Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Mmm, it's a good point." He was graceless, landing with a whumph and a wobble, but at least Ilmenite didn't seem self-conscious about it. If he bothered to work at it, he could perhaps move toward some semblance of athleticism, could master the quite settling onto the balls of his feet, the subtle way other Officers moved. Instead he spent that time socializing.

As he straightened, he flashed Alunite a grin and wiggled his eyebrows, starting immediately down the alley, expecting him to follow. One hand gestured back toward the hem of his outfit. "You got a full length skirt."

"Yes, definitely consider yourself lucky in that regard. Poor L...ah. Ammolite? She has just about the shortest little pleated thing you could ever see." He fluttered hands around his hips in a meaningful gesture that didn't convey the skirt very well -- but probably put his own sexuality rip-roaringly on display. Straight men didn't flap their hands like that, generally.

"I think it must be meant as some kind of distraction technique, though. I mean, the average joe, that's going to make his head turn, right?" Ilmenite was chatty, but these days, maybe more than he'd been before: no longer worried about his place in the Negaverse.

"Then they get the average joe rooting for them and, well, a whole bunch of dimwitted football fans are suddenly rallying to their fetishist icons." ...and it was impossible to tell if he was joking or not. The glint in his eye was certainly laughter, but...

No; Alunite definitely had it more together than Lyra or Sabine did. He was more self-certain, comfortable in his skin. He spent less time with his eyes vacant and expression mildly curious, like everything Ilmenite said was new and strange.

It made him rumble a little, thinking about it, head tipped to shoot a look back over his shoulder and consider where, exactly, to take the senshi. Somewhere relatively quiet. The kind of bar where people drank until they could hardly stand up anymore should serve as good hunting ground, as a nice beginner's harvest..

"You sound rather committed." It was the mildest way he could come up with to ask Alunite what he thought. "Wasn't really expecting that. Uh. I mean, you seem to have picked things up pretty...quickly..."

Oh. Ilmenite paused, finally, drawing to a halt and rolling his shoulders, looking over Alunite a second time. That did change things, at least some, but in a good way. It made him hum and hesitate. He'd been playing on taking the senshi somewhere relatively quiet, worried about the assault of information against his senses, but -- well, if he remembered, then just about anywhere could work, couldn't it?

"Give me a ******** scare, I imagine. Okay, let's go." That was all the warning Alunite got before Ilmenite kicked into proper motion: twisting through streets and then taking off back up a building. Roof-hopping, he'd lead the other man along toward the more social areas of the city, where music pounded through buildings and crowds of chattering twenty-somethings gathered in clusters and lines outside of club doors.

This was his favored area. Drunken singles or duos wandering off for cigarettes, or limping down fairly-empty streets in stupid shoes made for easy targets. And since there were two of them, now, it should be even easier. They could clean up.

"...the goal is to find someone who doesn't look like they'd be missed, or like they'd really remember." Much of this strategy was based on when Zink had drained him in a similar state. He considered that life experience.

"It makes the job easier and you less likely to be nailed by people playing at hero." He drew up to the edge of a building and gestured Alunite to the clusters of people. "Alleys and empty streets are the best, I think..."

Ilmenite watched her go before he replied, his own eyes sliding onto her group of friends. Not a large group, but it was about even male-female, which left him wondering if one of them might be a boyfriend. Boyfriends were frequently a problem, one that made him fidget and start to object, but...

Well. He was here, wasn't he? It wasn't like Alunite could get in that much trouble versus a few humans, with a captain in the wings. So instead he flashed a smile, looking up at the Senshi, and just shrugged a touch instead.

"I say go for it." If nothing else, it would definitely bea a learning experience, which was the entire point of this endeavor.

"Personally, I'd probably just walk down there and ask her for a cigarette, wait for her to light it, and then take her hand and steal the energy while we chatted." It'd end with a crumpled girl at his feet, but also relatively little damage. But he sounded hesitant offering this same route to Alunite, his eyes taking in the unusual senshi garb.

"...but uh. You're in a dress, so I think this is the wrong kind of place for that strategy to work. Probably would be better off stepping out of the darkness and quietly restraining her while you work." He met the other man's eyes and shrugged, briefly, his head cocked to the side.

"You know you're stronger now, right?"

He'd been about to gesture Alunite down, to tell him to get to it, a hand extended languidly toward the edge of the roof but -- at the words he paused, instead. Ilmenite blinked at the senshi, turning to face him fully, and forced himself to come into more serious focus.

"You can what now?" Business mode, for just a moment, trying to get a handle on the new recruit's powers and abilities, just in case it hadn't been noted yet. He tipped his head and raised his eyebrows.

"How, exactly? You're a senshi, I'm not...you have a realm or something?"

Ilmenite shook off the shaky explanation of what a senshi was and what they did. He knew that bit; God knew he'd had enough senshi throw their crap magic at him. Or sometimes, like in the case of Vindematrix, their really awesome magic at him. Ilmenite needed to hunt down that one again. It was impossible to get drunk that cheap...

The rest, though, made his eyebrows raise. He was taking notes in the back of his mind. Dear self: write this down in your papers later. Love, self. "...useful, though. How long can you do it?"