Athene sat on top of the building rooftop looking out over the city. A nearby fire escape ladder suggested the means by how the dark-haired senshi had managed to get up there.

The cup of hot steaming hot chocolate was a hint perhaps that right at this moment the dark-haired senshi wasn’t actively patrolling. He wasn’t. It had been a quiet patrol so far tonight. No youma-type chaotic auras, actually plain no chaotic-type auras period. He hadn’t stumbled across any order type auras either so he’d felt pretty okay about hiding behind a dumpster, powering down, walking to the late night Diner to pick up some hot chocolate and then, after finding somewhere secluded, powering back up again.

It struck the dark-haired senshi of beads just how peaceful Destiny City felt tonight, something of a rarity given that there were usually youma wandering around ready to terrorise whatever unfortunates that crossed their paths if nothing else.

Athene found his thoughts drifting back to the last meeting of senshi and knights he’d attended that had been on purification. It had been so much different to the first meeting he’d attended, so much more positive for a start. It probably helped that that time round there had been no elements in the crowd vocally shouting out disagreements at times (or so it seemed) just for the sake of disagreement or going off on rants. He’d left the meeting with some new contacts in his senshi phone as well as more information on purification.

Oh it hadn’t been that much information. Of the three princesses present, only one seemed to have done any purification at all and one, the bright rainbowy one, had outright admitted that she didn’t have a clue. Athene had agreed with her that purification seemed a lot better than some of the other options, especially as the dark-haired senshi knew that he personally couldn’t and wouldn’t go down the route of killing people – he wasn’t a murderer and he wasn’t going to let this war he’d ended up being pulled into turn him into one either.

The idea that those part of chaos had been brainwashed made a very scary kind of sense. In both of his really significant encounters with those serving chaos, Athene had witnessed them seemingly have no issue with killing people, heck he could still remember the Negaverse unleashing their youmas on the hapless civilians at the city council meeting over a year ago during that period when a whole bunch of civilians had mysteriously disappeared, could remember one of the youmas actually eating someone.

How those on the side of chaos could have no issues with that, or with the energy stealing or with any of the rest of it made no sense – unless you factored in the brainwashing. And if purification could fix that, could open up their eyes to how wrong it was – well then Athene couldn’t see it as a bad thing.

It was the gate-crashed senshi and knight meeting that had truly been the tipping point for the dark-haired senshi, before that he’d been pretty much on the fence about the whole thing at best. However so many had been murdered in cold blood that night by both the Negaverse and Dark Mirror and that wasn’t right, wasn’t fair.

Sighing Athene reached for the hot chocolate and took a few mouthfuls before looking over at the city again. He was pretty sure he’d heard mention of a member of the Negaverse being purified first – something about her becoming a knight – at the order meeting and then again by the Sunflower senshi at the recent purification meeting. It made sense that if it could happen once then it could happen again, even though Aster had also seemed to think that the three princesses present were the key.

A few more mouthfuls of hot chocolate later Athene made himself get to his feet, the remainder of the hot beverage to hand. Although he was now personally pretty firmly of the notion that purification was a good thing, sitting and looking out on Destiny City wasn’t going to generate ideas on how the dark-haired senshi of beads could best help out, nor was it going to help finish his patrol.

Finishing up the hot chocolate Athene made his way over to the fire escape ladder in preparation for the climb back down. He’d try thinking up ideas later, right now he had a patrol to finish.

-- 743 words --