Backdated to February 18th

Totally divorced from everything else, it was much easier to make her quotas when she wasn’t also trying to collect for Melanite. Astrophyllite was so used to going above and beyond the call of duty (and for what? Nothing. It was utterly thankless) that cutting back just, well, it made her nightly patrols more and more of a breeze!

She’d first noticed her current target when he blazed through a stoplight and nearly hit a pedestrian. Bad people get punished, Astrophyllite thought, and took up the chase. She caught up to him at one of those drive-through diners, the kind where the waitresses wear roller skates, and waited just out of sight while he screamed his order at the menu board.

Rude! she thought, creeping forward. His hand was dangling over the edge of his window - if she was careful, she thought, she could keep in his wing mirrors’ blind spot. Slowly, moving as softly as she could, she reached up and carefully touched her fingers to his, and felt the energy begin to flow through into her. Just - just a little bit. That was all she needed from him, just enough to make him feel tired but not so much that he’d crash his stupid ******** pickup truck on its stupid two-and-a-half foot tall tires.

After about a minute, she heard the waitress approaching from the other side of the car. Astrophyllite bolted, closing her fist around the energy she’d gathered so far and dashing for the boxwoods planted beside the driveway. She took a dive and slid into home plate. The crowd went wild.

She rolled into a crouch, the taste of rust burning in her mouth. Astrophyllite looked around, trying to place the floral perfume she smelled. “Colchis?” she asked quietly. Oh no - oh no, how much had her friend seen?

Shibrogane
Colchis hadn’t quite discovered how to sense people as well as Astrophyllite did. What she did have on her side was the relative ease of weatherproofing her uniform--so she turned up at their usual meeting spot in a black hoodie and ******** jeans she’d gotten from Goodwill, and a pair of boots instead of her gladiator sandals. When the summer came, she imagined she would abandon this tactic of “cover up your uniform and hope everyone just thought your skirt was, like, the bottom of a tunic top”. But right now, it was only logical to avoid <******** frostbite. (No one tell her dads she’d cussed.)

Anyway, Astrophyllite hadn’t shown, and so Colchis had taken to the streets. Sometimes her friend was delayed. Which was fine, except she never really had a good explanation for why she was late, and after a while Colchis had gotten a little curious. All those hints about why Astrophyllite and her ‘side’ were bad, and no actual elucidation, tended to pile up, and Colchis no real proof except that disaster of a New Year’s ball. It was enough to make anyone curious, but especially her.

“Astrophyllite,” she started to say, when she finally spotted her friend. Astrophyllite was crouched beneath a pickup truck, doing… something to the driver, collecting something glowing in the palm of her hand. Only for a minute, though, before Astrophyllite bailed. Colchis followed, because--they were friends, and that looked kind of neat. “Astrophyllite! There you are. What were you doing to that guy? Can I see it?”


Astrophyllite straightened up, holding the sphere of energy protectively to her chest as Colchis approached. Oh, god. Oh no. She’d been late to their meeting and now - no, no, no! She’d never wanted Colchis to see her like this, to see her being bad! “It’s energy,” she said quietly. “I have to collect it. For my job.”

Perhaps… perhaps just showing her for a second wouldn’t hurt. Astrophyllite unclenched her fist to display the glowing ball of energy, and then quickly closed her fingers around it again. She tucked it into her pocket. “I’m sorry I missed our meeting,” she said, genuinely apologetic. Colchis was one of her few friends, and she’d hate to make her feel put-out! “I have… I have a quota I need to meet, and if I don’t meet it, I’ll be punished.”

There’d been one or two times when she’d turned Melanite’s quota in and shorted herself, to punish herself instead of him for her failings. But then he’d still gone and left her behind. She’d been so dumb!

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Colchis quirked an eyebrow and flipped the hood of her jacket up over her distinctive blonde hair. “Where does it come from? I mean, I saw you take it from that guy, but I mean, how? Is it something I can do? Or is it just something people like you can do, or… what’s up with it?” Maybe this would solve the long-term mystery of Why Astrophyllite Thinks She’s A Bad Person, in a way that months of empirical research couldn’t! Colchis positively hated mysteries, almost as much as she hated her dada’s brussel sprouts or Jenny Mays, who was literally The Worst.

“It’s okay. I found you, so we’ve still met up, right?” She smiled, trying to look forgiving and interested all at the same time. She thought she pulled it off. Maybe. Or else she probably just looked constipated. “I don’t want you to get punished. We can do your quota-thing while we talk! I mean, if you don’t mind? It didn’t look like something really personal. But maybe I’m wrong.”


“No,” said Astrophyllite, cringing at the suggestion that she take Colchis with her to gather energy. That just seemed like such, such, such a bad idea! It was probably against, like, seven hundred rules on both sides! She would get in trouble for taking her and Colchis would get in trouble for not stopping her - or maybe she would try to stop her, and then they’d have to fight! Not sparring, but fighting fight! With nails and teeth and hair pulling.

She definitely didn’t want to do that.

“I don’t think you can do it,” she said, shifting her weight uncomfortably. She’d never heard of any knights or senshi being able to collect energy, and it was probably better that they couldn’t. Safer. “It. Um.”

She knew where the energy came from, of course, but if she told Colchis, then Colchis would be angry with her! It was bad enough that Astrophyllite had to know the shame of stealing people’s lives away, even bad people who probably deserved it - but she didn’t want to share that burden with someone who didn’t already know!

“It’s just magic,” she shrugged, lying. “He wasn’t using it, and I need it.”

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She needed it. Okay. Colchis frowned. “Have I been keeping you from doing stuff you need to do?” That would just be unforgivable, really. Friends didn’t let friends not do their homework, or… fail to collect their magical balls of glowing light.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m not using my magic either, so--I mean, if you need it, and you’ll get in trouble without it, you can have mine.” She offered a hand, remembering how Astrophyllite had brushed fingers with the man in the truck. If physical contact was needed, then hey, she’d gotten smacked by her before. That was definitely more painful than holding hands. “Then we can keep meeting up, and neither of us has to get in trouble!”


Colchis hadn’t touched her, but Astrophyllite pulled away, making a small, hurt noise as if she’d been shocked. “No!” she exclaimed. “I - I can’t. Your magic wouldn’t work.” That was a lie. Colchis glowed with energy, sweet enough to make Astrophyllite’s mouth water but even more than that, enough to make her want to gag. And she was rust sharp and floral sweet and- a knight’s energy would be more than good. If Colchis submitted to being drained regularly, her problems would be solved.

But with each meeting, she’d be shortening her friend’s life. Maybe just by a few hours at first - Colchis would still live to a ripe old age - but those hours would add up. She’d drain her friend dry, and… Astrophyllite didn’t think she could live with that guilt weighing down on her, so it was better to not even start.

“It needs to be energy from plain ordinary people,” she said anxiously. “I - thank you, but I can’t accept that.”

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She tipped her head a bit, and frowned, dropping her hand. This didn’t make any sense, did it? She had energy. She knew she had energy. And how did Astro know the people she was draining weren’t magic? “Can you sense magic from magic people in their human forms,” asked Colchis, stepping closer. Her red eyes sparked with curiosity: here was a new aspect to her superhuman abilities that she hadn’t considered! “How do you know who’s plain and ordinary? Is it something I can learn how to do? That’d be so convenient!”

Like… how would Astrophyllite know if she ran into Izzy Conrad that Izzy Conrad shouldn’t be drained? “If you met me as a civilian, would you know not to drain me somehow?”


Astrophyllite shook her head. She could sense a lot of things, but no, she couldn’t sense that - she figured it was probably unfair somehow. Like there were rules to this twisted, giant game they were playing and that would give her way too much of an advantage… or something. Everyone who wasn’t powered up felt pretty much the same.

Which was to say that they didn’t really feel like anything. Weird, that. “I wouldn’t know,” she said, “But I would never drain from you!”

“I only drain from bad people,” she explained. “Like, that guy?” The car was long gone, so she couldn’t point demonstratively. “He ran a red light and almost hit a lady! Which was bad. So that made it okay to take from him - it’s like taxes, for being bad. But you’re good! So I wouldn’t ever take from you! And besides, I can’t. Your energy wouldn’t work.”

Repeating that lie only made her stomach churn worse. Colchis didn’t know how good she was, how lucky. “I don’t like having to collect,” said Astrophyllite furtively. “I want - I want to be like you. A knight. I don’t like doing this.” She held her breath, worried over the response. Perhaps - perhaps Colchis was too new to really understand all this. Perhaps being friends wasn’t good enough, and she’d taken her fears to the wrong person.

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That… made no sense, but it also seemed to be making Astrophyllite kind of uncomfortable. So Colchis threw her arms around Astrophyllite and hugged her, so hard, maybe the hardest, and said, “Okay. It’s okay! There’s probably some way for us to make you like me, right? We can find someone and--and--” Colchis had to think about a decent threat. Astrophyllite didn’t seem like she liked the idea of threatening people, though, so maybe not. “You know. Make them fix you.”

Not that Astrophyllite was broken or anything.


Astrophyllite shrank a little from the hug, but that was sort of hard to do when you towered over the person hugging you. “I - I do know how,” she said quietly, balling her hands up against Colchis’s back. “Hvergelmir told me.” (And oh, she so badly wanted to know how Hvergelmir was, if her friend was okay, or - or - what if Astrophyllite had only made everything worse for her, because she’d brought her food and gotten caught?

Life was terrible. Astrophyllite was terrible. “I… I need to find a princess. Or a prince. Royalty. I need to find royalty.” But no royalty wanted to find her, was the trouble. She’d been too bad. Camlann made it seem so easy - she’d seen Melanite one night, and then a few nights later he was gone. He hadn’t even wanted it, she thought sourly - he’d just done it, and that should have been hers and-

There was no point in being sad over it now. Astrophyllite straightened, loosening her hold on Colchis. “Lots of stuff happens when you change,” she sighed. “I need to find out more about it first, so that I’ll know things for sure and have a plan for when I do it.” Would - would the Negaverse come after her? What about Beatrice? No, she would be free of Beatrice…

Life was hard, she thought. Life was really unfairly hard.

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She didn’t let go of Astro, mostly so Astro couldn’t see Colchis’s thinking face. “Then I’ll help you do that,” she said. “We’ll find you a princess, or something, and we’ll find someone who’s purified, and we’ll make them help you. It’ll be okay, Astro, we’ll make you how you want to be, and then--” She smiled at a sudden thought. “Maybe you can come stay with me! My dad is really nice. I bet he’d love you.”

Dada loved no one. Except Islay and Dad. But that was like, cool-guy love. Astro didn’t seem like she needed cool-guy love, just… friend love.

Then she let go of her friend. “Do you need to get more energy,” she asked, solicitously. “We can go hunt bad guys together.”


Astophyllite considered the energy rolling around in her pocket. “Um,” she said, and reminded herself she didn’t need to collect for Melanite anymore. She was close to meeting her quota - close enough to make up for it tomorrow. Besides, she really didn’t want to drag Colchis into this - she was mortified enough to have been seen collecting energy in the first place.

“No, I’ve got enough for tonight,” she said, shaking her head and hoping she sounded convincing. How late was it? She should be getting back to school, anyway, she thought, grateful for the excuse. “I need to go home, anyway,” she sighed. The nuns would get her up for early prayers, anyway, and there’d be hell to pay if she dozed off during them (she knew this because she’d already done it too many times).

But Colchis had made a very generous offer - one that she was in no position to turn down. “Thank you,” she added. “If you - if you know people like that…” Camlann had made such an offer, but she’d been so angry with him that she turned him down. Now, cooler heads were prevailing.

“Please?” Astrophyllite asked. “Please?”

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Colchis nodded firmly. “I’ll find someone,” she said. “I’m not… I’m a knight already, right, so maybe one of them will find me. Maybe they’re staying away because they don’t want to fight and don’t know you won’t?” She frowned at that thought--it was why she hadn’t really gone looking for others. Her love of science didn’t stretch quite that far.

“I’ll look for you,” said Colchis. “Same time next week?”