Weeks passed and the Negaverse moved on, with agents and Negaverse senshi resuming their standard duties. The Farnsworth was repaired, and its security increased. Fafnir's careful report was published. Destiny City remained alert and expectant, but ultimately accepted that the draining operation was an isolated affair. It must've been another mass hallucination. Life moved on.

But Faustite didn't. He knew Squiddy was destroyed by the Princess's magic -- Kamacite told him so before his friend so helpfully shut down on him -- and he felt that bond snap heavy in his chest, like a bone break or a gunshot. He knew because there was no more Squiddy. But because there was no more Squiddy, he lacked closure.

Faustite knew it was stupid to go out without any sort of protection, without so much as his own flame to curtail enemies, but that early morning nonetheless found him on top of the Farnsworth. He'd slipped Kamacite while the exhausted boy slept, confiscated some energy orbs from a Lieutenant, and used those energy orbs to get himself back to the city. While the nights were warm, Faustite still felt a chill roll off the air, and wrapped his arms about himself as he started toward the edge of the building.

He looked out, a lone kindle atop the building. Beneath the cottoned blanket of gloaming, each street fell silent, and only traffic neons and passing cars lit the sleepy burgeons of a glow. He saw the same streets he watched then the operation went underway. Waning cords of muscle in his tired body tightened when he saw the familiar intersection. Not twenty feet from a small four-way was where he'd first sighted the black and red eternal, the scrawny blonde that Jet described off his Database entry. The previously unknown factor that nearly put a stop to their operation.

Backing up, Faustite began a running start and leapt for an adjacent building. The more familiar angle confirmed it: that was the spot. If they hadn't budged when he sent Cybele to kite her, that would've been where Kamacite found her.

He sprinted down the parapet, body rife with complaint, and leapt to a third, still shorter building. A few windowsill ricochets closed the gap to the ground that he ended with a corkscrew. But that habit wasn't needed -- there wasn't any fire to keep out of his own face.

As Faustite approached the intersection, he imagined where they collected. Cybele, proud and staunch for them, rooted in the middle of the street. Traffic backed up all around her. Ganymede and her redheaded sidekick stalled on the sidewalk. Benitoite on the opposite sidewalk, ready to reach into cars to murder more civilians. And Kamacite… Faustite paused, his attention spanning over the blinking streetlight, the empty street, into the haunted mouths of buildings -- yes. Teleported into the hollow of a great, old arch, Squiddy in arms, huddled under grandeur. Dusted in the street, he imagined.

Dusted… There, where a dark smear overtook one of the dotted white lines. With the weeks that passed, he knew there couldn't be anything left of the ash. Blown away by passing cars, washed away by summer rains. Faustite knew there was no body to find. He could do nothing more but hold his jeweled palm to Kamacite's chest and hope for that memory to reach him.

He told himself it was the futility of it getting to him. Knowing he wouldn't find any answers in those streets, knowing there was no corpse, knowing the only ways to move on were time or callous replacement. Told himself he was just overwhelmed with his own recuperation.

"You stupid shitstain," he seethed at the mark on the ground. He stalked toward it, wiped his eyes of their black grief. "I never told you to ******** follow him. Why the ******** didn't you stay with me?" It was a dimwitted ******** youma with no sense and no self-direction. Why, then, did it scamper off with Kamacite, a ******** worthless…" He held his head, paced aimless. Ink raced down his face, his mouth cut into an ugly line as he struggled to hold in his breath. "Can't drain, can't think, can't eat because of you -- feel sick all the time, fire's gone out, and you did this to me.

"You ******** did this to me, you damned squid!" He shouted at the street.

He knew it was pointless. Faustite knew he put himself at risk, being out at the site of the operation, weakened, compromised. But what did it matter, anyway? Half-youma life was cheap. Catharsis was much too expensive for the juvenile General.

It was all he would get, he knew: an empty street, an audience with the dead city in gloaming. Silence for every scandalized hurt. He wasn't sure what else to do.

He wasn't sure what else he could do.