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Fulgurite had a lot on his mind.

Sylvite had left. She had left, and had become Nectaris, and she had broke out someone a new general-king had trapped, and she still wanted to watch over him even though she was on the other side and couldn't remember him, and he had got out his frustrations in a way that led to death which a knight had reversed and he got the money from that and the energy but--

But it felt like life was just happening to him.

He found out his general had left. Okay.

He withdrew a starseed. Okay.

He had someone offer him money to put it back. Okay.

He still had to keep a quota. Okay.

He--

Fulgurite found himself walking through the halls of offices of the Negaverse, and he realized, dully, he was coming near an office he used to be more familiar with. Okay. The last time he had been by there, he witnessed one of his other teammates sobbing on the floor, and he wasn't sure what to do with that other than excuse himself and leave. Perhaps, this time, he could take a look around.

-- Or he would just see Gismodine, again, this time not outright sobbing but definitely crying.

"Uh, hey," because Fulgurite was once assigned to be Gismodine's higher-powered patrol partner, he guessed he had some responsibility here. "Are you alright?"

Oh, now he was apologizing. For a moment he wished he was Sylvite; she would have been a lot better at handling this. He awkwardly rubbed his shoulder and then his neck and offered, "Yeah, no problem," because it wasn't a problem, really, Gismodine was the one who was crying not him--

He was going to break that cup.

He was going to break his face, probably, with that smile so fake he was worried about it getting stuck like that.

Gismodine confirmed what he had already known, but it confirmed something for him, too: Gismodine had known she had left. That might have explained the way he found him in Sylvite's office, crying and clutching a teddy bear almost as tightly as he was clutching that milkshake. "Yeah, I know," he glanced to the side, toward the closed door of the office that used to be hers--weird to think it would probably be someone else's soon enough. "I ran into her too. Knight Nectaris now or some s**t like that, like you said. Still kinda looks the same, except instead of daggers she has a moon staff."

He let out a heavy sigh, ran his hand through the upper pair of his hair, and turned back toward Gismodine.

"Guess they already reassigned you, huh. I don't know how I feel right now. s**t's a lot, right?" He leaned against the door of the office that formerly belonged to Sylvite, letting himself pretend that maybe it was still her office for now. "I'm ... fine, I guess."

He wasn't fine.

"Alive, anyway. Did you talk to Nectaris, when you saw her?"

Ashanite. He didn't know a whole lot about him other than the fact he called that attack in the park. In an attempt to capture a knight who actually wasn't a knight? That seemed to cause a lot of contention--

"Uh, me? No one yet, but I can only imagine it's coming." There was no hiding the absolute malaise in his voice when he spoke of it. "They can't just let a bunch of us drift leaderless for long, right? There were like six of us?" At that concept, he shrugged. They were probably going to be split up too. For the best in case any of them were thinking like her. Keeping them together was probably only encouragement.

Encouragement for what, though? Purification, probably, but it wasn't like Fulgurite had that option--

That was a lot. Fulgurite winced.

"Sounds like you had a bad night." And he did, Fulgurite wasn't going to make light of that--to go from getting burned to getting punched to finding out his general was a turncoat wasn't exactly ideal. "But... no, she didn't tell me she was going to leave either. She just did. I guess," he ran a hand through his hair, "there was a princess the Negaverse was torturing? And she couldn't stand by that, so she got her out."

To be honest, he would have had trouble standing by it himself if he could bring himself to actually care.

"I guess she couldn't stay after that. Which I mean is fair, the Negaverse isn't exactly kind to people who disrupt ops like that..."

Gismodine's reaction took him by surprise, but then again, Gismodine was very ... soft. He seemed softer than Sylvite's other followers. Adonis seemed blase, Ransomite felt like he knew what he was doing, Aschera seemed curious, and he didn't know Feldspar well-enough to have an opinion, but Sylvite had introduced Gismodine to him as nervous, and he could see it. Could see it in his reaction to the torture, too.

Maybe Fulgurite should have cared more.

"Do they torture?" Fulgurite's voice lifted in curiosity. "I haven't seen it, to be honest. The princess isn't the first case I've heard of when it comes to our side torturing people." He had heard of the Blood Moon, which became the Dark Mirror apparently so maybe that said something in itself, but he remembered the most distinctly the masquerade.

That had led to...

Friends? His brows lifted in surprise.

His voice dropped low, for a moment, "I think Nectaris is happier where she is. Sucks that she doesn't remember, but she's willing to talk to us even the side difference," and then his voice was louder as he said, "It'd be nice to stick together. Her being gone doesn't mean we need to be disconnected, right?"

He offered his hand.

"Former team Sylvite?"

Killing he believed. He wasn't sure he faulted the White Moon for it or expected it. They killed too. Was killing them just fair payback for the fact that the Negaverse had arguably killed thousands if not, potentially, millions?

He had been a part of that too.

Fulgurite winced in sympathy anyway, and responded with a, "Well, maybe let's go for no more hands around the throat." Maybe Nectaris would attempt to stop that from happening too? Or was she too deep into the White Moon now, too? He couldn't see her suddenly changing her mind and letting people attack him, and them, but that worry sat in the back of his mind when he thought of that moon-tipped staff.

And yet, she tossed it aside--

Fulgurite shook Gismodine's hand.

"We'll get through this, even with new generals and new expectations and whatever the ********." He smirked. "After all, at least for a while, we had the best ******** general this place had."

He wasn't sure who the ******** thought they were going to replace Sylvite, but--