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Not on Sailor Ares' watch.

Fallon had also decided to treat herself to a little fine dining at the fondue restaurant when something cheesy and warm took a terrifying form in the center of the room. Most of the civilians leaped from their chairs immediately and headed for the exits. Fallon found a spot behind a ficus and away from the security cameras where she could transform.

In the ruckus, a few civilians had been hit by the steaming cheeseballs. They hung like victims from Alien in a cheese-mucus from the walls and ceiling. All of them moaned, called for help, and otherwise tried to distract Ares from her goal. It was a shame she could give two shits about their current predicament when there was a youma afoot. At least they would be out of the way, right?

Sailor Ares would have completely ignored the cheese-trapped patrons if it weren't for a particular energy signature by the bathrooms. Another senshi? The youma was bee-lining for a frill-and-cheese covered girl. Sailor Ares picked up a chair, leaped as high as she could, and brought it down in the massive blob youma's side.

Apparently this evening would require a table for two.

As Rosalind disoldged herself from the wall, Ares was busy smashing herself right into the side of the youma. The chair made impact, but it was like stabbing a fork into a jar of play-doh. It stuck hard, bringing Ares to an uncomfortable hard stop. She cartwheeled at the last moment to avoid colliding with the youma. Her boots clicked primly against the wooden floor when she landed. A less prim snarl crossed her lips.

Crying? Was the other senshi crying?

Many things conflicted in the senshi of smoke's mind. On one hand, she had a deep, passionate love for exceptionally feminine girls. Her immediate urge was to ask Rosalind on a date. On the other, Ares found the lackluster, whiney failure of this senshi totally unacceptable. Her mind flashed with dueling images of romantic dinners and forced push-ups before finally combining into an image of Ares teaching the other girl how to throw a proper punch.

It was a little confusing.

The youma slowly oozed toward Ares, shooting a ball of cheese at her. She rolled away at the last minute, coming to a stop beside the girl covered in ruffles. "Youma are mindless. It just takes a minor amount of training to outwit them." The youma belched. Ares took the opportunity to lift another chair and throw it. It lodged into the creature's back, causing the youma to let out a wail.

She turned back to Rosalind. Hm, she could see the scathing glance -- but she appreciated the good manners tied to it. Ares reached out a hand and took Rosalind's in hers. "Rosalind is a very pretty name. I'm Sailor Ares, Soldier of Smoke. I noticed you might need a hand with this... disgusting thing." She released her hand, managing a smile. It was a waste of time, but Ares considered it a personal challenge to maintain this conversation, save the civilians, AND keep the monster at bay.

Why couldn't a girl have it all?

Keen eyes pricked on the cheese youma. The senshi of smoke was watching it for something, peeling over it even as it sputtered and flailed. There! The youma swelled wide, drew in a breath, and then spat a large cheesy ball onto the ground in front of it. It breathed. So it could choke on smoke. The ball slowly dissolved like wax peeling down the edge of a candle to reveal one of the chairs. There was something noteworthy there too -- the youma was smaller. It appeared to have a fixed mass. The more it spewed, the smaller it got. Perfect.

These tiny revelations happened in a short span of time, aided by Sailor Rosalind's distracting attack. Ares followed her under a table, and most of the civilians did the same thing. The youma was left alone in the center to squeal and whirl.

Wealth, eh? Fallon was pretentious in her own right, and she loved a girl who could appreciate the finer things. It was one of her favorite qualities of Jada and Adira, after all. From what she had seen so far, Rosalind had all the makings of what she liked in a girl. Perhaps a little too contentious, but hey -- Ares never stuck with the same person for too long anyway.

Once the coins stopped falling, the youma snarled. It swelled up high, growing larger and larger, and then began to spew boiling hot cheese in a wide arc all around it (a la The Exorcist and pea soup). The cheese splattered on the ground and bounced up to Ares' bare thigh. It burned a hot red patch where it touched, and Ares had to grab a napkin to wipe it away before the pain got worse. She gasped in surprise, locking an arm around Rosalind's waist. "Go go go!" she shouted, dragging the girl with her to the next table just as the youma let out another stream of boiling cheese exactly where the two had been hiding.

Manhandle? Annoyance flashed across gray eyes. She was busy saving this sorry excuse for a senshi's life. What she seriously complaining? "I could always leave you to fight it alone," she snapped, "if you would prefer." There was no hardness in the words, just the simple stating of fact. If Rosalind wanted to clean this mess up alone, then it could most certainly be arranged.

Then Rosalind exposed one leg, and Ares forgot to be angry. "I'm here to help you. I just need you to do what I say, when I say it, and then, yeah, I can take care of this--" Something crashed on top of the table above them. Ares rolled out from under it and saw an oozing ball of cheese slowly melting through the table. Her hand reached out for Rosalind again. "Rosalind, MOVE!" The table was melting. Cheese was dripping. Time to run again!

Sailor Ares would prefer to do all the work just as much as Sailor Rosalind would prefer to do none of it. This information did not go accurately communicated, leaving both to grasp at straws of the things they did not exactly want to do. "It's hard to know what the youma will do before it happens," Ares said, moving with Rosalind to put more distance between the pair and the monster.

"Battle is about reaction. Narrating it to you slows me down," she said. The disdain was hard to keep out of the words. Again, a cheese ball was lobbed at the pair, but Ares was done running. She hopped to her feet, lifted the nearest table and used it like a shield-turned-battering-ram.

Running against the stream, Ares crashed into the side of the youma. It was like running into a padded wall. She bounced backward off of it, summoned her powers to her, and called out her power. Twin columns of smoke burst from her hands, forming a thick, churning funnel around the youma. It was trapped inside, screaming in its guttural way.

Sailor Ares began to grab whatever she could -- chairs, tables, napkins, plates -- and through it into the column. "Rosalind, throw whatever you can into this smoke cloud," she barked. Was that enough warning? It seemed like some kind of compromise, at least.

Ares had no idea what Rosalind was doing when she went after the giant pot toward the corner. The senshi of smoke was trying to throw things that were easily accessible -- like the much smaller, much easier to wield table-top pots that decorated almost every table in their vicinity. So why did Rosalind feel compelled to go after the decorative wrought-iron one in the corner? Ares could not say. No one, she imagined, could properly explain it. It was just a stupid battle choice, one of many that Rosalind seemed hell-bent on doing.

Hefting another small pot into the column with accuracy that only repeated practice sessions had given her, Sailor Ares was not being as attentive to the senshi of wealth as she should have been. Her eyes barely registered the flash of gold before it came sailing back out at her face. The time to dodge was not long enough. Ares barely darted her head to one side, and the shoe caught her in the ear. <********!" she cursed, falling to her knees and clutching the side of her head. "What are your shoes made of?" They were adorable. On one hand, Ares loved them. On the other, she was pretty sure that one had taken her ear off the side of her head. Blood leaked from between her clenched fingers, but there was little time for her to focus on it.

The smoke dissipated, and the youma was ready. It trembled, it rumbled, and then, well... it sort of exploded. Cheese exploded from its every pore -- and with it, all the things that they had just forced into it. Ares grunted, diving behind a nearby pillar at the last second. She still took a chair to the arm, complete with a burn from where the cheese had seared her.

She didn't have time to worry about Sailor Rosalind then.

When the cheese bomb had gone off, Sailor Ares cartwheeled out from her hiding place, arms poised at the ready for battle. But there was no cheese youma in sight. Just a very yellow, very sticky senshi of wealth. Ares stifled a laugh -- barely. "You didn't duck," she said, raising an eyebrow. This senshi really had no survival instincts, did she?

Typical White Mooner. Typical.

The thought of her kingdom brought a pang of sadness to her chest. Her smile faltered. If it wasn't for how Rosalind was smiling at the floor, Ares might have been lulled off into that place of sadness and missed the youma entirely.

"Oh," she breathed, crossing the room to where the tiny youma struggled to regain its mass. Ares pushed Rosalind's cheesy hands away. "Nah-uh," she said, waggling a finger. "Don't touch it."

One boot lifted, hovered over the tiny cheesy blob, and the slowly smashed down on top of it. There was a tiny pop! Ares lifted her boot up and tried to wipe it off on a table cloth. It was pointless. After a moment, every trace of yellow, cheese youma by-product filtered away into glittering youma dust before fading away entirely. Ares brushed the last traces of dust from her arms.

She spotted something golden a few steps away and went to pick it up. It was a shoe. It was the shoe that had created the bloody gash on the side of her head. Ares sighed and then moved back over to Rosalind. "I believe this belongs to you," she said, dangling it out on one finger.