Zia tapped her nails on the touch screen of her phone, waiting in impatient earnest for the Jupiter knight to show up. In the worst place ever. On another roof. She had at least given him the street name and was keeping watch, but she probably wasn't coming back down out of concern she either couldn't, or could and would look like a hilarious dork in the process. Typical cat.

She was also kind of hoping he wouldn't do the sane thing and not come after their last attempt at patrolling let to her purposely trying to push his buttons and ended up genuinely being offensive. She really wanted him to come.

She at least brought food, though it was greasy fast food fare an while she waited was liable to eat it all by herself. In fact, when she caught a familiar glimmer of that armor and waved the hand full of phone while the other one had become occupied by cheeseburger at some point.

"Valhallaaaa~ Up here!" She practically sang out.


Guine
Valhalla scowled as he finally reached the place of which his once best friend had given him the location. He knew she had a problem with not taking things seriously, and he really hoped that she still did consider him her best friend, but she had a long way to go to prove it.

Especially after last time.

"I can't keep coming out like this... Paris found out I've been sneaking around at night and got upset," he said as he reached the top of the fire escape to meet her. That wasn't necessarily true, though. Paris made no indication that he didn't want Chris to keep going out at night... just that he was worried about his safety.

Sorry Paris, it was just easier to use him as an excuse when he was already grumpy about how Zia had been treating him.

"So... what's up?" he asked after a few moments, crossing his arms over his chest impatiently. It wasn't like he didn't want to see her... he was just not sure what to expect.


Zia shrugged, needing a moment before talking since she was half in the process of stuffing her face. "I dunno," She started, but luckily that wasn't the end of her brilliant eloquence. "I thought we should like, talk about stuff and stuff."

She took another pause to do the whole chewing and swallowing thing, glancing up as she processed things. "You guys are living together?" And then after another moment, "Wait, so you're done with this whole going out monster hunting dealio? Like, really?" She couldn't see it, but she also figured Chris for the easily whipped and obedient boyfriend so the possibility was prominent in her mind.

"Fries?" She half offered but it wasn't a serious one considering she was practically a garbage disposal at this point. She had a full day! Zia had always been prone to stress eating but where it was once her secret shame, now she would gladly get started on her second cheeseburger of the day as soon as she stopped being too lazy to go get it.

"Tell me about Paris," She 'asked' but with genuine big-brown-eyed curiosity. She was dying to know and thought it might be a good way to ease into the whole 'talking' thing.


Guine
"Yes, we live together... Again, if you had been talking to me in the past several months, you wouldn't be the last to know," he said with a small snort, his arms still crossed and shifting uncomfortably. It wasn't that he wanted to be done with the monster hunting thing, but... if she was going to give him such a hard time about it... he didn't think he wanted to deal with that stress.

As much as he loved shitty fast food, he grimaced at the offer for fries and shook his head. She looked like she was going to scarf them all down, anyway... "No thanks," he mumbled anyway, glancing around to make sure no one was around, but he couldn't feel any other signatures, so he didn't really worry about it, regardless of wanting to power down.

They should be fine...

He hesitated when she brought up Paris again, not really sure what she was playing at, before trying to think of something to say.

"Uhhh," he started lamely, not really sure what there was to say. "He, uh... has really... really nice legs..." And for a few more moments, that was all he could think of saying. "Oh, I guess you wanted more than that...? Um... he dances... and goes to DCU... and hangs out with my mom... which is really weird, but that's fine, I guess..." What else was there to say??

"W-what about that guy? The one you're sleeping with? And gives you hickies?" he quickly turned the topic onto her, shifting uncomfortably once more, frowning at his own failed description of his boyfriend.


Zia just shrugged again because that was the best default she could think of. She laughed out loud at the mention of Paris' legs and ended up choking, which ended up as more laughter at the derpy behavior of choking. "Well of course," She said while winding down. She lightly twitched her head to the side in a small sub-reaction at the mention of Chris' mom, deciding to only pester him about one person at a time. She hadn't been home in ages, even before she started actively pushing people away.

Not that her dad's house was her home any more, but it still kind of felt like it in spite of not being welcome there any more.

"Dancer, huh?" She said, trying to keep her showing interest outwardly mild. His lame description was totally unsatisfactory, but he'd gone and turned it around on her, which harshly derailed her prying. Enough she suddenly looked cornered, surprised, and a light flush crept to her cheeks from the back of her neck before she could fix her expression back to not caring chipper-ness.

"He's... um... I've kind of been seeing him, I guess," She muttered, suddenly really interested in the last few fries at the bottom of the bag. "Since August. I don't know how I feel about him," She was hoping that might cut down on the snide commentary in the future, at least.


Guine
Valhalla shrugged sheepishly, figuring Zia would understand him best when it came to things like that... He'd thought Skye had nice legs, too... Zia as well, but that was just... weird, since she was more of his sister. Or something...

"So..." he grunted as she dug for fries and tried to blow off the topic, "Do I ever get to meet this guy?" What?? He just wanted to see what he looked like. Maybe get his father or brother to dig up his records and see if there was anything on him that she should know...

Maybe if he was lucky, this guy would have an outstanding warrant for his arrest and Zia would thank him as he helped escort this douchebag to the precinct.

What?? He would clearly just be doing the city a civil service! Nothing to get upset about!

"Wait, this August and you're already sleeping with him??" he suddenly sputtered, turning red and wishing he could meet his guy so he could just... punch him or something. He was clearly... taking advantage of his Zee.


"Maybe...?" Zia said, feeling her stomach sink when he sputtered. "Yeah... um... I don't know." She was out of fries and out of excuses and had taken to looking to the very, very far left while she tried to gather her thoughts.

And ended up clearing her throat. "He's actually really brilliant, and he has his... erm... 'sweet' moments?" As much as she wanted to defend Pascal, it was moderately difficult considering she thought of him as a manipulative a*****e herself.

But he was a manipulative a*****e she kind of liked a lot.

"I don't know. Sometimes he does these things that... kind of bother me. But... um... He also didn't run for the hills when I freaked out about being grabbed and crippled him, so. It's kind of a wash?" She made a weak attempt to joke with that last bit.

And then she finally thought of something to whirl the topic around to him again. "Wait, Paris knows you're Valhalla? Seriously?"


Guine
He gave he a sour look, not at all pleased with her reasoning behind seeing his guy. Either way, it made him uncomfortable. Maybe it was because he'd never been in more than a couple relationships and was kind of old fashioned in various respects... like taking things slow (although part of that had been because Paris was tricking him at the start of their relationship...). Either way, he didn't like the idea of some guy, or any guy, with his best friend. And yes, she was back to being his best friend when he felt the need to be defensive of her.

"I didn't run for the hills," he grumbled, feeling a bit competitive with this guy he'd never even met. And for what? It wasn't like he wanted to date Zia or anything like that! He just... felt like she could do better than someone she wasn't too sure about.

As for Paris knowing his identity...

Valhalla blinked at her in sudden confusion and surprise. "Huh? Well... yeah he knows... You mean you haven't...?" but he quickly trailed off, not sure what to say. He didn't want to give Paris's senshi identity away, just as he hadn't told anyone, Paris included, that his best friend was a crazy b***h guardian cat... Of course, he would have thought anyone could put two and two together when there was a senshi hanging all over him during meetings... Despite not being publicly intimate, their closeness was surely a dead give away...

Maybe the magic was stronger than he thought? And that was fine with him... he didn't want anyone being put into danger just because they knew him.

"Um... he found out the summer before last... during that camp fiasco..."


"I know, I shoved you over a cliff," Zia said, staring at her toes and rolling back on her heels, looking downright ashamed. "You know... I wasn't texting him on patrol to ignore you. I was trying to explain to him... I mean... I kind of blew off our date to patrol with you."

She looked up at him and staunchly frowned at the 'you haven't...' bit he trailed off yet, trying to puzzle it out. "I... Really? Man..." But she shook it off. "I don't know, nevermind. I barely know how to be a person, I don't know how relationships work," She admitted, throwing her hands up in the air. She had decided to never share her identity with her not-boyfriend, even if by some miracle they figured out how to not be selfish, self destructive bastards, mostly because of the intense weirdness factor. But then she conceded that there were a zillion other factors at work, including hers being an entirely different species.

"So how's your mom? How's Peter?" She asked, unwrapping another burger, pausing, and looking at it with an offended frown. "Skimped on the bacon," but after that minor segue, she laughed. "Can you believe I actually miss that brat?" Though, the last time she saw him they had practically been sobbing together over the lack of internet.


Guine
"You did...? Oh, well... that's fine," Valhalla said, shrugging off how she'd blown off her date for their patrolling. "It would have probably been a bad experience, anyway. Or you would have probably gotten food poisoning... or he would have done something totally douchy like order for you," he grumbled, shifting awkwardly as he tried to cool down the seriousness of their conversation. He preferred her talking to him like an adult, finally... but he knew it must be hard for her, no matter what.

And... he realized he wasn't giving this guy any fair chances, but he hadn't met him yet, and as far as he could see it, he was right and Zee knew it.

As for pushing him over a cliff, he grinned sadly. "You can push all you want, but I'm not going over," he promised, feeling bad about... everything. "Look who you're dealing with," he said, indicating to himself with a small wave of his hand. He didn't think he was that conceded to believe he was invincible, despite his sometimes reckless behavior, but he was pretty sure he could handle a few tantrums from his best friend.

"Mom's fine. Probably planning Thanksgiving dinner already. We'll be going to Boston this year since last year Peter was a cat," he said, rolling his eyes. "Not really sure what was up with that, but that was just after General Painite sent me to the hospital, and then all of a sudden, I guess people started turning into cats? No idea, but we couldn't go up last year... How was I supposed to explain to mom that I'd been stabbed and Peter was a cat?" he rambled, remembering how it had been the year before at Paris's father's house, crowding the tiny living room with two cats and and a dog.

"I guess Peter's okay. I don't see or talk to him that much. I usually have school and then patrol... Paris still babysits him when he has time and mom needs him to, though..." he shrugged, not really caring what Peter was up to as long as he was out of trouble. He loved his little brother, but he was such a brat sometimes.


Some emotion sort of twitched on Zia's face, but she managed to bite it back down with some showed effort, caught between wanting advice and figuring Chris was not the person to ask for it.

When he gestured to himself, just kind glanced down with a shy, "Heh." And went back to stuffing her face as she listened fairly intently for the mundane subject matter. Until he mentioned Painite. "Hm?!" She squeaked with her mouth full and ended up choking and trying to swallow.

And when she finally managed to breath, "Painite? Put you in the hospital?" And then she cringed, glancing away with an, "Awkward."

Just last week she was discussing the awkward girl crush she had on the general with her lieutenant. Whoops.

"Peter was a cat?" She asked with the same amount of urgency and interest two people might discover they went to the same baseball game with. "Ugh, that was a mess. Like, really stupid. I swear, White Moon cats can't build machinery for crap. Also it's really awkward when you have to babysit your own senshi who is a cat when you are their cat." Though thoughts of Sailor Scylla brought a grimace to her face. "Most of my girls kind of got sick of s**t and vanished off the game board, though," She muttered. "Oh! But one came back, I just found her the other day. Sailor Maia."


Guine
Valhalla crossed his arms over his chest, an eyebrow raised at her quiet comment. "Why is that awkward?" he asked, trying not to sound like he was attacking her for a comment, but... it was just strange to think of his encounter with Painite as 'awkward'. "I stumbled across her when I was patrolling and recognized her as one of the Negaverse officers who had been attacking children and draining their energy at the camp. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she would have none of it. No matter what I said, no matter how I insisted I wasn't interested in fighting, she still tried to kill me."

He took a moment to reach down and lift up the layers of tunic he had covering his torso, wanting to show her the scar from being stabbed in the side with her sphere. "There's another on my thigh and one more right here," he added, dropping the chainmail and fabric of his tunic so he could pull the collar and cape away from his neck. There was a healed gash across his shoulder, but any closer to his neck would have probably sent him to the morgue instead of just the hospital.

"If Camelot hadn't shown up..." he said, trailing off and shaking his head. "I was just a Page, Zee... If you know her... I hope you understand that she is not as negotiable as others." Or maybe she just really didn't like him for whatever reason... But he still didn't like Zia's reaction to him saying Painite's name. He wasn't mad... just wary.

"Lily?" he blinked when Maia was brought up, his arms lowering into a less defensive stance. "How is she...? She sent me a gift while she was abroad, but... I haven't heard much from her since." It was good to hear she was back, though... everyone needed a little break... Well, most everyone. He doubted he'd be leaving for any extended period of time before the war was over...

So much for playing pro ball...


Zia managed to muster up some visible worry at the gash, brow still furrowed as she glanced up to Valhalla saying Painite wasn't negotiable and ended up choking out a nervous laugh and a grimace. "That's... uh... Well she's nice to me," Though after some eating and some thought. "Then again, I haven't spoken directly to her in months. Her lieutenant tried to 'rescue' me from Destiny City last week, though. ******** hilarious. Dumb kid. Super in love with the DMC and can just go straight to hell, though," She said with absolutely zero seriousness. "I dunno, maybe they just think I'm cool because I either have a neutral energy signature or no energy signature? Realgar's nice to me too. You'd think I'd have a bit of a reputation after the Rota s**t but then again, who cares about the cat?"

The topic of Lily made her cringe, suddenly remembering it was a secret, "Maybe you should wait for her to make contact and tell you herself. She's in kind of a weird place. But for the most part she seems to be doing okay."

She got caught up in a weird, sad stare where the gash was and after a moment of realizing this was way too into the depth of seriousness she wanted to be, bounced back and flopped down, laying on her back and pointing to Venus in the sky. "I've been there!" She quipped in a subject change. "Well, not there there. And not me-me. Zirconia and Aphrodite. But I remember it."

After some intense looking, she pointed at, at least from her angle, Jupiter near Taurus. "And I guess now I can say I've been there and there-there."


Guine
"Convenient," he mumbled to himself, although he wasn't sure his voice had been low enough to keep Zia from hearing as well. "I would give anything to have a neutral energy signature." He wouldn't consider her signature to be entirely neutral, but since it didn't reek of chaos and wasn't overbearing like a senshi... he supposed it was closer to that of a knight's. Maybe because she really was a knight...? Either way... it was easier to talk to people from any side when he didn't have a target painted on his chest.

"Painite is the only one I've had a problem with, personally. I don't really consider large fights a suitable way of deciding someone's personality. But her? She didn't care that I couldn't defend myself. She didn't care that she was attacking children. Nice or not, I hope you can understand that it's not the same for everyone."

Zia was reckless in that sense... If someone was nice enough to her, even with ill intentions she would just... let them do what they wanted. Granted, he was all for giving people second chances, so who knew... Maybe Painite wasn't the horrible, murdering b***h he thought she was.

"I never said there weren't agents of chaos who aren't willing to talk and negotiate," he pointed out when she brought up someone named Realgar. "Wolframite, Benitoite, and Zinkenite seem open to talk... Sailor Remarque as well." He would much rather talk to them again than run into Painite, who had been entirely unwilling to talk.

As for her changing topics... he glanced up at the stars and let out a sigh. "Is there a reason you wanted me to meet you, other than just talking...?" he finally asked, having been curious since arriving.


"...Wolframite," Zia mumbled, but didn't say much beyond, "More Rota bullshit."

While she would definitely give Rota victims a wide berth and had zero interest in making nice with Dark Mirror senshi, Valhalla's theory that she would gravitate towards anyone who acted nice hit the nail square on the head. Zia was clingy, and that was all there was to it. Not that she saw it that way.

"I dunno," She lied, eyes remaining intently on the stars as she folded her arms and drummed her fingertips against her own shoulder. "Well, no, wait, I mean..."

Zia sat up, pulling up her legs and resting her chin on her knees. "I guess I kind of wanted to like... um... Well I wanted to talk, but I wanted to also say... um... I'm sorry and all," She muttered, glancing to the far left. "You know, for being so shitty about this whole... thing. But especially the knight thing."

And there were other reasons, but she was taking baby steps.


Guine
He forced himself to remain silent on Wolframite, having already heard enough about what the BMC had done from Lily. That was back when he and Zia had still been talking and Hugbell hadn't been giving him the cold shoulder for no apparent reason, as far as he could tell. For all his insistance that he was on her and the younger senshi's side, she certainly didn't seem to want to give him any opportunity to explain himself during the meeting when Zirconia had snapped at him.

Perhaps that was why it was best to keep children from this war...

As for her apology... Valhalla took in a long breath and let it out slowly. He wanted to believe her... he wanted to think that she was being sincere in her apology... And since he couldn't exactly hold grudges, for whatever reason, he consented by moving to sit near her, leaning his back up against the edge of the roof for support.

"It's fine," he said, looking at her as he did so, wanting her to see that he really did forgive her, and that somehow... somehow that would give her more of a reason to be sincere if she had any ulterior motives. Like he'd said... he wasn't going to run away now. "You know I just worry about you... I... was hoping the knight thing would give you something more to work for than worrying about... other things all the time. I promise being a knight isn't bad," he added with a small, sheepish grin. "Even if we get kind of crappy weapons... The magic makes up for it. At least for me it does."


"No, I know!" Zia said quickly, almost defensively, before cringing as she tried to untangle all of her ridiculous feelings and put them into words. "I'd love to be a knight, okay? I just... it's kind of like it... um... Like, I already suck at all these other things really bad, yanno? And if I actually put any heart into this knight thing and it doesn't work, then, you know I really just don't think I can handle having that much hope dangled in front of me and then ******** it up. Again. But at the same time... um..." From the face she was making, you'd think it was causing her physical pain. "God this is cheesy. I guess it's like... I don't want to close the door on the whole thing, but I'm absolutely petrified of opening it wide enough to see what's there? Does that even make sense?"

She stood up and brushed herself off, stretching her arms over her head with a groan. "Ugh. But it's not like I haven't not been working on it! Well, I mean, I kind of never stopped working, in almost three years! I just kind of started thinking about it from a new angle?" She paused, gnawing on her lower lip in anticipation. "Wanna see it? It's kind of a big bucket of crazy, I mean, but... I have tooooootally been working, man."


Guine
"Sit or stand, make up your mind!" he snapped in exasperation as she got to her feet to pace around. Figures he'd try to offer a gesture of being at her level or some other bullshit and she ends up being restless!

Not that he was never restless, just... ugh... girls...

He pushed himself back up as well, brushing off his cape with a grumble not directed at her, but at life in general. "Yes, it makes sense," he tried reassuring her, not thinking it was weird at all. He knew exactly how it felt not wanting to jump head first into something that he didn't know was water or rock. It was one of those things that... had to be done with a little faith. And even then... even if she didn't succeed, would it have been a complete failure?

But before he could try and convince her that it would be okay even if she didn't trigger an awakening, she distracted him with... something she'd been working on? "Huh?" he blinked, not sure if he should be more curious or wary or both. "Uh... sure," he relented, not wanting her to think he didn't support her in whatever she did (that didn't have to do with strange relationships), because he totally did.


"I am a cat, dude, how do you think I got up here?" Zia snarked back, but as jokingly as that statement had been made, it was totally true. Expecting her to not be finicky was like expecting the world to end come December.

And then she smiled. It was way too excited of a smile. Maybe it was the level of crazy? But she was pretty proud of herself. It took a lot of work to reach the sheer level of <********> she had in storage.

Like literally in storage, because it was a long a** walk to the property she'd scoped out in a fairly deserted part of town, mostly because it was on a plot of land in half-incorporated-but-construction-slow-due-to-terrorists Destiny City, and the only structure was a temporary storage box. And the whole walk there Zia insisted she had to show rather than tell, though, by the time they got to her little slice of progress.

"I was trying to find this place last time you caught me," She explained. "Dad has a lot of worthless property he can't sell, I figured the best way to hide my s**t was in the last place he'd look, or let anyone else look because ~god forbid~ the world see Robert Connolly's failures. But anyway, I couldn't exactly put it together at home with a roommate, so here it is!" She pushed up the roll up door to the unit and grasped before catching the light switch. Which, when the lights flickered on, just revealed boxes and boxes of crap. There was a second level, which was more open and only covered about a third of the first, but there were papers and file boxes and binders. Names and starmaps on the wall, charts, spreadsheets, notes. Two and a half years of obsessive notes.

"Let's see," Zia lit up a cigarette before skipping through, kicking the occasional, dusty box of files as she gave a sort of half assed tour. "Blood Moon Court secrets are in that corner, got a dictated history section of Black Moon politics, White Moon royalty information's here, knight catalog is in this binder. Zodiac stuff, umm... oh, this one's about mirrorspace. Overe here's the Rota files," She had to stand up on her toes to pull the file box down, and then leafed through them. "And the Rota files haaaave... Gunn's involvement, Ares' s**t, my s**t, logs for Wolframite, Tanzanite, Uranophane, Helicase, Primase, and finally, the Dioptase fatality. Oh! And that binder's the weapon's catalog, and I totally have the knight stuff on my mobile phone now," She stopped her inane, hyper fast babbling and grinned a half nervous sort of grin. "Told you it was a big bucket of crazy."


Guine
"Yes you did..." he mumbled, staring around the room with wide, almost concerned eyes. Had she really been putting together all this information? It was a little overwhelming... okay a lot overwhelming. Now, Valhalla thought himself to have a pretty decent memory, but life had kind of gotten in the way of being a book keeper. Beside, what if someone stumbled across it and his family and friends were put in danger because of it?

Zia was at least smart to keep all this information in a less... obvious area.

"This is... impressive. Crazy, but impressive," he breathed, trying to take in everything he could, while wondering if there were things he'd rather not see. After hearing about certain events that had happened in the past, even before his time as a knight, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know the details...

But knowledge was power, right...? How else were they supposed to talk and propose the idea of compromise with the agents of chaos while they were all still ignorant of what was going on?

"You have knight stuff on your phone?" he asked, totally wary now that he might find out what she had on him... Hopefully is wasn't anything too horrible.

"What do you plan on doing with all this...? You're not going to just... keep it here, are you? And I hope you have some kind of electronic file for backup... you know, scan in whatever you have written... what if this place was hit by lightning?" Bye bye all that work...


"Working on it!" Zia said, flopping into a computer chair and letting it roll a few feet before she hit her laptop. "See, I've started putting it in a cloud drive so it's on my phone, and my hard drive, and a personal server. Problem is, I only just got started since Zirc shut the hell up and let me do my thing. This is my knight database, but it's got a lot of big gaping holes in it because Zirconia is just... ugggh, it's not hard to use a camera phone, b***h! But anyway, that's why I only have photos of Camelot, Shalott, Aventine, Kailash, Bimini, and yo-- oh..." She stopped and caught her cigarette when she laughed. She had completely forgotten about Valhalla's likeness scrawled into her database via MSPaint. "Sorry," She coughed, scrolling past it quickly.

And she shrugged a little. "I don't really know, I guess. I mean, originally I was supposed to be trying to find a way to crack open the universe and kick Ares' a** home, but then there were knights and bluh~ everything got weird. I was always super good at taking notes in high school, though," She ended with a laugh. "I guess I'm a guardian cat and I'm supposed to be an information hub? But... like I said, I don't really have a plan or anything. Oh! And no civilian identities. I mean, I'm sure I'd be ******** nine ways to hell if someone broke in here, but you can never have too many failsafes. Oh! And this is my corruption/purification binder. But, you know, of course those are the memories Zirconia barely has or remembers. Useless cat."

To make everything even more maniacal it all had neat little labels in Zia's dainty handwriting, like how her childhood bedroom had everything in it's own labeled little drawer or box. Except this was practically an intelligence war room. With really pretty labels.


Guine
"Knight database..." he repeated, skeptical about what could possibly be worth keeping notes about. Although, he supposed keeping track of uniform colors and weapons and things like that could help piece together what made each knight of whatever planet they were from significantly different from the next.

He only caught a glimpse of the picture she'd had in place for his own information and quickly looked away, pretending as though he didn't see it or hear her apology. He supposed he deserved being harassed about his behavior, but he never claimed to know everything. He just happened to have an opinion on most things, including her attempts at becoming a knight.

If that was something she was still interested in, of course.

"Corruption purification...?" he wondered curiously, although still wary about the subject. It had come up in the meeting shortly before Zirconia tried biting his head off. Maybe he shouldn't be asking these things. He was suddenly feeling very insignificant in the whole scheme of things. If Zirconia had memories of hundreds of years, what was all that important about the here and now...?

"You haven't changed much in the last few years..." he said, partially as a change of subject, but also because... well, it wasn't that difficult to notice. He could look at pictures of the two of them a few years ago, and where he'd grown a handful of inches and gained a number of pounds through playing baseball, she hadn't seemed to grow any older. More weary and tired, maybe, but she still looked like she was twenty-one. "Is that Zirconia's doing?" he wondered sadly, unable to stop himself from imagining the two of them several more years down the road... her looking the same while he continued to get older.


"Well I don't know, it's just weird if this is the first universe that generated you guys, you know?" Zia half explained. To be honest, she had her own burning curiosity that was bordering on irrational and inexplicable.

She spun in her chair., glancing up at the roof while she thought "Yeah, Zirconia's been corrupted and purified. Before. Most of the memories are pretty blurry and just cut in and out but... man Chaos messes with your head, you know? I remember that part. The not being able to think straight. And being so... um... angry doesn't seem like the right word..."

And then he had to bring up the aging thing. "Oh... yeah..." She stopped her chair and grimaced to the far left. "I try not to think about it." Vanity was all well and good, but it did make Zia wonder what she was going to be doing when she was in her thirties, or forties even. In the Black Moon verse it wasn't an issue, magic was common and a part of the landscape. Here? Not so much.

She cleared her throat. "Yeah, birthday next month. Twenty-four. Yay." She said with flat sarcasm.

Though something else was on her mind, and she promised she wasn't going to get into it, she was just going to choke out an apology and then everything was going to go back to being semi-normal. "You know, it drives me nuts when you make snide little comments about me being a slut." It might've come out of nowhere, but Zia had clearly been sitting on that since that night when everything blew up in front of Camelot.


Guine
Valhalla kept his mouth shut as she spoke, feeling like he'd already said enough. It was too depressing to think about how it must feel to watch your family and friends get older while you stayed the same. So she hadn't been aging... not really, not like she was supposed to. Where he had grown almost four inches in the past two years, she had remained practically the same as the day she became a cat.

But the moment she turned the conversation back to him, he winced, ducking his head in shame. He knew he was guilty and he wasn't going to deny it, although he felt the dying need to defend himself and his comments. It hadn't been to hurt her... it was just... a really sucky way of trying to be protective of her. He didn't want her with some sketchy guy.

"I..." he started, shifting uncomfortably where he stood, although feeling too guilty to look her in the eye. His temper had been way out of control that night. There had been so much tension and bitterness built up that... there had finally been a snapping point. Now? Although some of the bitterness still lingered, he angry in the least. In fact, he was still rather wary of the meeting.

"I don't think you're a slut," he admitted, although he was sure she knew that... hopefully. "I'm sorry, I just... I don't know what got into me."

No, he knew... he was jealous. He was jealous that some other guy was spending time with her when all he wanted was for her to acknowledge him from time to time. They used to be practically inseparable, and then college started and they saw less and less of each other... They were dragged into a war... and now they were just fighting to stay alive most of the time.

"I don't want to 'cure' you," he added, feeling the need to explain himself. "I just... if you were a knight... I don't know, I feel like it would stop you from doing something stupid and getting yourself killed... or worse..."

Because having one's starseed taken, or even corrupted without the chance of being saved... had to be worse, right? If anything, he was afraid Zia really would be lobotomized and Zirconia would be all that was left...


Zia ended up pursing her lips and becoming really interested in her sneakers, which had aged a remarkable amount in her few short weeks of diligent monster hunting.

She cleared her throat, weighing the various things that came to mind and whether or not she should say them. "He's just some stupid kid," She ended up mumbling. "Well it's because I mean... I... I feel like a walking hurricane and I'll screw up everyone who touches this mess," Which only made her cringe, thinking of Camelot. "I pushed everyone away and actually felt lonely and I know that's stupid and I hate myself, but... with him I just... I don't care. And I know that makes me a bad person, you just don't have to remind me." She she finally peeled her eyes off her shoes, they just glanced to the far left while she chewed on the inside of her mouth. "It's not like he's a victim, though, or anything. I mean the s**t he does to-- I mean he's just not." Yeah she didn't want to go into the humiliating disaster of 80% of her 'relationship'. But at the same time there was a gut gnawing guilt that she ditched all of her closest friends only to put her attention on the likes of Pascal Lalande. Who she actually was not entirely apathetic about but even she hadn't admitted that one to herself.

"I'm not going anywhere, though," She added, almost trying to swallow down the awkwardness of all those gross emotions she didn't want to get into. "No one tells me what to do," She said, a call back to their previous arguments. But with the addendum, "Not anymore. Not Ares, not Nehelenia, and not this stupid cat." And with almost determined purpose, got out of chair and stomped out of the storage structure, calling back to him, "Come on! We're not going to figure this knight thing out sitting around discussing our feelings like a bunch of girls."


Guine
His eyes narrowed slightly at what she was saying about this guy. He wanted to tell her that he didn't think she was a bad person at all, but saying how this guy 'did s**t' and who knew what, Valhalla had to do his best to keep himself from asking more questions that could potentially ruin the good thing they had going. It wasn't exactly like old times, but he supposed the old times had passed and he would have to learn how to live with what was happening now.

Zia was still his friend, and he would still want to be there to keep an eye on her when she could potentially put herself in danger. But now... he would just have to watch carefully and observe the situation before possibly beating the s**t out of this douche.

When she got up to leave, he started at her, and then sighed softly with the traces of a smile forming in her wake. She could have just given up the whole knight thing. He knew it was going to be difficult to force the awakening... hell, he wasn't even entirely sure how it worked, but... if they gave up, what good would that do?

"You are a girl," he called after her, not quite running, but making sure to keep her in sight. He glanced around the storage unit once more, taking in the sights with a small shake of his head, hoping that this place would help them in the end, and not give them all away to chaos.

Only time would tell.