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Oh, Serenity.

Astraea was not a cat who asked for much; just the good end of the world. She had been alive and awake for three years now, trawling through the a**-ends of Destiny City for senshi. She had had her failures. (She knew all her failures by name.) She had her, ... ... ... not-so-failures. ('Successes' had died stillborn on her tongue.) Whatever the case, they'd lived -- they'd all lived -- barring the Zodiacs, who had died in a fiery inferno together. And that was the realm of, callously, their guardian, who had died alongside with them.

That had been a blow. General-King Charonite was not a stupid man.

Winter had dumped itself unceremoniously on the city. It was freezing. She picked her way through freezing rain and sleet, grateful for her own ability to blink in and out of existence -- it just left a smoky signature wherever she left. She had to be careful. She'd crossed Charonite; he knew who she was; she was not about to sacrifice herself for the last General-King's pleasure. Or relief, more likely. She'd pulled Castor out of the flames more than once.

But --

-- it hadn't been her who had known the signature. Not her. It had been her, the soul who lived inside her, who froze screaming and anxious and wild with rage the moment she had felt it. She huddled close to the buildings as people walked past on the backstreets, too few people in the gloaming. God, she'd been right. She'd been right. The energy signature was correct. She never would have noticed it before, not without the soul -- what the hell to do?

For a moment she thought, call a senshi. But the signature was more complex than that. (Also, who the hell would she have gotten?) It no longer blared... corruption. That filled her with momentary glee; who else could have uncorrupted the seed but the Prince himself?

All right, time for a classic. This never failed.

Astraea flopped down on her side in an alley. The street was deserted but for one now. She started to mew in the pathetic help me, help me, I am a poor lost deserted cat! Maybe I have been hit by a car, a bus or otherwise mew. This never failed. You would have to have a heart of ice.

It was very unfortunate for Astraea that Miriam Jacobs did, indeed, have a heart of ice.

Astraea mewed harder. Then she tried to force a more pathetic tone into the mewing. Then she got annoyed, pulled herself up, shook off the wet and hissed:

"Captain!"

She had her own priorities, and this did not involve letting Miriam Jacobs get home safe and sound to Crystal Academy to soothe her pitifully stockinged legs. At the first Captain! her head only jerked a little, and having surmised that the street was empty must have taken this to mean that her hearing was going. She continued off down the street.

"Captain!"

That made her more unsteady. Somebody was definitely having a conversation aimed at her, but again: her legs were very cold. It was very cold. Her stockings were very thin. At this point to ease things along, Astraea stomped out of the alleyway, a small silver-furred cat with a pissed-off expression and slightly bulging eyes at the entire ordeal. "CAPTAIN! Where the hell have you been?! Where's the Prince? Is he in hiding? Why aren't you looking for her?"

Astraea was a little hysterical at this point. It had been three very long years.

If Astraea had thought that beating her forehead on the sidewalk would have been productive, she would have done so. Actually, she might have done it anyway, but leaving a little star shape in the snow was better than a breadcrumb trail. "The PRINCE," she said a little hysterically. "The PRINCE, where IS HE. DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT FOR YOU. P R I N C E, space, E N D Y M I O N."

That didn't really make a hell of a lot of sense. Serial killer cat was, thus far, not really doing its job as a serial killer cat should. Then, it articulated slowly: "Endymion. Where is Endymion. For Serenity's sake, is he even in the city? Is he hiding? I have every worry in me that Beryl's on the loose again, for the love of the Moon! And he's sitting on his a**?"

Occam's -- or Ockham's -- razor did not help a lot here. The cat was staring at her with wild surmise as if on a peak in Darien, etc, etc, though mainly she was staring at her as though she were a delicious catnip treat and the cat was very, very hungry. Hysterically hungry.

Astraea said a couple of pretty rude words. They were expletives. They were not the type of thing you would expect a cat to say. If you met a talking cat they were meant to lead you on a magical adventure, not explode with "s**t," in broad daylight as though they were very tired and on a highly waxing temper.

Clearly, she had dropped acid along the way. It figured that if she dropped acid, she would just be seeing swearing cats and having very cold legs, not anything interesting. This LSD was pretty boring. Did not do what it said on the tin. "Kunzite," said the cat, breathing pretty heavily, "are you telling me that you've been walking around all this time doing nothing?"

No, 'nothing' didn't account for the acid tab --

"Are you the only one? You're the only one and you're not even awake?" Astraea sounded like she might have a cat coronary. "I can accept that you're a teenage girl, but please! Where's Endymion? Where's Lady Serenity? WHERE IS EVERYONE?" More cat heavy breathing. "Do you know how much I've had to do by myself? I don't even know how to use the soul! The new senshi consist of about ninety-nine percent -- percent -- percent DIPSHITS. If you're done having been evil, can you at least do something?"

This was generally not the way anyone should have talked to General-King Kunzite, but desperate times called for dropping 'dipshits'.

The girl standing in front of her was -- in fact -- no longer a girl. The change had been so swift that if you blinked, you would have missed it. She had missed it. The uniform was a better shade of familiar, even if the person who inhabited looked like a teenage girl. Was a teenage girl.



"What do you mean, where?" She was baffled now, only a little relieved that her assumption had been correct: that this girl was not only Kunzite, but a Kunzite free of the corruption since when she -- well, Luna -- had last seen him. Which had been dying in the snow, run through by Venus' sword, having nearly killed them all. Out of all of them, he had come the closest. Charonite was chasing him for that position. "We don't have him! It's not my job to look for where Endymion is, it's yours." She was ruffled. She was disappointed. "I've got my hands full looking for Serenity, which is like looking for a needle in a haystack of idiots. I don't know if Usagi has even been reborn correctly -- you certainly haven't -- I don't know -- "

"Yes, though he got there solely through murder, treachery, villainy and the fact that you four were dead," said Astraea. "I thought he'd been killed as well! I didn't know he'd been frozen with you!"

Astraea was not so convincingly silenced. She had, out of pure reflex, shut her maw when Kunzite had held up a hand, but she was bursting with the slightly hysterical indignance you got when you only slept five days a week and your dreams were messed-up and fearful. "I didn't even know he'd been reborn," she was saying. "And now the Negaverse is, what, twenty-odd strong, also he corrupted two of our senshi, we really could have used you about -- I don't know -- six MONTHS ago?" Her tail was lashing. Her voice was at an embarrassingly high octave. "The Zodiacs are all dead! So is their Princess! Charonite went around brainwashing the cats! Have fun assembling the Knights, because I haven't seen any since you!"

"Yes, and then we can all go home for tea and cakes," said Astraea, but then she realised slowly that Kunzite was serious. Then again, Kunzite always had been coldly, chillingly serious. The Captain of Endymion's Guard was not given to jokes, nor hyperbole. Out of all of the Shitennou he had been the most powerful and least approachable. That was unfair -- approachable if you were having srs bsness, not so much otherwise.

Those memories all came bidden now. She was used to that. She was used to it.

"You can't be serious," she said, though both of them knew already that he was. "He's around your equal now -- and you're in the body of a teenage girl. He's a grown Negaverse general in his -- what -- thirties? I swear to Serenity he's got Beryl's soul. I can't confirm it. Beryl. You know, the Queen you left everything for? He knows I've got Luna's soul. You can't -- do you really -- where are you going."