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Mid-way between contemplating pinching himself and contemplating the probability of his death, Parker noticed the little kitten have a few seizures. Oh wait, maybe it was just her flipping. It was hard not to stare at the little bouncing kitten, harder still when it suddenly transformed into a less-walleyed girl. Parker gripped the wall behind him suddenly, eyes going wide.

For once, he had no idea what to say. He could only stare, half understanding the words she was saying. Parker got to his feet and inched away from Derp, the henshin pen still clutched in his hand. In the distance, he could hear the thud of punches and the exasperated cries from the senshi who had saved him. Parker might be unsympathetic to the terrorists, but in his own way, he appreciated what she had done for him before, and what she did now.

Wait -- when did he get a hat?

His free hand reached up to feel the brim of a brown bowler hat. "Did you... hat me?" It was the thing that made the most sense in that moment, far more sense than a cat spitting out a pen and a phone and transforming into a little girl.

Parker looked back to the pen. What was this? Why did... why did he want to believe the catgirl? Was it so wrong to want to have power in a world where so many others wielded it? Parker had met senshi, and he had met negaverse agents. They were powerful, and he was just a bystander caught in the hurricane. After all the knocks he had taken in his life, Parker wanted to believe that he was worth more than the sum of his parts, or the wake his life had left behind.

And in that moment -- he wanted to believe a talking cat.

Lifting up the pen in the same way (though less enthusiastically) that Derpraline had, Parker closed his eyes and said, "Taranis Power, Make-up!" The words were full of skepticism, but under the layer of fat, there was hope. And it shone out like a beacon.

It wasn't the only thing that started to shine.

Something a little like this happened:

Parker lifted into the air. His legs got really fantastically long and a swell of grainy sand encircled his body, hiding all the R-rated parts. There was this really uplifting music (or was he hallucinating that?) with a charging tempo. Parts of him erupted in clothing and his nails glistened with a clear coat of polish. A freak wind blew the hair from his face as a golden tiara glimmered into existence and when all was said and done he felt the distinct urge to strike a pose. He, being Sailor Taranis. And so he did -- like shazam!

Or something.

What was left in the place of the boy crumpled on the sidewalk was far better dressed and emitted a soft glow in the bleak alley:



Sailor Taranis stood there for several minutes, just staring. "What... the ********. What the. ********. ********." The confusion was replaced by euphoria, a sudden mind-melting glee that threatened to make the boy who once was just Parker Damhnait bounce from foot to foot.

He stared at his hands, he tugged at his outfit, he didn't even frown at the sight of shorts! Instead, he glanced down to the little guardian cat-turned-person and said, "What the ******** do I do now?" Very eloquent.

Taranis would have liked to say something smart to Derpraline, but it was a little hard to rebuke her. She had been perfectly right, even if the words were spoken with the skill of a toddler, and now he was the one standing in an alleyway dressed like the illegitimate offspring of a boy scout and an old west desert pilot. The glowing bit was hard to deny too. So was the surging rush of power in his arms and legs, the pounding of his heart.

"Sand Blast," he repeated. "Taranis. Taranis Sand Blast." It lacked the fervor and posing to send the attack whirring out of him, and he felt... prepared? No. Not prepared. More like eager. It was like every nerve in his body had been supercharged, and he'd explode if he didn't work it out of his system.

There was something else to -- a feeling of unity, a sense of duty. It was innate, like breathing. But Taranis wasn't ready to comprehend that. He could feel it. He could feel that the other senshi was in trouble.

Holy s**t -- the other senshi. The idea was new and fresh and had all the shininess that a teenage boy could hope for.

Taranis didn't have time to pad Derp's ego. As far as he was concerned, she had done her job, not a favor for him. Nodding sharply, Sailor Taranis took off at a run -- and, again, holy s**t was it a run. Up ahead, he saw something that was more familiar than he wanted it to be.

The girl with the braid had her hand in the senshi's chest. It was the exact predicament that this same senshi had saved him from just over a month ago. His legs pumped as he ran toward the pair, but suddenly, something in his head said to stop. It said that he was close enough. It said it was time for him to say those words.

So he listened. Raising his hands before his body, Taranis shut off the part of himself that wanted to analyze the situation and just went with the feeling boiling in his veins. "Taranis Sand Blast!" No sooner had the words left his mouth, and his hands were moving. They framed his tiara, pulling an energy duplicate into the air. That crumbled into sand floating between his outstretched hands, and again, his fingers moved, swirling and swirling until that sand became a orb about the size of a basketball and spinning like a cyclone.

It felt like he was losing control of it, and Sailor Taranis threw his hands forward, unleashing all the momentum at Moonstone. It wasn't perfect, but he tried to aim for the side of her head. If she was distracted enough, maybe it would work?

He didn't have time to consider the then what part of it.

Nothing could have prepared Magellan for the pain of having her starseed touched by the hand of a Negaverse agent. She'd had bones broken, had been beaten and bruised to the point where she could barely walk, but this was wrong. It was a violation. It echoed through her whole body, making her scream and thrash as though her life depended on it.

It did. It did depend on it.

She didn't know how she found it in her to fight, except that she had no choice, wasn't even conscious that she was struggling. When the hand receded, her own immediately flew to her chest, clawing at the fabric of her fuku. Not torn, not torn.

She was still alive.

Chest heaving, she watched sand skate all over the lieutenant's body, and she began to thrash again, scraping her back along the pavement as she tried to get away.

Moonstone staggered to her feet, eyes watering madly, squinting and blinking in fury. Swearing like the b*****d son of an inebriated sailor and a dock worker.
"I... am going to sand paper your SKIN off for that"
Her eyes blazed with a kind of mad fury when she said it, like she sincerely meant it rather than the kind of idle threat that gets passed around right before I fight devolves to fisticuffs.

"And then... I'm going to find some hedge clippers... and -snip- your fingers off JOINT by JOINT...GOD...you got it down my SHIRT... You -b*****d-"
This was followed by a nearly inarticulate snarl of fury as she found it creeping down into her undergarments as well.

"DEAD! you are so DEAD" she raged and went after him 'swinging' her strange leering mask clutched oddly by the strap.

Moonstone started coughing, bad enough she was half blinded by sand, but now the fine powder that clogged her mouth and nose, choked her and further blinded her.
It raised her fury again, blind rage that painted the world red.

"WHERE ARE YOU!!" she shouted. "WHERE ARE YOU!!! COME BACK AND FIGHT!!" She screamed, her voice rising to what could have been mistaken for hysteria.

"COME BACK AND FINISH IT!!" She screamed into the night, reaching for what she could not find.

A thousand questions?! Derp's face, which had been filled with glee as they'd fled through the night, dimmed alarmingly and she fidgeted while patting her hat with tiny hands. "A thousand? Derp does not know that many things, but...but...will try?" The little girl sounded like she might start crying at any moment, and was biting her lip nervously. Astraea had told her important things to tell senshi, but a thousand things? That was so many! Bringing her tail around, Derpraline started to comfortingly pet her own fur, and eyes skimmed to both senshi almost nervously. "Should de-senshi! They can feel senshi when they are senshi. Should be not-senshi?" Remembering her own siren lure to the agents of evil, the girl sparkled momentarily and with a pop! was once again a tiny, lazy-eyed cat.

Patiently she waited a moment for Taranis to pull his own power within and hide it deep inside his star seed, like so many senshi had done in front of her before, but it never came, and she started to fidget again. Mewling pathetically, she pawed at his leg with one eensy little foot. "Come on Taranis-senshi. De-senshi! Otherwise they will find you." It was plaintive, it was pathetic, it was absolutely adorable. "You gotta just....think about being not-senshi. Can you do it? Yes?" She hoped so, otherwise they were in Very Big Trouble!

Magellan had never met this guardian cat. She had actually not been aware that so many were in existence, and was a little pissed off to, once again, be out of the loop. She scowled as she pressed the heel of a hand to her chest, the warmth from their run at least doing something to dissipate the cold chill from before. The less she thought about it, it seemed, the less she felt it, and she was more than happy to go along with that flow.

She was in better shape than the male senshi, that much was obvious; even though they could run faster and farther than they could in human form, he was out of breath. Her lungs burned somewhat, but she told herself that was more to do with the starseed touching than anything else. The important thing was that they were away from the Negaverse agent, and everyone was alive.

Eyes straying to the little girl-gone-kitten, Magellan bit back a sigh. If she wanted answers, this was clearly not the cat to get them from. She seemed insecure, nervous, and more than a little slow. Well, whatever, she was doing fine on her own so far, so she'd find one of the other cats to fill her in.

Extending her left arm to her side, she massaged her shoulder with her free hand, wincing at the soreness there. Lately, Magellan was more than used to soreness, but that didn't mean she liked it. She watched the exchange between Taranis and the cat, expression more than a little unimpressed, and was already preparing to leap to the rooftop and book it. A senshi's human identity was everything, and if she could help it, she was not going to divulge that information to any more than an absolutely essential amount of people.

She stepped back, one boot scraping against the pavement, muscles bunching for the jump. Then, the male senshi lost his henshin, and she lost her breath.

Dumbly, her hand fell from her shoulder, shock naked in her face. Parker? Parker was a senshi? Parker Damhnait, her boyfriend, the guy she stalked home after their dates because she was afraid he was going to get his a** kicked, the boy who had nearly had his starseed stolen not that long ago -- Parker was a senshi? Taranis?

What the flying <******** ignored the fact that a Negaverse agent had just had her hand in her chest -- Parker was obviously much less prepared for this than her. Parker was soft, Parker got bullied at school, Parker couldn't even climb the rock wall at the activity center. He sat and read books while she ran! She wasn't even sure if he could bench press the bar!

Fear smothered her, making her palms go cold inside her gloves, her stomach twist. Magellan wasn't someone who really allowed herself to be afraid, but she was afraid for Parker. He was stepping into a world that was dangerous -- a world where someone had died recently, a senshi, a powerful senshi -- and he had no idea what he was getting into. Parker was now not just an innocent bystander, but he was Sailor Taranis, an active target.

He might as well have had a goddamn target painted on his forehead.

He addressed her, and she realized that she had just been staring, mouth slightly open, hands limply at her sides. She clamped her mouth shut, brow creasing in worry, and brought her hands up. She pointed, one slender finger, and demanded, "Parker?"

She was flustered, her face flushed. "Parker, oh my god..." And she shook her head, the henshin dropping off of her like water rolling from a duck's back. The fuku faded, leaving her in a pair of snug jeans and a forest green sweater, her hair pulled back into a single braid running down to her butt. Her eyes were big and serious, and she flexed her hands at her sides.

Her eyes caught his again, held. Then, she took a step forward, hands reaching for him. "Are you okay?"

It was surprisingly soft from her, and her voice trembled on okay. Without waiting for his answer, she launched herself at him, ignoring all the aches in her back and the pounding of her head, arms vising around his shoulders near viciously. She shut her eyes tight, face pressed against his chest, and just held on.

Apparently, having your starseed touched could rattle even Daniela Rymner.