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Per Melanite's suggestion, Astrophyllite was targeting rich men in suits for energy draining now. She'd expected them to be harder targets, but they all walked around largely oblivious of their surroundings, like nothing could harm them and if anyone tried, the police would be on their side. As a result, it was easy to slip beside them when they stepped outside the building for a smoke or made their ways to their cars, trace her fingers down their backs, and pull away little bits of their life force.

Their life force.

She'd never thought of energy as a finite resource before Melanite explained it to her as such. She thought you could just go home and eat some food and sleep a bit and get it all back but knowing that every time she took energy from people she was taking a little bit off their lifetime raised a lot of questions for her. At least these bigwigs could spare the change, though. At least Melanite had said they could...

Slipping away from her latest target, Astrophyllite merged the sphere of energy she'd collected into her larger collection ball. She'd met her quota almost exactly, so at least Natron would be pleased with her. She put the energy away, safe inside her jacket, and sniffed around.

She felt a page nearby, their aura spicy and dry like desert sand, a metallic tang like rust, and scorching sunlight. The lieutenant called her ouija board to hand and crept quietly down the alley. If this was going to be a fight, well, at least she'd be ready.

She didn't see him at first as she advanced down the alley, but Astrophyllite could feel the page more than clearly. The closer she got, the stronger the tang of rust became, in her nose and her mouth and everywhere. Although she was nearly certain it was her imagination, she could feel the grit of sand between her teeth. If she had to guess where the alien she was hunting came from, based on her parochial school knowledge of the solar system, she was going to say Mars.

At some point, she'd managed to move past the signature without ever locking onto it. Astrophyllite now turned on her heels and doubled back, peering into the shadows, her ouija board held at the ready. "Here little alien," she whispered. "Here little alien. I'm gonna- I'm gonna-"

She wasn't exactly sure. Gehenna had been a Mars Squire, and he'd been pretty okay, after all! What if this one was pretty okay, too? But she had to fight knights, they were traitors... "I'm gonna rough you up non-fatally so I don't get in trouble for not roughing you up," concluded Astrophyllite, thinking this statement of good will might make her prey more willing to show themself.

Wow, he'd been hiding so good! Astrophyllite grinned at the page. "Yes!" she said. "I was looking for you! And now that I've found you, we've got to fight!" Those were the rules, right? He was an alien, and she was a defender of the Earth!

She held up her ouija board and bounced like a boxer waiting for the start of the match. "I'll take first blood, then," she giggled, since clearly the page was a bit slow on the uptake! "I'll try not to hit you too hard! We can just both go home and say we won!"

With that, she swung the board at the page.

Astrophyllite stepped back, a deep frown marring her features. That just didn't make any sense to her - why wouldn't he want to fight? It was, like, the natural order of things! "Why've you got to make this all hard and stuff?" she asked. No one was gonna see her bruises, anyway! (What did he think she did, hung out in her underwear in front of her mom?! First of all, no. Second of all, no!)


"We're supposed to fight," she insisted, adjusting her grip on the board and perhaps telegraphing that she was going to go for another swing. "Didn't anyone give you the memo?" She'd said that they should just rough each other up a little, but on a more serious note, she'd get in trouble if she didn't at least try to do her job.

And she did want to do her job! It was important work! She was defending the earth!

"Get back, Alien Scum!" she shrieked, swinging the board at him once more.

"You look like humans, but you come from space!" Astrophyllite asserted fiercely, and tracked his scales awkwardly with her eyes. Perhaps she didn't expect him to actually hit her? At any rate, when the blow came, she moved her head to the side in what was clearly over-compensation, and then scowled.

"Oh, come on!" the lieutenant whined. "I hardly felt that at all! Put some muscle into it!"

She swung her ouija board again, not too hard, but in a vague approximation of how hard she would have liked the page to be hitting back. "You've got this thing in your chest called a starseed and yours comes from outer space. Duh." Didn't everyone know that? If even she knew that, it seemed like everyone ought to.

"Ow!" yelped Astrophyllite, staggering back from the blow. His weapon was hard to track, being on a chain as it was, and she'd taken it right to the side! Be careful what you wish for and all that, she figured, pouting at him. "That really smarts!"

She definitely did not want to tangle with him anymore! Not at all! And no one would be able to look at her bruise and dare say she didn't try to fight him. "I'm going home now," she informed him seriously, "but you are still alien scum and should think very seriously about going back to outer space or at the very least joining the Negaverse because we are right and good and you'll be forgiven for being an alien, okay?"