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Judging from the carnations she'd received, Jaimie had not asked her to coffee in the name of breaking up with her. However, that left her other guess, which was confessing he was a serial killer, which wasn't really better. (The jury was out on whether it was worse.)

She supposed he was buying, since he was the one who had invited him out, and she didn't want to be that girl who sat in Apollo's Coffee waiting for her boyfriend who was meeting her there only to break up with her, so she waited outside the door. It was a blustery February day in Destiny city, with snow blowing down the street at irregular intervals and icy patches on the sidewalks making businessmen skid around while they tried to walk. Tallulah played with her phone (her regular phone, not her senshi one) as she waited, and every so often she glanced up and down the street.

Whether she liked it or not, she was very rapidly devolving into that girl, for all intents and appearances. So when she saw Jaimie's familiar blonde head weaving in and out of the slipping Suits, she waved a bit too enthusiastically in the name of feeling Not Pathetic.

"Jaimie! Hey!"

"Yeah, but none of them are as cute," she said, and did not specify whether she meant the nutjobs or the cats. She held the door open for him and followed him in, a bit of a switch to gender roles, but she was closer to it, anyway. "Are you okay?" she asked. "I saw you slip--"

She pursed her lips and leaned in to investigate the black eye he was sporting. "Ouch," she said, hissing air in through her teeth. She knew that he'd had it a few days, because it had taken on the same greenish hue as the bruise on her hip (which was still tender and stubbornly refused to heal. Her teammates on Meadowview Swim and Dive were convinced she had gotten herself involved with an abusive brute.) "That looks like it hurt. What happened?"

She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, under no pretenses of kissing it better, and tugged him into line. On a blustery day like this, it twisted through the center of the cafe like some perverse, human game of 'snake.'

"It's good to see you," she enthused, smiling as she tugged off one of his mittens.

"Yeah?" asked Tallulah as they advanced in line. "No kidding. Kids these days. If I wasn't standing here looking at you, I'd say chivalry was dead." He'd been jumped? Clearly it was just an every day mugger, because he'd gotten away - if it had been a negaverse agent he'd probably be lying somewhere in an alley with his starseed ripped out.

"I'm glad you're okay," she emphasized as she took the box. "What's this? For me?" She gave him a bit of a suspicious look as she opened the box, hoping it wasn't jewelry - he ought to know her enough by now to realize she didn't wear any.

It was, in fact, a cell-phone strap in the shape of a beanlike dog-cat-thing. (It was yellow and had tiger stripes, so maybe a cat...?) "Oh! It's cute!" exclaimed Tallulah, and meant it. "Hold on, hold on, hold this--" she said, handing the box back to Jaimie and digging through her purse. Her hand clasped around the orange senshi-phone first, but she had barely started to pull it out of the depths before realizing the shape was all wrong and dropping it again.

She glanced up at Jaimie momentarily. He hadn't seen it, right? "Stupid compact," she murmured. "I always get it mixed up with my phone."

Guys bought that girls carried makeup cases in their purses, right? She found her boxy silver phone, which had been stylish about four years ago but was practically an antique now, and attached the charm to it. "Perfect!" she exclaimed, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Thank you!"

They advanced in line again. It was almost their turn.

Tallulah was, true to form, certainly not the kind of girl to own a compact. She wore, at most, eyeliner and a bit of powder, and even then only on special occasions. She gave Jaimie a bit of a studious look, making sure he'd believed her cover story, and dropped her phone back into her purse, where it settled into the depths somewhere between her henshin pen, her wallet, and the aforementioned senshi phone.

It was finally their turn in line. Tallulah, whose caffeine consumption had easily tripled since she'd become a costumed crime fighter, ordered an expresso concoction colloquially referred to as a "red eye" and claimed a corner table.

"So, what's up?" she asked Jaimie, and drank generously from her 60% post consumer recycled fiber paper cup. The look on her face as she swallowed indicated that she was not drinking this because she actually enjoyed expresso, but because she needed the caffeine. She pulled the lid off and dumped a packet of 100% Fair Trade Raw Cane Sugar (TM) into her cup, stirred it, and capped it again.

"Sorry I didn't get you anything for valentines day," she sighed. "I've been busy. I'll make it up to you."

Tallulah nodded, her lips curling into a smile at the promise of 'no fat winged babies.' Certainly it wasn't what every girl dreamed of always, but Tallulah was a tomboy in recovery and had never even seen reason to celebrate this holiday until this year. She nodded sagely.

"Where's she?" asked Tallulah. Jaimie's sister had been mentioned a couple of times, although Tallulah wasn't certain she even knew the girl's name - just that she went to school abroad, Jaimie had gotten into trouble on her insistence, and they were close. "France or somewhere like that?"

He had, after all, mentioned chocolate. She drank from her eco-friendly coffee cup again, and didn't scowl - apparently the sugar had helped. She contemplated the label philosophically and was about to read it out loud when there was a CRASH from behind the counter. The pungent odor of old coffee grounds filled the air. Tallulah gagged.

"What is that?" she asked, clamping a hand over her nose. She peered towards the counter, trying to see what idiot had knocked over a trash can.

Oh, s**t. The thing steadily growing in size and shape from behind the register was definitely a youma. There was no mistaking it.

Tallulah reached instinctively for her purse and began rifling through it. Cell phone, wallet, other cell phone - there it was! Henshin pen! Her fingers closed around it but stayed plunged into her bag. There were too many people here. People who were starting to panic.

Living in Destiny City was an occupational hazard.

She looked for Jaimie, trying to decide what you were supposed to do when a Youma was about to attack you and your boyfriend. Revealing her identity was an option, one she would like to avoid, especially with so many witnesses.

Tallulah, meanwhile, was busy slipping beneath the table into some kind of duck and cover routine. Of course the paranoid turtle had never said anything about what to do in the events of a Youma attack, but if it was good enough for nuclear fallout then it was good enough for anything. She reached out and gave Jaimie's nearest hand a good yank.

Now they were both under the table. Under any other circumstances this would have probably been pretty sexy but right now all Tallulah was worried about was the fact that she was about to reveal her secret identity. She brought her hand out of her purse, holding her henshin pen-

-and then noticed that Jaimie was holding one, too. Under circumstances that weren't so dire, she would have laughed at the irony. For now, though, she just said, "We'll talk about this later," and held her pen out at arm's length. Technically you were supposed to do this standing, so she hoped it worked.

"Europa power, make up!"

So that's why you weren't supposed to do this sitting down. In a flash of light, Sailor Europa appeared, sprawled awkwardly across the floor and Jaimie's lap. "Crap," said Sailor Europa, pushing herself back to a proper kneel. She cast her eyes to Jaimie.

"Your turn. Let's get 'em."

Regulus. Europa blinked at the other senshi for only a moment - well, this certainly made a lot more sense. Then, just to be sure he knew she wasn't mad at him, she said, "Kiss for good luck," and planted one on him. And then she climbed out from under the table. They'd dilly-dallied long enough, and there was a coffee monster to fight.

Apollo's coffee on a crowded weekend afternoon was bad enough, but add in a youma and two senshi and you had absolute chaos on your hands. Most of the civilians had had the good sense to clear out, but there were still a few left, and the creature was rapidly backing them into a corner.

"Hey stinky!" shouted Sailor Europa, who knew what her attack did to similarly composed youma and hoped it would work the same again. "Over here!"

The creature turned, ever so slightly, seemed to catch whiff of the two senshi, and started to glide towards them, bringing the smell of old grounds with it. "Europa deep ocean pressure!" she shouted.

It did not have the desired effect. The creature froze in place, straining, but did not crumble - apparently it was made of tougher stuff than the trash beast. Europa made a mad dash for the civilians and ushered them towards the door. "Get out! Don't you value your lives? Regulus, you've got twenty seconds before that thing starts moving again, do something!"

That was a charming side effect, scoffed Europa, and would have held her nose but she was too busy deciding what to do next. The civilians had, fortunately, cleared out, so now all that was left was for them to fight this thing and try not to bust up Apollo's too much.

The creature made no noise when Regulus's blades hit it, but chunks were sheared off of its form. It slowly readjusted its mass to make up for the loss of these, growing somewhat smaller in the process, and the sheared off peaces of old coffee made no attempts to reanimate and rejoin the host. That was a good thing. Now, what to do with it?

Europa picked up a saucer off the nearest table and chucked it at the beast, curious of its effects. The plate whizzed past, shearing a hole in the thing's shoulder that was quickly repaired. Okay. Apparently you had to chop things off entirely or it didn't stay dead.

The pressure wore off, and the creature let off a bottled noise that was part scream, part belch. More soggy coffee smell filled the air - it was nauseating - and the thing stumbled backwards with delayed momentum from Regulus's attack, crashing into the bar, knocking over several urns of coffee and breaking bottles of syrup as it fell. (So much for not destroying Apollo's.)

It reformed and started towards the scouts again. Europa chucked another saucer at it as she scrambled back towards Regulus. "Please tell me you can do that more than once," she said.