"Hello, stranger," the stranger says, her voice as smooth and rich as whiskey. "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
You laugh despite yourself, digging your feet just that little bit more securely into the grass. "Has that line ever worked on anybody?"
Then you look her up and down. Again. She's closer, now, eyes glittering the colour of firelight, and the way her dress slips further and further off one perfect shoulder suggests the only line she needs is the one leading to her bedroom. Her hips sway with careless debauchery each time she takes a step. Every inch of her form is an invitation that would be less blatant if she were entirely naked.
Kitsune, then, and young at that to be trying this hard.
You relax imperceptibly, sitting back and crossing your legs. If you're in any danger here, it's only of a good time.
"Don't be rude." Her pout is devastating. "I'm just curious! It's not often you meet a Fallen Angel all out on their lonesome."
"Hmm? Fallen Angel?" you ask, schooling your face and body to amused bemusement. "Is that a prelude to that whole 'did it hurt when you fell from Heaven' thing? Because you'll be two for two from terrible cliches, then."
You smirk at the flash of panic in her eyes, even as she drapes herself across the rest of the bench, only a couple of inches shy of far too close. She smells of sakura blossoms and smoke.
"Don't tease me!" she says, scowling softly. "I know what you are. I could taste it."
She seems awfully proud of that, for some reason.
"Fine, fine," you say, throwing an arm across the back of the bench that just so happens to brush her exposed shoulder on the way past, "you got me. Fallen Angel Jehiel, at your service. Who are you?"
The name is temporary, and a joke she surely doesn't get. But if you've left the Grigori, at least for now, there's no point letting your real identity slip even in a place as safe as this. You'll pick a better one later.
"I'm Ruri," she replies, rolling each 'r' in a way you last heard in Russia, "and you still haven't answered my question!"
You shrug in a very particular way, and her eyes aren't quite fast enough in flicking down to your chest and back to escape your attention – nor does it escape hers that you noticed, either. She doesn't flush, but she does glance away out into the park. Typical kitsune arrogance. A few lessons from her brothers and sisters, a few mortals led around by the tail, and she think that means she's ready to play the game with someone like you.
Oh, she's attractive. Absurdly so. If you didn't have a ritual to get to later, you'd consider it. But you do, and that means no distractions, no matter how bewitching their features or fluffy their tails.
"You haven't earned the answer yet," you say, smiling the same way she did when you first saw her. "Nice dress, though. Where'd you get it?"
There's only one thing holding up that dress. Well, two things. And maybe a little magic.
She pouts again at your answer, but brightens at the question, holding her head haughtily high and exposing the pale length of her neck, stained almost darker than the surrounding night by her hair.
"My sister gave it to me. She's very important, you know! She even met Lady Yasaka once."
Well. Isn't that interesting. A young, almost naive kitsune approaches a lone Fallen Angel and claims to be related to someone in proximity to Yasaka's court. How convenient. If there's any saying from Heaven you still sympathise with, it's the one about God preferring war to politics. You're not quite sure what the trap is, or even if it exists, but what are the odds of this meeting being anything except engineered by someone?You don't think it's the girl herself—she's probably exactly what she looks like—but there's one way to gauge how much they want… whatever it is they want.
To leave.
"She has excellent taste," you say, sweeping your eyes across every inch of her skin the way another woman might stroke it. "It was good to meet you, Ruri. Maybe I'll see you around. If you're lucky."
You stand, your hand slipping from the bench to her shoulder almost by accident; your Light, still bubbling close to the surface, means your flesh is as hot as kissing. She starts almost in surprise, and you leave with your laughter on the air, high and free. Ah, amateurs. So easy.
There's no point heading back to your apartment quite yet. Dawn hasn't arrived, and you're still a little restless. The park is soon behind you, and you're wandering through streets and alleyways into the city proper. No idiot tries to rob you or worse—in part because even the idiots are asleep at this time of night—so your walk remains merely refreshing as opposed to enthusiastic. A shame. You've run from so many fights recently that you're feeling a little… restless.
The sun is rising when you return to your apartment, and you clamber up twenty identical flights to reach a door even blander than the walls you passed on the way. You place your key in the lock for the sake of appearances, using the contact to disengage your privacy wards long enough to actually let yourself inside. Everything is naturally exactly as you left it, and soon enough you're unfurling your wings and unpacking some of the most important and fundamental tools of ritual sorcery: pens and paper.
There are six different circles in the Sacred Gear extraction ritual: three you need to scrap entirely, as they relate to unbinding and rebinding the Gear itself, and three you need to modify. That means drafting and redrafting over and over until they'll do—theoretically—exactly what you want them to do. While ensuring the way they combine doesn't fuck anything up in the process.
A few quick sketches later, you remember something: a few weeks back, Mittelt mentioned a book—Wings Of The Pratītyasamutpāda—she'd found from an author who had apparently pioneered an easier way of combining ritual circles. Some based on some new-fangled math that didn't even exist until a century ago. You haven't read it, but if the way Mittelt was ranting about the contents, it'll probably be pretty useful.
Given what you're planning on doing, perhaps you ought to read it now.