Fall was in full swing now, the winds chilling the leaves into autumn colors. Dusty red mixed with yellows and browns on the branches, and painted the sides of the street with splashes of warm color that slowly mixed together to make a dirty deep brown of decomposition. Castille took her time getting home, zipping up her jacket around her school shirt. It was chilly, but not enough to make her scurry to her house, where her warm bed and sweatpants called to her from her second floor bedroom. Instead, she wandered aimlessly, only paying enough attention to keep herself from being hit by a car, or running into people as she walked. Her mind was so full of thoughts that it ached, pounding in rhythm with her heartbeat.

Being a senshi started out as magical transformations, exciting new costumes and saving people from monsters that seemed too stupid to be walking about alone. It was going home and perusing her ITunes for a playlist of hero music, complete with battle tunes and quiet patrolling songs. It was sitting out on a rooftop on a quiet night, and watching the world roll by the flickering lights of the city. It was even meeting other senshi, and knowing that she wasn’t alone in this fight.

But her moonlighting was fast becoming a force of habit, its newness and excitement wearing off and leaving her more weary than exhilarated. Because with the realization that there were other senshi with her, came the second realization that there were an equal amount of people against her. And they weren’t going to be swayed into thinking that their methods were wrong. Castille paused in her walk, the couple behind her narrowly avoiding running into her. They were willing to kill to get their way. Suddenly, everyone around her seemed a victim. She cast her eyes on a group of friends sitting at the outdoor tables of a restaurant. A family in a car at the stoplight. Random individuals with places to be, walking to and fro around her. Every single one of them could be thrown into this war, if not as a soldier, then a victim. An energy source. Or even a starseed source. Castille felt claustrophobic, as if by being there, she was responsible for all of them. She escaped down a side street toward Knightside Elementary, where classes were out, and the playground was free. She flopped down on a swing, pushing herself forward just enough to feel movement.

How did she come about this responsibility? What great force in the world chose her to put the weight of the town upon? She could hardly handle her world, let alone the safety of others. Was this same force responsible for what powers they got? She grimaced at the thought of powers. Hers was not enough. Sure, it was a great way to escape, but without the physical force to back it up, Castille might as well just call it quits, hide that damn henshin pen somewhere and finally get a good night sleep. She couldn’t fight, at least not well. It was nice of the senshi she met to comfort her, give her advice, but she couldn’t follow it. Her training escaped her mind as soon as she faced a battle. Maybe being a senshi wasn’t for her after all…

Hel’s words entered her mind slowly, teasingly. She often considered those words, and tried to determine what they meant. There was hope in them, and the plans to an end of war. But there was something else inside those words, like a cobra in a beautiful basket, waiting for its victim to get close enough to strike.

“You could join those who have a goal, a plan, and a leader. You could have a family that would protect you; you're normal family and so much more!"

Castille wanted nothing more than safety for her family and friends. There were days where she was practically bursting to tell them about her, and everything she had been through. Times when her dad’s hug would have been more welcome than an end to a war she was thrown into. But she had to keep her silence, for her family’s sake. After every encounter with the Negaverse, she worried that she had given something away, given them a lead that would show them her house, and put her sister in danger. A runaway thought, and in her brain Negaverse agents bust down her door. And like every kidnapping scene in any movie, they run upstairs, pinning down her dad and running off with Kaylee and Tyler. She dashed the terrifying thought from her mind as she wiped away unshed tears. Hel’s words came back again, with a little more force this time. If she could get the Negaverse on her side...

This time her whole head shook violently. What was she thinking!? What if she did… would she end up like Hel? Or the purple haired Alunite? Would they take out her starseed, and leave her with an empty hole in her chest. It seemed very…violating. She couldn’t turn to Chaos...could she? The senshi weren’t known for attacking people’s families. In fact, Castille wanted to believe that it was almost taboo to do so. Senshi didn’t attack civilians, and maybe if she gave herself over, she could convince them to stop. She shivered suddenly. What would her friends think? Would Kallichore call her mad? Would Chaonis attack her without a second thought? Would Polaris look at her not with warm, motherly eyes, but with orbs of ice? If she tried to stop them by becoming one of them, would her true senshi friends turn their backs to her? Her family could be safe…

The swing had stopped moving ages ago, and the sun was setting, leaving the autumn air colder than before. But Castille wasn’t sure if it was because of the setting sun, or because she thought of such traitorous things that the wind felt like knives on her skin. Out of her backpack came not her coat, but her henshin pen. The pretty little thing of crimson and silver. The gold piece on top shimmered with the outline of a feather. Castille stared at it, as if it might offer her an answer, the balm to her troubled and heated mind. But the tiny thing remained silent, a toy in the hands of a child. A child that had been thrust into something much larger than herself, much larger than her town. Larger than her whole world, and the world she traveled to.

Grus. What would happen to her world if she gave herself over? Would the trees that have stood there for who knows how long fall to the earth? Would the tree houses her people lived in long ago crumble and disappear from memory? Castille imagined the beautiful red ferns that covered the ground in a wash of crimson, and the delicate white petals of their flowers that frayed at the ends like feathers. If Chaos took over her heart, would those flowers lose the will to live, and wilt away into nothing? Her planet may become a wasteland, like her starseed would be. An almost silent sob escaped her chest, which ached at the thought of her planet, so dazzling and natural being destroyed. Maybe Grus would stay the same...but with the loss of her starseed, would she lose the ability to go there? But if she could somehow reason with them, get the agents of Earth to see that the Senshi would back away if they did so as well…But how?

Why did this war begin in the first place?

Who was this Princess that everyone spoke of? If she had ruled so wonderfully as the senshi described, then why did the Negaverse want her and all her kind eradicated from memory? What did she do that caused so many to hurt? And why, as senshi, were they obligated to follow and look for her? Castille gripped the pen tightly, feeling not sadness, but anger. Why should someone look to a leader that has been dead for such a long time? How are they to fight when the person they take orders from is silently sleeping away eternity? She had no desire to seek out someone who caused a war! Reviving her spirit would only revive the original spirit of this battle, and it was hard enough as it was to fight. This unknown Princess...Whoever she was should remain just that. Unknown. If they are to follow her, then let her rise from the dead!

The pen was shoved roughly back into her pocket. Castille held onto the anger. It pushed away the feeling of loss and hopelessness, and shoved her confusion into silence. This whole thing was her fault wasn’t it? Is that why no one would tell her the story of how the war came to be? Was there an indiscretion on her part? It didn’t matter. Those who cause a war should not be willed back into it. “I will not be a pawn in someone’s chess game.” She said, tossing her backpack over her shoulder.


Is this what Chaos felt like?


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