Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Yeah that sounds about like Mac." The huge old tom had gotten rounder and lazier as he settled into the idea of being a comfortably 'domestic' feline, but infringing on his food before he 'allowed' it was a good way to get grumped at.

At least though that was the most of their problems, the cats anyway. They were still his, even if there was still a lot of things up in the air as they headed across the park.

If the universe had any more unexpected plans for the evening, it wasn't sharing.

It wasn't like Iris was enjoying the particular conversation topic at hand, but the grating sound of someone demanding things to move along faster caused her head to snap to the side.

They had been walking a while, and it seemed as if the spot they had been at before had practically vanished from sight. In a snide tone, she replied while setting the carriers down, "Well, I'd like one of those tacos he brought... but I'll take a raincheck on that sh*t..."

Stepping forward a bit more in a slightly speedier pace, she distanced herself before the skirt of her fuku seemed to grow in length. The cloth seemed to glow for a moment before the features shifted into the gown she was more accustomed to wearing in another lifetime. Her trademark headband seemed to phase into something a tad more ornate. For a moment she stood there, her bare shoulders towards the group before pale wings pushed themselves out into the open. Iris resisted the urge to grunt out at the most painful part of the change before turning towards the group with a single hand cupped in front of her.

Floating above her hand was a simple glowing crystal. The orb seemed to have its own interpretation as to what "gravity" was, playing by its own rules.

With an oddly gentle smile, she prompted with an equally gentle tone "Let us make this brief..." With her free hand, she gestured for the Captain to come forward.

The blonde took in a deep breath, her wings stretching out as she seemed to attempt to clear her mind. The facts were that the princess had only done this one time before. Psyche's situation had been a dire one, which had not only put the previously corrupted senshi in danger, but put the guardian in Irene's arms in danger too.

A pair of gold eyes flickered to the Mauvian briefly, as if to try and remember how everything had gone down.

Put everything you've got into it...

With that thought guiding her, those golden eyes closed. Her other hand lifted up, as if to embrace the gentle glowing aura lingering about her crystal. It might not have seemed like much was happening, but with as much concentration as she could muster, she focused all of the energy she could to her hands, as if to pump the crystal with her very essence.

The surge of energy caused the crystal to pulse out in several colors, shifting through the colors of the rainbow. The final pulse was a white light, and after that final pulse, the crystal's form had seemed to blossom.



It was only a moment in which the crystal was visible, for soon after the area was flooded in a bright light, making it rather difficult to see. The light wrapped about the Negaverse Captain, seeming to almost consume him. The crystal's light only had one purpose.

To banish the darkness lingering in Realgar's starseed.

The light began to falter, and the crystal that had briefly blossomed seemed to revert to the first form before vanishing from sight altogether. The princess staggered forward, her own powered form completely seeming to shatter to give way to her own civilian self. No longer was she a glamorous princess, but instead was an oil smudged tomboy in a jumpsuit. Perhaps it hadn't been the wisest decision on her part, but there she was in her work uniform, her name brandished upon the jumpsuit with a patch labeled "Ellie."

The girl seemed to be forcing her head up, as if it was too heavy to just simply lift in a normal manner. All she needed to see was the bronze and gold minotaur armor adorning the man's shoulder to know who was before her now.



"...Kairatos... Knight of Mars..."

That was all she could get out before her body slumped forward, passing out in perhaps the least dignified manner possible, her butt in the air.

Zia would be lying if she said she didn't resent Iris for interfering with her plans, and felt a small moment if heartache as she watched a second purification she had to be blind to on an auric level.

Some part if that was her fault, but for now one hundred percent of the blame was on Iris.

And somehow when she saw the knight in front of her, that all seemed wholly unimportant. She didn't even realize her hands were clasped under her chin hard enough to hurt until the tension relieved them from their place. "Mars..."

He was her first Mars knight, but she could suss out her excitement over statistics later. Right now the overwhelming emotions that came from reclamation of a friend from corruption were a mass of nausea and elation that managed to feel heavy and lighter than helium at the pit of her stomach at once.

She was looking intently for signs of confusion or fear, but all he offered was assurance he didn't forget her.

Tears broke through with an undignified whine as she tackled him with as much of a bear hug as she could manage.

"She's fine, she just needs a nap," She croaked out. And didn't even make fun if his skirt.

After all the light that had flooded the area, ********* pupils were narrowed into little slits, still readjusting after the whole ordeal was over.

Of course, Irene had to free the cat from the arm-hold about her chubby gut, which left the manx to wander over to the blonde, nudging her slightly.

"...it takes a lot of energy to control a crystal's true abilities like that... she had a similar reaction the last time she did this... Plenty of bed rest and she'll be back to her ever so cheerful self."

Seeing as Ellie was as good as she was going to be at that moment, the manx wandered away from the tomboy and towards a certain bag that had food in it.

Iris might have prevented her from sneaking into the food. However, now the food was fair game!

Without even asking permission, she attempted to crawl into said bag.

"She has a whole team, her crew can take care of her," Zia said with a flippant wave in Ellie's direction, even though one hand stayed very tightly around Kairatos' torso as if someone was going to pull him away at any moment.

"I think they should take her home. We have a lot of work to do. You're going to need a new name,job... identity. I don't even know what your old one was," She shrugged and looked at the cat carriers, making some very small effort to scale back her disdain.

"And take those things home. If they scratch up my hardwood floors I am going to personally declaw them with a manicure kit."

He was acting weird. It was a vague, almost hammy weird that she was trying incredibly hard to mentally excuse or ignore, but he made it harder every time he opened his mouth, to her great annoyance.

"...Real?" She prodded. That wasn't his name anymore, and she knee that, but she had known him as Realgar for almost a year and a half, it was hard to just shift to Kairatos.

"What exactly do you remember?" And what didn't he? "I think you should power down." Maybe he had some sort if ID on him. Some way to get ahead of the situation besides just asking an amnesiac what was missing.

Zia's brow had fully knit into a petulant and unhappy expression. He powered down into a stranger, but she wasn't expecting to know him.

But damn it, she was going to find out. By way of invasively and way too comfortably cramming her hands in his pockets one after the other to fish out his wallet.

"Do you remember any not-war stuff? Your family? Your job?" She asked with increasing urgency. Nicolae had forgotten the war but she was pretty sure the other direction was worse, even if it came with the brief relief that he remembered her. He had been someone outside of Realgar, and suddenly that someone had been devoured by Destiny City's terrible circumstances completely. Panic rose steadily in her gut until she had successfully and finally located his driver's license.

And gripped the laminate so hard it cracked.