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It was so small that he had almost missed it, would have almost missed it if he hadn't been trying to follow the small aura that had pinged so faintly on his senses.

The 'something' had turned out to be a crystalline shard of some sort, no more than a couple of centimetres in length if he had to guestimate... Well okay mayhaps about three at a push, but no longer.

Setting the take out cup of hot chocolate down, Athene bent down and carefully extracted the shard from the mud that it was half buried in before using a combination of his topmost sash and some of the bottle of water in the satchel he was carrying to wipe it clean.

That done he turned, so he could show his find to his patrol partner for the evening - his four pawed patrol partner

"Hey Liryn do you have any idea what this is?"

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Purplish eyes looked over the shard that the dark-haired eternal held out curiously, but after a moment the little mauvian shook his head "No, I can't say that I do" he admitted before adding. "Well nothing that's not obvious" such as the fact that it was crystalline and perhaps a chip from something given that it was merely a shard and a small one at that. "I can sense an aura coming from it though."

It wasn't one he recognised and it was small to the point where he had to really concentrate on it, but it was there nonetheless.

And despite its small size, it was pretty.

He looked at Athene who was staring at the shard thoughtfully. "I think we should keep it, show Ida or I can ask around." After all they both knew quite a few people between them - perhaps one of them would know what the shard was.

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Athene glanced at the shard for a few minutes more, before tucking it carefully into his satchel and retrieving the take out cup with his hot chocolate. "Okay, it'll have to wait until later though" after all they were early days into the evening's patrol. He took a sip of the hot chocolate as he started walking again and then looked across at Liryn, "The park's not too far from where we are, might be worth heading by that way and checking to make sure that there's no trouble" he said, before heading in the aforementioned direction at the mauvian's agreement.

A few minutes checking out the park and then onto somewhere else - at least that was the plan half-knocking about in his head.

As he and Liryn got closer to the park, Athene felt an aura started to ping on his senses. It was a large aura, although not large in the way of Camelot's aura or Iris or Polaris' aura when they were in Princess form. Actually it didn't feel like a senshi or knight aura at all. Nor did it feel like a Negaverse or Dark Mirror aura - or at least if it fell into one of the latter two then it wasn't one that Athene had managed to come across in his three or so years of being a senshi.

Turning to look down at Liryn he'd asked the small bobtail if the aura was something that he'd come across and been told that the aura was a mauvian one. Liryn hadn't been able to tell him much though - just that the aura was mauvian and that it was not mauvian-negaverse.

And then, after he had asked the bobtail if he could tell him anything else, Liryn had told him that it was mauvian-different, although that had still left the question of different how.

He hadn't gotten the opportunity to ask what Liryn meant by that however, as it was at that point that it sunk in that the aura appeared to have gotten closer whilst he and Liryn had been talking. Mayhaps it was coincidence that the aura appeared to be heading in their direction, although it was something that Athene privately thought unlikely as he scooped up Liryn who was suddenly looking about their surroundings in interest and held the little bobtail in his arms.

It took a few minutes of waiting, but eventually he was greeted by a feminine voice stating that that he had a cat with him.

Athene blinked at the lilac-haired cat woman whose attention seemed firmly zeroed in Liryn - at least up until the point that she greeted them more normally and after giving her name as Zirconia stated that he had something of hers.

"Good evening Zirconia," it was easy enough to fall into politeness, despite his puzzlement about what she meant about him having something of her, "I'm Sailor Athene and this is Liryn" he looked down towards the bobtail who he was still holding and back towards her, the puzzlement he was feeling reflected in his quiet voice as he asked "Something of yours?" After all he wasn't sure how he could have something of hers given that he had never met her prior to today.

Unless... At the thought his gaze turned downwards towards Liryn as he asked. "Have you two met?" It belatedly occurring to him that mayhaps Zirconia was referring to Liryn rather than to himself.

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Liryn hadn't made any protest when Athene scooped him up, continuing to look around - albeit from Athene's arms instead. The approaching aura was a curious one. Mauvian - yes and big like when Cora had done her switch forms thing. But at the same time it wasn't like the other mauvian auras he had come across. Was neither like the auras of the few Negaverse-following cats that he had come across such as that red-furred one that had tried to eat his tail on the night after the meteor shower back in March when he had met Ash and Sheena for the first time.

He had come across a whole host of cats on that night - order cats and chaos cats both - however none of their auras had felt like the one approaching.

The aura had turned out to belong to a lilac-haired, amber-eyed mauvian in the cat human form thing that Cora could do and Liryn looked at her curiously as Athene spoke to her, although at Athene's question to him he had looked up at the dark-haired senshi instead "No we haven't met and I don't know what the thing we're supposed to have is" he said, before turning his purplish eyes back towards Zirconia "But hi anyway." He continued "I've not come across an aura like yours..." And then his voice trailed off as his gaze was drawn to the object that she appeared to be fiddling with. "And what's that?"

Although the term 'Black Moon' was unfamiliar, the name 'Ares' was not - after all Athene had been there when the Princess of Smoke had helped the Negaverse gatecrash the Order meeting that Polaris had arranged as a way for the different parts of Order to share information.

It might have been over two years ago now since it happened, but there were some things that one just didn't forget - such as choking on the simultaneous combination of said Princess of Smoke's magic and flash bombs working in tandem with even more smoke courtesy of the General King that Ares had been working with.

But given that Zirconia's aura didn't feel Dark Mirror - and Athene had met enough senshi from the court at differing power levels to know the difference - he was inclined to believe her when she said she was not chaos.

He listened quietly as she talked about tracking crystal shards, absently patting Liryn as he eyed the object she held out curiously, it not something he had come across before.

"Well as it happens we did come across a piece of shard" he admitted. "Although it's pretty small" he didn't mind the lilac-haired mauvian having it though - particularly if she was a friend of ********* - even if he was dubious about such a small shard being worth much.

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Neither the term 'Black Moon' nor the name 'Ares' were things that Liryn was particularly familiar with, although he recalled there being mention of an Ares in the DMC section of the senshi primer.

He listened quietly as she explained about the Black Moon being a world from the other side of the Mirror, a part of him wondering if that meant that she could go to and from the Black Moon in the same way that senshi could go to their worlds and Knights could go to their wonders?

He managed to keep a lid on his curiosity however until she showed them the object, his purplish eyes fascinated as he asked "How does it work?"

He managed to remember enough to reply in answer to her pleasantries with a 'nice to meet you as well' but his focus was mostly taken up with the enchanted object.