(The only person he could think of to spare from any such fate was Jupiter. Although she believed quite deeply in her convictions, she was notably conflict-averse and innocent in a way that Cryptomelane couldn’t imagine would adjust easily to the realities of this war, as much as he knew of them, anyway.
If Jupiter Butterfly did have any magical calling, then he hoped that the Negaverse would find her first, so that she could be safe. He would have gladly picked up any energy-draining and/or starseed quotas that she struggled to fill because, even considering the greater good, she might have felt the process too cruel. He would have covered for her, allowed one of the precious few people who liked him to reap the benefits of the Negaverse’s protection while putting in work enough for both of them.
But truly, it was better all around, for both of them, if Jupiter had no magical calling and remained ignorant of the war. Such things would have only upset her, and while she was stronger than some people gave her credit for, Cryptomelane would have preferred for Jupiter to avoid any unnecessary pain and turmoil. Hopefully, she would be lucky enough to avoid all this trouble.)
The White Moon super senshi who’d crossed Cryptomelane’s path had decidedly not been so lucky.
They’d found each other out in Ramsett Park, while Cryptomelane had sought to fill his nightly energy quota and hopefully hunt down some empowered starseeds for Faustite’s game. He’d felt the aura before seeing heads or tails of the other person, and by the time he could pick her out, Cryptomelane had hidden out beneath one of the children’s playscapes. Perhaps she was in a similar position to his own, feeling the aura from an opposing faction but peregrinating wildly through the park, unable to easily pick out from whence the aura came.
He watched her from the shadows for a while, trying to determine what to make of her, trying to suss out any patterns in her movements and plan his best avenue of attack. If she used her magic at all, then he certainly couldn’t tell, which only made the situation that much more tangled up and complicated. While he longed to prove his mettle by toppling stronger opponents, Cryptomelane knew better than to be entirely reckless about it. Charging in without sizing up his opponent would only end up with him in the infirmary and holed up for at least a couple days, recovering from injuries instead of chasing down this chance to prove himself.
Yet, in the end, despite the work that he’d put into his observation, she came right to him, all sparkling hazel eyes and silly, extraneous ribbons flying every which way off her outfit. Holding his actions as he had, she insisted, made her think that he didn’t really want to do whatever it was that the Negaverse had told him to do tonight.
Emerging from the shadows and into the freezing rain, Cryptomelane couldn’t help but think that the senshi looked like some sort of maypole that had been turned into a real girl—probably by fae magicks—then taught how to condescendingly simper about how it wasn’t too late, and how he didn’t owe his General anything actually, and how she could call Cosmos, or a Princess, right away now and help him save his soul, get him something called a Wonder so he could be the Knight he was truly meant to be.
The vein in his temple flared. His eyelid twitched and his lips curled into a scowl.
“That’s how it goes when Agents like you purify,” the senshi-girl rabbited on, nervously twisting her fingers. “You should be a Knight, just like my girlfriend. Her Wonder is up on Saturn, and yours might be, too! Or maybe it’s on Lysithea or Ganymede, or Neptune, but……but it’s yours, and it needs you, and—and don’t you think that’s sort of beautiful? Having a destiny that says you’re the only person who can care for someplace so special? Having—”
She cut herself off with a wet, choking gasp as Cryptomelane’s hand plunged into her chest.
Squinting furiously, he locked eyes with her. “I don’t believe in destiny,” he snarled, voice low and dangerous, “and if I did, it would make no difference. My fate is up to me……” He twisted his hand inside her, teasing for a moment like he might decide to let her go, “and not the arbitrary whims of Cosmos.”
Something like hurt glimmered in the senshi-girl’s eyes, but it didn’t last that long. Once Cryptomelane yanked out her starseed, everything was all over. The glimmer left her eyes, and soon enough, her body dropped to the ground, a marionette with no strings left for support.
“My condolences to your girlfriend,” Cryptomelane huffed, crouching down to ease the senshi-girl’s eyelids shut. “Perhaps I’ll send her back to you before too long.”
Something, perhaps a sense of responsibility over the corpse, made him want to stay a while longer. True, the broken husk was only meat without a starseed left behind to animate it, and Preston owed a corpse less than nothing. What a preposterous thought, even remotely entertaining the notion that he could owe any dues to something that no longer counted as sapient by any definition.
And yet……as he tilted his head, watching rainwater collect on her still faintly pink cheeks through the haze of it amassing on his lenses, Cryptomelane felt something within him stirring, making him feel as though he ought to have moved her.
In the end, he did no such thing.
A car whooshed past the nearby sidewalk, snapping Cryptomelane right to attention. While this vehicle was not, itself, marked out as property of the Destiny City Police Department, that threat flared up bright in his mind. He had to get out of here. Had to move along before someone saw anything, before the police got called.
Cryptomelane only held off long enough to deposit the flippity ribbon senshi-girl’s starseed in the mason jar he’d placed in his subspace pocket specifically for this purpose. Once it tinkled against the glass, settling in safe with the others, he pushed himself up and strode off. As he made his exit, he allowed himself to whistle, one of the only songs he could remember learning as a child that hadn’t come from Mass: I had strings, but now I’m free. There are no strings on me.……
wc: 1,164.
