His sister was driving him up a ******** wall.

And he meant that in the nicest of ******** ways, but once he had to awaken to help save her a** from that corrupt senshi and his bear paw-equipped pal, she was unstoppable. Dumuzi wanted to just patrol on his own for once in his life but he had gone from having more freedom to less freedom when he would have expected the opposite without having these fancy a** powers. Did they even do anything other than make his outfit look fancy? He wasn't convinced. Richtersveld had said he would be faster and stronger, but what difference did that make when he had already been an Olympian--

"Are you safe? You don't really know what you're doing yet--" "Zot, you worry me." "Zot, I promise I only say this because I love you, but you need to take it a bit easier. You just started." "Dumuzi, you don't need to do that. I promise you don't need to hit them so hard they're dizzy on the floor." "... Zot, that's not how you say those things--" It was Zot this, Zot that, and Dumuzi almost missed when he was the one concerned over her and not the other way around. He was being brought back to when all three of them were children and Shikora kept trying to baby him anyway even though she was technically the youngest. (Technically, because he wasn't honestly sure how much difference twenty-six minutes actually made.)

It wasn't even like she was helping him fight!! In fact, if anything, she was stopping him, which was a pain in his a**. She patrolled with him, but she was always doing this nice girl thing, and he didn't quite get it. Weren't these the same people who had nearly killed her back in 2016? What was the point of being nice, then? Wouldn't it be better to kick their faces in before they attempted that s**t on anyone ever again? But no, "Zot, you know my oath. I'm not about to disobey it even in a form that no one knows that oath." "Dumuzi, you don't need to punch her in the face. I promise. She's listening. Or she was, until you spooked her off." "Dumuzi, I know you've always been like this, but why are you like this?" "Can't you just pretend to be friendly for five seconds? Pretend they're like... fans."

The Negaverse was the ... well, it wasn't his fans, that much he knew. His something, probably. Not his rivals either; that implied a friendliness with people he refused to have with people who kept trying to kill his sister.

He liked that Richtersveld was trying to help him. He did. And they probably worked better as a unit than alone, especially with Richtersveld's whole can't-fight streak and the fact that neither of them was their sibling with their sword skills. He just wished... well, he wished that for as much as Richtersveld kept asking that maybe he held back a bit more--

Maybe she could ease back, too.