[R] Christmas Aftermath (Rose, Sydney, Tallulah)

[The Red Dame]

When it came to Senshi-related matters, Rose’s dorm had become her sanctuary. Her roommate, Aurora, was a fellow Senshi and one of her Basterd teammates, meaning that she didn’t have to censure herself, or worry about awkward cover-ups. When she was injured, or simply wanted to talk, Rose would go to her dorm.

If ever there was a time that Rose was thankful for her dorm, it was now. Recent events had left her feeling raw. The fighting and magical strain left her tired, the cold made her numb on the outside, and the emotional upheaval was doing its damnedest to numb her on the inside. She’d been a Senshi for a while now, but now some dangerous possibilities had been brought to life that she’d never considered before.

In all truth, Rose wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to think too closely about it even now. What she wanted was warmth, chocolate, and company. Two out of three could be found in her dorm, and Sydney was following her. Glancing at her friend, Rose attempted to smile, but she suspected it fell a bit flat. Her friend, normally ball of goofy energy, had also been affected by the day’s events, so if she felt anything like Rose did, she didn’t expect her to be the best company. That’s why, after Rose let them into her empty dorm – Aurora was presumably at home, with her family, where people belonged on the holidays – she pulled out a shiny red cellphone.

“ Euro- eh, Tallu- Oh, screw it, can you come to my dorm? Some stuff’s happened, and… yeah.”

Not quite up to her usual standards, but Rose wasn’t feeling especially eloquent, so it would have to do. Flopping on her bed, she eyed Sydney and said tiredly, “ Some Christmas, huh?”

As out of sorts as Rose felt, she wasn’t ready to engage in a full-fledged pity party/freakout combo until she could tell how her friend was holding up.  

[Syusaki]

After that fiasco, Sydney couldn’t bring herself to trudge all the way back home. Not quite yet. There was no way she could quietly sneak through her front door and there was no way she would be able to dodge a barrage of worried concern from her family when she looked so battered. So she decided to do the next best thing: follow Rose back to her dorm. It didn’t matter that Sydney did not attend Crystal and so she wasn’t supposed to be on campus. She could care less right now.

Physically she was fine. She had not pushed her magical limits to edge and although her muscles were a bit sore, that was nothing compared to the mental wounds. Rose tried to smile at her, but looked more tired and bitter than reassuring. Nonetheless, Sydney threw back a weak grin. Dragging her scuffed sneakers as she walked, she entered Rose’s room and softly closed the door with a click.

Sydney vaguely registered Rose flipping out her cellphone and calling someone—another senshi?—but she just closed her eyes and slid down. She pressed her back against the wooden door and rested her arms on her knees so that they lazily crossed each other. As she did nothing, her mind traveled back to the past hour or so. Her thoughts flashed to the image of the purple captain and her ominous words while Castor’s frustrated scream echoed in the background.

Fear gripped her heart and she brought up a hand to grasp the loose shirt that covered her chest. “Some Christmas, indeed,” she bitterly agreed, her eyes still closed. She figured that Rose’s friend would arrive at any moment so reluctantly she scooted to the side until she was directly next to the door.  

[Silverah]

Europa hadn't actually stayed long after Kaguya was defeated - between the rapidly erupting violence, her wounds, and the fact that her mother was expecting her home for dinner, she'd retreated before she could get a real sense of what was going on. It wasn't the senshi-like thing to do, but you had to make sacrifices around the holidays.

But, then, from Rose's voice on the phone... maybe she should have stayed and fought. At any rate, dinner was over by that point, Nellie and Angus had retreated to the upstairs den to watch a movie, and Sailor Europa was back out on the town, making her way stealthily across the snow-covered grounds of Crystal Academy, paper bag full of christmas cookies clutched tightly in one hand.

It wasn't difficult to find the right room, being the only illuminated window on the entire floor. Europa climbed up to the ledge and rapped on the glass. "Hey, it's the almighty panty-raider," she called, and held up the paper bag. "I brought dessert. Please let me in? It's freezing out here."

Kaguya might be destroyed, but it was still snowing.  

[The Red Dame]

Well, that answered that. Sydney didn’t seem on the verge of a mental breakdown, but Rose wouldn’t be letting her out of her sight for a while either. She was supposed to be the pessimistic one, not Sydney, so the balance of nature needed to be restored.

Tensing at the sudden noise, Rose let out a sigh of relief and a grimace when she saw Tallulah on the ledge; she was too jumpy. Crossing the room, she quickly let the black-haired girl in.

“ Come in, come in. Dessert sounds heavenly.”

The activity of eating would occupy at least one small portion of her mind, meaning that there was that much less of her brain that could be occupied with other, less pleasant stuff. On that thought, Rose realized that she had wanted – no, needed hot chocolate. Fixing a bowl of water to boil in the microwave, she called over.

“ Y’all want to do introductions or no?” Some Senshi were rather particular about their identities, so it never hurt to ask. “ Also, who else wants hot chocolate?”  

[Syusaki]

There was rapid tapping from the window and Sydney furrowed her eyebrows. Great. Expect the friend to gloriously enter through the window instead of the door. She should have seen that coming. She would have pessimistically berated herself over the minor failure, but she quickly realized that one: that was so pathetic it wasn’t funny and two: the friend had brought dessert. As bummed as Sydney was, the prospect of nibbling on sweets somewhat lifted up her spirits.

She slowly opened her eyes and heaved herself up into a standing position, knees cracking from the sudden weight. Sydney curiously stared at Tallulah—her face was vaguely familiar, did they go to school together?—and then at Rose. “Hey, isn’t Rosie looking a little rosy from the snow?” she noted with a laugh, pleased with her pun.

“Sydney. Sinon. Senshi of Lies,” she rattled off in a bored voice. Introductions were not her favorite thing to do. “Hot chocolate would be nice. Put lots of marshmallows if you got any, ya?” Sydney plopped onto one of the beds, hoping that it was Rose’s and not her roommate’s.  

[Silverah]

"Sailor Europa, senshi of the deep, leader of the Basterds," replied the senshi currently climbing in the window. She latched it behind her, looked around the room, and then in a flash turned into a dark-haired girl in jeans and a sweatshirt. "Or Tallulah Cowden. Whichever is easier for you to say."

She handed the bag of cookies to Sydney, then smiled at Rose. "Hot chocolate sounds great," she said, and settled onto Aurora's bed. She'd been into this room before, although usually she used the door. Tallulah kicked off her shoes and curled her legs up under her. "Did Aurora go home for the holidays?" she asked.

Pointing at the bag of cookies, she added, "They're chocolate chip snowmen. I iced them myself."  

[The Red Dame]

“ Yeah, Aurora’s gone home.”

One hot chocolate with a small mountain of marshmallows and two normal ones; check. She handed Tallulah and Sydney their mugs before she settled down next to Sydney. She took a deep drink from her own mug, the nearly too-hot heat barely registering. She snagged a snowman, but before she literally bit its head off, she figured it was time to get to business.

“ Tallulah, how long did you stay after the ice alien’s defeat?”  

[Syusaki]

As Tallulah introduced herself as the leader of the Basterds, Sydney turned her freckled face toward the smaller girl. So this was the leader of the other team Rose was part of? She seemed kind enough, but she couldn’t gauge a proper opinion of her just yet. “Eh. I’ll just call you Tallu for now,” she offhandedly decided before mumbling a ‘thank you’ as she took the bag of cookies. Curiously eyes examined Tallulah’s frosting handy work as Sydney pulled out one of the snowmen from the bag. Not that she looked for long. She was hungry.

The bag of cookies in her lap, Sydney reached out to take the mug from Rose as she continued to nibble on a snowman. “Dankyou,” she said through a mouthful of crumbs. She noisily slipped her hot chocolate and remained silent while she waited for Tallulah’s response.  

[Silverah]

"I left really soon after," sighed Tallulah, sipping her cocoa and helping herself to a cookie. "I mean, I know it seemed like something was going on?" she asked, and frowned, "But it was too busy, and I had a curfew, I mean-"

It was Christmas Eve. Her parents expected her home for dinner, and missing one battle (that was winding down!) wasn't worth missing a whole month of patrol. "I'm sorry," she said, washing down a bite of cookie with a gulp from her mug. "What did I miss?"

She could tell it was something big, just from the looks on their faces.  

[The Red Dame]

“ Two crystals appeared. Pegasus got one, I think. I’m not sure about the other.”

When it became apparent that she wouldn’t be getting her hands on the second crystal, Pomona found other, more pressing matters to attend to then seeing who did manage to get it. That led to the second point.

“ And Castor… Castor was nearly killed. Or Corrupted. I’m not sure what the Negas had planned.”

There were more details, of course, but Rose figured Tallulah might like a chance to digest that first. Also, she figured there were some minor gaps she could fill in for Sydney.

“ Castor used to be a member of the Basterds.”

And speaking of teams… “ Sydney helps with my team. Our team. Eh, the Motley Crew.”

Rose waved her hand lazily, as if that made her meaning perfectly clear. Was it obvious that Rose’s thoughts were jumping all over the place?  

[Syusaki]

Sydney scrutinized her mug as she rewound her memories back to the second crystal. Who, specifically, had gotten that one? “It was a senshi, definitely. Looked like a pirate. A guy. ‘Wave Fist’, he said,” she answered as she blankly turned toward Rose and motioned her cookie-less hand into a fist. “I don’t know his name though, sorry.” There was just too many senshi to count.

Castor. So that was his name. She took another gulp of her drink, tasting the sweet, melted marshmallows mixed in. “And he left, I see,” Sydney mindlessly noted as her thoughts stubbornly remained on the Negaverse trio that had tried to claim (or corrupt) his starseed. “They’ve collected a group of corrupted senshi, and it looks like they want it to grow.” She frowned morosely. “I hope it doesn’t.”

“Eh. The crew isn’t much. We don’t contact each other often.” A real shame.  

[Silverah]

Tallulah felt a chill run down her spine. "I saw the first crystal," she said lamely. She'd tried to grab for it and missed. "I left before the second."

But that wasn't what the burning question on her mind was. "But what happened to Castor?" she asked, nervously dunking her cookie in her drink. She'd been worried about what would happen if Castor were corrupted, but now - the way Rose had said it, it seemed like she was trying to build Tallulah up to the idea of it actually happening.

"He hasn't gone dark, has he?" she asked, and the cookie crumbled. She sighed and reached for another. "They always seem so much better organized than us. The small teams are fine, but..."

The gears were turning. A plan was slowly percolating behind Europa's eyes, like slow-brewed coffee. "We need to combine the teams. We need an army with platoons, not individual rebel forces."  

[The Red Dame]

“ Yeah. A lot of the Crew has been busy, and I haven’t been on top of things.”

Another embarrassing truth. Rose was going to have to make some changes in her life, and make them soon.

“ Castor lived. Obviously he was shaken or upset, but he lived.” She paused, remembering something. “ This is what Polaris warned about. I don’t think he’s a traitor – at least, not straight out – but his actions are endangering his life and the lives of others.”

That brought Rose to the point that Sydney had brought up.

“ The purple-haired Nega, she said that they were done killing us. They said that from now on, they’d corrupt Senshi. I don’t know if it’s just them or if it’s a new Negaverse policy, but it’s troubling.”

Tallaluh’s idea was an interesting one. The Basterds were good at gathering information and had many strong Senshi, while Motley Crew was collecting new Senshi left and right.

“ I think that idea has some merit. The Basterds have information and strength. The Crew is fairly large, even if most of the members are pretty inexperienced. What do you think Sydney?”  

[Syusaki]

“Don’t worry, the second crystal caught everyone by surprise,” Sydney assured Tallulah. She promptly shook her head at the question as she finished off the rest of her drink, Sydney Martin did not comprehend the meaning of savoring her hot chocolate. Her face scrunched up into a pondering expression as she set her greedy claws on the snowmen that lay captive in her bag. Tallulah’s description of her plan was peculiar to the redhead, but somehow she understood it. “Ya, I don’t see any harm in merging. The Basterds could help the rest of the Crew gain some more experience,” she agreed with a consenting nod.

“Ya. Corruption . . .” Sydney mumbled before she stuffed another cookie into her mouth. Although she did not directly voice her thoughts, it was easy to deduce that the idea was incredibly unsettling to her. The idea had never crossed her mind until now, simply because she had never encountered nor heard of corrupted senshi until tonight.  

[Silverah]

"Right," nodded Tallulah, reaching for another snowman. "I still mean to talk to him, he -" She stopped cold, bit the head off her snowman, and asked, "Holy s**t, really?" She'd have to keep that in mind. "Does anyone know what happens when you get corrupted? I mean, I saw Tisiphone months ago but I don't think I really understand what was wrong with her, just that she was dark."

That was a scary thought. Which was worse? Corruption, or death? While she pondered that, though, there were still important things to discuss. "Have either of you met the princess?"

This was met with confused stares. They'd fought a fake princess today, after all.

"I mean," she clarified, "Have either of you spoken to Chibimoon?"