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With their encounter with the garden gnomes a few nights behind her, Sailor Europa's bruises had taken on a distinctly greenish hue. The cut on her forehead was less inflamed, but still looked pretty nasty. Meadowview had bought her lie about roller derby a bit too well, to the point that she had friends asking her when they could see her compete. So far she'd managed to avoid telling them, but maybe she'd have to go back to Ellen Page movies to borrow plot points from. If only they knew she was more Kitty Pryde than Bliss Cavendar!

She checked the time on her senshi phone - 10 PM - and eased herself into a plastic chair outside Frozen Rock Ice Cream. Scylla would be here soon for the ice cream she owed her. To combat the fact that they had both agreed to meet in uniform, which was not something so conductive to going into ice cream parlors, Europa had brought a pair of extravagantly feathered Mardi Gras masks along - they could pretend they'd just left a costume party. It was the right time of the year. (Not really.) Well, maybe - hadn't Purim been last week? And Mardi Gras hadn't been that long ago.

(Tallulah Cowden, the daughter of a pair of liberal aging hippies, was not particularly educated in the timing of religious holidays. )

She leaned forward and massaged a sore spot on her back, and looked out across the parking lot. Would Scylla be arriving by land, or by air?

"Well it's certainly well-deserved," agreed Sailor Europa, rising from her chair. She smiled at Sailor Scylla - when you'd fought garden gnomes with someone it was easy to feel friendly. She held out one of the Mardi Gras masks, this one royal blue and plumed with peacock feathers.

"Here, put this on," she said, and strapped a brilliant copper mask onto her own face. "Can't exactly walk into an ice cream parlor dressed like ourselves-"

After the destruction of quite a lot of property damage - which had been caught on security tapes - the city was once again on alert against senshi. The mysteriously animated garden gnomes, curiously failed to make the news. "Tell him we've been at a costume party," she said, pushing the door open, and held it for Scylla to go ahead of her. Clearly there was nothing Europa had not thought about.

In truth, she had spent all day coming up with how they would pull this off. It was a force of habit for her to plan ahead.

She smiled at the server from beneath her mask and looked up at the menu board. "What do you want?

"Oh, uh," said the server, going instantly red, clearly a more than a little bit charmed by the combination of cleavage and legs that had just been presented with. "Well, I can mix chocolate chips into any flavor of ice cream - the cake batter is good-"

Europa took this moment to laugh conspicuously into her glove. She knew this boy from school.

"While she's deciding, can I get a kid-sized cup of blueberry?" she asked. He nodded and moved to get it for her. Europa cast a sidelong glance at Scylla. "You'd think they'd serve better food at a masquerade party, wouldn't you?"

"Sweet cream is our store specialty-" volunteered the server.

Europa dug around in the pockets of her shorts, producing a wallet that could not have logically fit into them. "You pick yet?" she asked Scylla. "My treat," she added, a bit conspicuous in building a semi-elaborate ruse for the server.

The notion of getting their food half off seemed to charm Europa far too much. She didn't really come from a place where men gave her discounts in an effort to flirt, and if the boy had known who she really was he probably wouldn't have - in addition to being a goody-two shoes, Tallulah Cowden was notoriously a bit of a plain Jane. She said "Thank you," at least four times, and once more as they headed out the door.

They sat down on plastic patio furniture to eat. (It was much nicer to sit in plastic patio furniture than to have it thrown at you, she thought, although she did not share the notion with Scylla.)

They were able to eat in peace for a while, and had even finished most of their ice cream, when Tallulah heard the distinct sound of shattering glass behind her. Her eyes widened. She looked at Scylla. "That didn't sound good," she observed, and turned around to look back into the shop.

It would appear that the soft serve machine had sprouted arms and legs, and broken the clear lid of the freezer case. The server boy was trying his best to fend it off with a broom, but he was quickly losing ground. "Youma," said Sailor Europa, pulling off her mask. Couldn't they ever just have a quiet night?

She rose from her chair and headed for the door. "Senshi's gotta do what a senshi's gotta do," she remarked. "Come on."

"I could say the same for you," retorted Europa as she stepped into the fray. Broken glass littered the floor, and the server was clumsily fighting off streams of Soft-serve ice cream with a mop and a bucket.

This was the part where Europa was supposed to say something witty to the monster to make it pay attention to her instead of the innocent civilian, but witty slogans had never much been her forte. She managed a weak, "We all scream for!" and charged for the counter, aiming to throw herself between the youma and the young man.

She managed to do this, and was hit square in the chest with soft serve. s**t, it was cold! Super-chiled, even! She was glad for the apparent insulative properties of her uniform, but it still smarted. Europa turned, shoved the server towards the door, and ducked behind the end of the counter.

"Watch out, that stuff's cold!"

She wasn't sure she wanted to think about what would happen if it got onto exposed skin, and hoped that chocolate fro-yo wouldn't stain her uniform.

"Europa deep ocean pressure!" cried Europa, flinging an unnecessary hand towards the machine for emphasis. It paused in its motion, straining to keep moving, and churned out a thick, slow-moving ribbon of choco-vanilla swirl. Europa dove for one of the legs, narrowly avoiding being brained with Scylla's mop.

"Hit it, not me!" she yelled to the blue girl as she wrapped an arm around the leg. She looked up, effectively upskirting the creature, but didn't see any moving parts or exposed wires, and she wasn't so keen on sticking her hand up the heat sink that she was presently equating, unintentionally, to an a**s.

Speaking of which, a bit of motor oil presently dripped onto her cheek. Oh, gross.

Having not gotten what she came for, Europa flipped onto her stomach and crawled behind the creature. She aimed a mighty kick at its backside, hoping to tip it forward, and that was when her pressure wore off--

"Yeah," grunted Europa, sitting up and brushing dust and dirt and grease off her uniform. She was thankful for hammerspace dry cleaning at times like this - no matter how grimy she was when she henshined down, the uniform was always spotless the next time she donned it.

She picked her way around the thing, pulling a few shards of broken glass wincingly out of her thigh as she did so, and kicked its metal flank. It thudded hollowly. She jumped up on top of it and inspected the damage - the broom had impaled the creature neatly right through its metal chest. Melting ice cream leaked like stranglely pink, milky blood from around the hole.

Europa crossed her arms over her chest and gave it another kick for good measure.

"Looks dead to me," she said. Just another typical night at work.

She looked down at her bleeding thigh. She didn't think this was what the producers had meant when they made that movie "Blood and chocolate."

"Go ask him if there's a first aid kit around here," she said, jerking a finger towards the young man who stood outside with his face pressed to the window.

Europa surveyed the rapidly melting ice cream that surrounded them, and the broken glass, and the former soft-serve machine that she was standing on, and nodded. "I think the property damage is about the same," she shrugged. Well, she wasn't sure - she didn't know how much any of these things cost. The hardware store had seemed like worse damage.

The server came back with the first aid kid, which Europa took from him while thanking him profusely. She hopped up on the counter and used paper napkins to dab the cut with peroxide - this serving too slow, she gave up and poured the bottle right onto the cuts. Not her best idea.

"Yeowch!" gasped Europa. Well, at least it wouldn't be getting infected any time soon. She reached for some cotton wadding and a roll of gauze and wrapped it zealously around her thigh like they did on TV when they needed to do field medicine. She flexed her knee experimentally.

"That should do it," she winced.

She looked very seriously at the server. "You're lucky we were here," she said.