Takashi was actually intending to come home instead of going straight to the lab for once today anyways, so... being yelled at by an angry girlfriend factors as much into his plans as it ever could, he supposes. With a heavy sigh he sets his backpack down and is there to open the door just as she knocks on it.
He holds up a single finger. "No punching my shoulder - or anywhere else - until I can explain. The whole thing. Please." There's a definite honesty in his tone as he opens the door wide and steps well out of her way.
"And please promise not to tell anyone else about this. I mean I guess I can't help if they know I'm involved but the details - I don't need more people trying to get in my way or compete over the Cards."
Ami didn't even bother to go home and change. She's still dressed in her Seishou uniform, the blue and white seifuku over a pair of thin hose. She has her arms crossed over her chest, and her leather satchel over one shoulder.
At least she doesn't swing the moment the door's open.
"Lucky for you," Ami tells him angrily, "I know to ask questions before I leap to conclusions. I have a whole lot of theories about why you might be doing this," she explains, "but literally none of them don't make you look like a huge jerk."
After a moment, she lets out a frustrated huff, then steps inside and toes out of her brown leather flats. The bookbag is dropped with the rest, and she walks past Takashi back into the livingroom where she spent so much time recovering from Kunzite's attack.
Memories flood back in, but Ami's anger keeps them at bay. She whirls around to glare at Takashi again, and once more the arms go across her chest. "Alright. I'm listening."
Takashi frowns at some of her digs, but calms himself by going to the kitchen and getting them both a soda. The house is still holding that strange, half-lived in quality, that thing that tells Ami that no matter how much time he spends here, he considers the lab his true Home.
If she won't take her soda, he sits it on the table in front of her, sitting in the same chair he rested in while she took up the couch. "Please, sit. And I didn't hear you say anything about not sharing this with anyone else."
"I don't usually ask that. This is important." Takashi reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pile of tarot-sized cards - the Clow cards - and sits them on the table. They're wrapped in a ribbon - but that ribbon shimmers and shows sigils and signs crawling across it - keeping them bound in the absence of the book.
"I'm not giving you that promise," Ami replies honestly. She at least sits as instructed. "But even if I tell no one, you're going to be competing with other magical girls for the cards. Sakura Kinomoto's already sent out a general S.O.S., and Naru-chan was with me when I found out it was you. So your secret's pretty much already out. If you can convince me why you're not doing something utterly stupid, I will try to smooth things over so they stay out of your way. If you can't convince me, I am not going to stand between them and you."
Takashi's face is not pleased. He leans back in the chair and facepalms, then drags his hand down his face. "Already? The freakin' Sand ate her phone. I thought I'd have at least a little time before the pitchforks came out. And I'm sure people are jumping at the chance."
Takashi unwraps the card set and starts to lay them out, face down, on the table. Most of them have thier red backs but four of them have black backs in contrast with the golden markings. "These aren't toys." Takashi begins.
"They're the artifacts of the most powerful mage in history. And there's a caveat attached to them, now that they're free. I'm not mugging a little girl, Ami. I'm saving the world. I'm saving US."
Ami does listen, true to her word. She doesn't reach for the cards when he lays them out, doesn't attempt to touch them in any way. She does lean forward to look at them, curiously, but she doesn't even pull out her visor to inspect them.
"Nothing's ever toys, with us," notes the bluenette quietly as she inspects them. "They look like tarrot cards. Magical, I assume?" she asks, looking up to him to confirm.
A moment later, she's back to looking curiously at the cards. "So who mugged the little girl? And why did she think it was you? And who was the dark girl who looked just like her?" Ami takes a breath and looks back up at Takashi. "How does you having them, and her not, save the world?"
Takashi doesn't answer immediately, taking a drink of his soda. Then, he flips over a card with the black back. The Mirror. "Magical as all get-out. This is The Mirror. She came to me first, and she's the one the girl saw last night. She takes on her form and walks in our world. She's one of the few cards that can talk. And she's not a fan of the girl. She's the one who took the cards. She delivered them to me but keeping Sakura Kinomoto from reaching Final Judgement was the plan."
"And that's the part I want you to keep between us. Because if not, it's going to cause a panic and maybe a war between people on different sides. When all the cards are held, there's a challenge their creator set up called Final Judgement. Pass or Fail, one try. And if the holder of the cards fails..."
"Everyone on Earth will lose thier feelings for the person they love the most. Lovers, family, whoever it is. That love just dissapears. And if you think that's where people like your Usagi and others draw thier strength to fight the darkness, then you have to believe that by saving that I'm saving the world."
Ami studies the Mirror card closely, giving it a long and quiet inspection. After a while, she reaches for the coke he's put down for her, leans back, and pops the top. Half the soda is gone in one chug, then she takes a breath and looks back to the cards again, chin resting on the back of the hand holding the can.
Another few moments of silence, then Ami inclines her head. "Alright, there are ... several problems with that. I'll address those in a moment, though. First, I want to say, your motives are good. Saving the world from something like that is a good motive. I lack information to fully understand this, so I'm going to challenge your assumptions and hope you have the information to correctly answer my quesetions."
There's another pause, then Ami looks towards him with a very serious look. "Understand, I am challenging you because I want you to be right, and I want to be able to tell the others that what you're doing is justified and that they should support you. But if I am not completely convinced, they will tell me that you are manipulating me, or that you are blackmailing me, or any number of other things which you and I know are not entirely true."
Beat.
"So answer these questions honestly, and without any assumptions," Ami emphasizes. "I only want you to answer based on what you are completely certain of."
Then she begins, "What form does this Final Judgement take?"
Takashi listens to Ami in her entirely before answering. "To be up front - there's very little data about this. While these are the mages' greatest work, and they're incredibly powerful - I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't find themselves in the same league as the crystal Tsukino-san carries, all combined and understood together - he was not a master of documentation. Anything I've been able to find is fragmented at best."
"But I don't believe The Mirror is lying and she's explained to me that the Final Judgement is designed to challenge the holder of the cards to determine their worthiness and strength. And if they lose... we all get punished in the way I explained. She doesn't know the specifics."
"Okay," Ami replies, clearly thinking rather than judging, for the moment. "So it's a test of worthiness and strength," she replies, then looks to him. This question is going to be so hard fo rhim, but she has to ask it, "Why are you certain that you are worthy, and Sakura Kinomoto is not?"
Takashi perks up an eyebrow. And he leans back and gives the best answer he possibly can, and maybe one she's not expecting. "I can't. But if she can't hold the cards from me, it doesn't bode well. And..." He takes a deep breath. "She's ten. She's excitable. She's... not a genius."
"I think from a best chance standpoint it isn't her." Then he looks up at Ami from his near meditation over the cards. "And Mirror seems to agree or she wouldn't have explained it to me and sought me out?"
A pause.
"And I'm not willing to entrust holding onto the way I feel about you to a ten year old."
Ami puts the cold coke onher forehead, then lets out a soft sigh. "Takashi ..." she starts to protest, then shakes her head and falls silent again for a moment.
"Taka-kun," she tries again, looking up at him, "By a lot of definitions of 'worthiness', you would fail. You fail at kindness, at generosity, at selflessness, at humility, at patience," she grimaces a little, then says, "Your heart's in the right place, Taka-kun, but in my experience--and I have literally millenia more than you in this--measures of 'worthiness' are almost never about genius, especially when magic is involved. It is almost always a measure of the heart. If you really want to ssave the world, then the right thing for you to do is figure out what the metric is, and then help figure out who the best person to pass that metric is."
Takashi looks at Ami and starts to say something, stops, slumps, and he waits. Then he starts a different direction. "Look, I don't know that I can expect you to agree with me. I'd like you to... but." He shrugs. "At least I hope you UNDERSTAND where I'm coming from."
"And don't be so quick to judge what the mage might've considered to be worthy. Everywhere I've been able to find - fragmentary, to be sure, but consistent... his power is referred to as being of the darkness."
"And the chant to unseal Sakura's key relates to that. And he's a powerful mage, not a princess or a sparkling cute animal. His definition of worthy stands a high chance of deviating from the experiences of you and your compatriots."
"I allowed for that," Ami points out to Takashi gingerly. "I didn't say you shouldn't collect the cards you find. What I said is that you should figure out what the measure of worthiness is and then figure out who best meets that measure. If that's you, then so be it. But if it's not, be man enough to admit it."
Takashi looks at Ami. "I know what's at stake here. I know more than she does, and I think... more than other people should. I don't know if it's part of the rules or what but Mirror was hesitant to tell me."
"But I know what we're talking about. Not just how I feel about you but how you feel about m........ usagi, I guess. Or how Usagi feels about Mamoru. Or... any number of things."
"He was absolutely powerful enough to make that a penalty for failure, research bears it out and I can feel it whenever I pick up one of these cards. And they respond to me..."
Takashi picks up a card and the back begins to dim, shifting from red to black until he puts it down. "And my power."
"But yeah, if I ever believe I'm not the best fit, I'll step over for someone who can. But until that's not the case I'm going to do everything I can and everything I have to in order to protect... everyone, and especially US."
"Are you ignoring me?" Ami asks, raising her voice, "Or are you just too caught up in patting your own back to hear me?" She leans forward, glaring at him eye-to-eye, and says, "I am not questioning whether you are correct about the consequences. I am questioning whether you have any idea what the metric that will be measured is. If you can't answer that question, then any assumptions that you are the best is sheer arrogant idiocy, and I will tell my friends exactly everything you have told me. So if you would like my support--which I have to assume you would--then you will promise me to find out the metric. Until then, assaults on little girls are not evidence of your worthiness, they are petty bullying. And I'm not going to tolerate it."
Here, Takashi folds his arms. And then as he talks he shifts from sitting to standing, his voice getting away from him just a little. "I'm just trying to give you all of the information that I can but you're so ready to indict me that I still feel like I'm not even getting a trial!"
"I said I would do what I can to figure out the metric and act accordingly! Do I need to sign some sort of magical contract!" Takashi steps away and moves around the room, trying to keep his building indignation focused into movement rather than hostility. "I'm doing my best to know and if it's possible to know then I will but until then it'd be really nice to not have to defend myself from YOU telling me I'm not worthy ALREADY."
Just like that, Ami's expression drops to casual again, and she leans back. "Actually," she says quietly, "that's the first time you have agreed to find out the metric. Prior to that, you said that you would give up /if/ the metric proved to not be favorable to you. You did not say you would try to figure out what the metric was."
Ami sets her mostly empty can of coke down on the table, then leans forward and rises from the couch. "I didn't tell you that you're not worthy. I told you that by many metrics you are not worthy. If the metric is intellect, you probably are. If the metric is power, you certainly are. If the measure is being a bully ..." she trails off, then arches her brows. "Well, I'm sure Sakura Kinamoto would agree that's you. Makoto surely would. If it's being a good boyfriend, I'm still on the fence. But as long as you don't try to steal the rest of the cards from her, I will tell the others that you have a good reason. I will even try to get Konomoto-chan to meet with you about it, if you're willing. Maybe she'll agree that you are the better choice. And no, I won't tell her the details."
Ami huffs just a little, then shakes her head. "You frustrate me so. But as I've said several times, your heart's in the right place. I just wish you hadn't started with stealing cards from a ten year old. You should have talked to her first. Or talked to me and asked my help soliciting her. Now ... now it's a mess. And my friends are going to want to fight you for it. Stopping that is not going to be easy."
Takashi runs his fingers through his hair, and it ends up making him look just slightly dishevelled. "The situation got away from me while we were at Peru. Lacrima didn't know to watch it, and I didn't... it had been so calm... I let it get away from me. Then we'd come back and... she was halfway to Judgement. So yeah, I stuffed it."
"And you know, maybe it'd be nice if at least you didn't automatically assume the worst of me. Like, maybe you of allll the people would..."
Then he stops dead in his thoughts and lets it die there with a heavy sigh and tries to put his hair back to some degree of order. "I'll be alright. I'm capable. Despite popular belief I actually know what I'm doing. Even if whatever that is happens to be unpopular. Probably more likely, then."
"You know they work like normal tarot cards in a way, once you have enough of them?" Takashi asks as he walks back over, picking them up and shuffling them. "But there are some questions I think I'm afraid to ask."
"I didn't assume anything," Ami points out to Takashi firmly. "You're very good at not listening to a word I say. Sometimes it makes me wonder why I bother giving you the benefit of the doubt. I asked questions," she reminds him.
"I asked you important questions, and I believed the answers you gave. The only assumption I may have made was that you cloned--or whatever you want to call it--another magical girl. Which I think I have a darned good reason to jump to that conclusion, given I know you've done it twice now."
Ami makes a soft noise of disapproval, then starts marching towards the door. "Ask the questions, no matter how afraid you are, Takashi. A scientist does not fear knowledge, he is liberated by it.
"Kunzite says he's interested in meeting to talk about the dusk zone," Ami says. "I'd like to be there when you two talk. Let me know when it's convenient and I'll coordinate it with him."
Beat.
"And learn to listen, when I talk," Ami stresses heavily. "Because if you can't tell the difference between someone who is actively trying to defend you from people who have good reason to hate you, and someone who is accusing you of things, then this relationship will never work." With that, she starts shoving her feet back in her shoes, getting ready to go.
Takashi doesn't get up from his chair at first, just raising his voice to be heard as she heads towards the door. "Sometimes it's difficult to tell. You ask questions that seem to expect the worst from my point of view. You don't need to call me an arrogant idiot to get the information that proves I'm not."
But he can't sit, and he ends up getting up as she's getting her shoes on so he can properly let her out of the house. "You know... it doesn't matter which question I seem to ask, or who I ask it about. Even us. I always pull the same card first." he says as he shuffles the cards rather vigorously, then pulls what really ought to be a random card out of the deck.
And he reveals the Sword card to her, the blade inside seeming ready to tear its way out of the card were it not held by the chains drawn within it. "Conflict. Battle. War. Sometimes even I get tired of it. But even you're not a refuge from it. I don't like arguing with you."
He puts an arm on her shoulder but not around it. "I'm doing the best I can, and I need you to understand that, and more than that, I need to know that you do."
Ami taps her toes in her shoes to make sure they're on solidly, then rises, satchel in hand, to look at Takashi once more. Her gaze passes from his face to the card, her expression firm. After several moments of studying the card, she sighs softly, and the firmness fades just a little.
"You are arrogant," she emphasizes with him softly, as she returns her expression to his face. "Deservedly so, in many areas, but you are arrogant. If it offends you to be told the truth, I will not apologize. The truth is important. I care about you despite your arrogance."
She tilts her head just a little, then adds, "Idiot is harsh. But you must understand, when a ten-year-old claims to have been assaulted by a man and a girl that looks like her, and you all but confirm that it was you ... it's hard not to be angry with you."
Ami falls silent a moment, then reaches up with her free hand to initiate contact, gently touching his cheek with her palm. "Taka-kun," she murmurs, "I believe that your heart is in the right place. I believe that you are doing what you think is the best you can to do what is right. These are some of the reasons I love you: because you want to save this world.
"But you cannot save it and also destroy it," Ami says to him. "And I worry that in your impatience, your arrogance, and your lack of compassion, you will abuse the great power you have to cause just such an effect. I believe in you, Takashi," Ami says quietly.
"But I also fear for you. That is why I asked for ethical oversight: not so that I can limit you, but so that I can help you achieve your goal--the goal you have made me believe in. But you have to let me help you in that way. Otherwise it's going to come to fights between you and other magical girls. I don't want that outcome, but if you continue to act without concern for how you are perceived, I cannot stop it."
Takashi shuffles the sword back into the deck and rests the loop of magical ribbon around it - and it locks itself around the cards which vanish into a pocket. "You know, some of that, I've come to accept, is inevitable - or at least unavoidable due to some of the paths I choose..."
"But what I'd like to do is minimize the conflict with you. Because I care about you. That's why I know you'd be the person I lost if this goes awry."
"And I'm always fighting... not to lose you without losing myself in the process, walking that road."
He kisses the fingers of her hand quickly, a little peck, when she goes to pull them away from his face.
His lips to her fingers, and Ami blushes again, looking away from him in embarassment. How did that go so out of control so quickly. She grabs herself, hugging tight, and glances aside.
"Uh," she mumbles quietly, "an...anyways," she says, "don't be so sure it's Usagi-chan that I'd lose. I care about her, deeply, but I'm not convinced she's the one I care about the most. But ... mostly," she says, looking back to Takashi.
Ami swallows hard, burying her embarassment in favor of the importance of this conversation, "If you listen to me, and trust me, and believe in me like I believe in you, then we will not have any conflict. The questions I ask are hard and pointed because it is what they will ask me when I tell them to trust you. Because they will assume the worst of you. So I have to ask the hard questions, and make you give me a straight answer, and believe in your answers, if I'm going to defend you to them."
Takashi leans back against his door. "I'll try to remember that, Ami-chan. It's just... when everybody is being harsh and pointed at me, there's no refuge. It's what makes it so easy to be so hostile back."
"I'm not going to let up doing what I believe needs to be done." Another beat pause, a breath, a slight diversion in subjects. "I'll talk with Kunzite after our little dimension-hopping trip this weekend. Everything's checking out safe for it."
Then he looks at her. It's always kinda... awkward, when he can't close out the meeting at his house by just properly kissing her good-bye and it leaves him without a good close. "Be safe." he offers, moving forward visibly but then holding himself back.
Ami hesitates on the doorstep a moment, looking up at him nervously. Her heart is pounding, and she's trying to find a way to calm it. She squeezes her eyes and steps forward, gives him a very brief hug, then turns to flee, almost but not quite running out of his house into the cold again. She doesn't say another word as she goes.
It's so hard not to see her as running away from him, rather than intimacy specifically, but the things she revealed in Peru at least help that. He watches her go, watches her the whole way before he heads inside. He looks down at the set of cards after pulling them back out.
"It's a good thing I'm no stranger to having a troublesome friend." he says to them, puts them back into a pocket, and makes a Dusk Zone jump from his house here to his home - his lab.