145/How Do You Know If You're Out Of Mana

How Do You Know If You're Out Of Mana
Date of Scene:	20 July 2023
Location:	Club Building
Synopsis:	After Kyouka's intervention, Kazuo brings his gifts to Naru. Youma Science Club is not actually an RHA-sponsored student group, but that's not about to stop them from trying. (Now if only they knew about the youma part.)
Cast of Characters:	Kazuo Saitou, Naru Osaka

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Kazuo Saitou has posed:
TXT to Naru: I got receipts. Did you tell anyone else about coffee not helping?

Naru Osaka has posed:
TXT to Kazuo: Inai-sensei is the only one, I think. She implied there were others who had the same thing.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
TXT: So she got that from you, then. Good. I was trying to figure out if that was independent confirmation, and it's not.

TXT: Yet, at least.

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru sends another TXT to Kazuo: Did she bring it up?

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
TXT: Semi. She asked what I was carrying and why. When I said it was for a junior who was feeling off, she started alternating between trying to push me off-balance and leading. She brought up the coffee. And your name.

Naru Osaka has posed:
TXT: She found me still half asleep the morning after and I spilled about the weird. She was really chill about it, other than telling me I'm in with the wrong crowd and to be careful and to call her if I need help. Which is a better theory than practice.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
TXT: Good. Right now I can't tell whether she understands and is trying to help, or is secretly malicious and responsible for your weirdness and mocking us, or whether she's in a weird cult.

Naru Osaka has posed:
TXT: The first two feel mutually exclusive, but the last one could fit with either of the first two. I think she's trying to help. Evil is always more suave in the movies and the good guys are awkward.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
... I will not examine the implications too closely. Also, sadly, I can't attach electronics to a text. Can I catch you somewhere?

Naru Osaka has posed:
TXT: I'm done for the day, and no clubs tonight. Where works for you? Picnic tables outside? Somewehre more private? Art room?

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
TXT: Somewhere inconvenient for the gossips. You have that Umino kid in your class, you probably know better how to dodge him.

Naru Osaka has posed:
TXT: Art room. We'll see if Hana's there, but she's the only one who also heads there when there's no club time. If she is, we'll pick somewhere else.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
TXT: See you there.

That's all the response she gets. Maybe he knows who Hana is, or maybe he's picking and choosing what to worry about right now.

Naru Osaka has posed:
There are not a lot of students who have access to the Art Room outside of club or class time, but the two mentioned are privledged that way. Naru gets there first, ensuring the door is open and not locked for when Kazuo arrives.

There's various works in progress tucked into cubbies from other students, sculptures and paintings, some dramatic oils that are probably Hana's, and a much smaller collection of textile work, probably Naru's. She's standing at her cubby, considering a piece that looks like a discoball shattered all over a textile piece, some sort of free form machine embroidery.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
That ... sparkles, all right.

Kazuo lets himself in and finds the closest empty stretch of surface to Naru. Quiet gentle tapthunks: wrist blood pressure monitor, non-contact scanning thermometer, pulse oximeter, matcha vanilla flavored plant protein bar.

"The thing that I can't get over," Kazuo says, with a casual lack of hello, "is that the weirdest thing that came out of Inai's mouth is the one that made some sense."

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru tucks the sparkle-fest back into her cubby, turning to come join Kazuo at the table. She looks over the haul. Because this is totally the sort of thing that students meet in quiet classrooms about. Keeping themselves healthy.

She reaches to pick up the oximeter, smiling as she spots the plant based protein bar. He is, unsurprisingly, very good at listening. She looks up from reading all of the claims on the box to Kazuo. "Which bit made some sense?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"If you were sick," Kazuo says, "your wanting food makes sense, but you'd want easy to digest things. Broth. Sweets. At least noodles or something if you didn't want to fight your roommate for the sweets. If you were getting drugged," at least he's finally voicing that possibility out loud, "food would be the last thing you'd want. But you wanted meat. Full on protein and fast. Which didn't make any sense."

He exhales, and then braces himself and says, "Inai said - this sounds like a video game. Inai said coffee doesn't work on energy drain. And if you're - I don't know. Neurotransmitters. Something. Protein would almost make sense. Except that, what."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"My drink didn't leave my hand from when I unsealed it until I ultimately dropped it. It would have been hard to drug it." Naru's words speak to her having absolutely considered that option. It's a reasonable guess. "And I wasn't eating food. Just my drink." She shakes her head a little.

"It felt like a video game." Naru acknowledges and then mms softly as she thinks more on that. "Very much so, as if I was trapped inside a monitor or something. It was very flashy, and distorted, like through curved glass, or reflected in a lot of mirrors." She can't help the little smirk that emerges. "So in the first one, I lost most of my hit points, and in the second one, I lost all of my mana?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"At least you didn't lose experience points. I know I wouldn't want to repeat a year." Kazuo mirrors her little smirk right back at her, then nods his head briefly toward the shattered disco textile. "Is that what it felt like?"

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Small mercies. I don't think I'm suddenly stupider, so I think my experience points are, at least for the moment, safe." Naru glances briefly back at the cubby before turning back to set the oximeter down and pick up the BP monitor. That one at least, she's got some idea on how it works.

"That's the goal, although it doesn't feel quite right yet." Naru snorts softly. "At least when I do absolutely trippy things in an art piece, people just admire my creativity and don't ask if its non-fiction."

"The first one came out alright, in the end." Naru gives a shrug. "Although figuring out how to theme them together.. well I suppose they dont' have to theme together, they can be stand alones." She sets the BP meter down again. "So if some of the weirdness targets the body, and some is this energy drain.. which sounds utterly like we're both on crack, but we'll run with it.. will I have any physical signs if I am out of mana?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"... if you figure out a way to suck people's energy out through their eyes when they look at that thing so that it feels right, either you have a bigger problem, or you're paying an egregious amount of money to a billionaire for API access." This time it's an outright grin Kazuo gives her, laughter silent in his eyes. "So I hope you can come up with another solution. It sounds like you managed it the first time."

The actual question is a more serious one, but the only answer Kazuo can offer to it is a wide, hands-open shrug. "I have no idea. You're already starting to track the subjective results, though, and you've got a couple of quick tools for tracking objective ones now. Inai said that wouldn't go anywhere, but Inai says a lot of things; if it works, you get information, and if it doesn't work, then we know Inai was right about that one."

... from video game to logic puzzle. If one brother always lies, and one brother always tells the truth, and neither of them knows whether Kyouka's lying or telling the truth, then how do you... et cetera.

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru makes a show of considering the possibilities of sucking energy out of people via art. She laughs softly and shakes her head, dismissing the idea.

"So, I'm sort of excited for the potential of getting the data, and vaguely horrified about how much fun its going to be to actually be part of that." Naru twists her expression a little, rueful at the reality.

"Call me naive, but I want to believe Inai-sensei." Naru is naive, at least sometimes. Or at least terribly trusting.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"I don't know if I want to or not. It'd be good to have a source. But that source is going to have its own biases and agenda. And I don't know what her agenda is." Kazuo shrugs again, easier this time, more casual. "I mean, she's a teacher, or at least teacher-adjacent. Thinking she knows better than we do what's good for us is literally her job."

He exhales, and adds ruefully, "If I get hit by one of these things, and I'm nearer campus than home, can I text you? Presuming my phone still has charge afterward, anyway? I can keep baseline readings at home for a comparison, but being able to check the variation on the spot might be useful."

Also presuming that getting hit by one of these things does not leave him dying, in a coma, incapable of thought, turned into a styrofoam polyhedron like a Star Trek redshirt, or any of the other fun possibilities his mind's generated in the time since he said 'if.'

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Everyone has biases and agenda." Naru agrees. "Teachers are pretty good at thinking they know better than us. Unfortunately, they often do."

"Come over anytime." Naru invites him over easily. "I'm hoping you don't get hit. Worse, I hope we both don't get hit together, then neither of us will have the wherewithal to keep track of what we should be measuring. One of us miserable is enough."

And apparently Naru is comfortable enough with the reality that it's her.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
... apparently Kazuo's eyes can sparkle. "If I come over anytime, I will get hit. By your roommate. I'm not sure it'd bruise much, but she might be able to suffocate an opponent with her hair, and I hear breathing is important for keeping a body running. I'll do my best to text notice if I take you up on that. Have you considered taking her around even more often when you leave the grounds? She might terrify these people into not targeting you. Well. Terrify. Make them pause and go 'awwww' at the kitten-claws long enough for you to grab her and run. Something like that."

Apparently sometime between the first time they talked and now, he's actually met Usagi. These things show.

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru laughs brightly at the notion of Usagi trying to take out Kazuo with her hair. "She'd need to climb you like a tree to suffocate you with her hair." She points out, still giggling softly.

"But yes, warning is probably a wise move. She's often out and about, and if you are flattened, come over anyhow. I'll protect you." Naru offers, with no reason to think that she can't take on her equally small and delicate roommate.

Naru laughs and shrugs. "We're together at class, but we're not actually together every second of the day, but we're together a fair bit. Sometimes I actually need a bit of quiet to hear myself think." The hazard of an only child who now has a roommate in the dorms. Who is Usagi.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"If she could manage a good hairflip, she could cross the distance all on her own," Kazuo says, mock-ominous. Then grins at the if-he's-flattened. "All right. I'll trust you to keep me safe."

(That does not sound entirely like it's part of the joke.)

"And the art room is probably good for that, when I'm not in here ruining the quiet for you." He glances back at death-by-disco, pausing a moment to study the fragments and their edges. "That might not be finished, but for some reason, I really do like that piece. I can't put a finger on why. It just keeps grabbing my attention."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"She has hairflip skills I can only dream of." Naru lifts a hand to give a toss of her shoulder-length bob. Utterly not the same at all, and she grins back at Kazuo.

"You're pretty good at quiet." Naru points out as she looks around the room with him, and back to her cubby. "I mean.. that's the point. That it grabs your attention. I'm glad its doing that." She smiles at the compliment. "It needs more red, I'm not sure why precisely, but it does."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
In fairness, Naru's bob is far less likely to cause her to sprain anything trying. At least Kazuo isn't likely to make these suggestions to Usagi directly.

"The obvious answer," Kazuo says half-meditatively, "is that sharp edges make people bleed. The less obvious answer is that being trapped inside a monitor has to be particularly rage-inducing. Well. It would be in me, anyway. You seem to be good at being outwardly calm, and who am I to guess at whether that goes all the way through?"

Naru Osaka has posed:
"When I think back over my visions from being trapped, there was a lot of red." Naru notes thoughtfully. "So some literal, some metaphorical. The best sort of inclusions aren't wholly obvious on the why." She gestures vaguely. "I want people to be able to disagree and neither be wrong."

Naru takes a slow breath as her calm is called into question. "Mostly right through at the time." Naru perhaps wasn't supposed to answer. "And then sometime later, less calm. But at the time, I rarely hit rage. Sometimes I wish it did more often."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"It's a useful quality, though. Rage makes people impulsive. Makes them stop considering things like 'consequences' or 'planning' or 'is this a smart move in the first place.' And by them I of course don't mean me, not more often than once or twice a week, anyway." Kazuo inclines his head toward her, enough that his shoulder ruffles his white hair for him. "I could wish for a little more of what you've got. Though I suppose it must be a little unsettling, when everyone tells you you're supposed to be losing your brain to the adrenaline."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"Calm makes it seem like they don't care. Like nothing matters to them." Naru counters quietly. "With too much thinking, and not enough actually doing things." She tips her head right back at him. "A little bit of a mix wouldn't go amiss. Calm when its right, rage when its a better choice. She watches him, thoughfully. "I suppose the whole lack of 'is this a smart move in the first place' tends to mean that you are not about to pause and call someone to ask that question."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"Usually I'm a little too in the moment, when it's happening," Kazuo admits. Because he doesn't care, right then. Because nothing matters to him. Not an echo that he voices out loud. "Who knows? Maybe we'll rub off on each other."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"It could happen." Naru smiles at the notion of them rubbing off on each other. She comes up on her tippy toes, which still doesn't get her anywhere near 5' tall. "If you could share some height too, while we're at it, I'd appreciate it."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"I'll do my best," Kazuo promises her gravely. And bends down to bonk his forehead, very gently indeed, against the top of hers.

Thank *god* neither of them have Usagi hair.