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So she was Encke's little sister. That was sweet as- well, maybe not sweet as sweet. Anser had a little more spice to her than that. Still, it was a nice thought that they both had the support system of a family who knew about all the magic.

"He's my friend," she said, smile going softer, although it was now her turn to wonder why Anser was looking at her like that. "Well, I hope he thinks I'm his friend." There was always the chance people were being polite. She had a hard time telling the difference, sometimes. "But I've been to his wonder a few times, and his house."

She paused and switched from fiddling with her bracelets to fiddling with her hair. "Is it that weird to meet people? We've got these auras so that we can find each other. I like seeing who is out here, when I can." Mostly, they were quite lovely. There had been a few broken ones, too, but they'd already talked about that and Pendour was more than satisfied to let it rest.

She did actually smirk a little when Anser wanted something to show off to Basiluzzo. That was something she was more than happy to support. "Well, there's the rings, and there's the Code, which is held in crystals at our wonders." She pursed her lips a little, thinking. "Oh, and there's the ancestors, which are the ghosts."

The conformation of friendship, well, at least the little sister's version of it, was very sweet. She enjoyed Encke's presence whether he was acting on duty or not, but knowing that it would be okay to call him friend was a nice thought. She listened silently what was maybe family trouble, but she didn't comment on it, simply stored it in her mind as something to be careful of.

No, it was the supervillian comment that sent Pendour back to blinking blankly. Again, she didn't quite know what to say to someone so determined, even excited, about violence. She'd said enough about it already, she decided.

"Well, you could look for both, especially if there's nobody from the Negaverse around," she said, careful to keep her voice soft and neutral. "It could help with that support network, maybe. I think people would be glad to have you as an ally." There was something bright as bright about the girl, brighter than her brother, even. It was almost too much for Pendour, but she knew there were other people who would need that kind of intensity.

She nodded about the ghosts, but then pursed her lips and ran her thumb over her signet ring. "Maybe not haunted," she said. "They're meant to be guides for us. Again, there are Star Wars parallels." She smiled at that, wondering briefly if it could be the modified story of a knight, although it didn't last long as her thoughts turned to Irving. "But they have human souls, and human flaws. I've been having a hard time talking to mine."

The wink threw Pendour off a little, although not in a bad way. There was beat first, where she processed, but then she smiled just a little. Even with the different opinions that they had, there was something about Anser's straightforwardness that she really appreciated.

With Irving, it was much harder to find the part of him that was easy to like. Pendour looked up at the sky as she often did for comfort, although tonight with all the talk of bones, she wondered what dark secrets were up there with the sweet ones.

"Maybe it's from being dead and alone up there for so long," she said. She didn't want to be so harsh when she'd been trying lately to be more understanding. If they could find some common ground it would be easier to work together on the wonder. Still, she carried some anger towards him.

"But he can be harsh when I don't want to do things the way he did, and he didn't take it well when I got hurt." Her voice was steady. These were things she'd thought about enough now to take the worst of the sting out of them. There was a longer pause before she added, "And, um, he used to drown people." She really didn't want Anser to take Irving as an inspiration, but it seemed important to bring up, with what they were talking about. "That's what the bones are from."

Salty?

Pendour knew what it had come to mean, lately, that it meant people who were irritable, quick to lash out over things, maybe as a rule or maybe just because they were upset over something. She thought of salt itself, though, the way she could always smell a hint of it up on her wonder.

She tried to decide if living with the smell of salt for a thousand years would change a person, change a spirit.

Maybe a little, she decided, but she didn't think that was the main problem.

"The metaphor doesn't break down quite that neatly," she said. "The Force is two sides of the same coin, but the Negaverse has its own power source, as far as I know."

Although she'd heard that agents had to drain energy, and take souls for energy, too. That made it seem like Chaos wasn't even a power source at all, that it was only a disease.

"Chaos might twist people inherently, but any power can be used for good or bad." She brushed her fingertips over the scale pattern on her skirt, the part of her outfit that most closely matched her ancestor. "Irving wore white."

Irving was far from the type of person that Pendour admired, but words like evil and supervillian still seemed a bit harsh. People were more complicated than that, but then, she hadn't seen enough redeeming qualities to defend him, either,

She just fiddled with her hair and said, "It's okay. I'm coming to terms with it." The idea of being a superhero, instead, was still not something she was quite comfortable with, especially in the way that Anser seemed to mean it, but she appreciated part of the sentiment. She looked down, then, but she still said, "I'm trying."

She so badly wanted to fix things, and the more she saw, the stronger that want got.

"He still knows so much about the wonder, and maybe more about the role of the knight of Pendour? I need to talk to him again, actually." He'd been acting like he wanted to tell her something for a little while now.

"It's probably still simpler than putting things together in bits and pieces from memories," she added, glancing over. "That's what all the senshi have to do, isn't it?"

Pendour didn't respond to Anser's sudden punching. That just left her staring rather blankly, slipping off her signet ring again and holding it close to her chest while she blinked and blinked. She blinked right up thorough the continued accusations about Irving, at which point she pressed her lips together and tried to find some words.

"I don't, um, really want to talk to him," she sputtered, and it came out quickly and almost loud. "But if I want to go up there, I have to see him, and he's offered to to show me something, and I hope if he's all salty and awful, at least he can be a guide, too."

No, she didn't want to talk to him, but she needed to, now. She had given her word.

"The cats give you magic?" she asked, still very focused on her fiddling and far from looking comfortable. "Maybe I knew that. They're so angry, though. So, um," she searched for a word, "Hot."

Wait. That wasn't right.

"They might want fight more than you do," she said.

She realized her mistake as soon as the words left her mouth, but the thing about words, like so much else, was that you couldn't take them back. She couldn't do much at all but stand there, cheeks going warm as warm. Anser's laughter didn't seem harsh, though, and after a few seconds Pendour found herself laughing, too.

The thought of a cat lounging in a silk shirt like the covers of those cheap novels from Walmart was what came to mind when she thought of attractive-hot, and it was a funny thought.

To be fair, she found cats about as hot as she found anything else, and she laughed harder at that, her private little ace joke.

"I don't think I was flirting with them," she said once things calmed down a little. She tried to think over her interactions with them, her eyes narrowing a little as she focused, because to be fair sometimes she just didn't know. Then all at once she stopped and blinked hard. "Wait, are nicknames flirting?"

Oh no.

She looked back to Anser, worry apparent. "I really don't want to be leading on a cat of all, um, people."

She took a slow breath to settle herself. "But yes, I meant more," she paused again, longer this time, "Fiery. One was clawing me while screaming about how I needed to join the Negaverse, the other was on our side but I think wanted to show me that I needed to fight back?"

Her voice went softer again. Neither had been particularly good experiences.

Cats were babies? Pendour just blinked at that, too. She knew it was something people said sometimes, but it wasn't something she really understood. Cats and babies were about the same size, but babies were very round and clumsy while cats had little pointed ears and sharp, sharp claws.

Pendour had not been calling cats either babe or baby.

"It was Nessy," she said, "For my clothes?" She held up a handful of scaled fabric. "He didn't think Sparkles or Fish worked." She pressed her lips together for a few seconds, thinking it over. "Well, hopefully it wasn't flirting."

If it was, it had gone rather neatly over her head, but it didn't matter so much at this point.

She nodded at Anser's explination, though. "Yes, a Negacat," smiling a little at how the word felt in her mouth, even if it meant something very sad. "I think I've seen some of their senshi, too." She paused after that, thinking about the broken people she'd seen. There were senshi and even cats, but where were the lost knights? If they somehow saw the use in corrupting her, what would she end up as? It wasn't a thought she liked, and she let herself move on from it quickly.

"You would like him," she said. "The second one, I mean. I think he had good intentions. He did teach me how to dodge."

Something in Pendour's chest went heavy, saying that, and she turned her bad side out of view. "Well. Mostly."