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Counting by the number of the day, instead of by formal numbers in months, it was one day off 7 months. He'd been a part of the war for 7 months. Had it really been so long? Had he really accomplished so little?

No lives saved, really, no great discoveries, no team, he'd never met another cat, he'd not met any knights, he was....something of an embarrassment as a soldier still. No, not something of, he was an embarrassment. He couldn't much better throw a punch or kick than his start with Maia's training session. He'd certainly gotten some schooling on getting torn apart. Thraen stopped his running on patrol, falling down to a jog, then a walk, then standing still in an herbarium kept by one of the University lab schools. It smelled strong, the fall changes and breeze kicking up the last powerful oils from the rosemary and the wide creeping Oregano. For once he couldn't smell the floral arrangement that was his uniform.

"What are you even doing?" It was soft, on an exhale. "Something has to change."

Rhetorical questions answered, Thraen almost jumped out of his skin, looking around himself at first- he'd missed someone's approach for certain. There was no one else in sight on the horizon then-what was that?

A bell collar.

There had been a bell collar. He looked down, relaxing visibly, "You-"

"Are too short."

He rubbed his hand over his face, heaving a long breath, "God's Breath I'm glad it's you, *********, and not anything else. But it's been more than half a year...I wasn't expecting I'd find you again."

"Or, more appropriately, considering, you'd find me." His brain finally caught up with her question, coming back from the far-overhill it had been wandering in, "Talk?"

"I don't know how much there is to say. It isn't subjective how awful I am at all this. Nothing more than get in the way and get broken by some officers. I'm not planning on stopping, but something has to happen. I can't keep failing like this. The hard part is knowing just how or where to start, when you're looking out of a deep well at the pale disk of sky above."

"Not all roles in the war are the same, and yet other roles except the path of a warrior are somewhat hard to come by, are they not, when there is one standing alone. "

"Besides, " He sucked his teeth once, "The politics scene is a little sparse."
Whether he'd be any good at that was debatable as well. It usually took some degree of charisma. If Irene and Medea were any bases of comparison, dispensing with mercy was no way to win allies. They seemed to breath compassion and fool-fated desires to come to a truce with murderers- using logic to try to reason with madmen. Women. People?

But they don't deserve mercy, who absent the destinies of others from their breasts and laugh. "What is important? Duty, to see through what must be done. Justice, to close the bloodied wounds of this war. And Order, that what once was confused and separate find harmony, purpose, succored growth. These are what is important to me. What is most important."

"But if you weren't asking about ideals? Well...what else is there in the end."

That makes me worry that other scouts decidedly aren't? Is it really that unusual to be trying to figure out the reason for being out here accruing mental and emotional baggage night after night? Maybe other scouts...don't really care. That wasn't a comforting thought. Thraen's mouth pulled into a peeved, lopsided minus sign.

He puzzled for a moment when the cat was reaching, then crouched and lifted her in arms, allowing her space if she wanted to mount up to his shoulders. "I'd rather be trying to learn more about...my asteroid. About others asteroids. About what we're all supposed to be a part of by being sailors that isn't war. There was a court, we had places we belonged to and did something for those places. I want to know about that and remake it. I want there to be something to be doing other than warring on Earth. "

"I met Aquarius. She seems interested in the petrified plants on Thraen. Maybe even in seeing if any still live deeper in. Imagine...if some place of the Court could be resuscitated- re-peopled. A place for study, quiet, growth- some haven where all scouts were not only welcome but known and remembered. Not alone, feared and abhorred, fractious and pressed to walls of madness or death like here. And floundering- all lost and full of questions. "

"Newly awakened senshi could be taken directly to such a place and instructed rather than just handed their pen and phone and told godspeed and good luck, save the lucky ones."

He shook his head, moving to her last question, "Not much. Most I've met are part of teams, and no one mentions seeking for new members. I guess they're all exclusive deals. Medea and Aegir are the only senshi I've met not part of chaos and not mentioning teams. I don't know if Pomona was or not."

"Maybe a team will come of it all. It is hard to suggest on first meeting someone. I talked it over briefly with Irene. She mentioned she knew you."

She is one of my girls It was a confirmation of what had once made him wince when talking to Irene, but this time he felt nothing. He’d spent enough years of his life as not part of a crowd, and he was accustomed to using his own hands to accomplish challenges set him. Having a companion was something that he needed, a team, but there was no use in pathos over the simple truth that he wasn’t a part of any of the existing teams. There was no point in worrying about the acceptance of cats either.

“I don’t expect information gained from the tiny place to be of much use in the pressing situation. Not from Thraen, at least. I would like more, but focusing on the dead ignores the plight of the living. There are people and nations here on Earth orders of magnitude more than the dead asteroid. And they are under threat by the Negaverse. “

“As for what Thraen was like? It’s hard to say. I took Medea with me, trying to use it as an emphasis of the definition of what we are. But she was exhausted, so we weren’t long. We arrived in a hedge maze, twisting sculpted limbs like lace over the rest of the view of the place. Flagged-ground and long dead lawn. We came out on a terrace of flagstone with twisted forms that may have been furniture before decay had done to them what it couldn’t to stone. What are centuries to stone after all? It counts its birthdays by millenia, ages, and epochs.”

“And all the plants there in view, across the stone paths and the stone beds, bridges, and glass in the distance of what may have been a conservatory ...they’re all petrified. Frozen as stone are flowers with leaves raised, buds still ready to open for a day that does not come to release the spell. Eerily, but fair to look at. I plan to go back and explore that conservatory. Explore the further gardens. “ His gaze was out, a thousand yard stare that probably remembered each of the features as they were named. One of his hands idly worked his long, sculptor's fingers into the soft kitty fur.

"If you're making an argument for cosmological recurrence, then I could equally quote Twain's 'History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme' as well as multiple independent discovery phenomenon as possible topics that refute that Nietzche view." Thraen looked down at the fluffy tummy, pausing for a long moment while thought fled and was replaced by the dial-tone of cuteness.

And then commented quietly, "I really like cats."

It wasn't fair to be so cute and catching fingers.

Before continuing, more intelligently he hoped, "Well, we can't even really do it? It isn't an ability if its a phone function is it? Unless you know someone who can do it without the push-button feature. Are magic cats not part of the cosmic phone plan?"

"Now there's a 'historic' point that does have a very present bearing on our lives. Where do these phones and pens even come from? Can more be made? Can they be modified? " You just popped them out of air the last time we met. Does anyone even know? Talk about the significance of history, how about the here and now? Like...phones, pens, and talking cats.

" 'I would tell you what you want to know if I could, mum, but I be a cat. And no cat anywhere, ever gave anyone a straight answer. ' " He quoted, considering the cute round ball in his arm. Though her answers had been fairly straight for as far as they went. Who made the phones and pens, and whether they could be modified, and if cats had phones remained at large- maybe the reason for wanting the pen?

He fished out his henshin pen and offered it upon the fluffy tummy. "Do you have a phone *********? Athene taught me about scanning others to be able to contact them like on normal phones."

Is it alarming, interesting or ironically fitting that magical talking planets come from somewhere else? Pretty sure the answer is 'yes'.

"Have you ever seen the movie The Cat From Outer Space?" But something was happening- he closed his eyes from the light for a moment, then examined the pen on the fluffy belly in its strange new shape.

"Is that a special, magic-cat power only?" He smiled barely, but then grew more stern with himself. "I might sound flippant, but really...thank you ********* for helping me."

"It's generosity I don't know how to repay." She has her own team and plenty of others to be looking after. Seven months of it, even. I'm a drop in the bucket. There are cases needing more stability, like Medea.

"What modification is this? "