[ Takes Place Right After Olympus Reborn ]

She found herself back in bed not too long after the Code vanished. She stared up at the ceiling and waited for the world to slow to a crawl. The page powered down, letting out a heavy sigh as Andronicus slipped from her. No pain came and she didn’t hurl. That was good. She hated puking and really didn’t want to have to hobble to the bathroom for it right now. Green eyes glanced at the clock and she let out a breath. She’d been on Mars for a couple of hours; dawn would come soon. She sank into her pillows and tried to relax. Sleep would help process her thoughts and she could sort them out in the morning. Alex closed her eyes and waited for sleep to come.

An hour later, as the sky through her window lightened, she was no closer to sleep than she had been before. She rolled carefully onto her back, wincing slightly as her bandages pulled, and stared up at her ceiling.

Balance huh? The Knights were part of balance and the keepers of that balance, according to the Code. (Something she really wanted to call the Codex but whatever.) From what she’d seen, that was not what the Knights did. They worked on their own agendas, they worked with their own beliefs. Camelot himself had told her to find her path in this existence. How was she supposed to ‘bring balance to the Force’ when it seemed even Order could not find its way? There was a long history of conflict in present day Destiny City that she did not know, but it had shaped some people into terrible creatures. The Code had said Chaos resided within everyone, not just those of Chaos. She wondered what happened when a soul filled with Chaos of its own accord, when people corrupted themselves by their actions.

Her thoughts flashed to the warehouse, where senshi tore into other senshi like people and the Negaverse guided them along, pulling star seeds and torturing their own. How they’d set fire to the building with the intent of killing everyone against them inside.

It wasn’t just full blood Chaos, but Chaos driven Order.

The Code had told them to keep the Chaos within them in check, contained and controlled. That good must always overpower it. What if… what if someone were to find balance with it, though? What if someone were to condition themselves into true neutrality, where they held equal parts order and Chaos within them? Would it be possible? What if the answer was, not overpowering their own Chaos, but coming to peace with it and accepting it? Moreover, how could the Code ask for balance in the universe when the Knights were not balanced within themselves?

She ran a hand over her chest, wondering what the Chaos felt like verses the Order. She didn’t have an answer for the questions she asked herself. What ifs were what ifs, but they seemed highly important to her. You couldn’t have balance without embracing balance entirely, right? That’s what it meant to have balance. Intentions were everything, as well; one could have the best intentions for the wrong reasons, or the wrong intentions for the right ones. The world was not as black and white as the Code thought it was. It may have been like that when the Knights were at their prime, but in a Chaos filled world, that just wasn’t the case.

There were shades of grey in everything, in everyone.

Alex shifted, eyes moving down her wall. It was too early for her to decide where she stood; she was new, she was inexperienced, she didn’t have the knowledge to make a good judgement call. For now she’d help protect civilians and ‘quest,’ whatever that meant.

It had said her wonder held some sort of power, and that she had to quest for it (what was she, a PC in an RPG?). But what was her wonder? And what was it she was supposed to quest for? This was a terrible story quest, it gave her no direction or even a map to get started from.

But her wonder probably was a good place to start.

Where ever it was, and however she got there.

Alex sighed, watching the sun rise in her window. She was in too much pain and incapacitated to go now, but it was a place to start at least. Perhaps when she’d healed some she’d venture into the unknown and start this quest.

The house woke up around her and Alex slipped into sleep.

WC: 765