Welcome to Gaia! ::

Pockets full of energy spheres, Astrophyllite and Kerberos waited at the rendezvous point for General Avalon. Astrophyllite looked forward to the day when she could teleport herself to her teacher's side on her own power, but her meager understanding was that it was a long time coming. Promotions had to be earned, and she had done very little worth praising in her time with the Negaverse. That did not mean she hadn't tried - she'd been working so hard to meet her quotas, and she was getting better! Avalon said she was a good little soldier! - but she still...

The lieutenant sight. Captaincy was a long way away, and their commanding officer seemed slow in coming tonight. Perhaps she'd gotten caught up in important business. She glanced to Kerberos beside her. The corrupt senshi assigned to their little unit enchanted her. He was, from her understanding, as alien as the white moon senshi whom they fought, but one who had realized the errors of his ways and now sought to prevent the invasion. So, one of the good guys! And he was nice, and he was pretty-

He was really pretty.

There were a lot of things that Astrophyllite wanted to ask Kerberos, like if because he was an alien, did that mean he'd ever been to space? And where had he gotten his tattoos, because they were super neat! And-

She opened her mouth to speak. "Can I braid your hair?" burbled out, before she could stop herself. Astrophyllite smiled hopefully at the senshi, determined to make the best of this.

Astrophyllite let out a surprised, excited noise - she hadn't expected him to say yes! Kerberos just seemed so regal! So majestic! So mature! Even if they were ranked evenly, he seemed so much more powerful than her, a little lieutenant who couldn't ever do anything right.

Clumsily, she banished her ouija board back to negaspace. "Thank you!" Astrophyllite said excitedly, taking up position behind the senshi. Should she suggest that they sit? Her uniform was made of out of sturdy, utilitarian knit, but Kerberos's robes looked a lot softer and more elegant and she'd hate for him to mess them up or get them dirty on the ground. Better not, the lieutenant decided, slipping her fingers into his silky blue locks.

"So these flowers just sprout here every time you transform?" she asked, wide-eyed as she combed her fingers carefully through his hair. There was so much of it and it was so soft and so blue! "That's so cool." Not that she was jealous or anything! Astrophyllite didn't want to be an alien. But if she had to be one, she'd want to be the pretty kind that was on the good guys' side and fighting to defend the earth.

So maybe she was a little bit jealous.

Chewing her lip, she began to plait a thick hank of his hair.

The flowers sprouted all on their own? So, like, they were part of him? Astrophyllite nodded diligently, and made a note to move a little more carefully around Kerberos's flowers. "So you're a plant alien," she said, and thought of Little Shop of Horrors. She hoped that Kerberos did not need to feed on blood, only civilian energy!

She fell a little bit quiet at mention of their superior's weapons. Bischofite's training methods meant that Astrophyllite couldn't help but feel anxious around bladed weapons and Avalon's sword was no exception. She knew that Avalon was a better master than Bischofite, that she would never hurt her the way he had, but...

"I like my Ouija board," the lieutenant said determinedly, concentrating on the hair in her hands. "It's good for hitting people and as a shield. A sword can't do that."

But he was a senshi, and that meant he had magic. Astrophyllite swept Kerberos's hair away from his ear and leaned forward to whisper excitedly, "What kind of spells can you do?"

Astrophyllite frowned down at her ouija board, deep in thought. Bischofite had told her right from the get-go that it would one day turn into something more lethal and useful, but then she wouldn't be able to talk to spirits or try to ask about the future with it and that was just really sad to think about. "I don't know," she said, trying to avoid thinking about losing her ouija board to something more functional but nowhere near as fun. "Maybe it will just become a fancier ouija board?"

She didn't think she wanted a sword, or chakrams, or anything like that. She'd be too scared of cutting herself.

Having a spell that only worked some of the time seemed inconvenient, at least to her. Probably to him, too. "Maybe you've just got to practice," said Astrophyllite reassuringly. "And then it will work more reliably! Like, I wasn't good at softball when I first started playing, but I kept at it and I worked really hard and now I can hit home runs!"

She sat back on her heels, bouncing a little bit with excitement. "I know!" Astrophyllite exclaimed. "You should practice on me!" Kerberos was her teammate, after all! They were supposed to be helping each other to get stronger! Avalon would be so proud of them.

Astrophyllite shrugged - magic of the senshi variety was not really her forte. In fact, magic in general did not seem to be her forte, given that she could not yet do any of the neat apparating spells that Bischofite and Avalon were so keen on. All she knew how to do was sense people's auras, which she thought she was good at, but no better than anyone else...

"Well, if you practice, then you'll get stronger, right?" she asked. She knew that negaversers could get stronger and be promoted (or was it the other way around, they were promoted so they were stronger?) and she supposed it must work the same way for Senshi given how strong some of the ones they'd come up against during the crystal operation had been. Kerberos was a senshi who'd thrown his lot in with the negaverse - would he be promoted like an officer?

This was all way beyond her pay grade to think about.

"The best way to learn is by doing stuff," she quipped at him, sitting up straighter. Bischofite ran a school of hard knocks, but she'd sure learned a heck of a lot in her weeks as his student. "What if I run into a white moon senshi someday with a spell like yours? If I practice with you, then I know what to do, and you'll be stronger too, because you practiced."

She patted her chest. "Hit me with it, ok?" she asked.

She was small. Seven years old and spindly, her hair tangled and pulled into too-tight pigtails. This was - the beginning of the end. A screaming match in the kitchen, a broken plate on the floor. She'd done it, carrying too many things to the sink at once and she was clumsy, so clumsy and this was all her fault, she was so stupid, and now mommy and daddy were fighting because they hated each other, they hated each other because Gemma was a broken baby, she was so dumb, how was she so dumb, Carol must have done something wrong that she was so goddamn stupid and couldn't do anything right-

As the memory faded, Astrophyllite broke into huge, hiccuping sobs that only made her feel worse. "I'm so stupid," she said, balling up her hands and pressing them over her eyes. "I'm so stupid and everyone hates me!"

He had warned her! He had warned her and she'd asked for this and she had no one to blame but herself! With a heavy, look-at-me sigh, Astrophyllite sat down. "I'm stupid and I'm broken and everyone fights because of me and no one likes me and- and-"

She trailed off into silent tears. Kerberos would be right to hate her, too, if he wanted to! She'd asked for this. She'd done this to herself. It wasn't his fault that she was dumb. It was hers. Everything was her fault.

Astrophyllite latched onto Kerberos's robes like a spider monkey and buried her face in his front, still shaking all over from her tears. "You should hate me, though," she said quietly, after a few more moments of not being able to get herself together enough to speak. "I ruin everything. I can't do anything right. Maybe it's the magic showing me it, but it's true."

His hands on her hair felt good, though, and his voice was soothing. The lieutenant tried to focus on her breathing, the way she'd been taught in therapy sessions at school, but it was hard when you were sad and scared for real and not just pretending in a room with a bunch of other girls. Astrophyllite quieted, her sobs turning to whimpers.

"Zinkenite only recruited me so he could punish Bischofite by making him babysit me," she said quietly, balling her fists in his uniform. "Bischofite hated me. He called me useless and he threw me off a roof and he attacked me. I don't know what Miss Avalon sees in me. She'll hate me too, sooner or later. As soon as she realizes how dumb and worthless I am-"

She stopped, turning the word dementor over and over in her mind. He was like one of those, wasn't he! "You like Harry Potter?" she asked, in a very small voice.

She insisted on clinging to him, even though she really ought to let go. It was a sign of weakness that she needed to be coddled and reassured like this, but it just felt so nice. Comfort was hard to come by in her cloistered civilian life. "Alright," she said quietly. It still felt strange to call Bischofite what he had been and become, a monster, but she figured she needed to force herself to do it: everyone else did so freely.

"I read the books in middle school," she said, smiling slightly against his robes. "I'm not a good reader. I lose my place a lot and a lot of times I just give up but they were so good and I wanted to find out what happened next so I made myself keep going."

"I think I'd be a Hufflepuff," she confessed, and did not ask about his sister and why he talked about her in the past tense - it seemed intensely private.

On the horizon, a dark power signature appeared - permafrost and rotten fruit and steel. Astrophyllite loosened her grip on Kerberos's robes and scooted away from him, her focus shifting towards the skyline. "Avalon's coming," she said.