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Megiddo was having a pretty quiet night, which sat, well, terribly with her. She wanted action! She wanted adventure! She wanted to put a guy's eyes out with her thumbs! Or, like, something suitably awful and gross. She'd show Niflhel's concern trolling who was really the best! Or she wouldn't. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him.

In short, <******** everything.

After about half an hour of running around aimlessly looking for trouble, she locked onto a nearby senshi signature. It felt low-level, and checking those out sometimes paid off. Sometimes they were total wusses, but sometimes they were, like, Megrez! And totally willing to learn and become bloodthirsty warriors of love and justice!

Cresting the rise of a roof, the senshi came into view. Megiddo would recognize that hair paired with those go go boots anyway. "Yoooooo!" she hollered. "Baby Senshi! Warhol!"

She took a flying leap, landing neatly in front of the senshi. "How's it hanging?" asked Megiddo. "You finding your space legs?"

Megiddo sighed dramatically, and she moved quickly to drape an arm around Warhol's shoulder's a pull her close. Given that she was nearly a foot taller than the senshi, this then meant that she needed to crouch slightly to address her eye-to-eye. "Okay, kid," she said. "Since you're still new, and I know that the senshi training program ain't all it's cracked up to be, I'm gonna be level with you: if you're not fighting, you're not doing alright."

God. What part of fantastic magical powers and a superhero costume didn't make people think, oh, I should be fighting crime? All she was asking for was a little bit of genre-savviness, and maybe for the cats to do their jobs better. (There was no telling what Snowball might have told Warhol if only she hadn't knocked him out, so she supposed that was partially her fault, but, eh, he'd gotten in her way and gotten what was coming to him.)

"I shoulda been in touch, too," she added, "so you get a pass there, but okay, tonight we're gonna go have fun. I'm gonna show you what fighting Chaos is really about and you're gonna see if you've got what it takes or not and I'll only tease you a little bit if you puke."

Personally, Megiddo hadn't - but she knew it was known to happen.

"So, baby senshi," she said. "Ready to go kill a dude? I'll help, but you've got to take the finishing blow yourself. I promise we'll find a really bad guy to take out."

Fighting if someone attacked you was bold talk, in Megiddo's opinion. If you'd never fought before, fought seriously, trained in the goddamn art of fighting, how did you know that you'd be able to really do it when your life depended on it? Gunn had preached preparedness, and although Order Boot Camps were no longer so much of a thing, Megiddo wasn't about to let that tenet slide.

"They would kill you, baby senshi," she said, considering the younger girl's fears. Her moral compass needed adjusting, but that wasn't anything Megiddo wasn't perfectly capable of. "They're monsters. They steal people's life force away with the touch of their fingertips. They can pluck your soul right from your chest if they want."

Which was, after all, a fate she had very nearly spared Warhol from - and she would not be convinced that situation had been heading in any other direction.

"So let's go find someone up to no good, yeah?" Megiddo asked, pulling Warhol along. "Come on. They usually lurk around the bars near DCU this time of night."

"Now that's more like it!" Megiddo crowed, as Warhol finally gave in. She heard a bit of resolve there, and that was all she needed - she could do the rest. Just find a captain with his hands where it didn't belong, get all shouty about how hey, that's basically rape, because it was, and beat the s**t out of the guy before letting little baby Warhol crack the dude's trachea and put him out of his misery.

It wasn't like she was leaving ******** calling cards. Chaos killed order all the time. Order killed Chaos. Why, just a few months ago, some a*****e had been going around painting Avalon on walls in page blood! This was, like, nothing compared to that.

As they neared the neighborhood she'd suggested, Megiddo slowed and took a moment to sense around. "Please tell me you've figured out this magical head-radar stuff," she said to Warhol. "Okay. Feel that, 'bout twenty yards thataway?" (She pointed, trying to be helpful.) "Roiling void of dark energy? That's a captain. You feeling okay, baby senshi?"

Megrez had killed a dude before she hit super. Megiddo had killed a dude before she hit squire. This was a rite of passage, and she was going to get Warhol through it, even if she had to hold her hand to do it.

"Well, that's kind of the point of this exercise," replied Megiddo, but she considered the question further. Sure, teaching Warhol how to crunch a dude's trachea would be all well and good for a starting point, but she needed to teach her how to take a hit and throw a punch without breaking her thumb and how to get out of a headlock! That was just, like, being responsible! Gunn would never let her live down leaving a wingman high and dry like that.

They neared the edge of the roof, and the captain came into view. "Look at this a*****e," said Megiddo. The Negaverser was crouched over an unconscious young man in a day-glo puffer jacket, his fingers drawing energy from the pulse point on his neck.

"Stay close," she said to Warhol, and launched herself over the low parapet. "Party's over!" Megiddo called, summoning her pitcher to hand, and the captain looked up from what he was doing just in time for the silver to clang off his ********!" he yelled, staggering backwards, reaching for his weapon. He brought the dagger around, and Megiddo raised her pitcher as a shield. The blade clashed against it.

"C'mon, Warhol!" she called. "Let's see what you've got!"

The effect of the magic was instantaneous. Suddenly, the captain was laughing as he waved his knife and staggered with the force of Warhol's hit. "********," he chortled. "******** me, ******** my life, what's even the point."

Well, that was definitely unexpected. Megiddo had been hoping for apathy, like she'd seen last time - but this guy hardly seemed to be trying anymore. Okay, cool, that had worked. She swung her pitcher again, catching his wrist and knocking the knife from his grasp. It clattered somewhere - probably under a dumpster. She didn't really care.

"Can't meet my ******** quotas," said the captain, starting to go after it. Megiddo swung again, catching him in the breastbone. He tumbled backwards, wheezing as he went. "Gonna get killed by a girl in a ******** petticoat," he said hoarsely, looking up at her. Megiddo put her foot on his chest, heel digging into the soft space beneath his ribs. The way he looked up at her was... almost reverential.

That was kind of cool. That was definitely doing things for her. <******** me," wheezed the captain.

"How about no," said Megiddo, pressing her heel down harder. "Warhol, foot on his neck. Make him choke."

The captain laughed like this was the funniest joke he'd ever heard in his life.

The captain's laughter grew hoarser, and then cut off as he struggled to breathe. His hands grabbed at Warhol's boot, and Megiddo shot the senshi a firm look and said, "No, don't let up."

A moment later, something cracked sickeningly, and his hands went slack.

Megiddo eased up on the man's chest. "Great work," she said, grinning at Warhol. Beneath them, the captain was perfectly still. A few moments longer, she thought, and he'd revert to his civilian self. The unconscious man would wake to find him with no recollection of what had happened - and she planned to have Warhol far away from here before any of that happened.

"Come on, let's get moving before someone comes to see why his power signature vanished like that," she said, grabbing Warhol's wrist gently but firmly. She didn't think death felt any different than powering down, but in the presence of a knight and a senshi, someone was bound to get suspicious.

"Let's go," she repeated, pulling Warhol along. "You did great, but we need to get going."

With someone older, who she expected to be tougher, Megiddo would probably have said, No cookies for doing your job, soldier. But she'd also bought Megrez a cupcake to celebrate her first kill, and she owed Warhol at least that, even if she couldn't go bringing fourteen-year-olds back to her dorm room. (Her roommate would probably lodge a complaint.)

"How about..." she said, continuing to pull Warhol along - the further away they were when that guy's glamor slid off him, the better. If Warhol was going to have a breakdown anyway, she didn't want to deal with the cognitive disaster that was watching a captain turn back into a civilian. "I know a place that does the best late-night pancakes."

It was getting to be about time, not that she had a watch. "Or there's a 24-hour falafel shop near DCU..."

Actually, that neighborhood was mostly head shops and porn stores, so maybe not. "Actually, let's stick to the pancakes," said Megiddo. They were back at street level, some five blocks away. She turned to Warhol, putting her hands bracingly on the girl's shoulders.

"You did," said Megiddo, "so good. Like s**t. Wow. That was amazing for your first time! You were really good in that fight and damn, your magic has got to be some of the best senshi magic I've ever seen! Ya did good, kid."

She shifted into her civilian guise, ribbons and lace becoming a snug houndstooth coat, skinny jeans, and a pair of combat boots with studs across the toe and heel. "You can call me Keren. Two Es, no A. So... pancakes?"