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Anser felt all the energy of the battle leave her body once her feet landed on solid ground. She had taken a bit of a beating on Aokigahara's wonder, and unfortunately, now she could feel a bit of the aches and pains. While Cybele rubbed her shoulder, Anser did a few basic stretches to alleviate some of the tension in her body and hopefully get some of that built-up lactic acid moving. Might help with some of the stiffness--

When Cybele sighed, Anser straightened out from her stretching and glanced downward at her. Sorry. What was she sorry for--

A lot has happened, and I've lost almost all of my memories.

Anser felt like someone had just punched her in the gut.

What's your name?

It was then that some of the other pieces started to fall into place. You're stronger too! Anser and Cybele had never been on the same stage at the same time. Cybele had been a super, and then was an eternal, with white wings bursting from her lower back like her brother. Anser had been basic and then became super.

Now Cybele felt like she was at super rank all over again.

"s**t," she murmured, her voice thin and airy, eyes glancing over Cybele. Something was wrong. Something was deeply, deeply wrong.

"I-I should have known. We were never--," she gestured between the two of them, gestured low at their skirts to implicate their stages. Anser swallowed hard, swallowed around the way her emotions attempted to flood her. "Super Sailor Anser of Geese. Civilian name, Raina Araya."

There were only so many things Anser knew of that could cause a memory erasure of that caliber.

When she had become a senshi and, specifically, when her brother had found out, she quickly learned from him the concept of corruption. That switching sides was possible, and often, possible whether there was a desire to switch sides or not. It usually came with some loss of self. Encke hadn't much experience with anyone who had suffered that at the time, though he had met people who had been corrupted, in general...

Perhaps Cybele wasn't sure how much it would help at this point, but Anser sat down on the bench, anyway. "It's nice to see you too, Cybele," came Anser's reply, though it was quieter and more distant than she had been even five minutes prior. Was that what happened? It seemed to fit, seemed to fit with the concept of trauma to the starseed.

"God," murmured Anser, moving her ponytail over her shoulder and starting to fiddle with it in an attempt to calm the way she felt her heartbeat ratcheting up. "You said trauma. What," she could hardly bring herself to say it, and adding to the feeling of getting socked in the gut came with a sensation that something was in her throat and making it impossible for her to speak or breathe. She clawed around it. "What happened?"

The Cybele she knew was gone, maybe. Buried underneath starseed trauma. Buried underneath what happened.

Buried underneath--

Corruption.

She had suspected it, but the words were another punch in the gut nevertheless. It felt like she had attempted to swallow something nauseating and failed, it felt like she wanted to claw at her throat and let it escape and maybe wake up and Cybele would be fine and this whole conversation had never happened. Eternal Sailor Cybele, senshi of the Hunt, stolen by the Negaverse, wiped and forced to behave in the ways the Negaverse desired.

The smaller antlers, the lack of wings, the fact that their power felt so very much the same -- even if it was mildly different due to her continued presence as a chibi. It bothered her, that she hadn't quite figured out how to get that lock off her power yet.

Irrelevant, though.

"I imagine that'd be a nightmare," Anser couldn't even imagine, honestly. Being told about corruption and seeing the results of corruption were entirely and completely different. The effects had sounded awful. The effects were clearly awful. "You did so much good for all of us -- gathering us, allowing us to train together, and -- we were friends, too. Worked together a lot. I,"

Anser fiddled with her hair faster. She felt a few pieces coming out of it and into her hands. She flicked them aside.

"Can you get the power back? I have a feeling the memories are lost to you forever," the memories of them were lost, too, "but--"

There was a note of something else beginning to boil in her gut, hot and tight and burning.

Anger.

Having her hair tugging and fiddling and pulling pointed out made her freckles stand out a bit stronger against paler skin, and she quickly tried to find some other way to fidget. With her fingers, maybe, in her lap, twisting over and between each other and crackling as she pulled on the knuckles--

"Walking's good," Anser decided, standing back up and bouncing in an attempt to dispel the sensations she felt running through the entirety of her body. Didn't have a clear head. Didn't know what to think of this. Didn't know what to do-- "Or standing. You're right. Just need to move."

The Princess. Anser didn't really know of any princesses, though she knew the possibility of royal senshi existed. She had never met any of them face-to-face, and, honestly, wasn't sure what she would do if she did. Unlike the Negaverse and their general-royals, the senshi weren't beholden to the princesses. At least, that was what she understood. "Right, right. Suppose it's lucky I'm talking to you at all." She squeezed her arm with her opposing hand. "And that you're back here, in white, even if you're... downgraded."

Anser didn't like the way that word sounded.

"Still an upgrade from being in the Negaverse."

The Negaverse. The Negaverse stole her. Stole Cybele and all her memories and all her being and tried to make her into a servant for their purposes. It made her blood boil. Her fingernails started to dig into her arm until she suddenly let go and instead swung her arms back and forth.

"We met when I was still young. Like, thirteen." She wasn't sure how much older sixteen counted as, but she wouldn't reinforce it. "Was kinda super into the superhero thing then. You wanted me to maybe be a little less reckless but I think you liked my enthusiasm. Met over a bird youma. Think I called it ugly." Anser snickered, even as she clenched and unclenched her fists again. "We started working together. Going on patrols together. Seeing how our powers worked. And how they worked in combination, too. Together we could be," she snickered again, "very speedy."

Anser seemed antsy, bouncing again before pacing a small bit ahead.

Anser was grateful that Cybele just followed her. She was willing to pace back and forth in general, but perhaps walking forward and not pacing would help clear her head a bit better. Clear her head before she found the nearest Negaverse source and showed them just what she thought about their friend-stealing bullshit--

Trying to steal lives, steal entire people.

Again.

Ruining lives in this city.

Again.

For what? For what purpose?--

Anser buried it down under the concept of the two of them being a good team, and she nodded an almost overly-excited agreement as she squashed the anger and questioning down with the waves of grief and the waves of reunification. She raked her hand through her hair again. She stopped midway upon remembering what she was doing and that it seemed Cybele didn't like that. "We did. A lot has changed, but some things have still stayed the same, right?"

Like Cybele and Anser making a good pair.

The anxiety eased back as her uneasy wavering on upset expression wavered instead into a smile. "Yeah. Think I'd like that. We can go on a very short run." She snickered, lifting her hand.

"Mothers Geese!"

The familiar honk of the geese echoed around them, even as Anser felt it pull at the dregs of her magic, and she eagerly bounced to get running.

New memories.

It shouldn't have been necessary to start over with new memories, but at this point, at this juncture, Anser was willing to take what she could get. There was no reason for her to not embrace Cybele the second time around, even if there was now an increased reason for her to wish that the scourge of the Negaverse be wiped off the planet, wiped out of the universe, wiped out of the multiverse if some of those strange physics theories she read about truly existed.

It burned within her, and perhaps it made the run more satisfying.

She set off the moment she saw Cybele's arrows fly, and perhaps it wouldn't have any particular meaning to Cybele who couldn't remember, but Anser was sincerely fast. The combination of the speed awarded to her by her magic and her own natural, long-built speed had her launching to the grass quicker than she might have even realized.

But it felt good.

She ran until the magic wouldn't let her anymore, and kept running for even a bit after that.

It distracted her from the anger and her rage and her bafflement and her deep, unexplainable sadness and let it funnel into something else.

Her feet.

The pounding of her feet, her steps gliding over the surface.

Anser let out an airy breath as the two of them came to a stop. She could feel the effects of blasting through so much of her magic as she stood there, but did it matter? Her mind was blank for a few blissful moments, and for a few blissful moments more, she could pretend Cybele was Cybele and nothing had changed and everything was exactly the same as it was the last time they had run past each other.

Bitterly, she realized that explained why it had been so long since she had seen Cybele.

Bitterly, stubbornly, she buried that down.

"We are!" Anser swirled around with a grin, though that faltered as she watched the way Cybele rubbed her shoulder. Cybele seemed happy though, as happy as she was, and Anser was perfectly willing to encourage that. "Our magic meshes really well! We could be like The Flash, or something. Maybe Sonic?" She paused, and then fell into a fit of snickers.

"Sorry, even now, can't stop making nerdy references."

Would those even be familiar to Cybele if she had lost all of her memories?

... Best not to think about it.

"We should do this more often. Together," Anser cracked her knuckles, "we can take them all out."