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The phone call was just the finishing touch on a ******** terrible few days. Elke was in the hospital, the voice on the other end had told him in a worried voice - Elke was in the hospital, and he really ought to go check on her.

Like Sue didn't have enough of his own problems. Like Sue didn't have too many of his own problems, God! He was still sore all over following his fight with Serandite. He'd been losing his wits, trying to sort out what had gone wrong. No matter how many times he shifted form following the fight, though, it seemed like everything was in working order - no misfires, no stuck shapes, nothing like he'd experienced under pressure. Had he screwed up, then? Lost his focus somehow, switched into that other form through some impulse decision or improper handling of the transformation?

He'd spent the entire weekend stewing in these thoughts - and now, heading straight to the hospital after school, they were still all that Sue could think of. It was bad enough when he got himself into trouble out of ignorance, after all, but now to be doing it out of incompetence...!

Signing in and getting a visitor badge from the hospital desk, Sue was directed to Elke's room. Time to set aside his own worries for a while, and immerse himself in someone else's. It was only the presence of a nurse that kept him from grouching in Elke's direction the moment he got into the room; instead, his hands buried deep in his pockets so that nobody could see his fists clenching, Sue simply remarked, "Hi. You look like hell," and found a seat by the bedside.

Settling his chin on his hands, and his elbows on his knees, Sue regarded the laid-up Zodiac. Part of him was berating himself, commenting rudely that he wasn't doing his job. He was the Guardian, so he should have guarded. For all he knew, this had come inches away from another Sagitarrius....

Oh, right, he should be saying something, shouldn't he? Several seconds after Elke's inquiry, he answered at last: "Finding out who it was that put your sorry a** in here, what else?"

Okay, maybe that was needlessly brusque. While it was true that he wanted to find out how she'd got injured - he could think of more than a couple Zodiacs that would start a manhunt the second they had a name - Sue was there for a more emotional reason, too. After all, the Princess would want for him to.

Speaking of whom. "Has anyone else been by yet?" he wondered aloud.

The Negaverse. Of course. "s**t," Sue sighed, rubbing at his face. He was taking this news rather well, for him; no screaming or shouting, just a small moment of angst.

But of course, that was just the calm before the storm.

"What the hell were you doing tangling with the Negaverse? Damn it, Elke -- you don't mess with them unless you've got backup!" It might have been comforting in its own way. Yes, Sue was yelling - and yeah, he was that quick to make it look like Elke was to blame for her own misfortune. But at least that meant he cared about her getting hurt, right? He just... had to shout a lot, in order to make sure she knew. And say mean things while he was at it.

Or maybe he didn't care at all, but was only worried about how this affected him. "You can't keep letting yourself get in over your head," he reprimanded her angrily. "You just can't do it. We can't afford to lose anyone else, all right?"

Why did Elke think that Sue cared whether some Negaverse Captain was married? And who were these other names - Moon Senshi, Sue hoped, maybe Elke wasn't a total loss after all. Sue would have pressed her for more details, but his eye caught movement near the door. Impulsively, he reached out to put a hand over Elke's wrist, giving it a quick little squeeze of warning - eavesdropper, cool it with the senshi-talk.

"Well. It's good you weren't hurt worse," is all he said aloud, still sounding distinctly grumpy that she'd been hurt at all.

And now they were hitting that awkward stage. Because the things that Sue would have cared to talk about, they had to hush up about until they were sure it was clear - and he really wasn't good at conversation otherwise. What was he supposed to ask her? How are you doing in school? Well, that might remind her about his own poor grades, and that would be disastrous. How's your... photography, that's what you do, isn't it? Elke might like to talk about that, but Sue would be bored out of his mind listening. Is your father still around?....

Actually. That one might not be bad to ask, considering.

"Is your father still around?" Sue wondered, glancing again toward the door. He didn't see anyone loitering outside now - maybe it had been a nurse, just checking in as she passed by?

She was... seeing constellations in the celing? Damn, they had her on something good, didn't they? In spite of himself, Sue glanced briefly toward the ceiling.

"... Elke." He looked down again, his lips pressed into a straight, embarrassed line. "They're uh. The dots. They're all in lines." Straight, even lines, no randomness in them that would justify the seeing of hidden pictures. Elke must have been on something really good to be seeing Gemini in those.

This was one episode that Sue was willing to let go of without cruel teasing - or at least, he wouldn't give her a hard time about it until she was better. Releasing her wrist, Sue wandered his eyes around the room, trying to find some new subject to fill the conversation with. When nothing came to mind, though, he went quiet-voiced back to the more important matters of before; "So it was Hematite and Nealite, right? How'd you manage to run into the both of them?" If the Negaverse was going around in pairs now, they might need to look at their own tactics again. If Virgo wound up in the hospital despite having two Moon senshi with her, it might be that the Zodiacs needed to keep in larger groups.

His eye went straight to it, of course - it wasn't like those things weren't colored like Easter Eggs, after all. But when he realized that Elke didn't see it... well....

Remember that bit about not teasing her? Yeah. Apparently, he'd been lying to himself when he'd made that decision.

"Oh, yes, nobody's told you yet - well, Elke, we decided that you're too prone to getting hurt to keep on as Virgo," Sue informed her. He wasn't a very good liar in this instance; his voice had a way of going flat, and his eyes locked onto his target just a bit too intently. Without any kernel of truth to it, in fact, it didn't even seem like Sue himself could take his words seriously - even so, he went on just the same. "So we call took a vote, and we decided to give your pen to Snuzzles. He'll make a fine Headcrab of Innocence, don't you think?"

Normally, once someone started crying, that was Sue's sign to shut the hell up and look awkward and uncomfortable. Unfortunately, this was Elke. Not just that, this was Elke on drugs. He had to figure that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to mess with her - maybe even one in three lifetimes, but he didn't have Zue's memories to be sure - and he'd be damned if he let it go by without milking it as far as it would go.

"Nope," Zue shook his head. "We all agreed that if it was too dangerous for you to be Virgo, then it was way too dangerous for the Princess to stay at Crystal, no matter who her roommate is. We locked her up in the tallest tower of the biggest castle we could find."

If only Sue had a recording of this. Oh, how he wished he did!

"I put Hero on hug duties," he promised Elke soothingly, "and Andeon is going to do all her cooking for her. He swore that he'd feed everything to Mackenzie first to make sure none of it was poisonous, so that ought to work pretty well. As for spiked turtles...." Sue crossed his arms, thinking. "I don't think I've seen any around. There was this big green-skinned dude with orange hair and an odd hunchback that I think went to visit her. But he was wearing glasses and a mustache, so he obviously couldn't have been a spiked turtle, right?"

Milking it for all it was ******** worth. Sue figured he had until Elke started screaming at him or someone came by to throw him out; these brief moments were meant to be enjoyed, for they would pass all too soon.