The moment he and Usagi appeared in the kitchen doorway, Khalid put down his riceball and, while his stoic expression did not change much, Mamoru knew him well enough to spot the softening of his features that showed he was relieved. He had a plastic bag in one hand, something thin and rectangular sticking out of the top; he wore casual clothes, and while Mamoru looked hard for signs of fatigue, it seemed Khalid was nearly completely recovered from the trials of the previous day, quite unlike himself, which was a relief. He offered him a shrug by way of greeting and apology for not looking better, to which Khalid returned an inclination of his head, acknowledging his condition without any blame. Rin noticed Khalid's change and turned to see what he was looking at, then quickly stepped down off of the new kitchen chair and away from the counter with its lunch construction, hesitating as he approached.
His red eyes were focused on his little slippers that Nero and he must have picked out when they picked up the ice cream the other day, probably studying the little pink bunny rabbit stitched into the toe of the white slip-on. With hands held behind his back, he quietly said, "I'm sorry."
He knew about what; it didn't have to be mentioned, especially with the amount of shame the little kid was exuding. "It wasn't your fault, Rin," he replied softly. He was just a kid -
"Yes, it was ," Rin assured, the words barely above a whisper, hardly heard above the low volume of the news program on behind him.
Mamoru made no sudden movements, his eyes darting to pin Khalid in place, too. What did he mean, it was his fault? Carefully, full attention returning to the little red-headed stranger, he inquired, "What do you mean, Rin?"
The kid's head shook, red hair shifting messily.
"You didn't mean for that to happen, did you, Rin?" he pressed softly, repeatedly using the nickname Usagi had given him specifically to remind the kid that they were supposedly friends. When he was at the children's home, that tactic seemed to work the best on kids around Rin's age when the adults were trying to get an honest answer out of them.
His head shook again, this time accompanied with a little " No. "
"How was it your fault, Rin?" he repeated, already planning what actions they would take if it turned out Rin did work for the Archons.
"They were after me , " Rin finally said, his hands wringing behind his back, the admission releasing the tension that had been building in everyone else. He looked up and quickly away, but not before Mamoru saw the tears there. "But they got you and you got hurt and -"
"That wasn't your fault," Mamoru reassured, glad, at least, that they hadn't be harbouring one of the enemy after all. Or… at least, if they were, Rin didn't seem to be actively working against them. He reached down and quickly ruffled the messy red hair. "I told you I'd protect you from them, didn't I?"
Rin's head nodded, and he reached forward and took Mamoru's hand -
He was running in the dark, as hard and as fast as he could. All around him the city was empty and eerily quiet, except for the voices that echoed off the tall storefronts - "Oh Little Red~" "C'mon, Red~ Slow down!" "We just want to play with you~" "Don't you want to play, Little Red? You're lonely, aren't you?" He covered his ears, trying to stay as quiet as he could be, but then directly ahead of him she appeared, smiling a creepy, demon smile at him. "Found you." Immediately four others appeared behind him, each female form covered in a different color of short hair - red, purple, blue, pink, and green - each of them wearing modified swimsuits with stiff collars, each of them with the wings of a wasp. Each one's pure black eyes staring at him as they smiled. "Game over~""I'm sorry you were hurt, though," Rin said.
Mamoru blinked, the vision fading away. If nothing else, he was fairly certain now that Rin wasn't in league with his chasers. He hadn't recognized the storefronts, or the language that the signs were in - which ruled out Japan and anywhere that spoke or wrote in English, Korean, or Chinese. Where then, that Rin was able to appear in Tokyo? How long had he been pursued by these things, and why ? And how were they connected to the Archons? Realizing he had hesitated, he closed his hand around the kid's and reassured him, hoping he could keep him talking. "Thank you, Rin. I'll be okay, but could you tell us a little bit more? We want to keep helping you, but if we knew more about what was going on we could help you out better, and maybe not get hurt like this again."
Rin seemed to think it over. Usagi moved from his side back over to the counter, where she gathered the lunch they had been putting together and moved it over to his new circular kitchen table. It was larger than his last by half, now comfortably able to sit four - six if you really crammed everyone in - as opposed to the square table he had had before. It was the largest that could comfortably fit in his small kitchen, and while only four chairs were set up currently, another two collapsable chairs stood waiting in the closet behind the door, a promise that he intended to keep. Khalid sat down at the chair closest to the refrigerator, Usagi beside him, and he slowly walked Rin towards the other two chairs.
Rin took a deep breath, keeping up with slightly shuffling feet, and finally replied, "Okay."
They were getting somewhere. Mamoru pulled back a chair and Rin hopped up into it, looking to Usagi as she put some… interestingly shaped rice balls, sliced vegetables, and little hot dogs shaped like… octopus? And bunny rabbits, maybe? on his plate. Mamoru sat beside Rin, getting similar treatment from a beaming Usagi. He adored her, but was glad the lunch was pretty much things you couldn't burn or overseason without some sort of visual cue. … but he was going to be careful biting into the center of the rice ball, just in case. The eagerness he felt for finding out even just one piece of the puzzle was enough to make him feel ten times better than he had upon waking.
"How about you start at the beginning, Rin," Khalid suggested in a casual tone, obviously not wanting to rock the boat, his serious, silver gaze inspecting the sliced hot dog he had speared with a fork, the image one that Mamoru thought he may never forget.
"I…" Rin hesitated, apparently uncomfortable with the suggestion.
Usagi quickly stepped in, "Or what if you told us about the people who are chasing you," she suggested instead, and Rin looked at her once and nodded.
"Okay, but can we wait for Helios and everyone else?" he asked, picking up a piece of cucumber and munching on it quietly, completely oblivious to their reactions to the request. Helios, finally releasing their attempt at a charade, glided in from the living room and landed on the table beside Mamoru, stretching his wings once before tucking them in closely. Rin looked up from his vegetables with a low sigh, watching as Helios landed, and mumbled, "I knew you were alive; you didn't have to pretend."
Helios shook his mane.
"I know you can talk, too," he said, finishing his cucumber.
"I'd like to know how you knew, but if you wanted to answer Usagi-chan's question first…? '
The kid smirked as if proven right and picked up a carrot, "Where's Ne- Nero ," had he corrected himself, or just tripped over Midori's name? "And Kaito and Yuu?"
"They won't be coming for lunch, " Helios replied, and Mamoru swallowed, stiffly reaching for one of the rice balls on his plate.
"Can I wait for them?" Rin asked, looking up at them, lips twitching, "I promise I'll tell, I just… I like it when everyone is here."
So did he.
"It'd be better if you just told us , Rin," Helios tried, " They won't be by today, and what you say could be very important - "
Helios stopped talking when Rin's eyes widened, his hand stopped halfway to his mouth, and looked from Mamoru to Khalid to the news program in the other room, expression one of a frightened rabbit. " Oh, no ."
"Rin?" Usagi prodded gently.
"Oh, no ," he repeated, putting hands on either side of his head, eyes moving back and forth quickly as he thought something through. His eyes settled on Khalid for a long moment, before he pushed back from the table, jumped down from the chair, and promptly ran from the room, taking whatever answers he had with him.
"Rin!" Usagi called after him, springing up quickly to follow. Mamoru attempted but the strain made him lightheaded so he stayed as she left, trusting her to coax him back out; Rin always responded to her better anyway. His hands flexed. Rin must have figured it out, but that he had had to figure it out meant he may not have the answers they needed to get everyone back. He may not even have any answers that would be useful to -
Helios jerked and stood still, his eyes widening as his head and horn involuntarily turned towards the living room. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
"Where?" Mamoru asked, determinedly eating the food on his plate. He'd need the energy. What happened at the Elementary school couldn't be allowed to happen again; he'd just have to trust in his powers to help him do it alone.
"I'd have to take you, " Helios replied quietly. "Are you sure you want to do this? "
"There is no other option," he answered, and a gentle flash drew his attention across the table where Khalid now sat as West King, his silver gaze even and determined through his mask as he stood back from the table. "Khalid," Mamoru began; he thought they had come to an understanding yesterday - Khalid needed to stay out of the fight - but before he could put together a phrase asking him to hide out in Elysion, West King cut him off as he strode out of the kitchen and into the living room. For a moment Mamoru almost hoped that he was going to say he'd stay put, but Khalid called out of the living room,
"I swore an oath to protect you, Mamoru. Do not ask me to forsake that."
"Even if it costs us the world?" Mamoru challenged. Before Khalid could reply, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the golden crystal, urging it to act on his need, and in a rush of warmth and energy his pajamas bottoms and the blood-stained gauze wrapping his chest were replaced with the armor of his past life. For the first time in what felt like days he breathed easily, the wounds in his chest from the night before finally fully knitting closed, the energy to do so coming easily from the earth beneath him. The headache was gone, though the weariness remained. He stood, the movement no longer painful, and waited for Khalid, ready to face him down, show him that he could do it alone, that his friend didn't need to risk himself and the planet on a promise made millennia ago. Helios regarded him with worry in his garnet eyes, but he couldn't reassure him that he'd be careful just yet - not until Khalid agreed to keep out of it.
Khalid reentered the room and paused as he took him in, "Endymion," and then, definitively, he removed the silver mask from his face and tossed it to the kitchen floor, strongly calling up images of Kunzite rather than West King. Without an ounce of jest, he continued, "Protecting you is protecting the world." He moved towards the door, pausing to add, before Mamoru could say anything else, "I will not stay; arguing the point can only cost us time."
Mamoru as Endymion sighed but strode forward to join him; once his mind was made up, it was easier to move mountains than change it.
"He's locked himself in the bathroom and won't open the door -" Usagi said as she came around the corner, catching her words as she saw them. She met his gaze and for a moment it was like looking back thousands of years, his heart catching in his chest. Serenity. Usagi. She moved to him, her slight hands glancing his forearms to hold onto his cape and she studied his chest. "You're healed?" she asked quietly.
He nodded, tilting her chin up to face him. "I'll come back," he replied, understanding what she meant.
Her deep blue eyes shifted from his face to West King and slowly back to him again, understanding. "You want me to stay here," she stated, but she wouldn't meet his gaze.
She sounded hurt and he disliked the veiled implication in her explanation; it wasn't that he didn't want her with them, just that it was necessary. And possibly safer, if he was being completely honest. Already he had lost Kaito, Yuu, and Nero, and Khalid danced with that same danger without having to do anything to start with; risking her, too, felt like too much. Her staying here with Rin meant Rin would be safe, and that there was no reason to believe that the enemy knew where he lived - else they would have been here already - was a benefit that could end at any moment. He swallowed, dropping his curled fingers from beneath her chin to put his hands on her shoulders. "Rin knows more than he's letting on; you could get it out of him. And if those shapeshifters come looking for him here, we know that you and your powers can defeat them; Khalid and I don't have that same record with them," he said, nodding back toward West King, "We're going to go destroy those crystals and put a stop to this chaos they're causing, and then we'll come back."
She didn't react at first, but then she released his cape to put both of her hands over his. "And if you don't, I'm coming to get you," she said, her eyes, finally meeting his, were filled with determination.
He smiled at her, quickly kissed her forehead, and turned to leave, Helios jumping from the table to join him at the door. The weight of the extra armor felt like nothing new; he only noticed the minute changes in his balance to compensate for the metallic shoulderguards and fauld. In moments they were on the rooftop, and from there racing across the city towards the most recent attack; once they stopped that they would go back to the elementary school and break the crystal there and anywhere else they had been planted.
They cleared across the city, following Helios's instructions, and darted down to enter the doors to an animal shelter called Animal Kingdom. The storefront was eerily silent and Mamoru's stomach rolled at what that meant. Pets. They weren't just going after humans, but why would they attack such innocent creatures? The energy they had was much less than that of a human. A receptionist lay unconscious at the desk, a cat stretched out across the floor unnaturally - it had been trying to reach something; following the line of its path he found kittens, five of them, barely breathing beneath the level of the dark miasma. Mouth in a hard line, he strode over, bent, and scooped up the little bed they were crowded in an placed them, and their mother, on the counter above the sickly purple mist. West King, scimitar unsheathed, kept close, his eyes sharp and darting for any hint of motion, waiting for him to finish before the pair of them went further into the shelter, past the offices and examination rooms and into the kennels in the back.
Somewhere along the way he had unsheathed his sword. Sometime before he kicked open the door to the silent kennels he had a rose in his hand, a rose that pulsed with the power he funnelled into it. As the door clashed into the cage wall behind it he sent the projectile flying, sight focused only on the glowing mass of crystal jutting out of the concrete wall at the back of the enclosure. A creature - large, hulking, some mix of beast and man - darted away from the attack as though dodging it and dashed down the hall to meet them, but Mamoru struck true to his target - the crystal cracked and the mist started to dissipate. Khalid shoved him out of the way and brought his naked blade to meet the rushing creature, ducking to dodge the thick arm of the beast and neatly stabbing upward. The creature shuddered once before simply collapsing, the form melting into a puddle on the floor before becoming dust. A golem.
Animals around them started to stir and the pair of them made their exit, glad that this instance had been so easy to handle. As they made the series of leaps up the sides of buildings towards the roofs, they both turned towards the Primary School to stop the crystalline growth there only for Helios to call them back. "There's another! "
Of course there was.
"Usagi-chan," Khalid called into the wristwatch communicators as they followed Helios, "Add Animal Kingdom to the list; the map is set up - "
"I've got it mapped out!" Usagi replied, and Mamoru held up the watch to see what she meant; the thin rectangular package Khalid had brought in before must have been a map and ruler, as it was unfolded over his coffee table. He couldn't make out much in the tiny image, but he understood Khalid's intent just from looking, feeling foolish for not thinking of the same thing - he was looking for a pattern. "I'll look for shapes or see if I can find any other connection!" Usagi replied, glancing over her shoulder to the color-coded diagram of streets and prefectures.
"There's another," Khalid added, just as Helios paused in the empty air above another street. Mamoru looked down just as Khalid did and read the store's name just as his friend called it out, "'Lucky Charms House'." As a reply of " Got it! " echoed out of their devices, West King closed the watch face and jumped down, his cape fluttering in the air behind him, and Mamoru followed suit. The storefront was silent and dark and Mamoru made sure to keep close to Khalid as they approached, the similarity to the events of yesterday enough to make his heart beat faster.
The glass doors opened smoothly at their touch, a little bell shaking as they entered into the store together. The door closed, and suddenly the light spilling in from outside went out. Breath catching in his throat he turned sharply, but West King was still there with him, his slightly taller friend as stoic and determined as ever. "Let's find the crystal," he said smoothly, though Mamoru noted the scimitar in his hand already. He nodded and faced forward, though kept close as they moved down the main aisle of the store. It looked like an oddities shop, filled with eccentric jewelry and occult instruments meant for fortune telling, or so the signs read; but so far there was no sign of the crystal. Helios, horn glowing slightly, kept just ahead and above them in an attempt to minimize the long shadows that could hide what they were after -
"So we meet at last, Kobai Khalid," a voice called, and they whirled, searching for its source, instinctively going back-to-back to search for the danger in the half-light. The voice, seemingly bodiless, continued, "Good reactions, as expected from someone with your skill level. I, unlike my colleagues, will not be so stupid as to show myself quite so easily. I trust you'll listen to my proposition and respond appropriately?"
West was silent. Mamoru looked to Helios, who nodded, and carefully flew as high as he could to spread out the light. On edge, he summoned a rose and prepared to throw it at the slightest hint of movement or indication by Helios.
"My name is Astaphaios, and through my work with Adonaios and Horaios I serve the great Demiurge. As he prepares to make his journey to this planet I would like to offer you a place in the new world order; we could use a man of your talents and affinity."
East's reply was cold in the ensuing silence, letting the beat drag on almost uncomfortably long. "You claim to be smarter than your colleagues, and yet you ask anyway. You know as well as I that I will refuse your offer; why make it?"
The voice, Astaphaios, replied almost dejectedly, "I am the wisest of them, and I believed you would be a kindred spirit, Khalid. Yes, I knew what the answer in your heart would be, just as you knew I would make that offer anyway. My hope was that you would realize the futility in refusing and make the wiser choice; you know as well as I that even in the defeat of Saboth, Elaios, and Iao, we got our new recruits anyway. Should you refuse you will still join us as they have. If nothing else, take heart in that and join us to rejoin them - surely you care for them enough to make that choice? Else, you care enough for Earth to make this choice. Has he told you what he has heard about what we have seen in this planet's future should he take charge?" Astaphaios asked, pausing, "I was witness to their final conversations - Elaios and Iao's. That "prince" of yours knows what he will do to this world. Has he shared that information with you, Khalid? You, who should be his closest confidant…"
He hadn't. There hadn't been time - it had all happened so quickly, and after the loss he hadn't been able to talk about the details.
"He didn't, did he. He wouldn't - it's not flattering, and he knows he needs you to make any of his dark dreams come true." Astaphaios sounded almost disappointed, and Mamoru swallowed, turning slightly in an attempt to catch Khalid's eye, but his silver-haired friend was staring ahead of him. "He has not been as close with you in this life as your last; is this loyalty you show him entirely deserved, King of the West? Come with me, with eyes wide open, and help us guide the future of this planet towards where it should be, rather than the doomed path it is on."
Khalid's reply was made with finality: "You speak in lies, and I will never serve a false cause."
A sigh whispered through the air and Mamoru tensed, waiting for the attack. "A pity. You could've been so much more useful."
Bright light flooded the space around them and Mamoru whirled just in time to see Khalid's body illuminated in a column of pure white light. He reached for his friend, heart hammering in his chest, but he was too late - his bare hand passed right through Khalid as though he were a ghost. Immediately he dropped to the ground, his hand slamming into the surface with a burst of power to find the pink glow of Kunzite with psylocation; he got a faint trace of a reading just as Helios called out above him and raced towards a corner of the building - Mamoru stood, hand glowing with Golden Crystal Energy, and fired in the direction Helios indicated.
The burst of power hit something and flung it backwards into a display of crystal balls, the glass cracking and falling to the ground all around a form that only then became entirely opaque; Astaphaios glittered for a moment, looking down at himself as he took a heaving breath. Mamoru strode closer, his hand glowing again with the power that came only too easily to his beck and call. He knelt and roughly pulled on the shirt of his enemy; he called healing energy, preparing to keep him alive to demand answers; the dark skinned man with eyes as old as time looked at him with nothing short of hatred.
"Where are they?!" Mamoru demanded, but Astaphaios released his breath and simply burst into shards of glittering light before fading away, the early afternoon light returning to the store the moment the last glimmering mote disappeared.
Mamoru as Endymion remained where he was, clutching at air on a floor littered with shards of crystal balls, unable to help wondering if his future was just as broken.
Helios let him be for a few moments more, but then landed carefully on the now-empty shelves and fixed him with a garnet gaze. " There was nothing you could have done. I felt the energy pulse - do you know where they are? "
Mamoru nodded and stood, calmly walking from the stoor with the unisus flying at his shoulder. "I got a read just as he was teleported, but it doesn't do me any good." Leaving the store, he stopped and looked straight up, clenching his jaw and glaring as though he could see through the atmosphere at the monsters responsible for this. Helios joined him, looking up curiously before snapping back to attention.
"Space?! " He replied incredulously.
"Kunzite's glow went up before disappearing," Mamoru confirmed and let Helios run with the explanation.
"That's… that's why you weren't able to track them before - you couldn't even if your powers hadn't been constrained; they were off the planet's surface and your psylocation is limited to objects touching the Earth. And Hanada's… "
"His website's leads were correct. U.F.O's. It has to be them - the Archons. They're up there - Kaito, Khalid, Nero and Yuu. They said that they needed all four of their energies to summon or call this Demiurge. Now they have all of them and there is no way for me to get to them." He paused, looking to Helios for clarification, "Is there?"
He had remembered a good many memories of his past life, but a lot of the time knowledge about his powers were just known rather than remembered. However, while he had no problem recalling and using powers like psylocation, psychometry, and healing through psychokinesis, he had no idea if he had rarer abilities that he simply didn't know he had. Something like true psychokinesis or teleportation would be helpful right about now.
"Not that I know of… " Helios replied morosely.
They stood in silence for a moment, the magnitude of what he was about to face without them too large to move past for the moment. All of them… How could he do it alone? He had to try; there was no other option. Whatever the true intention of these Archons and this Demiurge was, it was not what they claimed, and he couldn't just hand the Earth over to them. He would fight them - it's what his friends would want him to do, just as…
Just as he wanted them to do.
Whatever mess they were in right now, he knew they were alive . He didn't know their situation, but he knew they were up there, they were together , and he knew that they could figure out a way to come home, or else make sure that the Earth was safe after all this was over. He believed in them. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on them, on their faces, their voices, their mannerisms - Kaito's furious scribbling on his pocket-sized memo pad and his critical eye rolling, Nero lounging, stretching, loudly laughing at whatever came his way, Khalid's steadfast determination alongside that softer side he rarely let show, and Yuu's arm-crossing, driven and pushy exterior masking the inner idealist. He focused on them and their power gem's glow - Kaito's Zoisite, Nero's Nephrite, Khalid's Kunzite, and Yuu's Jadeite - and sent out Golden Crystal energy, not knowing if it could even reach them. ' Fight them! Come back!'
Helios looked at him sharply, " What was…? "
"A reminder," he replied, looking up to this advisor, "I'm fighting this until the end; I believe they are, too. If anyone could figure out how to come back, it's them."
Helios nodded, and just as the clerk opened the door to the shopfront behind them, Mamoru lept skyward, landing on the roof to run towards the elementary school to shut down its crystal. As he ran, the communicator went off and he answered, looking to the watch face, heart lighter at hearing her voice.
"Okay, I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's two concentric circles - " Usagi explained without greeting, the watch pointed to the ceiling as she obviously examined the map she had been working on for Khalid, "See?" she said, and the angle flipped around awkwardly until the map, tiny and barely legible, appeared. "I don't know if I can predict the next attack or anything from it, but maybe their base is in the center." The viewpoint changed back to the ceiling, "It could be where they're holding everyone - should we check it out?"
He approached the school but it was no good - emergency services were all over the place. There was no way he could get in and handle the crystal without being spotted and identified. He looked around for a less conspicuous way of entering -
"Mamoru?" her voice called softly, and he looked back to the communicator to see her worried expression. "Is Khalid…?"
He nodded, looking back at the school, "He's with everyone else. The person responsible for today's attacks is out of service, but with West King, the Archons now have all the energy they claimed to need. Unless they were somehow able to resist, Demiurge is coming." He calculated the jump and landed within the shadow of the rooftop access closet and quickly entered, leaving the door open behind him. The air was thick with the crystal's miasma, and on the fourth floor of a building that didn't bode well for the lower floors, one of which most likely held the dark crystal itself. Helios beside him, they ventured through the empty halls.
"I'm coming to meet you -" Usagi started, but he quickly cut her off, looking into the watch face with an easy expression.
"I'll be finished by the time you get here," he said, actively having to fuel energy from the Earth to keep moving forward as they reached the first stairwell, the air losing its transparency. In an overly casual fashion, he reached out with his free arm to give Helios somewhere to rest, continuing to maintain eye contact with Usagi. "I'll be back at the apartment after this, barring another attack. If anything else happens I'll call you, okay?"
Her gaze was critical as she stared back at him, but then something flashed softly, illuminating her face from below, and she broke eye contact to look down herself. "That's new, " she said softly, and then looked back at him, "Okay. I'll see you in a bit then."
"See you then, Usako."
She blushed, grinning, and terminated the call. He let out the rest of his breath, the mist making him lightheaded, and covered his mouth with the corner of his cape, moving Helios to straddle his shoulder like he often did in "plushie mode", and they descended deeper into the depths of the Juuban Municipal Primary School.