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Okay, so, she'd seen plenty of youma as a civilian in all kinds of shapes, but never as many in one night as she'd seen just now.

Actually, she wasn't even sure what she was doing out. She had fought that weird chimera monster off, gotten this magical apple, and had a prompt breakdown on a bench for long enough to attract a senshi over to tell her exactly what the hell was going on. Apparently she was powered but not a senshi, and hell, she'd never heard of knights or whatever she was supposed to be. Some kind of fakey-fake good Negaverse officer? All she knew was that she was Avalon, a Page of Earth, and her weapon--brace yourself, this was terrifying and fearsome and all those things no one really wanted to face--an apple. A Red Delicious apple.

Sure. It was impervious to all kinds of damage. But it was still an apple and she had to wield it against animals with teeth and enemies with knives.

Wolframite had knives, anyway. And she knew he would never take kindly to meeting someone like her. Theoretically, anyway. But hopefully, if things worked out, she'd never have to meet him ever, so, no big deal. Right? Right.

Which still left her with the problem of this current youma. It resembled nothing so much as a massive squirrel with sharp, pointy teeth that hooked up and out of its mouth. So... how was she going to defeat it with an apple? Avalon chucked the apple in its direction, crying out a very frustrated "<********>" as it sailed directly over the youma's head and into the trees. "******** seriously?"

She was pretty sure her apple was not, in fact, a boomerang. Like, ninety-nine percent sure that her apple did not have any boomerang DNA in its indestructible genes. Which wasn't one hundred percent: It was just close enough to surprise Avalon when the apple came flying back into the face of the giant rabid squirrel monster with sharp, pointy, death-defying teeth. Then the apple's pitcher appeared; it was a boy with brown hair, wearing a furry tunic. Another knight? Sure didn't look like a senshi, anyway. She leapt forward to gather up the apple into her hands and use it like a rock on the squirrel's head.

It made a funny squelching noise: not the apple. The monster squirrel's skull made the sickening noise.

That did not apparently stop it from moving. Now it just looked ******** deformed. "You're telling me," she said, voice fluting up into the panic range. "Don't they ever stop?"

"It screams," she yelled over to him, haphazardly throwing the apple at the crazed squirrel. God, was it even supposed to be able to move that fast? "Really loud, it... paralyzes you for a second, or something!" Just as she finished explaining, the squirrel let out a garbled howl; she flinched, though apparently her blow had quite stifled the ability. God, how had she ever thought the senshi were monstrous? Look at these things. These monsters the Negaverse made. Oh, she'd known about them, but not so... completely. So surely.

She was learning a lot more, and learning it very quickly. Her apple had missed, sending the small red orb bouncing back over to Valhalla. Avalon Page had absolutely shitty aim, which Tate Konstantin could have told absolutely anyone. "I'm fine," she decided, and then repeated it louder to him: "Just fine! Can you do that thing you did again, with the breaking its teeth?"

Maybe one more good blow would do the trick.

Apparently the furry guy had done exactly what needed to be done to get the monster dusted, which worked just fine for Avalon. She crouched to pick up her apple, dusted it off in the skirt of her tunic. The brooch at her navel pinched a little, but she figured that was the price of having that belt; it at least let her pretend she had a womanly shape. "Good throw," she said, tentatively flicking her wrist to tuck the apple back into subspace where it belonged when she didn't need it. Perfect. A+, let's never ******** do that ever again.

She smiled a little at him, the expression with a bit of a sarcastic bent because ******** all, Avalon always felt a little sardonic. "Guess you shoved something where it didn't belong." She picked around in the dust with the toe of her boot, dark eyes thoughtful. There were some shiny orbs, and she crushed them beneath a foot as she generally did. Sure, she didn't know what those were, but she knew they were probably important and ought to be returned to whoever had provided it.

"You're pretty accurate with the throwing thing. Do you play some kind of sport, or something? I can't throw for s**t, it's basically ******** embarrassing."

Was he stuttering? That was cute. It was also annoying, and probably not a great trait for a fighter for interstellar justice. Things had to be balanced, though. Maybe he lost a driving sense of morality in order to obtain mad pitching skills? Man, with the perversity of the stars, she would bet on it. He probably ran around throwing baseballs at people or things just for kicks! Downright shameful.

Still, he'd been pretty useful and he had to serve Justice overall in order to be a Page, if he was one. "That'd be great, Valhalla and-or Jupiter, I'm not sure which you meant? I'm Avalon, Page of Earth. Whatever the hell that means." She took it to mean that it was her right and privilege to bring balance to the city without extreme prejudice, so that was that. After a moment's thought, she decided to share her opinion with him. Surely he'd be curious. "I take it to mean that I'm supposed to be working towards the end of this bullshit," she said, gesturing off to the pile of dust that was blowing away in the summer breeze. "It makes the most sense." Fell right in line with her worldview, actually.

After a moment, she held out a hand for him to share. "Pleasure to meet you, Valhalla Jupiter. How long have you been playing on the dizzying merry-go-round of Destiny City's secret gang war?"

Ah, so, he was a Page of Jupiter just like she was a page of Earth. That made sense. She smiled a little bit, and took her hand back. Pretty shy, though, like she'd thought. What was it with her and the shy ones? Anyway, she thought honestly though she might keep calling him Valhalla Jupiter. It amused her, and sounded a lot more superhero-y than what his name actually was. She was going to bet on a Robin, or maybe a Christopher... Tate Konstantin, though, that was a perfectly superheroic name. You could trust a name like Tate Konstantin.

"How broad of a definition is 'monsters'," she asked, curiously; did everyone have some kind of qualm about punishing evildoers, or was she just being a wuss about fighting the good fight? "Just the non-human monsters, or the ones that pretend to be people, because I've heard it both ways and don't know where I stand just yet."

That was a lie. Avalon knew exactly where she stood and it was firmly over the line into Justice Territory. Which was a real place, by the way. Completely real. "Just been doing this a bit over a week," she informed him. "So you're way up there in experience points, compared to me."

Well this was confusing. Everything she knew about the Negaverse pointed to them being murderers. Murderers were bad. She excused killing another person under very specific circumstances, and 'needing energy to fight back the senshi plague' was not one of them. Reacting to abuse, maybe, but only during a situation where you were being abused. If the victims of torture Zinkenite had spoken to her about had snapped and killed the ones hurting them, she wouldn't have blamed them at all. Would have cheered them on, in fact. But... most of the people they murdered, from what she'd been told, what she'd seen, were just normal people.

"I think they are," she said. "They make the youma. They set them loose. They used to attack people and rip out their souls. Their... starseeds? I know. It almost happened to me three times." And it hurt like hell, and she hated it, and remembering made her feel jittery and weak, like her knees were made of jello.

What a coward Avalon Page was turning out to be.

She nodded after a moment, scrubbed her hands down the front of her tunic. "Alright," she said, "You go that way, and I'll go this way... See you, Valhalla Jupiter. Thanks for the assist, and the welcome."