Understand A Little Better

"...used to connect, maybe we can strengthen that link somehow?" Endymion's saying, leaning in a doorway that leads outside to shimmering heat and sands. Out the window next to it, there's a lush pastoral view instead. The doorway itself is white sandstone, much like the rest of the structure it belongs to, and lined in patterned blue and gold tile. The inside of the palace is cool and dim, and the scent of greenery within is accompanied by the sound of running water. An oasis.

The boy himself is dark-skinned and tall and lithe, blue eyes bright and sharp, and wears the carriage and bearing of a prince-- if not the clothes. No, he's in Mamoru's school uniform, somehow managing to not be at all out of place in these surroundings. Probably because this is his dream. But then he straightens up and squints, and looks over his shoulder. "Real company. Is the caracal here?"

The one he's talking to doesn't look quite like he did the last time Seishi or Ariel saw him. A few years older; silver-white hair cascading down his back -- on the other hand, that's a good deal closer to the glimpse in passing Seishi had the first time she saw him. When she had much better things to be paying attention to.

It may also be somewhat reassuring that he's not entirely like that glimpse in passing. Dressed in jeans and a white button-down, top button undone. Eyes focused and reasonably sane. Not smiling. Compared to that peripheral glimpse in her memory, not smiling is definitely a good thing.

"Possible. If it still exists at all. There might be political complications, but even so, we could take temporary measures." Unhurried words, paced and at least apparently unconcerned; the same applies to the way his eyes move when Endymion looks over his shoulder. "That probably depends on which answer would annoy me more. We'll find out."

The rider on the dark horse does look out of place, in more ways than one. The red of her samurai garb is a smear of vivid color against sunbleached sands, rich and almost painfully bright under the unrelenting blaze of the desert sun. The glare brings out the rich red-brown tints in the horse's sleek dark bay coat, glitters blindingly off the bits of metal in its incongruously modern Tokyo Mounted Police-issue tack.

The reins hang loose; Seishi lets the gelding pick his own plodding way over the sand. It's all the same, anyway, it's not really a horse. One arm raised to shield her eys from the glare, she glances down and to the side to make sure she hasn't lost Ariel and Lucky during the crossing between dreams - never mind that Ariel's probably a lot better at this - and then she's squinting through the glare at the two figures, familiar-yet-not.

"I did try calling," she says when she's close enough to be heard, somewhat embarrassedly apologetic, "but your phone was out of service."

    And there is a second rider. Though the much smaller figure at Seishi's side is not upon a horse, nor does she have any reins to hold. Yet her mount is almost of a fantastically huge size for taking the shape of a glowing hound. Indeed, Ariel stuck by the other girl rather well, with minimal risk of separation now that she had some actual focus.
    Ariel grips Lucky by the scruffy fur of his neck, more to simply have a hold than guide him. To her credit, the small, horned, girl is looking much better than the last time she had been about; not as haggard nor exhausted. Getting some un-disturbed sleep helped with that quite a great deal, as she follows along after the samurai girl.
    It's funny. The directions her mind has wandered over the course of the past few weeks, but when she had run into Seishi, and learned of a chance to find both Kunzite and Endymion, she quickly came right along.
    "Um!"
    Well. She can't quite match the quip of dead phone service, and looks somewhat sheepish as a result. The two men look... A bit different from how she remembers them, perhaps, but that doesn't quite matter much in a realm of dreams.
    "... Hi."
    Ever have that moment when you have very specific things to say to people. And then you finally get the chance, and fumble it completely?
    Ariel is having one of those.

Endymion gives Kunzite an amused look. "I could annoy you more," he says cheerfully, then steps just outside the doorway, still in the shade of the overhang, and waves. He grins, a bright thing that dazzles in the shade, then calls back, "Sorry about that. Service is terrible in dreams." As they get closer, his voice drops down to conversational volume to sort-of explain, "Virtue comms can reach about halfway, which is where I've been, lately. But regular mobile service? Forget it."

There's a moment of awkwardness as the prince realizes the incongruity between it being his dream but Kunzite's palace, and he shrugs the desert away to invite them into what looks like a subtropical villa, with more tile and more stone, and still a very open architecture, but much more greenery surrounding, and white-painted and frescoed walls, and multicolored mosaic floors. They're in an outer area of it; there's someplace to water Seishi's not-horse, and if it's too uncouth for Lucky, it's pretty clear the prince will fix that cheerfully. "Hello, too, to Ariel," he says gravely, "and Lucky. I'm sorry I never got the chance to thank you for your gift to Sailor Moon."

"Some things never change," Kunzite replies to Endymion, and follows him out -- first out of the doorway, then out of the scene, neither surprised nor disturbed by the building and the world altering around them. Only some things never change, after all.

There's a neat, silent bow to Seishi; another to Ariel, and an inclination of his head to Lucky. Hominid bias, possibly. At least it puts the unicorn one coherent syllable up on someone.

The chance of scenery doesn't throw Seishi much - this much, at least, she's grown somewhat used to. It does prompt her to dismount, throwing her leg over the back of the horse to slide lightly to the ground, and she takes a few completely unnecessary moments to run up the stirrups and tuck the reins under one of them before letting the gelding loose to wander off an investigate the water on his own.

With that done, she tucks her hands each into the opposite kimono sleeve and returns Kunzite's bow... and pauses on the way back up.

Ariel and the prince have, for this moment, something to discuss that Seishi is not part of, and that gives her a little bit of time to study Kunzite with visible uncertainty, as though puzzling through some unasked question.

    Dismounting is a thing. In fact it is in this particular moment that Ariel remembers she is in he presence- and dream of a prince and one of his esteemed generals. A very small, almost bell-like, noise trills quietly in the girl's throat as the realization sinks in, and she fumbles her way off Lucky's back only a beat or so after Seishi dismounts, a slight flush of a darker silver-green tint flaring on her cheeks as she dips into a bow of her own, to the two men. It is with a soft flare of light that her knightly armor and cape vanish, replaced by a much more humble tunic more suited to the more casual environment.
    The protean nature of dreams and change in scenery do not surprise her in the least, and it would seem Lucky is content to plop down and sit on his haunches, one paw lifting high in clear canine greeting more fit for civilized company than 'leaping, tackling, and face licking'. Ariel doesn't know which God to thank for that; it would have been terribly embarrassing.
    Though she had come with intention to speak to Endymion, she had reason to see Kunzite as well, although the child does not quite leap into her reasons for either just in that moment; she is polite (albeit flustered by Endymion's thanks which she had not expected).
    "-- A-anyone else would have done the same right? -But I'm glad we could finally meet- ah. More properly." She says at first. More properly and without less stress and horror, she means. "I actually came to thank you." That is directed to Kunzite, as she fidgets. "For what you did during that nightmare." Just making herself bring it up results in a reach for Seishi's hand while she tried to put the sense of 'being hunted' from her mind again. "I also had a question." That. That is to Endymion himself.

"Not everyone, no," says the prince, amused; he returns Ariel's bow with one of his own, smaller, more casual. "But that's neither here nor there." He glances toward Seishi, but she's staring at Kunzite, and Kunzite can take care of himself-- he listens absently, but most of his attention is on Ariel and Lucky for the moment. So: in defiance of anything resembling custom, he gracefully folds himself into sitting, cross-legged, on the colorful floor; he's no longer looming, and nearly has to look up to be face-to-face with the little unicorn girl. "This is also kind of weird-- I'm sorry about that, but I'm really not in great shape in the physical world right now. I'm glad you two could come find us here. Seishi over there taught me how to lucid dream, so I'll remember this, too. Make yourself at home, and ask away."

There are details that are clear to Seishi's study. She might or might not have caught the instant's lag in Kunzite's adjustment to the change, the moment in which the strands of that pale mane were still reacting to the dry winds of the desert rather than to the cooler, more humid air of the villa. She can certainly see that he himself wasn't modified by the alteration of the environment; his clothing is as out of place here as there, the earrings he wears remain colorless rather than picking up the brightness of the mosaics underfoot. And she can certainly see that he's watching her, reacting however minimally to her own reactions, while Endymion's attention is on Ariel's.

Until the girl's attention shifts to Kunzite, whereupon he turns to regard her instead. "Anyone else would have done the same, I believe you just said," he replies, and there's the faintest flicker of amusement at Endymion's return to that. "And we've owed you thanks and more for some little time now." There's a slight tilt of his head to the prince in the Infinity uniform. Echoing what Endymion said, that Ariel shifted away from.

And then falling quiet again, so as not to interfere with questions. He does remain standing. But it's even odds whether he'd somehow manage to loom even if he folded himself down to join the dream's primary.

Seishi's hand slips out of her sleeve when Ariel reaches for it, and the handclasp is met with a gentle squeeze of reassurance. "You put yourself in danger to help everyone," she points out quietly. "I think it's safe to say that thanks are owed in all directions."

And then she's ducking her head, making a wryly amused face at Endymion's comments. "You say 'taught,' I say 'useful side-effect,'" she says, before she looks up toward Kunzite again, brows lifting and dark eyes earnest. "Sorry. Turns out there's no polite way to ask 'are you really you or are you part of the dream?'" The question seems to have been settled now, at least, from approximately the moment that Ariel turned to address him directly.

    Ariel is distracted somewhat, for a beat or so. The idiosyncrasies between Kunzite and his surroundings making her purse her lips, before Seishi asks a very important question; one which she had failed to consider, which results in anothe momentary fidget, amid a brief moment of even futher fluster, when the heavenly king simply turns her own words back upon her and Seishi reaffirms it to boot. Thankfully, Endymion engaging relaxed mode, along with the handsqueeze puts her a bit further at ease.
    Swishing her tail out of the way, Ariel takes this moment, too, to seat herself, knees hugged to her chest. "Oh- I'm sorry if this was a bad time." She says, when the state of Mamoru in the waking world is brought to light. "Eheh... She's been pretty helpful to me, too. It ah... Helps bridge things a little easier for me to have a friend that can be on both sides." Of the dream and waking cycle she means; but then moves on.
    "I'm not sure how much is my business... I just wanted to understand a little better why everything happened at the north pole. I was still very new to the waking world when it happened... I had never seen anything like what happned there, before."
    It was a rough crash course to say the least.

"Oh, it's a fine time, here," Endymion says with a careless wave of his hand. It's not a conscious effect that has the light hitting him just so, picking out blue highlights in his black hair and making his eyes brighter in his dark face, shadowed further by his carelessly ruffled hair overhanging his forehead. It's not a choice, it's just that the mind from which this dream springs has a flair for the dramatic, a sense of when and where the spotlight should hit him for the most casually effortless impact. "It's only on the surface that I'm a trainwreck, and it's temporary."

He smiles apologetically, red school tie as bright as the tiles below him and the sky above the courtyard. "I hadn't realized you were so new to the world. I'm sorry. You are safe right now, and if anything hurts you like the events up north, you can come here to hide. I don't mind. I'm always here to some degree.

"But-- as far as why things happened the way they did there... I don't know if you saw the end. I think you did, but you may not remember it. The power behind that woman was a demon that killed the world once already, hundreds of thousands of years ago. She was sealed off, but when that woman was reborn, she set it free again; she wanted to own the magical heart of this world, and the demon wanted to eat it. She took steps to turn its guardians to her side, by guile and fell magics; she took their memories of what they were meant to be, until they fought against what and who they were meant to protect. There were still safeguards in place to prevent their access to the world's heart, even though they tried in every way they could think of to make it theirs-- but they were powerful enough to devour it even if they couldn't use it, if they weren't stopped. Sailor Moon's heart holds the key to the only power that could stop them, the only power that stopped them from ending everything forever, those many millennia ago-- so everyone came together to help her get to the end, and to strengthen her heart once she was there."

Kunzite's eyebrows lift a fraction at Seishi's apology. All he says aloud is, "Are those necessarily mutually exclusive?"

Then Ariel asks her question, and that lingering hint of amusement fades. Gray eyes shadow to stormcloud hue, and the brighter focus on Endymion is reversed for him, silvered hair shifting to the duller white of cleanly cut bone. Endymion has the story. Ariel has her answer. Seishi has an explanation, perhaps. Nothing for him to add, and nothing that he'd want to; he folds his arms instead, and shifts his weight, and though he's still a dreamer rather than a part of the dream, for a few moments he's distanced enough that he's no more significant to the scene than the villa that stands as backdrop itself.

The face that Seishi makes when Kunzite asks what he asks is priceless, like she's swallowed something she didn't intend to swallow and it's wriggling as it goes down. "I have no idea," she says promptly. "Please don't confuse me like that." She says it with a little hitch of a laugh, though, shaking her head.

Endymion and Ariel are both sitting now, so after a brief hesitation Seishi also settles down, sitting in seiza with her hands in her lap. In this posture, she listens attentively to Endymion's story. A thoughtful frown slowly grows on her face as she absorbs what he's saying - she glances towards Kunzite, once, takes in the shift, the way he seems to recede, and somewhere in the back of her mind another piece clicks into place.

Half-consciously one of her hands draws in to press against the sudden twinge in her midsection. She doesn't say anything.

    A fine time, he says. Ariel accepts that answer easily and prepares herself, mentally, for a story she's not certain she may like at all; but it is one she had been intent to hear for some time now. The child will simply have to accept whatever heavy weight that may come of it thanks to her burning curiosity, even by her barely peripheral involvement. There is a quiet mumble of thanks, on the offer of sanctuary, though it betrays the quiet look of worry at the mention of being a trainwreck.
    Ariel doesn't even know what a train is, yet. Needless to say her first ride in the Tokyo subway will probably be an interesting experience, but that is niether here nor there. But it doesn't sound pleasant nonetheless.
    Floppy ears prick up, the clear signal she's listening, while topaz eyes stare in perfectly placid, almost doe-like innocence, as the metaphorical spotlight settles upon the prince.
    The truth is, by the end, everything had been such a blur. Between physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, coupled with pain the likes of which she had never felt before, the last of those bygone events at the north pole blend to a point of incoherence almost like a dream in and of itself. But she sits in silence, gaze occasionally flicking to Kunzite and Seishi.
    There is a long moment of silence from the unicorn. She sits with a perfect stillness; while the prince tells her what she asked, as though she were a statue carved of alabaster, set out incongruously in the dream-villa, and when she does move, it's little more than another twitch of ears and slight shift og her tail.
    The story alone is like a fairy tale, and after a long moment, Ariel's head dips in a slow understanding nod, accepting it at face value for how it is told; and she had seen it in the final chapters first hand. But her fingers fidget together.
    "There was something else." She admits. The next question is perhaps more personal, but she was set on her course in asking it, for weeks now.
    "There was that woman. Her name was... Melanite. Where I was from, even the butterflies lasted forever. That was the first time I had ever seen... Death." She admits with a plain, but soft candor. "It might not be my business but... It felt like she had something important to say..."

That withdrawal is of necessity a temporary thing. Ariel's not-quite-a-question draws Kunzite back; he shifts weight again, this time to settle carefully down into a crouch at the periphery of the conversation.

"Melanite was a mind-witch," he says quietly to Ariel. "She could manipulate the ways that other people saw her, by magic if she needed to, by a performance like an actor's if that would serve. And she was fighting in that arena just as much as she was in the physical. Trying to convince us that she was an innocent, a victim, helpless. So that we would drop our guard and be more easily slaughtered or enslaved."

At some point while he was speaking, the place has shifted again -- changed from the villa to a public library. The one in Penguin Park, to be specific. If the library in Penguin Park had air conditioning turned to 'frigid,' and the quiet, rhythmic rushing sound of ocean waves in the background. None of this seems to startle Kunzite any more than the last transition did, and the cold doesn't distract him, if he feels it at all.

"I was only there in spirit, which is why you most likely didn't see me. But it was enough so that I could pass on the truths I'd seen about some of the things she said. She claimed to be a victim, compelled to remain in her apprenticeship to Beryl -- the woman who raised the demon. That was never true. What was true is that Melanite had pursued her darker magics as far as she could on her own; she had forgotten too much to be able to harm others without harming herself. She came to Beryl of her own will. Served her of her own will, without compulsion; she could have chosen at any time to turn away.

"She wanted us to believe that she was, at that moment, turning away. And perhaps there might even have been a little truth to it; perhaps she saw in that rose a hint of something that she wanted more. But if she'd had any honest change of heart, the first thing that she would have done would have been to call back her creatures. To keep her servant from striking down Mars. To give Sky Jack enough time to be healed. She chose otherwise."

The prince's hands fall to his knees, and when Ariel mentions Melanite, his expression's a strange combination of 'blank lack of recognition' and 'distress over not remembering something that impacted another person so much'; when she adds that it was her first time seeing death, it's not the setting that changes so much as the dreamer's perception of himself, and abruptly, it's as though all along they've only been talking to Mamoru Chiba, anonymous Japanese orphan and king of no-one; Ariel is facing a boy who met death for the first time twice in one lifetime, and couldn't fathom it either time.

He's a little lost, and even as Kunzite speaks, that's reflected in their surroundings. The place they are now might confuse Seishi: after all, it was a safety that Mamoru fled to for space and solitude after she and Shiori rescued him from the neverending loop of the fall of the Silver Millennium. But as Kunzite continues to speak, it grows darker, larger, menacing; it's not a nightmare, but a memory of the waking nightmare of a Labyrinth, mixing with the memory of the waking mundane nightmare of what happened to a car, once upon a time.

Mamoru shuts his eyes, tracking Kunzite's conversation in the background, buffering the explanation as he reigns the dream in and establishes, at least, the Tokyo Public Library that lives in Penguin Park as the haven it was before Masako died there, and the haven he's made it become again-- she wouldn't want a safety taken away. He visibly pulls in the scenery and arranges it, fingers splayed on the floor to his sides, until it locks into place.

And it's all right: libraries have magic of their own.

His blue eyes, the same in either appearance, flicker open; they're not obscured by the wire-rimmed glasses he's wearing. He doesn't apologise. And it's Endymion's bearing and Endymion's inflection and Endymion's fiat that punctuate Kunzite's explanation, finally.

"She was going to lie. Her lies were only important to her."

Again, still, Seishi listens; the hand that had pressed to her midsection relaxes back into her lap as she tracks the discussion from Ariel to Kunzite and back to Mamoru. She listens like it's important, because clearly it is, a faint line forming in her forehead as her eyebrows pull together.

When Mamoru pulls the dream in and settles it back into tranquility, a tension goes out of her that wasn't really visible until it faded. For a moment, although she hadn't moved, she'd been on the verge of surging to her feet, ready to reach for the iron fan that's tucked into her belt. But now she's simply sitting seiza again, on the floor of the library with her hands in her lap.

"It seems like I missed a lot," she murmurs, half to herself, and her dark eyes settle on Mamoru once more. "Is all this related to why you're a train wreck who's hiding out halfway out of the physical world?" Beat; she pulls a face. "--And there's a sentence I'd never have thought I'd say-- Or is that something else?"

    A mind witch. Kunzite says. Intent to lie, Endymion- no Mamoru- confirms, echoing his trusted companion, as Kunzite goes to great detail of what the woman could have done to prove herself a bit better. It is the protean shift not just of the dream's locale, but to Mamoru himself as well, as the villa becomes the cold book-filled halls of the library that perhaps aid Ariel in realizing she might have tread upon a sore spot. Not just for one but perhaps both men, when Mamoru's struggle plays out so blatantly.
    Once more she fidgets. And for a long moment she seems at a loss for words, but where Seishi returns to seemingly sitting so calmy, Ariel wilts, curls in on herself, and remains that way for a long, ong, moment.
    "Oh..."
    It does not seem to be the answer that the little unicorn had been hoping to hear. But it is an answer, and it is a closure to one of the world's many new mysteries that had been nagging at the back of her mind since she had begun to acclimate to the world outside of dreams, and its many, many people. Even if it not the answer she might have wanted to hear, she nods slightly. "I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have asked that." She murmurs at length. "And I'm still not sure I understand. I'd never met anyone like that before. But thank you both for answering me." She opts, to not pick at that scab any longer

"--no, you're fine," Mamoru says gently to Ariel, unfolding a little so he can nudge at her almost playfully with his foot; his smile's kind. "I only feel bad I didn't immediately know what you were talking about. I do remember the shock of meeting Death for the first time, in a way you can't fix, in a way that it's clear there's nothing you can do and so many things will be left incomplete. I understand. And it doesn't get easier."

He doesn't add anything else to that, doesn't add what's likely evident to Seishi, and what Kunzite already knows: the prince isn't sad about Melanite-- only that Ariel saw. He does say, "There aren't many people like that, and I hope you never have to run into another one."

Then Mamoru glances up at Seishi and flushes slightly, and he casts a look toward Kunzite briefly before answering the samurai girl. "No, everything that just happened was a fight with memory. Everything we just explained to Ariel is in the past. This is... something really aggravatingly embarrassing that's also going to destroy the world if left unchecked, and I'm..." His mouth shuts, then opens, then shuts again before he finally finishes, "really allergic."

"If you're not sure you understand," Kunzite says quietly to Ariel, "if there are things you decide you still want to ask about, then we can find some way to arrange to meet again so that you can do that." That second if is a significant one. There are almost always things that people would rather not know about, answers they'd rather not have in the end.

Witness, for instance: the glance that follows Mamoru's toward Seishi, and the absolutely deadpan addition to Mamoru's answer to her.

"Evil flowers. From space."

There are few advantages to fighting the things that Seishi does. But at least they're threats that are easier to take seriously.

Sympathy overwhelms Seishi's expression as she looks toward Ariel. Her hand lifts from her lap to reach over and rest gently against the unicorn girl's back. "You don't need to apologize," she says softly, backing up Mamoru's reassurance with her own. "Some things... even when you do understand, they still don't make sense."

She sits up a little straighter as Mamoru explains his current woes. At Kunzite's terse elaboration, her face goes momentarily blank. Evil flowers. From space.

"...geez." The word comes out as an exasperated sigh. "At least with you guys around I don't have to worry about sounding crazy. Well, I don't know how much help I'll be against things that don't come from dreams, but if you need a hand..."

    She doesn't certainly feel fine. At least not for a long few moments. Though the prod via foot does pul the girl back from the beginnings of a one-unicorn-lamentation-fest. There is still a small sigh, as Ariel begins to marginally relax bit by bit; lips pursing into a thin line. "It was just really sudden for me." She admits, before picking herself up off the emotional floor. "Thank you though. I guess if I do meet more, I just hope it... Well, that it could end with less lying and less death." She decides.
    A moment is spent taking in a slow, soul-cleansing, breath after all of that, floppy ears pinning back with that childish sheepish look once more to Kunzite's offer. Certainly there are so many things in the world that people may not want answers to, but even after hearing an answer she may not have wanted just now, she dips her head in a nod. "I have a lot of questions, sometimes. So. I think I'd like that." She finally says, weight shifting into the touch to her shoulder, and upon Seishi just ever so slightly, at the samurai girl's helpful reassurances. But.
    Buuuut... Her nose scrunches. A puzzled look fluttering upon alabaster features. Something world threatening that Mamoru is allergic to? Ariel does not laugh though, she looks befuddled and silly fo a good stretch when the true admission of space flowers is brought to light.
    "I guess that's not as silly as it sounds."
    What's space?
    But she too throws her lot into the proverbial hat along with her fellow dream-delver. "I can try to help where I can." Pause.
    ...
    "Is this what they mean when they say every rose has thorns?"

Less lying and less death. "Always preferable," Kunzite agrees to the unicorn. "But she chose her own path." That Ariel would like to talk again -- he only inclines his head in answer to her nod. They'll arrange it, one way or another. Certainly she won't be the first person he's had to explain awkward things to. (Possibly the most guilt-inducing. But not the first.)

"You're having trouble of your own, lately," he notes to Seishi shortly thereafter. "I'm a little curious what that thing was. And about the contamination it seemed to be spreading, though at least that seemed to fade rather than pass itself on."

Wait. Every rose has its -- Gray eyes slide sideways to Mamoru for a moment, but Kunzite's expression doesn't change, and he's speaking to Ariel again when he says, "Not exactly." Without further elaboration.

Mamoru gives Kunzite an incredulous look. For some reason, his face is bright red. He clears his throat and picks himself up, then brushes himself off, gathering his composure. "I'm sure I don't know what you're referring to. It's a metaphor and a truism. It's primarily invoked when someone wants to say 'every beautiful thing has danger of pain attached' without saying it so plainly."

The library is sunny and silent, and it's a different one now, baroque instead of modern, with gilt titles impressed upon leather spines and curved wooden bannisters pouring from upper balconies to lower. "But if you come here to hide, Ariel," he says as the scenery shifts seamlessly once more to the mediterranean villa and its open courtyard, "it's probably best that you only hide and don't ask questions, especially if I'm all the way here and you're not just here with my subconscious-- because I'm a fairly awkward person, and sometimes my reactions get the better of me. Kunzite can explain things when he's not deliberately being a jerk, and I can explain things well in the working world; I tutor more or less as a hobby."

He pushes his glasses up on his face, and for a moment, the reflection of the sun obscures his blue eyes. He glances to Seishi. "For the record, for everything you missed-- they're all back. They live with me at the apartment you visited. It's something of a frat house now, but the most appalling of them at least tend to put on pants when there's company."

Seishi sort of spends a few moments looking back and forth between Kunzite and Mamoru and Kunzite again, tracking the sidelong look and Mamoru's disproportionately flustered reaction, mentally filing the whole thing under 'don't ask.' Her expression might possibly be read as something along the lines of: Ah. Ah?

No, not asking.

Mamoru's disclaimers about his housemates don't really help matters much, but with a slight hitch, Seishi at least manages to respond intelligibly. "--That's good," she says, and then, "That's good to know. I'll call ahead and make sure everyone's dressed if I need to come by."

To Kunzite she nods, and her dark eyes grow more serious. "I thought you might have some questions," she says. "That's most of why I came looking for Chiba-san." Those eyes flick towards Mamoru as she adds, "To be honest, I don't really remember how much I explained to you originally. I seem to recall there was a lot going on at the time."

Kunzite did not say a word and is surely therefore not responsible for Mamoru's reaction. And is presumably sticking to that story. "The other three are polite, well-intentioned, or both," he says to Seishi. "You shouldn't have trouble." Or at least not much trouble.

(Which of them is the most appalling, he doesn't address. Mostly because it depends entirely on the circumstances, and it's him at least his fair share of the time. Though, granted, his version is not pants-related.)

Seishi's attention flickering to Mamoru lets him fall quiet again. As if there were some sort of conservation of communication between the two of them, with Kunzite doing much speaking only when Mamoru's words for some reason fail.

"At least all the stuff that was going on then is finally over," Mamoru says with an uncomfortable little shrug, watching Ariel dissipate as she wakes up. By the time she's gone, he's wearing very colorful clothes, not at all modern-- handmade of rich dark red silk and gold embroidery; he looks at Seishi, and there's the sense that she's speaking with the dream who knew he was a dream, back in the very first time they met. "You told me you were hunting a nightmare, and I said there was one coming, I think; you said you'd know if it was there, and the nightmare that followed the conversation was, indeed, not the one you were hunting."

He's a little preoccupied, and his brow furrows slightly, but he keeps addressing Seishi's question. "Later on, I think you mentioned you had a friend who ate nightmares. I'd meant to ask you if he could help Madoka with them, but she found her own solution. I'm afraid I don't remember much more than that."

"...so not very much at all," Seishi concludes, looking momentarily wry. "Right." Deep breath; her hands are resting on her thighs again, sitting very straight upright, the seiza formally correct. She looks toward Kunzite.

"What you saw was the kind of Nightmare I was looking for then," she says, and her eyes flick toward Endymion as she continues. "Your dreams came only from your own mind. Once we helped you break the cycle once, that was all you needed. Those kinds of nightmares, sometimes I can help with, and sometimes I can't."

She stops there, taking a moment to consider how to explain further. "My enemy... corrupts people's dreams into Nightmares, and brings them out into the waking world in order to steal them. The cases of 'sleeping sickness' that have been in the news lately - I'm sure that's what's really happened to them. Like that girl at the mall."

"I've checked on a couple of the victims," Kunzite says, more to Mamoru than to Seishi. His attire's shifted as well, lagging Mamoru's only by a quick reaction time. That uniform that he wore at the mall, in that particular dream that had broken into the real world -- cape and all. There's a certain degree to which he wears it more naturally than he did that shirt and jeans. "Enough to be sure that it wasn't the flowers."

"Not good, but at least some of it's not our fault," Endymion mutters disgruntledly. He shifts in place, working his hands: open, closed, open closed. "I can help you if they don't get to the waking world; call me in, I can try and get the guys in, too. I can't help you out there, not right now." He glances aside at Kunzite, then to Seishi again, and then lets out a breath. "But he can." And then he gives Kunzite a fierce look. "Zoi is getting me something that'll help me keep going to school for a while more. Once not even that helps, I'm probably not going to be much help awake-- which means I'm not going anywhere and there's not much trouble I can get in to. You'll have to be my hands."

As the prince talks about helping, Seishi shakes her head, a short, decisive gesture. "I'm not going to risk leading the enemy here. The risk would be too high, especially if you're not in good shape physically. Unless - do you mean that you can travel through dreams too?" She pauses for a moment, regarding Endymion uncertainly. Some kind of ability in that direction might explain Kunzite's presence in Mamoru's dream, but--

--well, never mind. "If you start having recurring nightmares, or if you hear someone talking about it, let me know," she says, looking from one to the other. "Especially if it's a dream about being chased. That hunter is just a servant, but it's the first time one of them has shown themselves this much. I have to stop him while he's still carrying the dreams he's stolen. Once he hands them on to the Eater of Dreams, it'll be too late."

If they start having recurring nightmares. Kunzite's eyes half-lid, but he doesn't turn that look on Seishi. Doesn't answer Mamoru's fierce look with it, either. And whatever Endymion means by 'some of it's not our fault,' Kunzite seems to be able to keep up.

"You can always get into trouble, I trust," he replies to his prince. "But I'll also trust you to keep it manageable. And I'll do what I can, and keep you informed." As always. Well. As always, with the usual notable exception.

Seishi he regards for a lingering moment. "Do you have a way to track the thing, or is it a matter of luck whether you and it intersect?"

At this point Endymion is leaning against the wall, arms crossed, body language tight and tense; his hands are out of sight. Nonetheless, he shifts one shoulder in an almost imperceptible shrug. "If I can do something, I want to do it," he says flatly to Seishi. "And the only dreams I can travel to on my own are those of the Shitennou and of Serenity, or people I'm in contact with, or who can meet me halfway with intent and some kind of link. You have two roses; you can call me in without having to come get me. I can't navigate, per se, but I can follow links."

He looks away. He's angry, but not at Seishi, and not at Kunzite. "But you're probably right, even if you don't come here. You're probably right about risk." He pushes off the wall. "Sorry. Stay as long as you like. You're not a disturbance."

And then he walks; as he goes he puts a hand on Kunzite's shoulder in passing, but doesn't pause in his steps. Then through an arch and around a corner, and he's gone.

Seishi's eyes widen; she sits very still, frozen with dismay, as Endymion walks away. Only when he's passed out of sight does she manage to move again, and then only to hang her head, the long fall of her ponytail slipping over her shoulder with the movement. "Nice job, dumbass," she mutters fiercely to herself. "Put your foot right in it."

--or maybe it's not to herself, exactly. For not even half a second, brief enough to miss in the space of a blink, the image of the girl flickers and it's a young man kneeling there instead, the same age or slightly older, wearing the same scarlet kimono but ripped and bloodied.

It's only a flash; when she looks up toward Kunzite, reaching up to push her hair back over her shoulder, she's Seishi again. "...I'm still working on that," she says in anwer to his question. "I have a few things to try, but... for right now it's mostly luck." The words are heavy with dissatisfaction. Luck is not good enough, and she knows it.

The hand on Kunzite's shoulder is covered for an instant, but not so closely as to slow Endymion's departure. Nor does the white-haired man look after the younger one's leaving.

"It's not your fault," he says, straightforward and even as he's said nearly everything else. "He despises enforced inactivity, and right now he's largely living in it. You can tell he wants to be a doctor; he's a suitably terrible patient."

He straightens, finally, coming out of his crouch and to his feet. The cape behaves as they do in dreams, flowing naturally behind him rather than the fabric trying to hitch up at any point. "I'm too old to be in school with him," he says, "and disinclined to try for university and get too far ahead. So I have time during the days, if you need anything done then. Looking for connections between the victims, for instance -- if whoever you have doing that already could use assistance."

Seishi gets to her feet as well, rising up out of seiza and taking an unnecessary moment to brush herself off. "I'll apologize later," she says, still looking down. "I know it's frustrating. I just - I don't want to put anyone else at risk cleaning up my mess. Ariel putting herself out as bait like that was bad enough."

She breathes out through her teeth before she finally looks up again. "If there's a connection, I haven't been able to see it," she admits. "It wouldn't hurt to have another set of eyes on it, though. It might be opportunism, or there might be some kind of dream logic to it that I'm missing. I can get you the names I know of. There might be more I don't know about."

She's looking tired, and a bit frustrated herself, as she reaches up distractedly to tuck some stray hair behind her ear. "Please be careful. The hunter made a try for one of the other people who helped at the mall. I'm not sure if he was after her dreams or something else, but it could happen again."

"You're not the frustrating part. It's the condition he's in. We haven't cured him yet of wanting to fix everyone's problems himself; I doubt anyone ever will." If Kunzite hopes no-one ever will, he keeps it from showing.

There's a brief nod to Seishi's be-careful. "Mn. More questions, then. Is there a -- no. That you would have told me, if you had one. There were marks, on some of the people there. Red. Do you know what they signified?"

"You might not want to assume too much about what I'd have told you," Seishi puts in, managing a lopsided, self-deprecating smile. "Lots of information to pass on, only so much time... I'm sure there's important things that I'm overlooking."

She falls quiet for a little while to think about his question, a faint frown coming to her face as she turns her memory back. "Claw marks," she says, "on the throat. I'm not sure, but if I had to guess - the mall was the second time we've run into him. Hino and Ariel were there the first time, and got in his way. It might be... a way of marking his prey. But the marks were gone from those two by the time the dream ended, and Minase-san - the girl he went after later - didn't have a mark on her, so I might be wrong."

A brief nod answers that off-center smile. "I was considering whether there were particular tactics effective against it, or particular protections that might be useful. But those you seemed likely to have mentioned."

And then there's time for more consideration. "Were those marks there on his victims the first time?" Kunzite asks. "If not -- it might only have been a signal of the second dream, something from his target's subconscious. Or the creature might have more than one kind of prey." Matter-of-fact, calm, as if a creature that devoured dreams, that pulled people into inexorable and unwaking sleep, that sparked the urge to flight even in the bravest, that had tried to draw him into its hunt himself, were something that could be reasoned about sanely. Were something that could be considered, and dealt with, like any other kind of enemy.

"--oh," Seishi says. A blink, a shift of mental gears. "Lucid dreaming. If the dreamer can realize it's a dream, they can take control of it, and that makes him vulnerable. If there's a way to guard against him getting into someone's dreams in the first place... that I don't know."

She closes her eyes, meditatively thinking back to the first encounter, the girl they had managed to talk down. "The red mark was on his victim the first time I ran across him too," she says, remembering. "Minase-san was able to purify it, or something - she snapped out of the Nightmare, but we didn't manage to stop the hunter from escaping."

"Not something I have a method of doing," Kunzite concedes. "But if the thing comes after me in more than a casual way, Endymion will know." If it comes after him in a merely casual way, it may be difficult to tell from the background noise. Not something he's concerned about. "And Endymion -- well. You taught him; you've seen."

He doesn't seem worried about a different lucid dreamer being the one to make the realization. But if Endymion's as much at home in his dreams as Kunzite seems to be in Endymion's --

-- given that the actual person whose dream they're in is, right now, apparently not in that dream --

-- well, that might be justified.

Seishi doesn't question Kunzite's assurance on this, no. She may not fully understand the nature of the connection between the two that lets them cross between each other's dreams so easily, but the evidence is beyond dispute.

"All I did was give him a chance to figure it out himself," she murmurs, with a little shake of her head. "But you're right, I have seen. If he'll know, and he can move in your dreams like you do in his, you're probably as safe as anybody can be."

Kunzite inclines his head toward Seishi, steady. "One thing less to worry about," he says. With luck. With more luck than he's inclined to admit; there are a lot of untested guesses, there. "So you can concentrate on the real problems."

Finding the Nightmare. Finding its next target. Doing one or the other, or both, in time.