Starlight Cookies and Moonlight Milk (4) : A new shop has opened up, just in time for the Star Festival! It doesn’t have anything on the menu except for Starlight Cookies and Moonlight Milk, but they are the talk of the town! Everyone who’s anyone has tried them, and without a doubt, they’re the most delicious things that they’ve ever tasted! Though...the reviews don’t mention that after you've had any, your eyes begin to glow strangely and sparkle like little galaxies are swirling within them. It’s beautiful, if a little strange! The effect fades after an hour, and your vision isn’t impacted...though, if you go to try the cookies again, the shop seems to have disappeared…
Per Calaverite’s request, that was how many of his assignments started. He’d said he needed to be rewarded and encouraged to complete tasks, and apparently, his captain hadn’t thought that was too much to ask. It wasn’t! Cala knew it wasn’t! But as with most things…
It didn’t often feel like enough.
Calaverite rummaged a hand through the paper bag he’d been given before he was deposited in the city. His captain had given him a white bakery sack and a lidded plastic cup before leaving him to his own devices with the instruction that he needed to complete his quota discretely. He could summon the older agent back to help Cala return to Negaspace once the task was completed.
He had his treat to help him through his boring and tedious chores: a few warm cookies and a cup of milk from some store he’d never heard of, so what more could he ask for?
Calaverite crunched a cookie and sipped his milk while he sat perched on the edge of a fire escape platform, waiting for passerby to come around so he could drain them and move on. The treats were good! Easily rivaling pretty much any other treat he’d had during his Negaverse tenure! He just wished, maybe… his captain would stay with him while he was out?
Sometimes he did! Cala didn’t always have to do his chores alone. His captain was good enough about staying with him and making sure he did everything he needed to while staying out of trouble.
Calaverite just wished it was more often, like, always, even.
No one had ever hung out with him before he’d been powered. The people he’d stayed with in the halfway house had been chilly and sometimes mean. Even the others his age had just been children that he often scuffled with. They weren’t friends. He wasn’t sure completely that Rakovanite was his friend, either, but it felt very close, Cala was sure. Someone who would hang out with him and bring him treats and do things that made him happy. That was a friend, surely.
Cala didn’t have to do more to facilitate their friendship, surely, so why didn’t Rakovanite do more with him?
Why didn’t anyone do more with him?
Calaverite’s brows pursed, lips pinching into a little frown as he stared at the ground below. He heard a nearby door open and knew that someone was coming this way to dispose of their garbage in the dumpster. He leaped as soon as the man was beneath him, landing squarely atop the stranger, holding his head to the ground, and draining every single scrap of energy he could from him, until his victim was facedown, still, and silent on the ground.
And then it was time for Cala to beat it with all due haste. He’d been instructed to be discrete, and leaving victims where people could find them hardly fit the bill. But no one had seen him, which seemed like the most he could offer.
He sprung futon the alley, scurrying toward the street and down the sidewalk with all the haste his powered body could manage.
He should probably find at least one or two more people before he called his captain to pick him up, but the glowing orb in his space pocket was a pretty good start, as far as he was concerned.
…It just still would’ve been better if he wasn’t alone.
Calaverite scuffed his boot against the concrete as he walked. He pouted down at the sidewalk, eyeballing himself in the dirty gutter water off to the side while he moved. Cala was at least certainly better than Ivory. How could no one want to hang out with him like this? Especially if they all had to do the same chores, anyway…
Oh?
He blinked. His head tilted. He crouched down to the gutter, pushing his long and tangled hair out of his face as he stared down at his reflection in the water.
His eyes!
Calaverite inhaled sharply, twisting hisface this way and that as he scrutinized himself in the dirty water. His face- his eyes! They looked unlike they ever had before! Dark and sparkling, glittering like stars in a night sky. Except better! There were colors that he’d never seen in a real sky! Only in picture books: blues and purples and reds… Deep and stretching forever.
It was lovely, but unexpected. Perhaps a little creepy. Would they be that way forever? Was that just what happened to people who harnessed chaos power for too long? He’d never seen anyone like that before though…
Should he ask Rakovanite? His captain would know. Did he care if it was like this forever? It would be nice to have something else special about him. People could look at him and know who he was- not that being a corrupt senshi wasn’t enough.
Well, no. Nothing was never enough. He’d always want more.
More, more, more…
[WC: 835]
