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Holy s**t it was late. Later than usual. So late, that it was early. The blonde frowned briefly at the glowing screen of her cellphone, telling her it was just a tad past four in the morning, and pursed her lips, glancing up at the diner two blocks ahead.

Go eat, or turn the corner and walk the few blocks home, instead?

Kess mentally opened her refrigerator, and examined its contents. Beer. Beer. Some cheese. Condiments. Beer. Leftover Pizza. A shopping trip was long overdue, but that was a task for another day.

One hand slipped into the pocket of her small hoodie [the phrase 'Everybody Poops' emblazoned across the front, beneath an image of a donkey and an elephant], and she pushed open the door of the diner, dark eyes scanning the counter as the bells chimed to announce her entrance.

The typical customers were there, of course, with the addition of an exhausted family, the kids half-asleep in their booth, parents staring at a spread-out map. The RV out front must've been theirs.

Catching sight of a now familiar head of purple hair, Kess grinned, grabbing herself a menu and sitting at the counter, rather than a booth.

"Did you swap shifts, just for little old me?" It was a joke. Probably.

There was a family of cross-country travellers in one corner of the diner, and gaggles of people in varying states of intoxication on varying substances in all the others. People could get obnoxiously, exasperatingly rowdy at any hour of the night at a place like this, and this was definitely one of those nights. At the table with the map, the parents were slowly beginning to regret their decision to stop at this place.

Typical night -- or at least that's how it was starting out. Ashley's frustrated exhaustion, paired with her attentions on the one welcome face in the room, made it for the first moment or two easy to overlook the burgeoning differences between this night and other nights. The new decorations in the place had been easy to shrug off. They were just little cheap vases with even cheaper fake flowers stuffed into them, placed at the center of every other table.

However, slowly but surely, things started to get much less rowdy than normal. Some of the shouting and jeering at the stressed wait-staff was quieting down a bit, with many heads slumping into folded arms as the conversation between Kess and Ashley progressed. The lateness of the hour was suddenly getting to many customers... that is, for the ones with the vases at their tables. Everyone else was perfectly fine.

In her irritation, Ashley hadn't noticed anything beside blissful peace, perhaps.

That is, until Kess was kind enough to point it out for her, where the blonde rose an eyebrow.

...When had it gotten that quiet ? She couldn't quite pinpoint.

"Kind of wish I had the idea." Ashley let out a chuckle, but it sounded almost forced. The drunks had been happily screaming their asses off only minutes ago... Or so it seemed.

Ashley could make a wild guess, but she had no way to be sure, either if she was even right. A quick scan of the room revealed no-one special... Senshi or negaverse alike. And without her ability to feel auras, she had no other way to tell.

"Hey, bro, I feel bad for your date, if this is a hint toward your later performance." A freckled hand gently gripped the shoulder of one of the drunk jocks, proceeding to shake him when she got no response... And none from his table mates, either.

Her grin was slightly uneasy, as her dark eyes shifted to find Ashley, across the diner, her hand slipping from the male's shoulder as if whatever he had might spread.

It wasn't until her hand brushed the vase on the table, reaching for one of the girls' cellphones, that rang incessantly, that she first felt something was really wrong.

"Woah," It was more a breath than a sound, as her knees buckled from a sudden wave of fatigue. Gripping the edge of the booth's table to steady herself, Kess then backpedalled, swaying for a moment, before her hand found the counter top closer to Ashley. "No me gusta."

"Good to know some people in the Negaverse still have some manners," replied Uranophane. Her attention was still on the sizable mass of energy in her fingers, her will coaxing it to become something substantial enough to tuck away for delivery later. Only when that was done did she turn to Captain Fluorite, looking mildly annoyed but not completely unapproachable.

"I don't like idle chit-chat anywhere we could be found and ambushed by a senshi," she warned with a deepening scowl. Just-freed arms crossed themselves across her chest, creating a small clattering of armor against armor as she did so. "So this better be worth the time spent with my guard down."

The soft acid-green glow of her goggles shifted this way and that on her shoulders as she scanned the area around them -- checking the street, the rooftops above, and even passing a glance into the restaurant she'd just attacked -- until her gaze returned to Fluorite, now tinged with impatience.

"You have thirty seconds, Captain."

"Uh," A sheepish grin, and she rubbed the back of her head as Ashley issued a command, then softened it. If it bothered her, Kess didn't say. "Sure thing."

And so, she was left, relatively alone.

It wasn't often the tomboyish, lanky blonde was referred to as 'a woman,' and if she could hear Fluorite, she might've been amused, or charmed. Regardless, the blonde had followed instruction, and retook her seat at the counter, to find that the cooks had finished her food.

With the purple-haired waitress gone, they'd given it to her, and gone back to the kitchens, and she was left to eat, and contemplate her options. She had to wait, of course, in case Ashley needed help, or the groups in the diner woke up....

As she ate, the trucker that'd been at the counter reading left, and she glanced toward the door as the bell chimed, again.

Shattered many weaker-willed beings, indeed.

But Fluorite saw it as a challenge. Found it amusing, perhaps, on some level, while thinking that there was probably nothing Uranophane could be wholly satisfied with.

A perfectionist, perhaps.

But there was a problem of logistics - she couldn't quite go back in like this, else Kess might not follow her. The cook wouldn't let her back through the back door, either. Causing a commotion would also lure people in there which would be bad.

Think quickly, Fluorite.

"Look out for the purple-haired waitress. That's gonna be me. I'll have a taller, freckled blonde with me. That'll be her. I'll walk toward you."

And then she was gone. She was on a timer, after all. Or at least she had the unspoken impression of it. She powered down before turning the corner, nodding to the cook as she slid back inside and, from there, went back to where Kess was thankfully still waiting.

She hadn't moved. Good.

Damn, this had to work.

"Okay..." She brushed her skirt. "Boss was us to go outside. Try not to touch anything, okay ? They want the area as undisturbed as possible to study it." That was a good alibi, right ?

Suddenly she felt nervous. "Come on, Kess. I'd rather be outside..." She hopped over the counter. "Something's really wierd going on here and I don't like it."

"I'll tell you what's going on."

The sentence wasn't very dramatic. It was frank, coarse and irritable, spoken by the raspy alto voice of the Negaverse General who stood nearby. There wasn't even a breeze around to lend some dramatic billow of her cape. As she calmly walked forward, it was as if she was willing the situation to be nothing more or less than the stark reality it was. She had been the reason why everyone in the restaurant had been passing out. Ashley knew this, and knew her. Kess was about to know as well. It was a simple fact.

"The Earth is full of problems. The senshi are one of them. The Negaverse is here to fix these problems. And you have been chosen to help." The energy orb she had just collected was cracked unceremoniously between her teeth: fuel for the ride she was about to take Kess on. No fuss, no theatrics. The only things that happened next were the General taking another step forward, followed by her removing one glove, flexing her bared fingers a bit and tossing the glove unceremoniously to the ground.

"This is going to hurt. Don't squirm too much or I might ******** it up."

Well, that was reassuring.

What took place after her warning would ensure that the memory of this night was one that would never fade. Kess had experienced having her energy removed from her earlier. As the Negaverse General shoved her fingers past her breastbone, she then was given the sensation of having it violently shoved back into her -- this time in a new and terrible form that tore away at her insides as it flowed relentlessly in. There was too much of it. It was more than her body could handle. It was going to tear her apart, she was sure of it.