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 Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 2:40 am
Sue had planned to visit Serenade today, no matter what. With Elke in the hospital, after all, their Princess had to be beside herself with worry - and without a roommate to check in on her, someone had to take it on themselves to make sure that she was holding out all right.
What Sue hadn't planned on was meeting with her in a small, four-legged form. He'd switched over for the trip to the Academy, sure; he was quickly growing to be just as comfortable in his feline body as his human one, and the fact that he was much less likely to have to deal with people on the trip if he were in cat-form had sold him on the idea. But then once he'd gotten near Crystal, well....
Come on, please. Change back? He'd been trying for at least ten minutes, it seemed, but it was no good. It was just like it had been when he'd gotten into that fight with Serandite - there was no juice, no henshin. He didn't know why, he didn't know how, and frankly, he was getting more than a little panicked about it. The cat paced, turning and twisting circular paths, trying to tell himself calm down, you just need to focus, calm down!
Focus, though, wasn't working - nor was anything else. What the hell was he supposed to do, though? If this were anything like last time, it was just a temporary issue. A hiccup. Maybe Zue was too stressed, worrying after first Virgo, now the Princess; once he relaxed, probably he'd be able to change back.
For now, he reasoned, the best thing he could do would be to visit the Princess. She must know that he was here; he could pick her out on his radar, up in her room, so she had to be able to detect him as well, right? Zue might not be able to open any doors in order to go up and visit her, but she'd surely come down to see him....
And if not, well. There was a tree over there. Much as he was shy of climbing them after his last experience, he might be able to get up to her window and call her out. Maybe.
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Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 5:29 am
Serenade was very very preoccupied with problems.
First was the matter of having her Opal Crystal stolen (and meeting the pink-haired Serenity in the process) which had been enough of a shock to her. And now hearing about Elke getting into hospital made her feel worse, much much worse than before. She knew that it was probably to be expected; getting hurt was an inevitable outcome of using Virgo's powers. It didn't mean she had to like it. Ally hadn't liked it either-- oh god, Ally.
She felt horrible, as though she had let him down in some way. She was supposed to help the Zodiacs, fight as a Sailor Senshi besides them, make sure they were all alright. And yet, when she had decided that she would go on patrol, something like this had to happen.
After the incident happened, and Serenade awoke to find herself laid and tucked in her dorm room, by Hero and Andeon, presumably, everyone would have noticed that she was more quiet than before. She barely talked, even to the Zodiacs, and seemed so out of it that for a few days, she stayed in her room entirely. Others were told it was trauma, that the death of Jude hit her this way, but Serenade did not know how many knew the truth. She didn't know if Hero told the others, and frankly, she didn't care. She didn't care to know if the other Zodiacs knew how hopeless and silly she was.
Now she merely stayed in her room with a locked door and let practically no one in. Even so, Serenade would not talk. Sometimes, Crystal girls would hear her playing tunes on the electronic keyboard she possessed, but that was the only sound that came from her room.
She was under her covers when Zue was in the Academy, though her eyes were open and awake. It was a while before she detected Zue outside; other than staring blankly up at the inside of her covers, what else could she do? At first Serenade contemplated that he was here to see the other Zodiacs, Hero maybe, and did not move.
Then she sighed and got up, opening the window to peer down to try and catch a glimpse of where exactly he was. He had seemed to be lost, as the dot in her head that represented him seemed a little confused. What was wrong?
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Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:45 pm
Zue's ears pricked, his head went back - he'd heard the window opening, sensed the Princess's movement, and now could see Serenade, hair unusually rumpled as if she'd just crawled out of bed, peeking out of the window at him. "Princess!" Zue called out - what was that, an unintentional trace of joy in his voice? No matter. She was up there; he was down here. It didn't seem right, and suddenly, Zue found, that tree didn't look so daunting as it had before.
"Hold on, I'll be right up--" Without further ado, the oversized cat launched himself up the tree trunk. Now, if this were a normal cat, understand, this wouldn't have been any problem - they'd be used to making all those split-second judgments required for tree-climbing, and they'd be at the window in a heartbeat. Zue, on the other hand, didn't have a cat's lifetime of experience - and, even if he'd been practicing really really hard lately, he really shouldn't go jumping up trees without planning for it first.
He made it to the first branch, albeit it clumsily - his front paws got wrapped around it, and it took a few seconds for his rear to scrabble their way up after them. The second limb, he was more cautious about - it was a considerable jump, after all - but he stuck the landing beautifully, like an Olympic gymnast. Riding off of the confidence, though, he nearly fell out of the tree when preparing to jump for the third branch, wobbling uncertainly on the thin limb he was stationed on. But God damn it, come Hell or high water, he was going to make it up to the window!
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Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 6:58 pm
Serenade barely smiled when Zue called her; she tried, she made some effort to, but the fact remained was that there wasn't much of a smile to see. In fact, she looked more morose and lethargic, like she'd just woken up from a deep sleep. The truth was she hadn't been sleeping well. She hadn't been sleeping well because she was scared to be brought to Elysion again. Scared to face Ally after what had happened.
It was also why she hadn't answered the door when Flora had come by and knocked. If Flora knew, Helios probably would too, and she really didn't want Helios to go to Eon upon hearing this. She couldn't summon up any courage anymore, she just felt incredibly drained and tired.
She did however, look a bit worried when he started to attempt his clamber up the tree. She didn't want to see another person she cared about get hurt, and she called out softly, perhaps the first few words she had spoken in days. "Be careful!"
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Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:01 pm
"I wi-- s**t!" One of his back paws lost its grip, and he stumbled - her recovered quickly, though, and sounded only slightly less certain in reiterating, "I'll be careful. God-damn!"
Despite swearing, scraping and sluggish progress, Zue eventually made his way up the tree, posing himself unsteadily on the final branch. From here, it was just a short little jump from branch to window. It was only what, four feet? Any real cat could cover that distance without a single thought. Zue might have to be a little more careful about it, but surely....
.... Maybe ....
Well... they'd be finding out pretty quick here, anyway, whether he could pull it off or not.
"I'm thinking... I'm gonna need some landing space, Princess," he called to the girl at the window. He was already uncomfortable trying to figure how he'd be fitting a cat his size on the windowsill once he jumped; no need to add in worries like how he was going to pull it off without landing claws-first on Serenade!
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Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:52 am
Serenade winced as Zue slipped and swore, craning her neck out in worry to check if he really was alright. She looked a bit nervous every time he swore as he made his way up, more nervous than how she would be normally. Normally, Serenade would have giggled, but of course, felt some worry for his safety.
But things weren't exactly normal anymore.
She nodded when Zue called out to her and stepped backwards, and grabbed a pillow from her bed to place under the windowsill as an afterthought. If he was going to land clumsily, he might as well land on something soft, right?
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Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:08 pm
If he was going to land clumsily. Like there was any chance that he wouldn't.
Here came Zue, launching himself toward the window. Now, an ordinary caught, confident in their calculations, would be likely to pull back a bit - it was more practical to pull themselves up with their front claws if they were a bit off than it was to try and brake with only their back paws on the sill, after all. Zue, on the other hand, was judging his jump by much more different priorities - namely, the chance of breaking his neck if he missed the sill and went sailing through the window, versus the chance of breaking his neck if he missed the sill and went plummeting to the ground below.
The good news: He didn't need a parachute. The bad news: That didn't mean he was going to get to keep his dignity.
His leap overshot the sill by an inch or two. His back paws scraaaaped as he tried to rein in his momentum, succeeding only in topping himself, head over tail, flopping right onto the other side of the windowsill - and, thankfully, so thankfully, onto the pillow Serenade had set out for him. It took a few seconds for the ball of purple fluff on the pillow to sort out its limbs, tail and head, but after a few seconds, Zue suddenly broke into a gasp of air, eyes opening, and then relaxed.
"God damn," he swore, rolling off his back and onto his paws. His whiskers might have been trembling slightly in reaction as he looked back up to the windowsill, considering again how far that fall could have been. Then he swore again, less politely - "Jesus <******** a few seconds, though, he seemed to remember his company. If a cat could blush....
"So. Uhm. Thank you, Princess," Zue mumbled abashedly, hopping off of the pillow. "I came by to see how you were doing."
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Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 8:08 am
Serenade watched mutedly as Zue careened into the room via the window, glad that she had set out that pillow after all. Perhaps, deep inside her mind, she had still thought of Zue as he was back then; more used to his cat form, but luckily, Serenade wasn't exactly thinking straight these days. She only gave him the briefest of smiles, bending down to stroke his fur so it wouldn't look messy.
I came by to see how you were doing.
If things were normal, she would have assumed that he was doing this just to check in on her since he couldn't be next to her all the time. But with recent events that happened, her reaction was completely lackluster; she sat on her bed and said very, very softly. "Oh."
Then Serenade proceeded to do something quite unnatural for her, she lay down on her back with a 'flump' and deadpanned. "Hero's told everyone about the Crystal then." After she had said this, a pillow was grabbed and Serenade held it over face, saying 'argh' into it multiple times. It had to be quite a sight for Zue; Serenade usually stayed quite calm even in the most dire situations. Whatever had happened had to be quite bad to warrant a few arghs from her.
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Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 3:30 pm
The... the what now?
Zue observed, perplexed, as Serenade began a worrisome attempt to smother herself with her own pillow. "Princess? Serenade, what the heck are you--" Zue launched himself up onto the bedstand, reaching up with a paw to lightly touch the skin of her arm with his claws, trying to encourage her to put the pillow down. What in the heck had gotten her so riled up? He was here about Virgo, not some crystal!
Unless... she didn't mean the Crystal, did she?
Zue's eyes blanked out. It was a terrible thought, that, one he didn't want to dwell on - and yet, from what she'd said, from how she was acting....
"Princess," he asked carefully, lowering himself down to a low crouch in much the same way someone might seat themselves before receiving bad news, "has something happened to the Opal Crystal?"
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Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 8:47 pm
The pillow was still held over her face; Serenade refused to relinquish her grip on it. At least she didn't press it down hard enough so that she didn't have any air to breathe, she merely wanted to scream into something. Even in her own dorm room, she felt trapped. If she screamed, people would come running... like when Aries and Gemini did when she was captured by that man.
She was reminding herself again.
Preoccupied with unhappy thoughts, Serenade assumed that Zue wanted to hear the whole story from her, and mumbled right into the pillow. "Some pink-haired girl who called herself Serenity and this man called Wiseman came and took the Opal Crystal." A pause. "I don't know where they are." She sounded lost, but thankfully, not about to cry. She had cried enough already.
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Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 10:14 pm
Zue was doing everything in his power not to break into a full-out scream at that moment, IT WAS STOLEN?! The revelation was like someone had just jammed his tail into a light socket - and that was a pretty good approximation of how he looked at just that second, too. It was probably very good that Serenade had her pillow over her face at just that moment, so that she couldn't see the Zodiac Cat with his eyes wide and ears flat, back arched, fur sticking out all directions, tail stiff enough to be used as a handle.
Panic, obviously, was not what Serenade needed to hear at that moment. Nor did she need to hear his anger, horror, shock, or worry. Bit by bit, he forced himself to calm - at least enough that he didn't look like he was about to explode. He struggled to find some sort of normalcy in his voice, managing a choppy little "I see."
So the Moon Princess had turned up - and had stolen the Opal Crystal. Astraea was going to have quite a bit of explaining to do, the next time he saw her... though, for all that they knew, this could mean that the Moon Court had turned against the Zodiacs. They would need to consult the rest of the Zodiacs, and soon, to determine what was to be done about it.
But that wasn't his first priority for now. As absurd as it was to say that the Opal Crystal wasn't top on his list, it was merely second - because Serenade, his Princess, was in obvious distress, and that took precedence. This was the manner of thing, Zue mused, that Eon would have once tended to. But without him around, there was only Zue to try and alleviate the Princess's fears; poor choice that he was.
Creeping, he stole his way onto the Princess's bed, picking a spot near her head. "Princess... how long has it been since this happened?" The more relevant thought in his mind - and have you been cooped up in here since? That fib he'd fed Elke about locking the Princess up in the tower - maybe it wasn't as far from the truth as he'd thought.
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Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 6:51 am
The pillow was, thankfully, now removed to reveal her face, which looked rather pale and drained, and was relegated to being hugged to Serenade's chest instead. She probably still hadn't even realized that Hero hadn't been the one who had told Zue, and it was her. Her, telling her guardian cat of her failure.
Either way, Serenade was already not in the mood.
"I can't remember." She said slowly, cerise eyes fixed on the ceiling. "He dropped me on top of Hero and Andeon; I fainted. I woke up and Elke wasn't here anymore." Come to think of it, she hadn't seen Elke these past few days... her absence had barely been registered with the aftermath of the shock of the loss of the Opal Crystal.
No one probably had the heart to tell her. It was always hard for someone to break the news to her; like how Andeon had finally been the one to tell her about Jude's death.
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Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:13 pm
Elke. The thing he'd thought was the issue in the first place, and now it looked like it was just an afterthought to a second, even more devastating, issue. With both these things so clearly weighing on the Princess's mind, it was no wonder that she seemed out of sorts.
Zue gradually settled to a rest, settling onto his haunches. "Yeah... I went to visit her the other day," he revealed, his tone considerably gentler than his usual near-growl. "She's pretty loopy; I think they've got her on some really good painkillers. She got this idea like you'd gotten yourself locked up in a tower -" never mind the fact that Zue was the one to put it there, that was beside the point right now "- and might need rescuing from spiky turtles."
The idea that the Princess hadn't visited her roommate in the hospital yet was the only thing on his mind. The concept that she didn't know Elke was there hadn't even occurred to him. Though at least that way, Serenade wasn't the only one who was missing obvious details.
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Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 7:53 am
There was a pause.
Actually, there was a very long pause, while Serenade took in Zue's words, and for the first time in days, turned out the reasonable, logical part of herself. The silly thing was Serenade thought that Hero had asked Elke to live at home for a bit to give her some private time; it was fairly obvious she wasn't coping well. At all. Or maybe that they didn't think she needed protection anymore? Either way, she hadn't exactly put much thought into it until now...
Oh dear.
"She's in where?" Serenade asked, sitting up abruptly and looking obviously bewildered. It seemed as though the princess was more loopy than Elke at the moment, really. At least she wasn't blabbing about spiky turtles capturing her? She had been leaning towards the 'being totally quiet' phase anyway.
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Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:23 pm
"In... the hospital."
Serenade hadn't known? Zue was examining her face very carefully, looking for facial clues. He found what he was looking for - his eyes went wide. Serenade hadn't known. On top of everything else, her roommate had been in the hospital, and nobody had --
WHY HADN'T ANYONE TOLD HER?!
"Princess. She's doing all right, last I saw her. She'd run into Nealite and Hematite with two Moon Senshi backing her up - Scylla and Merope, she said. She got injured, she's in the hospital. She's being taken care of, but...." There was an awkward pause. "... You ought to see her yourself. Soon." And stop moping around this room by yourself, was his unspoken reasoning. "It'll make her feel better."
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