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"I hate this."

Zachariah could have been referring to a lot of things. He could have been referring to the drink he was holding. He could have been referring to the cup, specifically, and its summery design. He could have been referring to the table they sat at, the chair he sat on, the music the cafe played, the people around him, the--

Everything, really.

"Why are we here?" Of all the stupid things Taalia could have asked for when she asked to meet up, she asked to go get a coffee. A coffee. He knew a cafe close enough, he guessed--not like he had a ******** car!--but cafes had people, first of all. They had social interaction, second. They had too many ******** options when all he wanted was a ******** black coffee. The hell was the difference between blonde and dark? The hell was ristretto?

Taalia seemed content, which was also bizarre. It was almost more bizarre than Autumn's constant cheer. Why would anyone be happy with all the murmuring around them?

"I would rather stick nails in my ears."

Somehow, he seemed serious.

She suggested DoorDash, of all things, to a house, and while she had been to his apartment already somehow ordering food together to his place also felt like an affront. It was too ... Social. Too much. Just because he somehow had a crowd of senshi he was mentoring didn't mean he needed to start being friendly.

It would have been less annoying than the damn girl behind him yammering about her dating troubles, though. He gave exactly zero shits that her boyfriend didn't know what--. He decided at that moment he didn't want to think any further about what she was saying.

"First of all," he sipped his coffee. Somehow, it was still too ******** sweet. Did they put sugar in it anyway? Or was it something about their damn blend that was making his eye twitch? Maybe it was because he drank everything burnt as hell, when he thought about it, "shut the ******** up. Second," and what was he even going to follow that up with...

"What did you wanna talk about anyway?"

It was probably senshi bullshit. Not like they had anything else in common.

Not like he wanted them to.

"Couldn't be done over a text, so," not that he wasn't used to this by now.

Efficiency by talking?

Great. Lovely. He loved just talking because it was so ******** efficient. Over text he could at least do a stupid little emoji react if he didn't feel like saying any goddamn words, which he almost never did.

He sipped his annoyingly sweet coffee.

"Is this really more efficient, though? Text gives me time to, ya know, think about my goddamn words." Whatever, though. He had already helped Autumn with a conversation about her burgeoning sexuality. At least he didn't have to help two people through a sexual discovery.

And at least Taalia was doing her research. So was Autumn, granted, so his newbie cadre was smart but--

"But fine. Shoot. What do you want to know?"

He sipped his coffee. Disgusting.

"Been at this s**t for way too long anyway."

She was used to it? He quirked a brow slightly, pondering why she was used to someone being silent for long periods, but ended up shoving it aside. The ******** did it matter?

If anything, it gave him time to think.

The Dark Mirror was an interesting place to start, and he did have to admire the fact that seemed to stick from Faust and Hydor's explanation of what she was going to confront. But she was right -- none of them had actually made it to the Mauvian Intranet, or whatever the database was actually hosted on.

How much of an issue were they, truly, these days? "Well," Zachariah snorted, "to be honest, I haven't seen any of those ******** recently. I used to be familiar with a few? Like there was one who had like ******** shrimp powers, I guess? She told me what the hell happened, at least."

That probably also owed an explanation.

"Once got sucked into their space. Mirrorscape? Mirrorspace? Something like that. It ******** sucked. Sent me into a whole bullshit maze or whatever. And that was before I even ******** powered up."

He decided, long ago, he did not like Mirrorspace. Perhaps it was one of the only things that held him back from discarding the clothing of a life he wanted no part of.

Pocket space? He supposed that seemed a good enough description, considering the bullshit he had been pulled through via a goddamn mirror. A mirror he returned to later to think, and he wondered, then, if he had been hoping it would suck him back in.

It hadn't. Perhaps a pity, in some ways--

He cut off the way his thoughts tempted to spiral, taking his slow amble back to the question he was asked. "Not sure. I suspect it may not right now. Pretty sure the only reason why they gather energy is to feed whatever is powering their mysterious pocket space as it were. Doesn't have an obvious eldritch ******** source like whatever Metallia is."

Sometimes, Zachariah felt like he was a side character in a video game he wished he had no part of.

"Don't know the entirety of their goals. I've seen them, but not really chatted with too many of them. One was friendly, another tried to murder me," and then Faust had his back and helped him upgrade to super, thankfully, "so their alignment toward us is kinda murky too. Maybe they just wanna be left alone, maybe they just wanna vibe in their realm, maybe they wanna kill us, too."

With a shrug, he concluded with, "Can't take our ******** souls at least."

Zachariah sipped his coffee again.

Lukewarm. Disgusting.

"Yeah, basically." Did they have any other complaints with the Dark Mirror, specifically? He could think of a couple, he supposed. Forced corruption still seemed to be a thing they could do, though it was at least different than that of the Negaverse. Still terrible, not ... as terrible.

He wasn't sure it made it better.

"Chaos sucks. We saw that s**t on Alastor. Don't know what the ******** it was, but it was still horrible. And whatever they're making with that Mirrorspace s**t will probably be just as bad, eventually." And Zachariah had never liked things he wasn't able to assign rules to. There were no rules he understood for a place that sucked him in and made him run gauntlets back when he was a civilian and now seemed to not threaten them at all.

Zachariah didn't like it, and that was why he told her about them in the first ******** place.

"Anything else?"

Zachariah glanced toward Taalia as she got up, watching as she headed toward the bathroom. "Yeah, take your time." What the hell kind of question did she have that it would take a specific wording? Was it some bullshit about why her magic didn't work? Because on that one, he had probably about two iotas of a clue and neither of them seemed particularly correct.

The only real difference in their awakenings were who awakened them--and he trusted Faust wasn't the problem here--and how old they were. He had been twenty. She was, what, twenty-four?

Like Demeter, he was pretty sure.

Zachariah rolled his neck as he got up, debating if he should just ... toss this cup out. It was too bitter.

Disgusting.

But what caught his eyes and stopped him in his tracks was a man in a ... skirt? That by itself might not have been too odd, but he was holding a goddamn spear of all things as he stood in the corner and stared at ... something. He attempted to follow his gaze, but stopped with a quiet, "Ah," as he spotted what the problem actually might have been.

The limbs of that creature were too long just to be a normal person. That was a youma, wasn't it.

And he was a human, wasn't he.

Taalia would find a text on her phone.

Zachariah noted, grimly, that at least her ******** magic worked this time, unlike half the time they went on patrols...

Borax, though, groaned quietly when he felt a presence that felt ... well, satisfactorily less powerful than his own. A basic senshi, so a new one to the scene he would be happy to, well... stop from being any further of a threat.

And she was there driving off his draining victims and irritating the youma he had brought with him. A pest.

As some scattered, he found himself pushing off the wall, dealing with the sting as he counted to himself. It had been ten, fifteen, twenty seconds as he made his way closer, watching carefully as a few civilians seemed more interested in staring at him than leaving. Let them suffer. He'd get to the frozen gazelles later. He cautioned the feral youma elsewhere with a handwave. No need to risk dusting his accomplice of the day.

"Senshi," he greeted, coolly.

Borax glanced from his spear to the woman he faced. Hm.

"Have you ever considered how your head might look on a pike?"

Zachariah, one of the supposed frozen gazelles, decided that perhaps he should attempt to find a place to hide and henshin up before this guy tried anything. Did he ask for mentees? No. Did he feel responsible for them anyway?

Unfortunately.