Another day, another dollar. Save that Naru doesn't have a job, so the phrase is more accurately another day, yet more homework. Or if one is looking for the happier side of things, it's another day, another sketch.
The door to the reno apartment is open on this afternoon, which is a rare enough thing. Usually Naru closes it behind her, hiding in there to work in peace. Today, however, it's open. There's not actually painting going on, right at the moment. There's a ladder waiting next to a mostly finished mural, and drop cloths and paint and a Naru sitting in the middle of the floor, changed out of her school uniform into casual clothes she doesnt mind getting paint on.
A cup of coffee in her hands, her sketchbook open next to her on the floor and Naru is quite literally watching paint dry.
Tsk. Naru does indeed have a job, after a fashion. Granted, it doesn't have designated hours, and the paint-drying part of it is one that usually happens in her absence, but it does exist.
Kazuo's absence after the Incident only lasted a couple of days, which were immediately succeeded by another Incident that involved less of his being damaged and more of the Virtue greenhouse being -- presumably not his fault. It does mean they've both been busier than usual, after a fashion. At the moment, though, he's at home. And now studying Naru through the open door. "Progress," he notes aloud. He's only good with hellos when greeting seldom guests.
A 'hello' from Kunzite would probably be translated as him being likely a clone, or at least a pod person or doppelganger.
Naru starts, no matter that it's barely visible as she looks up and over towards the door, blinking at him a moment or two. There's a quirk of a barely there smile and she nods. "Slow progress, it feels like. I'd hoped to be done already." She looks down at her coffee cup, remembering that its there and taking a sip. Its not especially hot anymore, but its at least now ice cold.
"Why does the Seiyou garden need repairing?" Naru asks, with just as much pre-amble as Kunzite's greetings.
"Madison Perry decided that she wanted a book the young king was keeping under guard." Kunzite paces into the room, but doesn't close the door behind him. If anyone arrives, they'll be able to hear in time to check the suitability of the topi. "She got away with it, but he and Orange and Hakuomaru gave her more trouble than she was expecting. Being wounded seems to slow her down."
"Hunh." Naru accepts that bit of information thoughtfully, tucking her legs up under her to sit cross-legged on the floor, her elbows leaning on her knees. "She's slowly collecting things, it would seem. I wonder how they all fit together. What was the book?" She looks up, way up, at where Kunzite is standing. "She won't stay wounded for long, few do."
There is another pause or two and then Naru adds. "I have questions about the Sailor Earth stuff, but I haven't quite sorted out how to fully articulate them into something that doesn't sound really basic."
He folds himself down to match her, cross-legged in turn. Still up, but not so much as to hurt her neck. "I don't know the specifics," he says. "Something her Device could use to create portals. I've sent word to Homura Akemi to warn her that Perry might be able to bypass her defenses, but I haven't heard back. If you happen to run across her, I'd appreciate it if you checked to make sure she knows."
The concern about the Sailor Earth business is met with a shrug. "Usagi is developing a vocabular for complex metaphysical events that consists entirely of comparisons to off-brand soda," he says. "I wouldn't worry too much about sounding basic."
"I don't usually bump into Homura, but if I do, I'll mention it." Naru nods in agreement to that. "Portals. Hunh. Interesting." She sets her coffee cup down on the floor in front of her, rather than holding tightly to it. "She's actively out to get Homura?"
"Obscure and possibly imaginary off brand soda." Naru takes a slow breath and lets it out in a touch of a sigh. "If I hadn't been trying to stay out of it, I felt as if I should have been translating out of Usagi for people during that." She pauses again, watching the coffee cup this time as she gathers up her thoughts. "Possessed? Mind controlled? Acting alone?" She pauses again. "I probably should re-attempt those with more nouns."
"Perry mentioned it -- and, more importantly, she's tried for something Homura has already. Still possibly a diversion, but less likely. She's clever, yes, but arrogance sometimes trumps that."
Kunzite exhales, even without the nouns, and pushes his hair back from his face. "All three are possibilities," he says. "Mamoru also suggested 'from another timeline,' which he seems to be using to direct his actions until we have more information."
"Diversion, or yet another piece of her longer term puzzle." Naru nods with a slow, thoughtful mmmm. "Do we know if Madison Perry is working alone?"
Back to the other puzzle upon the table and Naru pauses at Kunzite's answer, absorbing it with a slight quirk of her head. Not, apparently, quite the answer she was expecting, although there's no other indication of surprise. "Another timeline? Interesting. I .. hadn't put that on my list. At all, but I suppose it's as reasonable as anything else at this point. Has she made any further contact?"
"Perry's appearing alone, but then, she also did that at a point at which she's known to have been working for someone else. So: difficult to be certain." Kunzite's hands settle, loose, on his knees. "As for Earth -- no further contact, no. We're only aware of one person from another timeline; it's not particularly common. I think it's an unlikely explanation, but it's one that doesn't insult her while we're trying to get information, so from a diplomatic standpoint, it has its advantages."
"A lot of variables and unknowns and not a lot of defined variables." Naru comments upon both topics and she reaches for her coffee again, in spite of it being cold. "I think I'm glad that other timelines is fairly rare." She decides after a moment or two. "I'm not sure what about that gives me pause, but so many other things don't." The observation about her own psyche is calmly given, thoughtful even.
"Mn. I know which questions I'm not happy with about the idea. But the universe is rarely concerned with working out in a way that fails to unsettle its inhabitants." Time before Kunzite goes to do something about the coffee issue: growing ever shorter. But not too rapidly.
"I have generally accepted the reality that the universe doesn't give a flying fig about what I think about things." Naru comments with a twist of a smirk and a snort of barely there amusement.
"Is the sense of restless and uneasy and just /off/ echoed with everyone, or is it just me?" Naru asks after a moment or two of quiet, her tone curious.
"Zoisite and I have felt like that for a few weeks," Kunzite answers. "Mamoru hadn't. So -- something in between the two, I think. How long have you had that sense?"
"It ebbs and flows." Naru considers that. "A few weeks ago, it was bad. My art was all weird, and I even poked you then. Then it was better again for a while. Now it's been bad all week again." She gives a little shrug. "Less art wobble though and more just kinda generalized 'enh'. Which is an extremely articulate and specific complaint, I know."
"Sometimes it's all the warning we get." Kunzite considers the air between them for a moment, before focusing on Naru herself. "How have you been sleeping?"
"I suspect it's nothing. Eternal frustration at the three steps forward and two back that feels like everything except training at the moment. Running still works at least." Naru pauses at the question of sleep and then shrugs. "I'm not very good at sleeping." She acknowledges and then adds with a half smile. "I'm pretty sure that's part of the artist stereotype, isn't it? Late night painting fueled by caffeine and instant noodles?"
"Usually that stereotype is combined with sleeping late, not with getting up before dawn to run." There's a momentary flash of something at least resembling amusement, all the same. "Mn. You visit the Hikawa Shrine from time to time. Have you spent much time with Hino-san lately?"
... still with the surname and formality, where Rei's concerned.
"Dammit! Halfway to my artist stereotype. I'll have to drop out of school and cry about existenial angst to make up for my fondness for early morning runs or something." Naru snorts softly, amused.
Naru shakes her head at the query about Rei. "I don't see her very often at all. I probably should visit the Shrine more than I do, honestly, but the mix of painting, training and school means I don't see much of .. well.. anyone really, unless they turn up here while I'm painting, or at school."
"Maybe we should do something about that." Dropping out or not seeing Rei, Kunzite leaves up in the air. He pushes himself to his feet, though. "For the moment -- I need to do something about dinner. And you need something done about coffee. I'll bring some more by in a little while."
"I'm going to try and make this look like it does in my head." Naru follows Kunzite's lead in getting to feet and brushes herself off, looking at the wall again. "This section? Not doing it for me, even a little. I will win." She decides and then bends to collect up her sketchbook again. "More coffee would be welcome as a distraction in a little while."
She can probably, by this time, fill in the silent nod and the timing of the exit in her head. So it won't be a surprise that by the time where he was is back in her peripheral vision, he's gone.
Quiet resettles over the mostly empty apartment. Naru looks at the wall, looks at her sketchbook. Looks at the wall a few more times. Draws a few things in said sketchook.
Finally the sketchbook, and the pencil acquire air miles, and a smear of paint as Naru literally throws the book at the wall.
"Goodness, darlin'," Kyouko's voice says from somewhere near the door to the other apartment, "I know you're fiercer than you look but I don't think that sketchbook ever did anythin' to deserve such treatment."
She walks into the room, hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans, newly-short hair slightly wild, as it often seems to be because she hasn't acquired the necessary habits to train it to not be. Luckily the 'mussed' look actually works for her, looking purposeful and somewhat punky rather than merely unkempt (although it does look like that too).
She's been hanging around the apartment a lot ever since the Sailor Earth incident, even taking a few days off of work, determined, it seems, not to miss the next big crisis, perhaps feeling that she's not earning her keep if she's off working at the conbenie when there's danger at hand. But as danger has refused to re-appear in the time since, routine has re-asserted itself, and she wasn't here earlier. She must have just recently arrived.
"Fiercer would have been the first temptation to paint over this whole section." Naru comments drrly as she looks over to where Kyouko wanders in looking stylishly toussled. "Short hair really works for you." She declares almost absently.
"The sketchbook does plenty to piss me off, although currently it's really just acting in lieu of beating my head into the wall." Naru comments as she lets the book sit where its fallen for the moment. Take /that/. She picks up her stone cold coffee and frowns at it too. "How're you?"
"Oh, you know," Kyouko replies with absent cynicism, "Bored, restless, questioning my own self-worth, you know, the usual." She pauses nearby, then flashes a grin. "Aw, thanks. I should probably brush it but eh." An idle shrug indicating other things occupying her mind."
"More pressing question is what's bugging you? Normally you're the one with your head on straightest outta this whole collective o' misfits, so if you're chuckin' shit at walls I'm starting to get nervous." She eyes the painting. Looks fine to her. Then again she's no art critic.
"Restless, out of sorts, questioning my .. wait.. /you/ are questioning your self worth? What?" Naru is distracted out of her own list as she squints at Kyouko at that one. "Seriously?"
"It's been an out of sorts month, off and on. This week has been all about the 'on' for out of sorts." Naru gives a little shrug at the mention of head on straightest and then she laughs and shakes her head. "I think I just fake it better, sometimes. It'll sort out. It always has so far, so I have faith it will again."
"Because I'm a twitchy bundle of insecurities hiding behind a belligerent exterior and I'm always questioning my self-worth." Says Kyouko, truthfully but with mild acid in her tone. "And because nobody around here tells me anything, and I alway seem to be conviniently absent whenever important stuff happens."
She sighs then, and shakes her head. "No, not.. like, not seriously. I don't think anyone is doing that stuff on purpose and I'm perfectly aware that I trend towards the naturally pessimistic anyway but it still feels like it sometimes. I mean, he could have told me he was hurt." This last bit is grumbled, and it's obvious she's talking about Kunzite."
She shrugs. "I know what you mean though. Would it make you think I'm a terrible person to know that I've been half-wishing for shit to hit the fan again? At least when there's no time to think I don't have to worry."
"I wonder if twitchy bundle of insecurities is any easier than eternally brooding bundle of insecurities. I'm gonna vote with no, not easier, both sucktastic." Naru opines thoughtfully. "I just dont have context for anything and feel like I do nothing beyond ask basic questions non stop, like a toddler who still has exams. And absent a lot. Or told I shouldn't be there. Which is even better."
Naru takes a deep breath and nods to Kyouko. "Like he'd actually say. Part feline, I'm pretty sure with the 'hole up and hide' attitude."
"No. Not a terrible person." Naru shakes her head as she takes a sip of her coffee anyhow, and then makes a face. Cold has not improved it. "I can see how you'd find that way easier."
"Well, he should tell me. I get the whole don't show your weakness thing, believe me, but.." Kyouko falls silent. She should be exempt? Maybe she thinks that, but she isn't enough of a hypocrite to actually say it out loud.
"You're probably less likely to stab somebody in a fit of pique." Kyouko says, replying to the comment about twitchy vs. brooding. "Whether with a spear or verbally." A few times come to rueful mind where she did exactly that.
"I just.. I want to feel useful." Kyouko laments absently. "I know what I'm good at and so does everybody else. I'm useful when there's an enemy to fight. With all this sitting around I'm just dead weight."
She sees Naru's dissatisfaction with the coffee, and turns to point back through the door. "I think nii-chan started another pot a minute ago."
"I am less likely to stab someone in a fit of pique." Naru agrees with a nod. "More likely to sympathize with the 'hole up and hide', honestly. Or run. At this point, the 10k I feared was going to be a challenge is basically going to be just another fairly standard run, just with a whole crap ton of people and someone timing me."
"Everyone wants to feel useful." Naru agrees as she pads over to pick up her sketchbook. "As much as it doesn't feel like it, you're a step ahead of things in actually knowing what you're good at. Which sucks when its not what's needed. But when it's needed, it's REALLY needed. It's not dead weight, it's conserving resources for the appropriate time."
Naru picks up the abused sketchbook and considers her cold coffee. "Yeah. Hot coffee would be good. Not looking at this mural for a while would also be good."
Kyouko gestures towards the door as Naru makes her preferences regarding location known. "After you then." She says, waiting for Naru to head into the hallway and down to the other side of the apartment before following her.
"I know everyone wants to feel useful," Kyouko says, with a mild sigh, continuing the conversation as she follows Naru. "I just.. y'know, I feel like I'm bein' given a lot of things I don't deserve, and when I feel like I can't repay those debts, my pride gets prickly. Naru-chan, all the biggest mistakes of my life I've made because I let my pride get out of control. I recognize that, now, but I'm afraid it's gonna happen again anyway."
She passes into the current-main living room and while Naru goes to get coffee, flumps on the couch. "I need to do something, even if only to convince myself that I actually, really deserve a place here. Before I decide I don't and do somethin' stupid."
"Well, beyond the fact that you /do/ deserve them." Naru points out as they head down the hallway. "So what active things can you do to prepare for when your skills are really really needed."
Naru tosses her abused sketchbook on the table and then heads into the kitchen. Cold coffee dumped out and give that mug a rinse before it gets filled with hot coffee.
"Not a rhetorical question, by the way." Naru adds into it as she opens the fridge to consider what snacks are on hand for them, and then decides on the classic, grabbing an apple for each of them. She tosses one of them towards Kyouko on the couch as she heads back into the room with her freshly steaming mug.
"You sayin' it don't make it so, and besides, since when has a doubting brain ever listened to reality that easily anyway?" Kyouko replies absently, though without any real moroseness. Just tellin' it like it is.
"I dunno, I'm already doin' everything I know to do. This is real important to me, in case you hadn't noticed." No sarcasm there, either- genuine statement.
An apple is tossed her way. Kyouko catches it. Chomp. She chews pensively for a moment, then says, "Anyway, sorry. I didn't mean to make this all about me. You were the one hurling things around when I entered the room. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better? At least then I'd feel like I was accomplishin' something."
"No, brains are really /bad/ at listening to logic." Naru has to agree. "Although sometimes, hearing it often enough helps it sink in. Eventually. Not a quick fix, but there's some hope that if you hear how much you're admired, and how much you really do deserve it, and how much people look up to you, even when you're pretty convinced otherwise, the seed might take root eventually."
"I know it's important to you." Naru nods and then waves an apple at the apology. "Thinking about your stuff gets me out of my head. Which is, as often as not, mostly a feature. I'm like.. skin doesn't fit, nothing works, nothing looks right sort of out of sorts, and I figure it'll settle itself out, or I'll crack and go insane and at some point someone will drag me out of my closet burbling and trying to fingerpaint inside my skull, or something equally coherent." She pauses half a moment, just long enough to take a sip of hot coffee and then adds. "I'm hoping for the first option, personally, the second sounds really messy."
Kyouko chews her bit of apple silently as she listens to Naru, although there might be a faint hint of pink in her cheeks as Naru briefly extolls her virtues, or at least Naru's perception of them. At the rest though, she just quirks an eyebrow slightly.
"Naru-chan, I know exactly what you mean. Look.. we ain't known each other that long, in the scheme of things, so it might be hard for you to imagine, but there was a time all this was new to me, too. I know what it feels like to not know where you belong, and not understand why things are the way they are." She shifts on the couch, taking another bite of apple.
"It's what happens when you thought you knew who you were, and it turns out you really didn't know at all. You need to find out who you are again, and that can take some doing." A pause, and then, "It took me a good three years, and during those years I did a lotta things I ain't proud of, because I didn't know who I was. But I also didn't have anybody to support me."
"You do. Me, if nobody else, but I know there's plenty of others too. Might not make it easy, but should make it easier, anyway. And hopefully you don't end up draggin' around a cartload of regrets like I got chained to my own ankle."
"So I keep hearing. Although again, with the brain not being terribly good at accepting logical reasoned arguements." Naru offers a rueful smile. "I have a /ton/ of support. An embarassment of riches sort of level of support." She twists the apple in her hand, playing with it more than eating it. "Although how others see you, and knowing that they'll prop you up pretty much at any level of stupid.. possibly not /any/ level of stupid, but damn near, even if you might be mocked forever for it.. yeah. Doesn't help refocus the picture inside your own head."
"And honestly, I had /thought/ I'd mostly gotten a grip." Naru continues. "At least enough of a grip to generally fake it, save that then weeks like /this/ turn up and yeah." She gives another shrug. "Two steps forward, one back. Still, you wanna talk feeling useless? Try being an artist who doesn't always have control over her powers. Or her art amongst friends who are past this stage of awkward."
"You wanna know the truth, Naru-chan?" Kyouko asks, quirking her lips to the side in a faint, wry expression. "I mean, what I really think, not some existential musing."
"I think people like me exist to protect people like you. You might feel useless, because the world keeps demanding violence to check violence. But in the end, all I can do is destroy. My power, my skill, my purpose, is violence. I want to be a good person, so I turn that violence into protection, but at the end of the day, even if I'm destroying evil, I'm still a destroyer."
"You're a creator, Naru. Maybe you don't know what you should be creating yet, but you add to the wonder of the world, rather than take away from it. If you ask me, that's more amazing than anything else I can even think of."
"You don't have to believe me, but that's what I think. I'm here so you, and people like you, can safely do what actually matters. But you know what? I'm okay with that. Because I know what I am and I've made peace with it. In time, I think you'll do the same."
Kazuo makes, as ever, surprisingly little noise when he moves. But it's enough that Kyouko is not herself surprised when he appears at the edge of her vision, listening.
That he adds a silent nod after Kyouko's spoken ... that doesn't surprise anyone in this conversation at all, really.
"I.." Naru starts and then pauses, letting Kyouko's words sink in more than just tokenly. She frowns a little, a thoughtful expression, rather than one of disagreement. There's just a flicker of her attention up as Kazuo appears, but there's no more acknowledgement of him than that.
"Mmm." Naru can't really argue, Kyouko's words are true in the notion of her being a creator. Literally. "It feels so.. passive." She notes after a few moments longer. "I mean, most of the time. Sometimes.. okay twice.. I've actually managed to get head and energy and I have no clue what together and been functional enough to feel like I was more actively supportive than damsel." She is quiet again, thoughtful for a few moments. "The mix of dependance and independance is trying to kill me, or at least my sanity, I swear."
"What did you just say to me not two minutes ago?" Kyouko says in response, a faint hint of amusement in her voice. "Conservation of resources, right? You're here for a reason, Naru-chan. We all are. People like me, and nii-chan," She heard him, of course- her senses are too keen not to, but her only comment on his arrival is to include him in her words with a gesture, "Our reason is to make sure people like you, and Mamoru, are still around when the time comes for you to do what you're meant to do."
A brief shrug of her shoulders. "You might feel like a helpless damsel sometimes now, Naru-chan, but I'll put money down on the idea that some day, you're going to do something great. Truly great, and unique, and amazing. And then it's going to all make sense. Why you're here, and why we're here. But the killer is, you never know ahead of time. You just have to believe."
"Not even vaguely or approximately the same scale as Mamoru." Naru points out with a gesture of her apple. Apparently she wanted her snack to play with it, more than eat it. "Not even /close/. I'm not Prince of anything, not reincarnations of this or that. I'm just Naru, and that bit I am /totally/ on board and okay and comfortable with."
Naru is quiet a moment as she leans back in her chair, coffee waiting upon the table for her, and apple rotating in her fingers as she watches it move. "I did't think I was, and I was fairly well alright with /that/ too." Her voice is quiet, thoughtful. "I don't know what the future holds, it's true. Half the time, I don't know what the week is likely to hold."
"The Medicis were among the most powerful princes of their continent, in their time," Kazuo says to Naru, thoughtful and even. "Now - European historians know them, yes. Perhaps some others might know Lucretia's name in passing from a television show. But it's their artists that everyone knows. You could drop someone into the middle of Brazil with pictures of the David and the Last Supper, and you could find someone to tell you, 'oh yes, Michelangelo, Leonardo.' Those who make the greatest changes in the world are rarely princes. Only people who see things in a new way, and endure the frustration it takes to bring what they see into the open."
"And I'm just a preacher's daughter from Kazamino who made some bad choices." Kyouko says, with a brief shrug of her shoulders. "Nobody ever said you need to be anyone but yourself, Naru-chan. Realizing that is one of the things I'm most proud of accomplishing."
She glances at Kunzite as he speaks, and she rolls her eyes, though its an affectionate expression of exasperation. "Look, all you need to remember is that no, you're not the same as Mamoru. But he ain't the same as you, and you ain't the same as me. Just because you're not something don't mean you can't be exactly who you are."
There's a little frown from Naru at Kunzite's words, as if /something/ doesn't quite sit right, but she's not quite got her finger upon it. "Being me and just me, is the easiest bit, weirdly, I suppose. I'm alright with not being a prince, or a princess, or any other label beyond 'Naru'." She considers her words. "Which means different things at different times, I suppose. For a long time, it was just 'Usagi's friend', but its settling to be me for myself. Which I like. It's just.."
Naru takes a slow breath, held for long moments and then let out just as slowly, refocusing. Recentering. "This whole week has thrown things out of whack, for no good reason. Which probably just means my brain's a traitor, and will eventually get a grip, like sore legs in a growth spurt, which yes.. even those of us who are this short know what a growth spurt is."
"Well, I get that." Kyouko says, with a shrug. "And I don't know what to tell ya other than what I already have." She leans sideways against the arm of the couch, propping her cheek in her hand, her apple mostly gone. She bites the core in half, and then eats that too, a sight common enough for anyone who hangs around her to not require comment.
"But for what it's worth Naru-chan, I'm glad you're around, and I'm glad you are who you are. I went too long without any friends at all to take any one of you for granted."
"I'd be dead without you guys." Naru comments quietly as she waits for Kyouko to be finished chewing before she throws her apple over to the other girl. "Not hyperbole, not overblown drama, just a fact. For a long time, or at least what felt like a long time, I was pretty sure I didn't have to think about the future. I'm glad you're around too. Not just for pulling my ass out of the fire all the damn time, but to be a mentor too."
"Without Mamoru, Nii-chan, and half a dozen other people, I'd be worse than dead, and that ain't hyperbole, either. We all got a lot to be grateful for, I guess." Kyouko shrugs her shoulders, catching the second apple. She doesn't question, just bites into it. Don't waste food.
Kyouko actually laughs at Naru's last comment. "A mentor? Darlin', there's a lot better people around here you can learn from than me. Trust me, you don't wanna follow the path I took to finding yourself. I wouldn't wish it on you or anybody."
"Absolutely a mentor." Naru protests and leans over to reach for her coffee. "And precisely /because/ I don't want to follow your path. I get the luxury of /learning/ from that path without walking every step of it. I get to watch how you get to be fiercely and amazingly independant and unique and yet still manage to blend it into a team. Even when you're all cranky and feeling rough about it, and not sure how to manage it. I mean, I won't ever have the extreme of mixing independance with something like the Shitennou, but it's still really valuable and interesting."
Kyouko hides behind her apple a little bit, her cheeks red once more at Naru's effusive praise, but there's no hiding the small smile that touches her lips.. at least until she's able to subsume it in a scowl, although Naru should know her well enough by now to know the difference between a real scowl and a mock cover-scowl. "Yeah well.. how about you wait until I've actually succeeded in doin' it before you start admirin' it, huh? Cause I really ain't sure I figured it out yet."
"Naww." Naru decides lazily as she leans back in her chair, holding her coffee in both hands. "Cause you'll figure it out, and this way, I get to admire it all the way from puzzle to success." Naru takes a lingering sip from that coffee as she tucks her legs up under her, curling up into a little knot of flexible teen girl.
"So other than growling about being bored and restless and working.. I'm going to guess that you're still patrolling? And training?" Naru asks, curiously.
"You're good for my ego and bad for my pride, Naru-chan." Kyouko says, devouring the last of the second apple, with a hint of amused resgination in her tone. "But thanks.. it's nice to know somebody believes in me." Not that she doesn't think the others do too, but it's nice to hear somebody say it out loud.
She gives a slight shrug in response to Naru's questions. "Can't ever stop training, not if you wanna be ready when the time comes you need to be. Even when I was on my own I trained. As for patrolling.. well, a girl's gotta eat, right?" A slight grin, referring to the Grief Cubes. She's still a Puella after all, Shitennou or not.
"Right. So how do you figure, exactly, that between patrolling and training that you aren't /doing/ anything?" Naru follows up her curiously phrased question. "Keeping yourself in good condition, and keeping an eye on the city such that all the /rest/ of the crap isn't also breathing down everyone's necks all at the same time. Or worse, popping up like the worst sort of surprise."
"Look, we all do stuff." Kyouko says, sounding mildly irritated. "You go to school, paint pictures, and help your friends. I patrol and train. But that's routine stuff. It's not the same as really doing stuff. Besides, I meant about the.. situation a hand." A gesture with one hand, not wanting to bring up the whole Sailor Earth thing by name, as if that's somehow going to make it less of an issue. "There's a problem and I feel like I'm not helping, but it's supposed to be my job to help. That's all I meant."
"If my painting counts as me not being useless, than so does your training and patrolling." Naru points out and then holds up a hand. "Which sucks, I know. Hurry up and wait sucks no matter what side of the situation you're on. Just enough info to know something's up, and not enough info to /do/ anything. Barely enough info to get more info. On call is valid, even if you hate it. Just planting that seed too."
"I didn't say I was useless.. just that I feel like I ain't accomplishing much." Kyouko says, revising her earlier statements shamelessly. She sighs, getting up. "Anyway, thanks. Really, I mean it. Talkin' to you always makes me feel better. I should go though. I gotta work later and I got more o' that patrollin' and trainin' to do in the meantime." She offers a lopsided smile. "I know strong when I see it Naru-chan, and you're strong. You'll figure stuff out. And you know you can call me anytime if you need a hand." And with that, she's heading for the door.
"And even if I really should not paint anything else on that mural tonight, if I was being a responsible student, I'd be studying." Naru sips her coffee, which doesn't look anything even approximating 'resposible student'. "Thanks Kyouko. I enjoy chatting with you, a lot. Take care."