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Several hours later, Kirin's grandfather finally decided to leave. Well, temporarily. Kirin had worked a compromise - Kaine would stop hovering, go home, eat, shower, catch a few hours sleep (Kirin doubted that one would actually happen), and return later in the evening to check on Kirin once more. Where Kaine thought Kirin could run off to in a hospital, Kirin had no clue. He couldn't check himself out, he'd have nurses checking in almost hourly, and he was still hooked up to this damn IV - though at least it was on wheels now so Kirin could go to the bathroom himself, having flat out refused a bedpan.

It was smothering. It was enough to make Kirin wished normal visiting hour rules applied to his grandfather. Unfortunately, when one of the hospital wings was named after your grandfather, they tended to waive some of the rules for him. Hence, Kaine was free to come and go as he liked, and Kirin was receiving better care than some dehydrated kid normally would - and a closer eye was kept on him, too.

Still, the nurse had stopped by just before Kaine had left, so Kirin knew he had at least an hour before the next check-in. His limbs were all responding now - he'd been sitting up, gone to the bathroom and back a few times unassisted ("goddamit, no, I do not need any help!"). While the cats - annoying bossy beasts - were away, this mouse was living it up.

First on the agenda: pants! Backless gowns were evil and the pajamas Kirin had arrived in were his ripped BP leftovers. Thankfully someone had thoughtfully left him a pair of scrub pants - "one size fits all" which made them far too long, but Kirin just rolled up the waist and the legs and he was good to go.

One hand on his mobile-IV, Kirin peeked out the door. A pigtail-less hair of red-gold hair swung from side to side. The coast was clear, and Kirin was on his way. Once out in the hall, he looked like any other patient who had leave to travel around their floor, and the further he got form his room, the less chance he'd run into any of the nurses who had instructions to watch out for him.

One cup of terrible hospital coffee later and Kirin was almost ready to return to his room in disgust. He threw the half-full cup into the bin, freezing up as a cluster of nurses walked by.

"Isn't it terrible, all those children?"

"Oh, the black market ring for organ theft? I heard! How many did they find?"

"Two dozen or so. Right out in the middle of nowhere, near..."

Kirin's ears perked up as they described the location of 'Barren Pines'. So, it wasn't just his grandfather who didn't remember the school had been there. Apparently, to everyone else, it had never existed. He wondered idly who had survived. The kids had been reanimated corpses. He'd half expected all of them except the Zodiacs to drop dead the moment everything ended. But there was no way the Zodiacs alone made up over twenty kids.

One of the nurses put down her clipboard as the group moved to get coffee. Kirin quietly slipped past, picked up the board and continued out into the hall. He flipped through the pages, pausing at one particular name and room number. Kirin had meant to have a certain conversation before the whole Barren Pines debacle was over, but Sue had passed out before the big finish.

Making his way to the cat-boy's room, Kirin knocked on the open door and poked his head in. "Will you look at what the cat dragged in?" he said, a half-smile dragging up one corner of his lips into something less warm than a smile but not as nasty as a smirk.

Meanwhile, if Sue's senshi radar was still online, there was a decidedly non-Zodiac senshi beeping at his door right now.

Kirin gave a little chuckle at Sue's reaction. Guess he was an unexpected familiar face to see, since he'd done his disappearing act and collapsed elsewhere.

Kirin wasn't at his prettiest, by any means. His hair was down (and in 'hey, I was unconscious for over a day' bedhead disarray), he was pale and a bit weak, and he was modeling the highly fashionable open-backed hospital gown with scrub pants several sizes too big for his petite frame. Still, he was alive, he was awake and he was moving. Cause enough for celebration, in Kirin's books.

"None other," Kirin gave a crooked grin. This was point Sue might start wondering if he'd entered the Twilight Zone. Kirin was never this nice to anyone. Well, Kirin's verison of nice. Not to mention, almost friendly!

Entering the room, Kirin shut the door behind him. "Ah, guess I'm a bit surprising, huh? I meant to drop the bombshell before everything came to a head during our own personal apocalypse back there. But someone passed out just before the good bit. Well," Kirin tapped the corner of his mouth, "I guess I can't blame you. That was a ******** of pens, after all."

A secretive smirk appeared. Go on, it dared, connect the dots. A pretty redhead from Barren Pines who knew about Sue making pens and was there for the whole take-down-the-shield ending. Another senshi or a civilian wouldn't be able to make the connection - the magic protecting Foramen's identity would prevent it. But Sue was a cat, a Guardian. The rules were slightly different for them. And if Sue still couldn't get it, Kirin was willing to spell it out. He just wanted to have some fun teasing Sue first.

"And we have a winner!" Kirin said, lips twisting into a not-so-happy expression. Okay, it had totally been his choice to tell Sue. Sue, who was smart enough to have worked out that Foramen wasn't a flat, butch girl, but a very pretty male senshi. So now another person (cat? they'd all been cats so far, but Sue was looking very normal right now, no ears or tail or fur) knew his secret, the one Kirin hadn't wanted anyone knowing. It probably seemed counter-productive to tell Sue at all, except for one small fact. The cats had senshi-radar. The moment Sue had seen Kirin again - if not in hospital, then at a school, or on the street - he would know Kirin was a senshi. With enough effort, Sue might have been able to tell what Astraea and Ophelia had been able to - that Kirin was Sailor Foramen, Senshi of Rifts. And then Kirin would be equally screwed, but have no way of controlling that information.

"That last bit?" Kirin winked. "Kind of a secret. A really big one. So if you wouldn't blab it around...?"

Abruptly he dropped the girly, half-flirting act. The serious side that was left, well, Sue would recognise it from Kirin's normal demeanour and also Foramen's - at least, Foramen pre-Serenity. Things had become... very confusing... after the arrival of the Queen. Kirin still wasn't sure what to make of that part.

"Astraea and Ophelia - she's another cat - know about this," Kirin explained. He crossed his arms over his flat chest and leant back against the closed door. "Obviously, it's not something I want people knowing. They agreed to keep it to themselves if I got Astraea into Barren Pines - also taking myself back in there after escaping." Kirin made a face. Maybe Sue could understand that part, not wanting to re-enter a place where students were disappearing daily, your dorm had just burned down while you were inside, and zombies were roaming the campus. "I figured might as well round it out to three cats instead of just. And if you didn't tell your Zodiacs, well, that'd be awesome. But..." Kirin gave a shrug. "That was some weird s**t we just went through. And I like you a whole lot better than I like Astraea."

Kirin was giving Sue some leeway, what with the bombshell he'd just dropped on the catboy. It might have gone over better if Kirin had said something during the whole Meatgrinder saga, or when he'd first appeared before Sue and Astraea as Foramen. Less time for Sue to regard them as separate identities. The idea of 'coffee' or anything like that never occurred to Kirin, since he'd thought Sue just saw Kirin as someone 'effective' who 'got the job done' against zombies. And romantic emotions rarely featured in Kirin's mental flowcharting to begin with, so it was no wonder that such things went over his head.

But still, that leeway (and possibly also Sue knowing his secret) was all that kept Kirin from resorting to violence and intimidation. Or at the very least, snapping that it was none of Sue's ******** business, either.

"Really long story, really kinda private," he forced out eventually. He wasn't risking cracks in his armour here, of all places. Being back in a hospital was bad enough, let alone talking about it and everything that followed. Because he liked and respected Sue as much as anyone he knew, Kirin offered a little extra. "It's not one of those 'I'm a girl trapped in a boy's body' things. I don't think of myself as a girl. I don't want surgery. I just... dress this way." He shrugged. "Past few years or so. I'm sure if I actually saw a shrink like my granddad keeps suggesting they'd say I have 'issues' or 'its just a phase'..."

Kirin snapped his mouth shut before any more came out. That had been more than he'd meant to say. Gave hints at the things he didn't want to mention at all. If Sue was smart enough to catch them, hopefully he was also smart enough to tell that they weren't up for discussion.

He eyed Sue, studying the purple haired boy's reaction and trying to make sense of it. Sue hadn't struck him as a prude, or a homophobe. But such things weren't always easy to pick up on. "I'm not looking for a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend," he said. "So it's not like sex is an issue. I don't even like people."

Kirin snorted as Sue called Foramen fruity. Tilting his nose up into the air, Kirin retorted, "Well, that fruity senshi was a lot more useful than your Zodiacs during the zombie apocalypse."

Wonder of wonders, there was a clearly teasing element to Kirin's behaviour. He thought Sue's behaviour was starting to calm down, so clearly Kirin could allow himself to relax a bit as well. Hah, the ice queen relaxing in front of someone! Maybe because Sue knew the big secret. Maybe because Sue wasn't even human - he was some of catboy, or reborn cat, or cat thing. Maybe because BP had shown that Sue could be trusted to do the right thing, even if it meant wiping himself out of the game - nothing Kirin would ever do, but it made Sue a 'known' element.

"So," Kirin's eyes gleamed as he readied his next salvo, "when can we expect you to turn into a furry?"

Kirin would have felt exactly the same if it was his head and a** on the line. No furry protrusions, please! But he also knew their furry silver acquaintance and he doubted she would see things that way. "Dare you to tell Astraea that when she comes around to force you in line," Kirin smirked. Because that was what Astraea did: made a brief visit, got her bitchface on, and made you toe the company line. "Lemme know if you get that wicked headlaser thing going on, though."

The princess...? Oh, the Zodiac one that Serenity had been borrowing. Kirin didn't understand the interest. Oh, but Sue was technically a Zodiac. Kirin frowned. It was easy to forget Sue was a member of that group - he seemed too competent. Kirin was going to have to keep that fact in mind, else he slip up and start badmouthing the group and then the only decent cat he knew would join the other two in the 'Foramen needs yelling at' group.

"Yeah, I saw her," he said eventually. "After they brought the last Zodiac corpse over, Serenity left and the green-haired girl went all glowy and butterfly-winged. I didn't... feel anything from her." One eyebrow drew down and Kirin's mouth twisted. "Not like Serenity, that was... definitely something." Something Kirin wasn't sure how to word anymore. That day, he'd thought of the Queen as a deity descended to earth, honouring his lowly mortal self with her presence. Astraea had felt much the same, judging form the cat's reactions. But now, mere days later, there was a touch more fear than there was awe. The reactions he'd had, the emotions he'd felt, far too powerful and unfamiliar - nothing like his normal self at all. The fact that someone could force such a change on him... it worried Kirin. It scared him, and Kirin did not like to feel scared. It made him retreat into his armour, remove himself form the problem for proper analysis - basically, run away.

"But I guess that's why she's your princess, not mine."

Gemini... god those idiots. Kirin was totally behind trying out a headlaser on Andeon. Mackenzie would b safe, unless she joined Andeon is something stupid... again. To Sue, Kirin said, "Count yourself lucky they haven't decided to serenade you back to health. Unless they did, and I missed it?"

He didn't understand Sue's sudden glazing over at the thought of his princess. Serenity was one thing (and a confusing thing, no less), but Kirin still had no desire to give into that annoying voice calling for the moon princess.

'Find the Princess! Protect the Princess!'

Speak of the devil. "Shut. Up," Kirin muttered to it, thoroughly pissed off. This senshi gig was great, except for the brainwashing, the crazy bitchy cats, the retarded other senshi... What was the silver lining again? Oh yeah, power and anonymity. Kirin had yet to decide if it was a worthy trade-off.

"Yeah, missing," he said. There was a marked difference between Sue and Kirin's behaviour regarding their princesses. Kirin's tone was unenthusiastic and he slouched against the doorway as he spoke of her.

"I dunno that it works that way, for us." Giving a shrug, Kirin pushed away from the door and dropped into the seat near Sue's bed. "We weren't reborn like you Zodiacs, so there's nothing there to remember. Just a voice in my head telling me to 'find the princess' all hours of the day."

Obligingly, it started up again. 'Find the Princess! Protect-!'

Kirin closed his eyes. Face wan, he prayed for strength. He pictured an arctic wasteland, frozen and cold and pure, creeping up to form untouchable armour around him... then he drop-kicked the voice into an icy ravine and left his little fantasy world.

"Of course, it is singularly unhelpful about where or how to find our princess."