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Destiny City Memorial Hospital had been packed pretty full in the last couple of months; more worrisomely, packed full with the comatose and dying, or packed full with those injured in youma attacks but not fatally so. "Youma attacks". They were now described as solely terrorist work -- the uniformed terrorists who were known amongst themselves as sailor senshi. The Negaverse had disappeared almost entirely into the backdrop, and any work done by funny-suited people was described as "sailor senshi" (as the group had been dubbed, by themselves and the media) terrorist work.

This ward was just about empty. It was a small ward, only four beds. The other inhabitants had been taken to the Glasgow ward: those who had sunk into comas.

The sole inhabitant was leaning up in bed. One of her hands was in a wrist cast, and she looked as though she had gotten into a fight with a dump truck and lost. She didn't look up as Aurora peppily opened the door, resplendent in her pretty Crystal Academy uniform: just kept on, with her one hand, tapping on her Gameboy. She kept trying to balance it against the cast.

Her nose was swollen and bruised and had butterfly sutures: there were a couple of stitched gashes on her face and arms, and otherwise bruises everywhere.

"Shitty," she said, and kept tapping at the Gameboy. Beep, beep, beep.

"Hey, I don't mean to sound like a douchebag," said Charys, eyes still fixed on her Gameboy (beep! boop!) "but you kind of sound like the Buttercup Fairy from Saccharin Palace. This could be a Crystallite thing. Verdict is unsure. Anyway, it generally makes people puke: I just wanted to let you know, you sound like a d**k."

Mario died for like the fortieth ******** time. That was what happened when the wrong thumb was in traction. Charys looked up from her game, and Aurora floated into vision: she noticed that Aurora was also a pretty girl, and she rested her head back on the pillow. Aurora was a pretty girl. That should have pinged something inside her.

Instead her head was full of Sidra Sidra Sidra: Sidra, Sidra. Sidra. Sidrasidrasidra. S I D R A; her entire life was one long scream of Sidra. She hadn't even listened to Astraea. And Astraea had said a hell of a lot, in a quiet, forceful way, but she couldn't listen, because everything was a black hole of Sidra.

But Aurora was a pretty girl. And she was Charys Murphy, right. So she lifted her unhurt hand in a peace sign and, "Yo," and, "Car crash, yeah, totally. I got run over by a mini. You got any gum?"

"Holy s**t, just like a Disney Princess," said Charys, and took the gum delicately. And then immediately crammed it into her mouth, chewing as hard as she could -- apparently so that she could just get it in there in case Aurora had changed her mind. "Hi, Au-ror-a. I'm Charys. Thanks for the gum."

She looked over at Aurora again, getting the measure of her, apparently. They both exchanged glances: Charys was looking at her, looking at her pristinely laundered uniform again, which had prompted calling her a Crystallite. Aurora could infer from this that this meant Charys was a Meadowview student -- certainly she wasn't from Crystal Academy. If she was still a student.

But then her gaze travelled away, and she was staring up at the ceiling tiles. "Scoot, sit," she said. "Let me guess, you're here to bring a happy ray of sunshine into my life. Or are you here to help me find Jesus? I found Jesus, he was hiding behind my couch all the time. I am a funny girl, Aurora, watch out."

"s**t, must be nice to have parents who own six BMWs and put you in Crystal, don't mind my class issues," said the girl. She was still staring at the ceiling tiles, and chewing assiduously. "Sorry, I don't have anything to give you back -- you like rubber gloves? I stole a bunch. You can blow them up."

She was still chewing as hard as she could. It looked as though the chewing was painful. Apparently this didn't matter. Her brown eyes were turned to the ceiling in supplication, despite the fact that it was boring as hell. She looked about to say something -- and then a cat jumped up on the bed, a silver cat with a pretty silver star shining in the center of its forehead, a bow tied around her neck.

"Sailor Polaris," said the cat.

And Charys freaked out.

"NO," she said. "No. ******** YOU. No." She flopped over on her stomach in the bed like a child throwing a tantrum, her cast arm hefted with a slight grunt, slamming her good hand into the hard mattress. "I'm not waking anyone else up. Jesus, a**, just leave me the ******** alone, can you not even buy a goddamned clue -- go away, shoo, get thee ******** behind me, Satan."

"Shut up," said the cat, and shimmered, and changed -- into as lovely a girl as she'd been a cat, with long silvery hair and a delicate lacy dress, padding over in bare feet to shut the ward door with a bang. Her tail waved behind her snappily. "Get a hold of yourself, you idiot. You should be ashamed of yourself -- oh, I forgot, you can't feel that emotion. Anyway, stop your butthurt bawwing; she's already awoken. Serenity, why do I bother."

"Obviously you can't remember a voice," said the cat-girl. "'Aurora! Hold that wand up and yell'! Does that make anything click in your memory, or am I wasting my breath?"

Charys had flopped on her face and was now pretending to be a starfish, or a corpse, unmoving and not adding to the conversation. The cat-girl walked on silent feet back to the bed and sat down at the foot of it, though she hardly seemed to make a dent -- she walked as though she floated, light as a feather. "The PA system was, I admit, not the greatest idea of all time," continued the catgirl. "But for goodness' sake it was all I could do -- I am Astraea."

"'I'm a b***h, just saying,'" said Charys muffledly into the pillow.

The cat-girl ignored her. She was picking a little at the lace of her pretty nightgown. "I know you've been fighting. You met Walküre and Thuban, -- " ("You met T-Bird?" Charys said to the pillow.) " -- so it's not as though you had to look up 'duty' in a dictionary."

"'Demons'," said Astraea. It was obvious that, being a cat, she hadn't learned how to school her facial expressions; she rolled her eyes to heaven and looked as though Aurora was a slow child. "Youma. You've been doing this blind. There are many senshi in Destiny City -- well, there were -- "

"Shut up." It was surprisingly vicious, even said into the pillow.

"Well, there were," spat Astraea, lemon-juice acidic. And turned back to Aurora. "Youma aren't mere monsters; they're agents of the Negaverse, has nobody told you anything? Do I have to carry ALL of you on my back, or is it just me? All right. Well. I suppose it's probably not your fault."

"Whoop-de-doo," said Charys.

"The Negaverse are out to kill you," said Astraea. "They steal star seeds -- your life force, your soul -- do you think all the people dying here have died for no reason? Do you really think it's really continual outbreaks of Legionnaire's?"

"Good," said the pretty cat-girl, in satisfaction. "Never forget that, Aurora. Never forget that the Negaverse will kill you. They will kill you and then they will take every last soul in Destiny City -- they'll kill you, and you better believe they'll do worse -- "

There was a low noise that was kind of like a mix of a growl and a grunt of pain from the girl in the bed. "Charys is a senshi as well," said Astraea with asperity. "She's just simply one of the ones who -- well, 'sucks' doesn't quite, you know, communicate 'is a feckless, irresponsible, careless, lazy, miserable loser who got --"

Charys finally rolled out of bed, brushing Aurora as she went, revealing bruised legs and a hospital nightgown as she limped away. She also revealed that she was connected to an IV of something, and dragged it with her roughly as she went. Astraea snarled, "Go on, run away. Run away, Charys Murphy. Like you always run away."

"I know," said the girl, breathing heavily -- she coughed, and it was a deep, aching noise -- "I know. That I. Got her ******** janked. I know. I know. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know."

Astraea simply looked at Aurora, and said: "Today there are fewer senshi in Destiny City."