Welcome to Gaia! ::

Her phone was ringing. It was the damnedest thing.

It was not due to the mere fact she was being called, though, but who was revealed to be the one calling her. The name Kurma was flashing on the screen of her phone as if it had happily always been on her contact list. And when she answered, his voice was coming clear from the earpiece, in a tone that was casual and amicable.

"Hey Kal. Hope you don't mind me tapping into your phone," he was saying. "You got a spare moment?"

"Yeah. Actually, there is."

Kurma was standing on a streetcorner a few blocks away, his star-buoy cupped in his hands. The way he was holding it was quite like how a soothsayer might gaze into a crystal ball, though no visions of the future could be summoned from it. Just the sound of Kallichore's voice.

"Kinda straying off the path with this one, but that's not a bad thing. How about we meet up somewhere?"

They figured out a location, and hung up. Simple stuff for a senshi. Perhaps a bit strange when one of the people involved was someone like Kurma.

For those who knew Kurma better, this was pretty normal. Sailor Cosmos would be able to recall an age's worth of tales about how the man sometimes needed to be bribed with a promise of food in order to get him to sit still for longer than ten seconds. Apparently cosmic enlightenment was hungry work -- Astraea hated it.

So there he was, lightly grinning, scuffing a heel against the sidewalk as Kallichore approached. There was a largish box in his arms, big enough to hold his ball and still have room for one or two somethings-else of about the same size. "Yeah, thought you might like to grab a bite before we get started," he explained. "Food for thought, and all that."

Her lack of interest in late-night snacking didn't appear to phase him at all. "Well, how about we head in anyways?" He already had a literal foot in the door. "I don't get why everyone's such a fan of the sidewalk chats when you could be sitting down with a cup of coffee." Another sweeping footstep to nudge the door open, and he was inside. And already seeking a table to set the box on, before sauntering to the front counter and pointing at pastries.

Fighting was definitely not on the agenda for tonight.

He was neither bothered, nor did he care, nor did he honestly see the point of staying hidden and concealed. Safety protocol for navigating oneself in public places was something Cosmos and her guardian cat had to lecture Kurma on constantly -- which was a (probably futile) attempt at rectifying eons' worth of habit in his case. There was not a large gathering of power signatures to lure Chaos in; it was just the two of them.

"Seems to me like doing what we're doing now might do something to fix that," he observed with a shrug. "I'm hungry. And I'm a paying customer. Is that a crime?"

The girl working the counter seemed a bit terrified, but Kurma was able to order some food without any conflict breaking out. As a box was filled with his chosen treats, he -- in a somewhat childish fashion -- pulled a few bills out of the ankle of his boot, laid them down on the counter, and waved away his change. A moment later and there were two boxes on the table, one containing assorted doughnuts and the other still unexplained.

"Sure you don't want anything?"

"There we go." An earnest grin brightened up Kurma's face as he watched the senshi let one of her hands dart into the doughnut box. "Thought you'd come around when there was something to eat in front of you." There was a blueberry cake one in his hand, already half-eaten. He must have been nibbling on it on the way to the table. It was delicious. He had become quite a fan of Earth's food.

"Now, Kallichore..." It was a mouthful of a name to say. Senshi names were something he never shortened into nicknames, though. Otherwise they kind of lost their meaning. His free hand drummed its fingers against the table, before reaching out and grabbing the other, heavier box. "You gave me some stuff to think about." Then, he pulled it towards him. "About what we could be doing."

Kurma's answer, in some ways, was probably a bit disappointing to the senshi. He wasn't laying out a battle plan. He wasn't bringing news of any forgotten magic, or knowledge that could be used to save the unsavable. He didn't have any special artifacts, either. There wasn't any sort of strange energy in his other box. When he reached into it, there was a muffled clinking of metal on metal, and he leaned forward to pull out -- a lantern. A simple, unlit lantern.

"Lotsa folk seem to be having a hard time keeping track of what's going on," he began, by means of explanation. "We need a better way to help them learn, I figure... a place where go and see these things, and really think about it." The lantern was passed over to Kallichore if she wanted to take a look at it. "So I'm gonna need a few helping hands, and a lot more of these."