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It wasn't like Nectaris was going hungry. It turned out that Encke's family was both very generous with the food and also very good at making that food. She was getting three square meals a day, which, if she was being honest, was probably the best she'd ever eaten, unless she'd somehow upgraded from ramen and cookie packs in the years she couldn't remember.

For some reason, she didn't think that she had.

Anyway, she was getting nice and fed, but that didn't mean that she didn't occasionally need a snack when she was running around trying to make sure that the Negaverse wasn't doing anything bad. It definitely didn't mean that she was immune to the smell of something cheesy coming from a nearby street.

Nectaris walked around the block until she saw the food truck, and then she ran right up to the window.

"Hi!" she said, waving. "Can you give me the yummiest thing you have? I have money!"

Who was she? It was probably a valid question, but it wasn't exactly one she'd been expecting when she just wanted to buy something nice and cheesy.

"Uh, Nectaris?" she answered, glancing down at the moon staff she was holding in her other hand, and also at her outfit as a whole, which admittedly did kinda make her look like she'd crawled out of an 80's anime.

She gave a couple of second of thought to trying to kick the staff under the truck so that it was less distracting, or, like, to come up with some explanation for why she looked the way she did. Maybe she was cosplaying?

She also kind of wanted to ask him why he was looking at her like that. It almost reminded her of the way that one Captain had looked at her, like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

In an impressive display of self control, she just asked, "So, uh, are you gonna sell me food or no?"

If he did, it'd probably be easiest just to do a loop around the block and show back up again as Livie.

He'd seen someone who looked like her? Yeah, that could explain some stuff.

Also, she realized with a weird, sinking feeling in her chest, it might explain why he wouldn't wanna sell food to her. She really hoped that she hadn't done anything bad to him, because she wasn't really sure how to explain about Chaos, and why she might've done bad things, and why she was better now. Like, this guy was just trying to sell dinners to people. He probably didn't even believe in magic.

"I guess you might have seen me before?" she tried saying as he vanished back inside his truck. "Uh, I used to wear a different outfit, though."

That was the best she could figure out.

Only, then he was coming back out with fries. He was coming back out with free fries, and he was asking if she was a superhero.

"Yeah, I'm a good superhero," she said, 'cause that was the easiest way to explain it. "A Moon Knight, if we're being all technical."

She reached out for the tray right away and stuffed a fry in her mouth before he could take back the free part. Her eyes widened. "Woah, these are really good."

Now it was Nectaris's turn to kinda stare and blink in confusion. If he'd seen her around as Sylvite, that was one thing, but why would she have talked to the cheese truck dude about whether or not she was gonna be leaving the Negaverse?

Why did the cheese truck dude even know about the Negaverse? There were a lot of questions, here.

Unless-

"Wait. Are you in the Negaverse?" she asked, eyes narrowing. "If you're in the Negaverse, I can't talk to you about this stuff. Also, I probably would've told you I wasn't leaving the Negaverse so that you didn't think I was a traitor, duh."

She'd heard rumors that they weren't very nice to traitors, although she hadn't actually had any issues with people trying to track her down, yet.

Oh. An Order Senshi. That made sense too, she guessed. Nectaris nodded brightly, all of the suspicion that had been in her face and voice just a couple of seconds ago already gone.

"Okay. Sorry," she added, "I just gotta be really careful, you know? 'Cause, I'm a traitor now, like I said. It's a whole thing."

She looked at his face one more time, and then looked at her cheese fries, 'cause she felt like if she was going to remember something, cheese fries should hopefully be something that made the list. Like, she'd randomly remembered trying a new Starbucks drink the other day, but this time, none of it was ringing any bells, and she shook her head.

"And no, I don't remember, sorry about that, too. I kinda forgot, uh, everything from the last seven years? It's really bad." If she stopped to think about it too much, she would freak out, so she kept going.

"To answer your question, they were torturing a Princess. Maybe some other bad stuff, too, but that's the only one I kinda remember. It was gross, so I busted her out, and obviously I left 'cause I can't support people doing stuff like that."

She paused to eat about five more fries.

"It's been, uh, weird? It's a lot since I pretty much lost everything, but I did save someone's life, and I don't have to be evil, so all that' pretty cool." Her words came faster and faster, but she was careful to never stop smiling.

Was she happier now?

Yeah, she was supposed to say. She was magical, like she'd always wanted to be. She was free from whatever crap had gone down in the Negaverse, from stuff that she couldn't remember but that gave her a sinking feeling in her stomach if she thought about it too much.

Only, in a lot of ways, it didn't feel like she was free. It felt like she was a fourteen year old who'd had her whole life ripped away overnight, and had it replaced by some horror story where she was being chased down by bad guys who were mad at her and where she couldn't go back to her mom.

So, before she could stop herself, the words slipped out. "I don't know," she said, softly, and then she blinked, and then she said, "I mean, yeah. It's better now. Obviously."

She smiled. She could manage that much, when he was offering her more free food and a dog friend.

"I will eat any food you give me. Do you have, like, actual mac and cheese? I love mac and cheese. Also, dogs. Also, friends."

If she kept talking, she could keep from breaking down on this food truck guy who she'd apparently met before.

It probably wasn't hard to pick up on the fact that Nectaris was having issues with adjusting, no matter how much she tried to cover it up with giggling or changing the subject. People probably knew, but they didn't always try to talk to her about it.

Absolutely zero people had tried to talk to her about it while handing her a steaming paper bowl full of homemade mac and cheese.

"Woah," she said, mouth already watering.

If there was a way to keep her invested in a conversation, handing her a steady stream of free food was definitely it.

"What makes it weird, I guess, is that I'm doing pretty good at the rebuilding part. There was this senshi who'd kinda helped me decide to purify, he took me in afterwards, and his family's really nice. I'm working on job stuff, too. I'm a magical girl, which is something I wanted since I started hearing rumors about the war."

She took a second to take a bite of mac and cheese, which turned out to be absolutely heavenly. She had no idea why anyone would ever go to a bar and drink gross vodka while they talked about why their life was falling apart when they could be right here, eating this mac and cheese.

"It's just weird, having lost a big chunk of my life like that. Plus I can't ever go see my family, that's probably what sucks the worst, and there's nothing I can do about any of that. It's not gonna get fixed. I just have to try to figure out how to be okay anyway."

She glanced back to Evan, who'd apparently met her before.

"You'd probably know better than me, though. Do you think I'm happier, than I was in the Negaverse?"

"A youma?"

Nectaris didn't know what she'd been expecting him to say, but it definitely wasn't that. Her lips twisted, and it had nothing to do with the taste of the mac and cheese she was currently biting into.

"What? That's so weird. Youma are gross."

They were so gross that she actually got quiet for a few seconds, just thinking and thinking about how gross they were, how weird that would be, being one, how little she understood what had gone on in that gap in her memories.

"Do people, like, want to be youma? Is that a Negaverse thing? It's weird, if it is." Another moment passed, and she stopped chewing on the mac and cheese. "Was I weird?" she asked, 'cause he was saying he didn't know much about her, but he seemed to know enough to answer her questions.

"Whatever. I guess I didn't do that, so that's good. And, like, I guess it's good to hear that I was all messed up, 'cause, like, if I'm happier, this is worth it?"

She was still talking too fast, jumping from one thought to the next, which maybe didn't make her sound the most convinced, but hey. At least it seemed like she'd dodged some kind of bullet.

"And, yeah! We should hang out more! Uh, eat more mac and cheese? We can take turns bringing it but mine's gonna be out of a box."

She wanted to try being supportive of him, too, though, since he was being all nice.