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Alise wasn’t the most perceptive person; this she didn’t entirely deny- just look at all those times she had gotten the identical chibi senshi twins she was mentoring mixed up! At the same time, it was also true that there were some things Alise picked up on pretty quickly, and having your childhood best friend move back into the neighborhood was one of them.

Clem moving away from Destiny City had been pretty devastating for Alise, really! Like, sure, Alise could be pretty overly dramatic, making a big deal out of things that really weren’t a big deal (like going to Crystal), and sure, she’d gotten herself a, uh, ‘sidekick’ of sorts out of Cinta, but this was definitely a Genuinely Big Deal! Sort of. Kind of. Well, Clem and Alise attending different schools after they had graduated from Knightside had been a Big Deal back then, too, and Alise had certainly done her fair share of being dramatic over that… so basically, it shouldn’t have been any surprise that Alise was doing what she was doing now. Which was… breaking and entering except not really, because the door was unlocked, and Clem had moved back into the same house she had previously lived in.

(Alise knew this both because she had heard about it from her mother, but had also been stalking the property when she first saw the moving van in the driveway, peering into the windows of the house as Lepus when no one was home, like some sort of weirdo. Well, more of a weirdo than she already was, anyway.)

Etoile trailed behind Alise, utilizing her civilian glamour as the teen made her way into the house. Clem would likely not recognize the tiny blue-haired girl at first, both because Etoile had not yet learned how to change into a humanoid form, and also because she had gotten a wardrobe change in the past couple months, but who else could it be? Alise had no cousins, or at least none she had spoken of, and ‘cousin Etoile from France’ was a pretty dead giveaway as it was.
Alise had told her that Clementine was back in town, and that they should pay her a visit, and thus the Guardian Cat had accompanied her bonded senshi into the house as if this was something a totally normal and sane person and not a chuuni teenager with no concept of boundaries would do.

Alise, to her credit, did not immediately bust down the door to Clem’s room, though she couldn’t deny that it was highly tempting. Go big or go home, right? She certainly had always wanted to make a huge dramatic entrance. Instead, she settled for banging on the other girl’s door instead, prepared to kick the door in if there was no answer, or if there was refusal to open the door.

“Clementine Drew! When were you going to tell me you came back!?” Alise shouted through the closed door. She’d be generous, and give Clem a minute or two to respond… maybe.

"Uh huh, suuuuure," Alise retorted, her tone clearly unconvinced; Clem was going to have to try harder if she wanted Alise to believe her story. "You could have just, like, sent a text," she pointed out, accusatory, “I mean, I gave you my number ages ago- you didn’t lose it, right?!You could have also, like, sent a message to my other phone, too!"

Or, like, any other number of ways, including like, sending an email! Or even just… dropping by Alise's house! Gosh, why did Clem have to make this difficult? Alise didn’t see how hard it was to drop a simple ‘hey I’m back in town, let’s hang out’?

At the question of Etoile, Alise frowned, because Clem was clearly trying to change the subject, but she supposed it fell upon her to (re)introduce the two. “That’s Etoile,” Alise said, motioning at the kitten turned human person thing, “She got an upgrade while you were away. She can do stuff like this now?”

She was sounding a little like a parent informing the other absentee parent about important milestones they missed in their child’s life. Then again, some people considered their cats their children, and although Etoile was a magic talking cat who could take on a human form, maybe it still wasn’t too far off the mark.

Etoile gave a cheerful wave, as if this were an ordinary social call in which they had been invited over and not… whatever this was. “Hello, Clementine!” she greeted happily, “I can now stand on two legs for a couple hours a day! Having hands is very great; Alise gives me money to buy my own sweets now.”

“I got an upgrade, too, you know?” Alise added, “You missed a lot.” Like aliens. And almost being force corrupted and then nearly blown up, not to mention one of her senshi getting turned into a youma? Alise was still determined to fist fight the Negaverse until they gave back Alpha Leporis.

“You came back at a good time though, I guess. My family’s still all on that wanting me to be all proper and ladylike and stuff. They want to send me to finishing school next year and probably marry me off? Scylla said I could move in with her when I turn 18 but maybe you can help me out, too.”

“I can play video games, yes!” Etoile cheerfully confirmed, “I like to play the Katamari games; it is very fun to roll things up into a ball to turn into a star. The music is very catchy, too!”

As if to demonstrate, she did a small acapella rendition of the ‘na-na-na’s from the opening theme.

“Alise sometimes makes me play some of her co-op games with her, too~”

Alise meanwhile stared very intently at Clem, as if she had suddenly grown three heads. Sure, Alise had the emotional awareness of a toaster when it came to perceiving other people’s feelings, but what was Clem going on about? “What? Hate you?” she repeated, as she tried to process that run-on sentence in her head still, “No way- I don’t hate you, Clem. Like yeah, it really sucked when I didn’t get to go to Meadowview with you, because Crystal is torture, and it sucked when you moved away and all that, but like-“

“I don’t uh, hate you though?” Alise continued, frowning; words were very hard when she had to talk to people like a normal person!! She much preferred calling people ‘rivals’ and ‘sidekicks’ and talking about punching things and stuff. “If anything, like I said, you came back at a good time because uhh, yeah. Stuff and all that.”

Clem was saying she didn’t know how to help Alise with her family problems, and it was true that her parents probably wouldn’t listen to Clem’s. Moving in with Jada next year was still pretty much Alise’s plan of action, save for running off to go live in the temple of Lepus (she technically promised Scylla she wouldn’t run away from home, but she hadn’t exactly promised not to just run off to go live in space), but…

What if…

Alise was famous for her habit of coming up with ideas on the spot, the more reckless, the better. Act first, think about the consequences later!! That was the Lepus way.

“Your parents might not be able to talk sense into mine, yeah, but… what if we beat my parents to the punch… and get eloped? They probably want me to get married, yeah, but they never specified to who.”

Or that she had to get married to someone of the opposite sex? Plus, Clem was a friend, and her parents couldn’t possibly object to that… assuming she ever told them, that was.

Alise didn’t say anything at first, and it was unclear as to if it was because she was trying to comprehend Clem’s panicked ramblings once more, or if she was just formulating a new backup plan. The contemplative noise she made seemed to lean towards the latter, however, and she certainly didn’t look upset or anything, just maybe a teensy bit bummed, because the idea of proposing to a friend that they get eloped and run away together into the sunset sounded a lot more awesome in her head, before all the technicalities were brought up.

“Hmm yeah, I guess you’re right,” Alise said, tapping her chin thoughtfully; she hadn’t really thought it out beyond that they could maybe take an Uber to like, some drive-thru chapel or something, like the celebs in the tabloids did. Who’d have thought it would be more complicated than that? “That’s a real bummer, to be honest, ‘cuz like, imagine the look on my family’s faces if we told them I’m already married? It’d be so great.”

(It also was a powerful motivator when it came to Alise doing the exact opposite of what her family wanted! Though really, she didn’t need much encouragement to be the chunibyou she was these days…)

And then, as if she had only just fully processed what Clem was saying, “… wait, you said you want to elope, right? That’s not a ‘no’, right?”

Maybe that idea wasn’t entirely off the table after all??

Clem didn't want to make her mom mad, but that was kinda the point of Alise's Grand Idea? If she beat them to the punch at the whole marriage thing by marrying someone she was okay with marrying, then her mom couldn't, like... try to tell her what to do? Control her life? Alright, there had been a train of thought here and then just like that, it was gone; Alise just knew that if she could get Clem to agree to run off into the sunset with her, her family would back off, because it was just so easy like that! Totally!

And not at all probably in some way illegal!

"I mean, I wouldn't want to elope with anyone else," Alise said, nodding in affirmation to Clem's reply, "We're like, a duo? A team? Partners?"

Really good friends? As always, Alise was just saying things without thinking, because when did she ever really think things through? At the same time, it wasn't like Alise would so flippantly propose eloping to just about anyone, so... maybe she spent -some- time thinking?

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Alise was a massive idiot when it came to the concept of Feelings. She just never had stopped to think about how she felt about Clem, beyond that Clem was (of course) someone Alise would trust with her life and her deepest secrets- or at least the part where she wanted to run off with her best friend and get married to make her family mad so they couldn't try to marry her off to someone else. Perhaps one day she'd realize there was a next step up from 'best friends', and that if she was proposing marriage to a so-called best friend in any level or manner of seriousness that she should evaluate as to if she thought of Clem as something more, but...

This was Alise, who ran around at night as Sailor Lepus of Rabbits, who spouted nonsense about 'justice' and threw around big words while trying to look cooler than she really was, when she was actually massively cringe. The very same Lepus who had been a chibi senshi up until very recently, even though she was in her last year of high school... who was also mentoring a nine year-old and being a bad influence. Common sense was just not a thing that applied to her!

"Exactly! Our sacred bond," Alise repeated, nodding in approval.

"I'm so happy for the two of you!" Etoile chimed in, as if to make things even worse, "Congratulations."