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Sometimes, Ashton thought, days didn't quite go the way you'd planned them.

Did she intend to be picking up roadkill at midnight in a small cooler? Well, that depended on how you were asking. Tonight in particular? No, it'd simply sort of worked out that way. In his life in general? Sort of, maybe, possibly? Coolers were typically a harder find than garbage bags and came at a higher premium, and the apartment only had so much space, and plenty of that was currently taken up by other things. But the party she was at had gotten kind of unpleasant, and there'd been overtures made he didn't have the stomach for at this time of year, and someone had handed her an empty beer cooler, so! So.

Here Ashton was. Scrounging for roadkill with a pocket bottle of hand sanitizer, nitrile gloves, and a cooler someone had theoretically donated to the cause, with a full face of makeup and looking (objectively, if you asked him) hot as hell, and trying to find something to show for the evening that wasn't just a whole lot of frustration and a slight buzz.

She frowned for a second, leading his phone flashlight around - it was late enough this street was mostly closed down, but there was always the everpresent danger of getting hit by a college student who'd forgotten about brakes. Or, in general, the danger of getting hit by a car. Or any other of the thirty million dangers Ashton was painfully aware of, had taken pains to be aware of, and had taken pains to not be a victim ********, but it was cold, and this jacket wasn't thick enough to keep her warm. Alright, then, he'd have to set some internal limits for the night: if there was nothing besides the adolescent raccoon corpse she was currently bagging, fine bones of its wrist exposed to the night air through broken road-rashed skin and fur, in the next five minutes, he'd head home. This kind of s**t wasn't worth it in this kind of outfit.

Was that someone on the ******** roof of the building across the street, caught in the flicker-flash of the flashlight's brightness before it'd been turned away? God, but that'd be just Ashton's luck, wouldn't it. Stupid twentysomethings drunk on life and liquor. Not her horses, not her problem, if someone died he'd definitely heard nothing and seen nothing, no sir.

Ashton quirked one eyebrow and just sort of - stood there, mid-stoop, for a second, until her brain caught up enough with whatever the hell'd just happened to proceed on routine. Taking care of the roadkill was half-standard; he could do that without thinking about it too actively, especially when - had she just teleported? It'd been quick, effortless, all frameskip: one second this girl had been over there, and the next second she hadn't been, and he didn't have any prior context of losing time in this sort of way.

It was hard to live in Destiny City all your life without noticing some things, but in this aspect Ashton had always tried to keep her head down. It seemed like the safe option. It seemed like the option that wouldn't potentially jeopardize his plans for his career. The organ ring and coma epidemic, all those years ago; the sound of a heavy landing on the roof of the 7-11, figures sprinting against the skyline, all the holiday magic: nothing to do with me, no matter how much she wanted to dig her fingers into it and peel back the disguise and confusion.

"Thank you," Ashton said, and "can I help you," he said, reflexively, polite in the way people were when they didn't mean it at all.

If that eyebrow had been quirked before, now it was full-on arched, throwing Ashton's face into a full schematic of asymmetry. As much as he would've liked to laugh in this girl's face - it would've been good for mood, a moment of dismissive cruelty - she seemed oh so very genuine, and it wasn't as if he was blind. There was more than enough magic in the city, and it'd been there for years; it got hard to miss, eventually, when you saw teenagers and twentysomethings brawling on rooftops in downtown, light and glitter and unbelievable special effects on hands and blades.

It wasn't something she'd ever really admitted to herself, not like this, not so specifically. But he wanted it - wanted that sort of thing, that experience that'd been gated off from him for years and years, because sometimes it seemed like those magicians got younger but Ashton was getting older, almost halfway to thirty, not going fast enough to get everything in place and aligned -

"Why not?" she said, only slightly dismissively, and pretended to think about it for a second. "I've heard worse business propositions. You've got my undivided attention for the next five minutes, at least; after that, we'll see."

She might not have been oh-so-good at explaining it, but she was clearly trying, and Ashton did respect that. Even irregardless of an excellent explanation, the teleportation was clearly not faked, and, well. He'd known people before who really did have their moments of brilliance, if one was willing to look past appearances, and nobody else was watching.

Probably. God, but she hoped nobody else was watching, this entire scenario could well be a reputation-killer if anyone caught it on film. He could perceive it now in his head: shakycam, Tiktok, tinny audio captured from forty feet away, some tasteless joke about him eating these dead things.

"Enticing," Ashton said, and smiled an enigmatic little smile. (She practiced this kind of thing. It was important, giving off the right atmosphere, not seeming too easy to satisfy and please.)

"I'm not exactly a fighter, per se. Would that be a concern...?"

At this point, it was all playing hard to get. Ashton had already said yes, internally, had already made that confirmation and promise in every way but the one that actually mattered; but she just - it sounded silly to be worrying about appearance, when this girl was in hot pink tulle and looked a little like she'd stepped out of the coagulated spirit of Hot Topic, but it was important. He didn't want to seem eager to please, or eager at all.

This girl probably would've laughed. One never admitted anything like that out loud if one could help it.

"So... what's the recruitment process like, in that case?"

"I want this," Ashton said, almost too fast. If she didn't confirm this opportunity, it felt like it might disappear, and it was - she couldn't bear to know she'd had the chance for magic, to be something new, and she'd let it slip through her fingers. It would've made those fine-stringed feelings turn into something rotted, something poisonous, and they were already close enough to that without his encouraging it.

"And I'm not - " she shrugged, kind of, mostly a short and sudden up-down of one shoulder - "under the influence, sleep deprived, drunk, or under any other sort of effect that would adversely affect my ability to make choices for myself. I am confirming, twice over, that this is what I want."

His eyes were a little shiny, a little wild, in a way that fit more with roadkill in the middle of the night than it did his perfect eyeliner and even voice; there was a hunger there that wanted and wanted and wanted -

This was someone who could kill. Who would kill, even; someone who had previously, luxuriously, entertained the fantasy of violence before deciding the consequences would be too great and the process too inefficient. If someone like this girl had asked her ten years ago, she would have said yes, yes, yes; this much had not changed, even as she'd grown more sure of herself, more steady.

Power was power. And Ashton wanted that; had always wanted that; would always want that.

It was rare that Axinite ever took more than a minute to show up; he always seemed ready to be where he was needed and this was no different. He didn’t want a Senshi to slip away any more than he wanted someone to get hurt, and if he could help, he wanted to.

The energy signature of a General King appeared distantly on their radar, and then closer, and then he teleported right next to them.

He arrived with no weapon; Sylvite hadn’t seemed alarmed, so he treated this like business. With a smile, though; he didn’t want to scare anyone off.

“Hello,” he greeted; he was tired but his smile was warm enough. To Sylvite, “I take it you’ve explained everything, do you just want to borrow some power?”

He trusted her to know what she was doing, he didn’t mind sharing that with her if she wanted to do this. He didn’t know her relationship to this stranger, be it familiar or foreign, or what she would have preferred, but he was more than willing to let her guide this if it would make their new recruit more comfortable.

Obviously, it was nice that Axinite had shown up so quickly. He knew what he was doing with stuff like t his. He was gonna help, and then the Negaverse was gonna have a cool new recruit that Sylvite could focus her energy on instead of other, confusing and bad things.

She was also really, really impressed by how this unawakened senshi was taking everything. Like, she'd gone through recruitment, and then gotten promoted twice. She knew what it was like to get Chaos shoved into your chest. She knew it wasn't great.

This person hadn't run screaming, though, or even, like, blinked. They were nodding at Sylvite, nodding at Axinite, like this was something totally normal and expected.

That had to be a good sign, right? That had to mean that this was a good choice, someone who wouldn't get scared off by some of the messier parts of war.

"Just power, yeah," she agreed. "I already talked a little bit about everything else."

To the recruit, she added, "Sorry for how complicated this got. I promise, it's just gonna mean you end up extra cool."