1535/You May Be Wrong (But You May Be Right)

You May Be Wrong (But You May Be Right)
Date of Scene:	13 May 2024
Location:	Dorms #3
Synopsis:	Bow, without Crystal Hope with him (he thinks) visits with Mamoru about his fears and concerns of removing the AI and control chip from him. Mamoru gives him a lot of emotional assistance, words of wisdom, lots of chocolate and helps Bow reach the conclusion that it's time for the chip to get dipped.
Cast of Characters:	Bow, Mamoru Chiba
Tinyplot:	Crystal Nope

---

Bow has posed:
Bow had been out training. Actually, he had gone on a long run, the day after the talk on the rooftop, and it made him think about a lot of things as he ran through the neighborhood around the school, epecially something that Usagi had said at it all.

'Make sure your affairs are in order.'

And it is with that in mind that Bow had thought about what, if anything he needed to get into order. And there were a few things - but while he could not reach a couple of those people he needed to speak with, one of those people might actually be available.

So as soon as he was done with his run, he made his way to the dorms - and in paticular the dorm room shared by Koji and Mamoru. He take a couple of moments to collect his breath and his thoughts and knocks on the door.

When answered, Bow is dressed for a workout. A muscle half-shirt that is yellow and reads 'I <3 Archery, Even With All The Drawbacks' is over his torso, leaving his arms and middle exposed. A pair of gym shorts in red, trimmed with gold and white that cover his hips, with a spandex shorts in black that cover his thighs for more modesty. White ankle socks and a pair of white sneakers. And a gold sweatband around his head, pushing on his curly locks.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
When Mamoru opens the door, he looks rumpled, like he fell asleep studying or something. He's not in uniform, he's definitely wearing jeans and a t-shirt with his argyle socks and wire-rim glasses, but his hair's messy and his bed's as rumpled as his shirt.

As soon as he reads Bow's shirt, he's stifling a laugh, though. "Hey, come in! Do you want a can of coffee or anything?" he asks, stepping aside to let Bow into the room. "Nice shirt."

Bow has posed:
"Thanks." Bow says as he makes his way. "You look a mess. Sugar coma from too many hand pies?" he asks playfully as he holds up his water bottle. "But do you mind if I get a refill from the sink?" Once he has his water topped off, he folds his hands behind his back. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

And this may be where an observant Mamoru may notice Bow is not wearing the crystal earring that is usually where Crystal Hope would be. "About a conversation I had recently, and a backseat driver. Do you mind if I sit?" he asks politely, his dark eyes cast down for a moment of demurement that indicates there's probably an apology in there someplace.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Well thank you," snorts Mamoru at 'you look a mess'. He gestures to the desk chairs, his and Koji's, and at the sink, and he drops himself back to his bed to sit on the edge of it. Plunk. He runs a hand through his hair, which makes the fluff go in at least the proper direction, even if it makes his cowlick more pronounced.

"I just haven't gotten enough sleep lately. It's messy when friends are fighting, you know? It'll sort itself out eventually, but weh. For right now, there's enough beef flying around I might declare myself vegetarian for the duration," the prince says, then leans back, propping himself on his hands, elbows locked. "So you've got a backseat driver, and right now she's not around...?" he asks curiously. "Sorry, I'm getting ahead of you. Go for it."

Bow has posed:
"I didn't say it was a bad mess. It's actually kinda cute." Bow points out as he deals with the first point of order, refilling his water so he can take a long draw from it before topping it off again. Closing off the cap and screwing it into place, he goes to take a seat in one of the chairs. Digesting the information that Mamoru presents, Bow pinches his fingers on the bridge of his nose in thought. "If it's a bad time... or rather, more importantly, if you want to talk about it? What's going on with me can totally wait."

But then Mamoru notices that Crystal Hope is missing. "Yeah. I needed some time to think. I remembered the talk we had after what happened with Stellar and Lacuna. And I had kind of shelved it because I thought it was handled?" When he admits that, his tone is kind of sheepish.

"And it was. Mostly. Until a couple of nights ago. I was coming off shift at the Korma and Hinoiri showed up and asked if we could talk. Now. I already knew that Hinoiri and Sayaka and dated. What I didn't know is that Hinoiri was that A) Hinoiri is Sunbreaker. She told me that. And B) She's dating Double Trouble. I don't know if you know about them."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"No no, it's fine, I'm at most a passenger on the journey that is Someone Else's Big Mad. It's just an uncomfortable car ride and I hate being a passenger in cars, and this metaphor is really stretching so-- it's fine, haha," Mamoru says, sitting forward to wave a hand in the air to dissipate stretched metaphors and Senshibeef 2024.

He adjusts his glasses and pays attention, brow knitting slightly. He looks kind of cautious as he listens, but he nods. "I mean-- you don't want to go around telling people anyone else's secret identity, but I already knew about Sunbreaker, to it's okay. And... yeah, I know about Double Trouble. They got their ass handed to them bigtime in a fight with Ginga Kingu. I had to reinflate them from being a pancake. Very bitchy lizard person."

Bow has posed:
"Sorry, sorry. You're right. I assumed you already knew because I'm so far down the totem pole that I figure I'm the last person getting the information." comes the admission from Bow. "I don't usually do that, promise!" he is quick to add. "I guess that gets towards the root of the problem, but we'll come back to that."

Because, in Bow's mind, this is more important. "Double Trouble is that. And very dangerous. They can impersonate anyway." he says quietly. "And back on Etheria, they sowed enough dissent in the Rebellion that they were able to allow the Horde to overthrow a kingdom without us ever being able to respond." A sigh of breath, and he grits his teeth. "Not blaming you for healing them. But I'm not a fan of their theatrics." There might have been a little smile when Mamoru mentioned they got pounded by Ginga Kingu. He'll have to do something nice for Sugata.

With that out of the way, he returns to the topic at hand. "Anyway, while Hinoiri and I were talking, she brought up Catra and her lack of magic - just like my lack of the same. And she suggested that she could teach me how to use Dark Energy." A beat. "I'm not interested. But, after she left - right after, Crystal Hope reminded me that her magic could make more powerful. That I just needed to let her have more control." He closes his eyes.

"I hate admitting when I'm wrong. But I think you may have been right. So. I'm trying to figure out what to do. I wanted to talk to Sayaka on this, but the conversation became more about her past and what she was like before I met her and I just... I didn't want to try to interject my problems."

"I'm scared Mamoru. I'm a stranger here. This isn't my home. This isn't my world." Bow finally says, his hands move to clutch in front of him, interlocking his fingers. "If I turn Crystal Hope off, what if she's right? What if I lose my magic? What if I become what I was back on Etheria. Except at least on Etheria, I knew my world, my home, my friends. I have some of my friends here... and new friends besides. But archery is not a useful skill here against youma. Or kindabads. What if the veil effects me without her? I mean, what if I forget about you and Usagi... what if I forget about Sayaka?"

"What if I forget about Glimmer and Etheria?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru shakes his head, and he hesitates for a second before he leans forward and puts his hand over Bow's interlaced ones, warm and steady, the sense of sturdy unbreaking bedrock and the calm of a clear pool in a primeval forest in his touch. His feelings are clear, too, coming through that touch with his own magic: absolute faith in Bow, acceptance of Bow, belief in Bow--

"The Veil won't get you. Naru doesn't have powers and the Veil hasn't gotten her back -- once you can see past it, you can see past it until the Fade gets you, and that gets everyone except Kyouka and Fuyuko, because of some other deal they have going." He squeezes Bow's hands lightly. "I said it before and I'll say it again -- you have the potential to use magic yourself, or Crystal Hope wouldn't be able to lend you anything. Give Crystal Hope up and we'll find you something else. An Intelligent Device, maybe, or-- maybe a Precure Card, or some kind of other henshin item or access to magic. There are a lot of different paths."

Bow has posed:
"The Fade terrifies me, Mamoru." Bow starts to say, when the other boy sets his hand over his locked ones, and he gets that rushed influx of sudden emotion, there's a blink in the Etherian's eyes, as if something he had not caught on before and his hands open to catch Mamoru's between for the moment. He needed the confidence boost and it takes him a couple of seconds to recover and find his way.

"The reason why the Fade terrifies me is again. This isn't my world. I'm scared that I'm going to forget that I'm from Etheria. And then what? I'm a nobody here. No family. No record. Just the whole... Luke Armbruster thing." he laughs a bit sourly. "And even I rarely use that anymore."

Though he is taking in Mamoru's words and considers them. "I'm willing to at least try. It'll be a simple medical procedure to remove the control disc. And without it, we'll see what happens. And if it's true... well, we'll figure it out."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"It terrifies us, too," Mamoru says quietly, and he doesn't pull his hand back. It's something he can gift to Bow, right now: his feelings and his connection with the Earth beneath them, solid and ancient. "We'll just have to figure out how to get you home before the Fade gets us, that's all."

He says it like it's so easy, but his confidence isn't a lie: he believes in all his friends, he believes in their collective ability to solve problems. "Sailor Mercury is the smartest person I know, and she already has a bunch of dimensional data she can crunch through. There are other sources of dimensional magic she can look into as well, and I don't know, maybe you and Adora and Catra and whoever else-- maybe you have some kind of signature that matches with your homeworld, that can get you all back there."

Then his other hand comes up to cap Bow's hands around his hand, and he smiles, bright and easy, like Endymion in that brief snapshot before everything was terrible. "And besides. You wouldn't forget being friends with us, anyway. Not that you'll have to worry about it, but you wouldn't."

Bow has posed:
"Crystal Hope knows how." Bow says finally. "That was the mission, after all. We were going to come here - find Adora or the sword or rather then runestone - and then open another portal to take us back to Etheria. I just got sidetracked with a whole different world that was pretty spectacular." A small smirk at Mamoru as he mentions that, probably teasing him a little. "Not to mention the people and food and just everything. This whole experience = I admit, I got caught up in it all."

"Then someone else from our world arrived. With another runestone." He doesn't know if Mamoru has met Sarah/Scorpia yet. "I'll introduce you after we get this Crystal Hope thing resolved. But now there are two runestones from Etheria here. And I'm worried that something has happened. First Adora and Catra. Then me. Now someone else. There has to be... some connection? I can talk to A... Sailor Mercury about it."

"Well, yeah. You all would be really hard to forget." A smirk, before he adds with another squeeze of Mamoru's hands before releasing them. "Not that I think anyone back on Etheria would believe if I told them someone here fought evil with thrown roses. And we have a literal Princess that controls plant life!"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"To be fair," Mamoru says in a low voice, "I think they're roses from my old home, Elysion. I don't know how-- I shouldn't be able to get them if they are-- but they smell right." He sits up again when Bow releases his hand, and the feeling of the connection to Earth goes with him, but it leaves a warm echo in its wake. "Before you go, you'll have to give me that recipe, and I'll have to give you a rose. You can show that princess of yours, maybe she can make it grow for you."

So light and so easy, as if it's a done deal that they'll get him back. "Crystal Hope really got you good, huh?" he says sympathetically. "Maybe Ami," he nods to the near-slip, "will be able to figure it out without her. But yes! Introduce me, I'd love to meet the person you're talking about -- and you know, I haven't ever really even talked to Adora? I've never met Catra either, even though our time at Obsidian overlapped."

Bow has posed:
"You... you haven't met Adora?" Bow is honestly surprised by this. "Oh no. This will not do." the teenager says firmly. "She's been sulking in her room ever since the whole Catra and dark energy thing and I will need to drag her out of her room and get her active. I know and understand why she skipped Prom - that would have been rough, but maybe we can have a meet the Etherians thing in the Shed one day." At least that's his thought on the matter.

"Oh, I made a video with the recipe!" Bow quickly points out. "You can find it on my MeTube channel, WowBow. And the music is a song from home." There's a pause, though. And a thoughtful look. "It's my hope... that now I've seen how the magic runs along the Earth here... and that it is a lot and I mean a lot like Etheria's, that maybe we can make a stable portal to travel back and forth freely and it's not just a possible one way trip. I think it was called a 'Stargate'? The Americans seemed fond of the idea."

"But yeah, I'm going to let Sayaka know to contact Ami and Setsuna to go ahead with the removal - she's been wanting to do it for a while."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I've just-- heard enough about Adora and Catra from third parties that I've honestly been a little hesitant to seek either of them out. Well, Catra only when I was on that side, anyway," Mamoru says frankly, a little apologetic and a little amused. "But yes, dragging her out to the Shed to meet people sounds like a plan."

A beat. "Especially if there are more hand pies," he teases back, and he takes out his phone to look up Bow's channel and bookmark it for later. While he's doing that, he glances briefly up at Bow again and says, "A stable portal would be cool as heck. I'd love to visit Etheria! I mean as long as it didn't mess with me. I get kind of unsteady in different dimensions... there!"

He puts his phone back in his pocket and beams. "Excellent. Yeah, she -- Sayaka, I mean -- she's a great girl, I'm really happy for both of you -- and she'll definitely support you through this all. Do you think she'll go back to Etheria with you?"

Bow has posed:
"I'm sorry that they made a poor impression on you - and of Etheria." Bow sighs a little, "I'm no diplomat, but I figured that it was easier to behave like you would expect company to your world to behave. And if they did less than that, I'll yank on both of their ears." is his response to the whole issue with the whole Catdora thing.

"And I was thinking of making something more native to home to prove we don't like... eat whole frogs or anything, but for a friend, I can make sure that some hand pies are handy." A nod at that, but he's frowning. "Well, that at least proves I'm not the Prince of Etheria or anything." he teases. "I didn't even think that you travelling there could have an adverse effect. Sorry about that."

But then the conversation turns to Sayaka. "She can't." Bow says that simply, when it comes to Etheria. "Something with the nature of her powers, I'm not even sure she can leave Japan. But we haven't talked much on that."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru's expression slowly turns into a frown at 'the nature of her powers', and then clears, and he looks sad. "I think I might understand. I'm sorry for bringing it up."

He puts his phone on his desk and draws his feet up, then sits crosslegged on his bed. "You could be the Prince of Etheria! And I could also be able to go to Etheria, I don't know yet. I might just need a real planet under my feet. I've only ever been in two other dimensions and they were rotten and didn't involve planets at all, really, more or less," he says firmly. "Never know until we try."

At Catradora making a bad impression, Mamoru waves a hand around. "I didn't even know they were from Etheria until you got here and started talking about Etheria where I could hear it," he laughs. "Don't worry. I know that little about them. Mostly that they have an unhealthy hero-villain relationship that involves a lot of violence. I don't know what either of them is actually like, except that Adora is also the roommate of one of my friends."

Bow has posed:
"Do you want to know the story?" Bow asks. "I mean, it's really common knowledge back home, and considering what happened here, you deserve some explanation. Because it was really... even for Adora it was a bit odd. But I'll blame the dark energy for that. And seeing how that affected her, I do not want to be anywhere or anyway involved with it."

"And you're right, we won't know until we try - and hopefully, we will get the chance to do that together." he offers with a firm nod of thought and a drink from his water bottle, thankful that Mamoru didn't press on Sayaka's drawback. He really couldn't talk about it. He promised her.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I... I shouldn't really hear it unless it's from them, probably," says Mamoru after a moment of considering the question carefully. "If I were in a new world and I had problems that followed me there, I think I'd want the chance to solve them without it turning into everybody's business in the new place. I mean, like, backstory problems. If I were in Etheria I wouldn't go around telling everyone I used to work for the bad guys, you know? As an example."

Then he brightens. "Oh! I almost forgot, do you like chocolate? Because there is still so much chocolate-- Ginga Kingu sent it to me to encourage me to keep magically healing people, after I let him know I healed DT. I already gave Setsuna her share, we did it together--"

All this as Mamoru's heaved himself off his bed and gone to his closet, which he opens and roots around in for a moment. He comes out with a box of Japanese specialty chocolates, like the really expensive kind that rich people buy their valentines, and a dark-chocolate-raspberry fair trade bar, and he holds them out to Bow. "Here!"

Bow has posed:
"That's fair. But if it becomes an issue again like it did this last time? I'm airing all their dirty laundry, just to shame them into stopping, because it's really unhealthy." Bow finally allows, "And it's an excellent example. Just messy. And they let the mess spill over to here." He'll leave it at that. Because he doesn't really have a choice as suddenly, Mamoru is attacking him with chocolate!

"What... this... I don't think I've ever seen some of these before?!" he asks in confusion as Mamoru is handing him boxes of brands and flavors he's never considered or seen. Then there's a pause. "Do... do you have any Fujiya brand cream filled? It's..." he presses his index fingers together. "It's Sayaka's favorite." Becuase why not butter up the girlfriend? Bit he's accepting the boxes that are offered to him. He'll be sharing those with her later as well!

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"There might be some in there? It's all assorted, there's no box of anything that's just one kind," Mamoru explains apologetically. "Ginga Kingu sent it all, I can text you the receipts like I did for Madoka--" and he closes his closet door and goes over to pick his phone back up, and he texts Bow the pictures he took. "It has the shops where they came from. Though you can probably get some of what you're looking for at Chiyo's grandfather's place! Nounamu Sweets? They make the silver crystal lollipops too~"

Ping! A picture of the receipts, which have addresses on them too. Then he crouches to reach under his bed and pull out a reusable grocery tote, which he also gives to Bow. "Here, so they don't melt on the way. Make sure she shares with you! These are really good and you obviously like sweets as much as I do!"

Bow has posed:
Bow chuckles. "It's alright. I just know that they're her favorite and nothing wrong with bringing a girl chocolate? That's a good rule no matter what world your from." He smiles sadly for a moment, before breathing in and making it more grateful as he gets the texts for the reciepts. "Thanks, Mamoru. For everything. Hope you don't mind having me as a permament resident if this goes south."

With that, he gives Mamoru's hand a last clasp before he turns to head out of the door. But as he does, if one were to imagine it, the slight green glow of the control chip that rests on the back of Bow's neck? You can almost feel like it's glaring at Mamoru.

But that's probably an overactive imagination at work.