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He probably should have felt at least the pressure to be ashamed of powering up solely for the purpose of saving his shoes, but - well. Shoes weren't as easy to come by as everything else, being a man of discerning tastes, and he'd put too much faith in the notoriously-fickle Destiny City forecast and thus been surprised while wearing suede.

So he was, now, wearing those magically waterproof boots, his cloak drawn up around his shoulders, his hood pulled forward, looking for all the world like some sort of elongated garden gnome - and not much elongated, Maus being a man without much height to speak of - and helped along by the fact that all that was really visible in the shadow of that hood was facial hair.

Granted, it was a mustache, and not a beard. But it contributed to the general impression, at least, as he meandered vaguely in the direction of a friendly signature, his eyes turned to the ground.

The flowers had been a lot of fun, up til now. This was decidedly more on the unsettling end of things, but he was nothing if not experienced in rolling with whatever happened to him while Under the Influence, even if it wasn't usually the influence of random flowers.

He did not look up, therefore, when he issued a called-out greeting once he figured he was in earshot, his attention wholly focused on the kind-of-terrible vision being presented from the mud puddles. The nightmarishness was made sharper by the fact that the ground was swirling in strange colors with every step, as well.

"Staying dry, I hope?" he called out. He prodded the puddle experimentally with a toe, and made an inward face at the results.

He, by contrast, remained with his attention fixed on the ground in front of him, his head canted to one side in consideration of the very strange vision that literally looked back at him.

"Mostly," he said. He then, at last, raised his eyes to see who he was speaking with, his own pale and somewhat watery, looking allergy-stricken even though he wasn't and this was, in fact, simply the unfortunate usual truth of his face.

"I was going to say," he continued pleasantly, "that maybe the rain would keep the ne'er-do-wells and assholes in their houses, but I'm here, so maybe bad logic. Seen anything worth getting into a fight over?"

"I thought it was just me," he said, returning his attention to the ground with an expression of faint consternation. "Have you been sniffing any weird flowers lately?"

This was a question that would not make any sense at all unless she had in fact been doing so, but he gave himself a little shake, reacting to the introduction instead.

"And I'm Maus," he said.

His face lit up with a sudden boyish enthusiasm, his smile a broad ray of abrupt sunshine. The eyes didn't seem to be immediately eating anything, and therefore he abandoned the topic in favor of this much more exciting one.

"Are you!" He said, nearly as if he was encountering a celebrity. "I even have a tattoo -" he began, and made as if to suddenly strip off his clothes before being checked. "Well, there's about eighteen layers here, so you'll have to take my word for it."

Having thus been saved from the tribulation of seeing Maus shirtless, Tea received what was presumably a much more pleasant surprise. He reached up into his hood, letting it fall back and procuring, of all things, a little white mouse, its extraordinarily long tail winding around his wrist for stability as he suddenly held it out towards her.

"I love them," he said, almost childish in his simple delight. "Do you have one of these too? She came out of a little - a little fairy light type thing. I haven't met anyone else with a mouse - just a bird. And an octopus."

The mouse extended a pink nose in her direction, whiskers moving furiously as it gave the air between them a thorough sniffing.

The mouse extended a polite sniff towards the offered hand, before allowing herself to be transferred fully over into Tea's palm, where she promptly began to groom her whiskers. She was, it appeared, very truly like a real mouse, in that she seemed more inclined to tolerate pets than seek them out, but quite enjoyed an offered hand as a warm place to sit.

"I haven't had any on my Wonder either," he commiserated, "but I know someone else with them, so I hold out hope every time. And I'll hold out hope for you as well. The senshi of mice has to have mice," he said firmly. "Of course." He paused, watching Engelbart in the stranger's palm. "I wonder if Maus and Tea knew each other, one day. I feel like - I don't know if you know what I mean - but wouldn't it make more sense if Maus was a knight of Tea, rather than a knight of earth? It feels all wrong, now that I know about you. And it's not like Earth is doing s**t," he said, finishing gallantly: "So you're Princess Tea as far as I'm concerned."

"I don't think it's obligatory, no," he agreed. "Which is for the best, because I've never been much good at following a direct order."

Maus lied like he breathed; he lied casually, easily, constantly. He rarely told a lie that hurt him much in the telling, but that one did. How much easier would things have been, if that'd been true? Or, if not easier, at least less painful.

It passed, however, without even a flicker of an eyelash to betray the feeling. An accomplished liar had to be an accomplished actor, also, and he was, at least for things like this.

"I wouldn't spend too much time hunting for Maus relics, though, if I were you. I think we were more in the line of - ah - acquisition, rather than production," he said, with a pleasant but slightly roguish smile. "If you understand what I mean. Strange thing for an Earth Knight to be getting up to, what with that whole honor and virtue schtick, but then again maybe that's just more evidence that I was supposed to be a Knight of Tea."

Engelbart, having worn out her interest in Tea's palm, extended her nose in Maus's direction, and he put out his hand, letting her climb back and be returned promptly to his hood. Her fur rippled gently as she resumed her station, the white fur turning the same golden-yellow. No wonder she'd been hard to spot before.

"Don't look too hard at the ground," he advised, apparently preparing to go, with a glance skyward to see how much time they had to part ways before they'd been forced to find a shelter out of the rain again. "And stay dry, your Highness."