Painite was standing in an alley, her back pressed to the wall of the building opposite the library. There was graffiti on the library’s wall, but she really didn’t care about it at the moment. She was shaking, badly, her whole body trembling with an emotion she had no name for. Her throat burned with the unending threat of vomit, but nothing came, not even a dry heave, her stomach doing front flips and her ribs feeling like they were going to crash in over her internal organs as her chest constricted. Her heart thundered against its bone cage, seeking escape, and no matter how many deep breaths she took she could not calm it.

Was that man dead?

She had met him so casually, and become interested him in a simple way. He had presented her with a challenge, the idea that he believed something and she wanted to force him to see he was wrong. A story for the paper, with his name leading the headline, retracting the idea that Senshi were not terrorists. Clearly they were, if one had left him as bait just to kill a youma. She had even donned the ridiculous outfit, a pieced together white bodice and a skirt, which lay in tatters at her feet now, the wig and bent tiara sitting on top. She couldn’t take her eyes off of it. Hours of careful work, constructing that outfit, and for what?

To kill a man.

Had that been her goal from the beginning? She had never thought about it directly, in all her planning. She had never thought of the victim himself, just the idea he had instilled in her. She had seized the challenge voraciously, a youthful vigor and a twisted imagination fueling her tireless work, her hours of fact gathering, her careful planning. The set up had all been so interesting, so much fun, and putting it into motion was like giving birth to something beautiful. Something to be proud of. And everything had worked, just as she wanted it to. Everything, and then some.

That youma. She hadn’t expected it to look like that, act like that. So slow, patient, fathomless in its featureless existence, unreadable and impossible to understand. The haunting, jerking way it moved, the way its long fingers had wrapped around the librarian’s neck, too many knuckles bending to grip it so completely. It hadn’t made a sound, she realized. Not a growl, not a grunt. It had no mouth, no face. She could not even tell if it was sentient, if it knew what it was doing or if it was just going through the motions, doing what it was programmed to do by some universal design that Painite couldn’t hope to understand.

She had stood there, watching that human struggle. She saw the fight, the life, drain out of him as he kicked and called out for her to help him, though his words had been lost to terrible gagging. She didn’t move as the man she had used as a play thing had been put on the floor, unmoving, as if laid to rest. And now, only seconds had passed, but it felt like an eternity. Mere seconds since she had torn her eyes from the sight of the youma, the man, his head turned toward her, his eyes fluttering closed with her image the last thing reflecting in them. She had pulled the makeshift senshi uniform off, the stupid costume looking more fake then it had when she tried it on at home, staring proudly at herself in the mirror.

She was not sure she felt proud now. She was not sure if she had made a mistake, or done something amazing. How could it be so complicated? How could she not know if this was a success or a failure? She needed to learn where the line stood, in her own mind, between the two extreme sides of her own morals. Could she kill humans for fun? Could she kill them for her duty?

What of senshi?

So many questions plagued her in an instant, and they tumbled around her head so loudly, almost painfully, that she nearly missed a strange sound in the air. Her head snapped up and she looked to the street, clinging to the wall as if she were floating in the ocean and it were her only life line. She saw the man on the floor still, eyes closed, head still turned in her direction. She shuddered again, that deeply rooted trembling surging to the surface once more. Her eyes traveled, however, away from the librarian toward the youma. There she saw a surprise she hadn’t entirely discounted happening, but in her mental abstraction now it almost seemed impossible.

A senshi, a real one, defending the fallen human and fighting the youma. That was his duty, the senshi was a male, just as her own duty was to serve the Negaverse in anything they asked her to.

Perhaps that was the key.

She had never done anything like this on her own before. Whenever she implemented a trap, played with a plot, preyed on a human, it was for the negaverse, to gather energy and to take it back with her as she was directed to do. She treated Senshi as her enemies. She had fun, yes, but she was doing her job in the way she wanted to do it, and the way she felt was the most successful. This had not started out like the rest of it. She hadn’t found him while looking for energy: she had targeted him because he gave her a challenge she wanted to seize the day with. She hadn’t considered not acting on her impulse, not treating his life like a toy, as all she had been thinking about from the moment they spoke at the counter in the library was destroying his belief in the good of senshi. She had simply justified the whole endeavor by silently promising herself she would steal his energy at the end of it all. It was personal, in a way, and it gave her such a thrill. That feeling, even now as the moment for retrospect seemed wrong, would never be matched again. Never replaced. She had never felt so fulfilled and she would strive every day to feel that way again.

The only question was how to do it.

She watched the male senshi, who was dressed like some kind of BMX biker or something like that, fight with the youma. It seemed he relied on his fists, punching the youma’s non-existent face in. He fought with vigor, and she saw him throwing looks back at the man on the floor a few times. It made her wonder if the senshi had stopped to check on the librarian, and kept looking back to see if he was still alive.

Stepping into the street, she moved slowly to the man that had sent her mind spinning, making her doubt everything and yet feel more resolved than ever, though in what way she could not yet know. She kneeled by him, spying his darkly bruised throat in the darkness. She could hear a whistle, a low sound coming out of his throat, as the librarian drew slow breaths. Alive, then.

It did not clear her mind.

“Hey!”

She looked toward the source of the voice, the senshi, who was standing with dust swirling around him, his fists still clenched. He looked furious, his eyes narrowed at her. She realized he seemed like a guard dog, eying her like a threat because of how close she was to the human he was protecting. She held her ground, standing straight.

“Come get me, Senshi,” she said, hiding all traces of uncertainty from her voice, her lip not trembling despite an ingrained certainty that it would. She stared him down.

“Did you do this?” The senshi asked. She was silent. “Did you do this?!” He was yelling at her, and that, at least, she found satisfying. Hurting a senshi justified everything. She offered him a smirk and it was all he needed. He ran at her, and she turned to run from him. But she was not planning to escape.

No, she was going to fight him, she just had to do it her way. She darted into the darkness and he followed her, further behind than he wanted to be simply because he had to stop and check on Tony. He didn’t want to leave his father laying in the street, but he couldn’t show him too much care and attention lest the Nega get suspicious. He ran after her, but she was gone from sight.

Up above, Painite pulled out the stash of supplies she had brought with her and hidden on the roof. She knew the senshi could find her, but it wasn’t about hiding herself. It was about preparing for what would be a defining fight for her.