Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lace had yet to meet many senshi generals but she had heard of Alkaid. Who hadn't? It was a corrupts dream to be recognized by the negaverse and even more so by guardian cats for them.

She had heard of the ascendents and their uniqueness but that was all. There was only two right now....She wanted to know more! Plus she had senshi she had to take care of.

She had invited her brother along, taking his human hand in her own as they peered down the staircase of the hallway of shadows.

"S...She lives in the....the Rift I think!" Lace squeezed, "With...with all the youma....that like to eat....eat us..."

Mostly their cat forms, but maybe they would be safe as their human...forms?

It had been a long time since Alkaid had kept track of time in any meaningful way. The human realm meant little to her when she devoted her existence to wandering the lost, broken remains of the one that had been swallowed up by the rift. The tower had been her first victory but it had not been enough to quell the need for purpose and devotion that existed within her figurative heart.

She had continued her hunt, endless and pointless and random, and at last she had found her loyalty embodied.

Tanzanite.

It was almost a joke that caring for the half woman sent her out of the rift on tasks almost daily (or at least what she thought was daily). Tanzanite stayed behind and Alkaid ventured up to find what she thought the woman might need, even if neither of them could truly decide what she was enough to determine all of her basic requirements. It was a learning process. What she did know was that her charge needed more than a thinned, scrap of a dress if she was ever going to attempt to blend back into even their dark, chaotic society and whatever power Metallia had lent her was not keen on giving her a uniform just yet.

So, for the first time in months, maybe years, Alkaid was looking for her only recruit - her Stella. She had things that the Ascendant had left with her, things that she needed, and honestly she just needed some advice. How did one shop - what sort of dress did a woman with only one arm wear? These were the questions on the tip of her tongue as she mounted the spiral staircase, though they died as she became too aware of a strange pair of energy signatures that should not have been where they were.

"You," she didn't know their names, but concern rose in her eyes at the sight of what they were none-the-less. "You should not be here. This is decidedly unsafe for mauvians."

Especially children? kittens?

She made a pointed tsk against the back of her teeth and centered herself in the corridor as she walked, clearly intent on herding them back through the doorway and safely into the hall of negaspace where it gleamed behind them.

"Well maybe you should have thought this out better---like got a General to come with us or some---"

Silk immediately cut off as an aura unlike any other he felt flared onto his radar. Like Adamantine's but...more...twisted? More powerful, hands down, but yet oh so different, too. The owner of the signature soon appeared in their sights, and it wasn't the woman's height or the fact that she was, indeed, Alkaid that had riveted Silk's attention on the sight of the Ascendant General. It was all those cracks.

"Woah there, lady." Silk started, "Whatever you do, I'm going to need you to not sneeze---okay? I don't have a dust pan or any super glue, because you look like you'll explode if you do." He even held out a hand to ward off the Ascendant like she might just sneeze at that moment, and Silk then turned to look at his sister.

The hand that had been 'warding' off Alkaid then pointed right under his sister's nose.

"And you can't sneeze either---If you sneezed on her, I bet she'd burst into powder!"

Lace shifted back to kitten form since they had found her, popping from her humanoid form to the smaller compact form.

"So..sorry that Silk said that!" She batted at her brothers ankles, "I'm not gonna sneeze on her! You....you are so rude." She trotted after the woman, following after her clothes and hair.

"We came to find you....cause you are the first of...first of the your kind! We like senshi....so we wanna know more about them!" Lace trotted next to the woman, tail flicking back and forth.

"How come you live in the rift? Why do you have the cracks?" She paused, "Did....did you like kitties? Do you like kitties?"

The two of them together were nearly enough to make Alkaid smile; it had been a long time since she had spent any real time with Mauvians and she had never really known any of them so young before. Their unabashed questions were refreshing compared to the usual pensive, charged way most people asked her about her lifestyle and general existence.

It helped that they dropped a name she knew well, too.

"You are very chatty things, aren't you?"

A brow raised as she glanced at the male, then down to the girl that now rode his shoulder, back in her tiny, elegant kitten form.

"I do like kitties," she answered at last, turning her gaze ahead of them as she moved down the hallway and away from the entrance to the rift, "I have my own, somewhere. I have not seen Hiro in a very, very long time though."

Not since before she had ascended. It always made her wonder if she had left because of that but certainly that could not have been true - Hiro was the most loyal, the most proud of her at all times. It was easier than assuming the alternative, though, which was simply that he had been captured or worse.

"Adamantine is a lovely soul. I can see why you would be so proud of her." It wasn't affectionate, not really, but it was gentle in a way that her pointed, monotone voice rarely expressed. Even remembering the girl's name was a sign that she had made enough of an impression on the woman to last. Her fingers hands slid up behind her back to nest in the crook of her wings, laced together with her head high and her eyes forward.

"I don't live in the rift, though. Living implies a lot more than I am capable of. I've just been in the rift lately though, between you and I," her eyes shifted sideways to them, "I prefer to be on my planet."