1455/Hey Give Me A Barrier

Hey Give Me A Barrier
Date of Scene:	23 April 2024
Location:	Mitakihara Ward
Synopsis:	Kyouka needs a portable barrier to stop anymore civilians from wandering into the portal Beryl's inconveniently left open. Taro Yamada recommended she got to Fuyuko. Fuyuko... might as well go along with this.
Cast of Characters:	Kyouka Inai, Fuyuko Yuuhi
Tinyplot:	Operation: Past

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Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Most people knock when they enter Fuyuko's office. Stellar isn't one of them. It's probably reminiscent of when they were younger and she would barge into Fuyuko's room as if she owned the place, no doubt leading to at least one awkward interruption over the years, and probably more than that.

    It's unlikely that she's going to be interrupting any snog-sessions this time, but it might be equally awkward if she burst in while Fuyuko was dealing with some Obsidian employee- luckily it's after hours and that's pretty unlikely. The only reason Stellar knew the other woman was even here was due to her long-honed magic sense, particularly attuned to her opposite number, which drew her in the direction of Obsidian Tower rather than Fuyuko's apartment.

    All that to say- she appears in the middle of Fuyuko's office, in henshin, striding forward out of the teleport to approach the desk, her face a scowl. "You won't believe what that bitch of a boss of yours has done now." A statement that makes it doubly fortunate that no other employees are currently in the office.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"You know that I don't actually have a - well, I have a boss, but it's no one you would know," Fuyuko says dryly, and then pauses, taking a second look at Stellar, running back the words that were said instead of just passively running her automatic snark-back filter. There's only one person Kyouka would think of as her boss, and it's -

"What has Obsidian's second most irritating higher up done now?"

She's in her own office, after hours, working on the mountain of paperwork that inevitably piles up in the human resources department of an enormous operation. She can refer to people as she wishes, without shame or concern. And if Kyouka is actually coming to her office about it, it must be a serious situation.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Stellar approaches the desk and smacks her hand down on it- not any sort of threat or intent to damage, just to emphasize her words. "She freaked out because she happened to catch a glimpse of Mamoru out and about, and threw a tantrum and created some kind of weird portal that sucked in a bunch of my precious students!" She pauses. "And Sunbreaker!" She adds, as an afterthought. That might make Fuyuko care a little bit more, anyway.

    "Mamoru got away, he's okay, but a bunch of other people including Sailor Moon got sucked into this thing. We don't know where it leads to or how we can get them back, but we've got people working on that. The thing that matters more right this second is that the portal is still there, in the middle of the sidewalk downtown. Several mundanes have already wandered into it and gotten sucked in, and they'll probably fare an awful lot worse than the kids who have a chance of defending themselves."

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"I knew about some of that. Mamoru does have my cellphone number," she says this part dryly. "And I'm guessing you want me to do something to protect the poor little mundanes? If you wanted someone to teleport in after them, you'd have done that yourself."

She's not going to credit Kyouka with enough self-preservation and mnanipulative spirit to try and convince someone else to make the sacrifice play for her.

"She's... always had a predilection towards offering that kid too much attention. It's one reason I was never too mad about you poaching him."

The smack to her desk has been ignored - the mention of Sunbreaker has been too, for the moment.

"If she was willing to do all that, they probably aren't dead. Well, the mundanes might be, who knows if they could survive whatever she's got planned, but your kids and mine are probably fine-ish. What exactly do you want from me?"

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "Fuck if I'm going in there." Stellar says, with a frankness she wouldn't have dared in front of Mamoru and the other kids. "I've had enough of creepy fucking portals to last a lifetime." She winces inwardly as she says it, since of course this is a reference to the portal in the bay which spawned the Chitterling invasion, and took Kaito's life to seal. Hopefully this one won't be quite as costly, but it's a measure of how out of sorts the situation has made her that she'd make a comment like that at all.

    Hoping to brush it under the rug, she barrels onwards. "I don't think they're dead either. All I want from you is a barrier. I know you can get those things, more easily than I can. Like maybe forty feet square or something that we can set up around the damn thing to stop more unaware mundanes from walking into it. I know you have no love for the ignorant masses, but even you have to see the trouble it will cause if dozens of people start vanishing from the same square of sidewalk in the middle of the city with no explanation."

    She shakes her head. "We ran into one of your other kids down there.. dark-haired lad, trying to make a buck by selling snacks to the construction workers. I didn't catch his name, but he said you were his boss, and he seemed to think you'd be on board with this." She raises an eyebrow. Of course, she knows Fuyuko better than Taro does, but she's not above using Fuyuko's assumed desire to keep her kid's confidence as leverage.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
There's a look on Fuyuko's face at those crass words, a twitch of the eye, a stillness of the mouth, that signals bad - but she lets it go, tries to ignore a thousand fragments of memory. There's something more pressing (never more important) happening here, and she has to keep it together.
"A barrier would be one of the resources I could get ahold of," she says noncommitally, only to roll her eyes when Kyouka leans in on mentioning her student.

"That kid? Of course he's selling snacks... and telling people he works for me. Which is true," she might as well admit that, "Fine. I don't care about the ignorant masses, but it will cause a problem if people keep falling into nowhere, and that kid would probably use this as an excuse to ditch school so fine, I'll get the barrier. If you want to come with, you should drop the suit; all you'll do is get odd looks from my minions. I mean employees."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka catches those subtle signs of displeasure on Fuyuko's face, knowing the other woman's subtle expressions nearly as well as her own, and feels a twinge of guilt. She shouldn't have mentioned it, not if she wants to preserve the peace between them. But when no explosion (of any sort) follows, she forges ahead, promising herself not to make a mistake like that again even as the conversation moves on.

    She relaxes a little bit when Fuyuko says that she can get the barrier, that she's willing to do so. It only makes sense- even if she doesn't care about preserving lives, nobody wants to have to clean up the sort of PR nightmare something like that could cause. Considering Fuyuko is here late working on a mountain of paperwork, it's an easy bet that she wouldn't want to add to it.

    Stellar smirks when Fuyuko tells her to 'drop the suit'. "Why, am I famous?" She asks, with a toss of her bright red hair. Maybe she misses the days when everyone (magical) knew who she was. (She definitely does).

    But she de-henshins a moment later anyway, leaving her in her usual getup of black jeans and red shirt, leather jacket and shades. "Won't I get just as many odd looks walking through an office building dressed like this?" She asks dubiously.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"No, you're in a gold and white jacket," Fuyuko says dryly, "A fashion disaster you could see from space."

It's not true - Stellar's uniform is quite cool, actually, but the two of them have been ragging on each other's costumes since they were literally twelve years old. There's only so much time can change.

"Now, you look like a person, and more importantly, you don't look like anyone the people I don't need looking into my backstory would take an interest in. Aside from Agreste; he might take an interest just to mock your taste."

It's clear there's some disdain for whoever Agreste is, but then, does Fuyuko like any of the higher ups? Truly, the odds are not in their favor.

Signing out of her email, Fuyuko crosses the office to the door, opening it; she's one of the only people in the office, a few cubicles lit up from others burning the night oil the only signs of life from the two of them.

"We'll need to go to Inhuman Resources for the barrier; they're not far."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka does look offended at the comment about her fashion sense. "Look, just because it doesn't fit in with the Obsidian aesthetic doesn't make it a disaster. Do they make you prove you dress solely in black and red before they hire you?" She doesn't seem to pick on the irony of that statement considering her out of henshin outfits are almost entirely black and red. So honestly, corporate office or no, she fits in a lot better with the crowd like this than she does in her white-and-gold henshin.

    "Are you saying you keep your backstory a secret? I thought your whole thing was 'wah wah, people don't remember us and that sucks.'" Kyouka says, as she follows Fuyuko to the door and out into the HR Department at large. "I'd think you'd be crowing about past triumphs. Or maybe you're just that ashamed of me." She sniggers, despite the fact that it is almost certainly true.

    She might peer about with ill-concealed interest, perhaps thinking to do a little spying why she's in here with someone who will at cover for her. But there's unlikely to be anything of significance in the HR cubicle farm.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"No, but they have this particular interest in those who go around in predominantly white and gold and other such heroic colors. Something about being a clear sign of goodness?" She's not using that idiotic word the younger group have coined, sparklesquaddies, but it's heavily implied.

"And I keep my business to myself, when it comes to the higher ups. I don't need any of them taking more of an interest in me than they already have," she doesn't deny that she loathes people not remembering them. "You act as if that isn't your whole thing too. Or did I imagine you refusing to fade gently into the night?"

Neither of them is ready or willing to let the past and what they did - what happened to them - go.

The cubicles they pass are mostly boring, with planned memos, payroll details, upcoming holiday notices, and other such items pinned to the soft walls. There are a lot of stress balls on desks.

It's as they continue on and get towarsd Inhuman Resources that Fuyuko grows more tense and stern, her expression losing the faint relaxation that comes from talking to Kyouka. "This will take a moment. Don't say a word."

And then they're entering the large room that constitutes the main office for Inhuman Resources. There are several youma sitting at chairs, a vending machine that on second glance is also a youma, and a pair of employees sitting behind a desk. Fuyuko walks right up to it.

"I'm requisitioning a barrier device, forty square meter size at minimum. I'll need it for... let's start with a week."

"Purpose?"

"Training," she lies easily.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "Some excellent villains have worn white." Kyouka says, defensively, for some reason. As if she wants to somehow prove that her colorscheme is not inherently heroic, despite the fact that she is, in fact, a hero. "You can't tell what side somebody is on by their outfit. Although sometimes it'd be a lot easier if you could."

    She shakes her head idly as she follows Fuyuko through the office. "I don't want people to forget us. I especially don't want to forget myself. But I can't be mad at people for not remembering. It's not their fault. I can be, and am, mad at the system. I just haven't figured out what we can do about it... yet."

    She shudders at the soul-crushing uniformity of the cubicles. "I don't know how you can work in a place like this." She mutters. "I'd be clawing at the walls within a week." When Fuyuko tells her not to say a word, she gives the girl a Look that Fuyuko can't see, as she's facing away, but can probably feel and/or imagine. A 'do you think I'm an idiot' Look, which flies in the face of the reality that she is, in fact, an idiot. Especially when it comes to knowing when to keep her mouth shut.

    She eyes the youma in the chairs. But to her credit, she doesn't try to kill any of them. (Not that she could anyway without offensive magic. Not easily). She stands a half-foot behind Fuyuko and eyes the employees behind the desk, too. But to her credit, she doesn't say anything.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Maybe, which is why the color isn't outlawed. Doesn't mean it's not a strong indicator of the sparkly side of life. We're in a corporate office; do you really think fashion isn't as scrutinized as anything else?" The uniformity of the cubicles alone should prove that isn't the case.

"I have a private office that I can do what I want with. These people get paid a good amount to deal with the boredom; that's all. Some people will throw it all away for money." Which is rich talk from a rich woman, but, hey. At least she's not being disdainful about it. The sheer hypocrisy of that probably would have given Kyouka back her lightning.

As for being mad at the people? She simply won't address it.

She is mad, though.

"Training requires a forty square foot radius?" The staff member behind the counter is looking exceptionally skeptical, to which Fuyuko simply levels them a look.

"Right! Right, I'll just... get right on that, Yuuhi-san, I'll be right on that..."

In short order, the portal barrier device is in hand, and the pair are free to leave Inhuman Resources behind.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "Please. I haven't sparkled in my life." Kyouka complains, which isn't strictly true, if you consider all the lightning. Lightning is sparkly, by certain definitions. She doesn't comment on 'throwing it all away for money'. She knows Fuyuko comes from a rich family- she also remembers that Fuyuko both mostly cut ties with her family and helped put a roof over Kyouka's own head when she was homeless after her mom died. She's fairly certain that the money, while not something to be refused, is not the primary reason Fuyuko is working here.

    She manages to keep silent while Fuyuko procures the device. As they leave the Inhuman Resources department and head back out into the hall, she can't help but chortle. "You always were good at making people squirm." She says, in what might be a teasing insult but sounds more like a compliment. "Although I don't know why you had to lie to them. 'Uncontrolled portal on the sidewalk' seems like a legit reason for a barrier device, even for Obsidian."

    She considers, then says, "Though, I guess if they sent a team out to try and deal with it it'd get in the way of what my side is doing about it, so I'm glad you did."