Lacrima has sent a text message to Alexis.
'Meet me on the top of the Akira Building in Downtown Mitakihara. It isn't tall. We need to talk. It's important.'
The Akira Building is indeed a small squat office block within distance of Sunset Tower that you can see through the taller buildings.
She's staring at said tower as she mutters things to herself.
She's not doing much else of anything, besides waiting and staring.
There is a charm tag, a tracking tag, stuck to the back of her phone's battery, hidden behind the backplate-- a perfect hiding place. She always seems to keep her phone on her, right?
It doesn't take long before there's more movement nearby-- though considering the current situation, Lacrima can likely sense it before she sees or hears it.
The figure that leaps through the air from the next building over is hidden partially by the dark, thick hoodie, with it's hood flipped up over their head. How the hood doesn't get flipped back by the motion of a rapid leap is anyone's guess, really. Either way, after landing upon the Akira Building's roof, the movement is slowed down again considerably, turning from a run to a steady walk, with hands stuck into pockets. Curving towards where Lacrima is standing.
"Why here?" Asks the voice of Alex from underneath the hood, with a single green eye peeking down from underneath at the small vampire. "Why didn't you call me to the manor?"
Jia had been keeping tabs on Norie, the erratic behavior, the chat at the park and the whole situaton has her wondering what actually happened. She's also wondering if this might be Norie slipping further, something she can't just ignore even if she's unhappy with even the thought. She's actually being surprisingly subtle, having been tracking Norie through a mixture of bribed help from local minor spirits, disguises and distance and so on.
Seeing them heading up, it's obvious she has her full compliment of ghosts, something she hasn't done in a while! Though in this case, one is keeping tabs on them, obfuscated hwile the other two are helping her move from rooftop to rooftop where she can keep an eye on the two. It's at this point the meeting place choice becomse obvious to her.
Sure she could stay on another nearby building and observe, but she's sure she needs to listen in. Being on a rooftop already means she's probably going to be spotted or sensed. With a twist of her magic, she tries to hide her presence at least, if not her herself and is thrown to the building by another ghost where she tries to both land and scurry over to something to hide behind. She has no idea if she's even remotely successful, but it's worth a shot.
Lacrima doesn't seem to notice Jiaying's ascent or hiding. She's not concentrating on detecting Jiaying. Just Alexis. And he's here. He asks a question and she looks at him... then frowns and gets that ashamed look she's been wearing whenever she thinks about Alexis.
"Amu Hinamori-chan... took me out to the woods. And she had her charas... search and search for where we woke up. And we found the place..." she says quietly.
"I'm not sure how you'll react." she says quietly. "Because I remembered. What happened that night." she says quietly.
"--and Amu already is threating to purify me over it." she says.
"Do you want to hear it?" she asks softly.
"..."
Alex comes to a complete stop, when those few very specific words are said.
From the distance of four meters away, he stares at Lacrima, for a moment.
A moment before his head tips down, and the hood over his head slides a bit further forward and down, to shade over his features.
"...Just say it," he urges, after another few seconds of silence, voice faintly growling in it's undertone with those few words.
"Am I dead?"
:looks down, softly as she wraps her arms around herself. "I think you are." she says quietly. "I mean. I think you are alive. I'm not sure. I'm still not sure of a lot." she says.
"I..."
"We were attacked. When I turned around? To speak to you? Were me and you black out?" she asked. "Something big and icy and spindly like a spider." she says.
"I fought it. You threw a.. firebomb?" she asks.
"It chased you into the woods. I followed." she says.
"It...reflected a final attack back at me. In that time it... drove it's legs into you."
"I reformed. I.. did something. Horrible to the thing I don't want to recount." she says. "When I came to you were bleeding out. I tried to text for help but I was shaking from all the things going on. I couldn't text right."
"You were dying and..."
"...and..."
She just sort of throws her face into her hands.
"I'm not a healer. or a purifier or anything like that." she says quietly.
"I did the only thing I could do I... turned you. Like this." she says quietly
"Because I knew you would regenerate and..."
"I.."
"I promised people! I wouldn't do this! I promised people." she "and I did it anyways--because.. because it's all I could do!" she says, buring her head deeper into her hands.
"................................................................."
Silence.
Even while Lacrima's face is buried within her hands, it is as if though Alex has turned into a statue for the longest time.
Nearly a good minute passes, before there's finally some movement. A hand draws out from the pocket of the hoodie slowly, and reaches to his chest.
"I..." He lets out, quietly. He tries to say something, but words fail to leave his throat properly.
He can't remember what happened. Not even now. There's a black hole in his mind the size of of an afternoon. He doesn't even have the same frame of reference to help him remember.
But. His hand clutches at his chest through the fabric of the shirt.
He remembers a sharp pain. A dreadful sensation like his soul is being sucked out. He remembers not being able to breath.
... He remembers two giant holes in his lung and stomach both.
I t m a k e s h i m s i c k
And just like that, Alex is soddenly dropping down onto his knees, with his hand still clutching desperately at his chest like he's trying to cover up some phantom wound left behind.
"Did... Did I..." He asks, between heavy exhales of his suddenly quickened breathing. "...Did I regenerate right?"
Jiaying Maki settles down against the... what is it, an air conditioning unit? Or are these ventilation things since it's a rather tall building. She's never actually thought to look that sort of thing up and she mentally files it away. Instead, she starts to creep forward. Stopping once she's within earshot, at least as best she can tell without just standing out in the open, she only catches a portion of the story. This causes her to scowl, since Amu was making some pretty serious threats which means either part of the story is missing or she needs to have a chat with the girl.
Then there's a few minutes where she tries to remember if she's ever actually met Amu. Why did so many have to have similar names.
Lacrima kind of manages to calm down. She's told this story twice already. It still doesn't make it easy, but she relaxes. "As far as I know? You don't seem injured anymore. Right?" she asks quietly.
"Naru seems to understand. Amu... says. I'm still an abomination regardless of what I did. I dunno what to do about that." she says quietly. "I think she may be coming after you to purify you." she says softly. "That's a bad thing. It'll cause the power to dig it's claws into you deeper. We don't want that." she says. "You're not some common youma that can be purified like that." she says.
"This isn't something that is just possessing you. I pressed it into you. It's a part of you. It'll hurt and try to keep itself there if it's attmped to be removed forcefully." she says quietly.
"Alexis-kun." she says quietly. "You're still human. You still have a body. That's a good thing. I don't. I'm just. Something like a dark energy signature with sentience." she says quietly.
"Just a few steps up from.. screaming one word constantly while I attack a team of color coded magical girls." she quips softly.
"No one's actually *looked* at me," Alex suddenly notes in an equally sudden sharp tone in his voice.
"I felt. These hollow spots. In me. Like something was missing. I thought it was just. Side effect from being like this. Because I'm missing bloody emotions now too, aren't I?"
His hand tightens up against his chest, digging at skin through the fabric hard enough that, were he in his pre-turned state, he could very well draw blood like that. And he rambles.
"What if it's the wounds I feel? And what if it's not just phantom pain? If the parts of me that the creature destroyed are just... filled up by dark energy to make up for what's not there anymore?
"Wouldn't that mean I'm going to die if I suddenly stop being this way? Or even if I just run low enough on energy to nto be able to sustain it?"
His hand falls away, finally, and his breathing steadies at least a little bit, before he murmurs, in a quieter tone, "Maybe that would be okay too, you know? I might be human, in some way. But that doesn't stop me from being a monster, does it?"
"When Naru and Kyouko and Kazuo found me. I. Part of me wanted to rip their guts out, you know."
"Tear them to pieces and pound their faces into red."
"It took everything I had in me. To not try to."
Jiaying Maki begins drawing magic to herself, leaving a lingering coldness where she had been hiding for a moment as one of her ghosts is both summoned, then assigned quietly to keep an eye on Alexis at the mention that he was struggling to avoid hurting people she was sure he considered friends at some point. Whether Norie's story is true or not, sometimes you have to make a difficult choice and she'd like an attempt at early warning. Of course, this also means they're not going to be particularly close and could be lost, but it's safer than the other options!
She doesn't actually bother hiding the use of magic either, mostly because she's pretty sure any significant use of her magic is just going to be a big blip on anyone able to sense the stuff. It's a smaller footprint than it would have been at one point though.
So, rather than worrying about it, she slaps a charm to the piece of cover she had been using and calmly stands up. Brushing herself off, she steps towards the edge of the building which is her attempt to disguise what the real bit of magic was. She stops at the edge of the building, wreathed in the pale green mist of her magic, one ghost standing before her in a defensive manner while the other hovers nearby, ready for her to leave.
Lacrima frowns and shakes her head. "You're doing better than I did when... when I was... starting out Alexis. I couldn't control that. I went from.. liked and loved to... the school's biggest problem in a matter of a week." she says quietly.
"I know it's hard. TO control these feelings." she says quietly.
She looks down and then back up.
"Why did you want to beat them? Just. Because. Or. Did you think of.. every sleight. Every mis-interperted past action?" she asks.
She blinks a bit and looks around. Okay. She felt that.
"Jiaying-chan?" she asks.
"You know why," Alex grunts. "Because. Part of me was still. Angry at her. For tossing me out for someone else."
"I didn't want to feel that way. I told myself. Before I got like this. It's pointless to let that fester. But I couldn't cast it all away. And for just a moment. It came back stronger. After I turned."
"You know, I..." He lets out a heavy sigh. "I'm doing. Everything in my power. To keep myself there. Here. In control. I even. Helped Sayaka. Fight bad things. But I can't count on myself forever."
"So I already asked her. TO kill me. If I do anything bad. I'll have to ask Kazuo, t--"
His words cut short. He reacts in time with Lacrima uttering out that name, and in an instant, he's up on his feet, even if in a slouched crouch -- back arched, like a threatened animal.
Jiaying Maki glances over her shoulder, waving to the two. "Yours is the real thing, his is a portion of yours. It's probably just aggravating an already aggressive personality rather than burying one personality beneath another." She then adds with a tone bordering on sarcastic, "Out of fear that is." She turns on her heel, her back to the edge of the building, mist trailing away from her. "If she confirmed your story, why is she still threatening to purify you over it?"
To Alexis and his stance, she says flatly, "Stop now. Trust me. If I was going to do anything, I would have done it over there rather than leaving you two to your devices." There's some moments of thought before she adds, "And Kazuo's the one you should go talk to. He thinks she's saveable which means you definitely are."
She does take a defensive stance though, not sure what powers Alexis received as part of the dark bargain, intentional or not. "You may want to consider doing that sooner rather than later. Or bringing him to the manor since that's safer than you two getting atomized right?" There's more in Chinese after.
Lacrima frowns. "Because she still thinks it wasn't right I 'ruined a life' or something like that." she says silently. "That It'd be better to be dead." she says softly as she closes her eyes. "I disagree." she says. "I did what I had to do."
She frowns back to Alexis. "Alexis. This is Jiaying-chan." she says softly. "It's okay. She shouldn't. Hurt you." she says.
"I don't think..." she says quietly.
Is she kidding? It's hard to tell.
"So you've been there for a bit..? Then.. you heard me. Good. I guess. I don't need to tell you seperatly then." she says.
She head tilts at the Chinese as she smirks a bit and says something back. It's in broken Chinese, but understandable.
Something about a dog.
"Alexis-kun." she says quietly. "You've done a good job of... controlling yourself. Much better than I ever did. Please Just keep it up. Keep check of yourself." she says.
"I'm glad you've gone out with someone, helping people." she says.
She nods a little at Alexis. "....yes. I. Understand that." she says quietly. "Asking someone to be ready to off you." she says.
"Tch."
Alex's expression is not easy to discern from underneath the hood, but somehow, just in his movements, irritation is readily apparent.
"I should leave now," he declares in a quiet growl, and turns himself up from the crouch to back away towards an edge of the rooftop. "You trust her, that's fine. But that doesn't make this better for me right now."
He glances sidelong to Lacrima, one more time, with a mutter of, "I will let you know. If I find out I'm on borrowed time."
Jiaying Maki waves to Alex with a big sharp toothed grin, wisps of magic twisting from green to pale blue and back to green again, "Really though, you should listen to her for your own safety." She then resumes a humorless look as she looks to Norie. Her back foot is lifted as she leans back, supported by the ghost as she gets ready to jump back down to ground level. "Norie, after all of this time, you can't even confidently say I'm not going to hurt him without reason. That's upsetting." She says the last part with actual emotion, though her face is impassive.
"Later we're working on your Chinese." She's kind of embarassed that she got caught there, but that's easy to hide currently. A dose of actual suggestion and sarcasm should do it! "You know, Kazuo hangs out with someone that can heal. Fix one then fix the other. Work something out."
Lacrima blinks! And frowns as Alexis goes to leave. "Wait Alexis-kun, I'll go with you." she shoots a look back to Jiaying and frown. "I was trying to inject some levity but I guess my deadpan isn't good for that." she says silently.
"Sorry."
She frowns. "No more following like that. I appreciate that you care but you keep claiming this but doing that. It's one or the other. I trust you and you trust me or you don't. You obviously do not if you were following me." she says.
Then she's off chasing Alexis-kun.