Welcome to Gaia! ::

Alley exploration was an art form. Tomlin was still getting used to the city again, and this was a new part of town for him, further from Callisto’s house than he usually strayed. The streets were dark, and very few people were out on the main roads, the wind blowing cold. There’d been no sense of any youma in his usual haunts, which meant it was the perfect evening for exploring. It was practical to know the quickest way from here to there, to scope out all the little back-alleys where nobody really went.

In theory, he was seeking out the best route between the houses of the various Jovian Court members, so he could begin to keep tabs on them. In practice, well... He was an alley cat at heart, and the back streets were more fun.

The court had been unexpected. He’d found Callisto, but the rest of the court had formed up all by themselves and found him. It was strange to suddenly have so many senshi around him, but also familiar in an unplaceable, distant way. The knights were still something he needed to investigate, as well. It had all left him feeling a little lost. He hoped he wasn’t steering them wrong.

He scrambled through a wire fence into a narrow strip of darkness, wide enough for a cat but not much bigger than that, then out into the grey alley on the other side. There were street lights only a block over, tabby-striping the ground with shadows. It was not quite where he’d expected to come out. Maybe he was a little lost in general.

Tomlin smelt the fish before he saw the cat. He was not expecting to be addressed, and it took him a moment to pick out the other guardian by the fence. The little silvery spotted thing looked comically picturebook-like with her fish dinner, and as if her words weren’t enough to clue him in, a shining star graced her forehead.

“Hey,” he responded, moving cautiously closer. “Name’s Tomlin. Not intruding on your turf, am I?”

The slight grin suggested that he wasn’t particularly concerned if the answer was yes, though he couldn’t help remaining a little wary. She was eating, after all. Experience told him most cats in alleys wouldn’t like him too close while they ate, and he hadn’t met enough other Mauvians to know if the same held true for his kind. He had met a few, though briefly. Like the one he’d seen in battle, summoned by the tiny but well-trained senshi who’d lectured his Callisto.

Copper-yellow eyes focused more intently on the other guardian. He’d been very tired at the time, didn’t remember clearly, but he thought the colours were about right - it could be the same cat. He glanced around, looking for an accompanying senshi, but it seemed she was out alone, just like him.

Hungry cat. Fair enough, he’d been there. Even in the city, life could be tough like that. Fortunately, Tomlin hadn’t had to deal with that stomach-clawing hunger for a while now, so he stretched out a polite distance away, turning his face to the sky. He wasn’t interested in making her life any harder by taking her stuff - the poor thing was going to choke herself if she kept going like that.

“Don’t mind me, *********. I can find my own food,” he assured her, snicking his claws out in front of him for a moment, as if to imply his mighty hunting skills. She didn’t need to know he was strictly on a no-kill diet. About the only thing he’d mauled lately was a sandwich wrapper. The pristine claws disappeared again and he sat up, wrapping his tail across his feet.

“I’m kinda new around here. Still getting the lay of the land. I think I saw you, though, at a fight. You had a little orange senshi with you?”

It wasn’t much of a description. Tomlin figured if she didn’t know, she didn’t know. “Very little,” he added, by way of clarification.

The giggling earned a slightly sharper look in her direction, the hint of a frown. Was she choking after all, or did she think something he’d said had been funny? But there didn’t seem to be anything unfriendly in the silvery cat's stance, and once the sound was no longer muffled by food, it was hard not to smile back. That fish was certainly disappearing fast.

“Your girls?” he asked. There had been another one with her, now he thought about it. She’d been very tall, he’d been a little too preoccupied to look that high. “Well, I’m glad she’s as small as they come, I thought my Callisto was young! But no, no grief. She could have been a little gentler, it was our first day, but it’s all good. She seemed to know her stuff.”

All good to know there were well-trained senshi out here already, and other guardians with them. And all good that Callisto was safe. It was good to be back in the city.

“Yeah, that’s the plan,” he nodded, pleased that ********* seemed to share his need to travel. His own four paws were the only way to go - there was no point sitting around at home when the action was on the streets (though the thought of having a home was beguilingly new, and the shine hadn’t quite worn off having a place to go back to). “I tried maps before. Didn’t like ‘em.”

“My life has been sadly lacking in shortcuts lately. But that’ll change,” he said, lifting up a paw to examine the pad. It wasn’t like he was doing that much less walking around the city than he had for the last few months to reach it, but having access to ‘cat directions’ again did make a difference. The endlessly long country roads hadn’t even offered him the illusion of a quicker way. Except the cars, but that had turned out to be a bad idea in the end.

He was more than a little impressed by the litany of girls. It was quite a list, and for all the things the tailless cat claimed not to know, it seemed she had a whole lot more information than he did. He wasn’t a particularly possessive cat, there were no toys with his name on them, no streets he claimed as his own, but he did understand that sensation of ‘mine’ when it came to senshi. Callisto always, Callisto was his beyond any need for doubt or explanation, but there’d been other times when he felt something similar, more than just the awareness of a senshi energy signature, almost like a lit window. A warm sense he wanted to move towards.

“I don’t know names,” he said thoughtfully. “Not until I see them. It doesn’t worry you, to awaken them so young?” he asked. He wasn’t keen on the idea, himself. “What happened to the missing one?”

“Iris, huh? That’s alright, we’ll just make sure there’s no cause for lecturing. Thanks for the tip.” He smiled, half-joking, but anyone speaking harshly to his senshi was going to have to answer to him.

There was still enough alley-sense in him to make him fidget a little when she was suddenly up close, but she was so obviously harmless that he squashed the instinct down hard, turning away slightly to fuss with a tangle in his pendant cord. When he turned back, it was to meet her green-eyed stare with a steady orange gaze.

A little snort of laughter escaped him at the thought of the ‘girl’ who was a boy. Poor *********! “Some senshi it’s not easy to tell,” he said, thinking of the male senshi he’d met so far. With no preconceptions of his own, he hadn’t been paying terribly much attention to the genders of the senshi he’d met. He’d just been so happy to finally see them.

The little ones, though. Even though it was gently spoken, Tomlin could spot a lecture when he heard it. “Well, protect, yeah,” he agreed, though a hint of doubt remained in his tone still. The ‘serve’ part of their creed sat less well with him. He knew his guardian duties of course, and he wasn’t going to shirk them, but he wasn’t anyone’s servant, not even destiny’s. “They’ll still have the same starseed in another couple of years,” he argued. If the Negaverse didn’t take it. Better they had the strength to defend themselves, he had to concede, and that only came with awakening, at any age. But it didn’t seem right.

He sighed, stretching his paws again. Seems like he wasn’t the only one who’d walked a long way. Unlocated was far better than ‘missing’, in light of all the corruption fears that were going around. “You’ve been doing this a long time. I hope she turns up soon for you. The name is all the clue you’ve got?” He had to admit, he was a little fascinated in how she knew even that much.

“A senshi is a senshi, I guess,” Tomlin said with a little shrug, realising they weren’t quite talking about the same thing. As a boy himself, he was half-inclined to be offended, but hey, it was her senshi, she could nickname him whatever she wanted.

The ginger cat sat back at the brief description of Negaverse tactics, fur ruffling up with a hint of alarm. “No. A school…?” Targeted couldn’t be right. Font of information that ********* was, he was sure she must be wrong on that one. He could think of half a dozen reasons why it couldn’t be true - an attack of opportunity, a teacher maybe, or wrong place, wrong time. But then, he’d found Callisto at a swimming pool, and a youma had appeared there. There’d been no shortage of children that time, either. His tail flicked restlessly; hollow arguments weren’t worth voicing. He kept forgetting how dark the darkness could get.

He’d much rather hear about her senshi, that at least was a soothing topic, reminding him of Callisto. He nodded along, understanding the sentiment, even if the details were different for him. If she’d pulled out a wallet of baby photos, he’d have admired them with the same enthusiasm. The symbol, though, meant nothing to him.

“Not weird. I kind of understand.” All senshi were special, he was sure, but some were just... precious.

The details of the attack made Tomlin droop, all of the poise going out of him and leaving him hanging his head. Still he tried to see the extenuating circumstances that might have made sense of such a cruel attack. He didn’t want to believe that even a hardened bunch of chaos agents would endanger children. It was sick. But there’d obviously been senshi on the scene, and that was a good thing. He didn’t ask how many were hurt, or how the battle ended. The little cat before him wouldn’t still be laughing if it had gone so badly. He brightened quickly too, her good humour was infectious. The world had shadows, but it was far from all dark.

"I, well. Callisto. Is mine," he began, startled to be put on the spot. Maybe he didn't understand at all. He hadn’t known anything about her, the way ********* knew her girls. Just, he'd walked so very far to get back to the city, and had wound up right at Erika’s feet. As if his paws, at least, had been following a lead his mind hadn’t grasped yet. As if he’d been searching, but hadn’t known it till he’d looked up into those grey eyes and recognised.

And. There was more, a tip-of-the-tongue feeling of something else, a string-pull that drew him wandering off into the night to find... something. He couldn't expain it to ********* - he couldn't even explain it to himself. It had been so strong, the night of the meeting, but he’d had so many other things to concentrate on, he hadn’t stopped to analyse. He needed to go find those senshi again. But Callisto needed him most.

"I should be getting back to her," he said at last.