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"Hold still," Sailor Selene told Azzo, her voice with a sort of beef-jerky toughness that betrayed her discomfort. She hadn't looked invulnerable, not with her bruising cheek and puffed lip, and now she didn't sound it either. She squeezed onto the high schooler's sleeve to help pull herself to her feet, and there the moon queen stood, interposed between Azzo and his narrowly-averted demise. She hissed through her teeth, apparently an expression of her annoyance with her lack of invulnerability.

The black-clad soldier turned her back to her enemies, the hesitance in her eyes furthering the idea that she very much disliked doing so. "Everything is fine," she told him. In some ways, the way she spoke sounded as though she believed that when she declared something, this would cosmically bring it into being. How would it be fine? Were they going to run? It didn't seem like she was in any sort of shape for that; otherwise, even if she could run, it didn't seem like they'd get very far. "Take hold of my arm," she commanded Azzo. At the same time, she was raising her black and gold wand into the air, starting an imagined arc. "No matter what, you do not let go of my arm."

He couldn't, really, if he'd wanted to. She had her hand wrapped around his arm, too, fingers pressing red marks into his wrist.

Behind him, just a few inches off the brick wall, she had drawn a circle in the air. Now, just like a scene out of Harold and the Purple Crayon, that simple shape had become an ornate mirror, real and three-dimensional and fully functional as such. No tricks: it was pure magic.

Sailor Selene swung her arm forward, and this, the slightly super-human strength a sailor soldier possessed, sent him stumbling backwards toward the mirror as though she'd deliberately been trying to throw him at it -- which she had. But instead of running into it as Azzo might've expected, he spun right through as sure as a stargate, Selene anchored on right after him.

Azzo suddenly found himself tripping over a bench, despite that making no sense. Selene tried to overcorrect her balance for this, disentangle her arm from his, but without luck; she too flopped over the seat and landed on her back on the floor, staring up at halogen lights set into the ceiling panels. There were patterned tiles on the floor, set in modest beige tones, and a toilet, and a cheap pedestal sink with a drippy faucet.

"You can let go now," she clarified. "This is the girls' bathroom at Java the Hut. They're 24 hours."

Killing the queen and sailor senshi Selene would not happen, and neither would they be able to take her starseed and present it before Queen Beryl, something that was sure to cause them both to be recommended for a promotion. While Wolframite kept Sassolite distracted, the queen took Azzo and jumped through a materialized mirror, out of sight and for Wolframite, soon out of mind.

While he was only slowly started to shake off the overwhelming of duty he had, it quickly was taken away when he turned and noticed the queen was gone. He frowned, feeling both alone and betrayed by the Queen who he was working so hard for. A brief moment of puppy-dog sadness passed by him, pouting as he stood there, wishing to know why she had left him without at least getting a little praise. It was then that the name Beryl hit him hard, and he snapped back around to see a very furious Sassolite glaring at him.

“Ah..but I..” He what? He was very confused, and he looked down at his hands, the empty spot where the civilian and the Queen had left making him feel a deep sense of loss, more than could be attributed to just losing a commoner’s starseed. He’d been utterly devoit to helping this unknown queen, yet he remembered that for a brief moment, his entire mind was occupied with thoughts of her alone and whatever he could do to make her happy. It was hard to shake off, and he looked back at the Lieutenant, looking hurt. “She left me.”

The name of the Negaverse Queen was quick to turn him around, and he jerked to attention at the reminder. Yes. Negaverse. His ACTUAL Queen, and not some imposter who made him feel … made him think that she was his queen. How deceitful! How low. How WRONG it was to force someone to do your bidding without consent. It was a violation, and while he still felt cold and a nagging, fading that told him he should still be looking around for this other queen to see if she was around with any further commands for him to fulfill, he knew he’d just been used!

“Uh…Linarite.” He mumbled, his look of confusion and sad-faced pouting turning into embarrassment and the first warm waves of anger. Straightening out his uniform, he stood taller (or at tall as Wolframite could stand), and looked about, trying to enforce an image of professionalism to counter his loopy behavior before. “I suppose she left.” The reminder still stung, and he hated that he felt that way. That she, this imposter, made him like that.

Still suffering from confusion, he looked up at her. “She didn’t look like a queen to me.” Even if she didn’t look like it, she was certainly different to what he had seen in other senshi. Looking up at Sassolite, he gave her an expression that said he didn’t know what to do. He was still trying to sort out what had happened.

While the hand on the shoulder was comforting, he went rigid at the mention of reporting his conduct to his Captain. The idea of Linearite finding out he called someone else his queen, went against another Lieutenant, and handed over a starseed were all major offenses, and having that many bad marks on his record was not something he wanted. There was also the fact he had been so taken to the other queen, making it downright embarrassing. “Oh, that’s alright. I’m fine! Really!” he stepped away from the other Lieutenant and held out his hands, showing he was in top notch condition. “In fact, Linearite is probably too busy to be bothered by such a little thing. How about you just mention the new queen thing to Ursula and Charonite? I’m sure they need to know more than anyone else, and pronto!” Before Sassolite decided that she needed to tell everyone about what happened. “I can even walk myself home. I’m sure I can get there by myself. You really should report this as soon as you can. It could be important.” Important usually meant a good mark for the messenger reporting the news, and in this case, Sassolite wasn’t reporting any deaths. If she was tempted, he hoped she would rush off and tell their superiors without any specific details pertaining to his actions.

Sailor Selene was, at that moment, inspecting her swollen lip and asphalt-burned cheek in the very same bathroom mirror that she and Azzo had passed through just minutes before. She was hunched over slightly, like straightening up all the way would've caused her some discomfort, but she had let Azzo help her to her feet without comment.

"Sailor Selene," she answered him, "Queen of the Black Moon." She was watching him in the mirror, the topaz blue of her eyes following his movements.

"We got here by mirrorwalking -- it does what it says on the tin. Walk in one mirror, walk out another. You should be safe from them both for now, but you won't always be so lucky. You were a fool to be out by yourself at night with no one around," she chided him, dabbing with a wet paper towel at her cheek where she'd skinned it on the ground. It was a pretty harsh assessment -- she didn't appear to be particularly friendly compared to some of the other senshi he'd met.

If Sailor Selene was surprised to see a boy in this day and age carrying a handkerchief up his sleeve (and she did seem to be), it didn't stop her from gratefully taking the little cloth square in hand and using it to mop some of the sweat from her brow. She didn't look too keen on touching any open wounds with it, but she thanked him, nonetheless, and handed it back to Azzo when she was finished.

"You need to start taking a self-defense class," Selene told him, catching his eye in the mirror. "It's not your fault -- and it's understandable if you're hoping to protect the people around you -- but you should know what you're up against." Azzo could see his own face in the mirror, too, looking a little bewildered, but Selene didn't really seem to mind that. "Those people are armed -- they're stronger than normal, and faster than normal. And deadly, if you don't get out of their arm's-reach as fast as you can. You have to be ready, if you want to hold your own with them."

She turned to face him, bracing her hands on the sink behind her. "Take a class. Get some pepper spray. Get an air horn, a rape whistle if you have to. But if you see someone like that again, make sure you're prepared -- and you blow that horn like hell, and someone will come running. Scream, if nothing else."

She tilted her head thoughtfully, beaded gold jewelry all swinging sideways with the movement, clinking lightly. "You know my Ares?" There was an Ares and there was an Aries, but, of course, Azzo couldn't have known that.