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Ophelia was close to being the last of them.

Guardian cats were born -- with more regularity, less helpfulness -- in Destiny City. Since the fall of planet Mau, only two cats (the emissaries to the Lunar Court) had been truly born; the early nineteen-eighties, the guardian of the Moon Princess and the guardian of the Captain, Venus. Now it was more of a dog and pony show wherein fragmented cat souls had been born all over. Charonite had taken advantage of that, she thought sourly. Charonite's plan had been so simple as to be genius. Cats awaken? Steal the cats.

Caine and Grendel were gone -- maybe forever. Who remained? Chloe, guardian of Lyra. Abel, guardian of Pyxis. Montecristo -- since when did Montecristo do anything.

And now -- Ophelia.

You've work to do, she told her briskly in her dreams. Search out the Moon Princess.

Chloe was hard-working, just far too stubborn. They couldn't meet in an empty room without starting a fight. Probably about the empty room. Astraea was aggrieved; the rest of the guardian cats should have belonged within the pages of I Can Haz Cheeseburger; she was exhausted.

Destiny City was frosted over with snow. She made pawprints in it; she disliked that. She was curled up on top of a warmish car bonnet when she saw the flash of pale biscuit-coloured fur -- took off immediately, catching her up, padding in front of her. Confirmed. The star on the cat's head was bright gold. Sometimes it was a little difficult to pinpoint people in dreams; the visage was vague, you could wake up and remember nothing of them.

"Don't wander this side of town," she said. "It's too close to Barren Pines."

"The Negaverse happened." Astraea was still tense; two guardian cats were better than two guardian cats in human form, but she was still taut with annoyed anxiety. "I can see past the magic: it's not a school at all. I admit, I didn't know General-King Charonite would go for such a patently ridiculous lie -- but it was good magic, the city's been fooled. Anyway. Other than that."

She sat down in the chill sleet. She and Ophelia took each other in, slowly and calmly. Ophelia was graceful and seemed cautious; she liked that. "We can't do anything; it's not as though we have any Princesses on our side -- or our Lady. Ignore Barren Pines. It's not our problem. The Princess is our problem."

The problem: she wasn't around.

"How long have you been awake now? You've been sleeping a long time. I'm stuck with a bunch of guardians who couldn't find their asses with their elbows. None of the senshi have more than a handful of brain cells. It. Is. Hell."

Astraea tended to not 'play', and thusly the cat wore a slightly comic expression of surprise when remotely bumfed by Ophelia. She was not that sort of cat. She was not even the sort of cat you skritched on the head, despite how pretty she was. She was just not that sort of animal. She cleared her throat instead, a little awkwardly: "Oh, you'd be surprised. I was that optimistic at the start. Now I have NO IDEA how -- back then -- they used to DO IT."

Both cats knew about the existence of Beryl; there had been a shudder through the city the day that the Queen had been reborn. Most of them had no idea what it meant. Astraea did; she just dreaded it, and hoped to God that she was wrong. The Negaverse were more organised. The Negaverse had more. She'd told Chloe so much, to Chloe's disdain. Chloe was cup half full; Astraea's cup was full, but it was just full of s**t.

If Beryl was back, Nova and Tisiphone were most likely gone forever.

"If you do find anyone a little competent," she continued, "I'll be very much surprised. The best thing I've seen is probably two senshi beating a youma to death with a piece of wood."

Thuban had talent. Nerissa was Nerissa, responsible for the entire Nova debacle.

Something pricked at her ears -- a now-familiar sensation that had ceased to excite her, but probably was new and alarming for Ophelia. "There's a senshi around," she said. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate the company."

She was still doing the touching thing. Astraea was a little lost. Nobody usually did this. She and Chloe used to sit at least a foot apart, staring, just in case a scrap of the other came into contact with the personal space. But she shook it off -- thank the Moon, Ophelia seemed to absorb things without questioning her -- and took off at a mad pace, both cats weaving in and out of each other's paths as they darted to the backstreets.

Destiny City was fresh with snow. It was freezing cold underneath paws, and they skidded over the slick paths in the half-dark as the snow started to flurry down. It was in this condition that they used the oldest trick in the book: upon seeing the clumping figure in the scarf and coat. It was slim and androgynous, the shoes and ankles were all feminine; the bouncing red pigtails all said pretty girl!

Which was odd, because for two guardian cats, Sailor Foramen was utterly and completely male.

The redhead was suddenly assaulted by meowing; Astraea did every cat's trick of getting underneath somebody's feet, suddenly doing a criss-cross around ankles, rubbing up against them as though he'd filled his socks with catnip. Or crack. Astraea's meowing to another cat seemed a little forced; if she had had a dollar for every senshi she awakened, ... she would have about thirty dollars. That was probably enough for a KFC party meal. Not the kind of payment a guardian cat needed.

"MEEEOWWWWW," Astraea said significantly.

As far as Kirin knew, not many cats said "Meow."

It was an hour or so before Kirin was meant to assemble in front of the burned dorms to begin Sue's "Operation: Meatgrinder". Despite being told to stay behind - AGAIN - Kirin wasn't deeming any full-on battle a title better than "Operation: Suicide" until he'd seen the layout for himself. He was the chessmaster here, not Sue. Sue just spoke to cats.

Which was perhaps why Kirin wasn't all that surprised when two felines bombarded him. One twined around his ankles, and the other - more shockingly - leapt straight onto his shoulder. There was a little stagger as Kirin adapted to the kitty-sized pressure from two new locations on his body.

"Are you two lost?" he asked, then had a mental debate with himself over why he was bothering to speak to cats. It wasn't like he had Sue's bond with them. He doubted the cats could understand him any better than he could understand them. Goddamn it, if he was picking up stupid habits from everyone at this crazy school-!

"Maybe Sue sent you to keep me from following him?" Kirin guessed. Normally Sue's cats didn't move all that far from where the self-proclaimed cat-whisperer went. "Paranoid b*****d."

Kirin had always wanted a cat. Independent, self-sufficient, clean, poised animals - and cute as anything. His mother had refused, kept all cats away from their apartment as though they had the plague. Kirin couldn't remember if she'd been allergic or something... But he'd always wanted one. He just knew better than to treat Sue's cats like cute bits of fluff - they were mostly hands-off to everyone else. So it was more than surprising to see these two showering affection on someone besides Sue.

Ophelia, courtesy of being on his shoulder, got an immediate head scritch. Kirin bumped his head back at her, much more gentle than the boy was if people could see him.

"I'd love to stay and play ladies, but I've got a battlefield to survey, strategies to make, and zombies to beat the brains out of before they can eat mine. I would like to get out of here alive, after all."

Goddamn it, he was still talking to the cats like they were people. ******** Sue. If Kirin started seeing numbers everywhere or getting urges to sacrifice himself as a distraction, he was going to be seriously pissed off.

Golden eyes kept flickering back to the silver cat at his ankles. The one on his shoulder was friendly, but otherwise normal for a cat. Something about the cat on the ground... something about it's meow... that hadn't been a meow or any kind of cat noise AT ALL.

Deciding his explorations could wait, Kirin crouched down to get a better look at Astraea. The snow barely registered as he narrowed his eyes. "Say that again," he slowly prompted the cat.

Ophelia momentarily regretted the fact that cats couldn't giggle, because she would have loved to do so at the sound of srs bsns Astraea getting down to a cat food jingle. Instead, she settled for helping the other feline out.

She bounded from Kirin's shoulder, skidding momentarily upon the icy sidewalk. Even sliding, she seemed somehow graceful, dragging her tiny claws to pull herself to a stop. She plodded over towards the alley, glancing back at Kirin as though to say, What the hell are you waiting for?

“Me-ow,” she said disjointedly in a way that made it glaringly obvious. Her tail swished once before she vanished into the alley.

"That's a grotesque pun," snapped Astraea, who had obviously given up the meow shenanigans the moment that they were all hidden behind a dumpster -- "and put down that ridiculous shield. Ten points for being cautious, but we're cats."

This didn't really say anything anyway, as, fair enough, Kirin could be inclined to believe that cats could reveal themselves to be zombie cats who wanted to lunch on them. But Astraea sat down on her haunches, making a slight face at the cold concrete underneath her butt, and said: "I should have known you would have been the only one to get out of Barren Pines. It's so ridiculous. Rifts. It's so ridiculous I could cry. But apart from me desperately needing a prozac milkshake -- "

She looked to Ophelia instead. "Here's your first mission," she said. "Henshin pen. Sailor Foramen. I'm tired of producing them."

They talked. Of course they ******** talked.

Still, he wasn't believing someone wasn't dangerous just because they said so. Arastoo and others at Barren Pines had been full of tales of small monsters that tried to eat your face. Kirin played along, putting the trash can lid down - within quick grabbing reach, if needed.

Despite the gross hacking up of a pen of some kind, Kirin found he couldn't tear his eyes off the first, grey cat. "I'm out? I'm out of Barren Pines?" If his voice faltered a little, it was only to be expected upon hearing such shocking, impossible news. "That can't be right. We can't get out. I've tried - I've been trying all term."

Oh. Suddenly it made sense.

With a bitter laugh, Kirin slumped down into the snow. "This is just a dream," he murmured softly, barely audible. "Right. Talking cats, escaping the horror movie from hell..."

What had he been expecting?

Still, if it was only a dream, there was nothing to lose by playing along. Kirin had never been able to wake himself form his dreams even after realising he was dreaming. So he reached for the pen and wiped it off on his pajama pants. "No one's died from cat spit or weird dreams yet," he tried to smile at the second, seemingly younger cat, but his disappointment and general lack of friendly made it more like a painful twist of his lips. It seemed like a natural expression on Kirin - less out of place than the smile he was trying for would have been.

"Why not?" he said to himself. "Guess I can blame these dreams on lack of food, living at Zombie High, and mom's weird fairytales."

He stood. Even if only in a dream, dramatic moments shouldn't be made on the ground. Staring the purple-and-blue pen, Kirin spoke in a normal, everyday tone of voice. "Foramen Power, Make-Up."

What followed would make it immediately obvious that this was no dream, after all.