Relationship Status: 'It's Complicated'

Makoto brought food, of course.

Mostly this time it's stuff that she made up in the day or two before Walpurgisnacht when she wasn't sure how bad the damage from the storm would be and figured it'd be better to be prepared. So there's lemongrass miso broth and rice balls, and also anpan. She's spent some time helping clean up fallen tree branches and other storm debris around the shrine, but right now she's lying flat on her back on the floor feeling anew all the lingering aches from her adventures in channelling hurricanes.

"I might be in trouble," she says to her friends, apropos of nothing.

Usagi is...tired.

It's not because she still can't sleep! On the contrary. Though it feels like its sleeping, that glow is back. And she's able to snuggle it when her head hits the pillow and just dream. Not nightmares, or at least none since Walpurgisnacht!

No, she's tired because she spent a good deal of last night going through her family home. Packing boxes, moving them to one of the recently discovered apartments that somehow went with Mamoru's first apartment...

There are looters, right? She needs to keep their memories safe!

But! She did get a good bit of sleep in! On the couch at Mamoru's other apartment! The one he's never even seen! (She should probably build that fort. There's a perfect place in the living room!)

But yes! Anyway!

She's helped with what she could around the shrine, and now she's dangerously close to snoozing off when Makoto speaks up.

She tilts her head and peeks over at her, curious eyebrows. "How so?"

    Rei is lying with her two friends, in roughly the same spot but somewhat diagonal and upside down relative to them. She appreciated the help with the clean up, and she tried to help Makoto where she could, but there are things that Makoto can do that Rei simply can't and 'heavy lifting' is certainly one of those things.

    When she hears Makoto say she might be in trouble, she rolls onto her side and looks 'up' at her. "In trouble? What do you mean?"

Mako's head tips to one side and the other, glancing at both of the other girls. It's not the most sensible posture from which to hold a conversation, but in a way she's grateful.

Also, tired. She's sure Usagi and Rei both are, too.

So Mako doesn't make any movement to sit up, just looks straight upwards at nothing in particular and tries to organize her words. "Do you guys remember Masato Sanjouin-san?" she asks.

Usagi hums and squints. That name is from ages ago. It's like she was a completely different person back then!

"Hot Older Dude?" She rolls onto her tummy and looks at Makoto. Her face is Ded Srs. "Did he break your heart again? Do I needa kill him?"

    Rei nods, which the other two girls may not even see directly, though they might see her long hair moving. "Yeah... I vaguely remember him."

    She chuckles at Usagi's comment. "Hey hey hey. What is this 'I'? The real question is: Do we need to kill him?"

    Rei's still tired, from helping with civillians and her grandpa, but also from moving stuff around. She's moving as little as possible right now.

"He's Nephrite," Makoto says, utterly one hundred percent serious. Just blurts it out, like dropping a rock into a pond. She's still staring up at the ceiling. "So, maybe."

Usagi nods at Rei. "True! Us! We!"

"Huh." Still straight faced. "So you believe me now when I say that Mamoru is not Nephrite, right?"

She sighs and rolls back over and stares at the same ceiling. "Or maybe not? You two worked well together at Volleyballsnot."

    Rei frowns at that. She remembers what happened the last time Makoto came with similar news, but she also remembers that Makoto claimed to not be sure. "We already know that Mamoru Chiba isn't Nephrite, Usa-chan. We'd all be in big trouble if he was."

    After a pause, she says, "You seem pretty sure this time, Mako-chan. How did you find out?" In her mind she's thinking over what to do next, and whether or not escalation will work on him.

Makoto promptly lets out an inarticulate sound of woeful protest and throws her arm over her eyes. "Can we please never mention that again?" she pleads. The relatively brief period of time when she suspected Mamoru of being Nephrite is, to put it mildly, not one of her prouder moments.

When Usagi mentions the events at Walpurgisnacht, Mako lets out a sigh, a sound that might as well illustrate her Facebook relationship status updating to 'it's complicated'. For a brief interval following Rei's question, she's quiet.

"See..." she begins at last, slowly. "I didn't mention this to anybody at the time, but a lot of the reason that I thought Mamoru-san might've been Nephrite was because I thought that Sanjouin-san was Tuxedo Kamen." No, that's not right. A beat, and then Makoto amends: "Because he convinced me that he was Tuxedo Kamen."

Usagi is not giggling. Nope! No sirree! "Okay, okay, sorry!" She sticks her tongue out in Rei's direction. She was kidding, jeeze!

Her hand clenches tight and she begins to grumble under her breath. "Impersonating my Mamo-chan the fiend I'll give him a good what for just you see."

That done, and TOTALLY NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO BE HEARD, she again moves. This time, its to groan and moan as she moves aching muscles to sit cross legged. "How did you find out? Did he stalk you and you felt it and bought him an eclair not that I've done that?"

    "So you had information that led you to believe that Sanjouin-san being Tuxedo Kamen meant Mamo-kun was Nephrite." Rei takes a moment to go over the sentence she just said to make sure it actually makes sense. Does it? Oh well it's out now.

    "... and now that Tuxedo Kamen is obviously Mamo-kun, then that implies Nephrite would be... I see."

    It's a pretty honest mistake to make. Mars is certainly glad that she didn't fry Mamoru over it, even if current circumstances mean that she might end up frying Mamoru anyways.

    "So him tricking you into believing he's Tuxedo Kamen is strong proof in of itself, isn't it? That's certainly the kind of thing he'd do if he were an enemy... I suppose maybe he'd also do it he was trying to impress you, but even in that case that's still pretty dishonest."

Mako's arm, the one that she'd laid over her eyes, lifts to wave vaguely in the air. "Thinking Mamoru-san was Nephrite was really stupid and I don't want to talk about it any more," she says. "Anyway, when I found out who Tuxedo Kamen really was I realized that Sanjouin-san was lying to me... but by then he'd been out of the city for a while, so there wasn't really anything I could do about it. Except get mad, but Mamoru-san thought that maybe he was trying to get my help or something."

Here, at last, Makoto rolls halfway onto her side, a troubled frown on her face. "It's been bothering me since then, so last week I ambushed Kunzite when he was leaving Infinity and I asked him about it."

This sort of thing is why Makoto is not in charge of mission planning.

Usagi opens her mouth and closes it again. "Okay, but I don't the idea we're not talking about was stupid, given the information you had."

She hums and taps her chin. "Makes sense, if he was looking for help. Or...whatever...he was doing."

"So that's why he was already cranky when I ambushed him." It makes sense! And he'd said something about Jupiter then, too, right? (She...was a bit preoccupied about the subject at hand. And she refuses to think why.)

"Hey, wait a second..."

If Makoto thought Sanjouin was Tuxedo Kamen! And she had a crush on Sanjouin! That means Usagi had been all heart eyes and all Tuxedo Kamen-sama on the same person her friend thought she had a crush on!

Large, sad, apologetic eyes for Makoto. She didn't mean to!

    Rei considers the mental image of Jupiter ambushing Kunzite and questioning him and chuckles. "Oh geeze. Really, Mako-chan?" It was probably tactically unwise, but there isn't much to do about it now. "So Kunzite just told you, huh? Well... considering how he's been recently, I don't suppose that's a big surprise."

    Rei considers this turn of events for a moment. She's unaware of any Makoto/Kamen crushing, having not even seen a large amount of it. She's focused more on what that means for them as senshi. She sits up, leaning on a hand propped against the ground, with another arm resting on her knee. "If we start going after Sanjouin-san now... would that give Kunzite away? Or ourselves away? We should be careful how we proceed with this."

    It isn't until a moment later that the pieces fall into place and she realizes what this means for Makoto specifically. "Mako-chan... Mako-chan I'm so sorry."

At this point Makoto flops completely over facedown, folding her arms the better to bury her face in them. "Kunzite told me that Sanjouin-san was with the Dark Kingdom and asked me to save him," she says, slightly muffled.

"And then Friday when the storm hit I ran across him collapsed in an alley all bloody like somebody'd been tearing into him, and I didn't know what else to do so I took him to my apartment..." The words are spilling out faster now as she grows more and more anxious to simply have the whole story out. She doesn't really want to think about the brief but excruciating period of eating her heart out that she went through back when she thought that Masato Sanjouin was in love with Sailor Moon. She really doesn't want to think about everything it means to know that Sanjouin is Nephrite instead. "...and he's definitely Nephrite. I asked. He told me all this stuff about how he had me thinking he was Tuxedo Kamen because I guessed he was magic and he didn't want me getting involved with the Dark Kingdom, and he wants to escape but he thinks it's impossible, and I know he's probably just lying to me again, but--"

She stops. Takes a breath. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter. "I want to believe him," Mako admits unhappily, not lifting her head.

Somewhere during Makoto's rush of words, Usagi is by her side, cuddling against the taller girl, fingernails lightly scritching beneath the ponytail..

"Jadeite volunteered for it, even with that...even though he was technically under the influence of that...well. No crude words, Usagi." She sighs. "We took a chance on him, and it paid off. Even if we lost him in the end." A quick, sharp glance! No one must ever knoooow. "I don't think any of them are happy there. Or even...neutral. I'm pretty sure when their minds are their own, they're...miserable. Endymion is, I know that. Zoisite's just angry all the time. Kunzite's..." She sighs. Kunzite was basically an entire Shakespearean sonnet on just how not okay he was with being there.

She sighs and snugs closer again. "When I say I'm going to save them all, I mean Nephrite, too. He may think it's impossible, but he doesn't have all the details." Now she's rubbing her hand up and down Makoto's back. "It didn't work with Zoisite, but I don't think he wanted to be saved. Not then. Maybe not..." She sighs. "But if you think you can talk to him, ask him, we can find a way to...convincingly kill him? If we succeed? Maybe he and Jadeite wouldn't mind sharing a tomb."

She is being very macabre! She leans up to whisper in Makoto's ear. "I mean the apartment, and I don't mean doing it for reals but I'm paranoid right now."

    Rei listens as she realizes that Makoto's story is a bit different from how she imagined it. It wasn't as simple as figuring it out. Sanjouin just outright told her. "He doesn't want you involved. That's almost sweet in a way. He says he wants a way out? Kunzite wants you to save him?"

    She considers that for a moment, turning around to see Usagi hugging Makoto. She turns around to face the two of them and sit crosslegged. "He might be lying. It's true. However, Jadeite was sincere, and we were able to do something for him. Even if it wasn't enough."

    Rei shakes her head. "That woman just forces all of them to be with her. I don't think that any one of them enjoy it. All of that dark energy running through them all the time can't be making them happy, and that's before you even consider--" No... no Rei actually doesn't want to even think about that right now.

    "The difference between Zoisite and Jadeite might have been that Jadeite came to us willingly. If Nephrite was offered a similar way out... Maybe it'd work?"

The cuddling from Usagi gets Makoto to look up, green eyes peeking over her arms. She hadn't really known how she expected them to react to her news... especially not after how everything hit the fan after Walpurgisnacht... but somehow this wasn't it. Suddenly, Mako feels a little more hopeful.

"...I could ask him," she ventures after a moment of hesitation. "He doesn't know that I'm Sailor Jupiter. At least, I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I didn't tell him about Jadeite, either. But he's probably guessed that I'm involved with the Sailor Senshi somehow. If he's willing to meet and let you try to Escalate him, then maybe..."

Shifting her weight a little, Makoto unfolds an arm to loop over Usagi. "I want to talk to him some more," she says, sounding more certain now. "I want to find out if he remembers anything from before the Dark Kingdom. What he really wants to do. For a while there while we were fighting Walpurgisnacht, it was like we weren't enemies at all."

She lets out a quiet breath, and looks between her friends with a lopsided, self-deprecating smile. "I just wish I could tell if I want to believe him because he's really sincere, or because he was standing in my kitchen with those sad dark eyes and his hair all wet like he just came in off the Victorian moors or something." Remembering it makes her start to turn pink, and Makoto promptly buries her face in the crook of her arm again. "Ugh."

The more she hears, the more she believes. (Of course, this is Usagi. She'd believe someone wanted to be good if they were trying to stab her. Well, maybe not everyone anymore THANKS BERYL.)

"Kunzite is starting to feel...hopeless? Or at least doesn't believe they deserve to be saved. Or something. But it's what his prince wants."

She lifts her head. "Of course it was enough for Jadeite. He lived his last days safe and warm and happy, usually watching sappy romantic comedies. I think that's far better than dying under...that woman's thumb."

Her answering sneer at Rei's almost comment sets a ball of sour ickiness in her tummy. She does not like this feeling. Hate is not a good color on her.

She snuggles against Makoto! Yay hugs, and yay when they're returned!

"Mako-chan, weren't you one of the people Mars helped to evacuate? I mean, it's only obvious you would voice your concerns to the Senshi, right? Maybe that's why Jupiter was less punchy with him than she would have otherwise been?"

Subtle eyebrows! Code talk! Sneaky maneuvering with words!

However! Then her eyes are growing dreamy at Makoto's description of events that unfolded in that kitchen! "Eeeeeee!" She hides her face in the girl's shoulder, kicking her feet in glee!

Then her head is shooting up and she's pointing at Rei. "I'm going through a romantic dry spell. Let me live vict-- vike -- through her."

    "If the Dark Kingdom knew who we were, they'd know where we lived, and they'd be coming after us." Rei's tone is very matter of fact, though it's kindof a dire statement with even more dire implications. "So no, he probably doesn't know. On the other hand, Jadeite seemed to figure out that this shrine was involved with the senshi somehow. We should probably be more careful. It would be really bad for us if they knew."

    Rei stands up to move next to Makoto sitting down next to her. She wasn't there to overhear Nephrite being smooth at Makoto, but she's starting to get that things are becoming a bit more serious than a crush. "If you think about it, there was a point in time when we weren't enemies. We couldn't have been. It would be nice if we could go back to that. I don't think we were really meant to be fighting with the Earth Kingdom. It's just... Beryl... and whatever creature she works for... messing everything up for us. For everyone."

    In lighter circumstances, Rei would probably tease Makoto about her relationship with Nephrite, but for the moment it seems pretty improper. So instead she teases Usagi.

    With an over-dramatic rolling of her eyes and a pronounced 'Ugh!' she responds. "It's 'vicariously', silly bunny."

Makoto looks up again in time to see Usagi's very subtle eyebrows when she makes her suggestion for what Mako could tell Nephrite, and suddenly she can't help but laugh, swamped with overwhelming affection. "I don't think I could get away with telling him that," she admits. Not least, she does not have to say, because she's a terrible liar. "Especially not after I got on his case for lying to me in the first place. I'll think of something to tell him."

Something in her eyes goes misty as she listens to what Rei says. It's not that Mako had forgotten that the Shitennou didn't start as their enemies - isn't that what much of what's been going on lately has hinged upon? But for a brief, fluttering moment it's as though something she's forgotten presses close from the other side of her memory, and it makes a twinge in her chest that she doesn't understand.

Abruptly she sits up, the arm around Usagi tugging the blonde with her when she leans to wrap her other arm around Rei and hug them both. "Thank you." Her voice is soft, thick with emotion. "I've been going crazy second-guessing myself about this."

"That's what I said, Rei! Ventriloquy!"

She gives a light roll of her eyes. "Okay, fine, no lying." A gentle poke at the ribs.

Usagi shivers and huddles closer to Makoto. She's very much glad none of the generals knew where she lives. Lived? Will live again. But still, she gives a soft smile. "Serenity's kitty friend died. Kunzite comforted her." That's all she actively remembers, of course. Not the kitty funeral they later had, or the way none of them laughed at the foolish moon girl for mourning the loss of an animal.

A soft squeal, and she's being snuggled more! "That's okay. I've done that a lot lately, too."

    Rei leans against Makoto as she's hugged, wrapping both arms around the thunder senshi's stomach and lower back and resting her head against the larger girl's shoulder. She smiles. "It's complicated, isn't it? It'd be better if you could just be happy without worrying about the implications. Still, it's not like we don't have an answer."

    It's only natural that Rei wouldn't really hold a grudge against Nephrite here. After all, she fully and completely blames Queen Beryl for all of this. Even the Shitennou could be considered victims in this, to an extent.

    "We'll do what we can. We'd want to help him anyways, right? The only thing that's changed about our mission is that we have one more reason to do what we wanted to do anyways."

"You're exactly right." It feels like a weight coming off of Makoto's shoulders, a knot inside that she hadn't quite realized had been pulled tight until it loosens. What had seemed so complicated earlier today seems so much simpler now that they've talked it over.

Even the lingering fatigue and stiffness from the battle seems to fade when she's snuggled up to the both of them like this. "It won't be easy, but it's like Usagi-chan said." Makoto looks between Usagi and Rei, smiling with a trace of relief and a good bit more of her usual spirit. "We're going to save them all."