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It had taken time, and it had taken encouragement from friends, but at last, Pendour was back out, powered up and wandering the streets on her own. She was still shying away from any Chaos auras. Somewhere deep down, she knew she'd have to go investigate them eventually, that there might be a situation that she could help with and that it was important work, but for now it all seemed like too much. She was still jumping like a startled cat at even the smallest of noises.

For now, it was enough to just get used to the night-city again, to maybe find someone to talk to. She was as interested as always in how the rest of Order was doing, and she couldn't write letters to everyone.

She was in a more commercial area tonight. It had her missing the trees. She liked walking the parks the best, but they had a tendency to attract activity like something terrible. Instead, she walked past sleepy storefronts with most of the lights off.

There might have been an Order aura nearby, but she wasn't sure. She was busy peeking in through store windows. Specifically, she was looking through the window of this antique shop that she'd found herself in front of, and she was admiring the details of some tiny roses painted on a porcelain pitcher.

Pendour had a tendency to lose track of time. She did feel the aura in the distance, and vaguely noted it, but then she spent a while looking at some gold leaf that had a little shimmer, even in the low light. Before she knew it, someone was calling out to her.

It was a senshi, maybe, by the way the aura felt almost sparkling. "Is it?" There was a long pause. Pendour blinked at her reflection in the store window. "Oh. Because I might steal something?" Her tone was gentle, even though she spoke loudly enough for her voice to carry over to him. She turned in the careful, practiced way, so that her scars didn't show so much. It was harder, now, with the gash across her back to worry about, but it was still possible if she maneuvered just right.

"I'm. I'm not going to steal anything. I would never do something like that," she said, giving him as much of a look as she could. He was all in white, with only a little red to break it up. Yes, he was a senshi, then, and not one she'd seen before. "I just like looking at things while I wait to see if anyone else is around. The detailing on some of this china is lovely as can be." If nobody every showed up, she just enjoyed the looking for longer. every once in awhile, she even found something she wanted to buy.

"But you're here now, aren't you?" She blinked again. That sounded a little off, as if she'd just lured him into some trap. She didn't want to be someone who trapped people any more than she wanted to be some night robber. "Or, um, hi. I'm Pendour."

She waved.

If Pendour could hear the hint of amusement in his voice, she didn’t show it. She kept looking at him, head bowed and almost apologetic, and she took a step away from the window.

At the mention of the homeless, she straightened, looking more thoughtful than worried. “Oh, I didn’t think of that,” she said. Her gaze flicked from doorway to doorway, and her shoulders relaxed a little when she found nobody with sad eyes huddled in any of them. There was little she could have done for them right now. “I should have. Maybe tomorrow I’ll bring out hot chocolate and blankets for anyone out here who needs it. It’s getting bitter cold in the evenings, now.”

Would it be dangerous to give out other people’s contact information when she was like this? Her community garden did some work with giving food to people who needed it, and they’d worked with housing organizations before.

Athalia’s question snapped her back to the present moment. Tonight was a little more about the magical side of things. “Oh, um,” he had asked directly, so there was no need to hide it. She turned so the gash was visible, a line that started just above her elbow and ran across her back until it vanished under her dress. It was healed over now, but still an angry shade of pink.

“I was injured a few weeks ago. There was a whole-” she trailed off, swallowed hard, twirled a curl of hair around her finger, and then tried again. “It was a bad situation. My nerves have been awful, since. The anxious part of me says that something else terrible would happen if I tried to power up again.” Her voice never cracked, but it did go quieter. She gestured at the empty street, “So I’m trying to prove that wrong by easing myself back into things a little.”

She looked at him straight on, then. “What about you? You think it’s so strange that I’m here, and yet,” she tilted her head towards him.

Underwear? Pendour’s expression went almost blank at that, as if it were coming completely out of left field, but eventually she nodded. “Oh. You’re right,” she said. “That’s probably more practical.”

Maybe her own day job was showing. She was all about things that looked nice in advertisements. In charity cases, that meant things that tugged at heartstrings and made people want to give money. In some ways her perspective oversimplified things, and then she was left here, forgetting that people needed socks.

Still, with most shops closing for the night, those thoughts would have to wait until tomorrow.

His little bug caught her attention in the same way the china had. She found herself staring, squinting a little to make out the details. It was lovely craftsmanship. It looked as if it could start wiggling at any moment. Then it did twitch, and that sent Pendour blinking, too.

“What is that?” She stepped forwards, breaking the careful distance he’d set. Maybe she went too close. She didn’t always have the best sense of where people’s bubbles began and ended. She just wanted to see. “I haven’t heard of anything like that before. I mean, not really. Um.” she reached out, fingers drifting in front of her as if she might be able to feel any magic that was coming off of it in waves. “You said it can map out Chaos, but does that mean it’s-” she trailed off, her gaze drifting from the object to his brooch. That was a bug, too, and there was even something insectoid about the way the fabric of his outfit sat.

“Your magic?” If he’d been a knight, that would have maybe worked, but everything she knew about senshi had her shaking her head the moment the words left her mouth. “No? Is it an artifact from your world?” That would almost be more interesting, even if the implications were dark.

"You-" there was a pause, and not just because Pendour accepted the little device and examined it. She brought it up to her good eye and saw the way the metal glistened. She ran a finger over each spindle-thin leg in turn. Then she looked back up, her brows knitted just a little in a question. "You own a Mauvian?"

Was that how that worked? She knew Mauvians looked like cats, but she'd been around enough of them now to know that they didn't act like cats, really. "Do you mean your friend, or- Wait. Orias?" She blinked at the name, and then blinked again. That raised even more questions.

It was almost as hard to imagine Orias, with his attention constantly flipping between beer and odd experiments, and Athalia, barely more expressive than stone from what she'd seen, being friends as it was to imagine some kind of pet situation. The devices looked familiar, though, the more she looked at them. The map, especially, looked like what he'd pulled out at her wonder, even if it wasn't quite the same.

"So he did find a way to track, um, what did he call them? Chaos hotspots?" Her voice was gentle, and the short-lived look of surprise was replaced by a soft smile. "He was working on it when I talked to him before." She handed back the smaller but and focused in on the holographic map instead. "He must have been getting close even then. He mapped out my wonder with something like this."

As if she were suddenly remembering herself, she took half a step backwards. "What do you mean by parties, though? I don't think I've ever seen the Negaverse have any meetings out in the open." She didn't know if there would be, either. The tender scar on her back was a reminder that such things were terribly risky.

Pendour nodded. “So is it magic that’s connecting you? I feel like that with other Neptune knights, a little.” Magic did a lot of things that she didn’t understand, and Mauvians in particular were still a little bit of a mystery to her. There was the other possibility that they were dating, since that was apparently what people meant sometimes when they said something was deeper than friendship, but that was just too much to think about, even for her, and so she didn’t ask.

Athalia didn’t look happy when talking about Orias at her wonder. The map went forgotten as her own brows knitted in turn. “Apologies for what?” she asked, her voice mild. It was a sincere and honest question. “He and Irving had a little, um, spat? But I’m not angry about that. Irving is-” she trailed off, and swallowed, “Well, he’s cruel, and he was probably the one saying the more offensive things.” She tried to think back to the exact words, but it was all coming up like fuzz.

She could remember going on about sparkles and gardens, though. “And I think Orias thought I was strange. Not all there,” she said, and shrugged. “But that’s nothing new. I’m missing an eye and I talk to plants and I even come across as a thief, maybe.” She smiled at that, just a little, just enough to show that she didn’t mind if he thought she was strange, too. “He never tried to hurt me or anything, which is more than I can say about some other Mauvians.”

She glanced down to the web of her thumb, where the faint curve of claw marks were still barely visible.

Her voice had never gone accusatory. It was earnest and curious and that was all. He had been a little intense, but it had never gotten to the point where it was a problem, and of course she wasn’t going to say that to the face of his-

His minion?

No, that didn’t sound right, even in her head.

“Um, can I ask why?” she said. “I mean, did he tell you some version of this story?” Had the fight with Irving been a little more intense than she remembered, maybe? Her eyes narrowed in concentration. “I don’t think he said anything about you.”

Pendour blinked. "Maybe?" She knew it took more to get her all ruffled up than it did for most people, but she didn't think it had required patience to keep up with a Mauvian who moved at a million miles an hour.

"Well, I accept your apology on his behalf if you really think it's needed," she said, although her brows were still slightly knit in mild confusion about where this all was coming from. "You could apologize to Irving if you wanted. He'd maybe appreciate it?" Pendour still had a hard time knowing what her ancestor was thinking, but he'd never snapped about someone apologizing too much or having too good of manners.

He was always telling her that she needed more practical friends. Maybe he'd actually like this one.

"Nothing's broken, though," she added. "Or, um, nothing's more broken. It started out all ancient and crumbly. I think Orias would have needed more than beer in his space pocket if he really wanted to do damage, though. Bombs, maybe?" She giggled softly at the thought, although she stopped as she realized that it was a very possible thing and spent a moment in silence instead.

"Although you might end up trying to fix things in space anyway," she said eventually, her eyes refocusing. "Have you been to your world?" She leaned forwards, and for the first time, she looked at him with the same curiosity that she'd looked at the plates with earlier. "They're all so lovely in their own way, but they're all in awful shape."

Pendour slowly shook her head. "Not life life," she said. "Um, death? Undeath? Lingering spirits? Irving is a ghost."

She was silent for a moment as she fidgeted with her signet ring and tried to figure out the best way to explain it all. "He was the previous knight of Pendour, and he's my ancestor. I don't think senshi ever have ancestors waiting for them on their world. Your magic is more-" she paused again, fingers fluttering in front of her before she rested her hand on her chest, over her starseed. "Spiritual? You get your memories directly from your world, from what I've heard. Knighthood is more about, um, training or something? We've got ancestors to guide us, sometimes."

Her soft smile faltered, and she went back to spinning her ring around her finger, faster and faster now. "Which I'm sure is lovely when it goes smoothly, but Irving can be, um. Controlling, and manipulative, and volatile."

Her voice stayed steady. She wasn't upset right now, just stating facts. Eventually, she met Athalia's gaze again. "You can meet him if you want to, though. He might even approve of you."

Irving thought that most of her friends were either reckless troublemakers, or too soft, like she was. Athalia seemed confident and steady, though. She had yet to see anything that she thought would set Irving off.

"Your world sounds lovely," she added, her smile returning, even bigger than before. "Even if it's dead as dead, or as beige as an old cafeteria. I've never heard of something like a petrified forest." Of course it was going to be a little bit broken. Something terrible had happened to these places, and they'd been sitting in ruins for a thousand years or more. It didn't mean they weren't beautiful in their own melancholy way. They were certainty endlessly fascinating, partially because Pendour didn't know what secrets they held.

"You can always bring up some paint, if it bothers you," she said. "Or maybe even some seeds." She tilted her head. "I've worked on a few space gardens, now."