Caia hadn't meant to leave Destiny City, not really. He'd been spending a little extra time while out on patrol and after an extremely unsuccessful night of even finding anyone to meet up with, he'd wound up taking a break in the park.

He'd planted himself on the edge of a fountain and only meant to take a few moments to rest his feat and enjoy the night sky while it was still crisp and clear. There was a little bit of a chill in the air but ultimately it wasn't anything unbearable.

His phone buzzed and he'd pulled it out, but so far as he could tell it didn't seem like he had any new notifications or anything. He'd probably just pocket dialed or...something.

But that's how it all started.

He was suddenly exploring the applications, trying to poke around and understand a phone that he realized he'd been carrying around for a few months and yet had really done next to nothing with. He didn't have it when he wasn't powered up, but every time he was powered up he was trying to be productive--find Senshi and learn to be stronger, stop the Negaverse from hurting people, take care of youma--the usual important Senshi things.

If Caia had paid more attention or sought further guidance, he might have known exactly what he was in for when he pressed the button to access his homeworld.

Instead, the warping out of Destiny City caught him by surprise; he was dizzy and forgot to breathe for a moment. Something that proved to be a bad idea because, once his feet stabilized and he landed on the frozen surface of some faraway world, it was too cold to breathe.

It felt like his breath had suddenly gotten lodged in his throat and he reached a hand up to clutch at his throat as he choked on the frosty wind.

Caia slumped to his knees, eyes wide and in shock from the chill.

The cold bled through his layers in a batter of seconds and the biting torrent of wind and snow was enough to numb his ears, nose and fingers in a matter of seconds. He could have sworn frost was covering his eyelashes and blinking became difficult.

He couldn't see much--a wall of white pouring down from the sky. He had sunk into roughly two feet of snow, so clearly it had been snowing here for a while. His phone had fallen next to him and he scrambled to find it before his eyes frosted over.

It took a few more seconds to realize that his hand had even landed on the phone; it was so cold that he was having a hard time processing the things around him.

With the weather this bad, he could barely make out any details. It looked like there might be figures in the distance--tall shadows standing firm against the beating of the snow flurry--but it could have easily been his imagination.

Caia tried to stand up straight but froze with two realizations: the first, when he moved, the solid snow beneath him crunched and shifted and he slipped an inch deeper. The second, the taller he stood, the harder the wind beat against him.

He felt like he didn't stand a chance--a cold, crumbling helplessness. It hit him, hard, in the chest--in a way that wasn't just the cold freezing him from the inside out. This was an older pain, a weight that felt like he'd been carrying his whole life that suddenly collapsed atop of him.

He saw something--his uniform, or, at least, something like it. Walking atop the snow, with a cloak draped close. It was lined with fur--jeez, he could really use a coat right now--and seemed like it offered some amount of warmth.

It also seemed like the person he was watching had more resilience than Caia did.

But, he noticed something else.

He saw the way the man stumbled in the hazy white breeze. It took a few seconds to see the bright red blood speckling the ground behind him.

The man before him wavered; he tried to push forward and Caia was rooting for him--but he stumbled and fell to one knee.

Caia screamed a hollow, frozen scream; he didn't know where it came from or why his emotions had overwhelmed him so strongly but he knew something was wrong.

He had lived in a bad neighborhood for long enough to know that when you got a feeling like the one he had, you ran. You got the hell out of there and you didn't look back.

Caia could barely see; screaming had both burned his throat and frozen in. With trembling hands he tried to pull up the application but every part of him felt frozen. When his screen didn't seem to be responding, he desperately pushed his fingers against it, desperately jamming the buttons he could.

He was losing the ability to see and his head was pounding--but then, it happened.

The phone registered his command, and in another dizzying warp he found himself landing back in Destiny City. He wasn't sitting on the fountain anymore; he had fallen to his knees.

Slowly, he would thaw; even the winter air in Destiny City was warmer than the snowstorm he'd just left.

He tried to simultaneously replay everything that had happened and forget it; he wanted to think he'd imagine it but the chill ins his bones and the snow on his uniform told him otherwise. He could deceive himself in many ways, but not this way. He had gone to his homeworld and he had seen something.

Something he couldn't explain.

He told himself he'd be better soon, he could go home. Right now, he couldn't move, sans to tremble uncontrollably. He was so frozen that his body didn't seem capable of functioning; everything had locked up. He had even suspected that the reason he couldn't see right now was because the cold had been so intense that his eyes had frosted over.

Only, as the moments passed and he slowly began to warm up, he realized something.

There was no ice, no snow, affecting his vision.

It was just tears.