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Super Senshi. That term seemed like a bit of a laugh… especially when he didn’t feel particularly super right at the moment; Trying to delicately apply enough bandages and wraps to stop the bleeding from his injuries.

It hurt like a b*****d, and he kept involuntarily tearing up as he taped gauze over the long shallow, bleeding line on his chest, and gauzed and taped the deeper puncture mark lower down. It had bled pretty significantly at first, but after time monitoring it, he’d become relatively convinced that, if he could keep a handle on it, he might be able to avoid trying to explain what had happened to a doctor.

His ankle was swollen, turning slowly and impressively purple where the padded trap had slammed shut on it, but he’d been able to, however painfully, flex it, and bend his toes. It wasn’t broken, or at least, that was his amateur assessment.

“I wonder if they have some basic nursing classes as electives…” He grumbled, hissing air through his teeth in pain as he fastened clean bandages around the puncture, and carefully lifted his leg to rest along the bed so that he could apply the stiff ankle brace on it. He’d bought a fair range of medical supplies and stashed them over time after the last time he’d been injured. It had seemed like a good idea, especially after so many of them had been hospitalized, and he was glad of it now. He’d been starting to feel a bit paranoid, until now.

He’d still have to explain the limp, but at least he still had the crutch from his first real pounding. There just hadn’t been a point in getting rid of it, and he thought now he might just need it until his rapid, Senshi healing made the injuries fade. They couldn’t go away fast enough in his opinion.

He’d been pleased enough early on when he discovered basic injuries faded much faster than was normal, but that hadn’t changed, or gotten more powerful, when he had, which was, especially now, kind of disappointing.

“If I ever find out that there’s a cosmic complaint department I’m going to send them a blistering note.” He informed his swollen ankle, and the bed spread, as he fastened the brace. “If we’re going to be out there getting this kind of pounding on a semi regular basis, I mean this IS war… then they could at least upgrade the Mutant Healing Power to something more like… oh… Wolverine. I’d settle for Wolverine powers.”

The only response to this was the rhythmic throbs of pain from his injuries, which kept a steady red drumbeat of discomfort with his pulse.

“I wouldn’t waste my time on Jean Grey though. Any chick dumb enough to fall for Scott The-Dumbass-Summers can’t be THAT worth it. Besides it would be really annoying to date someone who could read your mind. You could never hide anything from them, and when they were right and you didn’t want to admit it there wouldn’t be any way for you to avoid a round of “I told you so’s”. Jean seems like the “I told you so” type.”

There wasn’t a specific point to the chatter, no driving deeper meaning; he was just trying to keep his mind off things. Specifically things like pain, and loneliness. His quiet room was especially lonely feeling, and as he trailed off, feeling tired and hurt, the silence added a heavy, oppressive blanket to things.

He felt as though perhaps he should do… something. Get up, get the crutch, go for a walk maybe. Get someone to help him get into a club or something and get completely plastered… except that he was pretty sure that although alcohol would numb the pain he was feeling, it would also thin his blood and make him bleed more. He didn’t need to bleed more. He absolutely did not need to bleed more, he was trying to avoid going to the hospital.

It might kill him, and it wouldn’t do a damn thing for the loneliness.

He thought about Tallulah, and then brushed the thought aside. It wasn’t… cruel as this sounded… it wasn’t Tallulah, who from brief glimpses around town seemed to have forgotten him with an insulting ease. No, it wasn’t Tallulah he missed, it wasn’t anyone specific… he just…missed having someone there. He kept ending up without a room mate, he’d cut himself off from most of his family… he expected to stay cut off, though no official word had actually come down that he’d been legally disowned or cut off. His father was the sort who would have sent him a notarized letter indicating that he’d been removed from the will. No there’d been nothing but silence, and that was somehow worse.

He didn’t want to miss Cee, it was like missing something unhealthy and addictive, but she was his SISTER. Even though she’d manipulated him, toyed with him… they’d also laughed together, played jokes together, and in their games, twisted as they probably seemed to others, he’d discovered with her a love for make believe, for stories, for THEATRE.

He’d never even explained that to Tallulah. Her reaction to the photos had been indication enough that she probably wouldn’t understand. Your nose is bigger.

He scowled at the memory of her comment, her insistence she could tell them apart instantly, and rubbed the end of his nose. The comment, innocently put, made him feel as though he had a nose like comic genius Jimmy Durante, and that was pretty far from the truth.

…Stop thinking about it He chastised himself, silently. The silence had settled in and made itself at home, and quickly established itself with a sort of church like sanctity, disrupted only in muted fashions from noises in the hallway.

He wasn’t going to miss those halls in the slightest, or breaking out. He was damn sure those halls wouldn’t miss him. Hillworth didn’t miss anyone, it just chewed them up, digested them, and dumped them out exhausted and both worse than they went in, or tired and maybe a little broken. Maybe a few of them actually came out disciplined and straight-laced, but somehow he doubted it. It seemed as though if you were expecting to get disciplined and straight laced and not angry and resentful out of someplace like this, you had to go in wanting to come out straight laced and disciplined.

He hadn’t wanted that coming here, he’d wanted nothing more than to go home, have the shoplifting incident forgotten, and get on with his life. Maybe cruise for a few more years, maybe even figure out how to balance his desire to write with his fathers desire to have him go into business… but things hadn’t worked out like that.

“I’m an idiot…” he sighed, breaking the silence, though unlike a rock in a pool, his words left no ripples in the quiet, which seemed to politely eat them up.

Maybe his father was right, maybe he wasn’t cut out to write, to act… to do any of the things he’d wanted to do. How could he do them anyway? He was a goddamn Senshi. He was a … a ******** ALIEN. He was a reborn magical ******** alien from another planet. What did that mean for his family bonds anyway?

He’d thought about this before, and he’d still never come up with an answer. He’d even wondered if Cee herself was a sleeping Senshi, maybe even the second star of binary Regulus… but everything he’d remembered in his visits seemed to indicate that, although it was technically two orbiting stars, Regulus had only one Senshi, and that having a second star didn’t make him any better or more impressive a Senshi, especially since everyone else around him seemed to be sprouting butt-wings and the title “Eternal” like they were finding it on some kind of interstellar sale rack that he couldn’t get a handle on. It was kind of frustrating really.

True most power ups tended to happen because there was a cat in the area and because you ‘needed’ the extra power boost, but damnit! He was getting his a** handed to him by someone who’d been wielding a HOBBY HORSE not too long ago. And she had friends with arrows! Of course he needed more power! Hell he needed ******** body armor… a Spartan shield… a body guard with a machine gun or… something!

Maybe the universe was politely informing him that he’d failed some kind of secret Senshi test and it was just waiting for him to get killed or corrupted. Unpleasant thought that. God was he really going down that emo train of thought?

Maybe he could blame it on being in pain and alone…

He let his eyes drift in the general direction of the phone, and realized he was actually debating picking it up… actually debating calling Cee… or his father… or his mother. He was considering breaking the silence because he –needed- someone that badly, and instead of other Senshi, who he felt he should, somehow feel were family, it was his awkward, troubled, CRAZY human family he thought about.

Regulus was a binary star, a twinned orbit… he was a twin… but his twin wasn’t… wasn’t –like- him. Still he felt like he couldn’t fully escape her influence either, even though they also had half a planet standing between them… or was he just making excuses?

He continued to stare at the phone, trying to imagine what everyone might be doing, though largely he had to reach the conclusion that all of them save for his sister, at school abroad, were probably asleep. Wisely asleep, like he should be. It was late, he had things to do tomorrow, and he was tired, which only made every drumbeat ache seem that much worse.

He wanted to sleep, but he also didn’t want to sleep. He wanted the phone to ring, he wanted someone else to make the first move and break the silence, like some STUPID tantrum throwing thirteen year old who’s stomped off and slammed the door to their room in a torrent of curses and insults, secretly hoping that someone will ignore their howls to ‘go away’ and come seek them out. Hoping that someone cared enough to ignore their commands and demands and barge in and give them some human warmth.

Human warmth… one of those things that seemed to be in short supply these days, since he felt relatively little emotional attachment to what shredded tatters remained of the Basterds. They’d been a team for a while, but mostly that was a very loose definition of team, and they’d learned…

They’d learned practically nothing with their cork boards and theories. He didn’t remember Juno being on that board.

He continued to watch the phone, waiting for it to ring, to levitate, to do something that would make him feel better, though he was pretty sure that being a Senshi didn’t come with the ability to telepathically suggest to people that they call you at two in the morning.

Most of the other senshi out there, who might have been up, didn’t have this number anyway, and wouldn’t be likely to ring up on the mauvian phone just for an idle chat.

The room remained silent, the phone continued to stubbornly refuse to ring, and he debated again jumping up, in so much as was possible with his throbbing, now partially settled ankle, and yelling and screaming just to make some noise, to do something to break up the eerie, church like silence of early morning.

In the end he did no such thing, throwing an arm across his eyes with a soft groan instead as he tried to shift slightly this way and that, trying to get at least a little comfortable, and with only the most minimal success. He’d sleep eventually, though not for long, and he knew the next morning would march along in an long and short tempered haze of pain, sleep deprivation and too much overpriced coffee.

The glamorous freaking life of the Senshi.

((2027 words *DED*))

Reg-Boulevard of Broken Bones

In an unusual turn of events, Regulus and Wolframite talk instead of fight.

Solo- Childrens Crusade

I can’t say when I got into this mess that I got any promises of it being clean and glorious. No I got insulted and told not to be a ‘Fail Whale’ by a rude cat. That was pretty… uh… yeah. “Fantastic”.

I didn’t even get a run down on what it meant to be the Senshi of Pride, which apparently senshi these days tend to get. Anyway… I’m definitely sure that until recently, -no one awakened kids-. I mean if you think about it, if we were –born- senshi, than all of us have been Senshi since we were little kids… we just never knew about it until random cats handed us our henshin pens and told us how to power up; Which they did when we were teenagers, not ten year olds. I mean launching a bunch of unprepared teenagers into a deadly war is pretty much bad enough, but holy s**t. Who’s brilliant idea is it to say HEY, lets go –even younger-! That’s a totally awesome idea!

Seriously if I find out Assy’s behind this one, she cannot transform fast enough to keep me from drop kicking her furry little tail over the field goal line at the nearest foot ball field.

Don’t even get me started on everything I’m finding out about Blood Moon too. I mean I wasn’t terribly thrilled to find out that Maia had hooked up with them in the first place, and now it seems like that brand is getting more and more common. I guess fear of being mauled by the negaverse agents that –survived the torture and drugs and kidnapping- is good for recruitment, especially if, and I imagine they do, they skipped mentioning that in the brochure.

Our fault? WHY NO. We’re just creepy a** cult soldiers from the black lagoon. We have NO idea why the other faction would be flipping their s**t and trying to eliminate any more action from the Blood Moon by nuking any one else who –might- join them! Clearly they’re just crazy. Here join us and we’ll give you a crash course in murder, torture, and other activities that totally justify people calling us terrorists!

Seriously, I think I’m going crazy. I really am…

Does Blood Moon even know how much damage they’re doing to us? To the good guys? DO THEY CARE? I’d ask Maia but I’m afraid to find out, and I don’t even know if she’d know. I mean she still talks to me and I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules. Also I’m a little unsure if I want to find out that the sweet kinda spaceball little privileged girl has done any of the things that the BMC stands accused of. I’m not sure what I’d do if I found out the girl I looked at apartment listings with helped torture and kill. Granted that's assuming my source wasn't just making it up, but he was always a d**k... just... kind of a bit more...

I don't know. Something went kind of wrong there. No... something went REALLY wrong there.

((475+ words))

Meta-Reg: High, High, High up in Space

After getting the call that 59 civilians that went missing from DC have turned up in the territory of the Zodiacs, Regulus heads out to bring some first aid supplies and comfort food to the injured and stressed civilians. Opinions are mixed as to what's helpful and what's not.

[Battle]-This is a Title

Bellatrix returns, asking Jaimie to patrol with her, and the two attract the attention of dangerous and ambitious Negaverse agents, Realgar and Bismuthite.

Reg=Pink

Jaimie and Bell clean up after the battle.

---
[Bat]-Doity Rat:
Lions and tigers...but no bears.

[Reg]-Soooo... this is a thing, right?

Holy s**t it is a thing. Jaimie and Bell are on a date.