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Perhaps Stillwaterite would refer to it as luck, but Encke wasn't certain that continuing to run into the same few people was anything close to luck.

That especially applied to a certain piped monster, admittedly, who had attacked his love, and Encke had been on edge since. That intensity had only ratcheted upwards when The Autumn had been attacked, killing more people than he could save, and his love and been there. Even worse, his sister had been there. His sister, who was also a senshi. His sister, who later on ended up at The Center with him, where there had been yet another attack. Where his love had been, again.

Everything was a ruse. Everything was run by the Negaverse. Nothing was safe.

And on some level, Encke had already known that, but his paranoia had been especially high over the couple months. He was thankful that over the last month it had been a bit quieter, but yet, he had managed to run into certain frequent enemies again. He had managed to run into plenty of youma. He had still needed to save civilians from the hands of people like--

Like the Eternal who sat on the corner of the building.

Encke couldn't help his quiet groan as he landed on the building nearby. He wasn't sure if he actually wanted to engage her, but she might have starseeds in her coat again. Lives, lives that would be fed to the Negaverse Machine, lives that should be in human bodies or, at the very least, should be allowed to be reborn and given a second chance...

And knowing that fact made it even less likely he would just let her remain.

He didn't speak her name, but he did approach her. If the click of his boots didn't give him away, the obscene brightness he gave off probably would.

... Was she really smiling at him?

What the <******** froze in his tracks, unable to help the way his face scrunched up in concern. Why was she smiling at him? What did she want from him? Should he be worried? Should he be concerned? Considering how their last meeting had gone, he wasn't necessarily interested in finding out what she was smiling at him for. It couldn't be anything good, he knew that much already.

Why was she looking for specifically him?

The fact that she wasn't looking for a rematch was only a slight comfort, and his posture didn't exactly settle. "Uh-huh." And that wasn't the voice of a particularly confident transcendent eternal senshi, either. A wary one, maybe. Correctly wary in his opinion, considering where she had tried to stick her hand last time they had met.

Still, the lack of starseeds was an interesting approach. Perhaps she legitimately did want to just ... talk.

Or something.

"No offense, but I've learned not to trust Negaverse agents." A pause. "Or senshi. Do you mind if I check your pockets?"

A pause, before he added, "And if you attack me when I do so it's going to become a rematch."

He had remembered how this s**t had gone before, when he checked someone's pockets for starseeds--

At the second base joke, Encke snorted. If this was someone on his side, he might have remarked he had a boyfriend for that. As it wasn't, he simply quirked a brow.

"And which restaurant, exactly, would serve a pirate and a literally glowing man?"

At least he still seemed to have a sense of humour, albeit strained. Quite strained. The steps he took towards her were cautious and uneasy, not at all speaking of confidence or assurance. Arguably, he seemed even more paranoid than he had when he last saw her.

Of course, before he started feeling victorious--

Encke took his time searching her, though he was polite enough to not stick his hand down her corset, even if he quirked a brow at her joke. He checked her pockets, every pocket, patted the coat down for hidden pockets, even checked some spots near her legs for any pockets that might have existed in her pants.

Indeed, he found nothing.

Once satisfied, he backed away.

"Look, see, didn't even take your corset off." There was a somewhat awkward silence, before his expression grew more serious and he offered, more hesitantly, "What is it?"

... Wait, what?

He had talked to her about his connection to his comet before, mostly when he was trying to tell her that whatever her homeworld was missed her. Had something he had said actually gotten through to her? It was interesting, to say the least. Encke's hesitant posture relaxed a little further, but that may have been because of confusion or wonder. Was she interested in finding out more about space? Was she interested now in finding out more about what she had been disconnected from?

Encke's Comet was one of his favorite things in the universe. Presenting him with the idea of taking someone else was an almost surefire way to get him to agree to anything.

Of course, he hadn't exactly taken an agent of Chaos before.

She was showing a lot of trust in him, though. If he took her there, he could, in theory, just leave her there. There was enough there for her to thrive. Encke's Comet had plants, it had shelter, it had electricity and running water. It wasn't like she would die or anything, she would just no longer be on Earth. No longer able to mine starseeds from civilians, perhaps.

The thought was tempting, but he also did not want to be responsible for holding someone captive. That was morally dubious at best, especially when Stillwaterite had opted to let her guard down and let him search her, and then ask him to take her to a place where he would have the majority of the power.

It seemed like he was mulling over this for a long time before finally, he spoke once more.

"Alright."

Encke fished out his senshi phone.

Perhaps if he could convince her of what she was missing, she might become a little less married to this Negaverse bullshit she had found herself part of. One less agent of the Negaverse was one less potential monster to worry about, in his opinion.

(And he'd never admit it aloud, but Stillwaterite's brain might have been useful back on their side.)

Encke bridged the distance between them again, offering his hand for her to take. The other was still holding onto his phone.

"Unfortunately," he drawled, with a quirked brow, "you're gonna have to hang on to me. Easier this way."

Once she did so, Encke would turn to his phone and press down on the center button for a few moments. After that time went by, they left the top of the building behind. They left the planet Earth behind. They likely left the inner solar system behind, from what Encke knew about his comet's orbit. He didn't exactly have an exact calculation down, but the perihelion was over a year and a half ago at this point, and Encke only had approximately a three and a half year cycle.

The ground underneath their feet wasn't paved like the streets of Destiny City, but it was smooth. They had landed on one of the many paths of what Encke had figured out was the capital, in the middle of a once thriving city that still looked like, in a lot of ways, it should have been. After all, the buildings had lights emitting from them as if people were living there. Spires into the sky had lightning sparking from one to another. The sound of actual water could be heard in the distance, carrying easily due to the lack of obstruction and the lack of much noise at all. There were signs of plant life coming through beside the path, plants both glowing and more normal looking, like what might have been seen on Earth.

Something about Encke himself shifted when he was here. His posture relaxed. He was unable to stop a grin from coming onto his face despite the discomfort he felt. He felt the energy of his world flowing through him. He felt that deep connection.

This was home.

Though Encke was good at practiced smiles, being an actor, something about the grin he offered Stillwaterite seemed more sincere this time. "Well, this is Encke's Comet. I don't know how you are with vertigo, but be careful looking up."

There was a reason why he stated this. If she looked up just long enough, she'd see the stars moving in the sky.

Encke watched Stillwaterite's expression, and his smile once more cracked into a grin.

To see someone as taken by the comet as he was, even if that person was wearing a uniform that was far too dark, always excited him. Pendour's reaction excited him. Methone's reaction excited him. So, too, would Stillwaterite's, especially once she spoke. He could hear the awe.

That couldn't be faked.

Maybe this would be effective.

"To believe your first out of town trip was to another world, eh?" asked Encke, his voice considerably warmer than it had been for the entire time they had known each other. Now, his voice almost seemed reverent. The way he said another world was the way he might say Richard's name, warm, full of affection. He looked away from her to let his eyes wander back over the setting around them, stopping on the taller spires in the distance, the mountains in the further distance.

He bent down to observe one of the bulbous glowing flowers on the side of the path, placing his hand underneath the bulb so the light could reflect on his skin.

"It's amazing, isn't it?"

Encke chuckled quietly at the idea of her grand plans paling in the face of this. He still enjoyed trips and always would, especially with Richard admittedly, but over time, he had grown far more fascinated by trips that would take him outside of the planet. There was so much more to see out here that he never could have even dreamed of back on Earth.

He never would have guessed there would be a world with his name on it that had tall spires, electricity, and glowing bulbous plants sprouting from the ground.

Encke scooted over a bit so she could take a closer look at the plant, if she'd like.

At being asked what he did with the comet, he attempted not to reel. It took a few seconds before he came up with an answer. "Well, one of the primary things I do here is restore this place. Nothing was like this years ago. I mean, the buildings were there, the paths were there, but it had been left alone for hundreds of years. Put the paths back together with concrete, fixed some of the broken things, blew off the dust, brought up supplies to clean the buildings, light the buildings. Eventually discovered the way to get electricity running, here. Can you believe there was a society hundreds of years ago that had already figured electricity out? Already figured computers out?"

And it was his society. How far along would the Enckean people be now if they hadn't been--

"I bring people up here to talk, to bond, for protection, for quiet, for peace," because here, they were free to be themselves where Chaos couldn't get to them. "And I also get memories here. I remember what this place once was. I remember who I once was. I remember the other people who once were here, too."

By the time he had finished talking, the enthusiasm had leaked out of his voice. Somber, he added, "I'd like to make this place live again. Not just the plants. There used to be a whole people here. A whole society."

And they had been wiped out.