School was canceled today.

Even for the heavy winter that plagues this land year round, it was profoundly bad today. Artemis sits on a windowsill in Sophia's room, looking out into the distance. The cat had made it a point to be extremely careful to avoid detection since he got here. He wanted to stay close to Sailor Venus, to help her and guide her as best he can, and to do that he had to keep from burdening her.

She was different from the past, but there was still a lot that was the same. The smile, the kindness, the natural aura of energy that seems to draw others to it...it was all there.

However today was a new problem...leaving the albino furred cat to tremble in intimidation.

"This is bad....this is really, really, really bad..." he mumbles, audible to Sophia if she was nearby. He could sense it...an extremely powerful dark presence was in the city...probably responsible for the snowstorm that was raging right now. Even the snow particles had the faintest spec of chaos energy on them. Unless something was done about it, chances are it was going to cause the entire city to freeze and worse.

But could Sailor Venus handle such a force? Even if the Mars Knight that Artemis met were to help, Artemis questioned whether they were powerful enough to stand against this thing.

Sophia sits on her bed still in pajamas with a laptop in front of her. She said she would look over Kail’s work, and with school cancelled, she had ample time to do so. However, Runic Blade was a fairly prolific writer, and she was unsure of where to start exactly. She goes way back to the first thing posted, figuring it may be nice to see the beginnings of it all.

She looks up when Artemis starts mumbling. “What’s wrong? Don’t like the snow? I think it is sort of nice to have a long weekend, but I guess it is terrible that it so grey outside. Actually, maybe I would trade in the long weekend for one nice day. But we could make hot cocoa. Would you prefer yours with marshmellows or without?” She gets up off the bed in preparation of making two cups for them both. However, looking at the cat a second time, she notices that he is incredibly worried and anxious.

“Or is this one of those serious things that hot cocoa can’t fix?”

"If only I could indulge in hot cocoa, but unfortunately it's not very healthy for my feline body." Artemis says, hanging his head slightly, remembering the aversion he has to chocolate. He lifts his head and becomes more serious as he looks out the window, silent for a few moments before speaking again.

"This storm is not natural. Something is causing this, something dark and powerful." he say calmly, looking out at the snow and narrowing his eyes in the general direction where the overwhelming sense of darkness was coming from. "And whatever it is, it's only going to grow stronger the longer it stays."

At the mention of hot cocoa, Sophia pipes in, “Well, you can talk. I figured maybe you could deal with chocolate better. Sorry. Warm milk then.”

However, Artemis’ fear of the current storm confuses her. Sophia looks out the window. Bad blizzards happened occasionally, and she couldn’t tell the difference between this and extreme natural storm. “What makes this one different? What is causing this one? What do I do?” she asks. She feels some slight nervousness about fighting whatever it is Artemis wants her to fight, but she pushes it out of her mind. It isn’t a time where she could dwell on that.

“This is an emergency, right? I guess this is one of those things where we should walk and talk,” she says as she starts grabbing shoes and a coat and putting them on. She isn’t really interested in seeing how worse everything could get.

"Think of it as a spell that grows in power the longer it's in effect, drawing energy from both people and surroundings to amplify it's own power..." the white cat says grimly, before shuffling over to the side of the window and looking at the latch, debating whether he wanted to go right now.

"...The only way it's going to stop is to destroy the creature causing it...lacking opposition, Tokyo will become a glacier. I would hate to ask that your first battle be against such a powerful opponent, but there are others who will probably come to the aid...others who will pick up on what is going on." he says, looking at Sophia intently, then closing his eyes, the golden cresecent symbol glowing slightly.

“Alright. Let’s go. Time to escape the house without my family noticing,” Sophia says with a some anxiety in her voice. Watching her home freeze over was not something she was interested in. She makes her way over to the window. “Ok. If we hop out of the window, you will be standing on the roof above the kitchen. On the right side, the ground slopes up, so you can hop down without getting hurt. I used to do this when I got put in timeout in my room when I was younger. They had me sit on the stairs after that.” She feels as though she leave a note for her family if something were to go wrong. However, explaining the situation seemed impossible, especially when time was of the essence.

“Alright, after we get out of here, what do I do next? How do I stop it? I know how to transform, but not how to stop some kind of blizzard monster.”

She looks back at Artemis to see if he had any suggestions. “You’re glowing…”

"...I was sensing out where the knight I ran into was..." he says, waiting for Sophia to get ready and when the window was open, he hopped out, following the path that Sophia mentioned, but sliding and losing control from the ramp and face planting in the snow, leaving just his butt and tail in the air from his initial daze. How embarrassing for the white feline.

While Sophia made her way down, Artemis shakes the snow off and get his footing again, shivering a little in the cold. Damn this snow, damn it all to the depths from which it came from. He then looks about, noting that there were a couple of soldiers lurking around, lowering his head into the snow and using his natural fur color to blend in in the odd event one happened to look in their direction.

The idea that there were people patrolling the roads didn't enter Sophia's mind, so it catchers her off guard. She grabs Artemis and moves to behind one of her neighbor’s homes, out of view of the street. “Ok, it is really cold out here. I think if we run around the back of the houses until we get past some of the larger roads in the neighborhood, then we can avoid the patrols. Maybe the smaller roads have no people, seeing as neither of us want to get escorted back to the house. Let’s just hope not many people are looking out their back window.”

However, she isn’t sure if this is good enough. She grabs the mask out of her pocket and puts it on. “Actually, I feel the need to wear this with all this sneaking.”

“Who is this knight? Does he have shining armor and ride a horse?” she says sort of confused. “Is he aware what is going on?”

As Sophia made her way through the back roads, she was fortunate that there were no others to gaze upon them or report them to a patrol. When Sophia was far enough away and Artemis felt safe enough to carry on with the conversation, he piped in again.

"He is a knight that has an influence over the element of fire and the planet Mars. It is a little unusual to me really seeing a male guardian like that, however I saw him prove his might in a youma battle recently when a rather nasty one popped up and went after some street punks. He knows about as much as you do? the cat says, then quiet and thinking, wondering where the other guardians were.

Sophia keeps moving around the streets toward the entrances/exits of the base. “It is really weird seeing no one outside…” It strikes her as almost spooky. “Provided that we don’t freeze to death, I think we are good. However, I am going to need you to lead the way since I have no clue where to go next.”

“So this Mars Knight has some clue what he is doing, cool. Wait, there are knights AND senshi for planets? Is there a Venus Knight? Or is the gender difference just because Venus is associated with femininity and Mars with masculinity?” Sophia asks. Having a partner in all this seemed completely awesome in her mind. Also, the fact that there was a person with a little more experience than her in this put her mind at ease. At least, one of them would have some kind of clue as to how to do this.

“Erm… also, what exactly should I expect to see?” Sophia was wondering what this battle would be like. She couldn’t fathom would a youma would actually look like. Her mind runs through images of Grade-B monster movies, but she doubts it is anything like that.

"...Traditionally, the planetary guardian duties were always handled by female senshi, the creation of a 'knight' archetype is new to me. The guardian of the Earth was a male in the past, but he was the exception to the rule." he says, then shaking his head when she asked about what the monster is expected to look like.

"...The one i saw was an insane female with psychic powers. But there is no consistent rules for what to expect from a youma unfortunately." Artemis says, shaking his head slightly, then pausing once the two leave the base and a payphone is nearby. He hops and squirms away from Sophia and then makes his way over to the booth, jumping into it and pawing at the receiver til is falls off. After a substantial and comical effort of seeing a cat dial numbers, he ends up dialing a collect call to a cell phone number he happened to get earlier...but it ended up going to voice mail for some reason.

"Mars Knight...yeah...its the cat. Big problem. Make your way to.........and hurry, we need to meet and handle the youma that is causing this storm." he finishes off, hoping the Mars Knight gets the message soon.

Killian was trying to enjoy himself with some tea and scones. While hearing the wailing winds outside his windows. He was doing edits on a chapter of a book he wanted to get published. But it was slow since he remembered the other day when he became the Mars Knight. As he looked at the very ornate writing pen. The pen was the catalyst to turn him into his heroic form.

His musings got cut short as his cellphone went off somewhere in his room. During this surprise his tea fell over on to the floor. Kail quickly got something to wipe the liquid up. So by the time he got done the message went to his voicemail. Cursing slightly he gets his phone and gets his voicemail box and listens to the message. It surprised him as it was the white cat from that evening.

The other shock was that a youma was causing the storm. This gave him pause for a minute. As to make peace with himself for the battle that was to come. Grabbing his transformation item, Kail sneaks out of his house. As his mother was almost all knowing on when he comes and goes. "I hope I can come back in once piece" he said to himself and started to make his way to where the white cat would be.

Sophia snickers as Artemis makes his phone call. It was a little strange. She thought they would run to the knight's house or Artemis would have her call. No, the cat pawed all the keys on a payphone, which she imagines to be a somewhat of a difficult feat without individual fingers. It isn’t until he introduces himself as “the cat” that makes her laugh loudly. “That has to be the weirdest voicemail anyone has ever gotten…”

Sophia looks down at her attire. “So we just wait here for him then? Is this the part where I transform, so this random person doesn’t think I fight in my pajamas and coat?” She takes the pen out of her coat and says the transformation words “Venus Power, Make Up!” The transformation goes exactly the same as the first time that she did it. Bright light as the world fades away. The tiara appears on her head and glows as the dress, gloves, and boots appear. The bows sprout out from nothingness as her hair grows long. Thankfully, the masquerade mask stays in place.

“Surprisingly I don’t feel terribly cold out here… weird,” she says as she sits down to wait for the knight to arrive. “Question, what is the best way to introduce myself on this occasion? Should I say, ‘Hello Mars Knight, I am Sailor Venus’? Or do I make up a name? Is there a senshi handbook in existence?”

Artemis sweatdropped as Sophia laughed at his substantial effort to dial the phone. Hey at least he was a cat that could do that sort of thing! When Artemis was asked about what her appearance should be, he bubbled another bit of sweat. He didn't take into account the fact that Sophia ran out with just pajamas on.

"It'll probably be better to keep the coat on over it and not draw as much attention to yourself. If you think about your coat, it will reappear on you...a trick for the items you keep outside of your magical self." the cat says, then shaking his head.

"The senshi handbook...a novel idea."

Ba dum tish. Corny jokes beware.

Kail had to keep himself bundeled up a bit more then normal. He quickly tries to get past most people. And tries to avoid them to best of his ability since this was not a normal storm. As he got closer though, Kail was on high alert since he did not want to walk into an ambush. All he could hear was the wind around him blowing furiously around.

The redhead finaly got there and looked around since Artemis blended in with the snow. And after a few seconds, Kail spots him waiting with a girl. He gazed at Sophia a few times to try and figure out who she was. But it would have to wait "Artemis I am here" Kail spoke before approaching the two. The young man was unsure if he should have transformed before approaching. Or after speaking with the cat.