Welcome to Gaia! ::

The order signature had been stationary for a long time. Long enough that Megiddo started to fret that the source was injured and slowly fading, and she owed it to herself to go investigate. Fearing the worst, the squire bounded up to the roof, not sure what she'd do once she got there. Calling for backup with a signet ring was not exactly speedy...

What she found instead was something of a relief, if a very confusing one. Landing, Megiddo furrowed her brow as she surveyed the scene before her. "Good evening," she said to the white-haired senshi. "Is this, um - are you waiting for someone?"

A tea party, she thought. Really. Really?!

Gunn would either laugh her a** off or shake her head in dismay when Megiddo told her about this. Maybe both."Should I just be on my way?"

"Oh," said Megiddo, and she quickly scanned the area for chaos signatures, hoping this was not some trap laid by an allied senshi on the eve of her corruption. Finding nothing amiss, she took a seat at the table and accepted a teacup with her daintily-gloved hands. "Thank you," she said, staring at the tea. It was very purple. She bet it would stain her lips.

So, like, this was weird.

"Megiddo Squire of Saturn," she replied, and tried to recall who she'd met on Mars: had it been evenly mixed? Perhaps it had skewed female, even, and yet most of the knights she could recall by name were men. Well, there was Lyngvi. "We're an equal-opportunity band of crime fighters," she added.

The senshi's name sounded familiar, and Megiddo's hesitancy was replaced with a genuine smile as soon as she managed to place her. "You came to boot camp, didn't you?" she asked. "I'm Sailor Gunn's intern. I was working the sign-up table. How did you like it? You know, we're having another one this month. Will you be there?"

Megiddo was momentarily confused - how could anyone forget Gunn?! She was stunning. And it wasn't like Kaatje hadn't advertised her identity - but there had been a lot going on that day and she supposed she could forgive Mintaka for being forgetful. "Sailor Gunn was the redhead running the whole event," she said, and shook her head.

"No one's ever said anything to me about Saturn having a princess," she said. Granted, the only other Saturn knight she'd met thus far was Ys, but spastic as he was she was certain he would have said something to her. "Or a prince. And at any rate I'm not looking for her. I follow Sailor Gunn."

She was Megiddo's alpha and omega, her beginning and her end. Should Gunn say jump, Megiddo would say how high? and if the answer were out a window, well.

Megiddo would do it. Her glorious leader surely had a plan involving auto-defenestration.

She reached for a cookie. "Thanks for the snack," she said. "I think this month's meetup's going to run a bit differently, but Gunn hasn't given me the details yet. Stop by if you can, okay?" And then, trying to make small talk, she asked, "What do you think the hardest thing you've done as a senshi has been?"

"She's beautiful," Megiddo agreed, but all of Gunn's admirers could get in line. She was leading this fan club, and even if her affections were momentarily focused on Penthesilea, the eternal senshi of Wildfires was still number one in Megiddo's heart. "You should see her as a senshi. She's stunning."

Megiddo crunched into the cookie she'd taken, and used having her mouth full as an opportunity to compose her answer. "All this Saturn stuff is past life hocus pocus," she said, which was not really as eloquent as she should have managed to be. "I can make alliances with whoever I please. If Sailor Saturn exists, I've never seen her and she's never done anything for me." Gunn, on the other hand, had done lots for Megiddo. She'd given her a purpose where she had none. She'd taken her from silly child into polished huntress.

At hearing that Mintaka had been making nice with Negaversers, the squire nearly did a spit-take. Swallowing roughly, she objected, "You're not supposed to be learning from them." It was like, a ******** meme, or whatever. Sterling Archer's face and the caption, Do you want to be corrupted? Because that's how you get corrupted. "Do you not understand the concept of war."

Gunn, she decided, needed to have another round with this senshi. Because she was doing dumb s**t instead of her job.

"You're supposed to fight Chaos," she said. "You're supposed to kill them. Because when you don't kill them, they kill civilians, and that's bad for obvious reasons."

Tea parties in the middle of the night, she could chalk up to eccentricity. Going soft on the enemy? Not so much.

Gritting her teeth, Megiddo set her tea down as well. That was negaverse propaganda talking if she'd ever heard it, coupled with a dose of optimism and naïveté that needed to be extinguished, and the sooner, the better. "Chaos is evil, though," she said. "I've seen them murder civilians without a second thought. They steal energy. They prey on people who can't defend themselves. What part of that sounds good?"

"Destroying chaos isn't bad," she said indignantly. "It is wiping out a blight that holds the whole universe in its clutches." Megiddo hadn't absorbed much from her time on Olympus, but she understood the direness of their fight well enough - and she had no patience for those who would try to fraternize with the enemy.

She stood from the table. This, Megiddo appraised, was a waste of time. "So you'd rather just let them continue to kill?" she asked. "There is no compromise that can be struck with Chaos. No negotiation. They are all or nothing, and one day, if you do not fight back, they will either kill you, or they will make you join them, and they will steal everything you ever were from you."

Avalon had been a knight once, she remembered. Avalon had been a knight.

"One chaos operative killed is a hundred civilians saved," she said, clenching her shaking hands. "That's math. You would rather make friends with them? Learn from them?" Stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Megiddo rolled her eyes. Pretentious, pacifistic bullshit, she thought indignantly. "It's real easy for Chaos to overwhelm Order. They've done it before, and they will do it again if we don't all grow spines, stop trying to sing kumbaya and build daisy chains with the ******** enemy, and fight back," she said. Maybe she wasn't going to get through to Mintaka tonight - but she could sure as hell report back to Gunn about her foolhardy behavior.

"I hope your pacifism works out for you really well," continued Megiddo. "I hope that everyone is nice and you sit around the fire and make s'mores and gossip about boys. And when you're ready to come back from Girl Scout camp and do your job, Gunn and I will be waiting."

She thought about breaking the teacup, but that just seemed too cruel.

"This is not dollies, this is not a kindergarten, and I assure you that Ares and Leto and Zinkenite and Avalon do not want to learn from you. They don't want to be friends with you. They want to kill you. And I hope for your sake that they're not successful, but at this rate, who knows!"

Ugh, she thought, picking up her pitcher. "Night-night, sweetheart," she said. "I don't think we've got anything else to discuss."

She spun on her heels, and began to head off into the night.