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Regular - Out on the Town - Tallulah, Jaimie, Bell, and Xavier- Completed.

Tallulah, Jaimie, Bell, and Xavier hit a fancy restaurant to celebrate Tallulah's 18th birthday. (At the Mikado, they wear kimonos while they serve your tea, and that's how you know it's fancy.) After dinner, the lovebirds go for a walk in the snow and Jaimie makes a promise that neither wants to break.

The most dominating feature of the landscape wasn’t even on the moon itself. It was the massive gas giant that hung over head. There was a moon in the sky, too, and Sailor Europa guessed that it might be Io. But her more immediate surroundings were far plainer – the ice fields of Europa stretched out in front of her as far as the eye could see. Sometimes a jagged swath of mountains or a rust-red line of mineral deposits interrupted them, but mostly they were flat. Still, she could see the appeal of living here: the views were fantastic.

Despite the immediate plainness, the scout didn’t feel underwhelmed. The sky alone made it more than worth the trip, and she was certain she’d find something if she looked long enough – after all, this was her home. People had lived here once, hadn’t they? Presumably she’d lived here once.

Now there was a thought, and she remembered last spring, lying on the garden swing with Jaimie, talking about a dead girl with a sword. “What if they're not the only ones?" she’d asked then. "What if more of us lived before and just don't know it?" She hadn’t even imagined something like this then! How could she have?

And then, moving further back- she saw a sudden flash of this world in its heyday. A road had run through here, connecting cities. A signpost, ornately shaped long gone, written in a language she’d forgotten- It pointed in a direction whose name she did not know. There was something over the distant rise of the mountains.

“Well,” said Super Sailor Europa to no one in particular. “Let’s go see what there is to see.”

She took off running. Between senshi leaps and reduced gravity, it didn’t take long to reach the ridge, though she did take a few spills when she hit slick patches of ice and it made her go more slowly than she might have. You could definitely hurt yourself if you weren’t careful – how had the ancients made the trip, when the road was still here? And how much would she find? She knew from Wikipedia that Europa was constantly being resurfaced – the moon was like a giant ice rink. Still, with some trepidation, she headed down into the canyon.

It was a tricky, slippery trek down a narrow path to the bottom, and Europa had scraped her knees up something fierce by the time she got there and was beginning to feel the cold even through her protective bubble of adrenaline. It was down in the canyon, though, that she finally found some signs of ancient habitation: Three small, domed houses, built in art-nouveau style, perched on outcroppings from the cliff-face.

“Wow,” whispered the scout, approaching the nearest one. The roof of the building appeared to be made from burnished copper, molded into a dome formed from interlocking panels. The walls were brick, and the whole thing partially iced over, but she managed to find a door and open it after some forcing.

There was a single main room, and a door and wall partitioning off what might have been a bathroom or closet. Against the nearest wall was what looked to be a kitchen, left untouched from how it had been when the previous inhabitants had left – an empty pot on the extinguished heating element, copper dishes in the sink. There was a low table with a granite top, and a rug made of the fur of some kind of animal on the floor, and on the other side of the room, two beds bunked on on top of the other, both unmade and covered in blankets made of fragile, aged cloth that threatened to crumble at her touch.

There was no guessing what had happened to the people who had lived here. Europa left the house undisturbed and moved onto the next one, which she found to be much the same in contents and condition.

The third building had similar furniture, but had materials for jewelry making strewn on the table. Europa pocketed a few glass beads but didn’t investigate for long. On a shelf above the bed she found leather-bound books, but they looked old and fragile, and she didn’t want to touch them and have them disintegrate, which was what she feared they might do. The cold had managed to preserve the buildings pretty well, but paper would decay after a long enough time whether or not it was in cold storage.

Besides, the phone would let her come back any time, and she’d already spent at least two hours since first meeting Kurma. The senshi of the deep was exhausted and cold, and even if she wanted to investigate more tonight, she recognized that she needed to go home and collect her thoughts first.

She flipped open her phone and cast her eyes once more to the darkened sky and the looming gas giant. There was a particular crispness to the air that was absent on Earth, and Sailor Europa realized it was because there were no clouds on this world. The stars shone brighter than any winter night on Earth.

She took one last, good look, then closed her eyes, tried to listen to the universe again, and dialed the earth.

When she next opened her eyes, she was back in the alley, gazing at the sky. It couldn’t compare. There were wisps of cloud across the moon, and haziness from the city lights. Europa shook her head and rubbed her eyes before checking the time on her phone. It was that strange hour of the night where it was impossible to say if it were very late or very early.

Heaving a sigh, she headed for home.

Battle - Three Kingless Camels - Europa and Scylla - Completed.

When Lawn Ornaments attack, v. 3.0! It was the camels, officer! Honestly!

It looked for all the world like a Very Important Letter, and yet it was flung carelessly on her bed in between a flyer for a school she wasn’t interested in (Dartmouth or bust! Which was to say, Dartmouth or DCU) and an issue of Cat Fancy. Tallulah could tell it was an important letter because it had the Dartmouth school crest on the envelope, and she held her breath when she slipped her thumbnail under the seal to open it. She opened it with her eyes closed, feeling superstitious, and then opened her eyes to quickly read the letter.

“Dear Tallulah Cowden, blah blah blah,” she murmured, willing herself to get to the good part. “Something, something, congratulations!”

This could only mean one thing. She kept reading. “You have been accepted to attend Dartmouth beginning in the Fall semester, 2011. A full admissions packet is forthcoming. We anticipate hearing your decision whether or not to attend before January 25th, 2011.”

Letter still in hand, Tallulah ran shrieking down the hall into the kitchen, where Nellie was wrist-deep in a chicken. “What on Earth are you shrieking about?” she asked as Tallulah slid around the island counter in her socks. She focused in on the letter her daughter held lofted above her head. “Oh, so it was good news from Dartmouth?”

“The best news from Dartmouth,” replied Tallulah, and skated out of the kitchen in her stocking feet. She went back to her bedroom, changed her Facebook status to something that grossly abused capital letters and exclamation points, and flopped back on her bed to look through her contact list. Who should she text first? Dani would be happy, or should she text Zay? Or Bell? Jaimie would want to know, but then he’d be sad because there wasn’t any chance that he’d be able to follow her to Hanover…

“You’re not really thinking of going, are you?” asked that serious part of her brain that she was coming to identify more and more as the duty-bound voice of Sailor Europa. Tallulah sighed and rolled over onto her stomach – unfortunately, she knew this was right. She’d been foolish to apply, more foolish to think the war would be over by this summer. By the way things were escalating, it seemed like the struggle between the Senshi and Negaverse was just getting started, and might drag on longer than the war in Iraq.

“I don’t have to send in a decision until January 25th,” groaned Tallulah, hoping this might quiet her sense of responsibility for at least a while. Unlikely, but it was worth a try.

“This won’t be over by January, this year or next or maybe even ever,” objected logic and reason, and Tallulah knew this was right, deep down where she didn’t really want to acknowledge it. Instead, she tried to shirk responsibility by reorganizing her collection of identical snowglobes and caving to the temptation to check Facebook. A string of congratulations littered her page, and Tallulah could only sit and wonder how long it would be before she had to definitely tell her friends she would not be attending the school of her dreams

Regular - Snow Way Home - Tallulah and Tate - Completed.

Two old rivals are in the same place at the same time to witness some truly strange happenings in Destiny City. Two snow dancers converge to spin and twirl about the alley while Tallulah and Tate look on, and their exit is just as strange as their appearance.

"We're never going to talk about this ever again, are we?"

No, probably not.

Battle - Christmas Eve -
The snowglobes reveal an impostor princess! And then all hell broke loose!

Regular - Since We've Got No Place to Go - Tallulah and Jaimie- In Progress.

A snowed-in getaway turns into a mess of misunderstandings, leading to a break-up. Awkward.

Battle - Castor Training Camp - Team OH SNAP - Castor, Taranis, Europa, Scylla, and Lyra- In Progress.