Welcome to Gaia! ::

He hadn’t seen Gale in a while, and part of him blamed himself for that. He’d texted her just about every single day with sweet nothings and questions of when they might meet again. She was so upset last time they’d been together face-to-face, Zach was positive his terrible decisions the day before were the root cause. As much as he’d wanted desperately to help Denebola, he didn’t think to call Kari. After the fact, part of him was glad he didn’t - she would have been terribly injured.

Still, her lack of usual communication fed into Zach’s guilt, and while his sister asked about Gale, Zach dismissed her. This was his problem to sort out.

When he’d received her text to meet in the park, Zach sincerely hoped this wasn’t a break-up sort of meeting. Internally, he dreaded seeing her again for fear that she was going to end things on account of his blatant recklessness. The boy couldn’t blame Gale - she was a little older, probably a little wiser, and deserved someone who wouldn’t throw himself into danger and come out beaten and bloodied on the other end. Didn’t women want stability?

Sigh.

To try and ease the blow, nervous and afraid as he was, Zach stopped by a small grocery store for a bouquet of flowers to bring to Gale in hopes that perhaps she’d reconsider. When approaching the park, Zach was only a few minutes late, if only because he was moving at such a slow pace. Thoughts were racing in his head ever since her text arrived.

This is it, huh? I really mucked this one up, didn’t I? Dammit…

Sheepishly he approached the picnic table where Gale’s distinctive form sat, head in her arms. Yep, done mucked this one up. Way to go, Zach. Way to go.

“...uh… hey…” came a quiet, almost sigh of a statement. Zach’s demeanor was guilty, nervous. He set the flowers in their glass mason jar next to her. “I uh… brought you these. Hope they’re okay. Didn’t know what kinda flowers you liked the best so… I got the ones that smelled good.”

The boy seemed thrilled that she liked the flowers and admitted she had missed him. Before thinking, he simply blurted out, “You mean… you’re not breaking up with me?”

His demeanor visibly relaxed after realizing he wasn’t about to go home brokenhearted just to beat himself up further internally. Gale looked extremely distressed and Zach immediately sat next to her and wrapped his arms around her form. “Hey, babe, what’s going on? You’re in trouble? What happened?!”

Was she hurt? Zach couldn’t find any visible injuries but he certainly didn’t want go about trying to find any. That wasn’t very gentlemanlike. “Did somebody hurt you or somethin’? Gimme their name and I’ll take care of it, okay? I promise!”

The desire to protect her was almost overwhelming, similar to his immediate gut reaction to run in the direction of Denebola’s distress signal… which may have caused all this trouble to begin with.

Zach leaned back to wave his hands before him - a gesture of no! “Nah, nah i-it’s not that at all, babe. I just…” Well now he’d gone and made her even more upset. Great. “...ya know, there was this distance an’ I thought maybe… ya know, I did something wrong? I sure as hell don’t want you goin’ anywhere, Gale.”

The boy leaned in close, his lips in her hair. “I mean it.”

The mention of Stella made Zachary’s body stiffen. She was that Negaverse agent who, no doubt, charmed and tricked Gale into doing things she wouldn’t normally do. The Negaverse was full of people like that, or so Zach thought. Why else would they do half the inhumane things they were doing? He’d heard stories about everything from robberies to kidnapping to straight-up murder.

He held her close as she clung to him, mind racing to unravel the solution to fixing this. Only the Negaverse would stoop so low as to threaten civilians’ lives just to meet a quota.

“Starseeds… those are people’s souls, aren’t they?” He breathed softly into Gale’s brown hair, tracing faint abstract patterns into her back to soothe her. “...buncha bastards. Scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel… why can’t they offer their own energy for whatever they gotta do?! Why they gotta threaten my girl with all this s**t…”

He clenched a fist behind Gale, swallowing the fury he felt building in his gut. Cetus had mentioning killing as a last resort, but Zach wasn’t sure he could sleep at night knowing he’d snuffed out a life with his own hands. Cetus might have been comfortable with it, but Zach wasn’t. “He’s usin’ you because he knows you care about other people. I mean, you’re not gonna be a nurse for no reason. Look, Gale.”

Zach leaned back just slightly, enough to give the brunette a good view his face and hands when he’d pulled them back. With a flick of his write, Zach produced his newly-upgraded henshin stick - one that match Kari’s in its star shape. “I ain’t gonna let this a*****e get away with this. I’ll fix this, Gale. I’m not gonna let this Epidote assface threaten people’s lives jus’ cuz he’s got some quota to fill. That’s his problem. If he wants to threaten my girl, he’s gotta answer to me.”

“Well, I still need your help, Gale. You’ve been in this longer than me, and you still got better shoes. I mean, mine got a lil’ bit of an upgrade but I’d still prefer boots or somethin’. They make your butt look good. I’m sure as hell think so.”

Zach dropped her a wink.

A quick flick of his wrist and the henshins stick had disappeared to it subspace pocket again. Holding her close, Zach toyed with the ends of Gale’s hair. “‘Ey, babe, don’t you worry, okay? This Epidote punk ain’t got nothin’ on Chicken McNugget back there.” He jerked a thumb behind his shoulder, indicating the power plant where he’d sustained those injuries that hospitalized him. Never before had he seen a youma of that size and power.”

Gale admitting to wanting to go to the meetings, if only to spare the threatened lives of innocent people, made Zach’s grip around her tighten just slightly. “No, Gale, I don’t want you goin’ to meet this douche on your own. Who knows when he’ll start demanding more. They’ll keep takin’ and keep threatenin’ until somebody comes over there and teaches ‘em a lesson. Consequences. I ain’t lookin’ for trouble - I know who he is. I just gotta know where he’s at.”

Zach clenched a fist in determination. He was not about to let Epidote scare Kari into compliance, especially since he didn’t trust a Negaverse agent as far as he could throw them. First it would be energy, but then what came after that?

He couldn’t help the slight blush and sheepish smile when Gale asked him to stay over. “I’m not gonna turn that down, babe, but… isn’t this the part where I buy you dinner first?”