[REG] Many Happy Returns [Kunzite, Thuban] [FIN]

[codalion]

The Dark Kingdom melted away and the stockroom of Things Recollected dripped into existence. It was the first place Kunzite could think of, dizzy with adrenaline and pain. Her room was right out, as long as she had a roommate. So was her room at home, God no, or the locker room: too risky, all of them. She wouldn't have the energy for another teleport once she finished this one, not without passing out from the blood loss and sheer exertion. So she chose her workplace, knowing that it was after hours and that only she and Charlie Boyle worked there, and prayed that Charlie had already finished closing up and seen fit to go home and carry on his precious little life far, far away from where his coworker was about to appear.

How did the saying go? Something about the best-laid plans?

Oh, she appeared in Things Recollected, all right. That did happen according to plan. The cooler air of the stockroom was no balm to the pain in her hands, arms, and shoulders, all the worse for keeping a death grip on the hilt of her sword in some irrational fear that she'd lose it in transit. She blinked once at her surroundings in general, and then one more time at her new company: her polo-shirted coworker, carrying the cash drawer, en route to the safe, which was behind her.

Kunzite wondered remotely if changing back into her normal clothing would help, or if it would really just make things worse. Make things worse, she decided. Failing that, she did what any reasonable person would do under the circumstances: stare stupidly at Charlie Boyle.

Well, this was awkward.  

[Shazari]

Today had been going so well. So very, very well. So much better than three days ago, on his first day, when he'd met Miriam Jacobs and the register had been empty, and he'd had to then problem-solve with Miriam Jacobs. Today he'd even made a few awkward, halting sales.

Today had gone much better. Their manager Linda had been all apologies -- apparently she was responsible for the missing money. She'd taken cash out of the drawer to go to the bank and get change, and then forgotten about it completely. Seventy-five dollars was waiting in a marked envelope in the safe for Charlie's coworker.

But this --

His hands clenched around the cash drawer, a danger instinct.

"Negaverser," he breathed out the accusation.

Slowly, as though she were a panther or a rhinoceros rather than a person bent on evil and murder, he set the cash drawer to one side. He didn't break eye contact -- instead he reached into the back pocket of his khakis for his henshin pen. It was probably the worst idea in the universe to henshin in front of an enemy, to let his identity be compromised, but he didn't seem to have any choice. He'd never make it out of the stockroom and out through the locked storefront door before she caught up to him.  

[codalion]

Kunzite stared. Stared harder, if it were possible to stare harder than she'd just been staring at Charlie. It wasn't so much that her coworker who came from Meadowview High and didn't know how to use Microsoft Excel and called ATMs "ATM machines" had accused her of working for the Negaverse -- which, all things considered, was a reasonable inference under the circumstance, if a damned inconvenient one at this very moment. It was that he knew what the Negaverse was at all. That was what she turned over in her head and attempted to parse.

Hope's brittlest little voice burst out somewhere inside her as she considered the facts: he was a man, he knew of the Dark Kingdom, and he opposed it. The thready little song died out again when she realized that he'd called her Negaverser, and not Kunzite, or even Traitor: he hadn't recognized her. Whoever he was -- and who was Charlie Boyle, exactly? -- he hadn't recognized her.

That was when she noticed him taking something out of his back pocket. She instantly brought her sword up to guard again, and felt the answering pain. She wasn't ready for this fight. She wasn't going to kill her seventeen-year-old coworker. Not now. Not after the Dark Kingdom and Beryl and Mortalitas, and Mortalitas driving the knife of regret back into her and giving it a few twists for good measure. God, not now.

"Not any more," she managed, "Charlie -- ... is that a henshin pen?"  

[Shazari]

Charlie. Charlie. Charlie. She knew his name.

He wasn't a total idiot: if she knew his name, and she was in the stockroom at Things Recollected, of all places, there was a good chance there was a reason for it. Linda? Miriam? Was that even possible? Was Charlie going absolutely off-the-deep-end crazy?

Nevertheless. "Thuban Star Power, Make Up!"

The light spun around him in a momentary shield, gray-beige and warm and totally alive with energy. When it left, Kunzite was shielding her eyes and Sailor Thuban was in his familiar beige-and-green toga set. He felt immediately safer, just for having it -- which was a relationship between a man and his skirt that a person never truly understood until they had been there and walked a mile in his sandals.

He backed toward the supply closet. There was a mop in there, and a pushbroom. He'd grab whichever one was nearer. "Who are you?"  

[codalion]

The question threw her off guard almost as much as the henshin had. It had been a henshin, all right, she knew what those looked like: it had definitely been a henshin. And it had been done by a person who was most certainly male -- were the stars so cruel as to reincarnate one of the Lunar Guard into a male body also? Well, at least it wasn't only Kunzite, then -- but one of the Lunar Guard would have recognized her, and more to the point, one of the Lunar Guard would have had a name that she recognized. Now as Thuban edged back towards the stockroom, her gloves dripped blood onto the floor. His eyes widened in horror. She didn't understand, for a moment. Then she realized. Of course. He had no way of knowing that she was wounded on the hands and arms: that was to say, that the blood even belonged to her.

"Captain Kunzite, Cavalier, in the service of Prince Endymion and the Kingdom of Earth," she said, unmoving. "You are?"  

[Shazari]

Sailor Thuban cursed Astraea once more for the most unhelpful cat in the world. Those words were supposed to have meaning for him -- but all they did was stir a faint feeling: not of something he did know, or had forgotten, but of something he ought to know, something it was fundamentally important to his being to learn.

The name, Kunzite, sounded like a Negaverse name -- it ended in the right letters, at least -- but everything was off, was strange. Negaverse agents didn't, in his experience, deny the accusation. They didn't 'not anymore' him: could they even change back? Was it even physically possible? Hope bubbled up in his heart just for the idea of it. They did not belong as what they'd become, they belonged normal. Fresh and clean.

His hand twisted on the doorknob, and he wrenched blindly behind him till he grasped onto a long polearm.

A splash of water hit his face as he brought the handle over his head and up to bear before him as a weapon: the mop, then. Well, that was fine. He attempted to keep ahold of his dignity. The mop was just fine. It dripped none-too-menacingly in the space between them.

"Sailor Thuban, soldier of Antiquity," he ground out through clenched teeth. "I don't know anything about any cavaliers. Who is Prince Endymion?"

And what did he have to do with Things Recollected?  

[codalion]

There was a long silence between the two of them as Kunzite made an effort to parse things again: this time Sailor, Thuban, Senshi, and Antiquity, and most importantly who is Prince Endymion? She stared at Charlie Boyle, or the person who had been Charlie Boyle, for a while longer. Sailor Thuban brandished the mop at her. She wondered for a confused moment if it was some kind of magical senshi mop, but then recalled that he'd had to go into the stockroom for it. No, that really was all he had.

Well, she'd be damned.

"Are you absolutely certain that you're one of the sailor senshi?" she said with none too well-hidden skepticism. Thuban was still glaring at her in evident suspicion and wariness. As a show of good faith she lowered her sword. Then, as Thuban failed to lower his mop, she slowly and without breaking eye contact got down on one knee and lay her sword gingerly on the floor.

That didn't lower the mop either, but Thuban's eyes darted between Kunzite and her sword. To complete the gesture, she stood up again and took a step back from the sword. If worst came to worst, she told herself, she could take this no-name boy anyway.

Her arms and hands made an argument to the contrary. Anywhere Deathcord had touched, it had torn open -- and it had touched just about everywhere from the backs of her hands to her shoulders, save those portions of her arms that her gauntlets covered. The fabric of her uniform was stiff with blood now. She couldn't tell if she was done bleeding. She was feeling a little light-headed. But memory served her well: you'll be fine a little longer, said General Kunzite, the soldier, and she gritted her teeth again. She shouldn't have been this faint already. This body was weak.

"I've never heard of you," said Kunzite. "But if you'd care to find Sailor Venus and bring her here, she knows who I am."  

[Shazari]

Thuban lowered his mop, but only by about a foot. A series of unknown names did not serve to reassure him any more than the first unknown names had. No, what reassured him was that the bloodied sword was now safely on the ground, about a foot away from the teleporter who had borne it. Her arms were drenched in blood as well. He wondered whose.

"Being a sailor senshi is about the only thing I am sure of," he said, with probably more honesty than wisdom. "I guess it stands to reason there could be a Sailor Venus, but I don't know her. You're saying you're on our side? Can you -- " Then he had an idea of his own. "Astraea would know who you are, then."

The mop was fairly slack in his hands -- maybe not because he trusted her -- maybe because he wanted to trust her, because it seemed too good not to want it to be true. Someone who knew things about what they were supposed to be doing. Maybe Thuban was just desperate for guidance.  

[codalion]

No Venus. No Endymion. No Cavaliers. "Is that what Luna's calling herself now?" Kunzite was tired. Of what, she couldn't say -- of fighting, certainly, but also of surprises, and changes, those too. Kunzite had never been comfortable with change. First this body, then Luna screaming that the entire world had gone to hell in their absence, and that she didn't know where the Prince was, or the Princess. Then it was Charonite, God, but Charonite had grown up -- she couldn't say what was worse, that Charonite was a General-King of the Negaverse now or that he seemed so utterly wounded by it all. Minutes ago she'd been close to killing him. She might have. She wondered if she'd had the time, Charonite would have surrendered.

No, likely not. Death before dishonor. After all -- he had taught him that too, hadn't he?

Kunzite pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, and remembered she was wearing gloves. With a grimace she stripped the glove off her right hand to reveal the bloody weals left by Deathcord. "That name ring any bells? No?" It didn't appear to. "If we're both talking about a grey guardian cat with no manners, then we're talking about the same -- person. Do you serve the Moon Princess?" she demanded of him. "Are you in the Lunar Court?"  

[Shazari]

"I don't know," he admitted, his voice tight. Whatever Kunzite knew -- and that seemed to be a great deal -- no one had bothered to share this information with unimportant little Sailor Thuban.

The head of the mop was now brushing the ground.

"That same gray cat doesn't tell us anything. Or she doesn't tell me anything, at least. We fight demons. We fight the Negaverse -- " He hefted the mop slightly again, remembering 'the Negaverse' could well be Kunzite. "There are a ton of us," he lied bravely -- or at least, as far as he knew, it was an exaggeration. "We're everywhere."

Her hands seemed to be wounded. He wondered about it. "What happened to you?"  

[codalion]

Kunzite hoped, nigh on prayed that Sailor Thuban was telling the truth. It didn't strike her as unlikely that Luna had been of no use to him. Luna had been of damn near no use to her, and it seemed Luna was dead set on being of damn near no use to anyone who wasn't specifically delineated as her responsibility. The new senshi consist of ninety-nine percent dipshits. New senshi, ah, that was it. "Dipshits" was not promising, though even considering all of Miriam Jacobs' troubles with Charlie Boyle, she was not quite ready to classify him into that category.

Ninety-nine percent dipshits didn't rule out the possibility that those dipshits numbered more than nine, she told herself with another hesitant thrum of hope. At least that would be something.

"Do you know who Queen Beryl is?" Luna really was an entirely useless individual. Lunars. How utterly typical. "Very well, what about --" she wrinkled her nose a little and forewent his self-proclaimed title, "-- Charonite."

Thuban's eyes widened in what appeared to be recognition, and Kunzite thought, finally. But it took her a moment longer than that to compose her thoughts.

Her hands and arms had stopped aching. Now they were faintly numb. She spoke through teeth that were still gritted. "I served Prince Endymion. But I betrayed him to Queen Beryl of the Negaverse. My starseed was corrupted. The Sailor Senshi. At the time," she peered at Thuban again and tried to remind herself of an old adage about beggars and choosers, "killed me in battle. I'm no longer corrupt. I awakened again -- reborn -- and tried to go back to the Dark Kingdom. To look for the souls of my soldiers. I met Queen Beryl and Charonite there, and we fought -- Charonite and I. That is. Almost had him," she felt the urge to point out, a little defensively, "Beryl intervened -- here I am."  

[Shazari]

Here I am was still the missing part of the story. But it was so matter-of-fact, so very matter of fact, that it did seem like this had been a natural place for Kunzite to go. So he guessed, "You're Miriam, aren't you?"

If it was Miriam Jacobs -- and he felt more sure now that it might be -- he'd put his weapon down. He'd take the chance on trusting her: because she'd helped him three days ago when she didn't have to, because he owed her that much.

"There's a first-aid kit in the bathroom," he said carefully. "It'll do till we get you to the ER. Just . . . tell me your real name, how you know me."  

[codalion]

Come to think of it, it hadn't actually occurred to Kunzite at all that Thuban wouldn't have known who she was. So she did have some protection on her identity. That was a relief -- it hadn't occurred to her that she needed it, but she had nightmarish visions of what might happen to Crystal Academy, to her roommate. To her mother, Ruth and Annie. To her dad, even. True, Thuban hadn't had any trouble guessing, but in these circumstances and after what she'd said, it probably hadn't been too hard to guess. Maybe a little hard. She gave him a morsel of grudging credit: mostly out of gratitude that he existed at all.

In response she closed her eyes and tried to think herself back into Miriam Jacobs' head, Miriam Jacobs' clothing. When she opened them again it appeared that she had. Her sword was gone. She had mittens on, and her father's old winter coat. Maybe --

No, she was still in pain. Oh, goddamn it. "No ER," she said, stripping off her mittens as quickly as she could before she bled through them. "No ER. Too risky, I'm a minor, Charlie --" Next was her wool coat, which she unbuttoned with feverish haste and flung onto the ground. That was safe, but damn it, her shirt, shirts didn't grow on trees, damn it damn it damn it -- she started unbuttoning, dread growing in the pit of her stomach that red was already beginning to soak through.  

[Shazari]

Despite being a teenaged boy, there was nothing about this scenario that had ever remotely figured into Charlemagne Boyle's fantasies. Or what passed for fantasies with Charlie -- hand-holding, long walks in the park to see the autumn leaves changing to red, kissing under the football bleachers.

Miriam Jacobs, in the stockroom of Things Recollected, in her brassiere and half her Crystal Academy uniform, with blood soaking through her skin and down both arms, resembled none of these things. Thuban's hesitation was for the ghastliness of her injuries: they seemed serious, but also otherworldy, not like the sort of wounds any known weapon could inflict. It reminded him of getting his childhood vaccinations, where they came at him with one of those four-pronged needles. It looked like someone had vaccinated the hell out of Miriam Jacobs.

There were not enough cures for enough diseases in the world, of course. Thuban set the mop down against the wall and stepped around Miriam's discarded clothing to the little cell of a bathroom on his left. "I don't know," he said, opening up the first-aid kit mounted on the wall by the mirror. "Promise me -- swear to me you'll go to the ER if you're still bleeding in an hour, the mere possession of a first-aid kit doesn't cure all injuries. What did he do to you?"

It was a fairly basic first-aid kit, nothing life-saving, but according to whatever health and safety codes, it did have a list of essentials all packed in. He grabbed some antiseptic wipes, two rolls of gauze and both ace bandages, and returned promptly.  

[codalion]

Miriam blinked at him, and seemed to have more trouble answering this question than the one that required her listing off the history of her career as Cavalier Kunzite. In actuality she was a little taken aback by his concern; he had never been anything less than uncomfortable to her, and at the beginning he'd even been irascible, for some reason. He'd thanked her for carving a seventy-five-dollar gash out of her checking account, but he hadn't offered to contribute to it. It wasn't fair to resent him for that, though. She reminded herself she'd offered. Retroactive passive aggression in no way resembled honorable gift-giving.

"He's got a whip made out of -- something. Suckers on it, they pierce skin and take your blood. Better with it than he was with his sword. Wouldn't recommend fighting him." She held her arm out to Charlie to be cleaned and bandaged, setting her mouth in what she hoped was a suitably stoic line. "He used to be one of my men, my Cavaliers."

It pained her more to give the explanation than to have the gruesome puncture wounds cleaned out painstakingly by Charlie, and she shouldn't have liked to repeat that experience, either. Even so, she reminded herself, it was part of her penance to explain this in full and unflinchingly to anyone who required the explanation.

"He followed me down," she said, weary and all the terser for it. "But not back up. Look. Charlie. I can't promise you that."