Sophia makes it through the halls of the unfamiliar school to the place where Kenji said the art exhibit was taking place. The exhibit is pretty large, and the tons of displays are fairly disorienting and distracting. Most of it is extremely high quality. She could see some people paying a lot of money for a few of these pieces. It strikes her that she should of invited Amarissa. The painter probably would have enjoyed all this. Maybe she would introduce Kenji and Amarissa at some point…

Eventually, she texts Kenji, ‘Alright, I’m here. Where are you?’ She sighs to herself; she really needed to stop getting lost so easily. She looks around at some sort of landmark. She texts again, ‘I am by the water fountain on the left side of the room. Left side coming from the entrance.’

Kenji was across the building when he had gotten a notification from his phone about Sophia's presence. Admittedly, he was strongly wondering of the girl he met at the costume shop would really appear: it was quite the bit of trouble to arrive at a strange school to meet someone who was being unnaturally social to a customer. The whole thought seemed crazy. Yet she did come! He quickly gets away from a small group of classmates that he had been talking to and then begins to shift through the crowds toward Sophia's location, pausing a moment before she noticed to admire her at a distance when a shyness built up within him.

"Oh hey Sophia! Glad you could make it!" he says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head with a slightly too enthusiastic grin.

Meanwhile the others at the exhibit would mingle about. A man with blonde hair with a black suit stared at an image of a castle at night with a canopy of stars behind it, several shooting stars. His expression is cold, yet something about the painting fascinated him.

Sophia is glad to see the familiar face. She grins back at him. The boy’s shyness had an almost endearing quality to it. She could almost hug him that it was adorable enough. However, it occurs to her that nothing is really stopping her from that. “Kenji, good to see you again,” she says while embracing the boy briefly.

“Thanks for inviting me. This has been pretty impressive. Everything I have seen so far has been so well-done,” she says, “Also, I get to see artwork that you are actually passionate about.” The curiosity of it brought her more than the idea of a free costume, even if it would be hilarious to show it to Artemis later. “So where is the display of your work?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the man in the black suit. She wonders if this was more of a formal occasion that she originally thought or if there were people looking to purchase work. He seemed so serious for an occasion all about displaying one’s progress and hard work. “Do buyers come to events like this sometimes?”

As Sophia embraced him, Kenji felt as if raw electricity was running through his body. Sparkles could be seen in his eyes almost as happy thoughts went through his peanut sized adolescent brain, before he got his composure and then stood upright. He nods a little when she says that this was a very well done display of art and exhibits.

"Yeah, everyone worked really hard for this. They love to show off the flair of what their individual talents can do along with group projects that have a more collaborative feel to it." he says, gesturing toward one of the centerpieces, a photo array of Tokyo with one side being early morning, another mid-day, and the last at night in a collage that formed one coherent image showing the different times of day, but yet seemed seamless. It was obvious that this work was incredibly time consuming with the group involved for it.

"My work is on the opposite side unfortunately, so we'll have to fight through the crowd to see it. As far as buyers, yeah we get them sometimes though it's not that often people actually sell, or at least tell others that they did. More often, people are trying to impress talent scouts to attempt to enter university that specialize in their field of choice."

Sophia barely catches a glimpse of the sparkle in the boy’s eye. It takes her a lot restraint not to verbalize the words “sooo cute” that is going through her head. Boys tended to be offended by the word cute for whatever reason. However, it was nice to have someone as cheerful as she was for once.

She can’t help but stop at collage for a few seconds. “Wow. That is huge.” The sheer size of the thing made it so that anyone would have to look at for a long time to actually appreciate it. There was a ton of detail as she could make out a few of the individual buildings were recognizable. She could hardly make out the different pictures to see where one time slice ended and the other begun. Eventually, she tears herself away from the photo array to follow the boy through the heavy crowd. “I can’t help but feel that there may have been a better way to organize this to reduce traffic though.”

As Kenji mentions talent scouts and buyer, she briefly looks back in the direction of the man in suit. “Oh. Yeah, I suppose that would be why some people look so serious. But I can certainly see why they would want to come here.” Talent scouts would be cause for a little bit of tension. "At least, people don't seem horribly cutthroat when talent scouts come by. Unless, they are really good at just pretending to be nice." She had heard stories that exhibits, performances, matches could get a little crazy when talent scouts came around. She wonders if Kenji has gotten any, but doesn’t want to ruin his cheer by bringing up a more serious topic of university acceptances. “So how long did it take for everyone to put this stuff together? I mean, the school year just started, but it looks like people have definitely been preparing for this for awhile…”

"Well they stay competitive, but they don't let it get too nasty since at our school, there's a small enough population everyone knows everyone else and nobody wants to spike the punch so to speak. Things would be a little better in all schools if people took the time to know each other, and not just a small circle that they view the rest as outsiders who don't matter." Kenji says, tucking his hands into his pockets. "It's kind of a family with a lot of cousins." he states with a small chuckle, then looking up thoughtfully when Sophia asked how long it took them to do the projects.

"A lot of these are term-long final projects from the previous term, though supposedly a few pieces were made the past week by some very talented individuals. It's kind of a chance to show off what everyone can do and they produce their best, along with expressing their mastery over multiple types of artistic expressions." he says as he walks in the direction of the exhibit he had.



Cutthroat.

A slight chuckle could be heard from the blonde man in the suit as he brings his hand to his glasses, tilting them slightly. The man reaches into his coat and pulls out a small device, looking at it, and the audience carefully. The scene of kids talking to various people was one that seemed idealistic. A frown came across his face.

"There is still too much joy in the world. Scenes like this should be nonexistent. How these Japanese can ignore the pains that we have brought them I do not understand, why they should not be crushed under our heel like the rest." he says, an icy expression falling upon a young woman who was speaking to two well known agents from Calahan Scouting. Aiming the device at her, he frowns.

"The brightest light, casts the darkest shadow." he states, pressing the button as a small dart flies across the room at bullet speed, hitting her in the neck. The girl's eyes glaze over, and she falls to the ground. Concerned, the others around her approach, but they fall unconscious as well in turn, their energy being drawn into the girl on the ground as dark sparks manifest around her body. A black cocoon of energy manifests around the first girl, as something happens, and her body surrounded in dark energy manifests as a youma. A youma with wide red eyes, no visible mouth or nose, and a green skinned body covered in what seemed to be paint, hardened to form a light armor around her torso, forearms, and feet, with the rest bare skin. She holds a large, exaggerated paintbrush in one hand as she holds up the brush and begins to draw energy from those around.

Kenji looks around as he hears the bodies start dropping around him, and his eyes bug out slightly.

"What....what is going on..." he starts, then turns and sees the youma. "...What...is that..." he says, as the all too normal reaction of anxiety gets in, but he looks at Sophia and then reaffirms himself.

"Sophia, get out of here!" he says, standing between her and the youma and trying to distract it, hoping his friend would get away before it fixated on her, not knowing about Sophia's little secret.

“It seems nice to have a school so small,” Sophia says. “I doubt I will meet everyone at Juuban by the time I graduate…” A second family. Her mind moves to the senshi. She wonders if she could facilitate that sort of feeling amongst them all.

“So how long were you working…” She doesn’t get to finish that statement as the girl falls over and a youma appeared. Was it looking for her or was this just coincidence? People around them fall, and Kenji yells at her to leave.

“No. You are not fighting that thing.” She wasn’t going to watch the boy die for her sake. She drags him behind some large exhibit panels, putting them somewhat out of sight. “Stay here. I promise I’ll explain later!” She pulls out the transformation pen, “Venus Power, Make Up!” The fully transformed senshi gives him a smile, "Wait right here."

She jumps into the middle of the room. “Surrender now or fight the guardian of love and light! Wow… that was sort of lame saying it out loud. But here for me?” First things first get the youma to focus on her instead of everyone else. Step 2 would be developing some sort of plan. How could someone change so quickly though?

Kenji blinks in disbelief as Sophia suddenly became a touch forceful, then when dragged out of sight and in a flash she turned into...something else in front of his eyes, he wasn't sure what to think, but the tone of her voice seemed to make him want to believe her,.

"But that thing is one of those cult monsters, it'll kill you, even if you are wearing a cute short skirt... he gushes, possibly being influenced subconsciously by Venus' natural charm and influence. Yet before anything else could be said, Venus bolted off to confront the monster.

The youma, unimpressed by Venus' entrance and speech, turns to her and holds her brush out as a rainbow of energy launches at her, attempting to strike her body directly. The light approaches comically quickly, but enough that Venus could probably evade it if she tried. If a youma was doing something, it was probably a good idea to not get hit by it...but then again, there is that unconscious body behind her that might get hit by the beam if she sidesteps...decisions, decisions.

Sophia curses the location for a fight. Way too many people. However, it was part of the job to play human shield to innocent bystanders, wasn’t it? Though, there were some good sides to a location like this. Tables and panels everywhere. She tries to grab a nearby panel as a shield to try to protect herself. She feels a little bad because this person’s term project was about to get destroyed no matter what happened.

“Weapon of love, Bow of Eros,” she says. The bow materializes in her other hand. She did make a promise to other senshi to fight if it was necessary. “Come on… you were perfectly fine a minute ago… These people, your classmates, you care about them… love them like family, don’t you? That was only a minute ago! That can’t all have gone away…” Could someone seriously lose all their humanity in a number of seconds? She desperately wants the girl to return to normal. To join her peers again. And now for completely different reasons, she regrets not inviting Amarissa.

"Well it looks like this whole thing just got more interesting!" A voice laughs as both Sophia and the person behind her were scooped up and pulled out of the way of the beam of light. Kishin had appeared on the scene and he smiles down at Sophia. "A hero always shows up at the last minute." he says in a cheerful and upbeat voice. To be honest he didn't really have much of an idea what was going on at the moment, but he figured that when all was said and done they'd beat the bad guy then run off like normal.

"I am getting way to used to this." He comment, well he had done this quite a few times at this point.

He blinks and looks at the youma with a frown. "Another girl huh? Well I guess we don't have much of a choice. Meteor Smash." He says and a large stone quarterstaff appears in his hand as he starts moving towards the youma.

Unbeknownst to Sophia, Amarissa had been there the whole time. Of course the painter would be at an art exhibit like this, she was showing off her own work at the other end of the room. She had brought two pieces. One being the painting she had done for her entry into the talent program, a gorgeous mostly black and white piece except for the single, blooming cherry tree in the center. The other a much larger piece that she had done at home, it had taken her a few days, was of a beautiful blue woman singing on a stage in an empty, run down theater. The details were amazing, and as most of the theater was in grays and black, the woman stood out like a sapphire. Amarissa wasn't easily recognized next to the paintings, having worn a lavender dress shirt with black slacks and her hair up in a bun for once.

From her point of view, she saw the strange man pull out a device and shoot the girl. Ducking behind a large display, she pulls out her locket and transforms, then runs over to join the other two. "Venus, Kishin. Wait! The man in black used some sort of device to transform that girl. I don't think she's working for the Covenant willingly," she says as her own bow appears. "We need to be careful."

Luna came in following Kousuke and seeing a youma, her fur raises. She looks at the youma and then back at Kishin. The man in a black suit made Luna feel uneasy, but she had to trust that the Senshi and Knight had enough ability to handle him if need be.

"Kishin, Moon is right! Take caution! The youma is forced, I can still sense the innocent soul in her." she says, then noticing something unusual...she runs in the direction of Kenji where Venus had pulled him and looks at him for a moment. Could this one also have a potential?

As the youma's attack soars under the air-lifted Sophia, it narrowly misses the unconscious civilian behind them, flying into an easel with a painting on it. When it is struck, the structure begins to animate and mutate, giving the expression still-life art new meaning. It's stand turns into tentacle-like legs as it roars and begins to approach the senshi and knight as the strongest energy source in the room. Meanwhile, the Youma, sensing Kousuke as a threat throws a handful of colored balls at him, which explode in burst of energy once they get within range, creating a challenging to defend attack. She watches both Venus and Kishin, not paying direct attention to Amarissa.

Meanwhile, the man in a black suit watches with a frown, seeing another magical girl and a guardian male enter the battlefield. He stands back, allowing the youma to be the more obvious problem...if they turn their attention to him, the youma will take every advantage of it.

Sophia screams a little as she flies into the air away from the light. Not exactly what she thought would happen. Maybe she died already. That would suck. However, as she looks up it appeared that Kishin just had amazing timing. “Oh. Awesome, right on time,” she says smiling back at him. As he materializes the quarterstaff, she yells, “Stop!”

With Amarissa’s sudden appearance, Sophia feels like this is going more her way. She looks much more relived at this point. “The girl sort of just spazzed out, fell over, and turned into that after some weird metamorphosis,” adding to what Amarissa has said. Thankfully, the black cat was on her side as well this time. And people say black cats are unlucky…

She takes a second to gauge her surroundings. The girl's eyes were clearly fixed on Kishin. Unfortunately, she glances behind her to see one the art pieces had been brought to life. At least, she has some semblance of a plan now. “I don’t mind handling the moving pieces of artwork. If Kishin can distract it enough, Rie, do you think you can get close enough to purify the girl? I can help him if no more of these things pop up. But I think there are enough art panels for cover to sneak up close.”

She readies her bow at the moving piece of artwork. “Now, I can’t believe I thought that looked nice a few minutes back…” She lets loose an arrow of light in its direction.

Upon hearing the objections to his fighting Kishin merely shrugs. "I'm not to good at things like strategy. I'll leave the complicated stuff to you guys. I'm just going to do my job and fight to keep you guys alive." Kishin says as he moves towards the youma. As it attacks him he shouts "Metero Smash!" As thick stone armor surrounds him and he advances behind a large stone round shield that he wouldn't have been able to lift if not for his super strength.

Kishin advances more slowly due to the armor, but he moved with a great deal of both weight and strength making him seem more an ominous force than a man racing towards an enemy.