1681/The Bad Future's Full of Weirdos

The Bad Future's Full of Weirdos
Date of Scene:	19 June 2024
Location:	Penguin Park - Penguin Playground
Synopsis:	Zoisite and Tuxedo Kamen WERE fighting a giant bug when a giant killsteal crashed in--! Ft. Young Lacuna.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Zoisite, Fuyuko Yuuhi

---

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's a day that is stickily hot. It's a day for shaved ice. It is definitely not a day for henshins that are predominantly black wool and silk, and are multi-layered, and Tuxedo Mask has regrets. He is not wearing his hat.

The park is a great place to get attacked by youma, generally speaking, and today is no different -- the civilians have already all fled with their children, because there is a cicada-like bug the size of a small car crawling around on top of the skeletal geodesic dome that's a staple of playground equipment everywhere, spitting acid and creating powerful gusts of wind with one of its enormous wings.

It's a little charred, the other wing burned through; it's a little battered, bleeding green from its crunchy carapace; it's really strong, since there are already two mahou here and it's not dead yet.

"Combo its head?" Mamoru calls out to Zoisite after throwing a rose into the monster's full wing, pinning it to its body. He makes a grabby hand toward Zoisite, "Smoking Conflagration Bomber?"

Zoisite has posed:
Unsurprisingly, grey wool and silk isn't all that much better in this heat, but Zoisite looks immaculate anyway, as if he's not sweating through his clothes by sheer force of will. Even his hair isn't out of place, but that's more to do with the wealth of product he uses to make it look perfect every day.

Not that anyone knows that. His beauty routine is a closely guarded secret.

Zoisite looks down from atop the slide, where he's just landed after jumping out of the way of a splash of acid that nearly speckled his otherwise pristine Shitennou uniform. "Combo its head," he confirms, then tosses his head back, sending his ponytail over his shoulder in a practiced move.

He leaps into the air again, spinning in midair so that he can land next to Mamoru, and then extends his hand, ready to attack.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Named combo attacks are for nerds!"

The shout comes from behind them, as a smaller figure (on account of them being unreasonably tall) literally flips over their heads, a trail of black bleeding from her arms -

No, not bleeding, trailing behind and swirling about, readying, because she's brought her hands together in a double fist, and the giant cicada-youma isn't ready for what's about to happen.

To be fair, neither are the two boys.

The black liquid surges forward to take the shape of a machete just as Lacuna brings those two fists down - and the void shears through the cicada bug - not merely cutting it, but disappearing the portions of the body that are touched, devouring it in an instant - causing two neat portions of perfectly split bug to fall to the sides, gushy, insect insides bursting up into the air in a shower of goo.

"Whoops, we got a gusher," Lacuna calls out gleefully, and sweeps her arm upwards, creating a shield of darkness that devours the goo... that would have landed on her, anyway.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Oh, fu--" yelps Tuxedo Kamen, absolutely unable to push Zoisite, but absolutely jumping up into a tree to escape... well, some of the gushing goo. "UGH." comes his voice from the foliage, "ugh it's in my HAIR."

He drops from the tree once the gushing stops, and there's goo all over him, including spattered on his face and sticking in his hair, and he looks desperately unhappy about the state of affairs. He de-henshins on the spot, which means he's suddenly mostly clean, except that his glasses now have a little goo on them from what's still on his face and in his hair. Otherwise, it's white band t-shirt, cargo shorts, foam-soled velcro sandals, that one white glove he was wearing in the basement when Stellar and Lacuna wandered out--

As the bug corpse disperses into dark energy and the dark energy dissipates, Mamoru takes off the glove, revealing a horribly burn-scarred hand, and takes out a top hat from nowhere, and puts the glove in his pocket, and fishes around in the top hat until he comes up with a towel.

"Thanks for the help," he tells Lacuna, voice as aridly dry as the desert in the sun.

Zoisite has posed:
There is no similar hastily bitten-off cry from Zoisite, no. He just... teleports away from the incoming goo wave, popping up across the park, on a bench, where he casually sits for a moment or two. First he checks his nails, then sighs as he notices a chip in his clear polish. Part of him is tempted to just go home and deal with it, but he supposes he shouldn't just abandon his prince.

Manicures can wait.

So a flutter of sakura petals swirls around Mamoru and Zoisite reappears next to him, perfectly composed down to every individual hair. He does shoot a sympathetic look towards the towel and Mamoru's goo-splattered head, which is rather generous for Zoisite.

"Yes, whatever would we have done if you hadn't arrived," he adds, voice thick with sarcasm as he folds his arms over his chest.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Probably some lame combo attack that would have got you covered in warm, roasty, bug splatter," Lacuna says with a devilish grin, glancing at them both with utterly unmoved expressions. "Seriously, I even gave you a warning about it being a gusher, how'd you still get hit dude?"

A pause. A squint.

"Wait, are you that guy who was with the old hags?"

That's where she recognizes him from! The door with the old hag versions of herself and Stell-chan!

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Bad luck," Mamoru answers sourly to the question of how he got hit. "Picked the wrong direction to dodge in, probably." He puts the hat down and his glasses next to it, then wipes the goo off his face with one end of the towel.

"Yeah I was in the basement laughing my ass off. Did you see their faces?" he asks, and there's a half-grin in his voice even as he bends partway over to towel the worst of the goo out of his hair.

"Zoi, this is Lacuna, like, the kid version of the HR lady at Obsidian. There was an incident-- I wasn't alone, don't worry!-- with a hell-door and she and the kid version of Kyouka popped out. All four of them were immediately horrified. It was hilarious."

Zoisite has posed:
From where he stands, Zoisite can helpfully point out where Mamoru missed a spot of goo, so he does so. And there, and there. See, Zoisite can be helpful. With a nod he subsides to let Mamoru handle the rest, his eyes skating over this Lacuna person for a moment before he lifts his chin slightly.

"Really," he says, flatly, but let's be real: younger versions of people running around is hardly the weirdest thing that's happened, so he accepts it with a curt nod. "I'm sure this won't have any dire implications for the timeline."

That seems like a faraway worry, though, so he just sighs quietly and clasps his hands behind his back. "Well, I suppose we're done here, then," and then he's surrounded in a shower of pink petals, leaving him in a pair of thin pants and a linen shirt, a pair of sunglasses perched atop his head. Which he immediately drops onto his nose, to shield his eyes.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Yeah, you were the guy who couldn't stop laughing! Unlike that other guy, who couldn't stop looking around for places to hide," she snorts. "Okay, so, you can fight too. What, you ..." she squints at him again, taking note of his dark hair, and then squints at Zoisite, and then - "Nah, you're not cool enough. Nothing to worry about. What'd those loser hacks need with you anyway? Why'd they have a bunch of back up with them - osteoporosis digging in that bad?"

Lacuna, please, they're not that old, you know this -

"Besides, the only implication this has on the timeline is that we're in the Bad Future."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"This is definitely the Bad Future," Mamoru says immediately and emphatically. He glances at Zoisite, and his blue eyes are sparkling. "Implications, schmimplications," he says. Then he turns back to Lacuna. "When you get back, look me up, okay? I'm eight years old and in an orphanage, my name's Mamoru Chiba, get me out of there before the big bad gets me, okay? I could already do a little energy work and heal myself--"

He starts laughing again. "I don't expect you to look after a kid, so, pass me off to some other mahou that needs a hobby."

There's a Big Sigh, and Mamoru wads up the now-manky towel and one-shots it into a somewhat nearby trash bin. "That way there's at least a shot at a timeline where I don't end up brainwashed and evil for a while. At any rate, I was there as a neutral party and an emergency backup plan if anyone got hurt. But you two came out of that door instead of anyone else going in, so I didn't need to do anything."

He puts his glasses back on, carefully does stuff to his hair with his hands to make it less obnoxious, then holds his glove in his hand for a second as he considers the drinking fountain off to one side.

"I could just stick my head under there," he says contemplatively. "This is the grossest hair-gel ever."

Zoisite has posed:
"Oh absolutely it is," Zoisite agrees, regarding whether or not this is the bad future. He completely no-sells being called 'not cool enough,' though he does turn his head to level a particularly unimpressed look at Mamoru for his cheek, before he tucks his hand against his chin.

He doesn't speak up about changing the past-future (or is the future-past?) but his mouth thins into a line at the thought, and yet he doesn't try to stop his prince from trying to alter it. Instead he looks off into the far distance.

Only for his attention to snap back when Mamoru suggests putting his head under the water fountain. "Please don't," he says. Zoisite wouldn't drink from one, so he certainly doesn't like the thought of dousing oneself in the water from it either.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
Look! Someone who agrees with her! Lacuna has gained +10 confidence in her assertions about the future.

"Eight years old?" She makes a face, "That's like, barely old enough to ride a bike. God, I'm definitely making Chiharu deal with that, she'd probably love having a little brother."

Break some kid out from an orphanage, dump him with the only person she knows who likes kids and isn't dating her, mooch healing benefits while basking in the knowledge that she's an awesome person.

Sounds like a plan.

"You should definitely do it. The fountain's probably just got piss in it. Everybody pees. The bug goo has bug gunk in it. What if it dries? Do it! Do it! Come on, don't be a coward, dunk your head!"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Good. You know, I kind of annoy Kyouka like a little brother even now," he says-- and looks thoughtful. "Pretty sure I don't annoy older-you as much. I could try harder, but even for an HR lady and an adult, she's pretty cool."

Then he glances at the fountain and at Zoisite, and starts edging toward the fountain with a face like the devil-- until Lacuna urges him on, at which point he stops in his tracks and looks supremely irritated. "If you wanted me to do it, you shouldn't have mentioned the pee until afterwards."

He vanishes his top hat in an excellent reverse of his earlier impossible sleight of hand, and pulls his glove on over the burn scars. "Would Stellar have stuck her head in the fountain with that kind of goading, or would she just have gotten into a scrap with you?" he asks, interested. "I will only use this information for trolling, not for good."

Zoisite has posed:
Zoisite looks supremely relieved when Mamoru does not stick his head in the fountain. If he were anyone else he'd probably be thankful to Lacuna for her unsuccessful goading, but that's a bit too generous for him, so he only pulls his sunglasses down a little to look over them at Lacuna, and then as he pushes them back up, his head turns to Mamoru.

"If anyone sticks their head into the fountain, they're going to get a quarantine shower." His nose wrinkles at the thought, and is that a subtle shiver (despite the icky-sticky heat) that travels up his spine? It might well have been.

As he turns on his heel, Mamoru asks his own goading question, and this prompts Zoi to just do a complete 360, coming to stand back where was before with a supremely put-upon sigh. "I suppose I can acknowledge the value of information gathering," is what he says, rather than admitting he wants to know the answer too.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"I thought about not mentioning it," Lacuna says, when it becomes clear Mamoru is not going to dunk his head in, "But it'd be a dick move even for me to not mention it til after."

She's an asshole, but even she has limits, apparently. At the question, she laughs out loud. "No way it wouldn't have worked. Stell-chan would have just splashed me and then I'd have tried to drown her in there, but only 'til she cried uncle."

This is a highly biased accounting of how this scenario would turn out. Obviously.

"I cannot imagine her with a little brother," she declares after a moment, referring back to the start of the converastion. "Older siblings are responsible."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Responsible is telling me 'don't die doing something stupid,'" Mamoru says cheerfully, sticking his hands in his pockets, glove and all.

"And thanks for the info! Ugh let's go, I gotta get this stuff out of my hair," he fiiiiinally agrees with Zoisite, turning to walk off--

--and oh god as he turns he prince-henshins because despite it costing more energy, it costs considerably less time than yelling out a henshin phrase to put on formalwear. "I'll see you when I'm less bugful," he says to Zoi, then gold-glows before teleporting, himself.

Zoisite has posed:
With a roll of his eyes, Zoisite says, "Then I must be the most responsible person on the planet," and then he watches as Mamoru turns to go. The appearance of Prince Endymion earns a bit of an eyebrow-raise, but then that leaves Zoisite and Lacuna alone.

Not for long, though, as Zoisite just cocks his head towards her, then lifts one shoulder in an elegant shrug before a sweep of sakura petals surrounds him, and he's gone.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Huh," Lacuna says, shaking her head. "The bad future's full of weirdos, isn't it? Wonder if they'll disappear, when we fix things?"

Something to ask Stellar about, when she told her about the eight year old heal-spam boy she was going to have to rescue. But for now?

If the future is full of one thing, it's prey. And she's out to hunt it all.