1534/Days of Our Outers Episode 1534: Don't Let Her Nail It To My Door

Days of Our Outers Episode 1534: Don't Let Her Nail It To My Door
Date of Scene:	10 May 2024
Location:	Casa del Outers
Synopsis:	Mamoru comes to the Casa to offload some of the chocolate he's nearly swimming in. Discussions about the ongoing strain between Usagi and the Outers happen.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Setsuna Meiou
Tinyplot:	We Got The Beef

---

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's something like a week after the earth-shattering kaboom of Senshifight: 2024, and it's the day after Setsuna and Mamoru got DT into a state of 'more than just barely alive and actually will recover fully if they are not really dumb about it'--

--and Mamoru is at the back door of the Casa del Outers, just having dropped his henshin, carrying a tote bag. It's enough after school that Setsuna would be home, but enough before dinner that she won't be too pressed to get on with that. He's wearing his favorite UNMASK aLIVE t-shirt, black with a white printed design on it, and a white short-sleeved button-down shirt loosely thrown on over it, unbuttoned-- it's over jeans and dress shoes, because that's how he's rolling today. His glasses are clean but his hair is a little messy.

There's no tension in his stance, and his face isn't neutral or schooled or anything, he's just... normal, when he knocks.

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
At the knock on the BACK door, Setsuna blinks from where she'd been flopped across the couch. Frowning and a bit confused, she gets up and pads through the kitchen, down the short stretch of hall to where the back door connects and opens it up to see Mamoru.

As is usual for the woman when she's bombing around the house, she's one of her oversized t-shirt/one piece dress things.

This one has a line drawing of a cat 'standing' on it's back legs and has the captions:
     'Look Im A Hooman'
    'Dur Dur Dur'

She stands there for a moment, tilting her head, then she steps aside to indicate invitation inside as she says, "...pretty sure I recall giving you explicit permission to come in whenever you wanted...you didn't need to knock."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru gives Setsuna a lopsided grin. "Habit, sorry. I even knock on Kazuo's dorm room door," he says, coming in and slipping his shoes off. He presents the bag as soon as his (argyle!!!) socks are visible, and he explains, "These are your part of the spoils of war, as it were. They're from Ginga Kingu, who wants to fund our Mahou MSF and I told him chocolate."

A pause. He closes his eyes. "There is so. Much. Chocolate."

In the bag there are two big boxes: one is an assortment of artisan chocolates from luxury producers originating in Ecuador, Dubai, and Taiwan. The products range from chocolates filled with nougat to ganache to fruit filling to assorted nuts, topped with flaky salt, leaf gold, and more, certified fair trade.

The other box is a Japanese specialty brand, fancy candies of the sort that are highly sought after on romantic holidays like Valentine's, White Day, and Christmas Eve. There are also a couple of fair trade chocolate bars, one dark and one milk, with almonds in one and raspberry filling in the other.

"I also-- I don't have a message from Usagi, but I can tell you she's working on how to put things, because there are a number of points she needs to make. She wants everything to be cleared up between you all." A beat. "I'm not mad, myself."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Setsuna leads Mamoru into the kitchen.

There is, by now, a new butcher's block on the island.

Michiru replaced the broken one days ago.

She waves at the island top, then walks over to the fridge, gets a pair of bottles of ramune, then hands one to Mamoru. It's pineapple flavor.

The largesse of chocolate that gets laid out when she turns around gets a pause and a blink from the woman of the house, and she gets a bit of a complicated look as she stares at it.

During which, she pops the marble on her bottle, takes a pull, then sighs, "...well, on the one hand, part of me isn't sure how to feel about taking chocolate from someone who just shattered a poor girl..."

There's a beat, then she goes on, "...on the other hand, not taking it at this point would mean throwing it out, and I'm fairly certain on some level that might be an actual CRIME."

Another beat, "...or if it isn't, it SHOULD be."

Finally, she sighs, "...eh. I guess I'll take them. I live with three other women, after all. I'm certain it won't last long."

She waves to one of the island chairs, then sits down across from it, and sighs, "I do too. Frankly, I did make some mistakes...but I think I also inadvertantly stepped on a land mine."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Laying the chocolate down on the counter, Mamoru takes a seat as directed, then pops the marble on his own bottle of ramune. Seems that word's gotten out that pineapple's his favorite -- that or he's just lucky.

At Setsuna's complicated look and 'poor girl', Mamoru squints a little bit and lifts his hand to make a 'so-so' gesture. "Ehh, it was a strike calibrated to put a dent in Sunbreaker and take out a big youma. They -- Double Trouble, the lizard person in question -- are a shapeshifter, and were disguised as Sunbreaker, and pulling out youmas and claiming one he'd already killed as his own, while there was a group of children really close by. So it wasn't actually his fault. I told him he wasn't even the one who asked for DT to be healed, and he said he knew, but he'd like to encourage us to keep doing what we're doing."

He sips his own ramune, savoring it a little before swallowing, and then he thinks about what to say about the fight. Instead he says, "But yes, throwing it out would absolutely be a crime."

He's still thinking. He didn't come prepared with anything to say, but he knows perfectly well what points Usagi's been laboring over phrasing for, and knows exactly how much he doesn't want to speak for her without her asking him to--

"She didn't ask me to speak for her, so I'm not going to," he finally says. "But knowing what landmine you think you may have stepped on might help. It's a really multilayered and nuanced set of interlaced problems, which is why it's taking a while."

A beat, and then Mamoru asks hopefully, "You wouldn't be willing to write letters over it, would you? I mean, if you are, I can ask her if she wants to just give you her 95 Theses."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Setsuna frowns, then sighs and nods, "Fair. Fair. Context *IS* important, after all."

As Mamoru asks her about things, she tilts her head again, then snorts when Mamoru makes the classical reference, "Pretty sure Martin wasn't thinking that precisely through when he wrote those down."

She shrugs, "He seemed pretty angry, after all."

A frown, then she taps her lips, "...granted, he was pretty angry ALL the time back then..."

Finally she shrugs again, "Well, at least ONE of them was that she said Firefly worked for Riventon who works for Beryl now? Which is news to ME."

She waves a hand absently, "...and with what we'd all just been through, anything that touches on THAT bint's name was going to be a sore point."

After a moment, she leans back on her chair and rubs her face in her hands, "...and...well...I just never IMAGINED her reaction would be that bad. Early on, right after Hotaru moved in, Rashmi dropped by...and apparently Nicomachea let her know Luminous Titan was here...so that was Hotaru being Firefly revealed to her."

Setsuna takes a deep breath, and she smiles softly at the memory of that day, "...and she reacted so WELL...so UNDERSTANDING about the whole situation...especially since Hotaru was so BRIGHT and HAPPY and KIND once she was here."

She looks up at Mamoru, "She used to have to come into the infirmary pretty often because she was in such poor health due to what's happened to her. Away from that madhouse? She's been fine."

A hand is reached up so Setsuna can pinch the bridge of her nose, "...so I just could not IMAGINE Usagi...the girl possessed of the most kind, loving, and forgiving soul I have EVER KNOWN...would react any worse."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"She's still angry," Mamoru says apologetically at the comparison with Martin Luther, "but she's not planning on sending you the really really really angry version. Distillation isn't complete, and products may further settle during shipping."

He takes another pull on his ramune and looks contemplative, brows faintly knit -- not a frown, just pensive. "Riventon is my contact at Obsidian-- I mean, he's my brother in all but blood. When my Shitennou and I left, there was a void, and Riventon hadn't actually understood how bad Beryl was until well after he decided to take her offer for better funding if he worked for her division. So technically he works for her, but he doesn't want her to have anything she wants. Usako, understandably, doesn't really put much faith in his ability to say no to Beryl under duress. It's just, Hotaru's one of the few people Riventon actually cares about."

He exhales and puts his bottle down, with a double clink because of the marble, and he puts his elbows on the counter, lacing his fingers under his chin for a moment. Then he just crosses his arms and says, more quietly, "So -- all that is to say, that's not nearly as big a part of the problem as you might think. Usagi's very kind, loving, and forgiving -- but there's a lot going on in this one.

"Hotaru may have been sweet and nice to Usa the few times they interacted, but her experiences of Firefly are very different from Rashmi's. They've been very, very negative. Rashmi wasn't there, for example, when Firefly killed the two Obsidian girls, and that's just one incident. Just one. There's a lot."

He looks uncomfortable and unhappy. "I've had different experiences of both Hotaru and Firefly than Usako. I know how badly she hurts, physically. She told me things in confidence, which even if you probably already know them, I can't tell you -- but they don't excuse her behavior as Firefly. Neither does the influence of dark energy -- I've had to apologize to a lot of people for my own behavior when I was with Obsidian. It doesn't make you do things, it just makes bad things seem like better ideas, it just amplifies negative things that are already there. Usa's perception of Firefly is radically different from Rashmi's. That's a much bigger problem than Riventon working for Beryl."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Setsuna leans forward and props her hand on her chin, arching an eyebrow at Mamoru, "Well, if Riventon is working for Beryl now...that's news to me...which is, as I said, the landmine I stepped on."

She sighs, "As for Hotaru? I was at that fight, too. I saw how it went down. I saw those two bragging they were going to kill us all and moving to do just that. I saw one grab Firefly...and I'm pretty sure that's what set whatever's in her off."

She waves a hand, "Not the least reason being that Luminous Titan's default setting is and always has been 'nonlethal', and two, Firefly just didn't have that kind of power to throw around."

She rubs her face again, "...Look, I'll do whatever you think will help. You're far closer to Usagi and know her better than I do...but if you can do me a favor? At some point maybe remind her that that girl is more machine than meat, is TWELVE, has been slowly dying for years AND KNOWS IT, grew up around the people at OBSIDIAN who, with a few notable exceptions, are HORRIBLE people.."

An acknowleging nod goes towards Mamoru as one of those NOT HORRIBLE people, "...and somehow she STILL managed to be a girl who was ecstatic to finally be working for the side of light."

She sighs and covers her face in her hands, "...a girl who was TERRIFIED of me when I wandered in one morning in my fuku beause she was convinced that Sailor Moon hated her...and I told her that that COULDN'T be the case."

She heaves another sigh, then looks at Mamoru before frowning...and looking over at the chocolate.

After a moment, she picks through the offerings until she lights one a gourmet candy bar of some kind...which she snags and starts eating in a way that's distinctly a bit angry, "...okay, this was a good idea. Because this whole thing puts me in a terrible mood because I know there's problems all around, that I'm responsible for at least some of them...and there's literally nothing constructive I can DO about it now."

She takes an angry bite, "...waiting for things to heal has always been the part of medicine I hated the MOST."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Riventon working for Beryl was not a landmine you stepped on," Mamoru says, shaking his head. "It was, in all likelihood, just one more thing to throw up her hands about. I don't think that even made it onto the list she's been working on. And... getting stabbed repeatedly with a nonlethal knife you don't necessarily know is nonlethal still really hurts. And you can absolutely still try to kill someone with a rubber knife, you just won't get very far."

Then he finishes off his fortifying ramune, takes off his glasses, and rubs the bridge of his nose. "She's twelve. She's like... two and a half years younger than Usa. She had a terrible childhood. I had a childhood terrible enough that leaving the orphanage with Beryl when I was thirteen seemed like a good idea. I have always been able to feel what other people feel when they touch me; you might notice I don't touch often-- I don't like feeling it when people who were friendly are suddenly afraid of me because veil or not they know I'm different. I was in Obsidian, as a Dark General, for two and a half years-- and even when Usa first met me, I never once tried to hurt her. I tried not to hurt people.

"Someday I'll tell you about Global Help, the call center subdivision I ran. I beat myself up for years over a lieutenant of mine that died on my watch, fighting Sailor V-- I saw the security cams, she was trying to save him and he let go. I was just barely 14 and one of my people died on my watch. I held myself responsible-- and I continue to hold myself responsible for every wrong I did when I was in Obsidian.

"We are all kids, Meiou-san. Playing the 'she's small and hurting and dying and was surrounded by horrible people' card will do the opposite of help her case with Usagi. Hotaru taking responsibility for her actions might help a bit, but you're right -- that part would need to wait."

He sighs and puts his glasses back on, and his blue eyes are tired in a way his body language is not. "There's not... I'm afraid I do know her better than you, and I can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that she needs the kind of time and space that you're not the Senshi of. It might actually help to turn the argument into correspondence because then the two of you would be able to have a... a--"

He snaps his fingers. "I can't think of the word, but you'd be able to see all of each other's arguments and craft responses and edit them into not inferno rage towers. Does that make sense? And it wouldn't be between messengers, where words can get left out and ideas accidentally misrepresented." A beat. "Can I text her and see if she'd be willing to do that? Would you be willing to do that?"

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Setsuna finishes her chocolate bar, then balls the wrapper up and tosses it into the trash can, "I'm not saying 'she's twelve' as some kind of excuse. I'm saying 'she's twelve and this is all she's ever known so maybe take that into account'. And to the best of my knowledge Usagi-san has had precisely zero interactions with her since she left Obsidian. She's being better. She's even trying to make amends...in her own, peculiar way."

She shifts back in her seat a little, "...and one day, hopefully soon, we're going to try to start untying the knot of nonsense and terrible ideas that your 'brother in all but blood' has both intentionally and unintentionally built in that girl's head. Because, yes, I do think Hotaru should take responsibility for what SHE has done...but I don't think she should be accused of what OTHERS have done TO her."

She waves a hand, "Look, Mamoru-san...I'm sorry you got caught up in this. I'm sorry everyone ELSE got caught up in this."

Sesuna shakes her head, then props her elbows on the counter and covers her face with her hands for a few moments...then finally she says in a lower, slightly exhausted voice, "...yeah...just...just have her send me a letter...just don't let her nail it on my door, okay? The last time that kind of thing happened, it led to the a good chunk of the middle of Europe being turned into a war torn battlefield on and off for a few hundred years."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I'm sorry things are messy, but I promise they'll get better, Setsuna-san," says Mamoru, picking up his bottle and standing up. He regards her for a moment, and his expression is still apologetic, but it's affectionate, too. "I won't let her nail it to your door."

He puts his bottle in the same place Setsuna's went, then says more quietly, "Thanks again for helping me the other day. I was in way over my head -- I hadn't dealt with physical trauma that bad since the peacekeeping campaigns in the West, and I wasn't the one doing the triage."

He looks at his hands, then just drops them, and he bows a farewell as he heads for the door. "And thanks for the ramune!"

He, after all, is a kid too.