"The Second Rift" as she'd come to call it had come and gone. She'd suffered minor injuries in this large battle, and her ones from the warehouse had healed. All but her burn, but the scar that stretched across her back would never go away. She had almost all range of motion in her broken elbow, though hyper extending it made it pop and crack. Her ankle was healed and did not pain her, though not as strong as it used to be.

She was lucky to have gotten out of that with her life, a feat she had to contribute to Acubens' wariness.

Green eyes stared up at the sky. It was a black color broken by pin pricks of light. Much had changed since the last time she'd stared at the sky, and yet the sky was the same. Alex shifted and let out a sigh. When she'd awoken into Andronicus Page, she hadn't known the war that raged on beneath the civilian eye. She hadn't realized just how much civilians ignore and block out to keep their perceptions of reality true. Once thrust into it, however, she had no choice to but to see it for what it was. It was a war of zeolots and people who thought they had no choice. They endangered each other, themselves, and the city with no thought to consequence but destruction of the other.

Agents of Chaos had tried to bring a second Rift into Destiny City. From the commotion, it seemed to Alex that many of those officers had no idea what they were trying to do until the end. The Dark Mirror Senshi seemed to be caught in the middle, as well, once again. Senshi and knights had flocked to the epicenters of power and tried to destroy Chaos before it enacted its plan.

But... why?

As near as she could tell, the officers were just as human as she was. Which meant most must have come from Destiny City itself. Why would they destroy their homes, their families? And if all senshi and knights were as human as she was, why were both sides trying to destroy humans and the home they lived in? Why did both sides assert they were the protectors of Destiny City and not simply work together against a common enemy?

Simple. They didn't have one.

Alex blinked. Youma and mirror wraiths were used by those with Chaos in them, but she had yet to see one enemy of both sides. An enemy that was not, she amended, one of their own. It was odd to think something hadn't come looking for all the powereds, Chaos or Order. Something always came looking.

Regardless of the motives behind it, she'd learned valuable lessons. One, caution is sometimes the best course of action. She wanted to protect civilians, yes, but without knowing what was going on, she was good as dead. It was hard, given Alex wanted to be 'an anime main character' at times, but Acubens was right. That would only end in a lot of pain on her part. Two, Order and Chaos' favorite weapon was fire. They wanted each other to burn, and believed fire purged all.

Three, the most startling of all: eradication of the opposing faction was more important than anything else. They fought with blind ambition and hatred, past down from superiors and older teammates. They never questioned their fight, never questioned their supposed task. They fought as though their lives depended on the other faction being destroyed.

And that terrified Alex.

She did not want a part in a war where everyone blindly ran into battle. Too many stories told of death and destruction at the hands of blind devotion. Yet, she could not just abandon her duty as a page. The Code had given her a task, to find balance, and she felt compelled to try to find that balance. Alex could no more run from it than from herself.

But how do you find balance within a war where no one will look outside themselves? She didn't know, and probably wouldn't for a very long time. She'd survived two giant battles so far; she'd survive more and learn from them.

She'd promised Acubens she wouldn't become one of those mindless sheep running into the slaughter.

She wasn't about to break that promise.

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