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His knuckles were bloody.

It was strange, he thought, that he had no real connection to that fact anymore beyond its observation. His knuckles were bloody. That was just a thing they were, just like how a lot of things were just the way they were. The sky was blue. The evergreen trees were green. His knuckles were bloody. Fulgurite thought of dehenshining quickly to rid it from his fingers, but the blip of a smaller aura on his senses was enough to give him pause on that. Someone he needed to scare off? Someone he needed to fight?

He rubbed the back of his knuckle against a nearby wall -- close enough, now his knuckles just looked bruised -- and then jammed his hands into the cloth around his hips. Fulgurite sincerely hoped this wasn't some overzealous Order senshi looking for a fight. He wasn't sure if he really felt angry enough for another fight.

Great, they were heading toward him.

Lovely, even.

He rolled his eyes as he moved into a more open area so he'd be easier to spot, bracing himself ... and then immediately releasing that brace when he realized who was walking toward him. Oh. The probably-wolf senshi again. Non-threat. Might have been there to ask him more ******** questions--

"Raksha," he greeted, anyway.

What was the bag?

Huh.

Of all things, he didn't actually expect Raksha to follow up with a bag of Indian food and an offer to go to her planet. He agreed to it ultimately as a why not, also appreciating a bribe like the one she had agreed to give him. And it seemed she was prepared for that. The bag definitely had the scent of something he'd like to eat, and his stomach rumbled as a reminder of his exertion.

He ignored it.

"So you were serious," he remarked, with a laugh, as he eyed the bag with a glance that was probably longer than necessary. "About all of it. Including stealing the telescope. Glad it worked out for you. Sort of. Not sure if passing out counts as it working out."

She got it, anyway. It was also honestly surprising to hear that she had looked for him that first time, too, but he didn't say anything about that part. Though he couldn't help but wonder if she just kept buying Indian food until she actually ran into him--

Fulgurite looked at the bag again.

s**t that smelled good.

"Honestly, the best parts of Indian cuisine are probably the least fancy. Samosas are what I asked for, after all."

That would be wrong -- the naivete and the determination to Do Good were particularly strong in this one, as he had noticed the first time he talked to her. It was amusing to see that it hadn't changed at all, not even after a couple of months of dealing with the realities of being a senshi. Or perhaps the enthusiasm about space overrode all of it, considering how enthusiastic she was and continued to be about space as a whole. He didn't get it; weren't all their planets ******** dead anyway?

But whatever.

"You could probably become a space photographer real easily that way." He took the bag of food when she handed it to him, pondering the merits of simply teleporting away with it. Free food and no chances of being held captive on some mysterious dead planet with just a telescope and a place to sleep. ... On the other hand, Raksha was incredibly earnest and he should probably also keep up his end of the bargain.

Why not and all.

Unless this was an elaborate ambush, it was probably nothing, anyway.

"Not that anyone would believe you." He was already going for a samosa. "These civilians are ******** oblivious. Probably think you were going for interpretive art or something. But yeah, sure, we can eat there." Didn't stop him from taking a bite now, necessarily. "You can show me around a bit."

If there was anything worth seeing, anyway. At the very least, might be more about planets to report back--

Still with that endless hopefulness she could eventually share these things with the world.

If the Negaverse had their way, neither she nor any other senshi would ever share any of these things at all.

But there they were, in what looked to be a room made out of a cave or some other bullshit, and he found himself glancing around and down the different hallways to see if he could see anything of interest. It looked like she had set up a whole campsite there, along with the telescope -- he could definitely believe she had swiped it with it just sitting in the middle of her cave-dwelling.

It took a few moments for Fulgurite to actually follow, taking another bite of his samosa in the process. As he chewed it, he came to a stop behind her.

"I mean, s**t's been abandoned for, what, hundreds of years?" He swallowed the bite of samosa, went for another one. "Not really that surprising it was ******** rusted. Honestly, surprised anything's still standing at--"

His voice was a little slower when he saw the sky just outside of the door. Fulgurite had always been a city boy and had never really been to many areas without light pollution. The Rift counted, probably; the Rift also didn't have a view of space in the way that literal planets did, and it still wasn't anything like going to an isolated national park.

"--All."

Space had never been something that really captured him much at all the way it clearly had Raksha, but even he couldn't deny the views.

He guessed he could agree with that one. It felt begrudging while at the same time not; the sky was beautiful, and there was something about it that made him feel hilariously small and insignificant. Even the Earth must have seemed like such a tiny thing when there was so much out there, and each individual point he saw could have been another senshi--

It made the brief grazing thought sweep over his mind of wondering what his own name actually was.

But it ultimately didn't matter, did it? There was too much to lose by even thinking of that concept. And his world was likely deader than roadkill; there wasn't anything to be gained by switching sides for loss and desolation. The thought was buried down where it came from and even deeper than that as he approached Raksha and sat down next to her, gathering his legs one over the other.

"Never been there. Or to any other high nature place," he finally set the bag back down between them, figuring that she had rights to try the samosas and other things that she had been the one to buy. "Guess that's not entirely true anymore. Strange how much is still standing here. Still looks like a ******** ghost town, but..."

He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't really domes and plains and vistas that belonged in a painting.

He picked up another samosa.

"Hallucinate memories of the past... That sounds ******** terrifying. Has that happened yet?"

Lassi was a good choice, even packed in containers that made it a bit harder to actually drink from, but he wouldn't say anything about that.

Some people, whoever those were. He had noted in the entry he wrote about her that she had mentioned some people they were already familiar with last time. He'd take note of the fact that apparently some of these worlds were getting life, and perhaps the people that she had mentioned last time might have been the people with those worlds. "You're supposed to repair this?" To be honest, he was in part a bit incredulous. "And that makes animals appear? Really?" How?

The other part of him felt some relief. One of the Negaverse's longest-standing arguments was that the senshi and knights should just go home. And while he knew the concept was illogical, to some degree -- he was born on Earth himself, as was every other senshi he had met, Order or Negaverse -- maybe if they started focusing on their planet and repairing it they could go home and this s**t could be over. And then his family would be safe. And then, maybe, he could stop patrolling and go back to having a normal ******** life.

That seemed horrifically unlikely. Metallia would probably find something else to go after.

The memories thing was almost momentarily forgotten until she reflected on the fact that if it was longer, it probably would be more terrifying. Guess that was one benefit to being part of the Negaverse. He had been there for nearly eight years and none of that s**t had ever been anything that had occurred. He pulled out another one of the lassis, taking a sip before adding a, "If it's like anything else, it'll probably get worse as you get more power."

Worse, because leveling up was worse, because expectations were worse.

Fulgurite snorted under his breath. "Not wrong."

The containers were s**t, but he'd take greater access to the sweet drinks within. He took a sip as she continued talking, taking a few extra moments to figure out the right way to take a sip out of something as oddly shaped as this--

He guessed if they were already speaking of things that didn't make sense with commonly accepted Earth Knowledge, spontaneously appearing creatures wasn't that far out of the realm of possibility. Anything was, really, in the realm of possibility considering all the s**t he thought he knew and then found out he really ******** didn't after what felt like more than half a decade. Was more than half a decade. ******** is nice," Fulgurite interjected, but otherwise kept quiet until she finished. Well. He knew the people he was forced to be aligned with, but every time he heard about the depths of their evil it hit as both something that he expected, something that was unsurprising, something that was acceptable in the name of Metallia just like everything had grown acceptable in the name of Metallia, and something that nauseated him. He wasn't sure how to negotiate it and still hadn't quite tried.

He might just need to accept it. Too much to lose by leaving.

It galled him, especially, in some ways, and Fulgurite deeply wanted to be angrier about it. "Wonder if she's ever gone after some of our own, seeing as some of us aren't exactly rich." He rolled his eyes. That was glazing of the truth; he remembered how envious he used to be of people who had money. How bitter it had made him-- "Sorry. Not everything people do in the name of Metallia is justifiable. I'm not really supposed to encourage you to get stronger if you're not joining us, but I'm also not gonna get in your way, you know?"

That was the best he could do, somehow, and there was still a part of him that wished he hadn't said that.

"Maybe the dead guy memories will be useful."