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It was dark out. You didn't normally hear demented clop-clop-clopping when it was dark out, like some kind of epileptic horse. Then again, Miriam reflected with some puzzlement as she hefted her bookbag, you didn't normally hear that when it was light out, either. It piqued her curiosity just enough to wonder for a moment, and then continue on her way.

She'd had to work late today at Things Recollected, which was beginning to dominate her life in a way she wasn't entirely pleased with. The extra cash was good -- especially now that she'd gotten her cash drawer donation back -- but it had sliced time out of her life, precious time dedicated to fencing, viola practice, and most of all, finding Prince Endymion. Admittedly she hadn't actually dedicated much of her recent time to that, but it irritated her that she couldn't if she decided to. It was home, class reading, and then sleep. What class did she even have to read for today? God only knew. She dreaded the sleep the worst, if only because it carried with it a few hours of oblivion and then a bright-and-fresh morning full of shiny happy people she'd have to socially interact with. The reading was preferable.

Charlie Boyle had refused to get back together until, quoth him, she "saw some sense" and "stopped festering." Well, Charlie Boyle could go and. Go and. Well. All right, he had -- probably near saved her life, definitely saved her a lot of awkward questions, and he was the reason she had arms and shoulders full of ugly scabs rather than ugly wounds. But he could still go and.

She turned the corner and was confused to hear the clop-clop-clopping get louder. Miriam glanced up and saw -- well. Luck be a lady tonight.

Habitually, she looked over her shoulder to see if there was anyone around -- there wasn't. Then without further ado she slid her bookbag off her shoulders (gingerly, still) and shifted into her uniform. She wasn't thinking.

Kunzite peered at the stomping figure to make sure it was a senshi -- that or a member of a very dedicated yachting club, to be sure -- and then swept her cloak over her shoulder as she strode over to greet her. She wasn't thinking. Her sword was in her hand; she shifted it casually to her other hand to raise her sword hand in greeting.

"Senshi," she called out. She really wasn't thinking.

There were some cliches, used to describe human emotion, that tended to be cartoonish hyperbole. One of them was "his/her jaw dropped." This was not the case with Kunzite at this particular moment. Kunzite's jaw dropped. Sailor Castor had the uncommon, and dubious, honor of seeing Cavalier Kunzite stop in her tracks and simply gape at him. Her mouth hung open. A fly could've flown in. Whatever she'd been expecting out of him, it clearly hadn't been that.

Kunzite tried to parse the torrent of expletives. She alighted on General-King out of it, and this confused her the most: did he recognize her? Was that the reason for the stream of hostilities? In either case it appeared he mistook her for Negaverse, and -- well, she'd deal with that in a moment. But General-King. That was a title no one had used on her in a while. Shitennou. That was an old title.

"Do I know you?" she said with a frown.

Kunzite stared.

"Stop," she ordered, with the voice of someone who expected to be obeyed: she had a mezzo-soprano, but it carried. It was also probably the voice of someone who needed to adjust their expectations. "I am not -- any longer -- a servant of the Negaverse and I certainly do not follow Charonite." She was standing in front of a combat-ready senshi with her sword drawn, she realized with some horror. That made this the second time this week. Definitely not the second time in all her lifetimes, though. Why in seven hells couldn't Kunzite ever seem to avoid this?

She recalled Thuban, earlier in the week, with his mop. Slowly, she lowered the point of her sword, in what she was entirely certain was the universal signal for I'm not going to stab you. Certainly it was. All of the Cavaliers would've known it on sight. This little idiot just needed a little bit of straightening out.

Kunzite gestured with her sword's point. "Stand down, you little idiot. I'm of no mind to spill any senshi blood because of a point of misunderstanding. You have my word as a Cavalier of the Golden Kingdom."

Confusion was clearing from Kunzite's face as its replacement, horror, shuffled in. Not that she wasn't still confused. She was. Actually, she could not remember being close to this confused in the recent past. But what was surfacing in her mind again was that charming refrain, howled straight from the mouth of a hysterical guardian cat: ninety-nine percent of the new senshi are dipshits. It didn't particularly occur to her to raise her sword into a guard, because she hadn't in fact totally grasped that somewhere in the senshi's vulgar word salad was some kind of threat. Kunzite stared at Sailor Castor. She blinked, opened her mouth, prepared to say something, with her mouth, but words were an essential component of speech and somehow she was having trouble with those. In lieu of that, she stared at Sailor Castor some more.

Clearing her throat, and struggling to maintain some degree of propriety, she directed at him the only logical question under the circumstances. "Are you high?"

Chunks of hail battered Kunzite's arms and shoulders as she shielded her head with one of her arms, instinctively. "Castor! For God's sake!" She wouldn't drop her sword and brace her head with both arms, so a lucky hailstone collided with her head, sending a painful ring through her head. Along her left shoulder she felt sharp sears of pain. Goddamn it. "Castor, I am not a General-King!"

The hailstorm ceased shortly after and she shielded her face with one arm, glancing up in trepidation of something further. Nothing came. Well, at least there was that -- her shoulder was bleeding, she could tell, but, well, her shoulder bled before, she thought grimly. It would bleed again. It was nothing compared to the growing sandpaper sensation of her irritation with Sailor Castor.

She brandished her sword in an offensive ward. "For Christ's sake Castor don't make me hurt you!"

There were certain points of no return, really, after which one could comfortably say that one had done all they could -- all they honorably could -- before being forced to an unwanted course of action.

That was to say, Kunzite lunged for Castor.

However, she didn't strike. In a manner of speaking, that is. Her sword was drawn back for it, and by her estimation she could have probably taken off his head in the next moment -- ninety-nine percent dipshits -- if his reflexes weren't too fast, or if he wasn't especially bright, which seemed evident from. Err, well. Which seemed most recently evident from his decision to get into a fistfight with a swordsman, Jesus Christ, who was teaching these people, Venus would be mortified -- that was about as far as Kunzite got before she got into melee range and instead of slicing at him, drew her sword back and made to bash him in the face with the pommel.

If it were practical to smack her forehead into her palm at the same time as smacking Castor with the flat of her sword, Kunzite would have seriously considered it. As it stood, she merely drew her sword back again and smacked him in the face with the flat of the blade. It stopped him short and swung both of his fists a bit awry -- one met the air, and one met the metal of her right gauntlet. She repelled that one fairly easily, balled up her gloved fist and punched him in the eye: not in the broken nose, that would be unnecessary and quite out of line.

She hit him again with the pommel, though, this time where his neck met his shoulder, and when he swung at her a bit madly he tripped over her outstretched foot: something she would've liked to have credited to her own reflexes, save that it was entirely serendipitous.

Castor fell. Kunzite watched him, and delivered a kick -- a relatively cheap shot, but necessary under the oh who the hell gave a goddamn -- to his ribcage to make sure he stayed down. She kicked him again to seal the deal and lowered her sword's point to hover directly in front of Castor's prone face.

"Listen to me, idiot, I'm speaking very slowly," she said, true to her word. "If I were with the Negaverse I would have killed you right now. In fact, I would have killed you earlier. I would have killed you before you dropped your ridiculous little hailstorm on me because it seems they don't teach the Lunar Court a speck of manners." Kunzite bit down hard on her lower lip. "I'm not with the Godforsaken Negaverse."