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Tallulah was having a blast. When she heard Paris had no real plans for her birthday, she took it upon herself to change the situation for the better - so a few phone calls and one bout of begging her mother for use of the car later, here they were, shooting at cardboard aliens and other players in a dark room, bass pounding in their ears and lights flashing all around them.

She'd dressed more appropriately for the occasion than Paris, she thought, in an olive-green cardigan and a pair of dark-wash jeans, but the white laces and rubber on her converses glowed under the ultraviolet bulbs. It was a careless mistake, but not one worth beating herself up over - Tallulah knew what real battle was like, and it was nothing like this giggly maze, sensor pack thumping against her back as she ran through machine-generated fog.

"It's okay!" she called to Paris, aiming her gun through the darkness, squinting to make our the glowing target on a distant player's vest. "I didn't come to win, I just came to play!" Still, when she pulled the trigger, the vest blinked a hit. She spun on her heels and directed her gun towards the target that Paris had tried and failed to hit, taking that out as well.

"Your aim will be better if you hold the gun with both hands. It won't shake as much." Steadiness couldn't make up for the fact that the equipment was of the somewhat-old-and-finicky variety, but it could help. "We should get back to our base and see who we can take out on the way. Okay? Stay behind cover as much as you can."

It was a pity that her senshi abilities didn't make Tallulah any more graceful in her day-to-day life. She would have killed for even half of Europa's agility right now.

"No way!" Tallulah called to Paris through her laughter. "No one's a lost cause at laser tag!" At least, not the way she saw it - but then, she was playing for fun, where the points were made up and the rules didn't matter. Paris was playing that version, too, or at least her laughter made it sound that way. Tallulah was glad that her friend was having fun on her birthday - it was a nice break from their usual routine of school and patrol.

"If you do that, you'll completely tank your score - are you okay with that?" she asked, crouching behind a barrel painted radioactive orange to Paris's right. She definitely thought she could take out... a lot of people, given the right window of opportunity, but she couldn't ask Paris to lay down her quote-unquote life like that.

It was sort of weird that they were taking a day off from being actual literal alien soldiers to play fake alien war games instead, she thought. But it sure was fun!

"So this was a good idea, right?" she asked Paris, leaning around the barrel to shoot at an LED target. "I'm not totally crazy for dragging you to this?"

Paris's tactics certainly lacked for subtlety, Tallulah thought, fighting back a grin, but you couldn't say they didn't get the job done! Keeping low to the ground, she crept along, dodging between barrels as quickly as she could in hopes that Paris would keep their opponents distracted for as long as she could. Of course once she started shooting, the other team would realize it was a trap... So she only had one shot at this, basically.

"Steady," she hissed under her breath, like she'd seen so many television cops do. "Steady..."

She took the shot, and the nearest boy's vest lit up with the hit. Tallulah bit down a whoop of victory as his friends whirled around, looking for the hidden assailant. The sudden flurry of motion made her next shot all that much harder, but Tallulah took it and then dropped back into cover, clutching her gun to her chest, giggling breathlessly as the other team beat a hasty retreat.

"Holy crap," she said to Paris, standing up once she was sure the others had cleared the area. "This is the most fun I've had in weeks. Let's keep going. If you really think your pack's screwed up, we can switch it before the next match. And we should definitely get the whole group here. Make a day of it. Divide into two teams and the losers have to buy the winners ice cream or something."

After taking a moment to re-orient herself towards their team's base, she waved for Paris to follow her into a canyon of huge wooden crates. "Anyway," Tallulah called, changing the subject. "Let's keep moving. We're almost there."

"Christa was a few years behind me at Meadowview," said Tallulah thoughtfully, creeping along. "And I think Penelope's about the same age?" Penelope, especially, had always struck Tallulah as being particularly young. "And god, I'd be a completely awful person if I got Erika drunk. Express train to straight to hell, that kind of thing." Erika was young and innocent and Tallulah was not about to be the one to ruin that - and also, how irresponsible could she get?!

So yeah. No booze. Ice cream was definitely the way to go. Tallulah clapped carefully around her grip on her gun, applauding Paris's shooting. "Definitely improving," she appraised, eying the alien cutout as they hurried past it. It was scary, for sure, but also kind of cartoonish in a way that didn't really scare her. Tanzanite was definitely worse.

"Should be just up ahead, yeah," she added, following Paris, and sure enough, the path opened up to reveal their team's base.

"Okay," nodded Tallulah, ready to get back to business. "Time's running down. Let's hold the line until the timer runs down, and then we can decide what to do about our next game. I'll be over there. Find cover, and let's finish strong."

That said, Tallulah climbed up a set of crates - she assumed they were meant for climbing, given the carpeting on top - and crouched, watching the passage from which they'd come. She could hear footsteps approaching - this was exciting! Tallulah steadied her gun. "Come on," she whispered.

As the lights came on, Tallulah hopped down from her hiding place. She'd taken out two green packs in the final moments of the game, but one had been a distance snipe, so things hadn't gotten nearly as rough as she was maybe expecting them to. But then, most of the people playing laser tag were not magical superheroes with four years combat experience on the wicked streets of Destiny City.

"The next round won't start for fifteen minutes," she called, joining Paris on the way out of the arena. "Let's go see our scores and yeah, it is kind of warm in here," she agreed. Her shirt was sticking to her back a little. "Want to hit the snack bar for something to drink, while we wait for them to be posted?" If her scores were just in the top half, she'd be satisfied. It was probably silly to seek validation from laser tag, of all places, but, well, yeah.

A few moments later, icee in hand, Tallulah staked out a place for herself and Paris at one of the cafeteria tables and turned her attention to the score screens. "Alright, fingers crossed, let's see how we did," she said, tipping her cup to Paris."Cheers."

The scores flashed up on screen, and Tallulah scanned for her player code. "I'll take it," she said. She'd placed above the median, but she had a feeling that some of the guys in their round were here every weekend. "We were lucky to have some of the really heavy-hitters on our team, or we'd have been slaughtered."

The bottom half of the score table was mostly made up of names in green. Tallulah sipped from her icee. "How'd you do? Do you want to play another round, or should we sit out for a bit?"

Anything, Tallulah supposed, was better than dead last - and Paris hadn't exactly been taking things seriously, which wasn't a critique so much as an impartial observation. In all honesty, it was probably pretty healthy to not take laser tag too seriously; Tallulah had seen a couple of hard-core players hanging around, and they seemed a little bit, well, unstable.

Maybe she'd bring Paul back here sometime and see how he handled it. As, like, a test of character.

"Our pass says we can play until close," she said, checking her watch. Like Paris, she was surprised at how long they'd already been playing. She knew they'd played a few rounds, but... well, time had gotten away from her. "But I think that it's sort of late enough that we could skip out now and go get dinner and, like, cake? Please tell me your crazy ballerina diet lets you eat birthday cake." She was already drinking an icee, but Tallulah would rather avoid the hot food section of the snack bar if she could.

"I mean, if you're all played out," she added. Tallulah didn't want to cop to being tired, but she sort of was - she'd only been back in Destiny City for four months, and even with as much progress as she'd made, she wasn't tireless like she'd been before taking ill, and that was endlessly frustrating. But today was for Paris - and Tallulah would try her hardest to keep her energy up for her friend.

"But, like, if you don't want to leave yet, I'd eat one of those soft pretzels," she added, considering. Of everything on offer, it seemed like the thing least likely to be disgusting.

Italian could be super carb-y when you avoided meat as rigidly as Tallulah did, but the exchange was that she'd be able to find something to her tastes really easily. And with how many mornings a week she was hitting the pool (and she still hadn't figured out how patrol translated into exercise!), she supposed she didn't really need to worry about it. "Yes," said Tallulah, following Paris out onto the street. She was secretly glad that they were bowing out of the rest of the day's matches. "Italian sounds fantastic. Let's go there."

"I was never into staying out all night and causing trouble," confessed Tallulah. Pre-senshidom, she'd been a good kid. Mostly. "I mean, I snuck out a couple of times before I was officially involved, but I was shooting youtube videos of fights. Which is not, like, normal. By any standard." Tallulah at twenty-one thought Tallulah at sixteen was a total dweeb. "Of course, then I got the superhero bug and started sneaking out after bedtime and dating Hillworth boys and sleeping in class and ruining my flawless reputation."

It wasn't that she didn't still have friends who weren't senshi, it was just that she didn't see them nearly as often. It was easier to combine socializing and going on patrol, and taking nights off made her feel guilty as it was. "No, my normal friends are limited to study groups, and, well," she shrugged. Study partner kind of sold Paul short on a lot of levels - had they had this conversation? She couldn't remember.

"Did I tell you I've got a boyfriend now?" Tallulah said brightly. "His name's Paul. He's not involved in any of this and it's really nice to just get to be, you know, Tallulah, for once, instead of worrying about how whatever I'm saying or doing is going to reflect on Europa. With him, I just get to be a normal college girl and make up for all this stuff I feel like I would miss otherwise."

They'd been walking for a bit, and Tallulah jerked her thumb towards an awning further up the street. "Is that the place?" she asked. "Cold air really works up an appetite."