CHAPTER THREE

"Kaden is going to kill me."

Mamoru spoke aloud despite being the lone occupant of his apartment. He filed away the nostalgia of the moment and the strange feeling of joyfulness the thought of that particular looming threat brought him for later enjoyment and focused on the immediate problem.

Kaden had mentioned more than once during his forty-eight hour visit how much he liked Mamoru's apartment (especially now that he was able to experience it in three-dimensional space, not simply as a spiritual presence inside a rock) and admired how neat he kept it. Mamoru used to hate being called neat; he always took it as a pejorative term. Neat – the sort of thing you say when you've run out of compliments, or never had any to begin with. It was a hollow sentiment meant to disguise the true opinion of boring. Fortunately for the near future if neat truly was synonymous with boring Mamoru would be anything but.

The apartment, specifically the kitchen, was a crime scene. To compound matters, this time he could not lay the blame on dear Usagi whose exuberant but underdeveloped culinary skills often resulted in nightmare landscapes of ingredients and utensils like something out of a Bosch painting. No, this was Mamoru's sin and the penance of seeing his neat apartment brought to such ruin was nearly unbearable. The only disaster in recent memory to compare (other than the tyrannically insane Sailor Galaxia murdering everything, himself included) was Minako's Tragic Toast incident. That memory conjured a smile… which then immediately tumbled in on itself when a new problem arose to overshadow even the most egregious gastronomic genocide.

The Shitennou were back. It had been two days since their miraculous reappearance into his life but he felt as though barely any time had passed. Their long stories and hours of laughter on the roof of Crown was the best possible icebreaker and he wondered if he would have been so open with his emotions if it had not all happened so suddenly. Mamoru was not a man to wear his heart on his sleeve, but he opened up to them in ways that he never did before, even with Usagi. Even though he felt that he was as much as stranger to them now as he was long ago in his life as Endymion the first time he stood before them, there was a familiarity and a casual ease to their conversation even in awkward moments like when he realized he didn't know their names in this lifetime. Being with the Shitennou felt natural, like falling back into a comfortable routine or slipping on his favorite green blazer, but easy as it was for him he couldn't fathom what conflict their sudden return might stir within the ranks of the Sailor Senshi.

There had been a time just after the final battle with the Dark Kingdom in one those rare moments when Mamoru, Usagi, and her friends were able to slow down and catch their breaths that everyone decided to sit down, discuss, and share their memories of the Silver Millennium to bring as much closure as possible to that chapter of their existence. Mamoru's memories were fragmentary and indeed the memories of the Senshi varied widely in their impact and influence. Makoto considered her memories to be like watching someone else's home movies and seeing a resemblance in a young woman that she felt she might have known a long time ago. Ami, always sensible and skeptical, was well aware of how the human brain created and stored memories, so she viewed her past experiences as something akin to reference material rather than having any active bearing on her current life. Rei, already something of a modern-day princess, simply accepted that a very long time ago an entire planet might have bowed at her command and allowed her spiritual compass to simply guide her along her life's path as it always had. The outlier, of course, was Minako.

When Mamoru first met Minako (properly, outside of a battle with fuku-clad super women) he understood exactly why she was considered the leader of the Sailor Team. She was sharp, quick-thinking, courageous, and experienced. That last point, however, gave him pause. Minako had been fighting a group called the Dark Agency, something of the Dark Kingdom's initial expeditionary force, while Mamoru was still learning how to tie his tuxedo's bowtie. She had battled youma and had regained the memories of her past life long before she met the other girls and she stood apart from them for that reason. Perhaps it was the head start she had fighting evil, the fact that she was a year or more younger than the rest were when Artemis found her, or just her own adolescent search for identity, but where the other Sailor Senshi regained their memories and integrated them in their own way, Minako embraced hers fully.

She didn't need to learn how to be a leader; she already was one in her past life. She didn't need to learn how to sneak undetected into the Dark Agency's base of operations; she already perfected that skill chasing Serenity when she would steal away to the Earth. She didn't need to learn how to fight; she was already a fighter long ago. But for all of her power, cunning, and all of her charm it didn't disguise the fact that Minako Aino was a lonely young woman who longed for the type of companionship the other Senshi found in Usagi and who lived every day since awakening as a Sailor Senshi with the knowledge that she was fighting against the man she used to love.

Mamoru was well aware during the Silver Millennium that his Knights were acquainted with the Princess' Sailor Guardians from their not-so-clandestine missions to retrieve the wayward monarch whenever she would sneak away from the Moon. What he was not aware of was Minako's present-day battlefield revelation that not only had the Senshi and Shitennou met in their past lives, but that they had fallen in love. In the heat of conflict the disclosure was a cruel irony, a twist of fate seized and warped by the Dark Kingdom for maximum effect, but fate nonetheless. Just as he fought through the ages to join his heart with Usagi, so too would their guardians fight for each other's.

Pondering this, Mamoru involuntarily started laughing. Howling, actually.

There were still a great many gaps in his memory and something as scandalous as his Knights falling in love with the Princess' Guardians would certainly be the type of thing that both parties would want to keep firmly under wraps, but there were some Silver Millennium fairy tales he just couldn't believe, especially when juxtaposed to the reality of the modern day. Could Rei, poised, mature and proper, be able to listen to Jiro wax eloquent about his love for Star Wars without damaging her optic nerves from excessive eye-rolling? Would Neil's crude language and brash behavior be too off-putting even for the tough-as-nails Makoto to endure for more than five minutes? And could shy, studious Ami even inhabit the same room as Zora without every last drop of blood in her body rushing to her face whenever he winked, moved, or heaven forbid, took his shirt off? The laughter faded however when his thoughts refocused on the central figure of this mental tangent.

Despite her status as leader of the Sailor Team, Minako was of her own admission an indiscriminate flirt and the closest thing to Cupid this side of a tacky Valentine's card. She was the Matchmaker-in-Chief; the self-styled Goddess of Love and Beauty who even in the face of her staggering devotion to Usagi and a prophesied destiny to always choose duty over love (which Mamoru found rather dubious considering how few prophecies about anything ever come true) would make damn sure, come hell or high water, that everyone found their one true love even if she had to manufacture someone a soul mate out of papier-mâché and happy thoughts! He often thought that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Minako enjoyed the idea of romance more than the actual experience of building and maintaining a relationship. Mamoru wondered, then, what sort of affect it would have on her eternally golden cheer to learn that Kunzite – Kaden—was alive. How would she react to seeing the man she professed to love again after fighting against him for so long and seeing him die right before her eyes mere seconds after she herself helped cleanse him of evil?

Mamoru had asked Usagi to show some restraint in revealing the Shitennou's return to her friends and not simply call each of their communicators screaming "The boys are back!" as she had done with every stranger in earshot on New Year's Eve. He had won a minor victory that night when he convinced her to leave her cell phone and other electronic gadgets at home so the two of them could spend a quiet, distraction-free evening of adult conversation and companionship with Motoki and Reika, but that idea went straight out the window when his beloved bun-head was introduced to the tequila Reika brought back from a recent trip to Mexico. Thanks to the deep tequila-sleep that night and the unfortunate hangover the next morning Usagi had been out of commission for quite a while, but after not having seen her since earlier that morning he was quite sure the news had now been disseminated. He even briefly toyed with the idea of inviting all of the girls to tonight's dinner for proper re-introductions, but considering the amount of elemental magic at their command coupled with the fact that the last time they saw the Shitennou they were trying to kill them, Mamoru wasn't sure his apartment would still be standing in the aftermath.

Still, it couldn't get much worse.

He filed away his anxiety over the Senshi's emotional health and refocused on his current anxiety of trying to present himself as a functional adult who was quite able to take care of himself during the Shitennou's absence, but in this he was failing. Mamoru was a mess of nerves for no discernible reason. He knew he felt comfortable around the Shitennou, he had thought as much mere moments ago, and he certainly didn't have anything to prove… but he did. These were the men that served him, hell, that pretty much raised him in his ancient life. They taught him how to hold a sword, how to ride a horse, how to compose a sonnet, and how to be an honorable man. This was his chance to show them what he had become, what he had achieved and what he was capable of! Right now he was utterly incapable of making food.

Usagi had seen it this morning just before she left. She commented that Mamoru seemed tense and correctly predicted (maybe he'd put more stock into prophecy after all) that we would end up over-thinking and complicating things. Perhaps he could salvage the situation with some fancy take-out…

"You're not ordering take-out." He commanded himself, "And you can't call Makoto. You know you can't call Makoto, so don't even think about it."

If one was meant to worry about talking to oneself, it would have to wait as Mamoru balled up his right fist, slammed it into his left palm and declared, "Time to man up."

He retrieved his phone from beneath the sad remains of an attempt at chicken marsala and quickly scrolled through the admittedly rather small contact list until his thumb rested above the name of his intended target. He wasn't proud of this, he wasn't sure if it was entirely proper, and he hated having to lean on charity in a moment of weakness, but desperate times and all that. He tapped the name and put the receiver to his ear.


"Back?" she asked.

"Back." She answered.

"Back?" Minako repeated, "As in back, back?"

"That's what I said!" Usagi scrunched her nose, confused in the face of Minako's confusion.

"Did you meet them?" Makoto asked cautiously as she continued washing a recently used mixing bowl at the kitchen sink while four other young women hovered nearby.

They had all received a cryptic text message from Usagi that morning informing her Guardians that she had something urgent to discuss with them and that they should all meet at Makoto's apartment as soon as possible. Usagi never communicated through text message unless she was being deliberately secretive and a secretive Usagi, as Makoto had learned over the years, could be a stressful Usagi. Makoto dealt with stress in only one way: baking. It would be another twenty minutes before the quick batch of shortbread cookies were ready, but the cozy kitchen was already wafting with the sugary sweet scent.

"Yep!" she replied perkily, "They were all up on the roof at Crown on New Year's Eve! They live in the apartment right across from Motoki-kun!"

"Really?" Rei raised an eyebrow at that and looked down into her cup of tea contemplatively, "That's… convenient."

"Don't be a sour-puss, Rei-chan!" Usagi teased, "They were all super nice and funny and we spent all night talking, but I don't remember too much." She blushed and her voice fell several sheepish decibels, "Because I drank too much."

"Oh, Usagi." Ami delicately reprimand her, "You know that's not good for you!"

"But it was New Year's Ami-chan!" her princess' excuse was endearing despite Ami's practicality, "And besides, everyone was having a good time!"

"Were they?" Minako asked doing her best to hide her interest behind a leader's resolve.

"Uh-huh!" Usagi chirped, "Motoki even took pictures and sent them to me this morning!" Usagi frowned a bit, "Mamo-chan made me leave my phone at home on New Year's."

Usagi quickly navigated the app-infested forest of her smart phone to the picture folder and held up a group photo for the other girls to see. The photo depicted Mamoru front and center with an exuberant blonde teenager with striking blue eyes piggy-backed on top of him. He was flanked on either side by two tall, broad-shouldered men, one with a dark mane of hair and a red face full of New Year's good will (and whiskey), the other a towering Greek god with silver hair and a body that might as well have been chiseled marble he looked so stiff and stoic. To the right of the group stood a fourth man, lithe, impeccably dressed, and looking rather bored despite the smile on his face. A jubilant Usagi stood in the space between them, arms raised above her head, face blurry from apparently jumping up and down while the picture was being taken.

"Wow." Makoto was the first to react though the tone of her voice betrayed no clear emotion, "That's… surreal."

"They look so…" Ami studied the picture intently, "Different."

"They are different." Usagi stressed, "Look how happy they are! Rei-chan!" she shoved the phone in front of the priestess, "Look how cute Jiro looks!"

Rei didn't respond vocally. Her expression didn't even shift: hands folded on the counter, lips slightly pursed, not frowning or smiling, but also not completely blank. She simply stared past the photo over the top of the phone at Usagi silently communicating, "I know your game and I'm not playing."

"How could they just appear out of thin air like that?" Makoto interrupted the moment with a thought, "Wouldn't someone have noticed?"

"They've been living in town for a few months." Usagi clarified, "So it wasn't like 'Poof!' here we are!"

"Could it really be that simple?" Minako was uncharacteristically reserved during this whole conversation, "That they could just come back?"

"Well…" Usagi spoke knowing full well that the simplest answers were usually the best, "We came back."

"We were taken to the Galaxy Cauldron." Ami reminded her, though she was still unsure herself of every event which transpired within that nebulous realm.

"And we had to fight Chaos to even have the opportunity to come back at all!" Makoto added.

"Well they came back about two years ago!" Usagi elaborated, "That was about the same time that everything happened with Sailor Galaxia, so maybe something happened and they got to come back too?"

"I would hope it were a simple coincidence like you say, Usagi." Ami was cautious, "But we can't rule out something sinister."

"Rei, you're awfully quiet." Makoto observed hoping the shrine maiden's insight might prove useful in making up her own mind about how she felt about this new development.

"I haven't sensed more than a whisper from any dark spirit in months." Rei revealed, "If I couldn't feel their auras, even if they had some evil agenda, I doubt they would pose a threat."

"They're not a threat!" Usagi was incredulous, "How could you even say that?" She held up the group photo once again as if to further illustrate her point while silently reiterating "Look how cute they are!"

"What did Luna say?" Ami wondered, "Did she and Artemis detect any unusual energy lately?"

"I, um…" Usagi shrank slightly into herself, "Didn't tell Luna yet."

"Hah!" Makoto laughed at once, "Luna doesn't like Usagi hanging around one guy let alone five!"

"She does too!" Usagi pouted, "She's just very picky! It took her a while to warm up to my Mamo-chan, but she loves him now and she'll love the boys too!"

"They boys?" Rei inquired.

"Usagi-chan," Ami gently interposed, "It might not be a good idea to act so familiar with them so quickly. We don't know that much about them."

"You're all just being a bunch of fussbudgets!" Usagi declared and crossed her arms in a huff.

"Excuse me?" Rei asked, the sound of the foreign word rubbing her in all the wrong ways.

"It's a word Neil taught me." Usagi beamed proudly, "It means you're all being cranky for the sake of being cranky!"

"I'm not cranky." Makoto shrugged.

"Neither am I!" Ami agreed, her tone a bit shocked.

"What about you, Minako-chan?" Usagi asked. Rei's silence was confirmation of her crankiness, but she was always cranky, so she let it slide.

"I'm, uh…" Minako spoke vacantly. Her eyes seemed fixed on a distant point on the horizon despite the fact that her position faced her squarely at Makoto's refrigerator. She pushed away from the wall where she was leaning and walked towards the apartment's common room.

"Minako?" Makoto called after her, hands still soapy with kitchen cleaning.

"Just gonna, you know." Minako gestured with her thumb towards the apartment's front door, "Step outside for a second. Need some air."

Usagi quickly scanned the equally concerned faces of the other women in the kitchen and immediately turned and chased after the normally bubbly blonde. In the hallway she found Minako once again leaning against a wall facing the door to Makoto's apartment. When she looked up she immediately forced the deeply contemplative look from her face and replaced it with a sad smile.

"Minako, what's wrong?" Usagi asked, dropping honorifics as she did when she was truly upset.

"It's nothing Usagi-chan." Minako failed to convince her.

"You stop that!" Usagi ordered and Minako looked up to see her Princess' eyes going glossy, "You worry about me enough; I'm allowed to worry about you!"

"You shouldn't worry." She assured her, "I'm okay, really. Just…"

"Well I am worrying so it's too late." Usagi was firm, "Tell me what's wrong!"

Minako took in a breath unsure of how to formulate her conflicted emotions into a coherent stream of words so she simply settled on one, "Kunzite."

"You mean Kaden." Usagi corrected.

"Kaden, right." Minako genuinely smiled at her slip-up, "You know how it is, Usagi."

"I do." She agreed having spent several days after first regaining her Princess memories referring to Mamoru Chiba exclusively as Endymion.

"I know I should be happy." She confessed and put strange stresses on the same string of words, "And I know why you think I should be happy, but I don't think I should be happy."

"Minako-chan, you're making less sense than usual." Usagi observed.

"I know, I'm just…" she paused, "Processing."

"What's to process?" Usagi asked honestly, blissfully unaware of any internal turmoil, "The boys are back and when you meet Kaden you'll see that he's a great guy, if a little stuffy, and you can be friends!" she playfully elbowed her friend in the ribs, "And then who knows?"

"Usagi…" Minako sighed and realized she wouldn't let up until she'd had the whole of it laid bare, "You were lucky. Mamoru was brainwashed by the Dark Kingdom, but it was over like that." Minako clicked her fingers to represent the scant few days that Tuxedo Mask was under the Dark Kingdom's control, "I fought against Kunzite for a lot longer."

"The Dark Agency." Usagi's face fell as she remembered, "Minako, I'm so sorry! I completely—"

"You don't have to apologize." She interrupted, "But it's just not the same as with you and Mamoru. Not everyone is meant to have that storybook romance."

"Minako Aino how dare you say that?!" Usagi scolded her, this time with a not so playful elbow to the ribs, "How can you of all people just give up on love?"

"Love?" Minako laughed surprised, "Usagi, I think you're reading a little too far into this."

"What do you mean?" Usagi demanded, "I remember when you told us about them! About how you would chase me when I ran away to the Earth and how you all met and fell in love!"

"Oh, Usagi." Mina looked disappointed, though specifically at herself, "You don't understand."

"Try me!"

"Look, there's what you and Mamoru have." Minako tried to explain, "And then there's what everyone else has."

"That…" Usagi stalled for a moment to analyze what she was just told, "That's a bunch of nonsense!"

"It's not the same." Minako repeated.

"I think you're just making excuses because you're nervous about meeting him again!"

"It wasn't easy for us even back then." The Senshi explained, "We were both leaders and we both knew that seeing each other was the absolute worst thing we could do, but…" she didn't need to tell Usagi how she felt, "And besides, just because I remember something from a million years ago one way doesn't mean he does too."

"Well they seem to remember everything else." Usagi recalled, "You should just talk to him."

"What would I even say?" Minako fell into her guilt, "Not just to Him, but to any of them?" She shook her head remorsefully, "After all, I wanted to save them, but all I did was get them killed."

"Is that what has you upset?" Usagi tried to console her, but the Senshi would have none of it, "Minako, no—"

"If we hadn't restored their memories then Queen Metalia wouldn't have…" she hated thinking about that moment; she hated more to speak of it, "If we could have held them off a bit longer until you and Mamoru defeated Queen Metalia, maybe they wouldn't have had to die at all!"

"But you know that's not true!" Usagi cried with her friend, "Queen Metalia would have destroyed them anyway and all of you, too! It was because you healed them that we were able to beat Queen Metalia at all!" Minako glanced up into Usagi's face which spoke only of pride and gratitude, "When Kunzite appeared and showed us her weak spot!"

"He did do that, didn't he?" Minako fondly remembered.

"Minako, I know you better than this." Usagi reassured her, "It's a shock and you can try to deny it all you want, but you can't deny what's in your heart." She poked her friend in the chest for good measure which released a giggle, "You won't give up if it's what you want."

"It'll take time for me to decide what to do." She admitted, "Whatever I felt for him once… He's not the same person anymore. I've learned to live without him after all these years."

"Maybe it's time to learn to live with him again." Usagi suggested.

"Maybe." Minako laughed, the weight previously pressing down on her spirits now considerably lighter, "I just have to figure out what to say to him."

"Well." Usagi grinned knowingly, "You could start with hello."


"Hello?"

A split second after placing the call Mamoru wanted to hang up, his brain suddenly having decided that this was a bad idea and that not only would he be scrutinized into oblivion for asking for help in the first place, but that he would owe them a favor. The fact that the phone line opened to silence was also not encouraging.

"Who's in trouble?" the brusque voice that answered asked in lieu of a proper greeting.

"Me." Mamoru sighed and immediately regretted the phone call, "Do you always have to be so negative?"

"Pragmatic." The woman's husky voice answered through the receiver, "Does it have something to do with the rock people?"

"Rock people?" Mamoru blinked.

"We're still working on nicknames." She confessed, "Is it about them?"

"Yes." Mamoru had to confide, now certain that Usagi had relayed the information that morning to absolutely everyone just as he assumed, "Kind of."

Mamoru's power of psychometry, the ability to read thoughts, feelings, and other sensations through touch, obviously did not work through the digital connection of a phone call, but he could nonetheless detect the grin spreading across the face of Haruka Tenoh on the other end of the line.

"What did they do?" She asked hopeful. Mamoru was pretty sure he heard the sound of knuckles cracking.

"Nothing, it's…" he stalled and realized how utterly pathetic and disjointed he sounded, "Something else."

"Did they try to steal your energy?" Haruka sounded positively giddy with excitement, "Or did they summon youma? Please tell me its youma!"

"No, it's nothing like that." Mamoru attempted to diffuse the situation.

"Mamoru, you're disappointing me." She sounded honestly displeased, "I haven't used my transformation pen in ages…"

"You should meet them." Mamoru suggested, "I'm sure either Kaden or Neil would be thrilled to have a new sparring partner."

"Tempting, but I'll pass." Haruka dismissed his attempt at social interaction with the men the Outer Senshi most likely viewed with extreme skepticism as to their moral orientations, "Your guardians just came back into your life; it would be a shame to take one or more of them out of it so soon."

"So…" Mamoru stretched the syllable out as he gave his brain time to process the thinly veiled threat and then lurched back to the reason for his call, "This is a personal request."

"Fine!" she sighed in resignation, "What does my liege wish of me?"

"I need to put together a dinner party in the next six to eight hours." He confessed, "And I'm failing miserably. I was hoping you and Michiru with your, you know, more elegant tastes could, um… maybe… help?"

"Elegant tastes, huh?" Haruka snickered at what Mamoru had hoped would come out sounding much less pandering, "I assume Makoto turned you down? This is the sort of opportunity she would jump at."

"We, uh, don't want to involve the other girls." Mamoru tried finding a diplomatic way to explain that—

"They haven't met yet?" Haruka interrupted his thoughts.

"They haven't met yet."

"Huh." She pondered, "Well absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that."

"Let's just… not go there right now." Mamoru pleaded knowing full well that any discussion of possible relationships among the Senshi and Shitennou would only end in a massive headache and pile of unwanted embarrassment, "Can you help me?"

"Michiru?" Haruka shouted without bothering to take the phone away from her mouth. Mamoru grimaced and after a moment he heard another voice join Haruka's through the recognizable tunnel-like compression of a speakerphone.

"Mamoru-san," Michiru greeted in that ethereal voice that Mamoru always associated with whatever gothic romance the woman had apparently been born from, "It's been so long! How are you?"

"The Prince needs our help throwing a dinner party for the rock people." Haruka quickly brought her partner up to speed, "Today."

"How bad is it?" Michiru inquired.

"Mamoru turn your phone on its side." Haruka ordered her future king and he obediently did as instructed.

A moment later the screen which was previously occupied by mundane phone call statistics filled with the face of the Outer Senshi as the call suddenly became a video conference. Haruka was smirking as she normally did and held the phone at just an oblique enough angle to hide Michiru's bare backside off screen as she hastily draped a robe over her previously disrobed body. Haruka did little to hide the fact that she was wearing an orange tee shirt and not much else. Mamoru's face went pale and he unconsciously tilted his own phone away from his to both hide their indiscretion and his own embarrassment. He assumed his call did not interrupt any specific… activity that the two were involved in since Haruka did answer the phone, but he ever so briefly wondered what they were doing that required so little clothing.

"Show us the kitchen, Mamoru." Michiru requested and Mamoru gladly pointed his phone anywhere but at his eyes. When Michiru registered the devastation her only reaction was, "Oh."

"What were you trying to do?" Haruka asked incredulous to the scale of the disaster.

"I don't even know." Mamoru whimpered.

"You're having this get-together tonight?" Michiru asked as if taking Mamoru's medical history.

"Yes."

"We're what, a two hour drive from the city?" Michiru asked and Haruka nodded the affirmative, "That only gives us, let's see with a grocery list and prep time…" Michiru quickly calculated, "We'd be cutting it really close to meet a dinner deadline." Haruka again nodded and bit her lower lip to stifle a grin, "So…"

"Helicopter?" the blonde eagerly suggested.

"Helicopter." Michiru was forced to concede.

"Helicopter?" was Mamoru's confused reply.

"Get the place ready, we'll be there soon!" Haruka announced as her normally sardonic and combative disposition became positively sunny.

"Wait, wait!" Mamoru pleaded, "I don't think you can land a helicopter on my building!"

But his pleas fell on deaf ears as the video went dark and the Outer Senshi disappeared from sight. His hand fell limp at his side and the future king of the planet who had strode into battle and vanquished countless foes all while wearing a top hat and tails stood shivering with dread in the middle of his once-neat apartment. He prayed that whatever political connections Haruka and Michiru cultivated ran deep enough to exonerate them from something as serious as airspace violations, or that they had enough of their mysterious wealth set aside for bribing whole police departments. With nothing else to do until the Valkyries descended upon him, he started idly shuffling pots and pans around to make himself feel better and at least present the illusion that he was attempting to clean up his mess. Once again he had a familiar thought.

"Kaden is going to kill me."