162/I Committed Teamwork!

I Committed Teamwork!
Date of Scene:	27 July 2023
Location:	Soryuu Shrine
Synopsis:	CW: Horror, blood, self-harm, past animal death. Hematite and Pyrite have a cheery post-battle check-in! They talk about friends, killing, monsters, and ducky swimsuits.
Cast of Characters:	Pyrite, Mamoru Chiba

---

Pyrite has posed:
    The ward that the city has forgotten, that used to be connected to Juuban Ward, is long dead. Overgrown. Abandoned. The houses stand tenantless, like empty graves. The name is strangely difficult to locate in any official documents. It's not as though its existence has been covered up, but it's just... Half-known, like a story one heard somewhere but hasn't thought about since the first time the story was told. There used to be people living here. A quiet ward, made up mostly of families, with a stretch up on the hill by a shrine where the elderly mainly lived. Children would play. Old love birds would walk along the road that passed by the temple steps. Families would head into Juuban when they needed something from a larger part of the city, with more commercial options.
    And then there weren't.
    It wasn't instantaneous. Just... Something happened. Something no one can remember.
    Afterwards, those living here went off somewhere. Moving out, or just leaving without being seen.
    It is even more abandoned these days. There's life still, but it's the life of nature unrestrained, absent of human interference. Everywhere except the vicinity of the shrine.
    From the moment one stands at the base of the steps carved into the hill that slopes upwards, lined with black-barked trees, an ominous air weighs down on normal people. A chill wild that cuts straight to the bone may pass through. Things may be heard moving underbrush. But, unlike in the rest of the neighborhood, nature is what is beaten back here. It's like the shrine at the top of the steps was the epicenter of something exploding.
    Instead of a crater, it's just blight and death radiating outwards, cutting rot and sterility into the land in long black, jagged stripes.
    A fight took place here, comparatively recently. Over a month ago, but still more recent than the death that hangs over everything.
    No sign of trouble now though.
    No sign of anything that could be mistaken for life.
    Just a carpet of dead cicadas on the path through the low wall that surrounds the temple grounds themselves, crunching underfoot if walked upon.
    Also, a pair of yellow eyes that peek out of the shadows sometimes, at the rare visitor, whether they can see him or not.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's at least one Dark General attached to 'Beryl Holdings' that prefers to fly if he doesn't have to walk, and since he doesn't like crunching dead cicadas underfoot, he floats up the path through the burnt and salted earth, past the blackened trees and the shifting and not-quite-chittering underbrush, bathing in the oppressive air and the chill wind like they're a terrible relief.

Hematite may not have a death wish, but he's certainly comfortable with it, like he's been living with it in the back of his heart for a long, long time.

He doesn't notice the yellow eyes, which is a pity. He loves cats.

"Py-tan? ...Himeko?" he calls out softly, his voice hushed -- a month ago he was only silent or loud, grim and determined, but now he can afford this place the affectionate reverence it deserves. He can afford his shadow the heart-in-his-throat concern he couldn't let show moments ago. "Are you all right?"

Pyrite has posed:
    Pyrite appears, still in her Shitennou uniform, very quickly after being called. Not necessarily like she was waiting to be called, but like she just figured out where to show up. She is splattered liberally with dark-red blood, but the crimson fluid is rapidly turning into black splotches that more resemble smeared ashes than life's liquid. She smiles broadly at Hematite and waves a blade-tooth half as long as she is tall in one hand, the other hand grasping one of her swords.
    "Welcome, Hematite-senpai! Did you see?" she asks excitedly, and then lowers her voice to a conspiratorial tone. "I committed teamwork!" She says this in the same manner as someone confessing to shoplifting candybars from the local store. Then she tilts her head. "And the hole. I tore it in reverse, so it became a not-hole."
    She emerges from behind Hematite without actually disappearing from where she was standing in front of him. Her arms loop around his waist as she hugs him. "I ate the creature, and stole its tooth, and now the magical girls will fear and respect you. None shall challenged Hematite-senpai and Pyrite! But I hope they do anyway, so that I can eat them too."
    She giggles like a little girl talking about how much she likes puppies as she envisions gutting girls barely older than her and drinking their pain before eating their souls.
    Oh, also, the Pyrite who was holding the tooth-blade and waving a sword around is gone now, that is a thing that happened.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Anything that might seem like not the best of ideas on a normal day for this boy, well, ideations of family + dark energy = forgiving and accepting an awful lot.

There's a brief moment of alarm at the blood-spatters, but they disintegrate into something like ash-smudges quickly enough that Hematite reckons the odds pretty low that it's either Pyrite 'blood' or human blood-- and he grins in honest delight at Himeko's enthusiasm and excitement.

"I did see! I'm so proud of you! And that was so very clever of you-- I was worried about that hole, I'm so glad you were able to figure out how to fix it!" He hugs the arms around his waist reflexively before realizing Himeko is still in front of him, and instinctively looks down-- but they're definitely her arms, so he laughs.

"I was wondering if you'd get a tooth! It's big enough you can use it as a knife if you want, too, isn't it?"

When the Pyrite in front of him isn't in front of him anymore, he pats her arms and says affectionately, "If they do challenge us after that, you can scare them terribly and drink their fear, but don't eat them -- they're too useful, and besides, they're full of the kind of light that hurts you. Do you remember what Sailor Moon did with the rose, and how it turned into bright light and went right through the monster you ate? I don't want that kind of energy to eat you from the inside out."

Pyrite has posed:
    Pyrite's swings and piorettes, spinning in the air like an olympic ice skater, before coming to a stop on the broken stones that used to be a pathway before Himeko's old self and Hematite fought on these very grounds. Her arms are behind her back as she leans forward, smiling but looking thoughtful. "Hmm... Did that happen?" Red eyes roll upwards as she tries to remember what is being described. She seems to lose her train of thought and change subjects as she straightens up and claps her hands together in front of her. "Oh, you are worried about the rose. It did not hit me. See?"
    She swirls her cape in front of herself, holding it half-obscuring her body at about the mid-way point. Everything below that point is gone, so it's just her upper body in the air like it's totally normal.
    "Humans are bound by fixed forms, so they do not think about the possibility that their enemies are not! They expect things to proceed according to their experiences instead of having a flexible view of things. They are destined to be wiped out if they continue such folly!" Pyrite spins again, her cape covering her the rest of the way but vanishing into thin air along with her.
    "Oh, you were not hurt, were you, Hematite-senpai?" she asks while tilting her head and sitting on the porch-like area outside the shrine itself. The ghostly black cat jumps up onto her lap with moments, and loafs there, while keeping a curious eye on the rare visitor.
    "Did you want to lick up the blood, Shiro? So sorry. I am eating it to obtain more flesh, so it is being drained of life. It would not taste very Meow."
    Shiro meows at her in response.
    "Meow!"
    Myyaaa!
    "No, no. Say it like this: Mee-ow!" she scolds.
    The cat just stares up at her uncomprehendingly.
    Pyrite sighs as her gloved hand goes to stroke over her cat's back. "The Usagi has a cat. Perhaps I will take that one so Shiro has another to keep him company."
    She smiles down at her ghost-kitty, then looks up at Hematite, seemingly just remembering he's there. Being home, in Her place, has her falling into her ghostly routines more easily. "You aren't hurt, right? I can retrieve life force for you. Maybe blood of the enemy will restore you faster...!" she starts while scooping Shiro into her arms and starting to stand.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I see! I was initially worried that the rose hit you, yes, but I see that you're only missing half of you," Hematite says wryly, starting to walk around the ghost. It's a slow walk, making a show of examining what Himeko shows him, then nodding gravely.

Then, "That's why I came here instead of checking at work first. I thought you might have come here to recover," he explains -- and then laughs. "Humans are adaptable, it just takes them longer because of those fixed forms. Sometimes it takes generations, or centuries, or millennia. But you're right: if humans couldn't adapt, they would already be gone."

He comes around to sit next to Pyrite and her ghost-kitty, tilting his head a little to watch with a slightly preoccupied smile. He focuses. "No, I wasn't hurt. We were out of the blast zone, and then you were so quick and deft that you committed teamwork and killed the youma before it could even think of trying to hurt me. Besides, I'm pretty strong, remember?" It sounds a little like teasing, but only a little. And then he shakes his head. "It would make Usagi sad if you took her cat, like it would make you sad if someone were able to take Shiro. If Shiro needs company, I-- I'm sure you can find him a different friend, one that has no human to care for it."

He doessn't really want to think about that. He's comfortable with death, with the already-dead, with the possibility of his own death -- maybe he does have a death wish. Maybe he does. He doesn't think he does. He doesn't want anyone else to die, just for things to be different from how they are now. He doesn't want to think about Himeko making Shiro a friend.

"I really am all right, I could fix myself if I were hurt, Py-tan."

Pyrite has posed:
    Pyrite 'hmmmm's noncommitally at Hematite's continued insistence that killing the only people who are actually a threat -- as far as she can tell -- doesn't push the point. She does tilt her a bit at Hematite next to her, her eyes wide, and innocent, her face totally devoid of emotion, as she says a bit naively, "But I took Shiro first." She hooks her arms under his cat... leg... pits... And hoists him up to dangle him in front of Hematite. "Hora, hora!" she insists as she sways the ghost feline back and forth.
    For his part, Shiro does not seem terribly bothered. There's also a small black mark on his belly. Well, not a mark. A hole. A bloodless one. "That is where the knife went in!" she explains like a child lecturing her sibling on what each of the squiggles on her nonsense drawing means. Both significant, and not, at the same time. It matters in that she made it, but she has no investment in the act itself.
    She lets Shiro go, and he drops to the floorboards silently, and his gone by the time he circles his way around the back of Pyrite's seat. She kicks her legs back and forth as she sits on the edge of the porch area, just dangling them in the air and swining for the sake of it. Perhaps trying to act more like a human child.
    "Okay." she says finally. "The Usagi's cat will stay with her, and the Magical Girls will not be eaten. Not until you say so, Senpai." Then she smiles brightly up at him, as her attire and comportment both shift like a twitch in reality to Himeko Soryuu. "Did you pick a good bathing suit for me?" she asks with her faint smile, squinting her eyes a bit in happiness.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's not quite anxiety, the feeling that something is slipping away from him, but it's there every time he's alone with Pyrite. With Himeko. It's a feeling that's present all of the time, actually, it's just there more with her. Something precious is going to leave, something true is going to prove false, something safe is going to turn out to be the worst of losses. Hematite can't put a name to it, he can't even identify it as separate from the way he feels all the time--

--it's just worry, isn't it? He worries. He's concerned that everything should go correctly, that everything is at a careful balance and mustn't tip too far to either side. Everyone at Obsidian knows that Hematite is friendly, that he doesn't backstab without reason, that he's meticulous about whatever is serious to him-- it's just more of that, isn't it? It's just concern.

(Where the knife went in.)

There's the faintest of white echoes around his white glove as Hematite reaches to offer his hand to the ghost cat to sniff, once Himeko puts him down. It's like the haze around overexposure, the corona around an eclipsed sun; it's nothing to worry about. It's what's always there if he wants to physically interact with a ghost that isn't Himeko.

"I texted Usagi for a good place to look for a bathing suit with ducks, because I thought she would know," he says with a little smile, conspiratorial, like they're getting away with something. "She texted back that there's a place in Juuban where we can get one for you. We'll definitely have it in time for you to go swimming with the people that befriended you."

Pyrite has posed:
    Himeko nods along as she listens to Hematite. Shiro headbutts the hang rippling with white rings without actually becoming visible again. But there's audible purring. "Only one." she clarifies without taking her gaze away from the unseen cat but raising an eyebrow in confusion. "Only Usagi made friends. Only one there besides me." Then she pauses as if to double-check what she just said inside of her head. "...Hotaru was there too. But not a friend." Apparently everyone else was super forgettable.
    Or her ghostly form, memories itself, loses information over time as she tries to reassert herself. However, bit by bit, the more of a simulated living body she assembles, the information seems to be sticking a little longer each time. "Okay. We can go. Usagi was also at the battle. Perhaps she has fresh wounds." the black-haired girl says comfortingly as she reaches out to pat pat Hematite's arm. "It will make her easier to track." Greaaaat. A little sister who can track by the scent of blood. Exactly what Hematite has always wished forrrrrr...
    She stands up, and hops down onto the broken path. Then she bounces on her heels a bit, turns back and forth in place, and finishes by winding her arms in circles on either side. She appears to be satisfied. "I am more complete now. I have more sensation in my limbs. I move more easily. And I'm stronger too!" she chirps with a smile on her face. She pulls up the sleeve of her uniform and looks at her pale arm for a few seconds.
    Then she chomps down on it hard, puncturing her flesh, while growling slightly in the back of her throat. Double-you tee eff!?

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Hematite laughs quietly, scritching the invisible purring ghost-cat under the jaw and watching Himeko. "Well, Usagi and Hotaru, then. And Hotaru might become a friend as well, especially if she's that memorable," he tells her.

He doesn't get up yet, still sitting half-folded on the blackened and death-scorched porch, still petting the sensation of a kitty. Nope. Instead, he blinks when Himeko pats his arm, and he grins lopsidedly. "We don't need to find her, I know where she lives, it's okay. Besides, she can't teleport like we can, so she's not anywhere near the store she texted back about. We can go, just the two of us."

Then he stands up, brushing off his cape and dusting his hands together to clear his gloves; the aura around his hands has dissipated. "Excellent," he tells Himeko in satisfaction at her news--

--and then she bites her own arm hard enough to draw blood and growls, and he stares for a second before bursting out laughing. "Himeko-chan! Don't forget to fix that before we go to the store, and don't forget-- that is not something a human girl would do without an awful lot of fuss, so don't do it in front of anyone else, no matter how tempting."

Pyrite has posed:
    Himeko keeps biting for a few more seconds, and then pulls her teeth free, with some resistance against her flesh. There are just empty holes where her teeth bit through. She looks disappointed. "I still have no blood." She does lick her gums and teeth experimentally though. "I have saliva though!" She turns to look at Hematite as he laughs. She tilts her head. "Fix it?" she mutters in confusion, but nods to the instruction not to do it in front of others.
    "You can go ahead of me. I will stay back while I... 'Fix it'." she says with audible air quotes. Since when is healing something dead people can do? Well, she'll figure it out. Maybe there's something around here with the right sympathetic connection that wrapping it around the injury will... Fix it. Somehow.
    She gestures with her other hand, and leaves dry as mummy-flesh that dissolve into dust the moment the supernatural breeze catches them turn into a trail of decay that directs Hematite out of the temple grounds and back to the stairs. Or he can teleport if he wishes. It's not like she can't show up exactly where he is now.
    "Thank you so much for everything." she says earnestly with a big smile.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"All right," says Hematite a little dubiously, but then there's a dust path in the air like the spookiest mobile railing and he knows he's being ushered out. He knows he ought to be worried, and he knows that secrets being kept from him is the first sign that something's going to go horrifyingly wrong, but at the moment he can't feel anything but grateful.

He knows that's wrong too.

Everything is wrong, but the darkness that courses through him and eases him away from thinking things are a terrible idea, that billows through him and occludes the light that should be shining instead-- it suggests that maybe 'wrong' just means he's holding on to something he doesn't have to.

Something more slips through his fingers as he smiles crookedly back at his favorite murderghost. "I'm so glad you're here," he says instead of 'you're welcome', "and that you're you. I'll meet you whenever you catch up with me."

And he follows the trail out, pulling the bespectacled and t-shirted mask of Darien Shields back around him like a well-worn jacket.

Pyrite has posed:
    Himeko stands there, smiling, and covering the holes with her hand. She's glad that she's her too. That's why she has to do something very important. She turns away and hops up onto the porch, making a little 'whoopsie' noise as the boards creak under her minimal weight. She stands at the entrance to the shrine itself, a half-slanting doorway that leads into nothing but darkness on the other side. She stands there, her hand on her injured arm, and lets her smile drop.
    With her eyes glowing solid, brick-red, she speaks into the darkness.
    "You cannot come out."
    After a few seconds, without any audible reply, her smile returns, she pulls up her sleeve and she twirls back around in her black RHA uniform, and skips after Darien.
    She's going to have so much fun!