Welcome to Gaia! ::

Earth's spring was pretty ******** nice, all said. Very wet and growing. Grieve often gravitated toward more arid, desert lands when it came to making homes for herself. But the scent of damp grasses and the breathing trees, dripping with clear and shining waters had undeniable charm.

The rain had stopped not long ago, only a few straggling clouds in an otherwise pristine sky of stars and a waning moon. Grieve had finished a feast of sorts after attending the buffet that was Destiny City's biggest restaurant district after 10pm. The dumpsters had been fresh and full, and after fighting off more than one raccoon, so was she. All that was needed now was a good drink or three, and she knew just which shopkeeper would take her payment without question.

She was cutting through one of the bigger parks when she saw the silhouette and sensed only the aura of another senshi. And then the light picked out that hair, rare and familiar in a way that made the silhouette even more familiar. Could it be?

With Roka she'd called out a familiar old song, they were always so full of knives and teeth and the endless desire to use them. Which wasn't normally enough to cause her to try for caution, but they'd also, infuriatingly, outranked her. But this one didn't, and even if there were teeth, she'd long learned there was little in the way of knives for senshi on Earth. Plus, he was a nerd.

And if she was mistaken...well, at least they didn't outrank her!

Which is what led to Madriu of Struggle getting jumped by an overly tall and yellow woman that smelled like...garlic, fresh tomato sauce, and the lingering edge of anchovy paste.

"Aw yeah!" Grieve crowed, hugging him back and then lifting him up. "You lived you ********> you lived!" Every time she found someone who had lived instead of drowned and bleached in the ******** Cauldron it felt like a victory of sorts. So much had died, and was gonna die, meaning every day lived was a win. A thousand years of winning was a pretty good ******** record, right?

She placed him back down only to start roughing up his hair and ears. "Good ********' work, nay'en." Literally page of the story, roughly meaning, an old friend from a powerful moment in one's life. "We're gonna celebrate 'til we're as stupid as we are happy!"

She'd barter with the shopkeeper for food as well as drinks. Sure, it would cost a few more rats, but too often these days she met old friends during times and events where a good ********' drunken stupor between comrades wasn't gonna happen.

A toothy smile stretched across Grieve's face, smug at the unkillable compliment. "C'mon c'mon I know just the place." She tugged and at times pushed the other along, laughing as the went.

"There's Roka, and they're still a prickly little s**t but they've soured a bit, 'least partly cause Earth's all pooh-pooh no ********' weapons for stupid ******** in white bodices." She chalked it up to proximity to the White Moon, not even in power anymore and still acting like it's the center of the ******** universe and everybody's ********' mom.

"There's Stargazer, and holy ********> Madriu! She transcended! I saw it with my own ********' eyes. Apparently it just happens all the time now. Guess with everybody on them dead, our world can just go whole hog on tightening bonds to that level. ********' wild."

She thought a bit longer, "Selinur is around, and still a secretive b*****d that asks all the questions, probably still won't answer them for ******** either. I'm pretty sure Alastor survived, it's hard to tell when they look," she gave a vague gesture, "Earthish. But he's got that same vibe." The one that made her uncomfortable, like maybe she should be feeling some kind of guilt she had no interest in feeling.

Thinking further back as they approached the glowing green and orange shopfront, "Oh yeah, Helene is finally ******** Kaifeng! Sure it's Kaifeng's reincarnation, but there's nothing like gettin' flushed down Cosmos' toilet to clean a slate."

She was pretty happy for them. As far as she knew, all knights had died, proving once and for all that senshi were the superior powered force, so it's not like could've had a better ending.

Pushing inside the 7-11, Grieve shouted, "HAIL SHOPKEEPER! I'm here for your goods." She was pretty sure she had the rats for it. or maybe she should offer a crown this time and pay off the tab?

The man at the counter smiled, pleasant and soulless. In the background, little blue pills were singing on the old television. "Good evening, ma'am," Todd greeted her, crying on the inside. He saw her followed by another unique friend and the internal crying turned into wailing.

xNoir Songbird

"Unless you count drunk on d**k, Kaifeng's been pretty sober from what I've seen. Even on Cybele." Which was a feat for anyone, let alone someone as constantly sauced as the Saturn knight of old.

The store was full of shiny glass, bright plastics, and the smell of greasy food. Grieve made a beeline for the liquor section, grabbed up a bottle, then went to the fridges and picked up a a case of pink drinks, and a case of amber beer bottles. "Drinks!" She turned to Madriu, with a leer, "Buncha shitty good snacks too." He'd have to fight her for the food, but that was to be expected.

At the counter, Todd tried not to notice the ears and tail moving. He felt his ability to not notice things has been pretty high since that time he didn't see a guy who was walking around on fire. No to mention the repeat customer who definitely wasn't a giant yellow demon lady who had a seemingly endless supply of rats to slap down onto his counter.

"Grab an armful of whatever you want. Tonight it's I'm my ********' treat!" For someone who was easting out of a garbage can not an hour earlier, she sure was smug over her current show of generosity.

"Meaty as Cosmos' jiggly a**." Who knows what that meat was made of though. Grieve certainly didn't care, even if it was Cosmos-on-a-stick. She grabbed a couple with her bare hands and plopped them down on the counter as the shopkeeper looked down the smiling resignation of someone truly Used To This.

"Would you like this put on your tab, ma'am?" There was no actual tab, Todd just set it up so that she'd stop leaving dead rats and other urban wild life on his counter every visit. With a tab, she only left animal carcasses with him once a month.

Which was still better than her insistence that he name a target for her to kill in exchange for a pizza. That one still gave him the occasional nightmare. And grim temptation when confronted with certain belligerent customers. If he could scrub that offer from his memories, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

"Naw, I'm paying up and puttin some extra for later on my accounts!"

Todd stepped away from the counter, readying himself for something horribly, impressively big and dead to appear on his counter. His eyes squinted til they were almost closed and turned toward the wolf guy and wondered if she was gonna kill this guy she brought. If the freshness was the bonus and oh god oh god no why....?!

There was a clank on the counter, and Todd, his arms unconsciously held up like she had him at gunpoint, bravely looked down and saw...

A crown. Battered and crusty but that was a crown.

"Don't worry. The last owner is super ********' dead." Nearly a thousand years dead and gone, even his bones gone to snackies. But this human was always nervous, so she felt the need to reassure him that it wasn't something recently stolen.

The shopkeeper was somewhat in a daze and maybe about to cry?

"Let me...let me just get these bagged for you, ma'am." Turning to the newest in the circus that was Destiny City's nightlife, Todd asked, "Is there anything else you'd like to add, sir?"

What if he also was going to bring him dead rats? Or maybe rabbits? "Uh...I can put you both on a shared tab, if you like?" He tried to think of it as meeting another stray cat that may sometimes drop off gifts he never asked for.