A couple of minutes ago, Tuxedo Kamen left after depositing Miss White's injured civilian friend at the most illegal hospital in Tokyo. He's taken unstealthily and speedily to the rooftops, silhouetted against the moonlight. Realizing that the fight might already be over, he stops on a particular rooftop to take out the Tuxedo Tracfone to text Miss White again, this time to let her know the location of her friend.
Hat Guy TXT: btw she is at (address) black market magic doctor who is legit, pls don't recruit, be nice to her
That taken care of, he vanishes the phone back into the place his hat usually lives, and sticks around another second to put his gloves back on. They're so ungodly useful. Not for the first time, he vaguely wishes he could wear them all the time without looking like a weirdo.
Runealy is unaware of virtually all of this. Of any recent battles, of anything that might have injured Ao, or that Ao was left anywhere by anyone for any sort of 'magic doctor' retrieval. She is also leaping from roof to roof, wand stowed on her back as she patrols Tokyo.
She looks for monsters to fight, so that she might make Tokyo safer. Better protected and happier. She looks for good people to hurt, so that she might make Tokyo less safe. Less protected, less happy, in the hopes that if she hurts enough people and drains enough energy she can save her world from destruction. This makes her virtually everyone's enemy.
And tonight, she spots a distinct silhouette in the distance. The details are fuzzy, but the 'shape' is very specific and it tells her she almost certainly knows who it is. She decides to make Tokyo less safe. Boot wings glow, silver energy sending her on a series of boosted leaps toward Tuxedo Kamen. She won't be unnoticed for long, and realizes it. Wand drawn in hand, the alien princess calls out: "You're out and about already? That's almost as impressive as the fact you took that blow for her to begin with. She really must be as wonderful as all of you say, if you'll go to those lengths for her!"
The tall boy spins on his heel, immediately dropping into a defensive stance, and his gaze zeroes in on the glowing, sparkly princess. His hat's nowhere in evidence, but his cape swirls around him and his mask and gloves and shirtfront are bright against the darkness, and his hair ruffles in the breeze.
He doesn't run, but he's ready to. When she's close enough to see them, his blue eyes are bright and intent behind the mask. "She's very precious to me. To all of them, as well. The Senshi. Her heart is worth all our lives," he says with finality.
Then he straightens, still standing his ground, but letting his hands drop to his sides. "What do you want? Why did you attack Sailor Mercury? Why did you attack Sailor Moon? Please answer me first. Before we fight. What do you need?"
Runealy starts to take aim at Tuxedo Kamen, but his demand to know why this is happening touches her. She lands on the rooftop adjacent to his, head lowered and voice raised to carry between the distance. "I need your power. I need Sailor Mercury's power. And Sailor Moon's, and Sailor Mars' and everyone else's." Her voice falters at points, but by and large she tries to speak with an air of cold melodrama... like some twisted genius carrying out a master plan. Whether that works given her appearance is up for debate.
"I need all of those things to make history. History that will justifiably hate me forever, but will celebrate Moon and Mercury and you as heroes. So before we fight, tell me something of yourself. Tell me your name... it doesn't have to be a real name, but understand this. Historians will hear the name you provide."
Her wand tip lowers to aim at the roof floor she stands on. "Children will argue over who gets to 'be you' when they play." Nevermind that Runealy is still a child herself in some ways. Most fourteen year olds would vehemently reject the label, of course. 'I am not a kid!' is the near-universal teen protest. "So I would very much like to hear who you are and what you do. You shouldn't be some anonymous, faceless 'thing' that I hurt and forget. Tell me, so that centuries from now... thousands of years from now, people will celebrate you."
Something in Mamoru Chiba believes what would, to almost anyone, sound like megalomanic self-important ravings. Maybe it's history itself. Maybe it's the sound of her voice, or the loyalty of her guardians. Maybe it's something else, some feeling that resonates--
He shakes his head. "I'm no one special. What I do is search for my Princess, and protect Sailor Moon. But I'm not the only one who loves either of them. I shouldn't be celebrated." There's a silence for a second as he thinks, lifting up his hands open and relaxed, a staying motion instead of anything that looks like an attack. There's nothing combative about his stance anymore, and he's looking away; she's only just in his peripheral vision.
Finally he looks directly at Runealy again. "Is the history you're trying to make a good history, one that saves lives? Is it a history that will treat people well, even if they disagree with the state? You have seemed, to me, to be a good person in a difficult place. Can you promise me that this history is a fine one?"
"No, you're special enough. I wouldn't be here spending very precious time targeting /you/," Runealy snaps an emphasis on that word, a very sharp rise in tone for just that, "if you were a waste of it. You keep very confusing company, I admit. I see you alongside such obviously wonderful people as Sailor Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and... 'V', was it?" The princess is guessing, based on what she has seen of a poster bearing V's likeness. "Then I see you associating with Miss White, and I fear what that might mean. Nonetheless, you're important enough for me to be here."
Then she stops to ponder the question, taking a few steps closer to her rooftop's edge. Her head lowers, and for several seconds she cannot answer as her throat tightens and words try to come out but rapidly blinking eyes betray that her composure is rattled. "...As well as can be. I have no illusions; I am a monster, doing something awful to good people who want safety... 'protection and happiness' for all. Sailor Moon and her friends don't deserve what we tried to do to them. I doubt you deserved to be struck by our Oath made visible for the world to see. So if you are asking whether I am bringing about an ideal future where 'right' is always served... no. I will say this, though."
She tries to meet Tuxedo Kamen's gaze. "The difference between myself and the Witches of Tokyo and distant conquerors claiming someone's very life is their kingdom's due, like some sort of twisted mockery of a tax," her memories flash back to an encounter with Neprhite at Infinity one night. "...is that the history I seek will be built on misery, not death, and when it is complete I will return to hold myself accountable. Miss White may strike me until her heart is content. You may hurl me against walls and curse my existence until you are satisfied! I am here to steal what I must have... but I do care whether you live. I want you to live. I want you to live and Sailor Moon to live and even those two girls arguing over a magic artifact in the park. That..." She suddenly realizes she rambled. "Wasn't a direct answer, was it?"
The very first thing Tuxedo Mask says, hands dropped to his sides again, relaxed instead of ready, is very calm: "Killing me will incur a debt that is more than I think you will be able to pay, but if you do kill me, I will hope that you can find ways to pay it, on your honor."
Then he reaches up and coolly removes his mask, holding it up in two fingers, then twisting it out of sight, maybe out of reality. His expression is distant and aloof, his manner and bearing regal without trying, without knowledge of it.
"First," he begins, tone commanding, perhaps surprising, "Miss White keeps bad company, but everything she does, she does to protect those she loves. Someday I hope to be able to convince her that there are better ways, and that there are people who are strangers who are equally important, and that every thing she does will come back to her, for good or ill. So if you kill me, make sure you or someone else sees that through for me, brings her back to the life she's capable of living.
"Second," Chiba Mamoru continues, sounding as naturally official as anyone used to being, and expecting to be, heeded, "On your honor you will not target Sailor Moon. Instead, you will protect her from harm or make sure that that duty is seen to. You WILL. NOT. TARGET. SAILOR. MOON." He stops for a second, staring at Runealy.
The boy's an upperclassman at Infinity. A popular overachiever, a marvelous athlete, a hipster, and a bookish nerd all at once-- and still, a perfect stranger, but growing less so by the second. Even still, the qualities he's displaying, as effortless and as dignified as royalty demanding better terms for their surrender. There's something so old, so ancient, behind his distant regard. Mamoru twists his hand in the air and brings the mask back, but only holds it for now.
"If you want us to live, then don't kill us," he finally says, tiredly. Then he gestures away off toward the park. "Let's go that way, please. To the park. You can do it at the park. If I try to hare off, I give you permission to shoot me in the back."
Talk of killing him chills the princess. Attempts to sound like a mysterious, melodramatic figure in absolute control of a brilliant plan falter, her voice rising, shouting raw and hurt. "Stop it! Stop talking like that! Killing you is something I could never take back! There is no 'paying' for that, no matter how many times I would apologize or how much gold I threw at people, it wouldn't change something. It wouldn't change that you're gone! I'd know! I'd know that Sailor Moon wouldn't see you ever again, Sailor Mercury would never get to talk to you ever again, and anything you hope to do for Miss White would be done and gone! Don't talk about dying that casually!"
She's riled up now. "And don't talk to me about 'honor', either! Take one look at what I did to Mercury and ask if there's any honor in that! I'm going to do whatever it takes, and honor has /never/ been part of my thoughts. Any 'promise' I make like that would be instantly broken the moment I saw an opportunity to defeat Sailor Moon, because I can't limit myself like that! I might strike you in the back regardless. The /only/ thing you can trust about me is I am not a murderer. Bandit, yes. Traitor, yes. Monster, idiot, and trash. I'm all of those!"
She doesn't look in the direction he's pointing. Rune's gaze stays fixed right on Mamoru. His mask is held well enough in his hand, but her 'mask', her act, has slipped and stays off. "But I don't need to make some stupid 'honor promise' not to kill you or Sailor Moon or anyone else, because I know that they would get to look at you and ask why that had to happen!" She's crying now, open and unreserved. "And there wouldn't be a good answer for it! You would just be gone, and it doesn't need to be that way! So don't talk like that!" She's not just raising her voice to be heard across rooftops now; Runealy is shouting.
She's near the edge of her roof; he just watches her, face neither judging nor mild, but waiting. Taking the shouting as it comes unflinchingly, patient as a mountain. Strangely, something like shared grief and something like affection cross his face as she begins crying. As swiftly as it takes him to think of it, Runealy's keeping her gaze fixed on the thin air that had held a teenaged boy in formal dinner dress and a cloak of the night sky.
There's the lightest ta-tap on the rooftop behind her, and then quite suddenly, Runealy's being swept up in strong arms against a chest that's warm even through the white tie and tails, and there's wind in her face and a feeling of weightlessness. Tuxedo Mask-- Mamoru-- is carrying her through the sky in a series of leaps that barely seem to skim the ground. "So don't YOU talk like that," he tells her reasonably in midair. "As long as it doesn't kill people, and as long as the people you take power from recover, then you're not half the villain you're making yourself out to be. If you're not just 'making history', if you're providing a future, and you're not gathering it to resurrect some giant perfect evil from beyond time and space, then really you need to reevaluate villainy. You're not stealing souls, you're not twisting people, you're not permanently damaging the ecosystem. Plus you cry too much to be a villain."
Okay, yeah. Tuxedo Kamen is, in no uncertain terms, Chiba goddamn Mamoru.
He talks them all the way to the park, which really doesn't take nearly as long as it should. "Finally, if you aren't draining me dry, then leave me there in the park. And just-- every time you have an opportunity, as you see it, to get Sailor Moon-- just come ask me instead, okay? I won't tell anyone."
Rustling over treetops on the final descent, they'll land on the grass in a second.
"Gone!?" Runealy goes tense, suspecting that either Tuxedo Kamen is about to flee or attack her. Either would be really smart moves while her guard was down. She gets about a quarter-second to realize that before... "Hn!?" She starts to juke away, but she's seized and drawn in.
A chill runs through the alien princess as she realizes she has made a critical mistake. Left herself open, and now he could... what? 'Hurl her into a wall', just as Runealy suggested earlier? He has the opportunity. The gems on her tiara light up as she prepares to attack, to prevent that... but he manages to get words in just before she can do so.
Words that stop her. "Th... that's why I've been asking questions and studying people this whole time! To make sure they could recover. That's how I found out about a type of person here in Tokyo that /doesn't/ recover. A type of person that has to fight, they don't have a choice because if they don't they'll 'starve' and die, and you've seen them! You've worked alongside some of them! I needed to know, precisely so we didn't make that kind of mistake! But you... you shouldn't do this."
Her headwear's gems dim, and the attack isn't carried out as she stares down at the approaching grass-landing. "If you give a bandit ten silver, they will come back and demand fifteen. Then twenty. Then fifty /gold/. It won't stop until they have to stop, until someone stops them. You shouldn't give in to my demands, and... you shouldn't just let me hurt you like that. Trust me... one time with the magic draining we do, and you won't be talking like this. You're going to shout at me and swear revenge, promising to hunt me down as something lower than a dog like Miss White has said she will do. It hurts, a lot. Don't just /let/ me do it to you! Y... you should work with Sailor Moon and stop me!"
Mamoru sets Runealy down gently, and his mask is back on his face, which makes him look oddly younger, as tall as he is. "Calm down," he says kindly, his hands on her shoulders. "You can obviously tell how much you take before it's too much, and you won't kill me, so I trust that if I only have fifty gold, you'll take forty-nine."
He drops his hands and takes a step back, smiling very slightly. "And I'm not giving in to your demands, I'm donating to your cause. You aren't a bandit for accepting a gift. You aren't stealing from me if I'm volunteering to do something I'd be doing anyway -- protecting Sailor Moon. There's just less fuss if you don't engage her in battle in the first place-- and to be perfectly honest, that hurt an awful lot the other night. I'd rather not have to wake up from both."
He spreads his arms out then drops them in the single most grandiose shrug ever. "Remember: please leave me here. No one's likely to come through this part of the park at this time of night, and I'll wake up faster on the ground. Just-- watch Sailor Moon's back tonight, please. And don't tell anyone I'm out here."
It would be really, really embarrassing.
"...Or maybe just forty," Runealy starts splitting 'literal detail' hairs in Tuxedo Kamen's analogy, even as it finally sinks in to her distracted mind that she has seen his unmasked face somewhere before. The concert. "You're putting a lot of trust in someone who has shown they'll do cowardly things, aren't you? What's to stop me from running off and trying to 'double my winnings' tonight by taking from you and then from Sailor Moon? Aside from the stupidity of it, when you're offering no-risk gains versus high-risk ones that are only slightly more rewarding. More than that..."
She backs up several steps, stretching out as her free hand begins digging in her dress' bow to fish up a crystal. One of her Shrine's energy-conduit ones, not the twisted and ugly things she's using to gain a dangerous advantage in fights. This one is clear with a slight blue tint to it. "I can't just leave you here. I intend to call a healer to ensure you're taken care of. That was one of the first things we investigated upon arriving from Europe, you know. How to contact them and bring them to our victims. If I leave you here on 'no one is likely'... 'likely.' That's an interesting word, isn't it? 'Likely.'"
"It's unlikely that a Witch would find you, or that man with dark energy would come upon you and who knows what he would do to you. It's unlikely, but not impossible. I would be gambling with your life. So I intend to call someone to care for you, and I must wonder: How do I possibly find Sailor Moon to watch over her? And how would I even get her to agree to that, when she has seen what I'm willing to do? The very first thing she saw me do was hurt her friend. That is literally all she knows of me."
"No, don't," Mamoru says firmly, a little irritably. "I'll be protected. I can't tell you how or by whom, but I'll be protected." The irritation grows, but only slightly, and it gets flattened out into the faintest hint of mild annoyance in his voice. "Easiest way to make sure her back is watched is to stay the hell away from her friends so THEY can watch over her. Don't go after the Senshi if I'm out, and don't go after me if they're out."
Wow he is like super determined to make sure the odango'd klutz heroine with the biggest heart in the world is always guarded. SUPER. DETERMINED.
He waves a hand dismissively, then drops them both to his sides. "Anyway. *Do not* call a healer. I've already been hospitalized twice this week and I really don't want to have to deal with that again. And you answered your own question, as to why I'm trusting you not to go after Moon. It would be really stupid."
"If you're sure, then I'll trust 'likely.'" Runealy is hesitant, but Tuxedo Kamen has made his decision with full awareness of what she normally planned... so she decides it is 'on him' at this point. "You're driving a hard bargain, though. To leave alone five different people I could use, in return for just one that will apparently 'donate' to us? One for one is obvious. One for two is also a pretty clear choice. One for five is when I start having to weigh what I'm getting, versus what I /could/ get because it's a lot."
"You're asking me to accept a small win instead of a big one, when I need the biggest ones I can. You're asking me to gamble." Rune lowers her head, eyes lidded with worry as she tries to sort through this. "I have to ask myself what the right answer is there. There will be consequences regardless of my decision. Important ones. Ones that affect Sailor Moon and Mercury and everyone else, not just my friends and I."
"If you go after the Senshi, then leave me alone that day. You can't take them all out and get what you want, but if you take enough of them out of commission that she's not guarded, then don't take me out," explains Tuxedo Kamen patiently. "It's not a hard bargain. My basic condition is that she's protected. They might even be willing to make the same bargain, if you promise them the same thing. That you won't go after Moon. Just don't tell them about mine."
It has not escaped his notice that she is putting a lot of effort and focus and thought into how she might be cheating him. It means that she's taking the bargain to heart. It means that it means something to her, which is what the boy's been gambling on, himself.
"...I can't promise my Knights will abide by any agreement I make, you realize." They hadn't come up until now, but Runealy raises the topic. "They have significant liberty in interpreting how best to fulfill the promise we've made to one another. I have forbidden them to attack Puella Magi, and they know why. You know why. Beyond that, I try not to limit how they follow their hearts."
She stares at the tiny crystal held in her left hand, gaze still low and unhappy. This bargain may not be a 'hard' one with ironclad rules, but it still represents trading away some potential energy gathering. After several seconds of hard thought, she decides that since her world still has a few months to live... she has the luxury of trading away some potential gains in favor of smaller but nonetheless apparently guaranteed gains. "If we do this, that is the best I can do. I can tell you I won't encourage them to attack you or any Sailor Senshi. I won't help them plan ambushes on your friends. They might do it on their own accord, but I won't tempt them into it. "I, personally, will agree to those general limits and steer our priorities elsewhere if we can. But I cannot speak for my friends. Are you still okay with that?"
"If you can get them not to attack Sailor Moon, specifically, then I'm okay with that," Tuxedo Kamen says after a moment. It's a moment of frowning, as he considers it, himself. He'll have to ask some of the people who've stepped up to the plate of calling himselves his friends, he'll have to ask them for help keeping watch over her-- but he can make it work. "That's just one. And you can tell them that it's because she's the condition under which you'll have a volunteer source, which is guaranteed instead of a fight you might lose. Risk/gain analysis says it's a reasonable thing for them to agree to."
He's really going there. Tuxedo Mask seems to realize it, and rolls his eyes and puffs out a breath in exasperation. "Do it."
"...Yeah. I... I've been thinking about it like that, but hearing you put it like that..." Runealy stares down at the ground, head shaking a few times. "It makes sense, and sounds awful. I'm basically 'using math' to weigh how much evil is 'okay', aren't I. Pretty sick to realize I'm giving any answer other than 'zero'."
He tells her to proceed. Rune looks at him, hurt by the offer. "...I wasn't making that up earlier about how people will admire you. Sometime, I'd like you to tell me how you want your history chapter to read. I've been taking notes on everyone I do this to, to make sure all of this is saved and nobody forgets it. But... okay."
She steps back up to him, crying anew as her wand is stowed behind-back and the now empty hand taps the top of the crystal. "Tran... transfuse." It's a low, reluctant command.
Even half-hearted commands are enough to activate the gem, however. A thin 'clear' line of energy streams out to Tuxedo Kamen, and once it touches him, once it begins siphoning him, this ray will turn into a color to match one that represents his magic best.
Runealy wasn't kidding when she said this would hurt. It doesn't hurt a little, like getting a needle at the doctor's office. This is a deep chill, something piercing through and ripping out the essence it seeks to take in as the crystal fills bit by bit. Runealy watches both the crystal and Mamoru's condition, offering a near-whispered "Sorry" as the process goes on.
"Sure, once I have something worth putting in a history chapter, I'll tell you," Mamoru reassures Runealy-- but try as he might, he can't bring himself to feel sorry for the hurt in her voice at his offer. He's just impatient to get it over with, now, like a hideous exam or a trip to the doctor's office or an event that'll involve a crowd he can't escape from. "And you're a better person than I am if you feel guilty about weighing this kind of option. You also still cry too much to be a villain."
It would be famous last words if Runealy were, in fact, going to kill him--
--but she's not.
The beam hits his chest dead center, and the light instantly shines brilliant, living gold, locked on to him, to his essence, to that which powers him. He gulps back a cry and maintains his silence-- maintains his footing for a longer moment than perhaps he should-- then falls to one knee, his visage a mask of white-lipped, grey-faced pain behind the mask. One knee, then both knees and he's sitting on his heels, digging his hands into the earth below him. And he's still upright.
When his hands come in contact with the ground, the stream of golden light burns brighter, and he's making himself suck in a breath now and then, mostly breathing very shallowly. The thin line of his mouth degenerates into bared teeth, and still the power flows from him--
--there's no sign of it slowing when he finally passes out, crumpling like his strings were cut.
Runealy can't work up the nerve to say much back to Mamoru, even after his insights. Her hand shakes as gold light flows in, as the crystal begins to house that bright light and she can see how something that pretty is coming from being ripped out of Tuxedo Kamen, hurting him. It doesn't seem right to her, like there's an obvious contradiction in that.
And then the crystal is full, and the 'donor' falls. Runealy hurries to catch him, partially succeeding; he doesn't outright fall to the ground, but she doesn't entirely stabilize him and instead slows his descent. Once he's down, she puts the crystal away and starts to grab her cell phone to call Ao... then reminds herself that he just asked her to not do that.
She looks down to the unconscious Mamoru, head shaking a few times. "I wonder why you think the way you do, why you talk the way you do. You know, in some ways... this probably would have been easier if you shouted at me and hated me like Miss White did."
She's not expecting any real answer from him. Head lowered, the princess begins to walk away. Once a safe distance from Tuxedo Kamen, his words ring in her head all over again as her transformation fades. She's crying now, and suspects she will be doing a lot more of it before it comes time to complete the ritual that will save her world. Rune has a lot to think about on the way back to the abandoned store she lives in.
What to write about this mysterious man who asked 'why', who acted so very different from the first person she hurt. How to explain to Hinote and Gaofele that she hopes they'll leave Sailor Moon alone, without compromising Tuxedo Kamen's confidence. And to hope that his assurances that he will be fine, abandoned on the ground at night, are apt.