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The hotel room hadn’t yet acquired the lived-in look Kaatje had half-expected, but that was okay, because she could throw herself on a neatly made bed and queue up the entire James Bond movie queue (starting with Craig) on On Demand. “Mm, yeah,” said Kaatje, as she organized her jellybeans by color on the comforter before her. “Except you forget it’s a six-to-four life, and I think in this case no one will challenge me if I explain my friend is going through a rough time so I’m spending my night in the city sometimes.” She shrugged. “Plus, we’re actually between big repairs, so as long as I let my boss know, she’s gonna let me come in a bit late.”

It was the military, not prison. She popped an orange jelly bean into her mouth, chewed, and said, “Oh my god, Eve is really hot. Like, she’s my favorite. Wait, no, hold on.” She smushed a hand against Tallulah’s hair, like that would make Tallulah actually hold all of her thoughts until they saw the guy she thought was more attractive. But, like, Tallulah had already sat through Kaatje’s impassioned, but somewhat tone-deaf, rendition of the theme songs of each Bond movie; and after this they were supposed to pass out for a few hours so Kaatje could get to work on time and not super exhausted.

Which, not really the biggest priority, but it was sort of a thing. “So, anyway,” said Kaatje, since none of her quote-unquote boyfriends were on screen, “I keep hearing this really disturbing rumor about some White Moon senshi getting together with the Negaverse. You know anything about it?”

“They got together with the Negaverse to defeat the DMC,” prompted Kaatje, with an eyeroll to show exactly what she thought of that concept. She smushed a jellybean between two fingers, took it into two pieces, and smushed it together with another jellybean which had been subjected to the same inhumane treatment. “I heard it was called White Phoenix or something? God, I thought you were more jacked in to the White Moon gossip network than I was.”

Kaatje sighed. So much for her grand idea, although actually, Tallulah sure did sound like she knew more than she was letting on. The part of Kaatje that was Tallulah’s friend wanted to let it go because she was a nice person and a good friend and Tallulah was having a pretty shitty week. The part of Kaatje that wanted the eternal end of the Negaverse, the Dark Moon Court, and Chaos entirely was bigger, though, and it pushed her to ask things she wouldn’t otherwise: “I hadn’t heard it’d actually happened yet,” she said. “Had more of an inkling. There was a huge conflagration of Chaos a few nights ago, but I was on a midnight EC shift so of course I didn’t get to investigate.”

Not like she would have, not alone. And right now, she was pretty much alone; there was Tallulah and Megiddo but both of them were essentially useless because while Keren was on her way to being able to do what must be done, the more powerful one was Tallulah, and afflicted with the wrong sorts of moral standards. “So why don’t you want to talk about it? Had a friend there or something?” Because why should she suspect Tallulah of doing something so harebrained?

Kaatje paused the movie, because, what the ********? What the ********. “Okay, are you… like… suicidal or something? Tallulah.” Joining up with the Negaverse for any reason, any at all, even temporarily, even without corruption, was a stupid idea. The worst idea. The kind of idea you need an intervention for. If it was any dumber, she would probably vomit from sheer proximity to stupid.

She took a deep breath. “I’m not lecturing. I’m concerned. Why would you do that?”

Kaatje took a deep breath. She could get pissed about it as a matter of course, as a matter of Europa, you kill one person and you think you have the spine to kill a second? That’d help nothing. She’d learned to talk herself through knee-jerk rage at the stupidity of others in tech school, and she wasn’t going to stop doing that just because this war wasn’t supported by her government. Two years ago, she’d sworn to herself that she would protect and defend the citizens of her nation, and that was what she was trying to do. Alienating Europa wouldn’t help.

She put her face in her hands. “Of course it went to hell, it was the ******** Negaverse. It didn’t occur to you that it could have been a trap? That once you and the other White Moon morons were there, you’d be outnumbered and outmatched? Senshi aren’t as strong or fast as Negaversers. That’s just fact. Like, this looks like a death wish, I don’t care who you had the opportunity to kill. It was stupid, Tallulah. I thought better of you.”

“Don’t pull this self-pitying crap on me,” said Kaatje, who was no longer in the mood for James Bond, but didn’t really have recourse to something else to do in this case; she hit play on the movie, and with a great deal less satisfaction than previously, watched James Bond fumble around being incompetent. He isn’t even checking his corners, she thought, eyes narrowed into little more than slits.

Then she heaved a loud sigh. “You’re not a bad senshi,” said Kaatje. “You’re just not trained like you should’ve been. That... thing... had trap written all over it. And, like, did you actually see any of the Negaversers get punished? How do you know any rescue wasn’t pre-arranged?--How do you know any quote-unquote thwartings weren’t, either?”

On the screen, M was reciting ‘Invictus’. “I don’t want you to die.” It sounded stupid and vulnerable. “Next time you get a death wish, at least try to get in contact with me.”