Rob sat at the table outside the tiny chip shop, the bustle of central Chelsea swirling and milling around him. It was only mid-week, but it was a pleasant day for once, and people were taking advantage of it. Families were strolling through the streets with their kids, shop girls were hustling about on their lunch breaks, chattering amongst themselves; occasionally someone would glance his way and wonder why anyone would wear a leather jacket in such glorious weather. The young man with the blond dreadlocks ignored it all, though, much as he ignored his plate of fish and chips, the meal left half-eaten in front of him. He had other things on his mind, had been mulling over said things for weeks now. And mulling over things was best accompanied by a pint or three (or five, in his case).

He'd been back in London for a few years now, his life in Destiny City all but forgotten; he'd let a flat from a relative here in Chelsea and had set about rebuilding his life as if the move to America had never happened when he was a teenager. The band he'd started back then, Torgo, had been able to become reality again, spreading their "Pict-punk" Celtic folk-metal love through several gigs here and there in the City, and was meeting with some success. He'd even made a few trips out into the countryside, going on meanders through the forests outside the City and communing with nature in a way he hadn't been able to before. Robin Attewood was living the life he had always wanted for himself, had always imagined it would be.

So why was he morosely drinking beer alone outside a chip shop?

Despite himself, he'd realized a few days ago that he missed Destiny City. He missed his house, he missed his garden, he missed his parents. He even missed the people.

He missed Sid.

Sure, Sid was a pain in the arse, but she was his pain in the arse, inasmuch as she belonged to anyone. She was his best mate, his occasional ********, someone else to whom music was a part of their soul, one of the few living people who could put up with him. Sid was fun and flirty and scarred and wise in her own self-invested way. Because everything Sid did was done in Sid's best interests and to hell with anyone else. Except him. And he missed that, terribly.

But if he missed so many things in Destiny City, why had he fled back to London in the first place?

That whole bloody senshi nonsense, that was why. Rob had come to terms some time ago that he was in fact Sailor Puck -- no, Super Sailor Puck now, Senshi of the Woods, and that it was going to upend his life in ways he couldn't even imagine. And it had, in bizarre and horrible ways sometimes. He had no idea why it was his duty to defeat the forces of Chaos that threatened Destiny City. But it was a duty he felt compelled to fulfill, until it roiled and escalated and began to interfere with his relationships with Sid and his mum and dad and everyone and everything else, and that was when he stepped away and said "I can't do this any more." At least he remembered to let Sid know he was leaving this time (because this wasn't the first time he'd walked away from it all), asking her to take care of his stuff inside the house (his mum would take care of his garden) and telling her that he would be back eventually, which at the time he thought was a lie. He figured he would get to London and settle in and stay here for the rest of his life.

But he didn't expect to become homesick for a place that wasn't home and yet was home at the same time. Despite being a native Londoner, he felt out of place and out of step with the City. What was more, he felt like he was shirking a duty that he was expected to live up to -- that he expected himself to live up to, as he was for some reason born to it. The magical transformation pen that helped him become Sailor Puck was still -- and always, habitually so -- in his pants pocket, and he reflexively reached down with one hand to reassure himself it was there. He hadn't changed into Puck since he left. Hadn't wanted to. Right up until this moment.

Maybe it was time to go back to Destiny City.

Retrieving his phone (his senshi phone, which he still carried out of habit), he pulled up Sid's number and sent her a simple text: Coming home. Make sure you clean the ******** house up. More later. Then he stood and sighed heavily. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends," he muttered to himself. "Or close the wall up with our English dead." Downing the last of his beer in a single draught, he stood and left a tip for the waitstaff, then headed back to his flat to book his flight back to Destiny City and pack his things and start saying his goodbyes and thank you's, reciting the rest of that passage from Henry V as he went, growing louder and gesticulating dramatically. People stared, but he didn't care; he was a man on a mission.

"In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility, but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger: stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage, then lend the eye a terrible aspect, let it pry through the portage of the head like the brass cannon, let the brow o’erwhelm it as fearfully as doth a gallèd rock o’erhang and jutty his confounded base, swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean…"

(wc: 1013)