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The plan for the evening was to canvas every street in Herald Hill and Compline Heights districts of the city. Both had long ago fallen into dereliction during the post-World War II era. Empty-eyed storefronts interspersed with second hand clothing outlets, some barely feasible flophouses, low-brow concert halls, beer gardens, and pawn shops. Empty warehouses, or supposedly empty, where furniture outlets and lighting fixture retail or manufacture (it as difficult to make it out anymore without a trip to microfiche and city archives), dotted the backstreets between rotting, abandoned service stations and fenced in, paved lots. The homeless, drunk and vagrant population of the area had once been rampant, but five years ongoing of targeted attacks both energy and violence based had done a good job of clearing most of any type of idle loitering after sunset. There were still groups here of there, from time to time, but their purposed steps spoke of planned blocks from one sticky-floored watering hole to the other with only minor stoppage to urinate in one or two alleys.

It would be a dreary time, but it was a necessity. The amount of dereliction, boarded windows and doors to businesses that had been empty for decades before the war gave them suspicion, made both neighborhoods prime locations- for prisoners or for other operations. Quenton waited patiently in a rented Corolla, traditional fuzzy-butt shoulder pal safely stowed on the passenger seat, waiting for his second fuzzy passenger to arrive. The parking was metered near Destiny Tower, at least it was on the street where he'd found a spot to wait. "It'll take about twenty minutes to get there in this, mostly the traffic lights. The industrial sector that side isn't safe, but where is, really. Do you suppose street crime even a real thing anymore? Primetime code-language for Negaverse weaponry is more likely. "

I think its been two years since I last drove. I'll look like a crazy cat guy anyway walking around with two felines. The car getting jacked is probably the most likely threat. If at all. est park it and then find someplace to transform to make fire escapes and window creeping easier.

A grey shadow slunk down the street, flashing silver in the rare moments it broke from cover and caught the light before sliding back into darkness again. Ash was not pleased to be venturing out in the dark, even on this short jaunt from the tower to where Quenton and his companion were waiting for her. Youma creeped in the night and she was really not the fighting type, to feel confident running into one. Sticking to the main street seemed to help though... she had made it to the meeting point without incident.

Sliding behind the corner of a building, the silver cat assessed the waiting car with narrowed eyes. At least her eye sight was good at night... she was fairly sure, after a few moments, that it was indeed Quenton behind the wheel. The street lights caught in his hair and shone off his glasses when he moved.

Tail lifted in relief, Ash bounced out from safety and ran around the front of the car, darting to the driver's side door. Passenger side probably would have been safer, but she needed someone to let her in! Rearing up, Ash pounded on the metal side with tiny paws and let out a plaintive mew that very clearly said LET ME IN!

She wanted off the street and in the safety of the car.

"Great, so she's a silver tabby cat. Ain't never seen those around before..." Faust grumbled sarcastically. How was that gonna narrow anything down? "And how many science fiction things you think I watch, huh?" The cat shot his housemate a sharp glare before he looked forward again, with one ear tilted backward.

"Amphitrite, though... Yeah I remember seein' her at the Blackwatch s**t, but I never ran into her after that. I mean, it's not like I see a ton o' senshi when I'm runnin' my rounds, you know? Damn did we ******** up bigtime..." Faust remembered the New Year's horrorshow well enough, and the Negaverse really outdid themselves with it. How many were captured? And how many others were converted to the Negaverse's side? It took them far too long to find the location for the hostages. They needed to be cleverer than they were. Perhaps instead of a physical training group, Thraen should be disseminating some mental training.

The feline glanced toward the door with the batting, but saw nothing but the building in the distance. Idly Faust considered slipping the awkwardly-seated belts around his chest and paws, but that required more effort than he was willing to expend. They were on a mission to look for someone, and the one pawing at the door wasn't it.

"Yo, do you think she sticks to the street level or is she one o' those rooftop prowlers? If she said anything about it to Ash maybe, that could help us look for her." So many senshi stuck to heights, which left Faust at a loss while he struggled with stumpy legs to surmount whole buildings. He scaled the library exactly once and vowed never again - so he was hoping that Thraen would provide the lift for the two felines if it came to that.

Quenton waited while Ash brought up the information for them to see, reviewed it and took a moment to consider. "Yes, send the image to my phone. In fact, can you send the whole of her phone contact? I tried to get everyone that came to the meeting after we were done with the votes and before everyone was ferried down. If you can't, I probably do have it already there. I'm interested if you can forward information like that from the main database- in a way its similar to how specific contacts are linked in the Primer even though a beginner senshi might not have met Kallichore to have scanned her to contact her. "

A turn of the key, the stick engaged to drive, headlights, and they were off. At least he'd gotten most of the mess-ups between the turn signal arm and the windshield wipers out of his system on the ride from the rental place to Destiny Tower. Driving a car again, after so long, was just going be strange. Quenton focused on the road hard. "What happens if you ring the phone? Dialtone? Or static? I don't expect she can answer if she's still captive. If she can answer and is corrupted would be an odd and somewhat horrific outcome to that experiment. Has anyone tried contacting that corrupted.....Vespa. He purified. If he remembers anything of his time with the Negaverse, it would be worth knowing. Such as if their phones still function, or ...if their corrupted cats give them phones. "

The only cat that felt like chaos, the red and dirty one in the graveyard, hadn't seemed the most reliable source of information. Or if she was, it required a lot of sifting to make sense of. Could that cat be sourced for answers? Or some other? Reason would point that they have more than one. Even as we do. What they use them for, I couldn't guess. Our Guardians are needed to awaken us, but so little of that process seems to matter to Chaos. A starseed can be touched, willing of no.

Streets and streetlights passed in a regular rhythm punctuated with trashcans, bus stops and mailboxes. Street detritus grew, as did the potholes. Road paint broke and faded, veined with tar and tire skids. Bars on windows increased. Security glass glinted in livening neon from the few remaining corner stores. Finally, Quenton found their way around to a sidestreet that lacked any working lights and parked the vehicle in the fluttering, half detached awning of what used to be a produce distributorship.

"Have either of you ever spoken to a corrupted guardian?"

The moment the car started moving, Ash's claws shot out to dig into the armrest, though she did her best to not appear as though she were doing anything of the sort. Loose her balance? As if. She was a beautiful, graceful lady... she'd never let something so mundane as a shifting vehicle throw her off.

The silver cat looked askance at the black when he mentioned phones and buttons.

"What's wrong with the phones?" She said stiffly, her nose lifted. "The new, updated ones are wonderful, and have very few buttons. AND now we've come up with communicators for cats as well! Which, speaking of... have you gotten one yet? There were quite a few cats at that meeting... You weren't, I'm sure I'd have noticed someone so... large, but word may have spread."

Glancing back at Quenton, Ash made a face and pulled up her screen again, forwarding Amphitrite's information to Thraen's phone. "There were some corrupt cats at that affair in the park, months ago. When the bits of meteor hit ground and affected that poor man. One of the corrupts got a piece of it, the way ********* did, but I never actually spoke to any of them... I'm inclined to agree with Faust. I don't fight, if I can help it, but I doubt I would get on well with any of them. They're chaos... its disgusting." She gave a delicate shudder at that, her tail flicking behind her.

"As far as Amphitrite's phone... I've been calling it." Ash said, her voice dropping to something more serious. "She never answers. When the voicemail picks up I've left messages, but gotten nothing back. If she could access her phone... she wouldn't ignore me. She would have called me back. She's one of my girls."

The Burmilla glanced out the window with the others as they came to a stop, detaching her claws from the upholstery to stretch out the the kinks in her legs one by one.

Having already parked the car, Quenton was surprised to see the headlights glinting off glass. This is a rental. I'm certain those weren't there before. I've been being careful not to run over anything that wasn't poured macadam or concrete.

Certain but uncertain, just the same, and Quenton unbuckled, released Faust, and made it a point to get out quickly and check whether all the tires remained hale. A flat tire full of glass was an unfun prospect, considering all the rest of the night's plans. Expensive, too. The fear of the tire proved unfounded, but crossing to the glinting showed the nearest bottle was broken, useless, and contents lost to the pave. What are these? Illegal substances lost out of a pocket? A drop gone wrong? Most random glass with any sort of liquid in a neighborhood like this is urine or vodka. This scents of neither. "There's some sort of glass here, too small and decorative and not labeled with liquor names. Not convenience store plastic. What do you make of it?"

Twilight Zone strangeness and objects out-of-place that made his skin crawl. He turned his attention to the dim around. Thoughts reviewed the last of the conversation in the car in the interim. Cat communicators? Well, that would be useful. Faust should get one. Or...get? Build? He can't even read, how is he going to build a communicator? " Any auras near, offhand?"

I can't feel anything, still out of uniform, but they can. Dangerous to transform until there's certainty that its clear. But not on the street and near the car.

The silver cat was slow to exit the car behind the males, making sure to look around before she dropped from the vehicle to the pavement. Nothing seemed particularly out of place and there were no retreating figures to explain whatever it was the two were making a fuss of. When she was sure it was safe, Ash turned back to inspect the broken glass and liquid, but something glinting near the tire of the car caught her attention.

Sidling over, the guardian patted the thing out of the shadows and into the light where she could get a better look at it. It turned out to be a small vial filled with blue liquid and corked. It was an odd bottle, for something you'd put drugs in. She rather highly doubted that's what it was for. What it was for though... she hadn't the slightest.

"There's one over here!" She caroled as she rolled it back and forth between her paws with little cat-play pats. "This one is mine though, so you can look at it, but I want it back."

You know. In case someone got any ideas.

"I don't feel any signatures close by and as a matter of fact, I do have a few communication devices left over..." She said as she took a step back. At least this would be a way to get one more cat connected to the network. It would be impossible to make sure everyone was, but each new cat was another link in the chain. Spinning smartly, Ash pulled the communicator from her subspace pocket and it clattered softly as it hit the ground. She gave it a swat to send it bouncing over to Faust.

"They have covers you can put on them for customization, but I didn't know what you'd want. Just clip it to your ear, its voice activated. I don't... know that it has a ton of pictures? Not more than you'd expect, I guess. It does call senshi, which is the whole point of it being a communicator. It works the same as a senshi cell phone does, so everything Thraen's does, it can do. Just not the homeworld visits since... well. No one has figured out how to get to Mau." Ash yawned as stretched, her spine arching smoothly. "You're a guardian, I should think you're clever enough to figure it out, but I can show you how to work it if need be."

At least Faust was just as unsettled by the dance and vines the Cosmic Joke decided was how his magic would activate between his starseed and the mana of the Thraenean asteroid. It never stopped being a little unsettling how and where the vines whorled, tightened, then sparkled into fabric, plants, wood. He started towards the dark and sunk in door beyond the car and awning once Faust was down.

Ash's voice rang out even as Thraen stepped out again, putting his henshin pen away. The possessiveness of strange street bottles was more suspect than enviable under the best circumstances. In a cat, maybe it was a little more normal. Maybe. "By all means, 'mine' as 'mine' as you desire. I don't need to see it. Keep it."

He didn't waste more time about it, focusing on the auric energies around them for a moment. Satisfied that there was indeed nothing around noticeable, he looked to the Mauvians. "It's up to feet, keen ears and eyes. Let's go. "