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The appearance of the strange wisps had distracted one particular Super Sailor Hydor from his original intentions of heading home.

His evening was supposed to be easy. Finish his work at the co-working space. Walk the familiar path to his house. Perhaps pass the cafe and get himself some coffee, black of course. Perhaps pass by the cat cafe and remind himself that he definitely didn't need any cats -- his experience with cats was naturally not particularly positive, as much as that was a lie to himself because he would never admit he actually got along quite well with the Mauvians who put themselves in his midst. Head back into his house. Make some shitty ramen because, despite the fact he made freelancer money now, he had never quite gotten around the broke and poor budget of a college student who had no family of his own accord and simply lived in the dorms all times of the year. Go to bed. Rinse and repeat the next day in a slog that felt hilarious and utterly useless with the reality of the world he actually lived in.

But the wisp he had tripped over was strange. The second one was even stranger. Hydor decided that perhaps it was his job that night to see if he could figure out who and what these odd objects belonged to, if they belonged to anything, and perhaps, if they were some kind of trick of Chaos, whether that Chaos was of the Dark Mirror or of the Negaverse itself.

His path took him to another wisp, but not much beyond that, and he had been about ready to phone it in for the night and head back home with his wisp prizes in his bag when he spotted an odd and mysterious dome emanating odd energy he didn't quite understand. It drew him in closer.

Perhaps this held an explanation.

Something about his experiences told him he should know better than to trust any weird domes emanating any strange energy on any part of this Negaverse-infested planet, but the curiosity got the best of him, and he pressed on the border to see if it was something porous or if he would be locked on his side. It receded. Hydor found himself able to pass, shifting his laptop bag on his shoulder as he pushed himself inside.

The first thing his instinct told him was that this was almost assuredly a mistake and perhaps he should leave; the person at the table looked sinister even in the best light, and while Hydor held no particular fear he did hold a particularly high sense of self-preservation. He seemed distinctly alien in a way that Hydor couldn't quite understand, not even considering all the strange things that seemed to settle in this city, and Hydor's first thought would have been he was a youma of some sort if it wasn't for the fact he didn't feel like one.

And then he greeted him.

Hydor quirked a brow. "Hi."

Of course, he'd greet him. Why the ******** was he actually surprised?

As he shifted, the soft glow coming from the three wisps he had captured in his laptop bag would be more obvious. He didn't necessarily make an effort to hide them. "What are you, exactly?"

Just a humble merchant-- "With horns," Hydor reinforced, dryly, as he glowered at the strange objects that adorned his head.

This so-called humble merchant had set up in a crater. He guessed that explained the news reports related to all the power going out, though it did not quite explain the reason why none of the journalists had ever been able to find the damned source.

Or perhaps it did, considering he had horns.

The confirmation that he had landed from space was an interesting one; for one, it implied that other people still lived in space despite the implications that Hydor's presence on Earth held. Secondly, the information that these strange little balls of light he had found floating in the road were supposed to belong to him made Hydor something between suspicious and grateful. He did not seem to be a member of Chaos. However, that did not mean the merchant's intentions were good, courteous smile or not.

"Perhaps." Hydor did not give away his cards yet, tilting his head as he observed the items on the table. "I presume the items on these tables are what you have for rewards, then? And what are your intentions with these so-called cute, floating little balls of light?"

They did not look or feel like energy orbs, but he did not ever innately trust nevertheless.

Don't know any better? Hydor couldn't help the minor jolt of rage he felt at the concept that he was simply ignorant, but he tried his best to bite it down under everything else; if he was going to get anything useful out of this apparent crater-dwelling merchant, snapping at him was probably not a particularly useful response.

It didn't stop the very dry, "I'm sure they're lovely, Merchant, but they imply your inhumanity all the same."

So much for being a humble merchant with all his bragging about the horns there--

That smile was almost a goddamn irritant. Reminded him of those used cars salesmen. Perhaps he wasn't to be trusted all the same. He was still curious about the rewards, though, and it was enough to draw him closer to the table even as he shifted his bag and attempted to keep the presence of his wisps out of obvious sight. "You say they'll explode if they're apart too long. How does putting them together repair them? Does it not just make them more potentially explosive?"

Hydor supposed it could be like mixing two chemicals that could be used to neutralize each other; he still found himself terribly suspicious and he wasn't quite willing to back down yet.

The hell was he if he wasn't human?

The hell was he if he wasn't youma?

He wanted to question his identity more, but the not-a-human crater-dwelling merchant was still talking, and Hydor still wanted answers about whatever was happening here more than anything else. He still wasn't really sure if he trusted anything the man was saying; the used car salesman vibes were strong, and they didn't necessarily entirely stop when he made his pitch about blood being acidic. It made sense, in some ways. Was a bit like a chemical solution, then, where two chemicals apart might have been volatile, but together worked well and were beneficial. If the strange little wisps were truly more stable together, perhaps he should just hand them over and move on with his life.

Hydor took a bit of pride when the salesman said he was a bit hard to read. More of a compliment than most phrases he received. His face still looked stony, despite.

"Storms are fine," was his offer of dismissal, even though he admittedly liked the concept of being dangerous and looming. In truth, he liked storms. Not just because of their aesthetic, but because they didn't strike any particular fear in him where they seemed to strike fear in others. If Hydor needed to get anything done as a civilian, he usually waited until a rainy day.

Wait--

Something odd stirred within him when he looked at the object that was presented to him, and for the first time, his expression faltered into something of confusion. World with unpredictable weather.

Alright. So the not-a-human not-a-youma was an alien. Glad he figured that out. Wasn't space supposed to be dead or some s**t?

"Huh." Hydor lifted up the storm glass, carefully, examining it and wondering deeply why it rang so familiar. He was the senshi of mesocyclones, he supposed, but he hadn't ever identified with storm glass before. Carefully, he set it back down. "Where did you get this?"

Okay, so space was dead. He had gotten this weirdly familiar thing from a place that didn't have anyone to guide him, so dead.

Mostly. This guy apparently wasn't.

Not only that, this guy could apparently planet hop. "Do you always crash into planets like this, or are we just special?" He glanced to the crater, indicating the way that the alien crater-dwelling merchant had apparently opted to land on Earth.

His eyes wandered back to the storm glass. observing it closely, attempting to figure out why it rang anything familiar, when he took a closer look at the symbol.

Absentmindedly, he found himself touching his fingers to the tiara on his head, tracing the way the center swirled in on itself.

"Ah. Think this is probably from Hydor." He pulled his hand away. "Somehow. Was the planet just as dead as every other planet you've been to?"

Perhaps the people of Hydor were dead, but the skies were very much alive.

Perhaps Hydor would have been more charmed by the pleasant noises of the merchant if he wasn't innately suspicious of everything the merchant was doing. As it was, he still watched him down his nose, still watched the way he eyed his wares, still watched the way he seemed ... amused?

Hydor let out a gruff snort at being addressed as Hydor.

"Yeah."

Now the merchant had his name and he didn't have the merchant's. This particular information-gathering venture was certainly going fantastically for him. World wasn't dead. World wasn't a corpse. It was a shell of a world. He wasn't really sure if that wasn' dead. Usually a shell didn't have much meaning without anything within it. Hydor shrugged nonchalantly. "No, haven't been recently. Don't really know much of anything about it."

He glanced down at the storm glass.

"Gonna guess it's stormy?"

The merchant's comments brought a few more questions to Hydor's mind, namely: how old was this merchant, and was whatever was out near the star Hydor so synced to him that the storms were truly because he wasn't there? Did he have the power to tame them? Would his presence on that shell of a planet turn it into a peaceful land to live on?

A peaceful land for no one to live on?

He wobbled on his feelings of how important space was. Considering all of them held the names of stars, planets, moons, and asteroids, it was fairly obvious there was some tie between them and whatever was out there. It was dead, though, very dead, and the problems that they all faced sat there on Earth, staring them in the face. He had heard rumors that taking care of space could benefit them on Earth, seen a few of the people with the weird glowing tattoos.

But the merchant's words did pique his curiosity.

"Seems a little unfair to trade for something that theoretically belongs to me." But Hydor still had the wisps in his laptop bag, and from the way the merchant spoke, it seemed like a bad idea to continue to hang onto them. The last thing he wanted to deal with was an explosive ball of light. "You should probably just give it back. But I'll be nice."

He finally revealed that he was carrying some of the wisps, and let one of them flow from his laptop bag into the chalice.

Hydor dismissively scoffed at the concept of these wisps somehow belonging to the merchant, letting out a stiff, "Sure," at the appreciation of his generosity.

He knew it wouldn't be fully appreciated until he gave over the last of the wisps.

"Yeah, those ********?" Hydor crossed his arms, leaning on his back foot. "Yeah, I've run into more of them than I'd like. They're ******** everywhere." Local events, a theatre, a ******** hospital-- "Childhood best friend's mom got turned into a youma by those assholes. Can't get away from them."

He paused.

"Why? These wisps clearly aren't youma pieces or they would feel more," he gestured, "chaotic."