The messages arrive from Mamoru on HeartNET on Saturday morning. Even given the painkillers he's on, they do not bode well.
ami pls talk to k irl asap, <3, z
i mean zzz not zoi lol nite
Ami's weekend has not been going well. Friday night was full of an angry, enraged Makoto, followed by finally apologizing to Naru. She's spent most of the evening up studying Fiore's blood against other known samples, trying to deconstruct what he's made of, and whether the Xenian can be safely removed without killing the parent or the host.
So when she receives a text early Saturday morning, Ami is already grumpy and exhausted. "Ugh, Mamoru, learn to speak like a normal human being," she accuses her phone as she stares at the text.
Grumpily, she rubs at her eyes, then stares around the command center. It's empty, for the moment, but for the girl in her lab coat, and the buzzing lunar machinery. "Well, I guess I'm not going to get any closer to an answer tonight," she mumbles, then stands from the equipment and slips her phone back into her pocket. Removing her glasses, Ami puts those away as well, then holds out her hand. One of the most prominent benefits of a subspace command center is that it gives her far more options for teleportation over a distance. She still can't reach outside of Japan, but she certainly no longer requires multiple hops to reach other places in Tokyo, at least when she's already here. A little bead of blue magic forms in her palm, then expands outwards, forming a tunnel out into the nothingness that surrounds her.
Some boys might find it strange, to have a blue-haired girl show up wearing a lab coat, sneakers, stripey tank tops, and short skirts. The boys at the frat house, however, are probably used to it by now. Probably. She doesn't show up that much.
Ami eyes the pile of stress-cooked cookies briefly with a sadness, then glances at her watch. "Geeze, it's already this late?" she mumbles of the morning, then grimaces. "I need to check in on her. But first ..." she wanders through the house, in search of Kunzite, doing her best to walk softly so as not to wake up any who would sleep in on a Saturday.
The only person currently sleeping is snoring like a buzzsaw. Ami really doesn't have to search far: the three of them are in the living room, and the one snoring to wake the dead is Nephrite. As Ami walks in, Mamoru-- who is sprawled on the couch opposite him and merely looking like the morning after a car crash instead of a car crash (with no amnesia, bonus!)-- lobs a rose across the space over the coffee table.
It hits Nephrite's lovely locks petals-first, with a 'PAF', and Nephrite snorts and rolls over and stops snoring. The reality show addict, it can be noted, has a brace on one foot and there's a lot of various medicines and things to drink and reading material and electronic devices and a soggy ice pack on said coffee table. There is also, on Nephrite's side, a half-eaten sandwich.
The man of increasing ill-omen, for Ami at the very least, is seated on the floor by Mamoru's couch. He's shifted enough to be able to see the kitchen entrance, and is setting down a smartphone on the crowded table -- but there's a lab coat. And blue hair.
The first thing that he actually says to Ami, shorn of greeting, politeness, address, or for that matter any acknowledgment of rose-flinging or of the injured Nephrite on the other couch, is: "I'm sorry."
Possibly he's been practicing that.
Ami comes up short at Kunzite's ill-fated introduction. She studies him a moment, tilts her head, then asks, "Which of the very many things on my current list of reasons to hate this weekend do you feel personally responsible enough to apologize over?" she asks curiously.
And then, because she's tired and still a little grumpy, she snippily lists them off, "Is it because you were idiotic enough to let the one person I asked to help me research how to save the world get himself almost killed? Or maybe because you didn't even bother to tell his girlfriend first about the plan, and now she's in a mad rage that I don't know how to help her out of?"
There's only long enough to take a breath before she continues, "Or maybe it's because you're dating Naru and didn't bother to tell me, even though you saw fit to deliver my apologies for me to her. Not, mind you, that Naru has figured out it's a relationship, but that's fine, that's fine. Maybe it's because Fiore is still running around the city like a madman, hurting people, or maybe because the planet is overwhelmingly filled with plants attempting to rip it apart. Or is the extra time I'm going to have to spend doing the mathematics I thought Nephrite would help me with, because of the aforementioned idiocy?"
Again she pauses only long enough to catch her breath, and then Ami asks, "Which of those are you apologizing for?"
For a second when Ami comes in, the prince looks rather like a deer in headlights. But then Kunzite apologizes, and he looks more like he's wondering if it's possible to levitate out the window in preparation for an oncoming explosion. But then Ami starts listing grievances, and he just sort of... starts surfing it. That's a lot of beef. Most of it is legit. So, inb4 Kunzite wrecks all comedy forever, he takes a breath and talks fast.
"If Neph didn't do the math yet-- which he probably did-- his brain is fine, it's his ankle that's broken, and besides I can help with math, even on painkillers," says Mamoru, making kind of a :T face. He apparently, unlike certain blue-haired geniuses, got a full night's sleep. He hasn't got a lot of energy, true, and it's possible he's running on fumes and sass, but the fumes and the sass are there in abundance.
He lets his phone slip from his hand to the surface of the couch next to Kunzite's head, And he Eyes Kunzite. "Why didn't you tell me you were dating Naru?!"
There is a brief moment in which further disaster is, if not averted, delayed. In that Kunzite pauses to turn his head, glancing back and up to eye Mamoru in turn. "Because I'm not dating Naru," he says flatly. He does not go on to add 'there is no relationship' or anything like it in the same tone. He only turns back to Ami, not rising, not letting himself glance away.
Mamoru knows Kunzite's tendency to deal with certain awkward conversations with a cleaver all too well. Ami ... Ami's learning.
"I have reason to believe that Takashi Agera is Riventon."
Ami rolls her eyes at Kunzite's response, then leans against the doorframe from kitchen to livingroom. Somehow, approaching closer to the pair just seems inapporpriate, especially given she's feeling hostile at the moment.
Then Kunzite delivers the explanation for his apology, and--strangely enough--Ami doesn't fly into a rage! Instead, she just stares for a few moments, in silence, then looks between the two. "Right," she says quietly. "Is that the big emergency you called me here for?"
Mamoru falls silent for a moment, regarding Ami. He lets his head fall back to the couch cushion behind it, unmoving. Finally he says, "It didn't seem prudent to send the information over anything insecure, and in this case, insecure is also HeartNET. As far as I'm aware, there are people involved with Eclipse that have access to it. And we had no way of knowing whether or not that information might be a confounding variable in anything you're currently trying to account for. I..."
He looks away, finally. "I wish I could help with Mako-chan. We'd've sent Jadeite for the intel since he could have maintained the illusion, but it was Neph's idea and he wanted to be the one to go. We made sure he had enough energy to come back here, but... we didn't make sure he had enough time. He's just asleep, he'll be all right. I mean," he glances back to Ami, about to clarify something or add something, but the sentence peters out around there.
His hands, he's working the joints again, stretching them, doing the exercises he's supposed to to keep them from cramping up. Again he almost says something, and doesn't. It's another half-second before he says quietly, "No more plans without letting you know, and you can do with them what you want."
There's a flicker of Kunzite's glance away from Ami. More than a flicker. He studies a patch of wall for several seconds while Mamoru's talking. Studies it more closely while Mamoru is talking about Makoto. Gives a slight nod at Mamoru's 'no more plans' sentence; confirmation that he heard it, at least.
Glances back to Ami, finally, at the end. "He knew about Nephrite's injury," he says. "There's a limited pool of people who knew that. Believing our security is merely completely fucked is a pleasant alternative."
Ami leans back just a little in thought, then reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "So, my ex-boyfriend is one of Tokyo's most pervasive and annoying villans," she says quietly, "thus ensuring my credibility is completely shot. And," she adds, "I have to redo the encryption on HeartNet, and recall every single device we've got so that we can upgrade them to something more secure."
She looks between the two, Mamoru, then Kunzite, then back to Mamoru, then asks, "Anything else you'd like to add?"
"Redoing the security on HeartNET isn't going to fix the human element," Mamoru says, looking at his hands. "I only know about Cure Gull. There may be other people in Virtue who have conflicts of interest. That part isn't your bailiwick, it's something that'll have to be brought up with Tadase. He might already be working on it. I don't know. I'm out of the loop."
Then he looks up at Ami. "Out of the five of us, Naru, Makoto, and Fiore-- the only people who knew the night it happened that it happened-- no one would have spoken to Riventon, no one would have told him Nephrite was down. So how did he find out? Not over HeartNET. That information's still not public knowledge. I assume, possibly incorrectly, that the rest of the Senshi know now. But no one else should."
Naru didn't find out for twenty-four hours. She made it home safely and doesn't recall having been accosted. There's no way that Mercury's credibility would be significantly damaged, let alone completely shot, by that incident. They need to find a way to get Mercury more sleep. He's sorry about Makoto, too.
... no. Kunzite adds nothing, and stays lapsed into silence.
Ami's face screws up in parsiminous distaste. "People," she mumbles quietly. "Whatever," she says, because she really can't cast aspursions. After all, if Kunzite's right, Riventon was her boyfriend, and she certainly revealed some things to him that she shouldn't have. "What does him finding out have to do with Takashi, though?" she asks uncertainly. "No one on that list would have told Takashi or Riventon, so ..." she trails off quietly. "How does this come back to him?"
"Ah. No. That's a secondary issue." Kunzite runs a hand over his face, over his eyes, then pushing away once again the hair he does not currently have. Habits. "That issue. Agera and I independently tracked the same youma. He arrived first and destroyed it. Using the same blade that controlled Miss White for a little. When he realized I was there, he moved to defend himself. By changing into Riventon. We talked. He displayed memory of past incidents appropriate to both Riventon and Agera. I can't at present rule out it having been a trick. But it seems unlikely."
He's silent for a moment before adding, "He didn't attack. Offered no violence. Gave away a few things he didn't have to, whether by policy or not."
"Finding out how Riventon-- or Takashi-- whatever! knows about Nephrite, that's the part that's concerning me. We know this place isn't bugged or scryed on; we do regular checks, and it's warded, with multiple means of detecting new instances of magic. And it happened here. So despite no one on that list being at all likely to have put the information in a place he could find it, it's all we've got. Naru found out a day later. Neph hasn't left. I haven't checked with the other guys yet to find out if they mentioned it at school, but there's no reason they would have strayed from the cover story for Neph's absence. I haven't left. I don't think Fiore even knows Riventon exists?" A glance at Kunzite, as if he'd know. He might. But then Mamoru looks back at Ami. "Maybe Mako-chan yelled about it a lot when she exploded the giant Xenian stalk and took out half the Uminari power grid... but from what you've said, I don't know if it's feasible to ask her right now. So just-- I'll check with the guys, and..."
He looks like he's made of wince, and of uncertainty. "And if there's no other way to find out from Mako, I'll talk to her. When I can."
Ami inhales slowly, then lets it out just as slowly. "Figuring out how a lesser villain learned of an attack by another lesser villain is, frankly, secondary to my concerns right now," Ami says quietly. "It is alarming, but more alarming is the fact that the earth--your planet--is being eaten from the inside out, and there is a meteor on the way to finish the job."
Inclining her head, she turns back to the kitchen. Over her shoulder, she calls, "I need the data on the asteroid as soon as Nephrite or Mamoru can work it up." Then she extends her hand towards the wall, and the little ball of subspace forms in her hand. It expands outwards into her tunnel, and then she stares down the path into the command center for a few moments.
"I think he does love me," she observes. "But I don't have time for figuring him out. If you get the time ... I would be grateful." She hesitates, waiting for a reply, before stepping through.
"I'll get to work on the math right away," Mamoru asserts. "When Neph wakes up again I'll work on it with him. Or just make him give it to you if he's already finished it." A quick pause, and he sort of slouches further into the couch. "...math I can do. Takashi... all I know is he wasn't lying when he said he'd help with planet-eating threats. So that's you, Kunzite, he doesn't hate your guts."
Another pause. "Thanks, Ami-chan. For putting up with us, and.. for everything you do. Always."
"Wanting to capture and experiment on me instead is almost a point of distinction," Kunzite agrees dryly to Mamoru. "I'll try to make sense of what I have." Dark energy. Sense isn't going to be most of it.
Mamoru's thanks go for both of them, apparently. He doesn't waste more of Ami's time trying to follow up.
Ami grits her teeth just a little, then nods and steps through the portal. It collapses in on itself with a sudden rush of air immediately thereafter.