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All of Sylvite's personal notes about Order were written in color coded gel pen and then slipped into a sparkly blue folder. Stuff about the Negaverse ended up in a sparkly pink one. Two Christmases ago, she'd started a third folder. It was very cute and flower themed, but it only had one paper in it. It talked about snow fairies in swirly purple handwriting. There wasn't too much information about them. They'd flown around her and her mission partner for a while. That was about it. There was still a speculative paragraph at the bottom about how there had to be more magic out there than just what people saw in the war. This was obviously a hint of something way bigger.

Then, there was the last line: People probably don't talk about outside magic too much because it's super, super sporadic.

There had been no more fairies. She'd been looking, but the trail had gone totally cold.

The trail had gone totally cold until it hadn't. All the sudden people were talking about fairies again, and Sylvite was not about to let this opportunity to learn more slip through her fingers. People had apparently been seeing them in this garden in the middle of the star festival. It actually kinda matched up. The last time she'd seen them had been around the holidays, so maybe these fairies just really liked to party?

She was getting all ready to make a note of that in her tablet when she got to the edge of the garden and felt an Order aura. Really? Were people thinking that senshi were fairies now? With a heavy sigh, she started making her way in that direction. That was when she saw him.

She did a double take, but yeah, it was him. Athalia. The brainwashed newbie, but also the last person on Earth anyone would think was a fairy unless they were extra dumb. Maybe there was still something else going on? That was tonight's mystery.

"How now, spirit," she said in a very annoyed tone that was definitely not what Shakespeare had intended.

Sylvite's expression went even more sour for a second. She really considered him, scrunching her nose and mouth up tight, and then with a tiny nod she let it go. "Yeah. That's me," she said, throwing up a peace sign.

At least he wasn't trying to fight anything right now, or trying to tell her what to do, or even being loudly misinformed. She couldn't really be mad about anything he was doing. Anyway, there were things she was more interested in right now. When he turned to look deeper into the trees, she followed his gaze.

Between the lamp post that kept getting all dim and then bright again, and the fairy lights that were strung up everywhere, the garden was a mess of light and shadow. Whoever had designed this had done a good job with the mysterious, otherwordly vibe, but the result was that it was pretty hard to make out any details. She didn't think he'd found anything, but it was hard to be sure.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not doing any Negaverse stuff." There might have been some energy stuffed in her shorts, but she didn't feel the need to bring it up. It wasn't like she'd been going out to drain, it was just a habit now to take a little bit from anyone she came across.

"I'm looking for fairies." She squinted a little harder, like that would help clarify things.

Sylvite raised an eyebrow. "Wait, really?"

Mister no-nonsense, senshi-as-in-soldier, was out looking for fairies? She guessed that made more sense than him just being out here to enjoy the garden in uniform, but still.

"I was worried when I felt you here that there were just senshi patrolling here and people were thinking you guys were fairies, because sparkles," she said, looking back over and edging closer than she'd gotten during their other talk. She was almost to a regular conversation distance, although she was staring at him a little hard for someone just wanting to chat. If he tried anything, she was ready to pull her knives, but she didn’t want that. She wanted to hear what he had to say. “Do you think it’s the real deal?”

She was still looking at the park, although now she was looking at the display just past Athalia. It was some kind of crystal art installation with glowy lights. It looked like the kind of fairyland from kids books, or maybe the new Disney movies. “What do you think they’re supposed to do?” she asked. “Steal your babies and curdle your milk?” This cutesy garden didn’t look like it would be attracting anything like that. “Cure your warts?”

Yeah, she might have read a bunch of fairy books back in middle school.

She shook her head. “I don’t care if they do any of that stuff, as long as they’re cool, y’know.” She was really smiling now. It was clear any fairy that showed up would be cool in her book.

Sylvite shrugged, and although she still wasn't looking at him, she was definitely smirking. "Well, y'know," she said. "I mean, they'd probably get a lot of people coming to look for them. Dermatologists are expensive."

She talked like she knew what she was talking about, and she rubbed a thumb over her wrist again. It wasn't warts, but she could feel the bumps, even through the fabric.

"You said you saw them before?" Here?" She did look back over to him, her eyes a little bigger this time. She tilted her head, trying to decided if fairy stuff counted as important Negaverse information. Nobody else seemed to really care about it, so it was probably fine.

"I saw some a couple years ago at a winter festival thing," she said. "Those were probably, like, Tinker Bell level. They'd pull your hair, but they wouldn't do any of the really nasty unseelie stuff." She went back to her search of the garden. "And yeah, they were really pretty!"

Let him think she just cared about pretty stuff. That was fine. "I mostly wanna see if this is the same thing, or something else."

When Athalia started to talk about the habits of this fairy creature, Sylvite raised an eyebrow. When he kept talking and talking, she felt herself starting to stare and so she made herself turn away and stare in the other direction instead, pretending to get really distracted with fixing her headband.

She didn't know which way to think about this. Like, there was someone else who was researching these fairy things. Her poor flower notebook wouldn't be alone anymore. It seemed like Athalia was pretty committed, too, if he'd been coming out every night to get a look at this creature. She wanted to turn back around and grin and ask him if he knew anything else cool about fairies.

The thing was, it wasn't cool. He wasn't cool. He was a gross senshi who killed things, who would probably kill people given half a chance, who thought the Negaverse deserved whatever happened to them. He was awful and terrible and also he knew more than her about fairies apparently.

She finished with the headband, narrowed her eyes, and started rubbing and rubbing a pretend spot out of her glove, hard.

That was when she saw it. There was something, or maybe someone, walking down the path several yards away from her. It was definitely pretty, and it shimmered, but it was hard to tell any more detail than that. "Woah," she whispered, going still again.

She glanced back over. "Is that it?" If so, it was nothing like the fairies she'd seen before. She wasn't sure if it even counted as a fairy. "Also, what do you mean, not alone?"

On cue, she felt something tugging on her just-straightened bow.

Sylvite eyed the figure, not quite convinced. "Are we sure it's a fairy?" she asked. Yeah, sure, it was super shimmery, and it maybe had wings, although even that took some squinting and imagination, but it didn't look much like the things she'd seen before. "I feel like if it was Halloween everybody would be saying it's a ghost!"

Not that she had a problem with ghosts, but they weren't anywhere close to as cool.

Whatever was tugging on her clothes had caught her attention for the moment, and she kept glancing up every time she felt another tug on her headband. Something had decided to go for the buttons on her boots, too, which should have been easier to see, but when she looked down there was still nothing there. See, that seemed like the kind of thing that fairies did.

She got so distracted looking for them that she almost missed when Athalia started after the figure. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she said, breaking into a jog to catch up with him. She took another look at the figure but it still mostly seemed to just be walking.

She gave Athalia a sideways glance, still not sure how she felt about all this, but eventually she asked, "So, uh, how does this thing usually stay around for?"

When a few of the threads holding her button on started to get pulled out by whatever the little thing was, Sylvite reached down to try to brush it off. She didn't feel anything there, either. Would that be a ghost thing?

"Like, prank friends? Uh, poltergeists," she mumbled, but she didn't sound nearly as confident about that one. She'd read some ghost stories, too, but they weren't as much of her thing. She pressed her lips together. "Although I might have seen a ghost a couple days ago and I don't think that one had any friends."

It had also been more of a weird house and less of a floaty figure, so it didn't really clarify things. Sylvite shrugged. "Even with all the magic in this city, the more spirit-y, cryptid type things are still super hard to follow up on. They don't really stick around."

She'd been staying half a step behind Athalia until he said something about the fairy having a set path. She grinned at that. "You think I can get it to move?"

She might have been putting words in his mouth, but she didn't stick around to get corrected. It was basically an experiment, and she those were always fun.

"Hey, faaairy!"

She took off at her full Captain sprint, ducking under branches and leaping over flowerbeds and trying to cut off its path to the hedge.