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Even with as on edge as Pendour was, after everything, a corrupt Super aura was something that made her curious more than worried. People at that strength weren't as deep into the Chaos as they could have been. It was always the Generals that left her with scars, or had her wandering onto a scene where there were mangled corpses that she could do nothing about.

The others were nice, mostly, wearing black or not. Pendour had had a lot of pleasant conversations, and she was hoping that maybe this would be another one of those times.

Then she turned into an alleyway to be faced with a grinning purple girl and a pile of bodies.

Oh.

To her credit, Pendour only gasped once. She only blinked twice.

She'd learned that times like this, she had to think fast, and do what she could do, and what she did was take her ocarina and put it to her lips. She let her music play, and blanket the area in a sleepy calm.

She saw the two starseeds in the girl's hand, still. There was still hope, maybe.

Sometimes Pendour's magic worked like a charm, and sometimes it didn't. She understood that. It calmed people down, and it could free them from hectic emotions, which did a lot to deescalate situations. It didn't change what was in thr hearts.

Which meant, that as Pendour stopped the music, having used a third or so of her magic pool, the girl in front of her was now holding three starseeds, and there were now three motionless men in front of her.

The girl was asking if she was going to be a problem.

For some people, it would have been an easy choice. There would have been a trolley, bareeling down a track, with a split coming up. There were three starseeds one one track, the girl on the other, the switch that could change the train's direction in Pendour's hand.

But it wasn't that simple. It never was. Even if she tried to fight the girl, she could just send the starseed off to subspace and teleport away, herself, and the Negaverse would have been left with stories about how awful Order was, how violent.

"No," said Pendour, and though the tension was obvious in her face, her voice was calm.

She nodded towards the starseeds. "Is there anything you'd be willing to trade for those?"

A trolley. Two paths.

As the senshi made her offer, the vision changed in Pendour's head. Instead of the lone figure tied to the tracks being the corrupt, it was Pendour herself, eyes staring bravely at the sky, teeth set, waiting for impact, because in that case, the choice was obvious.

Of course she'd sacrifice herself to save three people.

"I would if I could," she murmured, because even that wasn't so simple, was it? The glowing scales that marked most of her body meant someone couldn't just reach in and touch her starseed, not without awful things happening.

Then there were soft petals fluttering around her. They were beautiful, but as their sweet scent hit Pendour, it was like one of t hose railroad spikes had been pulled out of the imaginary train tracks and shoved into her chest.

She couldn't do it, could she? There was nothing she could do here to save these people, nothing she could sacrifice or trade, nothing she could fight for, even if she'd been willing to, which she wasn't.

And there wasn't going to be anything she could do. It was going to be starseed after starseed, mangled corpse after manged corpse, faceless and smelling of moondust and smoke. She hadn't gotten that image out of her head, ever, not all the way, and now it came back stronger than ever, cut through with the real image of the sparkling starseeds in the senshi's palm.

There wasn't going to ever be anything she could do, no matter how hard she tried, how late she stayed up, how much she talked to her allies and her enemies until her voice was raw and her magic was spent.

She wanted peace, longed for it with every fiber of her being, but it was useless. It was going to be war and death for ever and ever.

Pendour sank to her knees, not even noticing the tears on her cheeks.

Pendour made a strained sound of protest as the corrupt reached towards her chest. She remembered how the robot had tried to reach into Encke's chest back on Astraya, remembered how his Transcendence had flared, how it had pushed back, how it had destroyed it.

But the girl didn't listen, and Pendour was crying too hard to say much more, anyway, as her hand dipped into her chest, and the light in her own body flared, and Pendour gasped, trying to will against it, and maybe it worked because the girl wasn't dead, but she was hurt.

Pendour had hurt her.

Pendour had hurt her.

The tears came faster and faster. Her breaths came faster, too, as she felt herself slipping into a panic. She barely heard the insults, although she did at least register the two starseeds glittering on the ground as the senshi vanished into nothingness. They rolled back towards the men without Pendour having to do anything.

One remained as a corpse in the alley.

One remained as a corpse on the trolley tracks.

Her fingers felt numb. She felt herself spiraling and knew she couldn't do it here, although her heartbeat was thumping fast as a rabbit. She dug her fingernails into her wrist.

It didn't work.

She dug harder, until they drew blood, and in that moment, her head cleared just enough for her to stand, just enough for her to stumble away, to the next alley over, and to collapse there instead, sobbing on the asphalt.