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Megiddo had been practicing as best she could in preparation for her next sparring match with Eternal Sailor Gunn. After all, she was finally taking this knight thing seriously, and she wanted her hard work to show! Maybe she hadn’t gone out and killed anyone, but she’d like, hit a negaverser or two in the face and dusted some seriously wicked youma and like, that counted for stuff, right?

Like, okay, she’d had help with the youma, but whatever.

She showed up at the Times Center fountain at nine PM sharp, ready to spar, and didn’t see Gunn. Could she have forgotten? Megiddo fretted, worrying that she’d been stood up. Had Gunn decided that Megiddo wasn’t worth her time? But that - that would be awful, Gunn was flawless and incredible and Megiddo didn’t even want to fathom what being rejected by her would do to her self worth.

So she was going to wait, the page decided, and then wondered - should she pace? No. She’d look impatient. Sit on the edge of the fountain? No. Lazy. “Augh,” said Megiddo.

In the distance, a set of church bells started to ring out the time. “Huh,” said Megiddo. Maybe she’d been a bit off about what time it was.

Megiddo eventually sat down, because her shoes were more sensible than some of the getups she’d seen but they still started to hurt after a while. It occurred to her, once or twice, that she should go home or go patrol like a normal person instead of sitting in the dark like a crazy a*****e stalker, but she didn’t know what she’d do if she missed Gunn! She’d been looking forward to tonight for weeks! Counting down and preparing! So no, she wasn’t going to go home, because <******** that.

So, like, it was totally worth it, because a bit after ten, Gunn appeared out of the darkness. “I’ll give it to you!” offered the page, maybe a bit too quickly, and hopped to her feet. Gunn, she’d discerned, worked in some kind of military profession, and Megiddo hated to be caught slacking on the job - she had a sort of hazy grasp of how military people worked, and that included that even looking lazy was a crime. “I mean. It’s fine. Work comes first.”

“I’ve really been practicing,” said Megiddo, twisting her signet ring around her finger. “I fought a few negaversers but one of them, this knight showed up and stopped us and screamed at the kid for a while and then sent me home, but I was totally gonna kill him if he hadn’t shown up. The other one, a captain showed up and Lyngvi and I had to scramble, but we saved the girl.” She purposely omitted the dead homeless man that Zippetite left in his wake. “And I dusted some really tough youma. And I went to my Wonder on Saturn! I got this!”

She held out her right hand, trying to show off the purple-hued metal ring on her ring finger, emblazoned with a Saturnian sigil inside a pitcher. “I don’t know what it does, but it was at my Wonder and I figured I was supposed to take it. So, uh, what have you been doing?”

“Something in the military?” Megiddo guessed. Destiny City was convenient to a few major bases, so it wasn’t unheard of, and she thought it fit Gunn’s demeanor. There had been IDF soldiers stationed on the kibbutz where she’d stayed with her cousins, and the redheaded senshi reminded her of them in a way. They spoke similarly, despite the language gap. They had the same posture. “You hold yourself like some soldiers I know.”

She knew she’d been sort of silly to expect Gunn to know if the ring did anything. After all, this was a senshi who hadn’t even known what a knight was when they’d first met. But Megiddo liked to give her mentor the benefit of the doubt, since she was so knowledgeable about practically everything else. So she smiled and pulled her hand back, balling her hands into fists the way she’d been shown and planting her feet shoulder-width apart and slightly staggered.

“I’ve been practicing,” she assured Gunn, throwing a punch into the air. “See?” She’d watched a lot of videos online about form and technique, and tried her hardest to match that first lesson and the senshi’s perfect fists. (Perfect everything, really.)

Faint praise was better than none, and to Megiddo, fairly decent for a beginner was as good as great. “Okay,” she said, although she didn’t really expect Gunn to just let her punch her. There was going to be a trick, right? Like, she was about to wind up flat on her a**, right?

Well, Megiddo supposed she could live with flat on her a** if Gunn was the one to put her there. “Okay,” she repeated, revving up. It was such an odd request. Give me your best shot! Like she was just going to stand there. No. This was a really great way to get a broken wrist, fighting a living goddess incarnate with military training.

Which was really, honestly, probably overthinking things.

Megiddo gritted her teeth, checked her grip one more time, and swung.

She really should have seen that coming, because she’d expected it and still been stupid enough to let Gunn goad her into throwing the punch. Or - it was part of the lesson, this is how you take someone down, but… Megiddo grunted, feeling her knees burn as they hit the ground. Skinned for sure, she thought, but that was what the bottle of hydrogen peroxide under her bathroom counter was for and she could deal with it later. She gritted her teeth and tried to struggle against Gunn’s hold, but no good - there was no overcoming someone with actual, professional combat training who, for all she knew, was a terrorist-fighting commando for a living.

“Uncle,” she said, gritting her teeth. She didn’t want to look weak, but she knew what was expected of her. And she wanted Gunn to be pleased with her. More than anything, Megiddo craved Gunn’s approval.

Megiddo opened her mouth to beg, and then she stopped, because Gunn interrupted herself. Did Megiddo think this was a game? Well, she’d seen a kid no older than herself kill a homeless man in cold blood, and fought multiple officers who were more than a little bit horrifying and rapey, so, uh, no. And, for the record, she thought stubbornly, she’d also looked Ares - AKA death herself - in the face and was passed over, and she’d been held captive by Sailor Lesath all before awakening.

“I was on the Surrounding,” she told Gunn, sucking in a deep breath and straightening her spine. “I was one of the civilians stuck there. I almost died more times than I can count and I never did. I’ve been face to face with Ares and seen her turn someone into one of her nightmare senshi drones before my very eyes. I don’t think this is a game. I think this is dead serious and that if we don’t beat them, we’re all going to wind up dead with our hearts ripped out, Ma’am.”

Which, for the record, she thought was a nice touch. Even if she was probably applying it completely wrong.

“So can I please get up,” she said, pressing against Gunn’s grasp. “Because I understand that I have a lot to learn, and I want to spend tonight doing that and not on the ground.” Although, she thought, if Gunn wanted to hold her down later, she totally could.

Megiddo got to her feet, and she didn’t even bother looking at her knees because she knew that they would be bleeding whether or not she actually checked, and looking down seemed like a horribly prissy and distracted thing to do right at this moment. “Alright,” she said, nodding as she raised her fists again. How had that block Gunn had used on her worked? She tried to replay the motion. She did not want to fall into it again.

Clearly, Megiddo thought, whatever petty traumas she thought she’d been through since finding out that holy crap, space terrorists are a thing??? were child’s play to Gunn. The senshi was cool. Tough. She’d been through s**t that Megiddo couldn’t even imagine, Megiddo imagined. And that made her a perfect mentor. A perfect everything. All Megiddo could hope was that someday, she would be as cool and as strong and as tough as Eternal Sailor Gunn. And, like, barring that, she wanted to come in second behind Gunn in whatever contest it was that determined who was the coolest and strongest and toughest.

She swung another punch, trying to keep the movement powerful but also loose, so that if Gunn tried that block again, she could maybe avoid it in time. Because breaking her arm sounded like a really awful way to end the evening.

Megiddo hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from her chest, which honestly, she remembered Gunn doing last time they sparred and should have expected. Flat, like this, with Gunn beside her, she was totally vulnerable, and she knew Gunn wouldn’t just leave it like that - the senshi aimed to teach, not to kill, but her lessons left the most exquisite bruises and she didn’t stop until she made her point.

Megiddo sucked air in through her teeth, never mind that it hurt like a ********, and forced herself to roll away from Gunn’s oncoming foot and to climb back to her feet. She bit back a curse - Gunn would not appreciate any grunting, swearing, or panting, she expected. After all, they weren’t even going that hard.

Well it’s a good thing that all the negaversers I’ve fought until now have been absolutely incompetent, thought Megiddo, but she didn’t say it - Gunn might give sass, she realized, but trying to dish back only annoyed her, and that was the last thing Megiddo wanted to do. She was indebted to the senshi for gracing her with her presence. If she carried on like a brat, Gunn would leave. And that would suck.

She took a quick step back to get her bearings, and raised her fists. She threw another punch.