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Sailor Europa needed three things: a roll of duct tape, a shower curtain rod, and a bottle of ENER-TEA. These were all negotiable or even scrapable, except for the bottle of ENER-TEA, which she might kill someone over if she didn't get it soon. The only thing standing in her way was the fact that it was ten-o-clock at night and she had climbed out through her bedroom window. There was only one place to get all three, inconspicuously, this late at night - hardware store clerks would not, in all likelihood, notice if you walked inside in a gorilla suit, let alone Sailor Fuku.

Out in front of the store was an odd array of garden furniture, gas grills, and concrete statuary - fat little angels, serene-looking priests, bird baths and the like. This was compounded by an elaborate pyramid of cinderblocks, priced to move at $1.15 a brick. And perched on that pyramid, like it was some kind of throne, was a girl who looked half like a senshi and half like a prom queen. Hello.

Europa hesitated, yawned, and pulled out her senshi phone. She flipped it open, aimed it at the elaborately-dressed and totally out of place lady, and hit "Scan." Apparently, according to the phone, her name was Sailor Scylla.

Europa waved tiredly as she approached. "How's patrol?" she inquired. Typically when you ran into a senshi out at night, they were on patrol. "Taking a break?"

There was nothing judgmental about her question. Actually, a break sounded pretty nice. "Mind if I join you?" The overly-friendly Sailor Europa did not wait for an answer before lowering herself onto the blocks next to Scylla. She rubbed her calves and stretched her legs. "I'm Sailor Europa," she said, figuring a belated introduction was better than none at all.

"No," said Sailor Europa, combining a yawn with a shake of the head in a motion that was not truly either. "I was actually here because I needed some things-" Which was to say she'd broken the shower curtain rod climbing in through the bathroom window last night, and the duct tape was for her utility bag, which she had not brought tonight.

She fell silent, listening. Yes, she thought she heard something, too. "A crackling, kind of?" she asked. In Destiny City, where weirdness was a way of life, you had to make sure you'd both heard the same bump in the night. It was a wonder that the x-files hadn't moved in and set up shop. Or maybe the men in black. (After NCIS, she'd moved on to dates with Mulder and Scully. Of course, the inherent shock value of the show was somewhat lessened by the fact that she lived here, where that kind of thing was old news. She wondered if Mulder and Scully had ever considered that the negaverse might be to blame.)

She looked around the little display of lawn ornaments, but nothing seemed out of place. She looked at Scylla. "It's either a cat, a youma, a lieutenant, or nothing," she said.

It did not serve you well, however, to bet on it being nothing. Betting on it being nothing got you dead.

Europa, a few paces behind Scylla, had seen what hit the other scout, and moved to investigate the thing where it had landed. It looked like a rock or a paver of some sort - she crouched by the thing and tentatively turned it over with her hand.

It was the stone head of a concrete cherub, a bit smaller than a soccer ball and deceptively angelic looking. "Are you okay?" she asked Scylla, and stared out into the arrangement of statues. Something was moving out there, and the cracking was starting again.

Something pegged her in the shoulder. "s**t!" exclaimed Europa, and looked down. She rubbed the spot where the thing had struck her - that was going to leave a bruise, and squinted at the little piece of concrete.

It was a tiny p***s, likely broken off the same cherub as the head. Ugh. "There's something alive in there," she said lowly.

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks," gasped Europa, and ducked to avoid a tiny cherubic fist that still just barely clipped the top of her head. More giggling. She pressed a finger to her forehead and it came away with a bit of blood on it. She'd be wearing her bangs down tomorrow, she decided, and followed Scylla into the waist-high maze.

She caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye and a stack of flower pots tumbled to the ground and shattered. More giggling.

"What is that?" asked Europa, stepping over shards of terracotta to try to follow the thing she had seen. A birdbath toppled over in front of her, and Europa leapt over it. She was getting close, if the cherubic forearm that had just pegged her in the side was any indication. "You see anything?" she called to Scylla.

Garden gnomes? Well, that was certainly a new one. A rain of gravel pounded down on Europa as she turned and ran towards where Scylla had fallen. A small, rotund, humanoid figure, barely a foot tall, stood over the prone Senshi, about to kick her again.

Europa was glad she was the kind of person who found gnomes kitschy and creepy instead of charming, because it allowed her to kick the thing without any sort of remorse. It chattered a stream of angry gibberish at them both as it went flying, slammed into the base of a fancy stainless-steel barbeque grill, and shattered into little pieces of acrylic.

Another concrete p***s connected with the back of her head. "********," said Europa, offering a hand to Scylla as she looked around frantically. She saw a green hat poking out from behind a bird bath, and a gnome in blue suspenders was perched on top of a Virgin Mary, diligently chipping away at her hair. "How many of them are there?" she asked - was that one peeking out from underneath a bench? What about behind that St. Peter? Most of the cherubs she could see had been emasculated and were in various stages of deconstruction - clearly the gnomes had a grudge to settle.

"Militantly anti-christian, at any rate," replied Europa, although she didn't quite feel like being clever right now. She was being forced to think on her feet, and if there was one thing that Tallulah Cowden, Star Student was not good at, it was improvising. She flailed to sidestep the chunk of holy virgin cranium that was hurled at the both of them, clinging to Scylla for balance, and tried, frantically, to think.

She could use her attack - that would stop them from moving, but then there was still the matter of hunting them all down and destroying them in thirty seconds. It would be better if they could get them all into the same place at once-

"We need to round them all up," she said, a tone of sudden realization in her voice. "There's this big zen garden setup at the other end of the display - do you think we can try to get them over there?"

The gnomes seemed to have a propensity for kicking when you were down, she thought. Europa was already headed for the open patch of sand, pulling Scylla behind her. "We need to go and act injured," she said. "It'll draw them out."

Or, at least, she hoped that would draw them out. That or just make the gnomes chuck gazing balls at them. "Come on!"

It was almost as if some smart a** had animated the store's entire stock of garden gnomes (actually, this probably was exactly what had happened). A shard of glass sliced through Europa's calf - not deep enough to cut muscle, but enough to smart and send blood running down her leg and into her boot. She limped out into the clear space and looked back at the encroaching army of gnomes.

"Their luck will be just as bad as his," she said through gritted teeth. Where Scylla seemed concussed, Europa was just pissed off. "Once I stop them, we have twenty seconds to smash as many as we can," she said to her newfound ally.

The gnomes, looking far more menacing than one would ever think a lawn ornament could look, were spilling out onto the sand. There were dozens of them, growing closer by the second. Europa took a few steps back.

"My only regret is that I haven't got a baseball bat," she said. "Whoever breaks the most gets an ice cream sundae." That seemed to be the last of them trickling in from behind the rack of plastic flamingos-

"Europa deep ocean pressure!" she cried. The encroaching army stopped in its tracks, straining to move forward but unable to. One or two gnomes cracked on the spot. She aimed a mighty kick at the nearest one, sending it flying. "Attack!" she cried, feeling a bit giddy. It was payback time.