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The Mall closed at 10. Closed to the public at least. As for Thraen, he was on the roof of it, fiddling with the skylight window latches, getting ready to drop down to the fountain in the food court below. There was a very distinct, oily, disjointed feel nearby. He deduced that it must either be a 'lieutenant' or a 'youma' according to the write up provided on the phone-wiki. He needed to provide for the duty he'd been given!

So...getting into the mall to vanquish something before the mall opened and some hapless teenager got eaten or worse seemed requisite to the job. As long as the whole ordeal caused as little damage as possible. The latch popped and he lowered himself down with little trouble- his arms were so much stronger and able to bear his weight this way. Too bad college didn't have required gym classes, for once. He wished he'd had this a year or so ago.

Where is the energy signature coming from? The drop from the ceiling was no trouble either at just one story and expected. Standing from three-point contact, he looked around. There didn't look to be anyone else about at all. He didn't suspect the hokey, spring-themed, pink LED cherry tree display to be a youma-Ent in waiting. The limbs came to life behind the unsuspecting sailor, pulled back, and swung full force into his back. Thraen went sprawling with an audible loss of air across the slick tiled floor.

The tile floor felt cold on his cheek compared to the blooming heat of rushing blood and impact in his back. Thraen groaned when to hear the click of someone coming- mall security? But the high heels that came into his range of vision belied the impressions of rent-a-cop misadventures. There was no way someone expecting to deal with hoody infestations and shop lifters would be caught dead in that sort of footwear. They were really very fancy looking shoes. It was a very ...flamboyantly dressed woman. She had spoken and he really should answer.

But looking up, he could see the tree's silhouette could move, lumbering toward them. It was no Whomping Willow, constrained by roots and earth- it was a walking, albeit slow, thing. "I'll live for now!"

He pushed up and stood with a compliment of I'm-not-making-noises noises, trying to be a little more sturdy than he felt. The panic and incredulity still crept into the edges of his voice, "I think it wants to kill us!"

Well, wasn't that a news flash. "W-what do we do now?"
The tree branches were pulling back for more swings, a dozen arms to their combined four.

"I....what?!" Stomp, smash? Original? What was she going on about? How it was going to kill them? That was far too gruesome.

Then she was lobbing food at the thing and shouting. "Oh....y-your magic. Right. Got it."

They had magic.

But the tree....didn't have a face. And besides, it had already been winding up all its arms, so it batted the Literal pepper grenade aside. The magic was damaging, sure, being magical, and the limb that knocked it away from the trunk started dissolving a bit in lurid, shadow black. The bright, lit pink electrical flowers flickered in fury. The tree shambled faster, swinging its limbs right for the two senshi.

"Weapons?! " Thraen back-peddled on his heels to get out of the things reach as fast as he could, looking at the other woman, "I thought our magic WAS our weapon? What are we going to do? Throw fashion mannequins at it? "

What was even available? A few benches, some trashcans, the kiddy train that went round and round for really small kids and its dumb little white fence. The stores with their metal mesh gates down. They couldn't eve GET to the mannequins. Not without breaking and entering. Could his flowers even PUT another ...'plant' to sleep? He had no clue. Worse, the youma started focusing on the girl because she'd wounded it. She was in danger because of him!

"Look out! It's swinging again!"

Sure enough it was throwing limbs out to knock her as best it could reach.

Good gravy was she ever strong! When the flamenco-girl-gone-commando grabbed him he thought his arm was going to leave its socket. So he hopped to in a hurry. As In get but moving yesterday. To the food court? Did she come here often? Where was the food court? HE'D NEVER BEEN TO THIS MALL.

He almost never had time to go to malls, unless it was to look at the awful sculpture they tried to pass off as art in the center sections of cross roads. But she was in the line of fire? But sleep flowers, all he could offer,

Where would the Food court be? Well...probably in the same direction she was prodding him towards, so he bee-lined in the same momentum. There were kiosks along the way, the usual sort selling blinged-up cell phone covers, badly carved wooden names as chachka, and then there was a hair-extension one. Hair equaled hairspray, right? Thraen had a brief moment- it was wrong to steal. He came to a complete stop, looking at the little sliding door that was at the base of the little cart, no doubt where the safe, the combs, the hair products.

"Breaking in is stealing. Even if...we're in danger. We can't just steal, it's not right. There has to be some other way..." He turned to look back at the other senshi girl and the cherry-tree youma coming up on them, marshing aside the other kiosks in its flailing as it came on.

"A fair trade would involve paying something. Predicting futures like that is playing in uncertainties to pet our own consciousness. As well declare a synarchy or oligarchy with ourselves, the magical elite, as ruling class that trades on what we will outside the laws as we predict good an fit to our own devices." His tone grew a little firm, but not angry AT her. Just at the idea that someone who was in the same court should have come to casual use of the law. "It doesn't make me feel better if you do it or I. That it is done at all....this is preposterous. "

It wasn't like he could just stop her either, even if he wanted. "I don't want to seem ungrateful."

He sucked his teeth, looking back. It was getting close. There had to be some sort of recompense that was certain. That was for what was done in the now and not trading against prophecy. "I'll leave money behind to pay for it if we live through this."

"I make flowers that put people to sleep. I don't think plastic trees sleep. Or have noses. In fact, it isn't useful at all. Its on us!" The last said as he ducked a sweep of branches.

"Fire-whaHOOOZITS!" He was about to ask what she meant and was going to do, but God's Breath, he was glad suddenly that he'd been ducking already and dropped completely like a rock to the ground and rolled away with arms guarding his head in case branches attacked him before he could get up. They didn't, at first, the modified flame-thrower made out of a woman and a hairspray can sending out a jet like a renaissance fair fire-eater. Come to think of it, that's almost exactly what she looked like. Only more flamenco and less bring-out-your-dead.

Melty plastic flowers started splatting this way and that as the Youma tree flailed, not content to die in a quiet way. Both scouts were vaguely assaulted by wailing, melty, burny limbs in a final death throe before it collapsed in a heap and started to wither away into fine youma-ash.

Thraen, being mostly awestruck, hadn't dodged the last throe and was knocked to a knee by some limbs across his shoulder. Next time he needed to be less dumbstruck watching another senshi spit fire like an elemental, and actually be more useful. Could I be any worse at this?

"Are you alright?" he called over to the greater woman, checking to see if either of them had caught on fire. He thankfully hadn't.

Thraen balked a bit, backing a step at her off-question. Was he 'traumatized'? What about getting attacked by a giant plastic tree in a mall after hours wasn't traumatizing? Everyone went through life knowing, or thought they did, that that sort of ridiculousness only happened in comic books or in children's shows from Japan. Usuuuuuaullly soldiers find their first few skirmishes a little 'traumatic, yeah. Shell shock its called. But no, I'm not mumbling, or catatonic, or something like that.

"I'm.... alright, it's just a little off-putting, is all. I probably won't be shopping here again, but that's no big loss."

Ice Cream? Was she insane? What sort of a conversational bridge was that? Or....was that her coping mechanism? A pint of chunky monkey every time you got in a battle seemed like some mysogynist stereotype plucked out of a RomCom movie. "Ah...no....not so much. I...don't see how...well, unless breathing fire like that requires that sort of follow up. But...I don't...I'm fine. If you want I could offer to pay for it for you? As a thanks? I think you saved my life, and while...I'd like to think I'm worth more than ice cream, I'm certainly not going to pretend I wasn't about as effective as dairy product fighting that ....Youma?"

He thought that was what the thing had been. He'd thought they were a lot less daily object-y and more like black shadowy beings from a bad movie set.

The tongue-in-cheek nature of the hand-up help title was lost for a moment on the normally-college-student, "They offer courses like that?"

"Wait...no...that's ridiculous. " The general public thought they were terrorists, of course there was no such thing as an actual 'senshi 101' class. If there was, that would be useful. "There's the primer, anyway. "

Alive is worth spicy sand, I guess. I'd use it if I had something that useful.

"You don't have to explain things to me." The way it was being put forward felt like it was some sort of shouldered burden- like babysitting a greenhorn on a logging show that was expected to wash out anyway. Admittedly...his performance wasn't stellar. He hated the idea of being a burden. "Not that I don't need it, but I don't want to be a waste of your time more than I've already managed.

Thraen pulled a small roll of cash out of his boot where he'd stuffed it in case of emergency and tossed a few dollars into the broken in kiosk wagon for hair extensions. "Did you know someplace close for the ice cream?"