Katie, who's slept through the night without any alarming incidents springing up, was still sleeping. At least Jack thought she was.
Katie was no stranger to waking up in someone else's bed. That being said, the pounding headache and rumbly stomach were two bedfellows she could have done without, and with a groan she turned to one side, wiping at her bleary eyes. Yawning, she started to make sense of the area around her, stretched and made sure she still had all her fingers and toes, and then she shuffled her way up to seated, her bun half-made and wilting to one side of her head. She licked her lips, rubbed at her nose, and as her vision slowly came into sleepy focus she realized she wasn't alone in the room, and might have jumped if she hadn't felt one sudden movement away from vomiting.
"Oh, hey Jack," Katie yawned, this time having the sense to cover her mouth with company present. "You, uhh, sleep easy?"
The groan was enough to make Jack smile as she half turned in her seat to watch Katie extract herself from the blankets far enough to sit up. She looked rough, which to be fair was exactly how Jack expected get to look after the night they'd had and the concoction she'd ingested.
Chin cradled in her palm, the brunette have a little half shrug. "I fell right to sleep after I was sure you weren't going to just randomly stop breathing." Which was half the reason she'd insisted on bringing Katie home with her. "We didn't get back until really late, though." A sudden yawn elongated the vowels at the end, and she lifted her free hand to cover her mouth.
"You?"
"Stop breathing? Nahhhh, that ain't me," Katie drawled, rubbing at her eyes. She looked down at herself, still rocking her pizza t-shirt and jeans from the night before, but somewhere along the way she'd had the presence of mind to take off her shoes before passing out on Jack's furniture. She kicked her heels on the side of the bed, trying to shake her head awake. "I don't know what was sleeping and what wasn't...were we...at a hospital?" Katie yawned. "Why were we at a hospital?"
Another small smile, bemused. I was there to see about a lingering headache after a concussion a few weeks back." Which reminded her of the pills sitting on the desk. She reached over and scooped them up so she could take them with a careful drink of coffee. "You were there because you'd apparently been mixing red bull and Benadryl at alarming volumes."
Jack concentrated on the swirling of her coffee in the mug. "A senshi's brought you in. The Negaverse controlled the hospital, they started hurting people. A fight broke out."
She looked up then to meet Katie's gaze. "Do you want some coffee?"
"The boy scout," Katie murmured, somewhat reverent while she rubbed at her head. "Yeah, I do remember that...I uhh...don't worry about that. It was a one time thing. Sorry to...get you mixed up in it and everything." The more she thought back, the more hazy memories came to her, including a bit about retching and possibly crying in Jack's car. Katie really hoped that part was just a dream.
Still, Katie's head perked up when she heard the word coffee, eyes brightening from the bags beneath them at the sight of Jack's mug. "I mean...yeah, if you're offering," she replied, starting to stand--and then with her head starting to spin, she sat back down, closing her eyes with a groan. "Actually, water probably first. Then bean juice."
"Yeah, him. And good. I was really worried about you." The smile slipped into something more stern, subset eyes narrowing on the taller girl before she leaned over to open a mini fridge beside the desk. "I can make you breakfast, too. After you're a little more...alive."
She pulled out a bottle of water and passed it over. "You also, uh. Threw your phone at a door and it sort of exploded." It was said apologetically, with a slight wince.
Katie nodded gratefully, twisting the cap and tossing back her head to drink half of the water bottle in a couple of swigs. Her eyes widened when Jack mentioned her phone, and one hand shot to her pants pockets, feeling no thin rectangle at her hip. Slowly, that little detail came back to her as well, and she groaned, capping her bottle so she could hang her head. "Fuuuuuuuuck, my aunt is going to be pissed," Katie murmured, trying to inject a little laugh in her voice but failing. "RIP my Christmas money this year."
"Ye-eah..." A broken phone was no laughing matter, for sure. You could get cheap ones, but they didn't last long, and they were slow, and the cameras, ugh. No, a phone worth having was one that cost a pretty penny. "You know, I might have my old one from before I replaced it last year. I can look for it later, if you wanted to borrow it?"
"Nahhhhh," Katie shrugged, sipping away at her water. "I'm sure I can pick one up on the fly, or my Aunt will have it covered. She's just going to be pissed is all." Scratching at the back of her head, Katie continued to run her mind over the foggy details of the evening, and eventually came to a conclusion that had her puzzled.
"You said it was a Negaverse thing," Katie pondered, crinkling the soft plastic of the bottle in her hands. "Not like...a gang thing. Or a terrorist thing. A Negaverse thing. What's that about?" Certain news reports referenced the factions by name, but more often their activities were swept under the rug of general crime and peace disturbance, which led Katie to believe that she'd somehow said something in the middle of her drunken stupor. She couldn't quite remember if she'd spilled the beans or not on the whole magic thing, but if she did she'd have a lot of explaining to do. After all, it wasn't every day that she outed herself as a magical ballroom dancer to an old classmate.
Well, the offer had been made should Katie change her mind. Jack nodded as she lifted her mug again for another drink of her coffee. It was pale, heavy on the peppermint mocha creamer, and it tasted wonderful.
She flicked her gaze up again at the question, searching the other girl's face. "Well it was, wasn't it? Terrorizing people, trying to steal energy. They attacked us in the waiting room. One of them dressed like a nurse hit a girl with her clipboard." Dark features pinched at the memory, distaste and anger rising to the surface before she took another drink.
"Well yeah, it was ugly stuff," Katie conceded, stretching out across the bed with her chin nestled in one hand. "All sorts of haunted house spooky stuff. But how do we know it's a Negaverse thing and not just like...normal government bullshit?" Normally Katie was the first to jump on wild and crazy crackpot theories, but now she seemed skeptical, reticent even. In truth, she was trying to get a feel on what Jack knew about the Negaverse and its youma, how much she'd been exposed to the secret double lives of Destiny City. She waited for a response, eyes intent.
Meeting Katie's eyes, Jack gave an easy, possibly revealing answer. "I've seen them before." Her fingers tapped in the side of her mug. "You seemed pretty certain they were Negaverse last night, too." This was where the conversation had the potential to be dangerous. "Mentioned glitter, and taking care of them."
Oh boy. Ohhhhh boy. Well. Drunk Katie said what sober Katie thought, and drunk Katie was an idiot sometimes. "Haha...haaaa, yeah, I mean, I get a little combative when I've had a few, and I say some stuff..." She trailed off, looking deep into Jack's eyes. Considered the odds. And then, biting the inside of her cheek, she held one of her palms up, where out of nowhere a handheld ball appeared, marked by a six pointed star.
"Buuuuuuuut I might know a thing or two about the Negaverse," she conceded, watching Jack's face for a reaction. "Sometimes they come at me. When I uhh. Work a night job. So I see them around sometimes."
A dark brow arched as Katie began to speak but as she continued, holding her hand out to summon a ball from nowhere the girl just nodded, drawing in a breath and letting it go. She didn't look startled by the sudden appearance, or even surprised. I thought so.. Last night, on the drive home she'd had such a strong feeling about it, and they'd just seemed to dance around truth without actually stating it.
A finger was held up, and Jack set her mug down and turned back to her desk so she could open one of the drawers. From within it she drew out a long, rosy pink pen with a golden symbol topping the cap. She held it up so Katie could see it. "Me too."
Katie's eyes widened into saucers, looking at the artifact. She'd always known deep down that the other people she met as Chauvet had to be like her, with normal lives and jobs and families, but she never would have suspected someone else to be so close. Leaning forward, she took careful observation of the pen presented to her, tilting her head. It didn't look like any knight weapon she'd seen, both more ornate and fragile than the sturdy little ball she chucked at monsters and crazy corrupts. "...Huh. Well how bout that."
"It's a henshin pen," she informed, a flicker of a smile tugging at her lips as she watched Katie lean in closer to get a better look at it. "I'm a senshi. My powered name is Phoebe, it's a moon of Saturn." She'd looked it up. "And my, um...my magic is euphoria. It's not crazy helpful, at least I don't think so. I throw glittering dust in peoples faces and it distracts them. Hopefully distracts them." At that she shrugged. She'd only used it a couple of times, and honestly she didn't know how her magic worked. Not really.
"A senshi?" Katie's eyebrows raised--she'd seen more of the cracked ones than anyone fighting the youma, though she had a hard time picturing Jack looking like porcelain. "...Can't be any worse than a ball," she offered, rolling her weapon in her hand before she offered it to the space between them, an invitation to inspect and touch. "Because I'm a page, and this--this is it. Except for, you know, having sweet parkour skills and looking glamorous."
Her head still ached but she still smiled, her world suddenly a little bigger and smaller at the same time. "I'm Chauvet, when I go out." Her smile suddenly faded. "The, uh...second. Chauvet One went missing a couple of years ago. Pretty sure she died, which is why I'm the Chauvet now."
As the ball was offered Jack offered the pen in turn for Katie. She took the ball, and even knowing what it was and what it was for it definitely didn't look like a weapon. She supposed if you got pelted in the face with it it'd stun you at the very least, but that hardly seemed like a level playing field when she took the youma into consideration. "What kind of page? You guys follow specific planets, right?" Jack didn't understand the sadness in her friend's voice or the shift in her expression, but whatever she'd just remembered, it'd been bad.
Katie was careful as she traded the ball for the pen, weighing it in the palm of her hand. "Well, kinda. Cosmos isn't really a planet. It's like...space. But also a person? I don't really get how it works," Katie shrugged. "But I don't cast magic or anything. Just super jumping and stuff. So you guys get like...your own thing? Euphoria sounds like fun." She smiled again, but it was more half-hearted, her gaze getting distant.
"We get magic," she confirmed with a little half shrug. "I think maybe I would have preferred being a knight. I don't know how to fight, like, at all, and the added physical boost sounds really helpful." What she wouldn't have given for the ability to out run a youma...
The thought had her sitting the ball to rest it on her lap, one hand moving to circle the opposite wrist. "Have you...um." She shifted the sleeve, pushing it up to bare the two perfectly round scars. "Does it bleed over for you too?"
"They don't exactly give us a manual, either," Katie replied with a tilt to her head. "I just kinda...go with the flow. Use my environment. I had a youma chase me out into traffic once. That was fun." Her mouth ticked up again, running a hand through her bangs. When Jack showed her the scars, her brow furrowed and she shook her head.
"Cuts and scrapes sometimes, but nothing that sticks. What happened?"
That didn't sound like fun to Jack, but Katie was definitely more of a thrill-seeker so she let it go.
At the question Jack extended her arm so the taller girl could see the scars better. They were still pinkish, healed up but still on the newer side and soft to the touch. They stood out against her dark skin. "The night I found out I was senshi I got attacked by this youma that looked like a gorgon, like, medusa. This really fluffy cat that sounded a lot like Mr. T showed up just in time to keep me from being snake food, but before I could dust her she bit me."
amitotic
