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It was 10:00 PM on a cool but pleasant summer night. Standing in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of the city, a Mauvian named Itsuki had called his two closest senshi together for a Very Important Meeting. The fluffy cat was sitting on the root of a giant elm tree, one of the tallest in the woods, visible from the skyline buildings. Swishing his tail back and forth, chest puffed with pride, Itsuki practically vibrated with excitement. This was something amazing! They were on the precipice of something so special that Itsuki seemed to, uncharacteristically, lack the words to properly describe it.

Gesturing while standing on his hind legs, his senshi seemed more confused than anything else.

"So... you want to find an... asteroid."

"Hai! It's a very important asteroid! It's crashed somewhere out here and the pieces of it are very special!"

Themisto had understood up to that point. He vaguely remembered a brief blip on the news about it, but it was swiftly covered up from his recollection. It could simply have been his age and general disinterest in space at the time that accounted for the missing information. Or, as he'd come to learn, it was Negaverse meddling with the media. Both were plausible possibilities. "And... you need a piece of this asteroid. For... a henshin pen."

The cat nodded fervently. "Hai!"

This was the part where Themisto was, ironically, lost. Crossing his arms, the senshi shot a disbelieving look towards Lacrimosa. Wasn't she cold out here? Maybe he should offer her some of his... well, could he lend her part of his fuku? He'd never tried to really remove it before. "...but you just fart out henshin pens willy-nilly whenever you want. Why do you need to find a crystal to make a pen? Couldn't you just... flip around and make another one?"

Itsuki's ears flattened, incredulous. "Themi-chan, farting out a henshin pen would be very painful! They're thick and--"

"OKAY OKAY, I get it!"

That was a mental image that none of them asked for.

Itsuki, for what it was worth, seemed completely unfazed. The cat continued to gesture with his arms, attempting to explain the situation to prevent another Thumbsmas Incident where Themisto nearly walked away with a stroke from shock. Themisto was cringing and pinching the bridge of his nose. "This isn't a henshin pen for a senshi, Themi-chan! It's for me!"

"Hai!"

Lacrimosa had nailed it right on the head. Themisto, for his part, was incredulous.

"Um, no." said he, crossing his arms and stepping towards the Mau who seemed hellbent on finding this crystal. "If you become a senshi, you're an even bigger target than usual! Doesn't your human form give off, like, this crazy-big aura and alert everybody in the vicinity? What if you power up with his henshin pen and the whole dang city knows about you?!" It would be a death sentence for sure!

Itsuki, for his part, was surprisingly calm throughout. Lifting his paw in protest, he already had that covered. Ash had explained everything she could about the process, and if Ash could do it, Itsuki could learn to do it too. "Ie, Ash-denka knows all about this! She's a senshi too! She taught me everything about it! She said we feel just like any other Super Senshi! It would be hard to tell us apart on your mental radar. I'd be just like Lacri-san! Except... fluffier!"

With an adorable trill, Itsuki puffed himself up to prove a point.

Themisto rolled his eyes. "So you need the crystal... why? Why not just poof out a henshin pen like you do with us?" It didn't make any sense to him to go through all this extra work for a henshin pen when cats made them out of thin air whenever they wanted to.

Itsuki had learned about that as well. "Ash-denka says it's to power the transformation. Our starseeds don't react to the pens like your do, Themi-chan~! Instead of talking, let's do some walking! We have crystals to find~!" With a flick of his paw, Itsuki produced a small safari hat from his subspace pocket to wear. It was the size of a small doll that a parent may give to a toddler to dress up and play with.

"Indiana Itsuki is on the job!"

As Itsuki's paws found damp earth, tree roots and overgrown paths, the Mau's voice carried over the light wind and rustling leaves. "Hai! That's what Ash-denka said, and that explains how the Negaverse can turn is into one of them, too." His ears drooped, thinking of the one Chaos-tinged cat he'd ever met by the name of Theodore. Mauvians simply weren't supposed to be tainted by Chaos. It wasn't nature. "Ash-denka says the special crystal powers the transformation, and we can only hold it for an hour a day, but that's better than nothing!"

Themisto was happy to hold Lacrimosa's hand, and was inwardly thankful that tiny furry legs couldn't take Itsuki very far very quickly. It meant he and the lovely blonde could have a slow stroll through the woods. Even though it was late at night, the weather was warming up, and their layered fukus allowed for some warmth and comfort.

"Thanks, Itsuki. The song's stuck in my head now." he grumbled.

"Honto kawaii is part of my job, Lacri-san~" The cat hopped over a fallen tree branch and adjusted his hat upon landing. "The other part is making sure my favorite senshi are safe! And the Pages I told you about, too. Someone has to take care of them! And Ash-denka said that the more Mauvian Senshi there are, the more we can help our senshi! The only problem is..."

Itsuki stopped at a branching path and sat down for a moment, contemplating.

"Ash-denka said the crystals are hard to find, but I don't know what they look like! She said you can feel them, though, so... maybe we should just wander around to see if we find it?"

Themisto remembered an odd newscast many years ago about something dropping from the sky. "'Couple years ago, there was a report about a meteor or somethin' falling on the outskirts of the woods, but I dunno where that was. I didn't really pay much attention to it. If you can feel it, then... I'm up for strollin' around. How about you, Lacrimosa?" Really, the eternal wasn't paying as much attention to the task at hand as he was to the lovely sakura senshi. As far as Themisto was concerned, they were simply walking their cat.

Their... intelligent, talking cat.

"Haaaiiii~!" squeaked the cat, turning a corner around an old oak tree whose boughs had probably seen Destiny City rise from its infancy. "All of my senshi are very important, but some of you are troublemakers, so I have to keep an eye on you~" Itsuki did so love to tease his senshi, just a little. It was all to keep him on his toes, right? It sometimes made Lacrimosa laugh, which was always a bonus.

Themisto rolled his eyes and chose to focus on the blonde instead of the cat, keeping her close and warm in the cool evening breezes. The senshi had some teasing of his own to do. "Yep, total troublemaker here. You know, Lacrimosa, it was me who told him to stop playing his waifu game and go to bed like a responsible person, but noooo, gotta put up a fuzzy fight about it. I said to him, Itsuki, your waifu will wait for you--"

The Mauvian puffed up in righteous indignation, stomping his tiny paws back towards the senshi spilling his embarrassing secrets. "KOTORI MINAMI IS NOT MY WAIFU! She has a strong heart and is very kind and--"

"--is totally his waifu." Themisto finished, a fiendish grin on his face.

"It's not like that!!"

Themisto continued, playfully ignoring the cat whose voice became higher pitched the more embarrassed he became. "It's some kinda music game, there's a ton'a girls with the same face over and over again, and they sing about stuff and Itsuki's all over this one girl--"

"LALALALALACAN'THEARYOUBYEEEE~" shouted the Mau, who turned around and stomped away to search for the crystal he was looking for (and to bury his head in some dirt! Itsuki didn't have waifus! This was terrible!!) The pair continued to poke fun at one another for the next half hour or so, meandering in a lazy, easygoing path through the woods with the moon high in the sky.

~~~

It wasn't until later, perhaps an hour or so that anything of note would be discovered (and Themisto wasn't keeping track of the time - he was much more concerned with spending time with a particular blonde than keeping tabs on the hour). The trio had wandered to a small clearing in the woods, far away from the bustling city nightlife and blinking streetlights. Here, the earth was loamy, the sky clearer, the air cleaner. Here was far enough away that it almost felt as though the city didn't exist, and all there was were rolling countryside hills and swaying trees in night air.

"Oooiii~ Lacri-san! Themi-chan! I think... I think we're close! Can you feel that??" squeaked the Mau, head popping up from beneath tall grasses, ears swiveling every which way.

Themisto, walking at his leisurely pace, shrugged the shoulder that wasn't attached to the arm holding Lacrimosa's. "I... don't really feel anything? Maybe only you guys can pick it up, fuzzbutt."

"You can't feel it? Hmm... maybe us Guardians are more sensitive to it..." he mumbled, fluffy tail peeking up from tall grasses as the cat wandered about the small clearing the trio had found themselves in. "It's definitely around here somewhere. Hmm..."

Themisto shrugged. Instead of worrying about whether or not he could magically sense whatever crystal or stone Itsuki was looking for, he concentrated on enjoying the presence of his lovely girlfriend. How did he managed to snag her, and furthermore, how did he manage to keep her around? Blessings, probably - not that Themisto was particularly religious, but if magic was real...

"UWAH! I found one!!" came a cry not far from their position. Lilac ears and arms poked up from the grasses, flailing every which way. "I found a crystal, Lacri-san! Themi-chan! This is definitely it!" Tiny paws grasped a near-transparent crystal, almost like glass, and tried to hold it above his head for inspection. "Ash-denka mentioned she had to shave hers down to be usable. I think I can do that with this one!"

The crystal itself was as long as one of Itsuki's arms and looked like frosted glass. Long and skinny, the crystal was probably much too big to be workable in its current state. Being so nearly transparent, such a thing would be easily missed by anyone not sensitive to its magical properties. In a flash, the crystal was spirited away to the subspace pocket each Mau possessed for safekeeping.

"Yatta, right?" Themisto offered, proving he sometimes paid attention to the cat's Japanese ramblings.

The Mau was practically bouncing up and down, parts of his body visible over the tall grasses with each jump. "Yatta! Yatta~!"

Chuckling, Themisto turned to Lacrimosa. "Sounds like it's time for a celebration, eh? Maybe... dinner? My treat."