Scene #9250: Washed In Water, Sins Stick

Owner	Pose
Natsuki Nuki	Natsuki had called Sougo on the phone, to see if he was feeling better. Even knowing somewhat that the Demon King of Time wasn't built like she was she expected the king of cardigans and Timbs to have already been on the mend. 'He's my senior. There's no way the Demon King is still down.' Then she called him and heard his voice, and the sudden question that came to the chimera was. . . 'Will something good happen for you?' and disbelief. Without Kukuru, how many Partners would have suffered? Even with Kukuru... There were things that bothered her, things she didn't understand. Was this the Concord? Or was it Sougo Tokiwa? Was this heroism? Was this, too, mentorship? She had toasted his victory as Sougo rested as blackened-spent kindling expecting the man to resurge with a fresh sprint shortly after. Yet the power hadn't returned to Sougo. He was ailed, so clearly that she could tell just by the labor of his breathing. Natsuki had sat with her phone couched against her shoulder, and rolled the Zi-O ridewatch in her fingers. With index finger, she clicked the gear tension of the face to display the face, the proud text 'RIDER', and a dynastic year. "I'm going into the city to relax. If you'd like to join me, I'll send you a link. Bring Woz if you like. I bet," She speaks into her phone, and thumbs the Ridewatch face to feel the soft impression under the hidden face, and eclipse Zi-O's face completely with the press in of thumbpad. "Both of you could use an activity. It'll be pleasant - trus~t me." The tone ends in a roll of tone and faint hissed insistence, and a half of a hyoo-giggle before cutting off. Her text message after sends Sougo to 'downtown' in the Grand Dorado, in the gilded gold shadow of the Apex. In the perpetual late eveningcore of a hotel and amenity walk, all specialty suites, bars, restaurants, and various other forms of stress reduction to manage those critical mood bars of the Multiverse's super-elite, Sougo is guided to a particular cluster of bathhouses in a traditional meditation corner around a managed spring. --- Smelling strongly of incense and springflowers, there is a small gathering moving through the area as March seems the perfect time for a reviving cleansing. Ushered through a traditional bath entry through the private VIP areas especially for Partners, Sougo (and Woz) shift from the luxury bustle of outside to a restive quiet and otherworldly-thick curtain of steam that parts only with some effort and clings to all of the corners to soften them in space. There's a spot for them to change and fluffy towels provided, a pre-sauna to sit down and bucket off, and then hanging curtains through to the source of the steam. The wooden oven of the interior sauna room has a bench seat sat around all of the walls, dark woods on every surface except the seat layer's rich tan giving a particular image of the steam-rich surrounds as a pit with an edge, and a soupy mist fills the air at seat level. In the center of the room, in a geyser of displaced mist, is a vertical log fed boiler, blazing away and perfuming the air faintly while the ash collects in a pool of water that boils up into steam. Natsuki sits on the far end from the door, resting with her back against the rear wall and knees apart. Tied as a skirt is a white towel that she both sits on and has cover her lap, and over her shoulders is a second towel that falls over her chest on both sides, keeping her steam-threateningly '''decent''' even for unannounced entry. Wearing her nuki-eyemasked 'Osakan' form - most likely to enjoy the bath - she reclines with her eyes closed and her phone on a handtowel next to her. Both arms rest lightly stretched up over her head, left hand playing with the Zi-O ridewatch with her thumb.
Timespace Riders	"I would, yeah. I think some fresh air would do me some good--and my uncle is just as good as you are at telling when I'm hiding my feelings, anyway." So, it's not like staying home gives him an out from talking about them. After a pause..."Woz says he'll come, too." --- Sougo wasn't sure what to expect, when Woz's scarf thinned out and revealed his surroundings. The Dorado isn't out of his reckoning as far as places to be, nor is the Apex. The amenities there are the best of the best, after all. He's certain that he hadn't expected their outing today to be this. "The Lady Nue is full of surprises, is she not?" asks Woz, seemingly having read Sougo's mind. "Yeah," Sougo answers fondly. He finds it's one of his favorite things about her--how every time she asks to hang out, he learns something new about her. Colorful button up and drab overcoat both are shed in the appointed spot, pre-sauna duly utilized, towels availed. "Hi, Natsuki," says Sougo, as Woz wordlessly greets her with a bow at the waist. In their current state of dress, she can see that the battle was every bit as physically taxing as it was mentally and emotionally. They each take a seat beside her, Sougo at the left and Woz at the right. "I struggle to envision a form of yours which does not snare the eye with its beauty," flirts Woz, though his catlike smile can't hide the bags beneath his eyes or the healing split on his lip. "Thanks for inviting us here. I haven't been to one of these in forever." He of course notices the Ridewatch in her hand. "I wanted to say... I think it was really great what you did for Hikaru with that."
Natsuki Nuki	Natsuki takes many pleasures, though it's hard to drag Sougo around to things in general when his state is 'unwarmed death'. Even warming it, as she intended with this almost-smothringly warm destination, Natsuki placed some part of here senior's state first when she picked her poisons. The Lady Nue prided herself on picking poisons. Saunas were all about the expressing, sweating, cleansing out of toxins. It was considered healing - and perhaps it was. Greetings earn a winked-open red eye, dilating to focus slit pupil intense, but the lean of her toothy grin remains playful. "You found it before I had to towel off and go looking for you, so," Natsuki rolls her arms down to bounce palms against the outside of towel-wrapped thighs, and the Ridewatch remains held with thumb and forefinger in grip. "Nice job on making it, maoh-san." Woz's greeting - pure praise of her physical form - coaxes a second eye open on the leaned-forward woman, and a second pair of eyes appearing, circling around the vizier. Bowed down he can see some sort of movement, but it's not until he rises and praises that she strikes. From the steamy mists, the scale-black length of her spooled out tail is more than a tripping hazard but a cleverly laid rope trap for the first clever-tongued lad to test the tail. Woz might not see the mid-ankle high loop but once he knees into it and is flanked about a muscular grip ribbons across his chest and over his shoulder like a sash that cinches tight and hot around his bare skin. "If you want to be snared and struggle, Woz, you keep talking just ~ like ~ that ~ !" Natsuki singsongs as she reels the split-lipped man in besides her to sit him besides her. He can shift the drapes and loops of the serpentine tail that slackens around him or not, but wearing extra layers in the sauna might go to Woz's head, giant snake or no. Sougo can drop in on Natsuki's left side, where Natsuki reaches over an arm and gives the Demon King of Time a damp side-hug. "You're welcome. It was this, eating, or drinking, and even if I feel like sucking poison it'd be bad for you." Praise for her actions earns a soft, amused 'huh' chuff of breath. "It seemed like just the treasure to loan out. A pendant for a missing pendant, with a push button and everything. And I've brought it back to ask yo: it's a power token, isn't it? Do you need an easier power?" Natsuki's arm reaches around to gently lift Sougo's chin up so she can lock gaze intentfully. "When does this get good for Sougo?"
Timespace Riders	Woz takes a step and is thusly snared. "Why struggle against that which I have invited?" Woz fires back. "Unless it is your desire --" He is tugged towards her, with no strugglet, yet. "In which case I shall offer the most sport this battered body may render, that we might both be made merry in spirit." Sougo giggles, despite his multiple kinds of fatigues. He finds that he's slipped an arm around Natsuki before he's aware of his hand on her skin, but doesn't withdraw. There's a certain type of warmth that the hottest sauna can't provide with the finest firepits and the most suitable logs. Do you need an easier power? When does this get good for Sougo? Sougo's thoughtful downward gaze is directed purposefully towards Natsuki. With effort, he meets her eyes with his. "I need the power of the king," he says. "That's when it gets good for me. When I can be powerful enough to be merciful--when the world tells me 'it will cost you these people' and I can shake my head, and say, 'no, it will cost you dealing with me.'" "When I can get what I want in the way that a merciful king would, and not a desperate pretender, that's when it gets good for Sougo." He lifts his free hand to take hers from his chin and gently squeeze it. "I'm close. There are... eight powers I still have to find, before I can learn to use the power of the king." "Then I can start to collect on what the world owes me, and what it owes the people I love."
Natsuki Nuki	Woz asks a very important question, and Natsuki has a ready answer for the smart-talking boy. "You know, witty guys always have all these lines, but if you thought about them you'd figure out the answer:" She teases, the attention off of Sougo for just a moment. The lack of struggle - the pointed acceptance, just means Woz has an arm looped under and over by coils and pulled against his own side as he's given less and less options or opportunities to escape. It's really only fair, she gripped Sougo firmly on their first meeting, that now Woz got a turn. "Isn't it because you're also a brat? You can't decide whether to wriggle and try to 'make it entertaining' for me, or if you want to see how far you can get without begging. The side of her tail's serpentine head slides warm scaled cheek against Woz's chest, shifting around his pectorals to apply another thick blanket of muscle over him, and squeeze about his chest. "Same question, Woz," Natsuki insists, reaching her hand up to Woz's scalp to take a hold of his hair and stroke his warm scalp. "When does it get good for you? But for you, bratty vizier, I'll set a condition: You can't tell me it's when Sougo ascends. Not for other people. Look at what 'other people' has made you become - has become of you." Back on Sougo, though her black-nailed fingers still drag through Woz's hair and slowly rotates Woz's neck, Natsuki's other arm keeps its simpler hold on the Demon King's shoulder, shifts his chin, palms the underside of his jaw and side of neck. Putting an arm around Natsuki is easy - she's sauna-hot and damp, but that's part of the point, and why the traditional style involves cleansing first and sweating after. In the thought-thinning mist, Natsuki wonders down at Sougo something similar. "Is the power of the king being human? When do you draw in that power, and make it yours?"
Timespace Riders	"Perhaps," says Woz. "But perhaps your own words have apurred me into action, only for my own pride as a 'brat.'" His muscles flex defiantly, valiantly, in vain against the thick tail which squeezes him. The retainer's body tenses, and he strains something which complains--fairly strongly, if his flinch is any indication. But this little back and forth is doing his spirit some good even if his body is still recovering. Look at what 'other people' has made you become - has become of you. That cuts through his flirty exterior to something that he's been chewing on since the war. "I don't regret fighting for other people, Natsuki. That is what Kamen Rider does; we simply decide which people we fight for, because 'everyone' and 'one person' aren't answers. I have two regrets; neither involves what I have become or what has become of me." "'When is it good for me...'" "It is 'good for me' when the past is well and truly behind me; when old mistakes have born all the consequences they ever shall. I imagined that was the case now--and I was incorrect. When I can fully embrace the limitless possibilities of the future and cut the final chains of the past, then it will be 'good for me.'" Woz allows his neck to be turned, closes his eyes for the fingers in his hair, and leans against Natsuki with a sigh. Is the power of the king being human? When do you draw in that power, and make it yours? "The power of the king is... being so human that humans don't recognize you as human. Drawing it in is... simple, but simple isn't the same as easy. Making it mine... well, what makes any power yours? Using it. Learning where it begins and ends. Practice." The arm around her squeezes gently.
Natsuki Nuki	Woz's moments of defiance do bring a chirping amusement to Natsuki's attention bouncing between the boys. For a moment Natsuki is engaged with both of them, staring down deeply into Sougo's eyes and challenging him, and then the next. . . Woz strains himself, and her tail instinctually clenches down in response - his force is met and overcome, possessively constricting. He strains himself and after a tight moment that threatens to red-out from the throb-clenched creak of internal pressures and his muscles slacken. After Woz gets smushed to the limit, a strained heartbeat and a half later the pressure relents, and slackness lets the coils fall behind him and on his lap, loose-piling. If anything, in the moment after there's a bit of support. Breaking him wasn't the punishment for bratting! "Brats don't have pride, they play a called 'see how long they get away with it', and they win when they get caught, not when they get away with it. But you came to relax, Woz-sempai, and I'm just suggesting the places." Shifting her grip to support his shoulder, Natsuki's shrug is transferred to both boys. "I know you don't regret fighting for people. I understand your type. But you transform to fight, you embody this thing that you could swallow whole and make internal." The support - having to support them, instead of oh-so-innocently involving her seniors to a private bath, having to gently support their shoulders and worrying about them popping (arterially, negative) - is palpable to Natsuki. An act she's taking, an investment she's undergoing to steady up the Demon King and vizier. "That seems too far away, Woz. Too long to wait. It's like saying 'never'. I understand gaining enough power you can invest and grow it. I understand getting good for you. But this hasn't charged you up at all. You're just full of foreign toxins and pain, and you don't even turn that into power. It's..." Disbelief. Questioning. "It's just pain. Are you concentrating yourself with negativity? It's..." The curse-eater's tone is momentarily furtive. "It doesn't seem like where either if you are going. You have all the opportunities you could ask for to improve your 'demon' parts. Isn't that what you are? A demon king, and a demon king's vizier?" Sougo is also released, though Natsuki turns aside to press close and plant a kiss atop the king's brow and place a lingering feeling atop Sougo's crown chakra. Retreating, she asks him, framed in the damp-hang of blonde white bangs. "Are you what humans think a demon is?"
Timespace Riders	Woz smiles as natsuki's tail slackens, given over, then, to gently stroking it as it falls in his lap. "Victory is as sweet as ever," he playfully exults. "My wise kouhai." "...If I seem depleted now, it is because I am." "Perhaps it is 'never.' Or, perhaps it only seems like 'never' because the present is not the golden future I imagined it would be, when I saw it in the pages of that book, two years ago." "I was more foolish then, and wielded a powerful tool clumsily. I knew my blunder as soon as I'd made it, or so I thought--the danger of inexpertise is that appraisal is a form of expertise as surely as the works themselves." "The consequences of that mistake have revealed themselves, two years later, like a misplaced beam finally buckling. I don't expect there will ever be a Woz who does not make mistakes--but I am ready for the ghost of that one to rest." "That is the future I want--and despite everything, I still believe that futures can be won, with the vision to imagine them and the will to forge them. The negativity will pass; faster with what victories I may secure now." He falls into a rhythm of long, soothing strokes of her tail, as if she were the one who'd fought in a war. "Faster, still, with good company between and during." Natsuki's next question draws a little smile from Sougo. "My demon parts are the parts that make me 'more human than human.'" "Some humans can't even--" The presence of her lips on his brow induce a little hitch in his breath, but not in a bad way. Less like it startled him, and more like he wanted to savor the feeling before offering any further explanation. He even closes his eyes, briefly breathing in as if he were at the beach, enjoying the seaside air. Eyes open slowly, he nods softly. "That's right," he says. "That's the whole point of this. Not to literally be a demon... but to be the kind of human that people think of as a demon. To be so kind that it's scary. That some people go from being scared to angry, that I can be the other things I am, and still be that kind. I want..." He searches for words, and if they were in front of him, he'd be grasping at them, hand outstretched. "I want people that just accept things the way they are and don't challenge all of the cruelty around them to scream at me that one day, some invisible hand is going to defeat me. Because they can't stand looking at me and seeing everything the version of themselves they could be, but won't try to be. Do you understand? I want humans like Sarracenia to call me a demon so that humans like Lilian can call me an ally. And that isn't the kind of thing you can bargain for. It wouldn't be real, if you could. If you weren't born that way, if you didn't have it thrust on you, then you have to take the opportunities, and you have to live through taking them."
Natsuki Nuki	"Don't beg to be choked when you're on your last legs, Wo~zu-san." Natsuki chirps back, amused at his claiming victory because he gave up so she released him. She could, obviously, go back to applying pressure to Woz's throat, but. . . She really doesn't want to finish off the king's vizier. Understanding her own strength had become seeing the frailty in him. The both of them are human in a way Natsuki is not and cannot be - only appear similar to. They had their priests, and she was her own. "So," She sighs, the laughs and coos of affirmation at the tail-stroking appeasement filling the sides of her tone. "Never, on purpose." She groans. "How predictable for a masked hero." 'That's the whole point of this. Not to literally be a demon...' Natsuki's attention on Sougo lingers, the dark rings around her intensely red eyes a mask to mark her as different than human herself. She, who had lived in human society as observer, outsider, minister, searches Sougo's face for something after she kisses it. She searches for the 'demon' in the Demon King, as there is a demon in her, extending from her, stroked while spooled about Woz. She doesn't find it. But she looks, for a time, her fingers guiding the faint turn of his cheek once more. 'I want...' Natsuki hangs on this, presses close to this, draws in steam as breath and holds it to respire more fully - most fully - Sougo Tokiwa's dream. And it is one - 'wanting those that cannot to scream that someone else will see it done' - that befits a "demon king". At the same time, it is strangely unsatisfying for the demon. "Sougo, if you want to be the 'demon king' by being different, then... 'So kind that it's scary' still means that you need to scare people limited in their kindness." 'It wouldn't be real'. . . Natsuki rumbles through several emotions with a low roll of the throat. "I'm real. And if you're trying to become the Demon King by being so kind that this happens to you... I think you should fill the parts of you that aren't kind enough - aren't strong enough - something potent enough to become more demonic. If you won't bargain - you'll have to work to swallow it --" At 'Swallow it', Natsuki produces the Ridewatch again, still held in thumb and forefinger, and brings it to her lips. With some show, she frames the top and bottom of the power object in her teeth, and then tilts her head back and 'oup'-s around the object with a tongue motion to do exactly as she claimed she would in innuendo. Leaning forward after showingly banishing the prop for her point, Natsuki drops her eyes back into Sougo's. "--to make it completely yours."
Timespace Riders	"Yeah," says Sougo. "I know I do. That's the difference between SOUGO Tokiwa, Ohma Zi-O, and Oda Zi-O. Maybe the power is the same, but only one of them is my power." He frowns, when he realizes what he'd said to her--that having a power he'd bargained for wasn't real, to Lady Nue. "I... of course you're real. I didn't mean it that way. I just... I need to feel it. That it's mine, that it comes from me. That there's no excuse that people can use to say it doesn't. And like you said, the way to do that is to swallow it. I can do it. I can, because I have to," he says, with a faint smile. "And... there's something that you could do, right now, to help me get it down, a little further than it was when you invited us here." "I need to see your past. To see all of the times you've been around any of the Agents that didn't make it," he says. "Even if it was only for a few minutes, I need to see as much of them as I can, to know that it's them I'm bringing back, once I have that power. And if I hold those memories in me, now..." "Then that's another reason I have, another little bit of force, to help get that power down and settled inside of me. Can I do that, please?" If she allows him, there's not much circumstance involved, that she can see. Just a flicker in the way that he sits, like he skipped a beat the sauna didn't. Sougo rests his head on her shoulder and closes his eyes.