Takashi and Ami have finished their steak, their deserts (ice cream!) and... come to an acceptable pause in their escalating adventure into the depths of complete technobabble.
This finds them outside of Clover Tower on the bottom floor, getting ready to head out doors into the rather severe cold.
"Do you have someone coming to pick you up, Ami-chan, or should I call a cab? You shouldn't be walking home in this weather." He means 'in that dress without a jacket' but he's too polite to say it. He's seriously considering wether giving her his would be too forward, so he's going to see if it's necessary first. The whole place is strangely quiet and dead - there's nearly nobody around. Probably because of the cold, right?
He's really not sure why seeing the blue-haired girl with that particular other anonymous kid with white hair sits so poorly with him, but Dark Endymion has had a crappy day (THANKS ZOISITE) and none of his usual methods of catharsis were available and so he's been sort of haunting place after place for the better part of the day, ostensibly looking for the Silver Crystal, generally looking for a fight, and actually looking for someone he won't know if he finds her.
So the two of them stepping out of Clover Tower? It just screams opportunity.
The boy's eyes flicker with malicious delight, and he henshins down to the Infinity school uniform he was wearing under the layers of henshin he had when he was kidnapped, and pushes his glasses up on his face. He steps sideways into view before Ami and Takashi, smiling. It's not at all a nice smile. He takes his glasses off and folds them, then offers them to Ami. "Would you hold these, please?" he asks her politely.
Ami has had a really good evening. Well, except the part where her brain shut off as she tried to process too many threads at once. Otherwise she has had a really fantastic and wonderful evening, of the kind she really shouldn't be having with a guy like Riventon. Not that she knows he's Riventon, of course!
She's still busy laughing and smiling with Takashi when they hit the first floor, her dressed in a beautiful blue knee-length dress with short tulle sleeves and a matching overskirt. Strappy black heels and a matching leather clutch are her accessories; dressed for the fashion, but not for the weather.
"Ah, I have a car coming to pick me up," Ami promises Takashi with a nod. Because her mother does not scrimp for details when it comes to her daughter's safety. "Don't worry about me. If you've got someplace to go, I'm sure I'll be fine until he gets here."
Ami turns, then, to look out the window, just in time to see a pair of glasses shoved into her hand. She accepts them on reflexive instinct, brow furrowing in confusion as she tries to figure out why she has someone else's glasses in hand. Then she looks up confusedly at the boy before her and her eyes widen with very sudden, very immediate fear.
Takashi shakes his head. "I don't have anywhere to be until I have to help contain some problems tomorrow." he adds with a smile. "I can wait here for your ride to get here." he says, just as Endymion walks up and hands something to Ami. There's something in him that he senses - not a dark energy so much as just an incredible hostility - once he walks through the door. Takashi steps forward and glares at him.
And then he realizes who he is. "Chiba." he says, venom in his voice. "What are you doing here?" Takashi isn't wearing his glasses. He can't sense the dark energy without coming in direct contact which hasn't happened...
yet.
"Thank you!" Endymion tells Ami cheerfully, then hauls back with astonishing swiftness and throws an unnecessarily brutal punch at Takashi's face. It's only as powerful as a regular human athlete's. Even Dark Endy is more sporting than Riventon. "You shouldn't ask questions you don't want the answers to!"
Homura Akemi is sitting across the street on a rooftop. She has no idea what's happening in the building across from her. She's just sitting there, her henshin being the only thing protecting her from the cold, Soul Gem in hand as she tries to feel out for another Witch.
For some reason she feels an incredible sense of vindication. She has no idea why.
Ami doesn't qui te have time to warn Takashi this is coming. She knew it was coming, but getting words to form in her mouth is juste a second too slow. "WATCH OUT!" she screams. But it's too late. Endymion has already thrown the punch.
Ami stumbles backwards towards the doorway, clutching at Mamoru's glasses as she goes. Should she intervene? No, this is too good an opportunity, her mind is telling her. Poor Takashi. But he's magical. Right? He can handle this. RIGHT?!
Ami reaches into her purse with Endymion's glasses and wraps her fingers around the Mercury pen. Should she do something!?
Takashi is not used to having fists thrown at him in his unhenshin'd form - not out of the blue by upperclassman. It socks him square in the side of the face, which twists a little bit from the impact.
Takashi's head turns slowly to face Endymion and the venom in his voice is still there. He's been hit before. Usually in henshin but not always (he's been known to be a bit of a prick.) "I'm actually glad to get that answer. It means I know where we stand!"
And then Takashi gets that flare of insight, perhaps a leftover result of the punch. "You're... filled with Dark Energy. Like that other girl was." Then Takashi throws his own punch - a punch that is less like a schoolyard first and more like a boxing punch, turning as it intends to make impact with Endymion's currently equally punchable-face.
"Are you gonna start accusing me of things I didn't do now, too?" Yep, still keeping up that lie.
"Ami-chan, when your car shows up, get into it, drive home, and don't look back." It sounds like he's being noble, but really he'd love for her to leave so he could show this jerk what kind of trouble he's getting into.
"Actually no, I have no idea who you are," says 'Chiba' -- Dark Endymion, for our viewers at home -- frankly, holding up a hand to catch the punch Takashi throws back. His dazzlingly stylish handling of this makes it look like the impact of Takashi's fist into his hand triggers his henshin. It's... a henshin like a crackling of black light and cinders, which turns the school uniform into a white tie and tails, neck badge, white gloves (it's like he's dressed for the restaurant they just came from!) and flowing black and red silk cape.
"I just really don't like your face. It looks like the kind of face that begs to be punched. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a word in German explicitly for it," he continues conversationally; there's no mask, there's no hat, but he is absolutely Tuxedo Kamen, just as much as he is absolutely Mamoru Chiba, and he won't actually answer to either. Then he brightens, rusty red eyes twinkling, and takes another casually vicious swing at Takashi. "Backpfeifengesicht~!"
The problem with Takashi's plan is that Ami didn't quite get time to signal her driver, yet. She was still debating when was the best time to go about that when glasses got shoved into her hands.
Worse still is that Ami is pretty certain this fight is a golden opportunity, and callous as it is, she's not going to pass it up. So while Takashi begins to focus on Endymion, Ami makes herself very small in the corner, relying on years of training as an introvert to become ignorable. And then she reaches up to very subtly touch the trio of studs in her left ear, drawing the Mercury Goggles into view as she begins to watch through an augmented perspective.
This time, she has no interest in screaming to warn Takashi. No interest in drawing attention to herself at all. Right now, this is opportunity knocking at her door, and she intends to open it.
Homura's Soul Gem transforms back into the diamond shaped form on the back of her hand. Then she takes out her phone and starts playing with it.
She's boredly unaware.
Takashi's fist impacts and - well. That's kind of a shock. Not a surprise, per se, just a shock. This means Takashi has a smaller list of people he wants to kill by one because two of them just became the same per-
WHUMP
Okay lists later fighting now, Takashi reminds himself, as another blow rocks through. He might not be putting all of his henshin power into it, but Mamoru Chiba, Tuxedo Kamen, Endymion, none of these are by any means weak boys. It takes a whole lot of self control to ignore Axion's pinging or just channel black energy into the boy in front of him. But Ami's there. And would Dark Energy be as much of an advantage? There's a better answer.
"Alright, so now you're an overdressed magical asshat." The charm in his left hand hits his palm - and it's not a charm at all, and there's a burst of cold wind and energy (which likely serves to give him some much needed space between Tuxedo Endymion and himeself to right his mind).
And then, there's Takashi - but he's wearing what looks to be light plated armor in a light grey - swooping motifs at the edges, and small ice crystal designs come up on the gauntlets and boots. There's a blue cape, fastened to blue and silver-gray pauldrons and affixed with a short chain that runs across the front of that armor. In one hand he drags a heavy halberd, made of the same color grey metal - but the halberd itself seems to be made of ice. Then he takes the halberd and throws it down where it clangs to the ground (even the parts that look like ice.) - This certainly won't prove to be a tactical mistake later.
"That's two I owe you!" he says as a bolt of cold erupts out of the bottom of the thrown halberd, covering the floor in a thin layer of ice - which Takashi is skating on now to improve his mobility, and give him a little more driving force to this much faster punch.
"Aww, it's like you want to grow up to be me!" singsongs Tuxedo Jerk as he watches the henshin, and his face is twisted in increasingly bloodthirsty delight. He's so proud of his burn that the much faster punch comes out of goddamn nowhere, and "--uhf," he gasps, rocking back with the force of the blow to his face, and he reaches up and wipes a trickle of blood from his nose, glancing at his glove.
Carelessly, he takes them both off and grins at Takashi. It's the grin of a boy who's not left-handed, but is getting a little high from adrenalin, and has never really given a rat's ass about pain. "And it's not my fault you're an UNDERDRESSED magical asshat~!" he crows, lifting off the slippery iced ground to hover, then throw himself forward and tackle Frost Knight to the ground away from the halberd, punching as he goes.
This is really the point where Sailor Mercury should be intervening. But right now, her visor is telling her two very important things: the first is that Endymion is far more powerful than she is. That power is on the scale of Moon Healing Escalation. Maybe on the scale of Beryl. And despite what she told Usagi, Beryl outclasses Sailor Moon's greatest attack.
The second thing her visor is telling her is that Frost Knight is impressively powerful in his own right. No, he's not on the scale of Endymion, but ... why does it look like this henshin is holding back? There is something deeply curious about Takashi Agera--Frost Knight, is it?--that leaves Ami utterly entranced with watching the spectacle. Good thing she's recording, too.
"I'm dressed correctly for a fi-" and there's Tuxedo Kamen ingoring the difficult terrain by levitating above it and slamming into Takashi/Frost Knight and punching. The Belkan armor is a little bit better at taking physical blows than a normal Barrier Jacket, but there's a lot of punches and Takashi really can't stop them. So he does what he can - and punches back, as he's tackled off his home ground ice.
Punches trying to head for the sides. And he can't help but feel like Mamoru's getting the better of him. But there's something about Takashi, even out of henshin, some sort of horrid pride, that generally prevents him from seeing himself as the losing faction even when he's hobbling away.
"I don't have time to beat the stupid out of you!" he says, between grunts and punches of his own. "I have important things to do. Come back on Friday." Takashi is not making much progress on getting Endymion away from him, though, and worse still for his concentration Axion is blaring various alarms and really trying to convince him to swap henshins.
"Also not my fault you're too blinded by arrogance to recognise the intelligence of people as far above you as you are above the general population--" Now, if he doesn't know Takashi, how does he know that? The punches keep coming, both ways. And then Takashi starts going for Endymion's sides. There's armor there, too-- a kidney punch will unfortunately hit metal. "--and I'm pretty sure you're also a complete dick. You talk like o--"
But a punch above that on the other side hits leather instead, and Takashi will feel, rather than hear, the satisfyingly sick crunch of a rib cracking. Endymion grunts, then snarls viciously. "I take it back. You're also actually legitimately stupid. MAY I--"
He knees Takashi in the stomach, then whips a sickly-sweet black rose out of his jacket and slams it down, stem-first, toward Takashi's hand to try and impale it to the floor. "CUT IN?"
By this point, Ami is starting to get nervous. Certainly, she's seen worse fights, but this looks decidedly one-sided, and unless Takashi--Frost Knight--manages to get Endymion to do something particularly nasty (which she's not sure she wants), there is really no more information for her to glean from this fight.
Once again she reaches into her purse for the Mercury pen. Maybe if she just distrac--
What is that? Ami looks down into her purse and spots Mamoru's glasses, then frowns faintly. Why did he hand those to her, anyways?
That's when an idea hits her. It is not a very wise idea. Some part in the back of her mind guarantees this is in fact a really bad idea. But maybe, just maybe, it will work.
Ami grabs the Mercury Pen and the glasses both. She clutches one in each hand, then looks back up to try and guage the fight again, looking for the opportunity she will need.
There's a breif moment in time for Takashi to think. There is a rose with a gleaming knifepoint stem in his enemy's hand, and it's headed for his hand. A blow like that will easily put Takashi out of commission for a while. This is when Takashi's incredibly academic astute brain remembers: He has two legs.
And on his boots are the ice-skate like protrusions from before. Takashi thrusts them into Endymion's midsection and manages to get enough strength to throw Endymion off - and throw off the attack - a bit.
It doesn't entirely miss, though, and that black rose cuts through the skin between thumb and pointer finger, and there's a lot of blood there.
He rolls back away from Endymion, and he's up and clutching his hand and reaching out - with the injured hand, no less, his right and primary hand - as he runs over to his halberd and goes to pick it up. There's not words here. There's not witty comments. There's is a dangerous, near murderous look on Takashi's face as he turns towards Endymion with the halberd held, blood dripping on it, drops hitting the thin sheet of ice.
Homura finally looks up from her cell phone as the sight of ice and the sounds of punching catch her attention. She glances up to see... Endymion? fighting some ice guy?
From what Homura knows, she should probably step in and try to fight or stop Endymion. On the other hand, this Frost Knight guy looks like a jerk. She can't put her finger on why she thinks he's a jerk, she just strongly feels that way.
She pushes some buttons on her phone and starts recording. "Awesome."
Picking himself up off the floor, face flat, nose still bleeding, Endymion narrows his eyes at Frost Knight.
There's a fraction of a second of silence, and the tuxedo gives way, shimmering with the dispersion of an illusion. In its place is the armor that Takashi felt rather than saw, navy blue and light-blue and gold trimmed, with metal pauldrons and metal pieces; in his hand is the naked blade of a folded-steel bastard sword, glinting in the streetlights and the light from the building. The corrupted Crown Prince of the Earth flips his other hand up toward Takashi, palm out. "Tuxedo la Fuck You," he says, conversationally, and there's a sound like a baby jet engine, and a bolt of crackling black and red dark energy slams through the air in Frost Knight's direction.
As the blast is moving, he points the sword at Ami without looking at her, and says much more politely, "Give me my glasses back now, please."
Takashi is too busy being upset, trying to get revenge for the near-holepunching of his hand, that he's entirely unprepared for the sudden attack. Not having any experience with the attack, the callout doesn't alert him, and there's a crackling blast of awful energy - and for the first time Takashi is on the reciving end of the kind of attack he hurls at people - but even more energized thanks to Metallia's direct influence over Endymion.
His feet leave the floor, and in an effort to ablate some of the concussive force of the attack Takashi's Knight henshin shatters - while it keeps him from suffering the worst of the effects, there's still a crash that's probably heard before it's seen, because Takashi has gone through a storefront window. This means there's probably little flecks of glass in his window. It also means that civilians might be coming to investigate sooner rather than later.
The other thing that saves him from the lethal damage is the way that some of the more awful parts of the attack don't wound him like they would a person - dissapated off with his innate dark energy. Even still he's not doing well. He's too stubborn to go unconscious, but his body is wracked with pain and is not stubborn enough to get him out of the heap he's now in. He's not stringing together coherient sentances, but everything he mumbles is still mumbled in Endymion's direction, with a very hostile tone.
Too late.
Ami realizes she's made the wrong choice too late. She could have saved Takashi--Frost Knight. She could have opened a portal and dragged him into it; taken him to a waypoint Endymion couldn't find them, for now.
She could have drawn up a mist to confuse him and guided Takashi out of this place.
She could have created a Hyperspatial Sphere to protect him.
Instead she chose to watch, useless, from the sidelines, as if Takashi were somehow a commodity.
Oh God, what has she done?!
"TAKASHI~!" Ami's scream pierces the night. There goes that secret identity. Likely even Homura can hear it, high above this fight.
But the time for terror is gone. Now is the time to act. To do something.
"MERCURY AQUA MIST!"
Homura's sweet camera angle is lost as a sudden heavy fog rolls in off the bay, engulfing half of Tokyo.
Endymion finds his glasses in his hand, even if he can't find /anything else/.
Takashi finds warm hands on his collar, hauling him up. "Hyperspatial Portal: Generate." In the fog, he won't be able to see who it is. But the voice is all too familiar.
"Oh god, what have I done?" Ami asks as she drags Takashi out of this horrible place to a safe waypoint nearby.
Homura checks her phone and sees a picture from Madoka. Matilda being ridden by Teddyashi?
"And here I was hoping the shark would eat that stupid bear."
In Homura's headcanon, this scene ends in exactly that way: with Matilda throwing Teddyashi off of her back and devouring him messily and painfully! Stuffing everywhere! Glorious plushie gore!
This is probably the only thing that could've distracted her from the fight involving her fallen bro. Fortunately the camera was still recording while she was looking at Madoka's plushies.
Endymion's callout catches Homura's attention again, and the aftermath reveals what Ami's words confirm: Frost Knight was Takashi all along. Homura rises to her feet and shouts, "HA! TAKE THAT TAKASHI AGERA YOU JERK!"
Wait a second. What's going on? Mercury Aqua Mist? Are the senshi siding with Takashi here? How could they?
How many people is that jerk going to con?!
Homura's grip on her smartphone tightens, threatening to break it. Fortunately the otterbox cracks before the phone's screen does, and Homura realizes that maybe she should reign in her temper a bit.
Still... what just happened here? The sudden mist obscures her view completely.
Endymion sheaths his sword in the fog and de-henshins back in order to put his glasses back on, pleased. "Thank you!" he calls to the now-vanished Ami.
And then he hears Homura shout from all the way up there, and a slow grin slides across his face. "TAKASHI?" he yells back. "SORRY, YOU JUST... MIST... HIM!"
He wipes the blood off his face, then gingerly pokes at his rib, flinches, scowls, and teleports out.
Long before the all-encompassing mist clears, there's nobody there. Just a broken window, and blood on the pavement.
"OH MY GOD," shouts Homura, not knowing that Endymion is teleporting away. "DID YOU JUST?!"
She is so trolled right now.
This is the point at which Homura receives a text from Endymion.
Dendy TXT: I haven't the foggiest if I just. See you at the meeting~