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Illness was not pretty on Sailor Taranis. He should be in bed, he knew that, but after spending nearly every night out doing his senshi duties, he had developed a habit. An addiction, really. Fighting crime was Taranis's drug of choice, and he imbibed daily, no matter the circumstances.

A snot-filled Kleenex jutted out of the little pouch hanging off his belt. It was quite possibly his favorite part of his fuku. Totally useful for holding onto things while he patrolled. That night, Taranis was hanging in the neighborhood of Crystal Academy. He normally left this area alone, figuring there were plenty of other senshi who might enjoy tangoing with the likes of the girls clad in periwinkle blue.

Taranis was not among them.

Dani had tried and tried to make him see that Crystal girls were worth more than the money in their purses and that many of them were on scholarship or otherwise not in the upper crust of society. Her words typically fell on deaf ears. The only Crystals he'd ever encountered had been nasty to him, and he never stopped to consider that they might have simply been responding to his own nastiness.

No matter. Taranis was patrolling the Crystal Academy neighborhood, and he considered it his good deed for the week.

Walking along the edge of the rooftop, Taranis sensed a tremor of dark energy below. It was in an alleyway leading up to one of the entrances of Crystal, and by the sound of it, it was a youma terrorizing a civilian. His feet were moving before he was aware of it, clopping over the tiles with the grace of a drunk elephant.

Taranis stopped on the edge of the roof. Damnit. A girl in a periwinkle Crystal uniform was being lifted from the ground by a youma that Taranis could only describe as looking like some kind of perverse clown, or maybe just a relative of big foot. The youma let out a growl of Chewbacca quality.

The civilian was too close for Taranis to use his sand blast. Looked like he would need to be hands-on. Sigh. Without warning, Taranis leaped from the building. He sailed through the air and landed with his arms in a loop around the youma's neck, legs hanging in the air like he was a kid getting a piggy back ride.

Uh oh. Big Foot Youma looked a lot smaller from up on the roof.

The youma dropped the Crystal girl unceremoniously to the ground and then slammed its back (complete with Taranis in tow) into the cement wall beside it. The impact winded the senshi of sand, but he summoned up the strength to shout, "Get out of here!" before the youma slammed him again.

Ouch.

Another senshi? The blip of positive energy had barely registered, and the girl was already attacking. This was a bonus. He liked a proactive fellow fighter. The frills on her fuku were a bit off-putting, but Taranis knew very personally that senshi had absolutely no say in what their magical gear looked like. If he had, there would be no frills on his shorts. There would be pants. There would be a bad-a** jacket. These were not decisions that Sailor Taranis was permitted to make.

The senshi's call to action was a bit disheartening too. What was she, the senshi of money? Great. Just perfect. It would figure that he would run into the head of the Crystal Academy defenders on his first patrol in their neck of the woods.

A senshi who fought with money. Pffft. She really did belong in this neighborhood.

All snarking aside, Sailor Taranis was still getting his a** beat by the big foot youma. Or at least he was until a rain of coins distracted the beast long enough for him to roll away. While the beast was preoccupied, Taranis put some distance between them and then let it rip with his own attack.

"Hope you aren't afraid of getting your hands dirty!" Taranis struck his pose, hands squared over his tiara. "Taranis Sand Blast!" The globe of sand was a spinning top on his fingertips, and he guided it straight toward the thing's head. The head shot was something he was still working on, but with the other senshi attacking, he had enough time to line it up and aim.

The whirring ball of sand made direct contact, exploding outward in a flurry of grainy bits in all directions. The youma fell to its knees with a growl. It tried to stand back up, but all the attacks to the head had clearly thrown off some of the gears. It staggered drunkenly before collapsing a few feet from Sailor Rosalind.

It collapsed -- but it didn't burst into dust. It was still kicking!

Okay, really. At any point, Sailor Rosalind was free to stop verbally making out with the Crystal Academy student who had been freed from certain death by Taranis's intervention. Seriously. Saving her life was enough. They didn't also need to erect a monument to her loveliness or class.

When the Senshi of Money (he assumed this was her sphere) strutted her heeled self over to his side and demanded he finish it off, Sailor Taranis had to suppress a sneer. It was not very effective. "I didn't see your shower of coins take his head off either," he said flatly. He didn't like being called 'boy' either. It made him sound lesser than her, at least to his highly sensitive class-conscious ears. "Look, girl, feel free to do the deed yourself." Sailor Taranis started to walk away. He didn't like her tone.

Behind them, the big foot youma stirred. It didn't get to its feet yet, but it seemed aware that the two senshi were distracted. Taranis did not notice.

Sailor Taranis stopped walking. He spun on his heel, head shaking and mouth agape. "You know," he said. The tone warned of an incoming speech. "Girls like you are the reason the feminism has been set back. You keep cutting the world into these chunks of what men are supposed to do, what women are supposed to do. People aren't supposed to do anything more than live lives with as little adverse impact on the world and people around them as possible." A gloved hand waved in the air to punctuate his words.

This girl was vomiting at the mouth in a way that was annoying. In Taranis's mind, his verbal diarrhea was totally informative, logical, and necessary. He raised an eyebrow at her. "So no, it is not a duty geared toward boys." Taranis turned his back to Rosalind and the youma once more. "You can fight the youma your damn se--"

His stunning quip was cut tragically short by a trash can to the back of the head. "<********>." Sailor Taranis crumpled to the ground, clutching his head with both hands. He couldn't see straight, probably couldn't walk. If it hadn't been the cheap ultra-thin aluminum variety, he'd probably be out cold. Instead he had a ******** ice pick in his forehead.

At least it felt that way.

Rolling to his side, Taranis shot Rosalind a glare. He assumed she had done it. He assumed wrong. Towering behind her like a living golem, the big foot youma pulled back to strike again. "BEHIND YOU!" Shouting made his head hurt. Then again, so did breathing.

Basically, his head really hurt.

Even if Sailor Taranis wanted to help Sailor Rosalind (which he didn't), he was not of sound mind to do so. The Senshi of Sand spent several moments clutching his skull on the ground even after his warning to the girl. It was just a toss into a fountain. No biggie, right? Taranis had fallen off of buildings (okay, so maybe they weren't so large) before and that seemed far more perilous than her impromptu swim.

Trying to wield his sand blast seemed like the worst idea in the world in that moment, and so he focused his attention on getting to his feet, clutching the nearby wall for support. Lucky him, the youma was fixated on the senshi that was bobbing in the fountain. Even if she wasn't worth much for a conversation, Taranis was absolutely certain that she could be a good distraction.

He would need every second of that extra time. Walking was proving perilous, and his first few steps brought him face-first into the wall. Black spots clouded his vision, and they wouldn't go away. Damn. It looked like he'd be fighting this battle with a handicap.

Cerulean eyes searched the battlefield. What could he use? There was a broken bottle, a few small rocks, and -- aha! Wherever the youma had come from, it had taken out a street sign with it. It had been snapped in half, leaving only three feet of metal attached to a yellow square that read DEAD END in chunky black letters.

Sailor Taranis reached to pick it up, but missed. His vision was playing tricks on him. Stooping toward the ground, he felt around for the sign, all the while leaving Rosalind high and dry (well, soaked) in the fountain. As far as he was concerned, she could handle herself for a few minutes without his help. He'd be over just as soon as he stopped seeing double.

"Shut up," Taranis whined, squinting his eyes at the shooting pains ricocheting up his skull. "Did you not just see me get hit by a trashcan?"

Her whining made helping her more miserable, it really did. The way she whined made it practically unbearable. If Taranis was more certain she could win on her own, he probably would have left her. But he had a score to settle with a certain trash can-wielding youma. It came in the form of a broken street sign.

When the silver-coin shower of Rosalind's attack began pelting the yeti youma, Sailor Taranis started to run. Each footfall sent a tremor of pain to his head. He needed to make this count if only because he wasn't sure he'd be able to gather his bearings enough to do it again.

Leaping into the air, Taranis hefted the sign high and then brought it slicing through the air as hard as he could manage. The youma was too distracted to notice him, losing too much energy from the berating coins. The sign sliced from shoulder to torso, and the youma let out a bellow. The cry was cut short prematurely when it turned to dust.

The momentum still held Taranis and he cartwheeled over his intended mark. He had the sense to throw the sign at the last second before rolling head over heels across the ground and coming to a stop once he hit the fountain. On his back, he let out a pained puff of air, staring up at the form of Rosalind towering over him.

Two hands clutched his forehead. "You really need to learn to save yourself," he said. "You're welcome." Oh god, he needed an aspirin. Maybe a handful. Also a big fluffy bed.

When Rosalind outstretched her hand, Sailor Taranis attempted to sear it off her body with his fiery gaze. Sort of. This girl was the most ungrateful, fussy senshi he'd ever met. And he knew Polaris. "Do you care if people respect you? Or do you enjoy acting helpless?" He would never understand this mentality. It was completely illogical, not to mention selfish, to believe that it was the responsibility of the rest of the world to bend to the wishes of the individual.

His head was still pounding. He touched at the back of his head, and his fingers came back slick with blood. Taranis cursed and then extended a hand toward Rosalind. "Your self-importance is suffocating me, okay. Take a step back." Perhaps if his head didn't hurt so much, he wouldn't be such a tool to her.

Perhaps.

Rosalind might has well have said: Taranis, I hate you. I hate your face. I want you to die. I am so much better then you. You are worthless. Because that is what the Senshi of Sand heard.

The other senshi jerked him to his feet anyway. Taranis snatched his hand away the second he was upright, eying the back of his hand as if to check for a mark of some infectious contact-based disease. The girl was apparently not satisfied with merely asserting her beauty and elegance over him. Rosalind also felt compelled to undermine everything he had done to help save her life, leaving only a backward compliment and a raised nose.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do you listen to yourself speak? Do you hear it? I think you should invest in a tape recorder, glue it to your forehead, and then review the things that spew out of your mouth with the overpriced psychologist of your choice." It was one long, ranting breath, eyebrows dancing up and down in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. "I don't need your backwards apology, and I don't need your condescension."

Taranis waved a hand, gesturing from her head to her toes. "This is a good look for you," he said, pursing his lips.