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She was just... not going to think about her trip to her wonder, because it made life less complicated, and ignoring major personal events of possible cosmic significance was absolutely, 100% guaranteed not to backfire, right? Instead, Megiddo was going to hold tight to her pitcher and explore the back-alleys of Destiny City, which was an appropriate hobby for any soon-to-be-eighteen-year-old, completely devoid of any danger or threat of bodily harm.

Well.

Sort of.

The page's eyes were peeled for any sign of trouble - wreckage or slime could mean a youma. Her ears were pricked for possible sounds of wrongdoing - screams could mean a mugging, or a negaverse stick-up. And her weird magic sense was pricked for chaos and order signatures, keeping an eye on what other powerful folk might be in the area.

In a few words, you could say she was learning from experience.

She'd been keeping tabs on a powerful chaos signature for a while now, trying to keep off an intersect course with whoever else was wandering around the maze of alleys and side-streets. But Megiddo was curious - and one peek wouldn't hurt, right? Maybe if she moved slowly enough, they wouldn't notice her. She was low-level, right? Maybe they wouldn't think her worth paying attention to.

(A dumb thought, and she knew it, but she still hopped up to sneak around on the second-floor terrace, hoping to get a good look.)

She could see blonde hair and yellow lace in the darkness, and no matter that it had been two years, Megiddo still knew Sailor Lesath anywhere. Her dreams made sure of that.

Nope, nope, nope, she thought to herself, turning to creep back across the terrace. She didn't think she'd been seen. Maybe she hadn't been sensed, either.

Megiddo froze in her tracks. Then, seized with the irrational notion that Lesath had seen her, she took a mad dive and curled up behind a planter box on the terrace. The illogical nature of this course of action struck her immediately - she sensed you, moron, Megiddo berated herself. Same as you sensed her. Anyway, she clutched her pitcher to her chest and listened to her blood pound in her ears and confirmed to herself that, yes, two years later and Sailor Lesath still scared the s**t out of her.

So, excuse her if she didn't really believe the dark mirror senshi's claims about not wanting to hurt her. Because if memory served correctly - and it did, because one did not simply forget about mirror wraiths sucking energy out of your chest - Lesath had hurt her pretty dang badly last time they'd met.

Although, she did have to consider that she'd been a civilian then, and now they met as powered... not quite equals. Megiddo frowned and reminded herself of Eternal Sailor Gunn's teaching: the dark mirror won't hesitate to kill you. So you should probably slink away before this fight even starts, because those pretty black buttwings are going to rip out your heart.

It was probably pure, unadulterated stupidity that made Megiddo call out, "How do I know you mean that?" instead of leaving right then and there.

Lesath probably didn't remember her, Megiddo reasoned. Like, that was how it went: for you, it was the worst night of your life, for them, it was just another Tuesday. And she wouldn't make any connection at all between that civilian and Megiddo, anyway, so why worry? Either way, if the senshi was lying, she'd wind up dead.

"Okay," called Megiddo, getting to her feet. She smoothed out her skirt, because when going to meet an agent of chaos who might possibly mean your doom, you must always endeavor to look your best. Then, she walked over to the edge of the terrace and looked down at the senshi. She seemed... Megiddo tried to think of a word that would encompass her worst nightmare sitting around playing with her hair. Failing at that, she called, "Okay, I'm coming down now."

She swung over the railing and hopped neatly down to the alley below, landing a few yards away from the senshi who had her so wary. "I know who you are," she said, flicking her pitcher away into the ether. She wanted to show that she was unarmed, but the truth was that she'd practiced her quick-draws enough times that she was almost more effective starting a fight with the pitcher vanished. "You wouldn't know me, though."

"The name's Megiddo of Saturn," she said, looking awkwardly at the senshi with an expression that was neither smile nor frown. How was she supposed to be acting right now? Gunn had never told her what to do when the Dark Mirror just wanted to talk.

"It was, yeah, something like that," nodded Megiddo. This was just too weird - the Lesath she'd run into two years ago had been sure and solid in her ideology, had happily touted the superiority of the Dark Mirror above all else. The senshi before her seemed less certain. Quieter. More mature? More... something. "Bygones being bygones, I guess."

She wasn't going to let her guard down yet, but had to admit that Lesath seemed earnest in her plans not to attack. Which was confusing, because Gunn had been very clear about the Dark Mirror Court and how they would sooner kill than converse, and Megiddo wasn't ready to consider the possibility that Gunn had been wrong. She'd been aimless for too long to go and discount the only solid guidance she'd gotten so far.

"So you're just kind of... hanging out?" she asked, confused. It seemed to her like if you were disenchanted with the whole Dark Magical Girl thing, then there were better ways to spend your evening than hanging out in alleys dressed as, of all things, a Dark Magical Girl. But then, she could imagine that the outfit came with some perks, same as hers did - and jumping around like you were Spider-Man had definite draw.

"Because if you're uh, if you're not doing the mirror wraith-y energy suck-y preying on innocent civilians thing, then I don't think I have to fight you. Or we could not and say we did." Gunn, she thought, would probably not be pleased to hear that Megiddo was rubbing elbows with someone who used to terrify her, but really, looking at Lesath, it was clear to see that her heart just wasn't in the whole Evil Moth Lady thing anymore.

Megiddo caught herself blushing, because what even was her life. "You think I'm cute," she said incredulously, secretly wanting Lesath to repeat the statement because otherwise she was pretty sure she was hallucinating. ********. Why did everyone attracted to her have to be either a) male, b) evil, c) crazy, or d) any combination of the above? She could just never win. (Although crushing on Gunn, who was almost certainly 120% heterosexual, was doing nothing for her case.)

"If it weren't for the whole we play for entirely different teams thing," she said, "I would suggest we drop the glamours, call it a night, and go get coffee." Which would solve the cold part and the bored part and the are your eyes malfunctioning that you think I'm cute, not that I think you're cute, except you kind of are, and you have a really nice rack part.

"I'm looking for trouble," she explained. Technically Lesath probably counted as trouble, being chaos and all, in which case Megiddo had found exactly what she was looking for. "Youma. Civilians getting their energy zapped. That sort of - yeah." She shrugged. Lesath was right about the weather being inopportune. Maybe they should skip the dropping glamours and skip right to the coffee.

Except that would be dangerously close to going on a date with a dark mirror senshi who had once tried to kill her, over some kind of weird disagreement involving Megiddo's ex-girlfriend, and that was just too many psycho lesbian layers to be remotely healthy.

"So you're just. Uh. Sitting around. By yourself. In the dark. And it's pretty much freezing out here?" she reiterated, because it sounded pretty bonkers. "What do you even do all day."

"Well, thanks," said Megiddo, twisting her hair self-consciously. What are you doing, her sense of duty shrieked. You are standing here flirting with Sailor Lesath, seriously, this is so far from okay, and Gunn is going to kill you. To which Megiddo replied, It's not like I'm going to go make out with her. Because she knew better than that.

"I'm underage," she replied to the offer of alcohol, although that had never stopped her in her life. The bigger issue was that she couldn't exactly go into a bar in her page uniform, and she wasn't about to power down in Lesath's company. So, moving on from the matter entirely seemed like a good plan.

"Well, are you studying something you think is interesting?" she asked. If Megiddo had to guess, she'd assume that Lesath was in college. "Just because you're doing the Dark Magical Girl thing as a part-time job doesn't mean that you can't have goals. Like, before Ares went and made you all evil and mothy, what did you want to be? Why can't you still be that?"

Maybe it was different for the dark moon court, thought Megiddo, which just made them all the more tragic. Perhaps she would only be rubbing salt in a wound if she tried to give an example from her own life - but that wasn't going to stop her. "So, me," she said, "I've wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. And then one night I wind up in mortal peril and poof, lolita frills and a nifty weapon and cool super powers. But that doesn't stop me from being me and wanting to be a doctor."

Megiddo shrugged, worrying she'd said too much. "I don't know," she added. "But if I were you, I'd say <******** it and find something I love and do it."

Megiddo's parents let her drink at home, so she'd never been tempted to get a fake. Maybe next year, once she started college. She eyed the bench, unsure of the proximity to Lesath, and ultimately decided that in spite of the senshi seeming friendly, she didn't want to risk it. "I hope you'll forgive me if I don't," she said, staying rooted to the spot. "Old habits are hard to break."

It was an easy enough conversation to continue from a few feet away, anyway. "Probably," she said, laughing, "If you lose the duckface and learn to - what's it Tyra's always saying? Smize?" Was that even a word? She imagined it spelled out in her head, underlined in wiggly red pixels. "You're really pretty," she said, and meant it, because it was true.

"Just because some big dumb witch-queen of Angmar picked you up and bopped you on the head doesn't mean you've got to give up everything you ever wanted out of life and go be her slave, right?" she asked. Was that how it worked? Probably not. Megiddo knew she'd boasted to Lesath before about being passed-over by Ares, which was why she didn't bring it up now - too revealing. "So like, be a model. Or get a hobby. Join a book club. And tell Ares to go to hell. She's a cunty b***h."

She was proud of that last statement.

Megiddo nodded, trying to look sympathetic when in fact she was taking careful notes. If the Dark Mirror Court was so fractured, then why hadn't anyone done anything about it? She was sure that Gunn would be interested to hear, at the very least. Maybe she'd even have a plan. "It's like, smiling with your eyes, or something? Looking happy even when you're pouting like a dead fish."

Boy trouble, magical boyfriend or not, seemed like an easier thing. Mostly because Megiddo didn't see the point of boyfriends. "If you hate him so much," she counseled, "Don't marry him. Seriously. Dump him and change the locks and if he still shows up, call the ******** cops on his a**. Life's too short to spend it having sex with people you don't even like." Like, forget love, sex and love were different things, but you should at least, like, tolerate each other? Or at least that was Megiddo's rather inexperienced opinion.

"You should go home," she said sympathetically, frowning at how sad Lesath had become. Who'd have ever thought she'd feel bad for Lesath! It was a weird night. "Take a bubble bath. Eat something that makes you happy. Play Animal Crossing or read a book or masturbate or whatever you're into. And dump your boyfriend. And go to sleep, seriously, you look like a zombie."

This, out of everything she'd said, struck her as harsh.

"A really pretty zombie," she added. "Like, the queen of the zombie prom. But still a zombie."