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 Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:50 am
She was anxious these days, knowing that at any moment, the call from Wolframite could come. Europa had no hand in determining the timetable for the attack - but when the gates of hell were opened, she would be there as soon as she could. In the meantime, she owed it to herself to continue working her way back into peak condition. Leto would be ready to fight, whether or not Europa was, and she would be ready to fight as a princess. Even teamed with Wolframite, they faced steep odds, and she wanted to even those as best she could.
She’d picked this youma to track because it looked like one she could handle on her own. It would be a challenge, sure, but if she was doing the real-life equivalent of level grinding then she didn’t want to waste her time on something too easy. And that was precisely how she’d wound up dashing around on the DCU campus in the middle of the night, following a lion with snakes for a mane. Because, seriously, who even came up with these things?
Rounding onto the quad, she spotted a lone civilian in the distance, minding his own business. So, of course, that was what the youma made a break for. “Damn,” Europa cursed lightly under her breath, kicking into a sprint. She flung a hand out ahead of her, locking onto the beast. “Europa Deep Ocean Pressure!” she yelled, stopping it in its tracks. The youma strained against the attack, letting out a sibilant roar, and she dashed to catch up to it.
At which point she realized that the civilian in question was Paul. Europa locked eyes with him for long enough for her mind to go totally blank in shock. And then, realizing that the lion she was currently kicking the flank of was totally going to come back to full force in like, five seconds, she shouted. “Get out of here if you want to live! Go! Now!”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:50 am
Paul was done with his studying. Like, seriously, done. And so glad that he only had a few more months left in med school before he could get going to a Destiny City Memorial residency, and when that was over, he could just be a doctor and actually do something useful in his off hours. More useful than classes and dating Tallulah, who was beautiful and perfect but also sort of the extent of his social circle right now, what with his disconnect from his fellows in Chaos, his missing ex, his generally full academic life…
Speaking of fellows in Chaos… He felt the youma before he saw it, a prickling of the fine hairs on the back of his neck. His henshin pen was in his hand before he was fully conscious of reaching for it in his bag of textbooks--but then a White Moon senshi rounded the corner after the weird lion-medusa creature. He dropped it back into its pocket, held up both hands and, well, froze. Fight or flight and it was the youma that aroused the desire to fight, and the senshi that made him completely incapable of doing either. To henshin now would mean he could teleport away. It would also mean that she would know who he was.
The lion-medusa was, comparatively, less of a threat. He met the eyes of the lion head, and it slowed its charge. Not quite to a stop, but it wasn’t running. It was just… walking. Towards Paul. And he wasn’t really that worried about that anymore. The senshi, though? Big problem.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:52 am
Europa had been expecting the youma to spring forward as soon as her attack lifted, so to see it walking - calmly - towards Paul was exceedingly, well, weird. “What are you doing?” she demanded, not sure whether to be confused, scared, or both. “Get out of here!” But the urgency of the situation had evaporated, now that the youma had fallen into this trancelike state. She wasn’t sure what she should do at this point - obviously, it needed to be destroyed, and Paul needed to be persuaded to get out of here, or she would in all likelihood have one very dead boyfriend - but there was no telling how long the youma’s trance would last, or if she would break it should she strike it again.
She was going to have to take her chances, because the medusa-lion-thing was getting closer and closer to Paul, and she really did not know what it was going to do if it actually reached him. So, taking a running charge, Europa plowed into the youma from the side, punting it several meters across the quad. This did the trick, to the extent that the youma, now visibly limping, got to its feet and charged towards Europa, fangs bared and mane hissing an awful racket.
“Run!” she called over her shoulder to Paul, before squaring her shoulders to the youma. She had very few options here, and throwing her eternal attack at it to see if it was smart enough to feel anything seemed like as good a bet as any. Europa flung a hand towards the advancing lion. “Europa deep ocean terror!” she shouted, and dove out of the beast’s path. It rounded neatly, changing directions to chase her. She wasn’t sure if the attack had done anything - until she noticed that the snake heads were now biting the youma’s lion face and body. Europa grinned to herself, feeling clever.
It did not look like it liked the sting of its own venom, that was for sure.
But it kept coming.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:52 am
Paul didn’t exactly know what to do as a spectator. He’d confirmed that the rumors were true and a youma wouldn’t attack even a civilian Negaverser if it was just given a minute to process what it was looking at--he wondered the same principle would work for the Dark Moon Court--but he was worried that he would do something wrong and peg himself as not a civilian. He took a few steps back, as if he were thinking of running, but then--would running make him look suspicious? It really depended on the kind of senshi trying to… kill the youma…
He hissed out a breath through his teeth and finally decided to tuck himself into the little alley between the medical sciences building and the student resource center. It was, like, four steps away, which was reasonable for a freaked-out civilian, judging by his memories of freaking out civilians. Close enough that no senshi would have a reason to be suspicious of his sudden agility. Far enough that he could duck into some shadows and henshin if it turned out the senshi was a threat to him personally.
God, being a civilian sucked.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:53 am
“Are you kidding me?” she demanded, seeing Paul take cover between the buildings. She’d told him to run. How could someone so smart be so unbelievably dense? Well, she thought, looking back to the youma, at least he was out of the way. She could keep the youma out of the alley easily enough, and ten seconds was all the time she had to make sure her boyfriend was safe before she needed to get back to kicking the crap out of this thing.
The youma seemed like it was coming out of the effects of her attack, walking a bit straighter and rounding on her again. Europa raised her hands, considering how to take this on. She didn’t want to get her bare arms near that neck, or she’d get bit by the snakes. But she needed to get it down, and break the neck somehow. Looks like her initial tactic of using her feet was about right on. Pity she was running low on magic.
“You’re going down,” she declared, charging at the oncoming youma. Flanking it, she knocked it to the ground with a bump of her hips. She planted one foot on the youma’s ribs, the other on its face, to keep the mouth pinned. She stomped with the foot on the ribs, feeling them give way beneath her heels. That seemed to be the winning strategy, and even though the snakes snapped at her ankles, she brought her foot down on the youma’s ribs again and again, feeling it struggle less and less with each impact.
Finally, the youma disintegrated beneath her, and Europa made her way towards the alley where Paul had taken cover. She found herself limping - her ankles stung where the youma’s teeth had pierced her boots, but she hoped the venom wasn’t anything too serious - for the moment she felt okay, and she didn’t think she’d ever heard of anyone dying from mild doses of youma venom.
“Hey,” she called, reminding herself not to address him by name. Paul and Europa had never met. “Are you still back there? Are you okay?”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:57 am
The youma wasn’t going to hurt him, he reminded himself as the lion thing shrieked. If it got past the senshi, he would just henshin up and teleport away--he wasn’t going to risk his mother suffering the same fate as his sister, or he’d end up raising his brother, and he couldn’t handle that and med school even on the family funds. It was a matter of time, not a matter of desire.
He realized the screaming-hiss-noise of the dying youma had stopped, and he exhaled slowly. Perhaps the senshi would leave now, but waiting an extra minute or two to make sure would definitely not go amiss. Except the senshi, apparently, wasn’t done with him. He looked up at the senshi at the end of the alleyway, wondered if he should answer and eventually decided, “Yes?” But she came closer and then he recognized her. He had fought her twice now, as Spinel, and though she presumably had no way to know it, he wanted to flee anyway. “I’d like it if you stopped there, please,” he said, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray his worry and fear at this new development. Or that if it did, she’d take it as usual civilian skittishness.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:58 am
He was afraid of her, Europa realized sadly, halting in her approach. Of course he was - between local media painting senshi as bloodthirsty terrorists, and what she’d just done to the youma, was there ever any chance he wouldn’t be? “Okay,” she said, nodding. This was a reasonable request. “I won’t come any closer. I’m stopping here, see?” And she realized that here was pretty effectively blocking the alley, so she said, “I’m going to back up, okay?” and stepped back and to the side, so that he could leave if he wanted to. You’re not Tallulah right now, she reminded herself. You can’t take any of what he does personally.
“Are you okay?” she asked Paul, even though she knew - he must be. She’d kept the youma away from him, and it hadn’t seemed like it ever planned to attack him, truth be told Which was - well, it was weird, and she was going to leave it at that, because there were lots of reasons a youma could have decided to behave oddly, and none of them were worth freaking out over. The beast was dead. It couldn’t harm either of them now.
Her ankles stung.
“You shouldn’t walk around alone in the middle of the night,” she cautioned him. “It makes you an easy target for monsters - or worse.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:58 am
She listened, which was weird, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Confused, probably. Confused and a little heartened that maybe he wouldn’t have to go all out and rip out someone’s starseed this evening--as if he could, because this was an Eternal and he was just a Super. But then, she was probably already weakened from fighting the youma. He could see the way she limped. I could take you, he thought, and he carefully did not say it aloud, because if he said that then she would know there was something wrong here.
Paul got to his feet, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m not sure I see how else I’m meant to go home,” he said, which sounded whiny and really kind of bratty, but it was the pertinent issue here: he was a med student. He was not always going to get to go home during the daylight hours, especially not now, in his second year of studies. “My last lab gets out at nine, ma’am. I can’t exactly spend the night on school grounds. And walking with another person isn’t going to protect me from one of you or… whatever that thing was.”
He frowned. “What was that thing?”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:00 am
Europa frowned. She’d avoided talking about Destiny City’s peculiar nightlife with Paul on the grounds that Tallulah was an ordinary civilian to him, and ordinary civilians didn’t obsess over mysterious crime fighters in Sailor Suits, but it sounded like he’d been buying too much into the local news’s take on things. Again, she wondered: how could someone so smart be so dense? “You don’t need protecting from people like me,” she said carefully. “White moon senshi and knights are here to help. We’re working for the safety of the public. It’s the negaverse and the dark mirror who prey on civilians. They’re trouble. But, you know, easy mistake. We’re all wackjobs with superpowers according to the eleven-o’clock news.”
Which was her trying her damnedest to be casual about this, the way she would be with any other civilian who she wasn’t dating.
“That thing was - we call them youma. They’re creatures formed out of - in our jargon, it’s called chaos. Evil energy, basically. They’re not smart. They get out, they cause trouble, we have to get rid of them before they hurt anyone. The usual superhero nine-to-five,” she shrugged. It was not an eloquent description, but then, Europa didn’t really understand what youma were. Not in full. She’d have to look into that - later.
“Are you taking the bus?” she asked. “I can’t really advise you on what to do every other night, but I could escort you, make sure you get there okay. If you wanted.” He seemed sort of anxious around her, which she honestly couldn’t hold against him, because it wasn’t like she made a career out of interacting with civilians while suited up and she was pretty sure most of the town had been told something ridiculous about her line of work. But honestly, honestly, she liked Paul enough that she hoped she could get him past that bullshit.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:00 am
She said he didn’t need to be protected from her, and he remembered the Blood Moon Court. Maybe Europa had never been a part of it, but he knew there were vicious, savage White Moon senshi who wouldn’t pause to help a civilian if they needed it--he knew that there were White Moon senshi who prioritized the destruction of the Negaverse above all, or abused their powers for the fact that they had them… although it was true that he didn’t know anyone of the White Moon who actually willfully killed civilians…
You know, like he had.
“Even if you’re right, and you really aren’t a danger to me, I don’t know that I can trust every… white moon?... senshi to be like you,” he pointed out. “And people with power will always find ways to abuse it. That’s how it works.” Or that’s what he had to keep telling himself. “Thanks for getting rid of that… monster thing, anyway.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:02 am
Well, he had a fair point. After all, the blood moon court had been part of the white moon before it went to s**t, and they’d been as dangerous as they came. She shouldn’t put her desire for Paul to like her in whatever form she took over his own personal safety, but - s**t, she was getting confused. “Take whatever steps you think are prudent to protect yourself,” she conceded. “I would feel better if you would allow me to escort you somewhere, but honestly, that’s up to you.”
Paul was a full-grown adult man, and a rather tall one at that, she assured herself. He was well protected from any non-supernatural danger, and the chances of him encountering two youma in the course of one night was simply abysmal.
“As for the youma,” she added, “There’s no need to thank me. It’s just part of my job.” Although the thanks was nice.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:02 am
He shook his head. “I don’t want you to know where I live. Like I said, I’m grateful, but I don’t know your kind and I don’t know that I can trust all of you and I don’t know who you’ll tell.” Those were all reasonable reasons. That and he didn’t want to take the risk of her checking up on him and seeing him become Spinel or vice-versa.
And then he sort of. Looked at her. And waited for her to go away, so he could go home.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:02 am
“A fair enough concern,” sighed Europa, finally, as ironic as it was that Paul was worried about her knowing where he lived. As Tallulah, she’d seen practically every room of his house. “Have a good night. Take care of yourself.”
With a quick wave of her fingers, she hurried off into the dark, and from the roof of the languages building, watched him turn to leave. Once she was sure he was no longer watching, she trailed him.
Because, seriously, he was so smart, but he was so dense.
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