Welcome to Gaia! ::

The rainy days really were sometimes the best days ever! Certainly Linarite was enjoying it, kicking through the puddles, water dripping off her body. She'd stripped the white half-gloves off early and left them carefully stashed in her only locked desk drawer. Really, if she could have, she would've stripped down to only her jacket and run barefoot through the streets! With the rain it was a total washout for any seed gathering, but that was always rectifiable with perhaps a trip down to the subway, a hobo or three. Easy marks that didn't yield very powerful seeds.

So it was with some amount of astonishment that under a flickering light, she caught the bowed and tiara'd form of a Sailor Senshi! Apparently even they were forced out in bad weather, to patrol against the wicked, evil Negaverse - how fortuitous! On her toes, Lina moved into the shadows, trying to get closer and closer. Dark copper eyes lit up considerably when she saw the delicate golden horn rising up from the tiara on the redhead's brow. It was Sailor ******** Pegasus, the girl who'd always been able to get a one-up on Linarite every time they'd met. Super, super interesting! Wolfishly the Captain called in her shiny new toy, the beautiful staff she'd started to call Mindstopper. Reaching down into the reserves of her power, she felt her pet youma, Orgel waiting eagerly.

"Well well, look what the rain dropped out of the sky. Too wet to fly home?" Dramatic effect was not lost on the Negaverser as she stalked out of the shadows, the flickering light giving an eerie cast to the encounter. "Imagine that. Imagine you crossing my path. It's quite a nice surprise the sky's dropped on me!"

Menacingly she swiped the stick through the air, listening to the metal whistle appropriately as she raised eyebrows and grinned. "Don't you like this one so much more? I mean the hammer was fairly intimidating, I loved it so much. But sometimes you just have to grow up, you know? Comes with the promotion." Apparently a great sense of entitled cockiness also came with the promotion, though inwardly she was trying to be wary. Getting carried away only led to you getting your a** thrown down into the pavement.

Not very fun, overall.

"Personally I'd be happy to demonstrate the charms of my lovely little Mindstopper to you! I really am a generous girl, and my parents were careful to teach me that sharing is caring. I do so care about you. And your starseed, of course." Pausing out of reach, hands wrapped around the weapon, Lina was ready to strike at any moment. She'd be out of the way if Pegasus tried to charge up her attack, but sometimes surprises did happen. Especially with the Senshi of Dreams.

No, she was definitely prepared. Linarite would have her crystal!

Surprisingly for Pegasus, this actually brought forth a snort of actual laughter instead of a derisive snort or denial. "Hah, with my track record? No thanks, I have enough strange senshi entanglements to last me a lifetime. Or to shorten it, as it were. No, I'm sorry, but you'll have to save your ample charms for some other poor soul. I'm simply out of room for them!" It didn't take long for the lilting tease to come back into her voice, but the whole time her eyes had been dead serious. Fortunately for the tension level around the two girls, Linarite was a generally impatient person when she knew she had the upper hand.

Sweeping in with the top side of her staff, the Captain lunged across the space and attempted to get in a hit. For good measure, right before the metal would've struck dead in Pegasus' chest, Lina swept her leg around too. If she could dodge the hit, she couldn't dodge the sweep! If lucky, which she generally was not, both would make a landing.

Success! Finally, after all that goddamn time, she'd landed a single hit on the Senshi of Dreams! Exultant in her success, Linarite barely slowed her momentum as she circled and tried to find the flash of stained white in the damp that signaled Peagsus. She knew, instinctively, that if she let herself slow even a little bit, it would all be over. She just wasn't as powerful, even with her promotion.

But she was faster. And smarter. Leaping into the air, she whirled the staff over her head and then brought it down much as she had tried to do earlier on the head of the new Sailor Dorado. If nothing else, it would probably force Pegasus to move and would interrupt the charge of that devastating attack a bit longer. Determined, Lina firmly sent a spear of power down to where she could feel the youma she'd made her own waiting. The Captain didn't want to rely on anything but her own power to beat Pegasus into the dirt, but at the same time, wasn't about to lose her.

"Nice try, but not good enough!"

Miscalculation Number One - Assuming All Senshi Use Magical Attacks.

It would be the heading on this part of the battle in Linarite's mind as the scraped senshi body slammed into her. Pegasus was not exactly a large girl, as far as size went, but she was still bigger than the petite blue Captain and took her down with ease. Mindstopper was trapped between them - painfully. Nothing like having those sharp little metal bits pressed into your own skin to motivate you! Shifting her grip while trying to keep the redhead from gouging out her eyeballs, the metal of her staff was shoved out and separated the two with a shove.

It wasn't easy, being on the bottom, to lever that much weight off of yourself. It hadn't been successful, and Linarite couldn't get her hands off the slim lines of her weapon to simply plunge her hand into Pegasus' chest. "b***h, you are going to die!" It was a fierce growl as a knee came up, aiming to hit whatever part of the senshi she could. Maybe that'd knock her lily-white a** off!

Panting and lightly scraped, but not bleeding from their wrestling on the slick concrete, Linarite slowly rose to her feet. Blue hair was soaked and everywhere, flattening down her back and over her face only accenting the savage look of dark murder on her face with a savagery that was terror-inspiring. It was a new feeling, and a new consumption - she wanted this death. Before they had all been necessary deaths, means to an end. But Pegasus? This death was a personal goal that brought a fierce pleasure to the Captain with the idea that it would be a reality soon.

Advancing while still trying to catch her breath, unwilling to waste this moment where the senshi was injured and slowly becoming exhausted, Lina smirked. "Don't worry, I'm told it only hurts for a moment." The staff was shifted to be held lightly in one hand, her right outstretched towards Pegasus. It was like a deer in the headlights, and deliciously enticing. Die, die little senshi, die! It was a pagan chant in her head, making her blind to all else but ending this vibrant life. And end it she would!

The words came out a lot less dramatically than Pegasus would have liked, but what they lacked in volume and fervency, they made up for in hatred. Blue-green eyes watched as the Captain got up, staff in one hand, the other extended forebodingly, glaring daggers as if could somehow injure the blue haired girl that way. The way Linarite was looking back sent a wave of ice through her veins, foreshadowing of events so soon to pass, and Pegasus attempted to scoot backward a little, claw her way onto the sidewalk. The attempt, however, seemed useless. The die had been cast, the victor identified, and no more stalling could forgo the inevitable.

Game. Set. Match.

Only it seemed some higher force seemed to think it wasn't.

The sudden flash of a bright beam of light startled the senshi of dreams, the sudden interruption of the twisted game of 'cat and mouse' jolting Pegasus out of her 'death glare mode,' head snapping in that direction out of pure human curiosity. But if she was surprised by the beam, she was even more shocked as she watched a siamese-patterned blur flashed into her vision, lunging at the blue-haired Captain with all the ferocity of a mountain lion. A very familiar ferocity, in fact.

"Chloe?"

'GET UP.'

The cat shot the order as if the rhetorical question the redhead had uttered had needed clarification, the tone so Chloe-esque in nature that any of the team could have identified it as their cat easily -- which was certainly good enough for her. The sigh Pegasus uttered was immense and heavy, tired in the way that felt like it should have come from an overworked football player groaning at their coach than a girl whose life depended on it. Still, she wasted no time in shoving herself hard to her feet, staggering just a little before regaining her balance, ready to dash forward to grab the guardian cat if need be.