1769/B-Point: Deliver the News

B-Point: Deliver the News
Date of Scene:	15 July 2024
Location:	The Dark Kingdom
Synopsis:	There have been losses. Tuxedo Kamen and Pulp Noir are burdened with sharing the news with Glimmer, Guardian Sukiyaki, and Sailor Moon.
Cast of Characters:	Usagi Tsukino, Glimmer Brightmoon, Ren Morimoto, Mamoru Chiba, Hinote Kagari
Tinyplot:	Dark Kingdom Finale

---

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
One thing is for sure: they are no longer in the catacombs of Paris. Winding ever deeper into the twisted passages, at some point, those heroes gathered to stop a demon have broken from the Earth, and descended into the Dark Kingdom. This means that rather than encountering tight and confined spaces, more and more our heroes venture through caverns and cave systems, naturalistic hollows with stalactites and stalagmites just from ground and ceiling.

Often, rocks fall, forcing them to run for their lives until the ground ceases it's shaking. Often, the walls are studded with skull-like faces and outstretches hands, pressing through the stone as though it were putty, grasping - for help, or to drag them into the depths, it's hard to say, for surely no one tries to take their hand.

It's been hours of travel, by now, and the darkness is everpresent, threatening to swallow their lights - illumination brightens a maximum of ten feet ahead, leaving shadows looming. There's the drip-drip-drip of water from the stalactites above and the skittering of rodents at their feet - occasionally, the rodents are youma, attacking in the hundreds, all at once.

These heroes find each other, from the shadows.

Two of them, at least, were already together - Sailor Moon and Queen Glimmer of Brightmoon, and Sailor Moon is, at the moment, dropping off of Glimmer's shoulders, looking furtively around. Wisps of darkness disperse at their feet.

"I think that was the last of the rats this time, um, sorry for maybe sort of climbing you. Again."

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon sighed and shook her head. "It's... fine. It's *fine*. Believe it or not? Not the first time someone climbed me to get out of danger. Though, usually it's because I can teleport them to a nice vantage point."

She held up her hand and a small orb of light formed in it, illuminating the way forward.

"This place reminds me of Entrapta's home. Except with evil bone monsters instead of evil robots."

Despite the light mocking, it was... wellllll... It was kind of nice to not be here alone. It was... scary t obe here alone. And while the rats didn't bother her, the spooky hands had... and there had been mroe than a few times where she had grabbed onto Sailor Moon out of fright.

"This place reminds me of some of the stories Adora used to tell me. About evil princesses and... ummmm..." She then coughed, glancing back. "The... rest of your friends. Do... do you think... ummmm... that Bow's... okay? Like... they'll keep him safe, right? While I'm not there?"

Ahhhhh. Usagi likely knew that tone well. That fearful 'I don't want my friend to get hurt if I'm not there to protect him'.

Ren Morimoto has posed:
To walk alone in those tunnels is a nightmare, one that Ren does not feel like he's come out of completely unscathed. And yet somehow being out in the wider spaces of the Dark Kingdom aren't all that comforting.

Imagine that.

When he sees movement up ahead, his own progress forward stalls. His giant cleaver, which was not particularly well-suited to fighting in the catacombs, comes out now that it's safe(r) to use. But then he hears voices, too, and relief washes over him like a giant wave, so powerful it nearly makes his knees give out from beneath him.

"Hello?" he calls out as he starts walking again. "I, uh, come in peace!" Hastening to catch up, he shoulders his blade and uses his free hand to push his hair off his forehead, feeling dirt from a near-miss of collapsing boulders grit under his palm.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's a bright golden light moving in a different tunnel to another side, shifting the shadows as it comes around a curve. It's-- Tuxedo Mask, holding a bright gold canister that anyone who knows Rashmi in fights would recognize as hers.

It's Tuxedo Mask, but almost just Mamoru, wearing his formalwear but no gloves, no cape, no mask, no hat... he's dirty and bloody and his jacket's stained with saltwater, his hair's stiff from it, his face is smudged and sticky-- he's filthy, and he's walking with a strangely light step and a distant expression.

For a boy who's usually so grounded and connected, he doesn't seem like he's altogether there.

"Usako," he exhales, voice as strangely weightless as his steps, "you're not hurt. Good. I love you. Hello, Glimmer. Sukiyaki."

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir walked the catacombs, having lost sight of Yellow Pearl Voice in some sort of trap or other waylaid encounter and he was alone again. So he continued on. With his flashlight in one hand, and a handgun in the other, until he came to an area that clearly was not the catacombs anymore. It was creepy. And dangerous. Sometimes, he'd have to shoot a youma rat or two with jets of water.

He dodged some falling dirt, turning his flashlight to the right to encounter....

"Sailor Moon! Tuxedo Kamen! and...people I don't know! Dammit, am I glad to see you guys." he says as he keeps his flashlight up in the dark, though he lowers his weapon.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi did know that tone well, and she flinched, because she was worried too, because they had done this before - no, they had been attacked before, but it had been the same evil and they aren't as strong as then but neither is the enemy and -

"I'm sure they'll protect him. Bow's our friend too. None of us... none of us would do anything to - hey! It's safe, we got rid of all the rats for now!"

This, to the boy who's appeared from nowhere, who she recognizes as one of Chiyo's teammates! She opens her mouth to say something, but then -

She freezes. Stares.

Runs, past Sukiyaki, past Pulp Noir, to throw her arms around Tuxedo Kamen, to draw him close and heavy to her chest, because he's covered in dirt and blood, his hat and his mask and his cape gone, and there's something wrong, something's gone wrong, and -

"I love you too," she says, and, "What happened?"

Anywhere he touches her skin, he'll feel her concern, her love, and the offer of energy, hers to his, to fill him to the brim and recharge.

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon did, in fact, shriek when suddenly there was a guy with a MASSIVE CLEAVER! And she grabbed moon and... "O-oh. Oh. Uhhhh... hiiiiii... there..." she said sheepishly, quickly detaching herself from Moon.

Just in time for the girl to run off and hug her boyfriend. Usako? Who was--

She didn't hear nothin', just him calling for Sailor Moon. Yuuuup. She smiled to Pulp Noir and then... curtsied. "Queen Glimmer of Brightmoon, a pleasure to meet you. I... take it you're another one of Bow's friends?" She did, however, look relieved. All these people coming here must mean that people were getting lost and rejoining all the time. "I swear, I really should have tried to get Riventon to make... something to better figure this stuff out. Bow's tracker pad stuff would probably be great here, if anyone could map this place it'd be him. We... should probably keep going, though. There's no telling what other things are in store here and there's not exactly a lot of good places for us to get good line of sight on people and the last thing we want is to get trapped in a narrow tunnel if we're ambushed."

".... Unless any of you have like... rock... powers? Cause being able to shape the stone and stuff would make this *so much* easier."

Ren Morimoto has posed:
There's a showing of relief on Guardian Sukiyaki's face when Sailor Moon confirms that the rats are taken care of, which overtakes the shock at Glimmer's shriek echoing off the walls. As one might imagine, a big sword is oftentimes not the best weapon for fighting small enemies, especially ones tiny enough to scurry around in the dark.

His reaction time doesn't show any signs of slowing despite his exhaustion, so his eyes track Sailor Moon's running progress as she speeds by him, to hug Tuxedo Kamen. And then another person emerges from the shadows, so Ren gives a quick up-lift of his chin to Pulp Noir in greeting.

"I'm Guardian Sukiyaki... I lost the rest of the Culinary Guardians ages ago, though, so I have no idea what's going on. I've been on my own for..." He falls silent, and shrugs his shoulders. For longer than he knows.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Equalizing energy; it's not despair in him, precisely, but it's a yawning, aching sense of a loss so great it can't be touched. Mamoru loves Sailor Moon back, and he does let some of her energy recharge him, incorporating it the way he can't incorporate the grief, as big as the grief Endymion had when he came to the Moon for the last time--

"Pulp Noir, hello," he says automatically, detached, as he curls himself down to press his dirty face against the top of Usagi's head, breathe her in for a second.

And then there's a hitch in his breath, and he exhales, hot and shaking, and he pushes out the words, "There have been losses. Five I know of so far, and three of theirs."

Their faces flash through the surface of his memory before he says their names, and their names come in a distant litany as Mamoru shies away from the feelings again. "I'm sorry everyone. Daifuku died to save Bow, Bow died to save us all from the one who killed Daifuku. Jadeite died to save me. Rashmi and Chrono died stopping a flood that would have killed everyone in the tunnels."

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir settles and looks as Sailor Moon runs past him and hugs Tuxedo Kamen. He looks a little relived as he looks over to Glimmer. "Pulp Noir. Detective." he says a little more formally, the masked detective giving a little smile, before it disappears into a more serious face.

"Jolly Roger..." he says. "...took the big sleep. Fighting a load of skeletons and closing the passage way behind me and Yellow Pearl Voice." he says a little tersely, still upset about it all.

When he hears Tuxedo Kamen's account he goes a little wide eyed, before his flash light drops downwards. "I...that's horrible." he says. "Jolly. Relayed some of that. Before we encountered the mass of skeletons." he says tersely.

He raises his flashlight again. "Have any of you taken a short rest at all?" he asks. Self Care. Important.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Even before he says it, she knows.

Not the full shape of it, but the scale, because there is a chasm yawning in him, fathomless, a grief so terrible that it calls to the most ragged edges in Serenity's soul, and as he presses his head to hers, she clutches at him, tears already welling up.

Each name is a stab, a choked sob rising in her throat -

"Chiyo-chan."

Chiyo-chan and Bow and Tamakun and Rashmi and Chrono and -
Herulp Noir's terse voice, adding to it. Jolly, taking the big sleep.

It's too much. It's too much, and she understands, in the most fractional of ways, the choices Serenity made, the choices she made, when it came time to wield a sword, but despite the weight of grief, despite the tears rolling down her cheeks, the catch in her throat as she thinks of what there is to say -

She squeezes Tuxedo Kamen tighter.

What cruel irony. She had just said - she had just said -

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon just gave Sukiyaki as comforting a small as she could. Poor thing. This whole thing, admittedly, had her freaked out. But she could teleport out and--

"Losses?" Glimmer asked. And there it was. The casaulty report. Three of them... Three of the DG girls were... And she frowned.

She thought they could... well... she supposed that was the--

".... What?" she asked. "You... can't be serious," Glimmer said, her voice going quiet. The orb of light that had hovered over her flickered a few times. "Bow... no. No no no no. You must have... you must have been mistaken, right? Like... he just got hurt, right? Bow gets hurt all the time, but he's tough. Like, even back home he'd get hurt but he'd never... he never..."

And the look on Tuxedo Kamen's face... told her a lot. As did the look on her face.

"I... I see," she managed to choke out. And she stood up a little straighter. And her fists clenched. And the starts of tears formed in her eyes. "He... he died.... p-protecting people. He died... to keep... others safe. That's... that's who Bow is. That's who... Bow... always..." And she choked on the words, closing her eyes for a moment. Slow, deep breath. And then, in a cold, stable voice, she asked a single question.

"Who?" Her fists at her side clenched, little bursts of light crackling in her hands.

Ren Morimoto has posed:
Here he was, hoping to hear news about his fellow Culinary Guardian. At some point he'll be cursing himself for that, for wanting desperately to know how Chiyo was, because it feels like it's somehow his fault for the wanting.

The news about Daifuku has him going still, too still. Nothing but his eyes, roving over Tuxedo Kamen's face, looking for -- hoping for -- a lie. A mistake. And then, an inward breath, the faintest intake. The click of a throat suddenly gone dry.

"Daifuku-senpai?" he asks, and he sounds lost, like a child who has wandered away from his parents. The tip of his giant cleaver dips downwards nearly to the ground as his grip slackens, but then before it has a chance to impact, the muscles in his arm tense. He nods once.

So many things he's run from. But he can't run from this, so he faces the news head-on, unshed tears glimmering in his eyes as he forces himself to acknowledge the loss. "Okay." That's all he can say. Because words aren't enough to grapple with it. So all he can say is just, "Okay."

Unlike Glimmer, he doesn't ask after Chiyo's killer. Maybe that would make it too real, to associate a name with the act that still feels a little impossible.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
She's like a magnet, pulling him down to the ground, connecting, and he can understand her grief better than his own, it's so big it's so big he can't touch it, like the grief he still can't touch from when he had to leave his mother the Queen fighting, from when he felt her die like he felt Jadeite die--

Rashmi's golden canister's light, partly obscured, is doused as he tucks it into his dimensional pocket with an absent sleight-of-hand. They're all left in a little more dimness, flashlights and Glimmer and the phosphorescent glow of some of the weird crystals growing in the bases of the walls, underlighting the horrible grasping hands and agonized faces...

Mamoru holds Usagi, squeezing her back as tight, trying to be strong for her, failing. Hot silent tears course down the tracks already in the grime and blood on his face.

His voice is unsteady as he answers Glimmer. "There were two there, and one got away. Drie, with gravity powers. The one he took out when he died was Zwei. They both had the demon strengthening them-- enough that when Sharpsong brought her labyrinth in, Drie was able to escape it and run."

He watches Sukiyaki, and exhales. "I'm sorry," he says again, to all of them. I'm sorry for your loss, I'm so, so sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't stop it, even though I know I couldn't... but all that comes out is the contolences, the gut-level pain he shares. "I'm so sorry."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Her grief is a whirlpool, is a vacuum, pulls and pulls and pulls from the core of her but Sailor Moon knows what it will me to give in. Princess Serenity surrendered to it before, and the cost was the rest of those she loved.

Sailor Moon forces herself to breathe, a single hiccupping sob breaking free before she swallows it down, down, down. Her shoulders tremble. Her hands tremble. She releases Mamoru, sliding her hand around his, her glove bursting into ribbons of light and then to nothing, so that his bare hand is clutched in her bare hand.

Her face is wet with tears. Her eyes shine with more.

"We'll take them down," she says, and her voice wavers only because of emotion, not hesitation. "Just like we'll take down Metallia, and Beryl, and every part of this terrible place. We have to f-finish what we started."

She squeezes Tuxedo Kamen's hand.

"We've been going down, this whole time. If we make it to the bottom, we're sure to find her. We just have to keep going. Daifuku-chan and Bow-kun and Jolly-chan and Jadeite and Rashmi-chan and Chrono-kun - they've left it to us."

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon took a long, slow breath. She started walking again. Quicker than she had before. She opened her hand, a little orb of light forming in it, floating up.

"Don't... don't be sorry," Glimmer said. "Not... not your fault. People die in war. Sometimes... sometimes it happens. Sometimes there are people you can't protect. Sometimes... Bow wouldn't want us to... to stop until this was over." Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, how much you fight, how desperate you are to be strong...

Sometimes, you can't. Sometimes, you fail. Sometimes you aren't good enough.

And when she walked past all of them, the tears started to go down her cheeks.

The war was over. It was OVER! Was this the cost? Was this the PRICE?! She didn't... this wasn't what she wanted. This wasn't at all what she wanted.

Drie. Drie. DRIE!

And then she started to run, down the hall, away from them. She'd kill her. SHE'D KILL HER! SHE'D KILL ALL OF THEM!

Ren Morimoto has posed:
Once or twice Ren lifts a hand to swipe at his face, when a tear escapes and manages to tumble down his cheeks. That, more than anything, seems to frustrate him. Would Chiyo cry? Or would she be strong? Stronger than he is.

He has to be strong for her sake, now. For her memory. So he sniffles once, wipes his face a final time, and then squares his shoulders. "Down, then," he says, firming up his grip on his giant cleaver.

Though Glimmer then takes off running, and he hesitates, taking a half-step, before he calls out "Wait!" and darts after her, not wanting anyone to be separated in this place. Not like he was before. His boots slap against the ground as he tries to catch up to Glimmer!

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"They have-- they did," Mamoru says, holding Usagi's hand tight, grimy but telling the truth, the chasm of reckless horrible loss that's the swirling windstorm of grief and shock, "and-- Rashmi tossed me her charge, for Kunzite, so he can have that much more power to hit with. We need-- ohh, Glimmer..."

It's another exhalation, the crying headache a dull thing in his sinuses, throbbing. "She's strong. Let her go. She's bound to find a group, we're all heading down."

It's not that he sounds better, he just sounds so much more present than he did, just from the contact, from the grounding that Usagi's able to give him when he's lost. It's an improvement. Maybe he can make some adjustments to his autopilot while he's with the program. Maybe he can make some adjustments to his soul so he doesn't feel the Mariana Trench of Jadeite's loss while he's trying to fight.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Glimmer runs off, and Sukiyaki chases after her, and Sailor Moon squeezes Tuxedo Kamen's hand, and starts to call out to her -

But what is there to say? Bow is dead, and compared to the enormity of that, any words are just too little, too late. So she doesn't say anything. She just... watches.

They could really use a miracle, right now.

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon was grabbed and stopped. Slowly, she looked back at him. "Don't," she said through gritted teeth. "Stay with your friends. Please. I'll be fine. I just need to be on my own for a bit."

The lines of tears down her face telling how little she needed to be alone right now. But it didn't matter.

Because, in a flash of pink light... she was gone. Leaving them all alone so she could focus on her own broken heart.