Welcome to Gaia! ::

It had been almost a half-year since the week she had fled in a panic, and Nembus still wasn't sure how she felt about her new life.

It came with the freedoms of never again worrying about being summoned against her will, freedoms from having to drain and murder, freedoms from the neverending pressure of knowing that some part of her would always be deliriously incomplete -- but it still felt incomplete, and she knew she was still trying to understand and trying to learn and trying to find her footing and ways she could breathe without a death rattle of fear following. She loved Cybele and she loved Phaethon. ... She loved Albite, too, and Alkmene, and her general, Faustite, and she feared seeing them all again just as much.

And General Jet swept forward, leaving Ochre's head--

She had talked with Cybele--Brielle--about finding more of those connections on their side about the similar experiences and she had known at least a few. It took a considerable amount of bravery for her to finally reach out, even as she knew they were safe.

But she had, finally.

The message had been simple, just a, "Hey, Albireo, my name is Nembus. Cybele says you were also once Negaverse and I'm trying to get to know people more like us."

And when it was accepted, Nembus ended up waiting hopefully and in the same measure ready to vomit of nerves while she waited for Albireo to show up.

A half-hour was long enough to make Nembus a little nervous. Maybe she should leave. Maybe she should dehenshin. The longer she stayed out in the open, the more likely that someone would make the connection. The longer she stayed out, the more likely she'd feel a chaotic aura, and the more likely that they'd realize who she was and either take her starseed and perhaps simply eat it or take her back for recorruption.

She wanted to try to reach out, but she feared the reality of it. Perhaps nearly six months had been enough time, though--

The enthusiasm took Nembus by surprise, and she found herself nearly jumping when Albireo suddenly arrived with an absolute smorgasbord of drinks. (Could a smorgasbord have drinks? She was still trying to figure that out.) "Yes, I'm Nembus," she replied, with considerably less enthusiasm as she attempted to bury the nausea and the nerves that had gotten time to fester. "I don't have any serious allergies as far as I know. Maybe pollen, but that seems to annoy everyone a bit..."

At least, that was what she gathered from listening to people complain about spring.

She took the vanilla milkshake, first.

"Nembus of Electromagnetism." She said it low like she feared someone would hear even though she knew she was safe. "I got out five months ago or something like that. Lost most of my life again. I ... was forcefully corrupted by General Marcasite." Maybe the name would ring a bell if Albireo had been in longer. "Back in 2018, I think. I lost everything when I was corrupted except for my name and birthday."

She took a sip.

"And then I started over again, so."

The 'depressed potato' descriptor was enough to bring the edges of a smile of Nembus' lips. She could picture it, at least, and while she thought she had taken the approach of conceal don't feel, depressed robot, she understood what Albireo was talking about. Could feel it in a way now, considering she found herself doing the same thing day in and day out, wondering when any of it might start to feel correct.

"I get it. It's... hard, to pull yourself out of that hole." She let Albireo reach out and touch her shoulder, though that also managed to take her by surprise.

She felt like she was jumping at ghosts, lately.

It was good that she left with someone to lean on. Nembus had done that, to some degree. Phaethon had never fully been a member of the Negaverse, beside for the ghost of the experience at the generators that had been part of what sent her running. Cybele was already out, but she had been corrupted, like her. There had been Sedna, but-- "It's hard. I," she swallowed, "maybe you understand, but I feel like I'm trying to understand what personhood even is. What I should even be feels out of reach, and the people help, but," but it would take a while.

Even then.

Albireo's descriptions, though, brought that ghost of a smile back to Nembus' face as she took another sip of her drink. "Cybele said how those of us who got out -- we have a group and we stick together, right? That feels like that." Nembus needed more of that. "That's what I had in the Negaverse, too. A whole team."

That she had abandoned.

Her emotions on that were endlessly complicated and warming and nauseating.

"I'd like to have that here, even if it is as a sticky weed."

Roy sounded adorable, and she let out a quiet giggle at the thought of a fat blue firefly that was arguably a pet. "I work at a buy-sell-trade store. And I journal." A lot. She couldn't forget anything. Never again. Not even if the Negaverse threatened to take her back. Not even if her memories slipped through a sieve and she woke up the next day as baby and new as she had been with Marcasite on that Negaverse floor. "I've been to my planet. There are these little bugs that zip like electricity, and a ground that was like fog--"

But not anymore, or perhaps in part.

She had been needed for that ritual.

Nobody. It both surprised her and didn't that the Negaverse had opted for isolation. When her first team had dissolved, that was what her life had felt like, adrift as she tried to figure out who she was and where she stood. She did what she was supposed to, sure. She collected energy. She took starseeds. She went to class and got her degree so she could be a better infiltrator. But yet...

"I'm sorry. Sometimes I feel like I got very lucky with my team. The Negaverse is cruel, even to its own members, and there's always that feeling that once you ******** up, you'll be next on the platter, right? That you're expendable. They saved you out of their own good will and once that runs out, you're next. That one day, Metallia will decide you're only worth your starseed, and that'll be the end of everything..." She swallowed. "Separating you from your love was cruel. I'm happy to hear you guys managed to reunite, that you managed to get out from that. It sounds like you're far more comfortable here."

She sipped from the vanilla milkshake slowly as she tried to gather her thoughts.

Tried.

"I hope so. I worry, though. They're deep. They're devoted to our general. His name is Faustite, and to his followers, he is a good person under all the fire and brimstone. Has your back. Appreciates you. He's forged that bond with his team," she fidgeted, "and with the Negaverse. I want to save them. I want Albite and Faustite and Alkmene and Lilith and Celadonite and Haymitch and all of them here. But I'm not sure if they'll listen."

Or if they'd even want to.

"But they're efficient. They know each other. They work together. Convincing them would be risky for ... anyone."

Perhaps it was easier to focus on something else, and perhaps that was always the problem. It was easier for Nembus to listen to what the Negaverse put Albireo through than acknowledge her own torment. It was easier for Nembus to focus on the team she had lost her fault than think about the alternative in front of her and behind her.

Huh, she knew Albite.

It brought a wider ghost of a smile to her face to think about that. Perhaps the smile looked more sincere. "Yeah, him. He was always wondering why his planet was locked away from him, so I'm not surprised he went with you to yours." Was he worth trying? Nembus didn't know. She wanted to believe he could be freed but he was also fully and completely willing to explain away anything in hopes things maybe could work another way, and he was so hopelessly devoted to Faustite who would be a bear to convince on his own... "Albite's a sweetheart. We were best friends, really."

s**t.

"I don't know. I think he might listen, but he also might just try to explain things another way and hope we can still be friends. I also don't think he'd go anywhere without Faustite..."

She fidgeted.

"They're all pretty devoted to him, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend trying to convince him to anyone who isn't already familiar. Maybe," she tapped her fingers against her leg, "Lilith is infiltration, so she's more willing to just chat, at least. I can't promise that of some of the others. Celadonite is mostly in it for the fashion, so maybe he could be bribed with an even better outfit."

"Not laughable. I'd like to try. But," Nembus fidgeted.

And fidgeted some more.

"I don't know. I've read the Order database. I don't get the impression he likes us, and from what I know of him personally -- it's a gamble. A potentially deadly gamble." She swallowed, and she left it at that, looking down at her drink for a moment as she considered the reality of it. The reality of their mutual positions with their mutual holes and their mutual sadness and pains that they dealt with both in and out of the Negaverse and--

Oh. Albireo was offering to help.

She smiled, and that strengthened at the concept of leaving these risky forms behind. In a heartbeat, she was Dahlia, and as much as it felt weird and unnatural and wrong in the ways that Nembus did not, it didn't pose as much of a risk to either of them. "I'd like to hang out, Olivia. Having more friends like this might help me feel more... connected and sorted out, maybe? I don't know. I'd like to try."

It hadn't worked as Negaverse, so far as she could tell, but she was so tightly bound to her teammates that perhaps something had happened?

But even in her videos and records, it occasionally felt like Delilah had been grasping for straws.

"Dahlia Astera. Nice to meet you."