858/Now What

Now What
Date of Scene:	06 December 2023
Location:	Obsidian Tower
Synopsis:	Jadeite, Zoisite, and Nephrite discuss next steps after the attack on Hikawa Shrine fails.
Cast of Characters:	Jadeite, Zoisite, Nephrite
Tinyplot:	Midnight Tokyo
Tinyplot2:	Lost & Found

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Jadeite has posed:
    Jadeite hangs out in the hallway outside of his office. He is wearing a business suit, rather than his Shitennou uniform, but he is definitely Jadeite right now, not Jason. There's a difference in demeanor, body language, facial expressions, and overall attitude. Jason may be sarcsatic at times, but he's more playful than mean. Jadeite is mean and then some. He wants to make his enemies hurt. He enjoys it. Further, he is infuriated by the failure to get revenge.

    It is something he has been denied consistently since his awakening.

    Now he wants it more than ever. Zoisite is tough. They probably couldn't have killed him (or so he tells himself), but they still came closer than Jadeite is willing to forgive. Not just for Zoisite's sake, or his own sake, but for Hematite's as well.

    So... He's going to do something about that.

Zoisite has posed:
    Zoisite regenerates. Just one of the many benefits of being chock full of Dark Energy. Though... He has often considered that it sort of feels like things aren't being remade the same as they were before when he heals himself. Like they might be slightly less than human. Thankfully, Zoisite hasn't gotten beaten up much, so he hasn't had to find out if his theory is accurate or not. It's just a feeling. And he was made to believe he wasn't human originally in the first place, so it should just be putting things back in their rightful place, shouldn't it? Returning him to being the youma warrior he's supposed to be.

    "I'm fine." he announces as his form of greeting when he appears in a storm of rose petals in the hallway. He must be if he's going to waste energy on decorative teleporting. He looks mostly fine. He's been cleaned up. There's no visible injuries. He's just greatly weakened. His Dark Energy stores are depleted, and he'll need time to recover them. At least if he goes the normal way instead of forcibly charging himself. But that latter option is rather dangerous, so he'll probably just wait it out.

    He doesn't bother leaning against the wall like Jadeite, and instead just says, "Let's go in, please."

Nephrite has posed:
    Nephrite gets off the elevator and walks to join the others. He shows up just as Zoisite is asking to head inside, so adds his agreement. "Not the hallway to be having delicate discussions in. And your office is probably very secure, yes?" he asks.

Jadeite has posed:
    Rolling his eyes as though this is a huge imposition and not literally what he was going to do regardless, he nonetheless, perhaps out of compassion for a clearly debilitated co-worker, doesn't protest. Jadeite just turns and opens the door to his office, and invites the other two in by dint of not telling them to get lost. The more passive-aggressive and indirect Jadeite can be about things, the more it's clear that it's really him in there. His avoidance tendencies, projection, and displacement are where he dumped most of his skill points, it seems like.

    Plopping down behind his desk, in his comfortable chair, because he's not that accommodating, he gestures at the soft leather sofa and the guest chair on the opposite side from him.

    He even does the others the courtesy of letting them get settled before starting in on them. Also, you can damn well bet his office is secure. The door shuts on its own, locks, and seals with some sort of self-inflating rubber glue or expanding leather foam or something. Harder to force than steel, but far easier to replace.

    "So, what exactly the hells happened last night?" Jadeite asks pointedly. This may seem uncommonly direct of him, but if he's being so forward he is no doubt thinking about something else entirely and saying something completely different from what he wants to say.

Zoisite has posed:
    Zoisite flops down on the couch as soon as he gets near it, sprawling out, and having no problem taking up as much space as possible despite being the smallest of the Shitennou. "Followed the plan. Attacked one of the shrines. Everything was going great until all the Sailor Senshi showed up out of nowhere, and some bonus brats to boot." Zoisite leans back and closes his eyes. "We need to figure out who the spy is. There's no way they aren't getting information leaked to them."

Nephrite has posed:
    Nephrite leans against the wall of the office in a corner rather than sitting on the chair or couch, because fuck you, that's why. He folds his arms and listens to the summary. He's frowning, but he isn't as upset as one would assume. "Did you inscribe the glyph at least?" Priorities.

Jadeite has posed:
    Jadeite frowns. The plaque on his door and desk may say 'Jason Dite', but he is definitively Jadeite in his head. More and more, he doesn't even see a reason to revert to being a mere mortal ever again. Why make himself vulnerable? That's foolish. The sort of thing a human would do. And though he may have been cursed by birth with a human body, by Metallia's grace he'll one day be returned to his proper state. So the talk of spies and information leaks is decidedly not to his liking.

    "So there's actually a spy? Wasn't that theory tossed out? I thought it was just Inai somehow getting ahold of... Ah. I see." Yeah. Where did she get that information from? "Who has been involved on our side?" he asks, as his fingers fly across his keyboard, bringing up mission-critical information disguised as boring business documents.

Zoisite has posed:
    "No." is Zoisite's answer. "I didn't get to finish. And Hematite wasted the opportunity to do so by trying to rescue me. Not that I'm opposed to being rescued, but this was a critical piece in your plan, wasn't it, Nephrite?" Zoisite rubs his forehead. "He should have finished. Or at least gone back to do the job after making sure the place was empty. Maybe at night. Fuck, I should do that." He sits up, and begins to stand.

    "Yes, there's been far too much info getting out to the Enemy. Even if Inai diseminated the intel, she got it from somewhere and someone." Zoisite considers who has actually been involved on their own side. It's a short list, thankfully. "Everyone in this room, Hematite, Pyrite, Riventon, Firefly..."

Nephrite has posed:
    "La Crima," Nephrite supplies. He sighs. "Yes, Midnight Tokyo was leaked shortly after the meeting where I presented it. Still unknown who. I strongly suspected Pyrite, but I've not had any evidence to support that after the whole thing with my house getting destroyed." He frowns thoughtfully. "...Though she has never actually been cleared. It just stopped being a subject of investigation because of everything else going on at the time." Very convenient, that.

    Shaking his head, the Second of the Four says, "La Crima is the only one I can think of who was actually on-site and actively engaging in fighting who wasn't one of us, or a youma." He looks towards Jadeite, to see if he can think of anyone on his end.

Jadeite has posed:
    Jadeite pauses in his typing, and rubs the bridge of his nose as he closes weary eyes. "Is there anyone outside the three of us who we are confident isn't actually a traitor?" he asks. "That may be a more important question to ask than trying to narrow down who is a spy. Because I am increasingly feeling like we're the only ones who have ever given a damn."

    Opening his eyes, Jadeite stares at the screen, and the thousands of megabytes of data on just one part of the project. "I hear Pyrite is trapped in a shrine or something. Hematite has been going insane over it. But he doesn't seem as stressed or frantic as he should be." Jadeite scowls. Suspicion is a terrible thing. It poisons the mind.

    And the whispers that replaced his own sub-conscious long ago assure him that he should view every situation with paranoid caution. He glances at each of his fellow Shitennou casually, to see their reactions.

    "Sit down, Zoisite. There are other candidates in that area. That was just the best one."

Zoisite has posed:
    Zoisite flips off Jadeite. "But that one was MY assignment. I'm not going to be the only one of us to fail. What about to the north? Isn't there one in that section? I'm making a play there soon. Professor Izono is doing an interview about the Silver Crystal, and that's a lead that nobody can pass up." he says with a grin.

    Zoisite is careful not to state his supicions about who might or might not be a traitor. He is as suspicious as Jadeite, but much more careful about showing it.

Nephrite has posed:
    Nephrite closes his eyes as well, not to help him remember the candidates but just to filter out sensory input while he thinks. "Crystal Tower is the strongest candidate in that area. Hematite can take the other one. Just get the tower, and I'll figure out the Hikawa replacement. It might not have been the best candidate in that sector after all." Though he certainly hopes it won't come to it, there is another Shrine of sufficient spiritual power, Hematite will already be on-site, and they have an ally embedded in the shrine who may be able to do something from deep enough underground that it can't be undone.

    "I want to consult with Hematite first though. If there's another option, I'd rather take that one."

Jadeite has posed:
    Jadeite pushes his chair back and stands up to stretch. "I'm going to go see about gathering intel from non-traditional sources. Maybe run some distractions to throw the hounds off the scent. I don't much like the feeling of being hunted. It might be time to remind the Enemy that they are our prey, not the other way around."

    Placing hands on the back of his chair as he moves behind it, Jadeite looks at Nephrite carefully. "Are you sure you should include him?"

Zoisite has posed:
    "Two birds, one crystal. Or something. It sounded smarter in my head. Gods, I'm tired." Zoisite flops dramatically back against the sofa, deciding to take Jadeite's advice and just recuperate. Physical injuries can't be healed if he has no more Dark Energy left to fuel the regeneration with. And he spent a lot of it recovering from Hikawa already. He could forcibly replace what he has expended, but he knows that when he does that he can feel things changing inside of him. He feels a bit more youma and a lot less human each time.

    That should be good news, but for some reason it isn't.

    He can't think of why though.

    "Let's be honest, if we can't trust Hematite, then we're all fucked no matter what we do or don't do. We need to strengthen our positions right now, so that if the Kingdom falls, or Her Majesty falls, or even Abyss-cursed Metallia falls, it will still be us standing in the end. I don't care if we have to burn the entire universe to a cinder. It's us that I'm prioritizing."

Nephrite has posed:
    Nephrite, like Zoisite, like Jadeite, just looks tired more than anything else. They're almost done with the first stage. If they can just complete this, then everything afterwards will be so much easier. Despite being fraught with complications, betrayals, delays, and interference, they STILL have almost finished the first stage of Midnight Tokyo. Even if he has been doing what he can to slow it down himself, Nephrite cannot deny that he wants to finish this work he set out to complete.

    He needs to see it through to the end, whatever end that might be. If he can just cross this last bridge...

    He gets out his phone, looking at messages from Naru, Mamoru, Hematite, even an old one from Himeko. Or he assumes it's old, anyway, given her current predicament, even if the message seems creepily relevant to the situation.

    "We'll make it, Zoisite, Jadeite. I'll contact him soon, and see how he's doing, and float the idea to him. I just want to wait until he gets Pyrite to safety, otherwise his attention and priorities will be split, and we need him focused. He's our leader. It's his duty to be on-task even when we lag behind." Nephrite begins typing on his phone, to send a text. "And Jadeite?" he says as he looks up with his stormy blue eyes. "Don't try to use Naru. It's not worth it." 'And I don't want to have to kill you.' he adds on silently.