptibly further into the sky.
The invasion of the Earth begins now in earnest.
And upstairs in the apartment, on the way to the door-- apologetic, still, for having to be helped to get there by someone who's still injured-- Mamoru's in the process of slowly shutting down. It's more graceful than it had been in the height of his rage, it's slow; it's aided by the poison-filled air and the constant wear on his system; it's aided by the expansive expenditure of his energy over the past couple of days. But still, his feet drag themselves along.
They get to the door. They get it open. Clean air from the hall, sweet-smelling in comparison, mixes with the noxious fumes from inside, and a crossbreeze from the broken window begins to disperse it.
Then that thing stabs deep into the earth and reaches green fingers into the sky, visible if Kunzite should look behind him to the window because it's so tall, and the shutdown swiftly completes. He can't even keep his henshin. Mamoru quietly, bonelessly, and very gracefully passes out completely.
Looks like the girls are going to have to get a bigger weedwhacker.