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Finding out one of your former students was a sailor senshi was weird enough. But then, considering how many of them were packed in Destiny City nowadays, and then considering that the vast majority of them were teenagers, Dr. Westerman came to the somewhat painful conclusion that in actuality it probably wasn't all that weird after all. Who knew how many more of his students had caught themselves up in all this?

"Yeah," he said. "Coffee. Right."

A few minutes later they'd sauntered their way out of the store, Perry with his coffee in one hand and a small box of assorted favorites in the other. Everyone in his household kept pretty strange hours, himself included, so it wasn't unheard of that someone would raid the fridge at random hours of the night: Allie because of her own senshi duties (it practically gave him ulcers to think about it), Suki because he marathon-studied day in and day out like there was some maniac in his room holding him at gunpoint to do so (suggestions to relax for a while were met with expressions of sulky disdain).

Needless to say, the mutual recognition in the least expected of circumstances had a way of making car rides very awkward. And silent. The only words that were exchanged in the first several minutes were for the sake of Perry knowing where Xavier lived. However, eventually he had to stop for another car at an intersection, where he took the opportunity to offer up, "October? I got roped into all this not long after that... at least for this go-around, anyway."

What was equally remarkable about Xavier's retelling of the story was that, like him, Dr. Westerman took in the details without so much as batting an eye. To his credit though, he always had a bit of a reputation for being a pretty unfazable, candid sort of guy. He had an extremely pliable, flexible composure most of the time, and was someone you would usually expect to not be caught off-guard by an unbelievably crazy story.

However, unlike most crazy stories, this one was told with the very palpable awareness that every single word of it was a hundred percent true. Xavier was not making up excuses. He was not exaggerating.

"Sounds like par for the course for living in this town," he offered. "I used to wonder why I bothered to move here."

Used to.

Perry shrugged, his fingers lifting away from the steering wheel with one second. He was driving with one hand, another ready to grab at his coffee cup at any moment; nothing surprising about his mannerisms there, it all seemed very characteristic of him. "Just face the facts, kiddo, you're stuck here," he replied. "I'm not so sure I buy into the idea of fate, but where we're supposed to be right now is kind of out of our hands." There was a look on this face that suggested he wasn't finding any joy in admitting such a thing.

The kid was barely out of high school. It just wasn't fair to him.

"I can get to your street from here, right?" he said, abruptly.