******** snowglobes.

That was really all Tate wanted to say about that. The whole debacle had just been embarrassing for everyone, senshi and Negaverse and civilian alike, as far as she was concerned; she'd gotten the ******** ******** out of there when the little girl had started screaming about how the ice queen (Kaguya?) was ugly or something. Everyone knew that insane queens were always really sensitive about their appearance. Why in the world would you deliberately provoke one? Being young wasn't an excuse. It was just common sense that you didn't provoke the villain if you could help it. Especially if you were young and vulnerable.

It was enough to make her pissed off. How could she have been so wrong?

Normally she could call when things were going to go bad. Like, the Halloween ball, she'd had a quiet suspicion that things were going to go south. She hadn't expected how far south it was going to go, but hadn't it always happened in every romance novel ever that all important meetings between a civilian and a person with supernatural powers would be ******** up by something catastrophic?

(That battle royale had certainly qualified as "******** up".)

The entire ballroom had been on fire. Wolframite had been… impressive. She had been impressed. But he'd practically ignored her since, except for that… interlude on the rooftop. Even now, as she wrapped up the snowglobes to throw them out, she flushed a little bit red at the thought. Not as much as to who it'd been--when you didn't see someone for more than a month, it was hard to pine!--but just because… rooftop dancing. It was so, so shoujo. The sort of thing that she would entirely daydream about while setting type or making little icing rosettes on cupcakes at work.

Maybe Wolframite and the others like him had mind-reading powers or something. No, that was ridiculous. If they had that sort of power, they'd be able to hunt down all the senshi. They'd be able to hear their thoughts--if she had powers, she'd think about them almost constantly. Power and what she would do with it--but, she was just human. Regrettably. Anyway, hunting senshi with mind-reading powers…

It'd be almost easy.

Rooftop dancing, that was just a cliche, which meant it was pretty much embedded in the cultural consciousness. Not as much mindreading as just life being really bitchy to her.

These thoughts in mind, she slammed a snowglobe onto a sheet of newspaper just a little too hard. "********!" Her hand came up bloody; not much, just a little bit. A few gashes of unimportant size. Some Neosporin and a bandaid and it'd be fine. But it meant she had to grab more newspaper to sop up the water and glitter, which was just inconvenient. Then she had to wait for it to soak up, which was possibly more inconvenient.

What kind of headlines were people coming up with back in 2009, anyway. Five Comatose from Unknown Cause. Strange Wounds On The Body. Sure, five was a big deal, for then. But then there was that dreaming sickness--really, how many people went out? Thousands, possibly. A lot, definitely. And she, for one, didn't buy s**t about it just being a wasting sickness. It hadn't started up until… two or three years ago, which would mean… 2009.

Hell if she could prove it, though.

As she rubbed her injured palm, though, something occurred to her. What was happening here, in Destiny City, it wasn't happening anywhere else. No other city or state was reporting sailor-suited warriors or even Negaverse-esque warriors, and those would be the easier ones to fake. Sure, a few costumes on Halloween, cosplay at conventions, but that was normal, it was nothing real. What was really going on here?

She looked back at the headlines, watched the black ink soak into the newsprint, the surface of her desk. Maybe… maybe she could find out.