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Cybele heard a final crackle of magic, felt the two dark auras finally, finally vanish into the night air. She managed a deep sigh, which got some more air moving through her lungs and released the first bit of the tension that she'd been holding in her shoulders for minutes now.

She drooped.

She drooped with a bright, living starseed in her hand, it was true, but everything that had just happened weighed her down. Moving would bring her closer to the edge, which was just not something to she could handle right now. With the adrenaline fading and the danger past, her emotions were flooding back. The fear was still there, with the face of the monster as he'd fallen into the void below burned into her mind and joined with the other times. There was something else, though, as she looked at the starseed in her hand.

It was beautiful. She'd never seen a living one before. She could see the gentle flicker of the soul inside of it, ever so slowly fading even as she watched. Moments ago, it had been in the Captain's teeth, and she'd charged him anyway. There had been a little hope that it would all work out like this, but it had been a vague one, practically a lie that she'd been telling herself. She'd known that he would swallow given the chance, and she'd provoked him, attacked with intent and with her magic up.

She would have given up this life so that she could have taken another one.

Hearing footsteps behind her brought her about halfway back to reality. She turned and looked up at him with too-wide eyes and not even the slightest put on smile. "She's down in the alleyway. There," she said. The words came slowly, but Cybele put the effort into keeping her voice steady. She nodded towards the direction she'd come from. "Can you take it? I- I can't get down." Her voice cracked anyway on that one. Just thinking about it sent the fear back up her spine..

She held the starseed up to him.

Living?

Cybele looked up as he took the starseed, lips pressed into a tight line as she gave a short and bitter laugh.

"Yes," she said, thinking of Cora, thinking of all of the other blurs that were souls ripped from chests in the bloody fights. "I just haven't ever seen one that's survived."

Over six years of trying and she hadn't saved a single soul. She didn't know if this one counted. She didn't feel like it should, even though it was still glowing in the other senshi's palm and there wasn't any Chaos around anymore to kill it. She did feel vaguely glad that the woman would live, especially when she saw the way he was smiling. Maybe it would feel real when she was back on solid ground.

"Can you help me down?" she asked. Even talking in clipped sentences, voice shook and her cheeks went red even at the simple question. It was useless that she was stuck like this, and she'd been stupid to come up here in the first place. Without help, she would have been the one falling, and it would have been to her death.

Cybele looked up at the light filtering through his fingers, now covered by the glow coming from his fingers themselves. Transcendence, she finally registered. It didn't seem so strange to her this time. It almost seemed like more Eternals that she'd met recently had the markings than not.

He was talking about ho he was grateful to save any starseeds, and he had a point, even if Cybele wasn't quite in the place to accept it at the moment. Still, she didn't want to act too bitter towards him, and using the better part of her willpower, she finally managed a smile as she kept her eyes on the living soul. "I'm glad it worked out this time."

It wasn't that simple, but it wasn't a lie, either.

Both her smile and eye contact broke when he came close, and her cheeks went even hotter when he had to laugh just to break the awkwardness. She knew she was acting like a child. Worse than one, really. Anser or even some of the senshi younger than that would have no problem flinging themselves from roof to roof, but Cybele didn't think she could even stand right now without the panic rising.

"Yes," she answered. She wasn't as interested in physical contact with strangers as her profession would suggest, but she wasn't opposed to it, either, and right now it seemed like the best option. "What's your name?" she asked, desperate to make this seem a little more normal.

Cybele found herself hoisted even further up, which did little to help her relax. However, the contact drew her attention to another thing that had slipped her notice during the battle. His arms were strong. His chest was solid. She was currently being cradled by a handsome man.

It wasn't even that she was interested. She really wasn't. She was much more interested in seeing where things went with a certain Uranus page, but it still wasn't the type of thing she could just ignore, especially in the midst of one of her lower moments. She was already about at full blush, which with her extra pale skin had her looking a bit like a tomato, but she was getting to the point where her embarrassment was almost as strong as her fear.

Not wanting to look at either his face or the drop below left squeezing her eyes tightly shut, although the jump itself still had her stomach dropping out. She flinched, hard, and then opened her eyes only to see they were still on a rooftop.

It sent her head spinning again and she looked up to try and keep the conversation going. "It's nice to meet you, Encke." The scripted phrase had a surprisingly formal, pleasant tone to it considering the circumstances. "I'm Cybele, Senshi of the Hunt."

Was he grinning at her?

He was grinning at her, and she couldn't look down, and closing her eyes again seemed rude. The grin wasn't a bad thing, but it did add yet another layer to the emotional roller coaster that she was on. At least it seemed that the jumping was over. Half the tension left her body the moment they hit the stairs. Stairs were normal. She could handle stairs.

She relaxed a bit into his hold, and still looking up she managed a decently professional smile, even if the effect was ruined somewhat by her flushed cheeks and still glassy eyes. She even finally manged to look down at his boots without spiking her anxiety when he started comparing their outfits.

"I can see it," she said, grateful for the small talk. This wasn't the best angle to take in the full picture, but she got glimpses of stripes and bright colors. "You look a bit like a neon sign. Those have plasma in them, I believe. The Hunt is more abstract. I have the antlers, now. At first it was just the flowers. They're apparently from my asteroid."

At the bottom of the stairs, Cybele stepped down from his arms. She let out a deep breath at the relief of it, her shoulders drooping for a moment. She was still a little shaky but she could walk and breathe again. "I'm sorry," she said, the color coming back to her cheeks for a moment. "Rooftops have never gone well for me, but thank you."

However, she couldn't dwell on her embarrassment too long. There was still business to attend to. "She's this way," she said, taking a few steps towards the alleyway. It wouldn't take much guidance to find the woman. She was laid out right in the alley floor, still in her business clothes.

The questions were unexpected, and sent Cybele, who was still barely recovering from everything, blinking at Encke with a bit of a blank expression. It wasn't bad to have something else to focus on besides what had just happened and the life they still had to save, but it wasn't something Cybele had ever put much thought into.

"I'm sorry," she said again as she turned away, checking the first alleyway and then the second. She gotten turned around from all the jumping and heights, but it still couldn't be far. "I'm really not sure. I've only been up there once, and I saw them growing then." Lately, she'd been getting a little more interested in her asteroid, but a night spent exploring was a night she couldn't spend fighting youma. Even though she'd come a long way with her connection to her world, going up rarely seemed worth the time.

The woman turned out to be in the third alleyway. "She's here," said Cybele, looking back over her shoulder. Then, she broke into a jog to close the distance between them and knelt down next to her. Her hairdo was coming apart, and one of her shoes had fallen off, but her chest was still rising and falling weakly. "She's still alive," she said. "Barely, though."

She turned and waited for Encke and the starseed.

"Perhaps," repeated Cybele as she knelt there in the alley dirt. Her voice was more dreamy than dismissive, and there was half a sad smile on her lips, although Encke wouldn't see it. She could feel this man's excitement, and something deep inside her felt it too. Part of her wanted to go see if the flowers on her asteroid were blooming. "Perhaps one day things like this will stop happening for long enough for long enough that I can go and see."

She turned around as he got closer and fished the starseed out again. It hadn't looked terrible before, but it seemed to be glowing even brighter now, which was a good sign. Up on the rooftop, she hadn't considered trickery, but now it seemed like a very Negaverse thing to do to fake out pursuers with the wrong starseed, or even to kill more than one person.

It was good she'd been so close on his heels.

Enke was giving her careful instructions, but Cybele was quick to take the starseed from his hand and place it over the woman's chest. There were times for reverence, but right now action seemed more important. The reverance came when she watched the starseed ripple through the woman's clothes and into her chest, and it only lasted for a moment.

Cybele glanced to Encke again when the woman's breathing began to even out, and then her fingers curled. "Should we stay?" she asked, keeping her voice low and steady in case she could hear. "I never know what to say."

There wasn't really time to make a decision or even to sneak off if she'd wanted to leave the woman to wake up alone. She tensed and then shifted over onto her side, and her eyes fluttered open a moment later.

Cybele tensed, too, watching her. She'd never been good at the public relations side of things, which might have seemed strange if anyone had known her other life. She was an actress, yes, but that only made her a storyteller. She wasn't a politician or a mediator. Still, she took a deep breath and tried to tap into a part of herself that didn't get much use when she was powered up. "Are you all right?" she asked, keeping her voice low and gentle.

The woman looked far from fully coherent. Her eyelids fluttered again, but then she seemed to take notice of the two of them. She leaned up on an elbow, squinting. "What? Who are you?"

"My name is Cybele," said Cybele. "We saw you collapsed from the road. I was worried." The lie came out of her mouth smoothly, with none of the shakiness that had been there earlier. With enough focus, she could even keep her hands still, although she could do nothing about the lingering smell of smoke or anxiety sweat.