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Sylvite had already been making her way over towards the basic senshi's aura. She'd been talking to a lot of people lately, but they'd all been, like, Knights, and Eternal Senshi, people who already had a bunch of biases and baggage from the war. Talking to them had been interesting, yeah, but it had only helped so much with the whole making her feel less weird t hing, which had kinda been the original point.

Maybe talking to someone newer would be a fresh start for her, too.

At least, she was gonna hope that it went well like that.

She'd activated her medallion so that her aura wasn't quite as strong, since she didn't wanna be scaring anyone off. Then she was walking forwards, looking for any flashes of white fabric.

She'd just rounded a corner when someone offered her money.

Sylvite blinked at the senshi in front of her. Then, she giggled, and waved.

Yeah, this was already going way better.

"You don't have to bribe me with stuff. I like talking," she said, "But, like I guess I also won't turn down a hot chocolate." She was pretty sure Starbucks had some pretty cute seasonal pastries up right now, too, which sounded great.

She stepped closer, already smiling. "My name's Sylvite. What's yours?"

Fulgurite?

Sylvite perked up at the name. "Oh hey, I know him! I'm actually kinda his boss," she said, and although that was usually the kind of thing she might have smiled about, because she was proud of him, but she was actually a little bit worried about his whole anger management thing, so instead she shook her head a little as she stepped forwards.

"He's been picking fights 'cause he's stressed. It's a whole thing. We're working on it. If you see him again, you could give him some ice cream? That usually helps a lot."

Not that Sylvite wasn't stressed, but she pushed that aside. The offer of a snack was helping her, too, for sure.

"I like hot chocolate," she said, changing directions so that she was walking towards the Starbucks, "And I don't mind questions. What exactly do you mean by elevator pitch, though?"

Like, was she supposed to sell something?

"Oh, that," said Sylvite with another little nod. "Yeah, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you totally are on the wrong side of the war."

It was really smart of her to ask about it early on, though. It would keep her from getting all entrenched in messed up philosophy like some of the other people that Sylvite had been talking to lately, and she found that the smile never left her face.

Although, it still wasn't quite the bubbly grin she'd always worn when she was talking about stuff like this before stuff had started falling apart.

She made her way over to the Starbucks while she started to talk, but she didn't go inside yet. It was one thing if the baristas saw her outfit and got all judgy, and quite another if they were talking about serious war stuff in front of random people.

"The Negaverse has been Earth's army for a really long time. Senshi have only started getting born on Earth pretty recently, and it's not something that's supposed to be happening. The only reason it is is 'cause you guys all wiped out your worlds or something, and now you're showing up here to mess around instead."

She leaned against the brick, trying to organize her thoughts but not exactly sure where she was going, this time.

"I mean I guess it would be fine if you guys were just like, living out your lives, but most Order people end up getting off on the power or something and getting really mean."

They didn't destroy their worlds?

People always said that, and honestly, Sylvite found it pretty hard to believe them. Like, Earth seemed to be trying pretty hard to wipe itself out. It wouldn't be a surprise at all if something similar had happened in lots of other places.

The rest of Raksha's theory was kinda sweet, but it was also kinda wrong.

Sylvite opened her mouth to argue, but by that point the other girl was running off into the Starbucks, so there wasn't much Sylvite could do except lean all the way against the bricks and think about what she'd said for a little bit.

"Okay," said Sylvite as soon as the other girl was back with the treats, like she was ready to spill all her thought. Then she saw what Raksha was holding, and she took a break from talking for long enough to grab a cake pop and bite into it.

"So, the Negaverse doesn't freak out and attack whenever aliens show up. There's this merchant dude who we trade with for magical artifacts. A whole team of aliens showed up a couple months ago looking for some fugitive that was hiding out in the city, and we helped them out. We like a bunch of the senshi, too!"

Okay, maybe that was more of just a Sylvite thing. She knew some of the agents still got all weird about senshi for some reason, even the ones in their ranks, but Sylvite had always thought that their magic was so cool and unique.

"Like, Fulgurite. Some of the senshi use the power from the remnants of their worlds to help us protect the Earth. The other ones, though? The ones who recruited you? Uh, they're kinda awful."

The words she'd probably said a dozen times came back to her, even if her heart wasn't quite as into it this time around. She took the hot chocolate and held it in her hands as she spoke.

"They act like draining energy is terrible and use it as an excuse to do all kinds of awful stuff to us. They broke into our headquarters once and slaughtered a bunch of new agents. They torture fourteen year olds. The collateral damage is awful, too. They permanently screwed up one of my Lieutenant's legs before he was even a part of all this. So, yeah. We fight them."

She was talking to Raksha, but she was talking to herself, too. This was the kind of stuff she had to hold onto.

This was why all the people she'd been talking to lately were wrong.

"You might just not have gone to any of the meetings yet," said Sylvite, and while her tone was steady, it was getting less and less chipper. "They might not always be organized, but the torture, and the invasion, and some of the other stuff was planned."

She wasn't looking at Raksha anymore. She was looking somewhere off in the distance, and her eyes were glassy as she finally brought the hot chocolate up to her lips and took a long sip.

That brought her back enough that she could focus on the conversation.

"You do have a point about the youma," she said, 'cause it wasn't a secret anymore how she felt about that particular thing. "They're weapons we use against senshi and knights, but they do get confused sometimes. They do get out of control. I'm trying to work on it. I promise."

The last few weeks when she'd ran into random youma running around the city, she'd sent them back to the Rift.

"The starseed, the soul thing," she said, and soul went in finger quotes, "It's mostly for emergencies. Like, if someone's trying to kill you and you can't get your weapons, you can grab that to stop them. Luckily, I've never had to do it."

"No. All of them. I mean, maybe not everyone everyone but during the invasion, there had to be at least a hundred people just-" murdering. She couldn't get the last word out, though. Sylvite's lips twitched. She took another drink and tried to focus on the sprinkles floating in her hot chocolate so she didn't go to a really messed up place.

After taking another breath, she continued, "I was one of the fourteen year olds who got tortured. I was on that battlefield, trying to protect my friends, and when it went wrong I was one of the lieutenants cleaning blood off the castle floors. Sorry if I'm not exactly chipper when I'm talking about all this."

The static-y feeling in her head was coming back. She tapped her fingers against the paper of her cup, faster and faster.

"I dunno about souls, but starseeds are life force, yeah. Taking them kills someone. It's war, though. Sometimes in battle, that's what it comes to."

Sylvite was getting less and less sure that she was okay, but nobody got to know that, least of all some random Order senshi.

"We can talk about other stuff if you want, but I don't think I'll know more about space than Fulgurite," she said instead, with a shrug, and went for more hot chocolate.