Welcome to Gaia! ::

The cold settled like a skin over Destiny City and caked everything in ice. This time of year, Rhona slipped on fleece-lined leggings under her fuku's skirt and traded in her clawed heels for boots. Between that and her wool pea coat, the only indication that she wasn't a civilian was the feeling of her aura, and even then powered eyes might skin over her if they weren't looking too closely. Which, if she was being totally hoenst, was exactly the way that Acubens wanted it. She wasn't out for a fight that evening, so soon after the debacle in the basement of that strange store. Her body still ached and her wounds still smarted if she moved just right.

No. Acubens was out to gather her quota of energy and then go back home to curl up with Lavender or Alois or both and sleep for the night. The only thing that would keep her out would be a distress call but it had been quiet all day and to the best of her knowledge, the senshi who were learning under her had already gathered their energy and gone home. She was headed into an easy and quick night, wandering through the upscale shopping district in the middle of a residential area. Her old stomping grounds from when she went by a different name and wore a different skin. Where her parents used to live before they split up after her "death." Where her brother would sometimes surface before drowning again in the sea of faces before Acubens could even think about trying to follow him.

Hiding from the cold and her past in her coat, Acubens slipped through the ever-thinning crowd of holiday shoppers, taking half-doses of energy with the wraith at her feet as she went. Never more than she needed, and far less than her share. Once in a while, someone would yawn or complain of sudden fatigue and Acubens would call her wraith back and move away from that crowd to linger in another. For now, she was seated on the patio of a cafe near a fire pit with a coffee in hand, green eyes following the wraith she had called as it darted between feet as people passed by.

Of course, Acubens noticed Sterope. The second a dark mirror powered signature blinked onto her peripheral senses, she noticed her. And she tracked her, eyes firmly on the table before her with the rim of the coffee cup frozen at her lips. For lack of better word, she watched her clambering around the rooftop, darting down into a nearby alley like a little hummingbird. Was she looking for something? Acubens' brow furrowed as she stretched her senses out, keeping a pin in the basic while she looked for other signals. Nothing. Which also meant that nothing was in pursuit of her either.

The whistle caught her attention, causing emerald eyes to move from the table before her to the source of the sudden sound. And she was not the only one to hear it either. One curious passerby traced a path from the girl waving in the alley to the woman sitting with her coffee and gave Acubens a confused look. No longer one to panic or act rashly, Acubens only smiled, tossed a few bills on the table for the tip, and made her way over.

The crowd was thinning to a point where it was no longer worth it to be gathering energy anyway, and she would have just otherwise gone home.

This felt more important anyway.

"Hey yourself," Acubens finally said, pulling the lapels of her coat up to shield her cheeks from the chill. "you seem to be in a state of excitation. What's up?"

Acubens had to laugh at the senshi who just seemed so damned excited about everything. She shook her outstretched hand with matched eagerness and a bright smile.

"Acubens," she returned.

I wanted to know what you were up to.

That gave Acubens pause. What she was up to? Did Sterope not see the wraith at her ankles before? Her smiled faltered just ever so slightly and her brow furrowed with concern. Wait did she not... did she not know how to drain energy? That was so basic... how did she not know? Who had trained her? Who had awakened her?

"I was... collecting energy," Acubens ventured, fishing out and producing the three mirrorshards that she had hidden away. "I like to do it in crowds like this. Everyone is too busy with their own things to notice anything, and if they get a little tired then they pass it off as just being busy and about. Draining in crowds is easier in the winter because," Acubens motioned to her winter gear with a grin. "Well, it's hard to tell who or what I am like this. Which is nice. I have the added benefit of being allowed to hang out in cafe's while my wraith does all the work."

Would Sterope know what a mirrorshard was? What a wraith was? Acubens hope that she would... she hated to think of one of their own off and alone without a mentor...

Acubens laughed again as the younger senshi seemed nearly gull to the bursting with energy and zeal. Uninformed though she may be, she was at least willing and eager to learn. Acubens could work with that.

"Well, it's not so much that you have one of your own, but you can call on one. Think of it more like having a bunch of them on standby. When we call one just kind of... shows up."

Never mind the heavy implications of what they really were. Of who the wraith used to be. Maybe. If what they had learned from Altea was reliable and accurate. And besides, Acubens liked to believe that they had a better handle on the Chaos Seed than Altea did. They were a whole court harnessing the energy. They could more easily check and balance than one woman on her own could.

Right?

Acubens drew herself back to the present and handed over one of her own mirrorshards and placed the other two carefully away. This senshi should have had one of her own, but given that she didn't know what energy gathering even was, and now with this admission that she was more than a little scattered brained, Acubens wasn't confident that she hadn't misplaced her own shards. Better to just let her borrow one of hers and get her her own later.

"Just concentrate on calling them forth. They'll do the rest once they're out."

Acubens waited for a moment, unsure of what to expect. She only began to breathe again when a frail-looking and spectral creature emerged from the shard and began doing what it did best -- collecting energy.

"Good. Step one complete. Now it'll do that until it's full and then it'll go back home. One a night is all you need, but if you feel tenacious, you can always call another. As a rule, one wraith per level is your quota. So for you, at basic level, you only need one wraith worth of energy. I do advise, at least to begin with, getting ahead, however. Just in case you get sick or taken out of the game for a few days." Not that there were any real consequences for falling behind quota, of course. Acubens had heard horror stories of Negaverse agents being punished for doing so but... had yet to see or hear anything of that effect for them.

"You go ahead and keep that. I know where to get more." Not that it was easy per say, but not beyond her capabilities. "When you're done, if you have pockets in your fuku you can store it there, or else pop it into subspace and store it there." She paused again before cautiously asking, "do you... know what subspace is?"