Jazz had been drumming his fingers on the counter while trying to decide why they were still in the underground for several minutes by the time he finally grew impatient enough to interrupt Iz's silence. Letting him keep his mouth shut at a time like this always came back to bite everyone in the end.
"Zunny?" Jazz called in a sing-song voice.
"Mm?" Iz hummed absentmindedly.
He had been aimlessly drying the same exact mug for far too long to make the odds he wasn't tempted to follow his brother topside slim to none. He had in fact had the same exact glass adequately polished at least half an hour ago but was far too deep in thought to notice or care. Watching seers as powerful as Iz ponder their next move was often a treat for Jazz, but only when they were thinking out loud. Someone like Iz in particular being this quiet and distracted for that long spoke miles for whoever he was trying to outwit.
"You're sure we shouldn't call the real Zenny?" Jazz added with a small and soft clear of his throat.
Jazz wasn't even sure when Zenny had officially become a sore subject, but whatever the real story was behind any of the rumors couldn't possibly be good. The famous Zunny finally dropping his own zelestial name would hold plenty of weight with Ozzy, but all of whatever drama there was or wasn't with Zory and Zenny right now surely couldn't outweigh her safety. Zenny would help if he was asked.
Asking for his help was bound to be a bullet they needed to bite eventually if Ozzy was right about whatever wicked this way may come at the starlighter's gala whether the other foot dropped on the spot for Trixxie or not. Zenny and Ozzy were bound to be often dumb and dumber when it came to trying to protect Zory without suffocating her or killing each other right after first sight, but this was different. If potential threats became immediate or at all imminent, Iz would make the call whether Zory liked it or not. Ozzy would fall in line. Whatever Iz's hesitation was? Jazz had every right to begin to doubt not calling now was not the right call.
"I still trust Zenobias even if Ozzy doesn't." Iz reaffirmed although his behavior didn't line up with that claim. "He's still one of us whether anyone likes it or not right now… Thanks to the whole mess my involvement here created, I wouldn't bank on Mari trusting either of them any time soon, but they're both worthy of it… She'll come around."
"Uh-huh." Jazz replied cheekily "So you've been standing there on autopilot mode since Ozzy left because…?"
Iz hung the glass on a nearby rack before turning back to Jazz and pressing both of his hands onto the bar. As he leaned closer with a bit of his weight behind it, it was obvious he was creating a pressurized zone to reduce the odds of anyone but Jazz hearing precisely what he was spinning his gears over.
"Until he earns his zelestial name in ascension?" Iz offered up with a small sigh. "Ozzy is a sitting duck in this fight."
"I know you better than that." Jazz mumbled.
"Unfortunately, you do." Iz tilted his head with a few less than agreeable nods. "I get him and I don't know each other as well as I hoped we would by now, but I think me not taking the chance to say goodbye when I still maybe had real time to was a mistake… There's almost no way I'm not gonna end up having to take a hit that was meant for him tonight. Death must have death and there's too much of it in the air."
"There's too much he doesn't know, Zunny." Jazz shook his head with an aloof kind of reassurance. "Somewhere in that dark and twisted little head of his, he's bound to know enough about you to know if you had seen a better way to handle any of this? You would have when timing allowed."
He wasn't wrong, but that didn't make him right either.
"He'll get it eventually." Jazz concluded gently.
It was Iz's turn to shake his head as he wondered whether or not this conversation would prove to be fruitful. "I know you know that doesn't make any of this fair."
"I never said it was." His friend asserted with more than just a tinge of irritation at the accusation he'd even implied it did. "For what it's worth, I know for a fact that Zory won't try to play it off as being fair either, not when it comes to you."
"You're missing the point, per usual." Iz huffed.
"Pot, kettle." Jazz clipped. "I'm on your side, always."
"Jazz, he's already lost too much." Iz explained like the real tea pot in need of blowing steam and screaming his head off that he very much was. "There has to be something I can do to ease the blow for both of them when I die instead of him tonight, I just don't know what."
Iz knew the odds of him becoming a shooting star were slim depending on how this played out, so he knew it was better safe than sorry to tip some people off in advance. In the event dead was going to be dead for good this time, the only person who would be more devastated than Ozzy was Zory. Her mind moved a million miles a minute regardless of what state it seemed to be in.