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Once Virgo was walking on her own, Neso fell into an easy stride beside her, his mouth generally upturned but not smiling. Blue eyes strayed to Babylon once, then back to Elke. Bifrost had made it out with them, but had gone her own way. When the time was right, maybe the Senshi of Summer would run into her again! She seemed like a nice girl, and he did love protective women. Also, all women.

When Virgo became Elke, Neso blinked and became Bo, dressed a lot less charmingly than his fuku in a blue hoody, cargo shorts, and flip-flops. He touched at his stomach lightly when Elke mentioned it. "This old thing?" he said, gently rubbing circles across the taut muscles there. "Right as rain."

Then, a bit slowly: "You look great. What do you need?" He smiled, as if they were meeting up for coffee and were exchanging simple pleasantries.

She looked great? Well, she felt like s**t. She had wanted to--she wanted... She ran her hands over her hair, which was still sticky with sweat from the heat and trying to get away long enough to beat the s**t out of Persephone or get the s**t beat out of herself. The pink leather jacket that had seemed just right for the chilly late spring evening now seemed claustrophobic, and she pulled it off to expose bony shoulders. Bo wanted to know what she needed and everything she wanted to ask for was unreasonable. Instead, she offered the jacket to him and asked, "Could you hold this, please?"

What she wanted was brain surgery. Maybe a lobotomy, even. She would accept having never awakened as Sailor Virgo. She wasn't going to get any of that from Finn or Bo, though, so she resigned herself to dealing with everything with her mental faculties intact. "I need a drink," she said, because that certainly seemed like the closest she was going to get to forgetting the whole humiliating situation they'd just left.

Too bad Elke wasn't legal yet, by American standards. "I'm glad you two got out alright," she said, reaching out to take their hands into hers. "We should go eat something." Or, they should. She kind of just wanted to not be alone.

"Oh, uh," said Finn, who had almost completely forgotten being fifteen minutes late to the battle with Starbucks. "The coffee was for Gunn," he clarified sheepishly, but Gunn was unlikely to miss what she's never known was hers in the first place. Beer sounded good, just like food did - and Virgo's hand in his reassured him that their friendship was not over.

She was okay.

They were all okay.

"So, uh, power's back on," he observed, gesturing up to the street lights. That was a good sign if he'd ever seen one. "Dinner sounds like a great idea, though. And booze."

He shot Elke a wink. "I won't tell." He'd drunk with her before, and she could hold her liquor better than he could.

Bo glanced up to the lights when Finn indicated them. "Oh yeah," he said. It had only just occurred to him. Being inside the warehouse on fire had momentarily wiped his brain, apparently. Then, when Elke mentioned the two boys trying to get her drunk, he leaned in conspiratorially and echoed, "Oh yeah." He even gave her a little salute.

In no time at all, they made it to Killian's and to a corner table. Bo waved at a couple people who waved back, but it was unclear whether or not he actually knew them or was just being overly friendly. He took a seat beside Elke and had just dramatically unfurled his napkin when she was saying something about texts. "Texts? Me?" he said, glancing from Finn to Elke dramatically. "That doesn't sound anything like me. I am an excellent communicator." Then, after a breath: "In person. I know that I own a phone, but I do not, per se, know where that phone has been. It comes and it goes. I solemnly swear to locate it and text you until you beg me to stop post haste."

His track record was pretty godawful, to be honest. Bo could rarely be reached by phone anyway, didn't own a computer, and had a habit of not being at his apartment for days at a time. He was the kind of friend who was awesome when he was around you, but a ghost when he wasn't.

When Elke moved to introducing him to Finn, Bo welcomed the change of subject. "Ah, a fellow outdoor enthusiast," he said. "I like to hike the Sawmill Trail -- have you ever done beach camping? Beach camping is spectacular. Morning surfing, nighttime fire." Bo also did a lot of accidental camping, which happened when he was either too sleep or too drunk to make it back home and opted to sleep under the stars instead.

His life was not a glamorous one.

A waitress appeared, looking slightly surprised she had a table at all. "You guys got here fast after power came back," she said. "Some of the stuff isn't available -- oysters are all right, keep them on ice. But no, like, ice cream. Or whatever. Sauces we keep on heaters are still warming, that kind of thing." She reached into her apron and pulled out a pen. "Anyway, what'll you have?" The woman didn't actually take out paper to write it down on, just the pen. Weird.

Bo wasted no time in ordering two dozen oysters and a pitcher of the cheapest beer. "Your finest, cheapest ale," he said, giving her a wink, and then waited for Finn and Elke to place their own. There were laminated menus on the table, not that Bo had touched them. He apparently just assumed they would be ready to order when he was.

Sometimes Bo was a little worrying, she reflected. "If I got you a belt case, would you use it," she asked, but it wasn't really a serious question. She knew the answer already. If he even owned a belt, it would probably get left in his laundry, with his phone, and go right into the washing machine. If he did laundry, she thought, a little horrified but--well--there was a lot she could forgive for a Zodiac senshi. Even one that made her life a little impossible.

She listened to the camping and hiking discussion with a politely interested expression. Her idea of fun definitely did not involve sleeping on the ground, or in sleeping bags. She liked looking at art exhibits and movies, and--and going to the Surrounding and raking leaves, where 'raking leaves' meant 'keeping a lookout for monsters'. Did Bo ever do that? She considered her hands as the boys ordered, and then she said, "A salad, please," and the waitress asked about meat, and she shook her head and slid a little lower in her seat.

Elke ran her fingers through her hair, and tried to think of something to say. A lot had happened--one Negaverse general stabbing another, the stabbed general becoming a youma--and Elke was honestly still processing it. And she didn't want to talk about the whole ordeal with Persephone…

Except, yes, she did want to talk about something. The waitress came back around with their drinks and once she was gone, Elke said, "If either of you ever picks me up and carries me away from a battle without my permission again, I will skin you both. With my bare hands." And if she got a little teary, it was definitely only from secondhand embarrassment. "Are we clear?"

Finn would have loved to go straight into talking with Bo about Alaska, which was honestly his favorite topic ever and he missed the place like woah, but Elke's interjection was honestly a little bit more important. Well, okay, a lot. A lot more important. "Sorry, Elke," he said. "Just got a little freaked out back there. I won't do it again."

Bo, he thought, would be cute with Elke. Maybe they'd be good for each other.

He gave Elke a quick look, just to make sure they were okay, and then, with great ceremony, dug his phone out of his front pocket. "Do I ever," he said, grinning at Bo as he held the phone across the table. "I was at UA Fairbanks studying Wildlife Conservation. So these are some huskies at a kennel linked to our program, and this is a botanical garden on campus, and these here are all from a hiking trip I went on last fall before I came back to Destiny City."

He realized at that point that he'd pretty much forced Elke into the corner by leaning across her, and did his best to back off. "I'll show you more of these later," he said apologetically, sitting back. Setting his phone aside, he reached for one of the glasses of beer.

"To each others' continued survival," he suggested. There wasn't a whole lot you could feel optimistic about toasting after a night like the one they'd all had, and Finn would have felt odd suggesting the Zodiacs seeing as he wasn't a member.

With each picture, Bo had the same basic reaction: "All right, man!" or "Killer, killer..." A quiet awe fell over him, and he suddenly knew that Finn was here and would never forgot again (probably). "Definite raincheck," he whispered. Did he mean it? In his heart, yes. Would he remember? Probably would the next time he saw Finn, if that happened, which he hoped it would.

With his glass raised, Bo called out, "Here, here!" and clunked his beer into both of theirs, sloshing a bit of foam over the side. He tilted it to his lips, drained half the glass, and slammed it down on the table with equal festivity. "So, that," he said, leaning back in his chair, "was a thing. What was that, you think, a halfsies? It seemed like a halfsies being metamorphosed in front of us out of that angry German dude." The bar was pretty deserted and the one waitress (theirs) was sitting on a stool, eating what appeared to be her own dinner. "Trippy." He drank again, trying to picture the strange creature in his head but only really defining blobs of color.