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Kallichore knew her approach would be felt before it was seen, so there was no reason to be sneaky about it. Lacking a cat, she had no way to cloak her Eternal signature. She launched herself across the rooftops, approaching from the east. The blackouts were suspicious and she knew something simply wasn't right - the gathering of Chaos and Order signatures into one place confirmed it. The darkness was thick and threatening. When society was so reliant on order and schedules, emergency lights flickering on and no television glow to fall asleep to meant the entire city was on edge, its senshi included. Stars above offered little in the way of light, red and blinking traffic signals showing just how widespread the blackout truly was.

She had a bad feeling about this.

The Eternal senshi leaped onto a higher vantage point and arced her way towards Cybele, stopping behind the senshi's right shoulder. Kallichore took a moment to rest before balling up her fists and taking a few steps forward. Familiar faces were coming out of the woodwork on both sides with hostages in the middle. She didn't like this one bit. "...why... Is this another one of their tricks?"

She could feel the senshi approaching, their sugary sweet auras pinging off her senses and making her want to twitch in excitement. The little shifting movements froze the moment Schörl addressed her though, and the dark haired woman straightened up, shifting another glance over her shoulder.

"With trigger points? Only vaguely... I would love to string that one up and watch you work, though." Cinnabar turned her eyes back to the approaching senshi. For now, she held back on throwing herself at them, trying to remember that this was a bid for time. "Maybe we could test how fast they heal. You know... cut her so she bleeds and see how long it takes for the mark to disappear. Maybe shatter her wrist and let the bones mend... I don't suppose we have time for that tonight though."

Leaning, she settled her weight on one leg and cocked a hip, her arms crossed below her corset-wrapped chest. She disliked the necessity, but she glanced to Buddingtonite, waiting to see what sort of a que he would give the rest of them, since he was supposed to be the leader of this little operation.

It would figure that there were some brave senshi among the crowd, especially ones with an attitude. Buddingtonite looked down at the one the addressed him about the power outage (Astarte), her words just as colorful as her attire. He brought Jade closer to him again, waving her off in a dismissive manner as he replied with a sneer. "Honestly, what does it look like? This is a hostage situation and this is one of many hostages. I have no idea what's going on with the electricity in this city- rats chewed on the wirings again, or maybe one of your kind sabotaged it, as you terrorists have a want to do. Don't look to me to fix it- do I look like a technician to you?"

"We pull their starseeds, no?"

Buddingtonite, and in turn Jade and Jarosite were lucky that Serpentine was there to address the captain, otherwise they would have all seen the way he jolted to attention. Yes, he had spoken up so suddenly and with such bloodthirsty enthusiasm that he genuinely took Buddingtonite by surprise, and once Serpentine had addressed the captain, Buddingtonite was quick to add, with an almost teasing smile. "Trust me, when the moment arises, you'll have the honor of being the first horse out of the gate. Keep this up... I like your spark, friend."

The snapping of Serpentine's whip didn't help with his nerves any, but the crack of the whip was definitely necessary. It served as a reminder to the approaching patches of Order aura that this was a situation they were not to take lightly, and he gave his friend a surprisingly solemn nod before turning his attention back to the matter at hand. With Serpentine as the leader of the guards, there was no way this could go wrong, he told himself.

"You're wasting your breath, my dear," Buddingtonite said, turning his attention back to his captive and once again raising his voice for all to hear. When she called him a thief, he held up a pen and held it high for everyone to see, though most of it remained hidden within his gloved hand. In all honesty, he was completely wowed by Jade's performance and once his role in this charade was over, he'd shower the woman with the praise she rightly deserved, but until then, he had to keep it up. He continued his tirade, unaware of the small cat (Cora) that Jade had spotted, as well as the tri-colored haired senshi (Leda) that had been stunned into silence. "I am judge, jury and executioner in this court, and this pen is enough to prove that you're one of them. You're one of the scum of this city, you're one of the troublemakers that the good citizens must constantly deal with. You, and your friends here, are all guilty. And if your friends in the crowd here plan on causing anymore trouble tonight, then we'll have no choice but to put an end to your lives this evening."

'Stick to the plan. Learn from the last time.'






"What a pompous a*****e..." Sarras Page of the Cosmos was not amused by any of this. When the lights went out throughout the city, he had suspected that the Negaverse had something to do with it, and this only seemed to confirm it to him. Despite the shine to his attire, it didn't offer him much light and certainly didn't glow in the dark, so perhaps he could finally go by unnoticed.

He positioned himself on top of a building to the left of this strange display, arms crossed and glaring towards them, as if the intensity of his gaze would be enough to set them on fire, though he'd be poorly mistaken. He felt the ping of Order aura all around, so at least he wasn't alone, and he was certain that this wouldn't end peacefully for either end... to think otherwise would be foolish.

He heard someone talking aloud and he looked down at the senshi directly below him. She seemed confused, and despite his desire of wanting to remain hidden from others, he found himself wanting to comfort her in some manner. He whispered down to her and motioned for her to join him. "Come here and keep an eye on things from a safe distance. And for the love of God, don't just stand there on your own... it can't be safe."

"Ooh..." Leda mumbled out of sheer nervousness, wrapping her arms about herself in some misbegotten attempt to assuage the mounting feelings of anxiety. For all this time, she sought out that man... That one man: Buddingtonite. And now that she found him, what could she do but stand and gawk? Leda prepared no speech in anticipation of this moment, no steeled words to rebuke him for his actions on that fateful night. Instead, she simply gave way to whims she never truly understood and hunted him down as if finding the man was her only reason for existing. And now?

Now she stood frozen in her own indecisiveness, green eyes darting from one ally to the next in hopes of some glimmer of direction... Some rare motivational phrase to break the cement from her legs and dissolve the block from her mind. But was that wishful thinking? Was that any different from waiting for a knight in shining armor to sweep her off her feet?

Mom always said you had your head in the clouds, didn't she? The thought saddened her, but the lives at stake struck her keenly.

Idleness was watching them die. Her brothers and sisters in arms... Fellow senshi captured by the Negaverse.

In her frantic search for direction, Leda caught sight of a cream feline approaching the scene. "Hey," she called breathlessly as she darted toward the cat. "They're holding hostages! Senshi in their civilian form... What should we do?" Maybe it was stupid of her to go looking for help as a super senshi... She should've known better by now, right? She hadn't much time to linger; the cracking whip coaxed a jerk out of her, and its sonic boom drove home that the Negaverse meant business tonight.

Others slowly filtered in, likely pulled as she was from their daily activities. Senshi of all sorts, knights too, present under similar pretenses. Inwardly Astarte marveled at the turnout thus far - were all senshi quick to the chaos spread by the Negaverse? Looks like she wasn't the only one interested in a few scraps here or there.

"If you don't know a bloody thing about the power outage, then why in the name of Stolas are you wanking around with hostages? Got your knickers in a twist over your coffee pot not working, so you decided to take it out on some passersby? Terribly bright of you, love. Terribly." Astarte offered little more than a roll of her eyes. Obviously soliciting the redhead offered no more answers than she discerned from the initial outage.

Finally she felt the approach of someone absolutely tantalizing in terms of power - an eternal senshi adorned in swaths of cream and green. "Hey there, got any idears about the power going out? This lot knows next to s**t about it, and I'd rather like my power back without engaging this lot of numbskulls." Hostages be damned, she had nothing to do with them.

Thraen was already on patrol as the lights around him started to die.

It was as rampant as a disease or film burning away in flickers, then black. Sirens and candles were just the cry of the lost for help and the stars. But the Eternal of Gardens quashed the regular instinct aside to move towards light sources like the rest of the civilians moving in dim. He felt out- there were growing nexus of powered signatures, many headed in like directions. Many Chaos.

He took an alternate path, but followed the same. No good could come so soon of large gathering. Caution. Cautions heaped and set in prominent place, but not wholly headed. Ignorance is no bliss for our kind, though traps are easily laid with how we gather as moths.

The sight that greeted was no greater comfort than suspicion had forewarned, approaching on swift feet and leaps and landing on a dead street lamp flanking the department store. There were many faces there he was loathed to recognize- General Buddingtonite among them, the whip-wielding captain-c**-general was an unpleasant update, the maniac black-haired murderer, the fool in feathers, and the captain that had robbed Thraen of Zircon's throat. There were other senshi there as well, of varying recognition and consideration of memory - Maia, Kallichore, Cybele, the cream cat from the Phoenix strike. It was not the best of odds without the use of strategy. He couldn't, from his vantage, count all the number of the enemy, but there were too many hostages. Too many agents and corrupted. He regretted Faust not being along to scout another angle or get behind their lines. Why were they all here. Waiting. Buddy was giving some bullshit answer.

"No one holds hostages without an ultimatum."

There was absolutely no point to stealth. Not because the white colors of her clothes gave her, like, some kind of disadvantage, because if she just stayed out of sight and counted on the Negaverse being distracted with the group of senshi they were already facing down, it shouldn't be a problem. And not because she was well-known, because, ha! she wasn't, not anymore, and she didn't spot Wolframite or any ******** old-school Dark Mirror senshi to give her or her sphere away.

No, it was because those <******** losers had engaged the Negaverse straight-on already, and probably they would get themselves killed if their powers were anything like some senshi powers she'd seen. If half her allied force was already committed to a frontal assault, then she might as well just go join them. So she dropped down near two senshi she recognized, Kallichore and Maia. The group was talking about negotiation and lives being in danger, and that could be true but… she doubted it.

For all Gunn knew, it was a completely unrelated blackout. But standing here, in front of a small horde of officers and four civilians, she remembered past traps by the side of Chaos. Veritas, she thought of Veritas specifically, and if she hadn't already been in a state of heightened alert she was now. Zinkenite had almost killed her or corrupted her, and it all had been because she'd decided to try to save the civilian. The civilian who had turned out to be just another Negaverse officer. She never had figured out how the Negaverse had known exactly what and who to expect.

This time, she wasn't taking that chance. Civilians being used as honey in a trap that had nearly killed her had turned her off the sweets entirely; if she could save civilians she would, but that was hardly her priority. If the civilians were really civilians and they died, they were glorious martyrs to the cause, unlawful targets dragged into an unlawful war by unlawful combatants. Gunn would remember their sacrifice for as long as she lived. And if they turned out to be senshi, as the General leading them all claimed, then that just meant that they'd already accepted (or they should have already accepted) their likely and upcoming death.

Maybe she'd just go around them. No, too late. They'd already seen her. "Megrez, honey," said Gunn, "I think I speak for all of us, our Negaverse friends included, when I say that no one is getting any apologies today."

What they needed was decisive action, and if the other senshi and knights agreed that she was out of line later, then she would sure as hell deal with that. There were too many coincidences for Gunn to feel any kind of comfortable standing around and chatting. She pulled her senshiphone out of where-ever in nullspace it was kept, and very deliberately checked the screen before hauling off and throwing it into one of the floodlights as she leapt towards the group at large. The floodlight wobbled, sparked, and died--but the sparks fell long enough for Gunn to shout, "Gunn Wildfire Voracious Propagation!" and for those tiny fires to explode.

She grabbed one of the hostages by the ropes binding her and hurled her out of the immediate danger zone, trusting that either another senshi would take care of her and that her teammates would back her up.