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Tallulah kicked the door ungracefully open, and turned to pull her duffle bag in before it slammed shut. "Hello? Kat?" she called over her shoulder as she heaved the bag inside. That done, she gave the door another kick and turned to face the living room.

It had definitely not been this much of a mess when she'd been by a few weeks ago - now the apartment looked like some kind of tornado had swept through. "Hey, um, Kat?" she asked, climbing over the litter to stand at the end of the couch. She surveyed her cousin's slumping form, then reached out and gave her a tentative shoulder-shake.

"...You okay?" she asked, after a bit of hesitation. She was sort of dreading the answer. A messy apartment with a depressed cousin crouched in the middle of it was definitely not Tallulah Cowden's definition of okay.

Tallulah cocked her head to one side and climbed over the arm of the couch. She sat on it and looked pensively down at her cousin. This sounded serious, but then very little had the actual ability to phase Tallulah and the likelihood of whatever Kat had to say actually having its presumed gravity was low.

But, for seriousness's sake, Tallulah decided to assume the worse: that her cousin was a mass murderer. "Ah, okay," she said softly, her face a mix of confusion and concern. For family's sake, she hoped this wasn't the case - she figured it would take a lot to make her hate her cousin, but if Kat turned into Kaatialaite, all bets were off.

Was your Henshin pen where you could reach it? Yes? Good.

Tallulah leaned in. "Kat?" she asked softly. "What's wrong? Maybe I can help."

The case against Kat being Kaatialaite, or some similarly-named fellon, was not looking good. Tallulah sank her head into her hands, although she tried to keep one eye on her cousin. A professed Negaverser - even a repentant one - was not someone you wanted to stop paying attention to.

"I warned you," she groaned, doing her best to not sound Holier-than-Thou. Or, at least, she'd tried to. She was having trouble remembering - she'd told Kat to stay out of it, hadn't she? "So, what, you thought joining The Negaverse would be a good way to make friends in a new city?"

Because, that was what they were talking about, right? Because that was what it sounded like they were talking about. And Tallulah didn't like the sound of it one bit.

Well. This certainly changed things. Tallulah was notably surprised by Leto's sudden transformation, which was saying something because very little surprised her lately. "Captain." she said, in a way that made it clear she was mulling the word over. "Torture."

This was not something that well-behaved Senshi did. But Leto was wearing a white bodice. Someone had pulled off something big behind her back, and Europa wanted the details.

Her henshin pen was already on quick draw. All that remained was for Tallulah to flick it between her fingers and utter "Europa Eternal, Make up!" and the cousins were once more on equal ground. (Well, roughly.)

Where Tallulah did her best to put a damper on Holier-Than-Thou, however, Europa had no problems with pulling rank and looking reproachful. "Who, exactly, have you been running with? Because they've been misbehaving."

Europa frowned and looked down at her thighs in frustration. "It's not a skirt," she groaned, and tugged on the tulle in demonstration. "It's ruffles, like on that bathing suit you had when we were kids."

Not that that was an improvement, because she was now comparing her decidedly grown-up fuku to pre-adolescent swimwear. She gestured to her cousin's uniform. "Watch it, it used to be shorts. You keep making fun of me and you'll wind up the same way."

Fuku Karma. How many other girl senshi did she know that wore shorts? Not many. Weird coincidence.

Europa crossed her arms across her chest. "You don't seem so torn up about your lot of bad things when we're both standing here dressed up as pretty-shorted warriors."

She was surrendering the title. Hers were more bloomers now, anyways.

"I dunno," shrugged Europa, motioning once more to her frills. "How are you to know this isn't next fall's hottest trend?" (Tallulah Cowden had never been "on trend" in her life. Why start now?)

She sighed and gave her cousin a sympathetic smile. "No, you're right, they'll probably stay shorts." All things considered, this wasn't such a bad thing. Much more functional. She'd always felt bad for girls who had to fight in skirts. The crotch of a leotard always seemed so much more scandalous when your whole costume was designed around not showing it than when it was naturally on display.

"The mess... I can do something about," she said, after giving the clutter a moment's consideration. "The Blood Moon Court... I've heard of them, but I don't know much about them. Not for lack of trying, they're just..."

She flopped back onto the couch beside Kat. "Very hush-hush." She narrowed her eyes. "Why. What about them?"

A lifetime and a half ago, the young Sailor Europa had lain in bed while her maid tried to comfort her, whispering, “These are the things you give up when you come here. But think, miss, about all the things you gain!” Ever since overhearing those words that day on her moon, the present Sailor Europa had used them as a rallying cry. Think about all the things you gain!

Except... what exactly were they gaining from all this? Europa sighed through her teeth. "I was supposed to go to Dartmouth in the fall," she said. It was only an Ivy league. Only her dream school. Except... She gestured to her bodice. "Except then this. All of this." All of this, reminding her she'd been silly to even apply anywhere out of town.

With another sigh, she reached a sympathetic arm around her cousin's shoulders. "I don't know where Europa ends and Tallulah begins," she admitted. "What you did..."

She bit her lip and stared off into the middle distance, deep in thought. "We're in a war," she said, after a while. "The normal ethics... they don't apply here. Most soldiers get boot camp, or indoctrination, but the cats just toss us in and we have to make our own propaganda."

She could sort of guess where this was going - Kat was a senshi, so there were only a few places it could. And Europa had heard rumors. The negaverse had taken enough senshi and civilian lives - she'd heard talk about the senshi beginning to bite back.She'd never done it, personally, but it didn't sound entirely reprehensible. What were the numbers Tate had thrown around? She had them written down somewhere, they were high- for a murder spree like that, it could almost be forgiven.

"You're being kinda vague, Kat," she said lowly, "But if your team killed someone, especially negaversers - If you'd let them go, they'd have gone on to commit more murders. And that doesn't make it okay under normal circumstances, to execute someone without, you know, trial by jury - but..."

She couldn't really believe that these words were coming out of her own mouth. But the more she thought about it the more they made sense. "These are hardly normal circumstances, Kat."

They were two teenaged superheroes. What was normal? They didn't serve that here. It had been off the menu for ages. Shut down by the health inspector.

Unless this wasn't what that was about at all.