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Roof jumping, that strange form of parkour that all Senshi and Negaverse agents alike practiced, seemed by vast consensus to be the best part of any and all powers granted by possession of a henshin pen. Of course, as Tallulah she was an athlete, a powerful swimmer who could cut through water like a hot knife through butter, but jumping through the air was different somehow, maybe because while anyone with proper training could swim, it took an extra step to learn how to leap from rooftop to rooftop with the wind in your face.

And of course you couldn't stride into Apollo's Coffee all dressed up like you were some kind of amateur superhero (even if this was the truth). From where she'd landed, Europa could tell that Libra had already changed back, although she couldn't properly tell if she was someone she knew just yet. It seemed to be in her best interest to follow suit, though, even if she did zealously protect her identity and fret over it every time she watched another episode of NCIS.

A moment later, Tallulah Cowden stepped out from the gloom behind the dumpster. The curves she had displayed as Sailor Europa either gone or hidden beneath her baggy sweats and a pair of dirty running shoes, and Europa's neat wave of glossy teal hair pulled into a messy ponytail and lacking its usual star clip.

She narrowed her eyes in disbelief at the blonde girl for a moment. Libra was... her rival from middle school? "It's been a while," she laughed, "Huh, Giselle?"

This was actually kind of hilarious.

Clearly, some people had not gotten over eighth grade Brain Brawl. Tallulah chose to ignore Giselle's less-than-warm reception, combatting it with a cheerful smile. They had, after all, just run someone up a flagpole, and if that did not make for a significantly improved friendship, she didn't know what did.

"After you," said Tallulah, holding the door open for the Crystal girl and following her inside. The warm air of the cafe hit them like a tidal wave.

"Why do they keep this place feeling like a tropical island in February?" she grumbled. "This is why we have a hole in the ozone layer." This kind of thinking summed up the difference between the two girls pretty well: Tallulah wanted to save the world; Giselle just wanted to rule it.

She placed her order - decaf and a scone - and grabbed a corner table where they could speak in relative privacy. "So," she asked quietly, "What are Zodiac Senshi?"

"Obviously," agreed Tallulah, nodding seriously as she stirred a packet of fair-trade sugar into her fair-trade coffee. She didn't ask further about the zodiacs, figuring that Giselle had done as much as she was really in a position to ask for, and she would find out more in time.

She stirred another packet of sugar into her mug. "The negaverse," she said, fiddling with her scone, ripping off a piece from the corner and dipping it into her coffee. "I know they're bad," she said, and ate the piece of scone. "But no one's quite explained to me what they do."

"They're some kind of para-military group, right?" she asked. She assumed this, given that they used names like "lieutenant" and such whenever she'd encountered them. Giselle seemed as good a place to get information as any.

She drummed her fingers on the handle of her mug. "I'm assuming Tate told you about the videos?" she asked.

Tallulah nodded. "I'm not taking the videos anymore," she said, the obvious condition being unless someone asks really nicely. "Getting caught by Tate sucked and I freaked out and nearly trashed my computer over it. But, I mean, just so you know, I started filming before I knew I was part of all this."

She nibbled at her scone, thinking over this bit of information. "Wait, so they're, like, the earth's army, and they're protecting it from us, because we're from outer space, but they're protecting it by killing humans?" she asked. This went against the logic presented by every science fiction movie ever made.

She sipped her coffee contemplatively, nodding as if she was going to pretend this made sense. (It didn't.)

"But I'm done with the videos," she declared. "Done with them. One double life is enough for me, thank you very much."

Tallulah nodded and cleared her throat. "There are only fourteen of you, yeah? And you're organized?" she asked, as much as a starting point as to make sure she had things clear. "Well, we're not like that, as far as I can tell."

So far she had met... she looked down at her hands and ticked them off. "Well, I've only met five, but I know there have to be a bunch more, because there just being five of us doesn't account for nearly all of the weird things that go on around here." Actually, she had seen five. She had met three. And only two of those had been while she was actually henshined up herself.

"We're not very organized, that I know of," she continued. "I'm on a team, but it's just two of us - Sailor Pyxis and I. And Sailor Pyxis's guardian cat, Abel. But he's a grouch."

(Being a grouch seemed to be a requisite of being a guardian cat, if Sailor Castor's description of Astraea was anything to go off of. Chloe had also seemed quite harried, but there had been a rampaging plastic elephant involved in that incident.)

"We patrol," she shrugged, "Like what I was doing when you ran into me, we just kind of look around, make sure everything is quiet. If we find a youma we destroy it before it can make too much of a mess..."

Some messes were necessary: see, the ruined playground.

"If we run into Negaverse agents we beat them up before they can beat us up, but I sort of get the sense that we go easier on them than they would go on us."

"I don't think guardian cats are so special-" tittered Tallulah. "I mean, we have Abel, but I've met another one, Chloe - she was the one who gave me my pen, and Sailor Castor talked about some others--"

She realized that she needed to warn Giselle about Sailor Castor and his roaming hands (and lips!) She leaned in conspiratorially. "There's this guy," she said, "Sailor Castor. He wears blue, snazzy uniform, senshi of hail?"

If Giselle didn't know him, she was sure to run into him sooner or later. Sailor Castor seemed to insert himself into every situation, whether he was wanted there or not.

"You'll know who he is because the moment the battle's over he'll start checking out your a**. He might even start while you're still fighting." (This was probably true.) "Even if he is a teammate, I've got to warn you, stay five feet away from him at all times." She said this with enough conviction to move mountains.

"Do you patrol the area I ran into you in, usually?" she asked. "If you do, I'll see if I can get Sailor Pyxis over here some night. We're Team Anglerfish, because he's fireflies and I'm the deep- actually, you know what, never mind."

It had sounded so much more clever when they made it up.

"There's one in every court, I guess," nodded Tallulah, although she did not know who Gemini Alpha was nor whether they actually had any real probability of meeting - of course, if Giselle brought him along to a meeting, then the advice would certainly prove handy. (The way Giselle was talking, Tallulah thought the chances of her actually bringing him were pretty low. Of course, she couldn't be certain...)

"Thank you," she murmured, at the very least grateful that Giselle was not heaping scorn upon their moniker. "That sounds good. Alright, maybe next week? Or two weeks from now?"

Someone was going to have to offer up a cell phone number sooner or later, or else this was going to get mighty complicated. Tallulah, after hazarding around with dates and times for a bit, dug her phone out of her pocket. Four years ago it might have been a fashionable, ubiquitous model, but here and now it looked charmingly reminiscent of the year 2006. "Just give me your number and I'll call you or you can call me when it's a good time," she suggested.