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"s**t!" She exclaimed as the final rain-drops of her storm were weakly sputtered out. "Nonononono DON'T DIE NO!!" Despite her aggressive pleading, the clouds of fury grumbled a mere cough of a thunder clap and dissipated into the atmosphere. Just a few wisps of nimbus were all that were left to even indicate that anything was there, aside from everyone being wet, of course.

Fear clung to her heart as Alba stared the monster down. She desperately thought about throwing the damned henshin pen at it in hopes of poking one of the eyes out, however, no action was made to do so. Facing an even angrier talking cat couldn't be any better than the thing that was cornering them now.

She opted to hope that Simon would actually listen to Astraea, and that his attack was strong enough to kill the radioactive ostrich/praying mantis concoction. If not, she had no other options to choose from.

Honestly, Franz on the Polecats was nicer. At least he just clapped Simon on the back a lot, in-between trying to rape him, apparently, and that wasn't really 'nicer' in Simon's book. But this was a lot worse. The cat was angry. It was an angry cat.

"Sailor Atlas," said Astraea. "I've been wanting to bite someone for a very long time now. AND IT WILL BE YOU. IT WILL BE YOU. THERE WILL BE BLOOD. THERE WILL BE BLOOD UNLESS YOU SAY RIGHT NOW, WITHOUT CRINGING AWAY FROM THE PE -- oh, wait."

The youma had started to flail. It suddenly crumpled as though it had been pressed down by a terrible weight, and was folded down as though it was a piece of paper. It was sqwawking all the while, its vulnerable head suddenly dropping down, a bundle of feathers and praying mantis legs. It looked like a lolcat: INVISIBLE WEIGHT!

The befallen monster's ugly head had ended up right at the edge of the range of Atlas's attack. When Alcyone swung her foot over it she would feel the ground pulling at it more forcefully than usual - it felt twice as heavy, but that just meant it hit the beast twice as hard. Her shoes easily cleaved into the monster's skull with a final rattling squark!! before it fell apart like a rotten pumpkin, splattering her ankle with flakes of chitin and globs of inky gunk.

Sailor Atlas was staring at all of this as if he had just seen... well, in all honesty, it was a perfectly normal reaction for witnessing the very events that had unfolded in front of and around him and, to some apparent extent, within him as well. He looked positively shell-shocked. The crisis had been averted but there was still fear painted across his features, a type of deep-seated dread in place of the slowly but surely fading adrenalin spike.

He looked at his still-raised hand, then at the crumpled mass that was once the monster.

He looked at Alcyone, up at the cat, and rolled his gaze everywhere else in the tiny space they were in, looking for someone, anyone else, human or cat or otherwise that might have also been there. Nobody was.

But there was no way that crushing blow could possibly have been dealt by him. Just no way.

"What's going on?" he finally asked, looking desperate for this to all have been a dream.

Sailor Alcyone was beginning to like Astraea less and less for with each encounter she found herself with the cat, and couldn't help but glare after her as she made her exit. Her goo be-speckled foot was dragged against the concrete floor in hopes that it might take some of the battle aftermath off, and when it didn't, the girl numbly walked back to the fence where Atlas was still standing, and as graceful as a hippopotamus out of water, slumped to the ground to sit.

"I don't really know anything about the Negaverse, other than the fact that they like to kill people," she admitted. "I ran into one who tried to reach into my chest, and that's when she came in and, well. You saw what happened here."

Alcyone sounded tired, as though all the weight in the world were hypothetically resting on her shoulders. "I don't know what we are. People say we're terrorists, Astraea says we aren't, I haven't even SEEN anybody else like me and now....you...." Her voice cracked. "I'm so sorry!"

She immediately raised her hands to cover her face as her gasps became more and more heavy with an all to familiar sound to Simon: uncontrollable sobbing.

The feel of his hand was an emotional breaking point for Alcyone. It was as if the wall that she had built to suppress all of the strange occurrences, the costumes and the magic had completely buckled and crumbled from the very touch of his fingers, and it all came crashing down in the form of big, wet tears and a sniffling noise. She made a sharp intake of breath that sounded almost painful, and before she could really stop herself from reacting without a thought behind it, she leaned in and threw her arms around Atlas, burying her face in his shoulder and letting it all go.

She hadn't met anyone, she hadn't even so much as seen anyone else in the same situation as she was since that fateful night, and it certainly wasn't because she had been trying to completely avoid it. All those times in the coffee shop or all those moments glancing around and dazing off into a dream were her feeble attempts at connecting with reality, and she wasn't met with anything in return. Not even another person telling her it was all true, that it wasn't all in her head, that it would be difficult but in the end all prevail for the good of humanity. Nothing.

Atlas was the first, and it was her fault, completely her own fault for dragging Simon into this mess. She wanted him to feel safe and confident, and now there isn't a way in the world for him to ever feel that way, what with these people running around and stealing star seeds or whatever they are, killing anyone who may have one in hand and causing damage and destruction everywhere they went.

All of this, on top of school, was impossible for her to bare, and she couldn't imagine it would be easy for him either.

She continued to cry on his shoulder, back shuddering with every heaving gasp and her arms tightly grasping on to him, as though if she didn't, he would just go away and she would be left alone for the world to devour.

It lasted for what seemed like an eternity of sobbing and clutching before Alcyone began to loosen up. After all, that was a lot of stress that had been hovering over her shoulders for quite a few days now, and the fact that she thought that it was her responsibility alone for dragging Simon into it didn't make her feel any better. She sniffled, and finally, slowly, she let go of her clasped hands and leaned away from Atlas.

The boy might have felt awkward for the next five minutes, as Alcyone didn't even make a move to talk. She stayed completely silent as she formed her thoughts into something more cohesive to hold on to, and therefore, to relay. She didn't want to leave him feeling like his life was now a hopeless case of misery and despair, especially since she had already gone through that route. That way of thinking is not going to help her, and she better stop now before it got worse.

"........Thank you." She began. "I'm sorry for all of this, and I really do appreciate you letting me...well, you know." She wasn't exactly proud of her break-down, so she left it at that and continued on. "I've been thinking a lot about this ...new life. It wasn't something that I chose to be apart of, and if given the choice, I probably wouldn't."

"But," she went on, "We're supposedly fighting for the better good, right? And people are dying because of this Negaverse. I guess being able to help these people who are being victimized isn't such a horrible fate."

"Yeah...me neither. What you saw there was probably the most harm I've ever done to anything before. I don't even like to squish spiders." It was a true statement: she much preferred to grab a cup and paper, capture the spider in question and release it out in the wild, far enough away from her sleeping quarters to allow her to feel a sense of false security.

"I'd like to think that we were chosen for a reason. I mean, I don't really have any physical prowess to do this sort of thing every night. Perhaps my gift lies elsewhere...." She took this point to inch her hand over and gently grasped at Atlas's own. "And I think the same goes for you. You have a big heart; even I can feel that."

"I think I'm going to try and do this Sailor Senshi of Justice thing. I don't think I can do it on my own, though...I hope that maybe you'll reconsider and perhaps help me with this. You're the only other one I know, so far....." She trailed off. "I hope we find others soon."

She gave his hand a final squeeze before letting go. The transformation back to Alba Gale Delores, senior student at Crystal Academy and all around nice person couldn't even compare to the kind of theatrics it took to create the senshi look. Somehow, in someway, it was as though Atlas had blinked and there she was, the same girl who had been running alongside him, without a sailor attire, looking normal as ever.

Alba pushed herself off from the ground and turned to face him, a shy smile tugging at the sides of her mouth. "Want to get some hot cocoa with me, my treat? I'd love some company, and we've just gone through hell. Nothing fixes hell better than a cup of hot cocoa and whipped cream."