He hadn’t powered up since that night.

Had instead tried to live a normal life and pretend that there was no such thing as talking cats, a secret war or magic powers.

He’d let Saffy talk him into finally selling some of his jewellery creations online via Etsy. They’d come to an agreement with his cousin handling things like the pricing and Arian handling the creation of things to actually sell. They’d managed to sell a few things already – he’d been the one to pack them up and post them out.

His grades at school had improved too, funny how much of an impact sneaking out to patrol had had on his school work and although nowhere near in the range of being a genius student, he’d been told that if he kept the good work up then he had a pretty good chance of getting into Sovereign Heights in the fall should that be what he wished.

And if sometimes when Saffy wasn’t around he took out his henshin pen (a much more elaborate one to the one that ********* had first gifted him with) – and stared at it – Arian had no intention of doing more than that.

It was better this way, besides it wasn’t as if he’d been a particularly sterling example of senshidom – worse his failings had been responsible for actually costing someone else their life. And okay so he felt a little guilty for pretty much disappearing on the Shepherds, but not enough to use the pen to actually henshin up.

Perhaps it was the coward’s way out, but the horrible choked off sound made by the senshi that had saved his life and ********* heartbreakingly mournful yowl still graced his dreams – well more like nightmares and Arian could still remember the pain of feeling the Nega-General’s hand wrapped round his starseed.

He’d kept up the Aikido lessons though, justifying it by telling himself that he’d promised his cousin that he’d take some form of self-defence classes – besides Arian found he rather liked Mr Green- even if he still thought of the other as the least likely instructor ever.

He sighed, double-checking things off the list that Saffy had pressed into his hands. Eggs - check, Billington’s sugar - check, that new type of sugar that his cousin wanted to try out (palm sugar) - check.

They’d run out of baking stuff again and Arian had agreed to be the one to go pick things up from the supermarket. He’d wanted some fresh air anyway so it wasn’t any biggy, but he’d ended up travelling further across town than initially planned as the store closest to the apartment didn’t stock palm sugar.

Once the items had been checked off and finally paid for, Arian started to head back. He’d sneaked some of that really nice chocolate into the shopping, was considering using it to make up a batch of something when he got back although he was torn between cookies and cupcakes.

He bit back a yawn, or maybe he’d call on a rain-check on the baking. Then he bit back another yawn, it was funny how tired he was suddenly feeling. Maybe it was a sign that he should settle for an early-ish night instead, maybe... “Ack!”

Arian jumped back instinctively as a thing appeared from out of nowhere and tried to fly at him, the movement managing to almost scatter the groceries from his overly full grocery bag.

“What?” Was that one of those wraith-things used by the Dark Mirror Court? One of the things they used to steal energy? He found himself instinctively looking round for a glimpse of a dark uniform, but saw nothing. Not that that was particularly telling – he was a civilian and unlike his senshi counterpart civilians couldn’t sense the auras that would have been able to tell him for truth whether there was anyone there or not.

The wraith circled around for another pass and Arian was unable to stop the thing passing through him, despite his attempts to dodge. Immediately he felt even more drowsy, his grip slackening on the suddenly too heavy shopping.

His last thought as his vision dimmed and blackness descended was But it’s still broad daylight…

-- 704 words --