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Mindy shook her drink.

The straw was ticking her off. While it had seemed so deceptively even and straight when she had gone through nearly two packages of straws - much to the chagrin of the sales clerk and anyone else watching - to find the perfect, most straightest one, but clearly, all this had been a lie. A horrible, deceptive lie.

First of all, the hollow of the straw itself was bent. The yellow paint that was going up the hollow of the straw was curving around the bent, and to add insult to injury, it was a twisty straw. Whomever invented such a perverse idea was on her list of those to kill off ASAP. Painfully.

With excruciating difficulty, she managed to break her attention from the straw, though it still burned in her mind, and look up at Emily. Or rather, up at the large boxes of stuff they had bought, mostly school supplies, that seemed to tower over the other on the table. Each one, thankfully, was painstakingly aligned in one perfect, beautiful and symmetrical rectangle.

And it was about to be ruined by the advent of a deafening scream, and then the crash of chairs from behind them.

Well, not the scream itself, but rather the creature that suddenly took residence in the food court, taking advantage of the cramped space to wreck havoc with its long, strangely reptilian tail. It seemed rather deformed, humanoid-looking, and currently was flipping over the solid metal food court tables like they were bowling pins.

Now, people were panicking, milling left and right, some of them frantically searching for cellphones in order to call the police, 911, their parents, god knows what. Others had even tripped over themselves in the fear: all-in-all, it was chaos.

Which brought Mindy back to her box situation. While she had enough common sense to move away from the chair that was flying towards them, unfortunately the height of her perfectly aligned boxes did not. Up they went into the air, some of the pencils and binders flying out from their once-painstakingly neat packaging. Up went their food, and also that accursed straw and drink, though that didn't seem that much of a huge loss.

However, Mindy was beyond pissed. Her boxes. How dare that- that THING squish her once-perfect assortment shopped goods? Maybe it was because she had been rather sheltered her whole entire life that she did not quite regard the situation like most people flailing and running for their lives (most: one person unfortunately thought this was a great photo opportunity to put on their Facebook account, unfortunately said Joe Bob Deceased would have regretted it, if he had survived to feel such regret). The 15-year old girl fumed, ignoring all sorts of appliances being flung around her, though it helped that she was currently being sheltered by a particularly large bench that had been upturned, slightly covering their position and hiding them from the Hollywood VFX creation.

"Emily," she began, in a voice that clearly said, I-do-not-give-a-s**t-about-what-that-thing-is, "Do you know who the guy in the suit throwing the stuff is? I'm going to phone daddy and make him regret every single moment of his movie career-suited life." And she meant it. If they were filming, they should have at least given her some warning: they would have if they knew who she was.

Skidding on the tile, Montecristo came to a halt less than a foot from the pair, narrowing his gold eyes in irritation at their lack of appropriate response to the youma who was currently redecorating the food court, and rather crudely at that.

"What the hell are you doing?" he yowled, his voice carrying clearly over the background noise. Exasperated, he leaped backwards, glittering brightly even as he practically flung a black-and-white pen at Emily, his ears pressed firmly back against his head.

"You're Hestia, Sailor Senshi of Housekeeping, and I need you to say 'Hestia Power, Make up!'...preferably before the ******** youma figures out it's more efficient to go around the tables instead of attempting to go through them!" This last was muttered, even as he turned to Mindy--who still seemed distracted by her boxes, now in complete disarray.

Leaping once again, Montecristo shook his head as he landed, shoving a pale blue and silver pen at her. "And you...Algol, Sailor Senshi of Ghosts, it would be wonderful if you could bring yourself to say 'Algol Power, Make up!'" He looked expectant, as if it were perfectly reasonable to fling pens at people and call them by weird names and expect them to yell out what he told them to without having to offer some sort of explanation...hell, without even introducing himself.

Maybe it was the size of its questionably existing brain, or maybe it was a telepathic change in plans from superior who issued orders to this creature: whatever the case, the youma had veered off Mindy and Emily's visual radius, leaving piles of upturned chaos in its wake. It also muttered, gutturally, something about "The star seed candidate not being here", whatever that meant.

Mindy, however, was still rather oblivious to how close she might have been to her death. Any furthermore thoughts about the trajectory change of Godzilla Jr. was abandoned for favour of The Talking Cat.

It had to be destiny. Clearly, this cat was a messenger, a heralding gift from the dark gods to her new reign, as one of Future Queen Supreme of the World. She had been waiting for a magical something to arrive for a while now, and was a little disappointed the cat was well, a cat, and not something more evil and foreboding: was it too much to ask for a firebreathing dragon or a killer hippogriff? Oh well, beggars could not be choosers.

Emily was already eyeing the cat: how like the other to have caught her train of thought already! The time had truly come for Mindy to step into power. If glorious music could play in the background, perhaps reminiscent to Wagners 'Die Walküre', followed up with a triumphant close of up of her face, hair flowing in a non-existance breeze, it might have. Might.

"It's about time, Dark Messenger from the Underworld, if you had arrived any slower, I might have had to fetch you myself." Granted, she had no clue where the underworld is, but as her daddy always said, there was nothing money could not buy. Mindy picked up the magical artifact that was somewhat-similar to Emily's, examining it: was it some pen of great and terrible evil? She expressed this concern to The Talking Cat. "So, how do I unleash this artifact's dark powers and invoke terror upon these human lowlifes?"

Granted, someone else (namely, a youma that was god-knows-where now, thank god it had left a 'trail' behind it) had already done the entire Terror and Doom stuff, but as far as Mindy was concerned, if someone could do it, she could do it better.

Perhaps one could even say, it was the beginning.

Emily listened to Miss Mindy's speech as she went back to studying the pen. How like the other girl to immediately identify the purpose of the robot cat! And how wonderful that the beings living underneath the earth's crust were finally sending an emissary! This was truly shaping up do be a landmark day, with Miss Mindy receiving recognition as the Destined Tyrant of Humanity by both the extra terrestrials and sub terrestrials!

Frowning at the pen, Emily gave it a firm shake. It wasn't doing anything...but wait, could it be?! Alarmed she started checking the pen for a battery compartment, to make sure they had been included. Wondering if maybe she should use a bit more strength to maybe encourage the pen to open up, the robot cat's instructions came as something of a relief, though the swat was hardly necessary. The device was voice activated! Emily's eyes gained a bit of sparkle at the thought of using such an advanced pen. Holding it up, she stated intently, "Hestia Power, Make up."

There was an explosion of sparkles and ribbons, not to mention some strange posing, but sadly, no destructive lasers. Unsure as to what had just happened, the former Emily Moffat looked at the pen. And noticed the new gloves on her hands. And the odd sleeves on her arms. Looking down she saw that her clothing had changed into something that looked vaguely familiar. It reminded her a bit of a maid uniform, but that most definitely was not. She stared at the brooch on her chest for a moment and then realized with a start, Sailor Hestia! It was a senshi uniform! Like the Russian terrorists on the news always wore! The pen had the power to turn her into a Russian terrorist.

Sailor Hestia loomed over the robot cat and stared at it, as if to say: I don't mind being a Russian terrorist, but please remember that I am Miss Mindy's Russian terrorist, Comrade Cat.

Montecristo barely restrained himself from grinning like...well, the cat that ate the canary. This pair, while lacking in the instant obedience that would have been preferable, was not completely without merit--and he would have time to smooth out some of their rough edges so that they could more effectively serve in the battles that would inevitably come.

However, when Mindy commented that Emily could 'keep the cat', he stiffened. While he'd never deny, or begrudge, being fed and pampered, he wasn't some mindless pet to bat his toys around the living room for their entertainment! Even as he opened his mouth to protest the comment, Sailor Algol was heading across the ravaged food court.

Growling in frustration, Montecristo snarled in Hestia's direction. "Come on!" he hissed, even as he bounded after the pale sailor scout, Algol, determined to teach both she and Hestia to wait for his instructions in future before sprinting off into the thick of things. At this rate, he'd be lucky if they even survived to be...guided as he saw fit.