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The Captain of the Zodiacs looked out into middle-class suburbia as she caught up with Libra, standing by her and gazing out into the road. Tonight Aries didn't look quite so tired. Their patrols had always been pleasant, when they had them: agreeable, talking when they wanted to talk and silent when they wanted to be silent. You had to fight with your hands when you were with her. Aries didn't like "magic overload," though whether or not this had anything to do with Kunzite and some mysterious urge to fight like a cavalier Libra could only guess.

So she fought with her hands and got Aries' quiet approval.

"Youma are like rats," said her Captain. "The ones you see are the ones desperate enough to be out in the open. They're here." The thin light gleamed off the bone knives at her hands, off the shot-gold embroidery at Libra's hem. They hadn't taken Capricorn. "The Negaverse live in the suburbs too. Ostensibly."

Ostensibly. "To tell you the truth, I was just sick of alleyway clashes."

"No," came back the immediate reply. It was curt. Their Captain didn't think much of splitting-ups. She also quickened her pace until she were right alongside Libra, both of them marching from pool to pool of streetlight glare. "Not in a pair. I'll leave tactics like that to the Geminis, even though I've told them a hundred times -- a thousand -- "

There was a distant sound of sirens. Aries drew Libra back down into a narrow path that lead to a nearby school, both of them skulking in a fenced corridor as the noise got louder and louder. It came screaming down the next street, disappeared, sound devoured. They were silent. The police were wild cards.

Eventually her Captain said, quietly: "Libra, if I ask you a question, will you answer it in the spirit of neutrality?" The redhead made a bit of a face. "I mean -- will you answer it from the perspective of not my friend, or somebody I respect, or as someone in my team. You know I've held you in -- high respect for a while now. So I want you to pretend you're on the outside looking in."

Aries stood at the lip of the corridor, adjusting the knives at her hands. What she said stopped Libra's military march: "When did I lose my hold on all of you? Did we fragment with Sagittarius, or did we never come home after Barren Pines?"

It was asked clinically, for all that it was loaded like a machine gun. When she glanced around her Captain was still fixing the knives to her hands, squeezing her fingers into fists and shaking them loose again, unaffected. No self-pity. No wonder. When did I lose my hold -- the words in and of themselves were interesting, they carried connotations. "When did I start wanting what I want from the Princess?"

That was a salvo.

Libra was saved from having to address the pieces of shrapnel from that bomb when something rustled in the trees overhead. It shook the branches of an oak tree in the process of browning its leaves, then flung itself as a shadow to the next. Its eyes were all that were visible in the dark: red pupils, darting in enormous seas of white.

"Move out," said Aries. "Circle."

The creature continued its hopping from branch to branch. Aries noted its getaways from that level: a fence to the left, another tree that Libra was backing away from. There was a chittering from in the leaves. Irritatingly, the youma didn't seem to be making much of a move, though if she squinted she swore she saw something shining amidst the fork of branch to trunk.

"This means the old-fashioned way," said Aries, and she hauled herself gracelessly up into the bottom branch. It wobbled as she inched her way up to the second, clambering up in exactly the same way a squirrel wouldn't to gain height. The youma chittered again from its perch high up in the tops.

"I'm being as cautious as getting the jump on it requires," called down her captain with no small irritation. There was a slight oof. The branches fluttered more and more as Aries made her ascent, and the youma kept chittering. "Faint heart never won -- fair youma. Please stop backseat climbing."

Her captain skinned up the tree. One arm reached out for the youma, and it sunk its teeth into her greaves. Aries shook it off and tried again, reaching up for it, but it chittered in a sniggering sort of way and took off around the trunk.

"I don't want to have to ask you not to backseat climb again, soldier," came the annoyed response, but nonetheless the branch got shaken unwillingly. The youma stayed put. Apparently shaking didn't irritate it. A branch came loose, and thusly her Captain tried the incredibly intellectual approach of trying to poke the youma with a stick.

"Might I remind you that you are the one," Aries said, "with the long-distance weapon, and I'm the one up in this tree. Try to knock the top of the branches without hitting me. While you're doing that, try to stop imagining that I came up here without a plan in mind."

(She impotently waggled the branch again with more force. She also muttered something under her breath that Libra could have sworn was a swearword.)

The youma was jumping to the fence opposite. Nothing loath, Aries flung herself bodily after it, landing hard on the youma as they rolled on the concrete. They tumbled; when the youma reared up, it revealed itself not as an adorable squirrel but as a malformed, twiggy thing with huge eyes and three mouths. It didn't looked harmed, just pissed off.

"Here's your practice," said her grazed, bloodied Captain, and with one well-placed leg punted the youma straight towards Libra. All three mouths opened in hungry anticipation. Time to use her scales again.