Welcome to Gaia! ::

Her fingers felt the grooves of the rock in her hand.

There was no longer any time for her to consider the foolishness. There was likely only one chance for her to do this, one chance before things settled and the celebratory smoke cleared and her absence was noticed. One chance before someone might have realized what she had done and perhaps went to murder her in her sleep.

She concentrated on the wrinkles, the way they felt in her hand.

It enveloped her.

Her hair wrapped around her like a cloak, the edges of it raised like static cling as the rock disappeared. From the ground, she gathered up the box of drives, her civilian phone with the SIM card removed, and their backups with fingers that stretched and turned lavender at the edges as if they hadn't enough blood flow. She noticed, for a moment, that her field of view felt like it was wider; she hadn't the time to observe why.

There was a place her and Phaethon had met up over the past few months. She presumed he would come back to it. Phaethon almost always had.

If her promotion and his near-corruption had been too much of a terror for him, she would understand. She would find someone else.

But she felt she owed this, at this point.

The alleyway seemed smaller or perhaps she was simply taller, the guise she wore having her take up space in a way that she was unused to. It kept the civilians at a distance away from her; she noticed the occasional wary glance and ignored it for the sake of her mission. Down the alleyway there was a small patio of a restaurant that was oft closed by this time of day, long enough closed that no one paid it any mind.

It was abandoned, as expected.

She gently set down the box over the fencing before climbing up onto the patio. One leg was crossed over the other as she sat at a table that was as far away from any potential cameras as possible, though she did murmur something under her breath and aim a single usage of her attack in the direction of the one she saw at a long distance. Knew the restaurant itself didn't have any in this area.

She had long since checked.

Quietly, she waited.

"Right."

She knew there was a way to mitigate the risk. Transcendence was something she had read about, something the Negaverse was likely determined to figure out how to defeat. The knight who had kidnapped her, Whisler, wore it proudly. It defended against what happened to her.

But it seemed so elusive. It wasn't like every senshi and knight she came across had that protection in their grasp.

Nembus took in a deep breath that felt like it whistled through her bones as she let it out, tapping long talons against the table as her eyes wandered back toward Phaethon again. He seemed well, though perhaps it was also for a given definition of well. Not angered, at least. Perhaps that meant her proposition would have merit here.

It was something she hoped.

"I am glad you are yourself. Wouldn't wish what happened to me on," she clicked her tongue again, "anyone. Unfair to lose everything of what you are."

"I'm trying." He rubbed the back of his neck as he sat in the chair, leaving his hands to then rest on the table's edge. Fingers drumming on the surface, he watched them for a moment before looking up at her. "...Are you okay?" Phaethon's brow knit as he glanced momentarily up to her, over her. "...Besides the obvious, I guess."

Something about their conversation felt awkward and desperate and she wasn't sure what portion of it felt as such. Perhaps it was just her. Perhaps it was her mind. Perhaps it was the certainty she felt mixed with the nerves that he was too hurt mixed with the minute concern that perhaps she was still making the wrong decision, a concern that she knew was woven deep within her by Chaos' influence in her mind, a concern that perhaps Phaethon wouldn't believe her words when she spoke them into the mind of another, the grim knowledge that this new life may only last for minutes if not executed properly--

She cut her mind off and pushed the box across the table to Phaethon.

USB drives. SSD drives. Her civilian phone, SD card removed. Photographs that she had hanging about her apartment, but only those she found most valuable so that no one would be suspicious if they checked on her apartment. Notebooks. Several notebooks. A letter.

"The box is me. My life."

Nembus swallowed.

"I don't know how much more I'll forget."

"There's also information in there. Documentation. Negaverse files on people and things they've done and anything I could dig out of what I have access to in Info." Nembus shifted in her seat. She wasn't quite answering his question. "Things I've done. Operations I've been part of and what I know of prior operations. If you lose contact with me, please go over all of that and get it to someone."

Her talons tap, tap, tapped on the table.

Her gaze shifted elsewhere as she confronted the reality of why she was doing this, of why she was in this mess, of why any of it had even struck her, of the memory loss, of those the Negaverse had so recently forced over to their side, of the way Phaethon laughed, of the way she let herself fall complacent and let herself keep living as a shell and--

"You once said I didn't have to keep doing this, right?"

He tried to keep it out.

But she noticed it.

Well, perhaps this would be easier than she thought.

"I had gotten complacent. The exact thing Sedna told me not to do, you know?" Nembus folded one arm over the other. "Felt alright. I have a team now, you know? A new general, one that wasn't the one who forced me? Faustite. The team likes me, depends on me. I didn't have to do what I used to. Had almost four years of memories under my belt. Felt okay. Not great, but okay."

She looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"But then I was upgraded, and I saw that the Negaverse was doing this to a whole new set of people after trapping them in a box, and I realized I was okay with it, all of it, and I knew I couldn't abide it after being forced into something I never consented to, I--"

Nembus wrung her hands.

"Sedna told me the way out isn't hard. Just gotta hope, I guess. And you said you'd be there for me. And I have other connections on the other side beside you. There are people like Cybele. And Kurma. And Whisler, I guess, though he kidnapped me," she paused, cleared her throat, and looked to Phaethon, "but I gotta check in on a few things first, yeah? But I want to." Her voice reverberated again. "I want to leave."

She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding and hoped that he was still listening or hadn't fled the way another had apparently--