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Zirconia had been a busy little cat, especially in the days since that disaster of a meeting, but in the events of Zia Connolly's civilian life she seemed less busy, and more of a slacker. For being someone who had set out to prove they deserved their job and didn't ascend to her position based on pure nepotism, nepotism turned out to be the only thing keeping her employed.

Especially since today she had bailed out early to flounce around town. Sort of. Sometimes Zia wasn't sure if she was trying to avoid being recognized or had somehow lost her grip, but she had left the sedan at her apartment and was strolling about in jeans, a baggy t-shirt she wasn't even sure she owned (and probably didn't) and barely contained hair that was less perfect ringlets and more resembling a lilac haired princess Meridia.

But she wasn't leisurely going for a walk. She was looking for something. and was stopping occasionally at a few vacant storefronts to test the door and peek in the windows ever so briefly before continuing her tour along the sidwalks.

Zia turned to look under her arm at Annabel first, and then her wide brown eyes shot to Chris before her mouth twisted a bit, and every microexpression in her face shifted to a far more volatile and cruel personality that Chris had encountered the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. Zia was literally drowned and vanished from her own face.

"Try again, schoolboy," She smirked, turning to face him and put one hand on her hip. And then came the derisive snort. Considering Zirconia's last words to the knight were about how sickeningly easy his life was, the image before her couldn't have been more fitting. "Enjoying another fine summer day?" She asked with bitter sarcasm.

"Well I'm busy. And so's your little friend," She said with a flippant handwave and continuing in a deliberately opposite direction.

Zirconia, or whoever was mostly piloting the poor body stuck in a weird eternally 21 limbo, stopped with an annoyed "Ugh," and whirled around.

"What even? Aren't you too busy having a life or some s**t?" She snarled, but conceded with a flat "Fine." Still sounding like this was just a terribly rude inconvenience.

And suddenly she was a wide eyed twenty-something again, who brought her hands up to fiddle nervously like she'd just been caught tossing kittens in a lake or something. "Um..." Would it be silly to greet him like she'd just answered the phone? that was her first instinct, but then it felt silly. Instead she just cleared her throat and gave Annabel a meek little wave, though she didn't dare reach down and pet her with the same kind of familiarity she did last time she saw her, which felt like an eternity ago. She was actually a little afraid she'd start bawling out of missing Harley, who she also hadn't seen in forever.

"You talked to him?" Zia seemed to zone in on the part about her dad first, and seemed limply unresponsive to the awkward hug. "We had a fight, I guess," She muttered, recalling when she actually cared about trivial little things like her dad's secret girlfriend and depleted trust fund.

Nowadays the only time it crossed her mind was when she lamented that an abundance of funds would make her disappearing act much easier.

She ended up just sort of gnawing on the inside of her cheek nervously. What was she supposed to say to him? Hi, I went into the lair of the beast and it kind of rocked my world in the worst way possible? There's no room in either of our lives to be friends anymore? While she certainly thought these sentiments were true and must be vocalized for the best, they were much harder to actually say out loud.

"You should keep walking," She ended up murmuring with a bit of a shaky timbre to her voice.

"He's sick," Zia muttered. Not because she wanted to announce his failing health, but it did severely support her following point. "Ugh, you just don't understand," She said, bringing her hands up like the entire concept gave her a migraine. Though the cause of the migraines might be more or less the hundreds of years worth of memories that her cerebral functions insisted on treating as her own when she knew very logically they couldn't be.

"She's like poison," She said, gaining a bit of her old passion in her voice. Though it was genuine fire, and not the bitter lashing out of an old, defeated politician Zirconia was often spouting. "Everyone, everyone she hangs around ends up in a bad way. She destroys everything. And she's part of me now," There was mingling of conflicting emotions in that last phrase, as Zia clutched a hand over her own heart that ached with so many foreign pains lately. "She's in me, and she's not leaving but... God, Chris, it wasn't a bad thing. What she said about you, at that meeting," Zia felt like she was blurting a years worth of repressed emotions all at once. "It's good that you have a life! And a family! And don't live day in and day out in this shitty war, trapped in this shitty city. But her... she just destroys everyone. Ares, Nehelenia, hell even before Nehelenia. And it's just so much better if you Stay. Away."

There was no internal argument. No conflict with Zirconia to be had here. The soul in the backseat of her brain only silently agreed.

Zia shook her head and shrugged and made a zillion more gestures as she tried to find words. Appropriate words that weren't cruel, or meant to be, like when Zirconia used him as her verbal punching bag.

And then she wanted to escape, though that seemed an impossibility. The lofts where she made her home weren't far, but the last thing she wanted was someone so connected to her family knowing where she was.

"I just... no!" For a moment she was back to being childish as she made tight fists and let them flop at her sides. Why were feelings so icky and hard? And she was even worse at it than usual. It was hard to to look at the mess you've made of your life and face the music; Even harder when you had the option of becoming dormant in your own body and letting someone else take the reins.

"Seriously, Chris, you can't get involved. Ares would wipe all of you out in a second and it's just... it's for the best." She didn't want to go as grim as saying she was preparing for the inevitable day when she and the Usurper Queen came face to face again and her likely resulting death, but that was certainly a part of it, and she felt like a terminal patient at this point.

"We had a good run, but, you know, people grow apart," She said, trying to put it in more acceptable terms. And still feeling cornered. She was about to admit things she'd rather leave unsaid. Things about her own analysis of her choices, things about Lt. Dioptase, who she still thought about with unsettling frequency.

But then there was rescue, albeit in the most annoying fashion.

"Good god, Connolly, what are you wearing?" Thomas Wilson, son of her father's business associate, occasional founcing douchebag, and currently stopped on the side of the road in Italian everything. Suit, car, leather seats, goldigging girlfriend of the week in the front seat.

He was a regular at social gatherings, although he was less noticeable than his father who fit in with the cranky old, men, and was a generation off from Chris and Zia, fitting in more with Zia's older brothers. But he was also Zia's tenuous connection to being employed. "Hi, Cristina!" He mocked. Just because he was a generation older didn't exactly make him more mature.

Zia responded with an 'ugh' but this was also an out. An escape, however unpleasant.

"Can I get a ride home?"

"Not unless you have a suit on under that fashion travesty."

Zia took that as a 'yes, but I'll be unhappy about it' and hopped in the backseat of the flashy red convertible. "Just let it go, Chris," She said before they sped off. And not referring to the 'Cristina' comment either.