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Immediately Miriam shifted into the whites of her Cavalier uniform, and Cavalier Kunzite went back to staring at Polaris. Now that Aurora had seen both, they pretty plainly were the same person: transformation glamour was a curious thing. It made Kunzite look a little less daunting, to have that knowledge. Nevertheless she crossed her arms over her chest and looked around the room a bit awkwardly, as if she was trying to figure out what kind of mess the attack would cause. "Do you want me to take you some place a little more undisturbed?" she said a bit brusquely. "We'll go right back here afterward."

There was some silence. Kunzite blinked at her. "Teleportation," she said. "One of the more beneficial aftereffects of corruption."

Through this Kunzite had stayed rock-still with her expression frozen, but once the knife came hurtling towards them her sword flicked up in a guard and there was a loud clang: the knife went hurtling the other direction like a baseball. It was almost comical. "Enough," she said a bit more loudly. "I think that's enough."

She looked about a little twitchily for more flying metal objects, and was dismayed when her sword shivered and started to tug of its own volition in Polaris's direction. It prompted her to power down: the sword and uniform melted away and she was back to being Miriam and folding her arms a bit tightly around herself as she backed against the least metallic-looking wall she could find. "Jesus Christ." It was the most fervent thing Miriam had ever said in Aurora's earshot. "Can you control that at all?"

Miriam was flat against the wall still and looking for more metal debris that might sneak up on her at any moment; once satisfied that this was not going to happen, she looked back at Polaris. With the occasional suspicious glance to one side or the other. "So what you're telling me is that you can attract all metal in a given area to any target that you want -- at high speed?"

She didn't need an answer. Polaris didn't need to answer her. Miriam shook her head slowly, though what emotion it expressed was yet to be seen -- but then she made it clear with, "Do you know how powerful that is?"

Silence reigned for another moment or two as the other girl looked down at her shoes. She seemed to be composing her thoughts. Once she did, she went on, "I was going to talk to you about using your environment to your advantage. It seems like that's more relevant than I even thought." She met Polaris's eyes. "You need to learn to fight on ground you can use. If you take the battle to your own turf a youma wouldn't stand a chance. Neither would a Negaverse Lieutenant."

"I don't know," said Miriam. She looked a little nonplussed, which confirmed the sentiment; she pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger and furrowed her brow in thought. "I'm not accustomed to thinking with magic other than --" She broke off and frowned. "Other than Venus's," she finished, and then elaborated, "Sailor Venus, my old partner. A very long time ago. I'm rambling."

She was far from rambling, of course, but perhaps this was her own standard of rambling: she was a taciturn person, after all, and more than comfortable with silence. "I'll have to think more about what you can do with your environment," she said, "but in the meantime, you need to be ready to pick up the objects you do attract after your attack's done and use them. If killing's really what you're after."

Miriam knelt to clean up the mess as well, gathering metal items into her arms with businesslike efficiency. She hated mess, that much was known about her, or perhaps she felt obliged to help Aurora -- either way, she attacked the task with some zeal and started reorganizing Aurora's room in a way that apparently made more sense to her. The opportunity to do this cheered her up more than anything previous had, and she narrated what she was doing without turning around: "I'm putting the paperclips here," she held up the box of paperclips, "and your desklamp on this side of the desk, it'll shed more light," and so on and so forth for several minutes.

When her share of metallic objects had been put away to her satisfaction, she oversaw her work with her hands on her hips and then turned back to Aurora, immediately looking a little more awkward. Such was her way. She looked at some especially fascinating spot on the floor.

"I don't turn down people who need help," she said brusquely. "It's what any decent person would do." She paused a longer moment. "You can't expect killing to be easy the first time you do it," Miriam said. "It's not something you actually get used to. If you aren't evil."

"Killing isn't right," Miriam said, shortly, a bit awkwardly: if there was any kind of conversation she wasn't awkward about, which was becoming increasingly unlikely, it probably wasn't abstract moral discussion. "I mean, there's nothing intrinsically -- right about it. And a lot intrinsically wrong about it. But I mean," she put her hands together and folded the cuffs of her blouse sleeves, which was beginning to look like a nervous tic, "I guess there's a lot more intrinsically wrong about letting other people die. Other decent people. Normal people who haven't done anything wrong."

There was a long silence while she fiddled with her sleeves more. She kept shooting glances at the clock. Eventually she went on, "I mean, that's the thing. The Negaverse, they're killing a lot of people. Any one of them dying is a lot more people saved. You just have to think about that, I guess."

It wasn't exactly a stirring speech. She seemed to know it, too, because she then burst out with, "Look, I'm not a superhero movie. I'm sure Uncle Ben had -- something to say to Peter Parker about this. Go ask him."

Miriam Jacobs closed her eyes. It was getting late.

Miriam crossed to the door faster than Aurora -- owing again probably to her longer legs and athletic condition. She nodded when Aurora spoke, and then nodded again, more shortly, when she thanked her. When they both reached the door she paused with her eyes fixed straight ahead.

"If you need any more help, you know where to reach me," she said as if reading off a script. "You have your phone and you know where I room here. Leave a message if you need to."

And without further ado she started off -- but lingered, a moment, meeting Aurora's eyes again to give one final, almost non-awkward piece of nonverbal thanks: a salute. Sharp, two-fingered, from the forehead. Then she half-smiled and went on her way.