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To say that Nectaris sprinted when she felt the aura of an eternal corrupt senshi was an understatement. For one thing, it was an understatement because she had superpowers, she was a fully realized Knight and that meant she was faster than any of the Olympic athletes. For another, she was running even faster than she normally did as a Knight. She felt like she was lightning.

If it was Albite, she wasn't about to lose another round of hide-and-seek or tag to him.

She knew there was a decent chance it was someone else, but she kept up the full speed charge anyway.

Luckily, there weren't any roses that she was supposed to stop and enjoy, even though she seemed to have ended up in some botanical gardens. There were some rose bushes, with cute little arbors around them and signs that talked about how cool and rare and special the flowers were, but also it was January. The bushes were basically just sticks with thorns on them.

She was surprised when she dashed round an arbor and saw who it was, but, like, surprised in a good way. At least, it was mostly good surprised.

It might not have been good that Fulgurite had upgraded all things considered, but she was proud of him anyway. She gave a gasp of delight and was clapping as she halted.

"Woah, look at you, Fulg!" She told him. "You're like, a bat now!"

"Butterfly and bat friendships are, like, all the rage right now," said Nectaris, skipping forwards one last step and then leaning towards him, squinting a little bit, so that she could get a better look at those fancy bat wings. "Did you see that new Wednesday show? She's more goth than you. Like, the main character, I mean. Then, her best friend's like, basically me if I was in some kind of edgy murder mystery."

Nectaris puffed out her cheeks. "Except, like, I'm not a werewolf," she said, blowing all the air out slowly. "Which I've decided is super sad."

Being a butterfly knight mostly made up for it, but she still thought it would be pretty awesome to turn into a wolf and, like, run around.

Not that she thought that Fulgurite had to be all edgy for their friendship dynamic to work. It would definitely be a lot easier if he ditched the bat wings and also stopped being evil, that was for sure. She thought it would also probably just be a lot better for Fulgurite, since she could see the way he was dragging his feet and not quite looking at her, even as he talked about being in Crobat mode.

She took half a step back to get out of socially awkward proximity range, and she looked up into his eyes.

"Hey," she said, softer than she talked most of the time. "Are you, like, okay?"

Pendour probably would've left it at that, but for all the pointers that she'd been getting from the other knight, Nectaris couldn't keep herself from smirking again. "You worried I'm gonna like, give you a hard time about being evil?"

She guessed that Enid wasn't a magical butterfly girl, so she had an advantage in that regard. It didn't stop her from glancing down at her fingernails, though, wondering what she'd have to do to get them to spring out into claws.

Probably turn into a youma, honestly, and that didn't sound worth it. She'd stick with the moon magic, she guessed.

"You're right. I'm pretty cool," she told him.

It wasn't really important, though, if she was a werewolf or a butterfly princess or whatever. That kinda stuff didn't matter so much with Fulgurite going through whatever he was going through. Like, she'd still try to lighten the moon, maybe, but her eyes stayed on his face.

Usually, Nectaris didn't really question stuff. If people told her stuff, she took it for what it was. In this case, though, it was super obvious that Fulgurite wasn't okay.

"And, like, I'm glad you're strong! I'm glad nobody's hurting you," she told him, but her own smile wasn't very big when she said it. "And yeah, I don't know anything about, like, when I promoted to being a General. I was in the Negaverse for years, so some of it was probably okay. I just know how stuff ended up. Like, uh."

A beat passed, and she shrugged. "I didn't wanna exist in the same way anymore. Was gonna turn into a youma to erase my brain. Or, like, purifying erased it too, I guess, but I know I was desperate." Her voice was light, like she was talking about someone else, but she squinted a little bit as she added, "Although I don't know much about why. I don't know what I ended up forgetting."

She'd saved Ganymede. She'd stopped being evil. That was what she knew for sure about why she'd done what she'd done, but she was learning enough that it seemed like there was more to that story.

"But, like, I know enough about what the Negaverse does to people. I know you deserve to get out."

She let out a tiny gasp as a thought hit her and added, "I know you gotta get out if it'd getting bad 'cause, like." She looked up at him. "I don't want you to stop existing."

The General-Queen? Nectaris blinked, the pieces not quite clicking together behind her eyes.

"I dunno what Hessonite liking you has to do with you being, like, mentally okay," she told him. "When I was talking about what the Negaverse does to people, that's what I meant. Like, stuff getting so weird you wanna turn into a youma, not like, Sovereigns wanting to hunt you down or whatever."

Which, yeah, that happened sometimes, but the situations had to get pretty extreme for that. Even the Negaverse, with all its being evil, knew better than to directly turn on its own recruits for the most part. Then, how would it have people to do all its evil stuff?

She was pretty sure he knew that, though. He was pretty sure he was just trying to get her off topic. He must not have really known Nectaris, not all the way, because for all that she chased around random thoughts like a dog after a tennis ball half the time, when something was important to her, she zeroed in on it like a missile.

Fulgurite was important.

She looked at him, not blinking.

"So, like, are you really saying you're happy with where you're at?"

Yeah, she remembered what they'd talked about last time. She just figured with, like, how clearly out of it he was, that maybe he'd have figured out that staying wasn't doing him any good anymore.

It sucked leaving your family. It sucked leaving your life. She got that. She got that. She still cried about it, in front of the fridge, all the time.

It was better than being a youma, though, or being stuck someplace where you didn't have hope and you were, like, being all evil and slowly sucking away hope from other people. She was just kinda hoping that Fulgurite would see that.

If it wasn't happening naturally, though, then maybe she'd have to change strategies.

"I'm glad we can talk like this, too," she said, a little bit quieter.

She looked at the ground, and sucked in a breath. If Fulgurite was looking really close, he might be able to see that her cheeks were starting to turn kinda pink, but that was all the warning he got before she was saying, "Hey, I was gonna ask, do I have permission to flirt with you?"

She kept staring at the ground. "So I can try to get you to leave through, like, the power of love? Uh."

Her face was burning now. "And also because I think you're kinda cute? I like your hair. "

Maybe she was mostly asking for the first reason and not the second, but still, he looked at least as nice as Albite. She glanced up at him, just for a second, through her bangs, before she went back to burning up in a little isolated pile of emotions. "Does that count as flirting? Sorry if it counts."

Ignacio had said that compliments were flirting. Nectaris's brain was making a high pitched whine, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she waited to hear what he'd say.

His words got through the bubble of blushing and overwhelm that was closing in on Nectaris really, really fast. Okay. Okay, she could flirt with him. That was at least one question answered.

It didn't really help the situation though. This was the part that, when Nectaris had run through these kind of conversations in her head, she got all suave and charming. Maybe suave in, like, a cute way, that was what she did best. But, like, she made people feel loved, and maybe they did a little kiss, and then they ran away into the sunset and also Order.

None of the daydreams had her like this, where she was somehow blushing so hard that she could barely move. Or, like, maybe it was just the jitters, she didn't know.

"Um. Fulgurite?" she asked, quietly. "How. How do you flirt?"

Slowly, kind of jerkily, she looked up. "Uh. I like your eyes. They're like the forest." She sucked in a breath. "Yeah." A second passed, and somehow she was getting even redder. She didn't know how that was possible.

"Nope. That's gotta be wrong. How does that sound so cool in movies but so dumb when i say it?" The words came faster, now, just like they always did when her emotions started getting big. She rocked forwards on her toes. "How did I even get a boyfriend in the first place? None of this makes any sense."

With a frustrated sigh, she collapsed into a cross-legged seat right on the ground. "It wasn't just an example, though. Your eyes, I mean. They're cool."

It. It had worked? He liked her romance novel line about his eyes?

Nectaris was still blushing five hundred shades of red, but when he said that, some of the jitters relaxed out of her shoulders, just for a second. She leaned forwards as he sat down with her. Her palms dug into the ground for support, and a smile came across her face, a softer one than her usual bubbly grins, as she looked up into that emerald-forest gaze.

Then he said that her eyes looked like lilacs, and that high pitched squeal that had been going through her head for the last minute or so started to come out of her mouth, at least until she could bite down on her tongue and let that energy come out by wiggling her fingers instead, and her hands, and by shaking her head so hard her curls bounced.

"Fulgurite," she breathed, "You can say stuff like that. It's allowed. Permission. Yeah. " She felt like she had to get that out of the way, before she added, still smiling, "It's fine, but, like. Also you can't, because it's gonna make me melt."

On cue, she melted down, curling up into her knees where she could feel even more just how hot her face was getting.

Also, if he kept saying stuff like that, she might just straight up fall in love with him, fast. She didn't know if she'd actually even had a crush on him five seconds ago when she'd asked if she could flirt. She'd wanted to know if she was allowed to use all the tools in the book.

But now she was here and something was very much happening in her heart.

Roses?

From where she had faceplanted into the ground in a ball of feelings, Nectaris couldn't really get any redder. Her heart couldn't really get any faster. All she could do was let out a tiny little high pitched noise.

A squee. Yeah, that was what it was called.

She flopped from her ball shape to lay all the way out, right there on the ground. Her legs and one of her arms were flopped out, but one of her hands was there to touch one of her curls.

Roses.

"Nooooo," she muttered, but if Fulgurite looked down to where her face was smushed into the ground, he could see that she was still smiling. She turned just enough so that she could get a better look at him and also breathe. She was still the color of a beet, but her eyes were dancing. "See, I told you. I'm a puddle now."

From here, she could really feel her heart beating against her ribs.

"A puddle that thinks you're cute, but, uh! Still."