A fight with another Witch: lonely and murderous, keeping people drowned in her lake, trying to drag the soldiers of justice down below... and then the aftermath, and Tuxedo Kamens don't stick around for those. If there's an item to snatch, he tries to get those too.
In this case, he did, and stopped on a roof on the way to A Tree Under the Moon to get out his phone and text, of all things.
Homura will get the message:
CHIBA: Picked up a thing for you. Meet me at the tree. Heading there now.
He took rooftops as far as he could, of course, then leapt down to the ground level when he ran out of buildings. Now he's darting across the grass of the seaside park, half shadow himself, cape billowing behind him.
IN HER APARTMENT
Homura's room is surrounded by bulliten boards plastered with pictures, documents, newspaper clippings, and so on. Bits of string connect from one thing to the next, indicating connections and causations. Her head is buried into her coffee table.
"It doesn't make sense."
"None of it makes /sense/."
"... what changed? Is this some kind of butterfly effect?"
She rolls her head sideways, glancing up at strange symbol that continues to vex and frustrate her. A capital P with an extra horizontal line at the bottom... what could that possibly be?
Her cellphone rings, dragging her out of her frustration.
"Chiba-san..."
She sends a short text reply: "I'll be right there."
AT THE TREE UNDER THE MOON
Homura's arrival is sudden. One moment no one is there, and the in next she arrives, leaning against the tree, watching as Tuxedo Kamen rushes towards their meeting place. He seems to be in a hurry. Should Homura be worried?
Whatever it is, she's sure she's about to find out.
"Good evening, Kamen-san."
Damn it, he should have texted her when he got to the tree. Ehhhh.
Tuxedo Kamen stops without skidding, and doesn't sound remotely out of breath. Then he takes off his hat and bows over it briefly before reaching into it and pulling out a glittering grief seed, which he presents to Homura without comment.
He figures she'll reckon everything just from giving her that creepy treasure out of, apparently, nowhere.
Homura smiles slightly at the graceful bow, but only while Mamoru isn't looking.
When the Grief Seed appears, Homura accepts it, glancing at it. "Oh, I see. So you've fought a Witch."
Homura bows slightly, though it's a bit of a stiff bow. "Thank you for ths, Kamen-san. We'll need this."
She looks it over from several different angles, turning it around in her hand. It looks just like any other grief seed as far as she knows, but she still has to ask...
"What was this Witch like, if you don't mind me asking?"
Who was she, he'd wondered there, even in the middle of the fight. But he had no one to ask then, and he won't ask Homura again.
Mamoru inclines his head briefly. "I barely fought. Two Sailor Senshi and two guys I didn't know did most of the fighting," he dismisses credit to himself neatly.
The question isn't really unexpected. "She was lonely. She styled herself after a creature from Russian myth, the Rusalka, and fought us with the moon and with the dead, clawing up from her lake, and with water weeds and wailing."
Tuxedo Kamen shrugs a little uncomfortably, then disappears his hat somewhere in the folds of his cape. "I don't think I know anything relevant, I'm sorry. But yes, I know you need them. There weren't any of you there, so I swiped it."
Minako Aino/Sailor V does the chasing thing, not really pushing herself because she's full of frowns and unhappiness. 'Maybe he's lost or got turned around in the fight,' she thinks, being quite generous as she chases after from a distance.
She doesn't jump from her high up building perch, electing to stare once her tuxedo'd prey stops underneath of a tree as Homura arrives.
"Ahooo hooo hooooo! He's bring a pretty gem to a young girl... a young girl who can turn invisible at will. The plot gets thick!" she murmurs to herself, hunkering down to spy like a creeper.
"Grr, I can't hear anything from here."
A Rusalka? Has Homura seen a witch like that before?
No, she's pretty sure that's a new one, or at least it's one she hasn't encountered before. She'll have to add that to the wall later.
Homura considers Mamoru's explaination for a moment. "Sailor Senshi?" Has she seen one of those? She's seen people with what Miss White called Intelligent Devices. She's also seen people calling themselves 'Cure something' and also those who fight with cards.
"I'm not sure I've met a Sailor Senshi before, or the two guys you speak of," Homura frowns, tapping her chin.
"Well... Just telling me the nature of the Witch helps. I've been trying to track what kinds of Witches have shown up... you know, to look for trends."
The Grief Seed vanishes behind her shield. She'll need to use it later, probably. "Thanks, Tuxedo Kamen-san. I'd have come, though it sounds like you had plenty of back-up as it was."
She doesn't suspect that Tuxedo Kamen might have been followed, nor is she exactly aware that she's being watched. If she were aware, she probably would not be standing so close.
"These Grief Seeds... the Puella Magi aren't the only ones looking for them. Magical girls who aren't Puella Magi want them for reasons that I'm not aware of."
On the other hand, Tuxedo Kamen feels like he's being watched. "Sailor Senshi," he says, though, "are kind of impossible to misinterpret if you see them. I've met Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, and Sailor V; they really give their opponents a tongue-lashing when they go fight for justice."
But being watched-- it makes his shoulders tense up a little. He forces himself to carry himself normally, and only steps nearer to Homura. Closer still. And his voice is lower, quieter.
"They can't be good reasons. I know what you do with them, and I'll always take them if I can, if there are no Puella Magi there. You and yours should be the ones to get them."
After a breath, a pause of a heartbeat or two, he adds, "I'd have called you, but people had already gone in and it was closing. I know for damn sure I can't fight one of those alone."
He bends a little lower to compensate for his quieter voice.
Minako Aino/Sailor V uses her newly acquired lip-reading skills to try and get a feel for what her distant prey are talking about. "Sailor Sasha! Ugggh, that idiot. He got my name wrong. It's Sailor V! Like the letter, or the roman number six," she mumbles, perturbed. "And that jerk jerk is... giving away my crystal gem seed thingy to this girl!? I'll never forgive him! And... why is he talking about sailor senshi giving tongue and fighting and leaning close to her... urrg, I've interrupted -that- kind of date," she says, ducking her head underneath the lip of the building and sighing to herself.
She mentally starts taking notes, committing everything she can intuit from lip-reading to memory.
* Miss White wants to cure people of playing with cards.. probably doesn't like Pokemon card players. Or gamblers.
* That girl wants Tuxedo Kamen to 'back up'. Weird pointy black seed gem wasn't enough for her. What a high maintenance girl!
Homura doesn't shy away from Tuxedo Kamen's closeness. Actually, the closer she gets, the more she notices his warmth. She can't seem to stop herself from leaning closer, her soft eyes gazing upwards at the taller high school student.
"Sounds like they'd be impossible to miss." Her voice is quiet, partially because Tuxedo's voice has lowered, but also because they /are/ pretty close.
"I wouldn't be so selfish, but... we /do/ need these to live. To anyone else, I don't see how they could be anything but a danger."
Homura wishes for a moment that she could return the favor somehow, but Tuxedo Kamen has been keeping his mission a secret. Well, still, she can't just forget this.
"I wouldn't recommend fighting one of those alone anyways, even if you had powers like mine. They can surprise you, and considering the stakes..."
His warmth, unusual: it's almost as though he radiates it. And the dark ocean blue eyes behind the mask are focused on Homura's violet ones. The sense of behind watched has faded somewhat, but his caution remains, and Tuxedo Mask doesn't come away from Homura yet.
"Survival is a good reason to be selfish, but the fact that no one else needs them underlines how you're not actually being selfish," he says firmly, tone faintly disapproving. But then he laughs a little--
It softens his eyes, his expression; it makes him almost look like a middle-schooler himself, but for his height. "They are, though. And very brave. They'd help you too, I'm sure, if you asked. And I did figure that, yes, since not even you went in alone my first time."
On the other hand, if he saw one of the few people in his monkeysphere wander in, he might have gone in alone after them anyway. Mamoru shakes his head, silent for a second. Then he adds conversationally, "I think there's someone close by."
Minako Aino/Sailor V spends her rooftop time neatly divided between growling at the theft of her crystal, tentatively forgiving Tuxedo Kamen for the romantic gifting of said crystal, and trying to discourage curious top-floor tenants investigating rooftop noises that she's not the Sailor V they know and love from TV and tabloids and to not distract her - then, that she isn't peeping in on park dates.
Her spy mission is going poorly.
Homura leans in closer, large purple eyes closing, standing on the tips of her toes to reach higher. What is she doing? She doesn't know... it's just happening.
Then suddenly she stops with a start. "What?!" She stares up at Tuxedo Kamen. It wouldn't be unlike him to troll her in a moment like this, but something about his way makes her think he's being quite sincere.
"Close by? Wait, are we being watched?"
Homura immediately starts looking around, checking the ground level first, glancing to her sides, behind her, and briefly leaning to the side to see past the handsome wall of Mamoru. Who could it be? There are only a few people who know about this meeting place.
Not seeing an immediate intruder, but starting to suspect that something is off, Homura looks back up at Mamoru, grinning slightly. "Should we go check it out? I bet with my powers we could catch them... assumig we could find them."