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Despite the clock chiming nine at night, Zach and Fai set foot into a dim sum restaurant still open at this hour. The boy felt ravenous but was willing to wait, especially since he had so many questions for Fai. Chibis? Children in the war? How was that even possible? What cat in their right mind would do such a thing? The thought was unconscionable. Who could do that to a kid?

A tired-looking waitress sat them in a booth, commenting that the restaurant would only be open for another hour. That seemed like plenty of time to have a good meal and discussion with Fai.

"Man, I'll take whatever you give me. Order us somethin' tasty, okay? I wanna know more about this kid problem..." The boy used air quotes and hushed tones until the waitress was far enough out of earshot. "...I wanna help keep 'em safe if I can, you know. Somebody's gotta keep an eye on these kids..."

Zach clapped his hands together, rubbing them in anticipation of stuffing his face full of delicious food. He didn't know what at least half of all the foodstuffs in front of him were, but he wasn't about to turn it down. A little of this, a little of that... he filled the decent-sized plate before him and started digging in.

"So... how you been, Fai?" he asked around a mouthful of food. Coughing, Zach chewed and swallowed quickly, realizing how rude it was. "...I've been trying to train more, and go to the gym and stuff... started swimming too. Tryin' to get some more muscle, you know?"

Whether or not he was successful... remained to be seen. It was a process.

The dumplings, dumplings galore, those were a definite favorite. Buns filled with barbecued pork were delicious. "I think you said the power went out after Chicken McNugget started raisin' hell... I wonder how much property damage that all racked up? It's crazy... they don't put a lot'a this stuff on the news. Seems like they just don't wanna, or nobody wants to hear about it."

Visiting the home world...

Zach loudly swallowed the food he had and paled. He hadn't been to his own homeworld and he was a super senshi now. It was embarrassing. "What is Cetus like, Fai? Are there lotsa... ya know... kappas runnin' around with those bowls on their heads?" Zach tried to keep his voice low, especially when the waiters came by with the food carts. He was incredibly interested in Cetus' homeworld and leaned forward in his seat for further details.

The media being under Negaverse control wasn't something Zach had ever really thought of. In truth, it was a brilliant idea. No wonder the regular citizens of Destiny City seemed to dislike the senshi - if the Negaverse controlled the information that disseminated through the city, they could easily influence public opinion. How crazy was that? It would explain so much...

The boy sighed and leaned back in his seat. One thing at a time. Can't fight the media all by ourselves. Gotta focus on checkin' out the homeworld first, maybe. If it's not full of lethal dinosaurs with laser beams in their eyes or something. Ugh.

Zach sipped the green tea that was brought out to them. "Nothing living? Besides the plants, anyway, that's kinda creepy. Don't you think? What happened to all the people and the animals and stuff?" Denebola had mentioned her planet, lovingly nicknamed Pern, was long extinct as well. The super senshi told tales of dragonfly mounts and cities hidden deep within a thick jungle. It orbited a star that kept the place lit and warm. Crazy, when one stopped to think about it. Nobody knew about these exotic, amazing, alien places. The science textbooks in school spoke nothing of ancient civilizations existing anywhere except Earth itself.

The invitation to visit Cetus caused Zach to chuckle. "Well... if nothin's living up there, that means no Kappa, which means no soul-sucking weirdos with bowls of water on their heads. Sounds good to me! I still... haven't gone. Haven't decided when I wanna do that... a dead place seems real creepy to me."

Zach did a lot of things, but creepy was not one of them.

The boy nodded confidently to Fai's assessment of the media and the lack of governmental interference. "You'd think the internet woulda caught onto this stuff by now, you know? Everybody's got a cellphone with a net connection, you'd think the property damage would be all over YouTube 'n s**t. s**t's crazy, Fai. s**t's crazy."

"It's like one of those abandoned cities, you know? Chernobyl? Where everything's super quiet and there's nobody around... way creepy. Are all the worlds like that?" Zach looked down at the tea he'd been holding, thoughts drifting to a mental drawing board to attempt to suss out the reason for the lack of human life on other planets. Maybe some interstellar nuclear explosion took everybody out. It was strange - Zach had never once, before becoming a senshi, thought that life could exist on other planets within the solar system. Other galaxies? Maybe. Statistically it's very likely.

But knowing now that cities with whole civilizations existed and were wiped out by some unknown reason...

Staring into the tea, Zach sighed. "Denebola used somethin' on her cellphone to go to the star. Is that how you do it? You just hit a button and boom, there you go? Nobody really sat and explained it, and I'm not really keen on runnin' around a dead planet with creepy critters possibly lurkin'... probably need to bring a flashlight and a friggin' shotgun in case anything gets an idea that I look nice 'n tasty. No thank you."

As far as Zach could tell, there was nothing a pair of friends at a dim sum restaurant could do to overthrow the media choke hold the Negaverse seemed to have on information circulating in and outside Destiny City. It was too great of a problem for them at the moment. Perhaps, in the future, an idea might take hold that could grow into a movement to benefit the citizens caught in the middle of the war.

"...man, I dunno. I still haven't gone to my moon... it's scary how much info isn't getting out, but just knowin' some of it's out there... that means the Negas aren't getting all of it. That's good, right?"

Ancient China or Japan...

Zach had seen pictures of the Great Wall and various Buddhist temples from hundreds of years ago in high school history books, but admittedly, he knew very little about either place. It sounded really neat, and probably safe, if there weren't any soul-stealing, bowl-wearing bastards running around in the woods. "...you think you could take me sometime? I'll bring the shotty, heh."

Listening to Fai's description of the whole process, Zach nodded. He knew there had to be more to the process than just pressing a button. Fai filled in the missing information - a connection to the world. But how do you form a connection with a place you've never been? Maybe he needed to talk to his sister, and Ember too. Cats knew more than they let one. Little fuzzy masterminds, they were. Maybe his sister knew about the events that led up to the home worlds of senshi being wiped out. There had to be a reason. Mass extinction didn't just randomly happen.

Leaning back in his seat, the boy latched his hands behind his head to stretch. "...yeah, you're right. Not much just the two of us can do, but at least some info's getting out. I'll ask around, but... Training and homeworld stuff... that seems more pertinent right now." Yes, Zach knew a word as sophisticated as pertinent - he just didn't use a larger vocabulary all that often. "But before we get all serious, I want some'a what's in that bowl..."

With a laugh, Zach leaned over the table, supporting his weight with his good arm, chopsticks clicking in anticipation.

Despite Fai’s reassurances, Zach still considered bringing a pocket knife. Just in case. The problem was, in his senshi outfit, he was desperately lacking pockets. Did the senshi of the past not need to carry anything?? It was madness!

“I bet my sister probably knows why everybody’s gone off the homeworlds. She’s a little weird but she said she’s been in this whole war thing for like, six years or somethin’. It’s crazy how long your family members can hide this stuff from you, but anyway…” Plucking a dumpling off of Fai’s plate, Zach couldn’t help but grin. Then he regretted everything immediately when the dumpling turned out to be spicier than he anticipated.

Coughing fit aside, Zach figured this was his karmic retribution for stealing. “...maybe you guys can meet sometime, and I’ll meet Swiss Family Magicalsons. I mean, the more friends we got, the better off we are.” Zach, as Themisto, had seen a few knights here and there, and definitely felt them on the edges of his mental radar, but he’d never actually gotten to know one. Most of the people he knew were senshi.

Stuffing the last bits of food into his mouth, the young man felt himself incredibly grateful for both the food and the company on such a lonely night. “‘Ey, Fai. Thanks. You’re a great dude. I’m glad to have met you.”