Welcome to Gaia! ::

She knew these woods just from her time as Brielle Gallo. She came walking here, sometimes, and now she came hunting here. The Corrupt's aura tainting a place where she spent so much of her free time made her stomach twist, and she wasted no time in tracking the source of it.

When she found that she was looking for, though, she found that she recognized the girl running through the snowy forest. It wasn't simply that vague sense of familiarity that often tugged on her mind, either. She knew her.

They'd talked, once, in a forest not unlike this one. They'd spoken of memory and identity right after they'd both been drafted by the Negaverse against their will. It was one of Cybele's first memories, and it had stuck with her, during her time in the Negaverse and up until now.

Now, Cybele wore white again. The other senshi did not, but Cybele felt her emotions shifting anyway. The appearance of another rouge animal shifted things farther.

When the swooped down from the treetops with its claws outstretched, Cybele was calling her basic magic before she had time to overthink it. She aimed and fired the ethereal bow at Adorea, hoping to give her some help with avoiding the thing's talons.

"Careful," she called.

"My priorities shifted, I suppose," said Cybele, watching the other woman and the owl for a moment even as one of her hands shifted to brush against her white skirt.

It was impressive, the way that she was dodging attack after attack, but she was not sure how much good it would do in the long run. Even without Cybele's magic on it, the owl seemed very quick and very graceful and very determined. Then again, it wasn't exactly like Cybele had any better ideas.

She ran forwards and swung at the bird with a curled fist, but it turned out to be basically impossible to punch something that could fly.

Her Eternal magic would help, some instinct told her, but that did not do her much good when she'd lost her wings. That left her just trying to stay out of the way of any stray talons, too.

"I never found most of my memories, but I did find some answers," she said.

It was interesting how this one wasn't going on about how she was a traitor. It gave her hope, almost. "So what have you been up to?" she asked, carefully, her eyes still on the bird.

Cybele blinked.

"In trouble for," she had to pause there, to make sure she was processing it all correctly while also accounting for the giant bird that seemed very unhappy with them, "Breaking your friends?"

At this point, she had heard a lot of Negaverse horror stories. She had heard a lot of Negaverse stories in general. She had a decent idea of how things worked, down in their citadel and among their ranks. She'd lived it.

That was something new.

Her confusion gave the owl a chance to get at her. It swooped, narrowly missing leaving gashes across her face, but it did fly off with a few mint-green strands of hair in its talons.

Cybele hissed.

"All right," she said quickly. "I'm throwing you."

There was no way she was leaving solid ground, but she could help someone else with it.

Closing the distance between them, she reached towards Adorea's waist and threw up, with all her strength.

This combined attack where she'd thrown Adorea at the owl seemed to have been their most effective idea yet. The corrupt got several direct hits in, and Cybele found that the bird did not swoop back around afterwards to try to get any more clawing or biting at them in.

Instead, it seemed to be going away. At least, Cybele caught one more glimpse of snowy white feathers against the treeline. Then the sky was empty.

"The machines were hurting people," said Cybele, when Adorea had landed back on solid ground again. Her voice was soft, softer than it would have been if she was talking to nearly anyone else about what had happened that night. Her fingers flickered to her own chest, to her starseed. "It hurt me."

She remembered the pain that had arced through her damaged starseed when the Chaos tried to take it again. She remembered watching Sheik's head fly and wishing for that fate, herself, rather than corruption.

She'd cried about it afterwards, but she kept her voice carefully steady now. "The Negaverse was doing to other people what it did to us. It was wiping their memories and lives and wills to make them servants to Mettallia."

Cybele took a breath and then added, "You don't have to be a part of that if you don't want to be."

No, she never knew quite how to talk about these things, but her heart had been going out to Adorea anyway, and if she was already seeing the cracks, she deserved the offer.

Cybele pretended to watch the skyline for the return of the owl. In reality, she was fairly certain that she'd chased it off, and she was just taking a moment to gather her thoughts.

"I don't know what the effects would be on your memories if you purified," she said eventually, her voice even quieter. She rolled her shoulders to get the tension out, and then she turned all the way to face Adorea. "For me, I've remembered a few things in moments of intensity. When Lyndin turned on us in that battle, I remembered another time I was betrayed. A snippet of it."

Although, even that was incomplete. She'd seen the face of the senshi who had done it sneaking across the battlefield, but even now she wouldn't have been able to say his name if someone had put a blade to her throat and asked.

"But, even if you don't remember, it doesn't mean you're required to keep serving the people who took all that away from you."

Cybele inhaled, and swallowed. She did not feel like she was good at talking about any of this. All she could do was tell her own story. "Order found a family for me that treats me like a daughter and a sister, not a tool for their purposes. They've done a lot to make me feel alive and human again, even after everything I've lost. They'd do everything they could for you.

She smiled, slightly.

"I'd do everything I could for you."

With effort, Cybele kept her mouth shut. There was a lot she could have said about the generosity of the Negaverse, having experienced it firsthand. They'd offered her a small bedroom and a shared, youma-infested kitchen and endless disgusting, saccharine snacks, and to pay for it, all she had to do was make stealing energy and starseeds her full time job.

She'd seen the way that the Negaverse preyed on those without families, as well. It had been her job to give a tour of the barracks to the homeless boy that Sylvite had taken in, the one who had seemed genuinely thrilled with the sad bed he was being offered.

That hadn't lasted, either. She'd glimpsed him in white at the meeting with Lyndin.

It probably wasn't worth it to spell all that out to this Corrupt, though. Like the two of them, she'd have to figure it out for herself.

Instead, Cybele shrugged. "My memories are a fractured mess. I barely know most people. I remember you, which is saying something."

She remembered the way their stories had lined up.

She bit her lip and tried to figure out how not to be pushy and intimidating about this. "It's just something for you to think about," she said in the end. "An offer."

She made herself step back. "Sorry about the owl bothering you. I'll check back later and try to make sure it's not really terrorizing the place," she said, and then stepped back again.

"I'll see you later, I hope," she said, and finally let herself smile.