The latest batch of cookies were transferred from oven to wire cooling rack, the rich smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookie filling the small apartment kitchen. Snagging one, Arian bit into it absently, warm gooey biscuit filling his taste buds – it should have made him feel better – it didn’t. Actually none of the previous five had made him feel better either.

Arian had spent most the morning baking cookies, had made enough mixture to get out three batches of cookies – well okay it had been four batches – but he’d left the first batch in long enough that the biscuits had resembled charcoal more than biscuit.

Almost mechanically Arian started to pack the cookies into one of the larger containers. The apartment felt quiet – too quiet – without his cousin, but Saffy was currently in the hospital with a broken leg, a broken leg she’d gained after attending that horrible city council meeting a few nights.

Arian had bumped into his cousin coming out as he came in from school and Saffy had decided that rather than being at home alone, he could come along to the city council meeting with her. It hadn’t been particularly at the top of Arian’s ‘to-do-list’ and he’d been less than – overjoyed at the idea of sitting in some stuffy meeting – even with Saffy’s promised bribe of them going out for burgers when the meeting wrapped up.

They’d never managed to go for that burger instead the Negaverse had come and people... And people had died.

Arian had ended up powering up into Athene and doing his best to try help protect the civilians trapped inside the meeting against the Negaverse. In reality this had involved tackling some blue-haired Nega in a tacky My Little Ponyish outfit blocking the front doors in an ill-advised attempt to get the door open, managing to fall over someone’s discarded handbag and chucking said discarded handbag at some monster-thingy that had to have had frogs featuring heavily somewhere in its genetic make-up considering how much it resembled one. In short he’d been pretty pathetic. Okay totally pathetic. He’d been pathetic in that meeting with Lieutenant Benitoite too.

The meeting had brought something home to Arian though. What he’d heard about the Negaverse was right – they were dangerous. And they – they were the bad guys – he didn’t care what anyone said to the contrary. That meeting had told him more than enough about what the Negaverse was like.

They were the reason that Saffy was laid up in hospital with a broken leg, why those people had died. His cousin was lucky – someone had helped her out – there were other civilians who hadn’t been so lucky.

The news was reporting it as a terrorist attack, had lumped the senshi and Negaverse together – but Arian knew it was untrue – the senshi had been the ones trying to help the civilians. They weren’t the ones with the monsters killing people.

The Negaverse had to be stopped. But... Arian bit his lip, there was the pathetic factor – as a senshi he didn’t even have a strong handle on his own attack and he hadn’t exactly conducted himself with any brilliance.

I need to get stronger. Somehow he needed to get stronger so he’d become a better senshi.

Arian added a final layer of greaseproof paper to the container. There was about sixty or so cookies in the container, most likely far too much for one person. He didn’t care. The cookies were better than anything the hospital could and would feed Saffy.

The lid was sealed on with a decisive click. As a senshi he was going to get stronger.


-- 607 words --