Log: Kyo Kills Ran

<Pose Tracker> Ran Itoh [SEES] has posed.

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh! What a long day! Her shift at the salon just draaaaaaaagged today, for some reason. But still, Ran decided after counting her tips, she can't complain. Her clients sure don't seem to be - there's plenty of yen here to put some up in her savings and spend some on a treat or three. A hot cup of tea would be pretty nice on such a cold day, and it'd be great to sit down and rest her tired feet before walking to the train station.

Soon she finds herself in a small tea shop, one that serves various other drinks as well and a nice selection of sandwiches and cakes. A little rest in here, and then she can go home and maybe go over whatever results Mitsuru might have about the pages, and maybe Masahiko Irie will have called back with some new information, and maybe pigs will fly...

"I'd like the white tea with winter plum, plus a slice of the sponge cake," she requests at the counter, and looks down to dig in her purse. Wallet, wallet...

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

And maybe snakes will come out from some dark corners.

While Ran has her head down, looking for her wallet, she might suddenly become cognizant of someone reaching past her to hand a bill to the cashier. This someone would appear to be a man, with a deft hand and a white coat sleeve. "Lychee black," he says, in an easy confident voice. But before Ran can start to get too offended about what is presumably some asshole trying to cut her in line, the voice adds slyly, "And I'm paying for the lady's choices. She has had a long day, and I expect it'll only get longer."

Turning around would reveal Kyo Enda standing behind her, looking mild and reasonably affable. "It may be my fault if it does," he murmurs.

<Pose Tracker> Ran Itoh [SEES] has posed.

A hand snakes past, accompanied by a voice... it's kind of a familiar one. But is she really taking /that/ long to--? "Oh no, you don't have to..." Ran starts to say, looking up and over her shoulder. Her hand goes very, very still inside her bag, and Ran isn't much comforted somehow by the weight of the slender, hiltless knives slipped into a hidden spot in the bottom of her purse.

"Enda...san." Okay, okay, maybe she'd better not go insane right off the bat. Her last memory of him, after all, is of his lion form gently pulling Naomi Suzuno down from the wall of the Sagittarius Shrine. Besides... they're in public, for better or for worse. "It's been a while," Ran says instead. She ought to refuse a couple of times just to be polite, but the hell with that - she's hungry and tired and Kyo can buy her afternoon snack for her if he's going to do something horrible later on!!

It dawns on her slowly. "You also won in Eien's contest. You got a story too, didn't you?" It makes sense that not only she and SEES and Masahiko Irie would try to figure out the mystery behind the illustrated pages. Ran nibbles at her pinky nail for a moment before deciding. "I'll find us a seat. Can you bring the tea and things over?" Before she can chicken out, the blonde turns and walks off to look for a semi-secluded, yet semi-public booth or table. ...This is harder than she thought it'd be!

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Kyo's amber eyes fix unerringly on the way Ran freezes up at seeing him. It's reminiscent of the way laser sights train on targets. It has that same machinelike, homing quality-- that same potentially lethal intent. "I don't have to," he answers quietly, and a vague smile haunts his features. "But I feel like it."

Ran recovers, eventually-- enough to address him, and to tell him it's 'been a while.' Kyo's smile widens, as if he's thinking about exactly the same last memory as she is. "Yeah, it has. I thought we'd catch up a little. A lot has happened since then, hasn't it?"

And one of those things is-- "Yeah, I got one. I'm actually here about that," he says, confirming her supposition. But what Ran does next takes even Kyo by surprise, just a little-- his brows lift before he can stop himself, and his head cants a little as she actually turns her back on him. A moment of grudging respect flickers in his amber eyes, but it soon disappears back into his usual coldness.

He obliges her, at the least, bringing everything over to whatever table Ran finds once it's ready. Setting it down, he drops into a chair with an utterly casual air-- as if he hadn't tried to catch and kill her for sport once-- and smiles at her again. "About those stories... they're kind of weird, aren't they?"

<Pose Tracker> Ran Itoh [SEES] has posed.

A lot has happened, all right. But some things never change... like the leopard's spots? After all, Ran turned her back on a hallucinating Izo Imaizumi once, too, and this time there's no Mitsuru Kirijo here to distract her enemy. With her face turned away, Kyo can't see the 'oh my god oh my god oh my fuuuuuck' expression that flitters across her face before she manages to school herself back into a less terrified visage.

She ends up picking a table by the wide front window, within easy reach of the doors, and sits down in the chair closest to the exit. Not that she thinks she can outrun Kyo /again/, not after a day spent on her feet, but she'd feel really dumb if she boxed /herself/ in.

Ran doesn't smile when Kyo settles across the table from her; face kept mostly as neutral as she can possibly manage. "Thank you for carrying everything," she tells him, and at least that is sincere enough. Ran carefully forks off a bite of cake and slips it into her mouth, chewing while she thinks. "They're very weird," she ends up going with. "How have they been weird to you?"

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Kyo's gaze takes in Ran's seating choice in a glance. It's pretty transparent he knows why she chose the location, and he gives her possibly the most patronizing 'I /get/ it' smile in the history of smiles. Even if Kyo is technically behaving in the sense this time he isn't trying to eat Ran, it seems he hasn't exactly stopped being an asshole.

Her lack of return smile doesn't seem to surprise or ruffle him, though he does blink when she thanks him in a way that seems sincere. His head cants a little considering her, though he ultimately says nothing.

Instead, he just watches her eat. It's probably kind of awkward, up until he finally seems to remember some bullet point about behavior in his notes on 'how to act like a human,' and breaks his gaze to pick up his tea and take a sip. "I just thought it was coincidental that this Seida girl gets a book, is explicitly told she must separate it, and once she does... the lights go out and-- well, /I/ got a weird vision."

He shrugs and takes another sip. "I went and talked to Seida about it." There is no inflection to 'talked' to suggest HOW he talked to Eien, and his blank face doesn't help to mitigate that ominousness. "She insisted she didn't feel anything odd about it, so she had her doubts."

<Pose Tracker> Ran Itoh [SEES] has posed.

It /is/ as transparent as glass. But what else can she do? Ran isn't like Yisa Mitsuru, who thought she could reform him, nor is she like Yisa, who makes her own rules. She's just plain old Ran Itoh, who is completely out of her league when dealing with the Kyo Endas of the world. He looks at her, and after a few moments of staring awkwardly back Ran looks down at her small plate and doesn't look back up. She eats her cake in silence, enjoying the taste of it on her tongue, because it might be the last thing she ever gets to eat and it'd be a shame if she rushed through her last meal.

She is, even if it's just a little bit, relieved when he finally remembers to pick up his teacup and drink from it.

"I did too," Ran finally speaks up, setting her fork down next to her half-eaten cake slice. "And so did another person I talked to. What about the pages you got? What kind of story was it? Mine was a story about a village living on the edge of a forest..."

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Kyo watches Ran indulgently. "You work pretty hard," he says suddenly, unexpectedly. "You must be tired, and here I am taking up your time. Take your time and relax. I can get you another of those, if you like." His smiling seems harmless enough, but given his predilections and Ran's uniquely 'creative' mind, she might find herself wondering if he means to sweeten her flesh up a little before--!

He picks up his tea and diverts his attention, and that sense of discomfort lessens. But that might be a danger in itself. Without that blatant sense of wrongness, Kyo's charm is more beguiling, and his tempting Resonance just a little stronger.

Ran eventually tells him she got a vision too. Kyo lowers his cup enough so those amber eyes can look at her over the rim. "Did you. And another person too. That makes me feel more legitimized. Eien Seida and all her disbelieving logic... she was starting to make me feel like an insane person." He laughs a little, and puts his cup of tea down. "As for what my story was about?"

He's quiet a moment, and if Ran should choose to look at him, she'd find he's no longer smiling. Now, he just looks pensive. "It was about a king who had everything-- beauty, wealth, intelligence-- except one thing. The thing which makes men happy."

<Pose Tracker> Ran Itoh [SEES] has posed.

"Thanks, but if I eat any more cake than this I won't have room for dinner." And Ran doesn't dance as much as she used to... is she going to have to start counting calories? Or... what if he wants her to taste like cake when he eats her?! Ran frowns at her cake slice and hesitates before picking up her fork again. Well, it's a shame to waste cake either way.

Funny... she never noticed before that their eyes are similar colors, just like their hair. Their facial features, at least, set them apart - with her Western heritage and rounder eyes, Ran doesn't much resemble the 'pureblooded' Kyo. It's a strange thought, and for a moment she forgets just why the two of them are here, or that they're talking about a book that might be out to... kill them or eat them or drive them crazy or something.

But you ARE crazy, Ran tactfully does not say, though a hint of the thought may slip into her uncomfortable expression. Crazy or evil and she's not sure which would be worse! She watches him stop smiling and wraps her fingers around the heat of her teacup. It eases the tightness of the small calloused places on her hands. "Makes men happy?" she repeats dubiously. "What... well it was probably 'love', right?"

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Kyo, mercifully, stops talking on the subject of feeding Ran more cake for Dubious Purposes, though he subsides into a sort of amused smiling that is probably just as disquieting. Of course, all Kyo is thinking is that he finds Ran's continued cool-- even flippancy-- to be amusing, and in fact her life expectancy is just going /up/ because she's not showing him any discernable fear. But it's impossible to tell that from his not-very-expressive features.

Fortunately for that increased inclination to let Ran live, she does -not- point out that Kyo is, in fact, crazy.

Instead, she just ventures that that thing was probably 'love.' "Yeah," he says, and he looks-- for a moment-- like a normal person, wistful and a little sad. It passes away quickly into simple lack of affect. "He found 'love' in the end, and it made him happy. Though I think there's something even deeper than love that makes a man capable of 'happiness.'"

He pauses. Then he shrugs, his mood gone and a casual carelessness returned to his demeanor. "But I don't think it's that relevant, what the stories are about." How wrong he is. "But if you and this other person felt weird things-- you feel weirdly attached to the pages, don't you?-- and saw weird visions too, then that reinforces my assumption that something strange is going on. Seida could not continue to deny it then."

He contemplates that a moment, drinking his tea. "I think I'll have to visit some more of these other winners," he muses. A pause, before he adds, "The ones who wouldn't try to kill me immediately, anyway." That rules out Seiichi, he thinks.

His gaze abruptly flicks back up to Ran. It's blank. "And as for you..."

<Pose Tracker> Ran Itoh [SEES] has posed.

Ran is moderately certain that Kyo is going to try and eat her, or rape her, or just kill her and then do the raping and eating. She just... it's too strange, the two of them sitting at a table in a cafe and drinking tea together, when she'd once run for her life from him in a very literal sense. She can barely take it seriously, even as she's trying to take in all the angles.

And there is no Masahiko Irie here now to step out of the shadows and save her. Only herself and Verthandi and the faint hope that Kyo won't go all Shadow-lion in the middle of a public place.

She watches him silently when he seems to actually feel sad about 'love'. Is it just a front? Or could he really... "Deeper than love? What is it?" She can't help asking the question, lured for a moment into sympathizing just a touch with Kyo Enda of all people.

"Yeah," Ran nods, when asked about a feeling of attachment to the pages that goes beyond normal feelings about a newly-won prize. "I didn't think Eien knew about the... weird stuff that's been happening. I don't know if she didn't notice it, or something is /keeping/ her from noticing. Maybe the same thing that felt like it was watching me, there in the bookstore. So if she still doesn't believe it, even if there's more than one person vouching for the reality of things..." Ran trails off witha slight shrug and the implication that it wouldn't be Eien's fault.

There. There it is. The sharp glance that tells her enough... Ran freezes, cup halfway to her lips, eyes like dark whiskey rimmed with white. Verthandi rushes to the front of her mind, ready to be called forth--!

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

What is deeper than love? Ran asks. For a moment it's not certain whether Kyo will respond, as his gaze has lowered to his tea. Then he lets free a breath, and shrugs. "I don't know. A soul, maybe. I always read it was a soul that makes people feel things."

He's pensive a moment more. Then that odd glimpse dissolves, leaving Ran with the uncomfortable recollection that she is at table with a man that tried to hunt and kill and eat her once. One who raped and killed a girl from Kirijo Labs. But even that recollection seems wan and hard to believe, when they sit together in a brightly-lit cafe talking about semi-normal things. It's not hard, in these moments, to see why that girl would have been taken in by him. His ability to act like a human is fine-tuned, his facade nearly perfect. He is charming, and thoughtful, and well-spoken.

Still, there's that little tiny hint of something 'off' to him, to those who know to look. The facade is a little too perfect. Too practiced. Too studied.

And the cruel nature that that mask covers is speaking ominously of Eien. Ran murmurs some words in her defense, and Kyo seems to accept them... for now. "I would bet that something is keeping her from noticing," he says bluntly. "I told her, there are things in Sumaru that... there are strange things here. Still, I will talk to the others."

And then... he muses on what to do with Ran herself.

She freezes up transparently, staring widely at him. He evinces no reaction to her stare, whether to take pity or to have his predatory nature stoked even higher. He simply puts down his cup, and leans forward, and reaches across the table...

...to try and tweak her nose. The grin that cuts across his face is positively wicked.

"...don't work too hard," he finishes, before he gets up and makes to leave Ran to her tea.

<Pose Tracker> Ran Itoh [SEES] has posed.

Despite the little things, the subtle wrongness of a predator trying to blend in with its prey, the afternoon sunlight slants winter-bright across the tables. Like sharks playing 'house'. Just wrong.

Don't scream. Don't scream, don't move. He probably sees things with peripheral vision so if she's still she'll be invisible-- the reptile areas of Ran's brain gibber nonsense as he stands up and leans forward, reaching for her with surgeon's fingers...

The door is ripped from the hand of someone walking in, a gust of bitter wind slapping the door against the wall just behind her. Ran /jumps/, eyes squeezed tight. OH GOD SHE'S DEAD, HE KILLED HER!!! DYING IS REALLY LOUD---

And then he's got her nose, and the man behind her is tugging the door shut with a rushed apology. He lost his grip and the door just... Ran sits there at the table, frozen, with splatters of cooling tea staining the tablecloth. "..." She nods once, stiffly.

And after he's gone, Ran breathes deeply, gulps down the remaining dregs of her tea, and fumbles out her cell phone. She hits speed dial and waits until she hears a deep voice on the other end of the line. "Shinji?" she murmurs, clutching the phone with a stillness she doesn't feel. "Please, I need you to come pick me up."