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Cryptomelane hadn’t really intended to look for the flippity-ribboned senshi-girl’s girlfriend. Despite what he’d told her about sending her paramour to meet her again, making a priority out of such a search would have ultimately distracted from the point of the game that General-King Faustite had laid out before the Negaverse. Even if Cryptomelane didn’t win the promotion, in the end, the game presented a rare opportunity in which an ostensible failure did not actually mean that everything had been for naught.

He might fail to fill the water bottle with starseeds and thus fail to win the promotion……but even so, he could find ways to stand out from the throng of other lower-ranking Negaverse Agents and senshi. To impress General Amazonite and potentially more of the higher-ups (including the General-Sovereigns, if he worked hard enough to earn such distinguished attention, though he dared not presume that this would happen). To learn from any failures that he encountered upon the way and to improve himself. None of these goals, however, would be accomplished by hyper-fixating on one specific Saturn Knight in an endless morass of Saturn Knights, many of whom probably had girlfriends, or boyfriends, or nonbinary date-friends, or whatever in creation a “situationship” was.

Imagine his surprise, then, when a routine civilian starseeding in Ramsett Park had summoned a Saturn Knight right to him. One of the starter-level ones, akin to Cryptomelane’s power as a Lieutenant but in service of long-dead garbage in the void of space. She’d carried a cloth doll with button eyes, which had barely attracted Cryptomelane’s interest, even when thrown directly at his head. At first, the little Page hadn’t seemed like anything special. Another Saturn Page out of countless others, no reason to think her particularly unique, though she had enough self-preservation to get out of the way when Cryptomelane lunged and swung his pumpkin bucket at her. Trying to throw the doll again gave him some mild respect for her nerve, but also made him miss Sonora of Ida. She would have provided a more interesting encounter than someone who would only repeat the same nonsense that had already failed.

But then the Saturn Page decided to open her mouth: “Please,” she said, her eyes wide and her lips trembling. “Please, you don’t really want to do this.…… Think—think about everyone who gets left behind when you do? Like—like, my girlfriend? She was a senshi, and someone stole her starseed while she was out on patrol, and—”

Very much like the girlfriend in question, the Saturn Page cut herself off with a wet, choking gasp as Cryptomelane plunged his hand into her chest.

“If you love your girlfriend so much,” he whispered, leaning in close to the Page’s ear, “then feel free to go join her.”

With no further pomp, he tugged hard and yanked out the Page’s starseed. Nothing more than a heavy pile of inert meat, she collapsed. Partially atop his feet, at that, which—while moderately irritating—was nothing special, as she had apparently been in life. He nudged her corpse off his shoes, huffing softly and flipping her over so that she faced the pavement. Ridiculous, to waste any further time on someone so pointless.

Although Cryptomelane felt the aura of someone stronger approaching him, he allowed himself a moment of distraction to appreciate the starseed. They looked so fragile, for things that contained such power. Given how easily they succumbed to a firm bite, it felt safe to say that they were fragile. Still, they shone with beauty. The one that Cryptomelane admired now sat before him, bright scarlet, like the Saturn symbols on the Page’s outfit.

It was pure instinct that made him close his fingers around the starseed when he heard someone calling out their attack. He barely managed to slip it into his jacket pocket before—

WHAM.

Something slammed into Cryptomelane, easily knocking him to the pavement. But mentally, he was off somewhere else.

Brother Horace seemed to stand before Cryptomelane with his silvery-white hair slicked back, pristine as always. Very much unlike Cryptomelane’s own hair, which he’d permitted to grow wild since getting away from Brother Horace, the compound, the church, and the family. Something twinkled in his ever-attentive eyes without revealing its intentions, the same way that those eyes—as pale as celadon—refused to tell anyone whether they were blue or green. The sight of his spidery fingers steepled together made Cryptomelane’s shoulder twinge with a memory of being yanked to Confession and absolution.

This had to be some manner of White Moon treachery, but Cryptomelane couldn’t imagine what. Senshi magic, certainly, and whoever had attacked him had said the word “Progress”—but how could they so perfectly conjure up Brother Horace’s image? How could they know the way that he always wore a white cassock, something nominally reserved for bishops and the Pope, even though he swore that it symbolized his status as a perpetual student of the Ineffable Light? How could they recreate his immaculate posture so seamlessly? They couldn’t know about this, could they? Surely not. If the White Moon could know so much about a Negaverse operative’s life, then why hadn’t someone realized it beforehand and written it up for the intelligence database?

A faint, inscrutable smile tugged at Brother Horace’s pale lips. “Is that you, little brother?”

“You……” Cryptomelane snarled.

Even realizing that this had to be some kind of treachery—that it couldn’t possibly be real life, not in light of the restraining order—he burned to fight Brother Horace. His fingers twitched around the handle of his pumpkin bucket. But as he tried to throw himself into a charge, Cryptomelane felt a cold, soft hand cupping around his cheek.

He tilted his head and stared up into the sharp angles of Brother Horace’s face.

“Look at you,” he said, in a way that sounded so much like the precursor to a punishment, but also……not, somehow. That glimmer in Brother Horace’s eye flared up again. “I have worried about you, you know, but clearly, I needn’t have. You have grown so much since the last time we saw each other.”

“You mean when you—”

“I am,” Brother Horace intoned, “so. proud. of you, little brother.”

“You’re not—”

“Preston,” said the illusion, “I forgive you.”

That statement crashed into Cryptomelane, hard and cold, with more force than he could handle. But as soon as he tried to call it out, as soon as he tried to demand to know what Brother Horace meant by that, the illusion dissipated. He didn’t… What was this… Did he really…… Cryptomelane’s fingers trembled around the pumpkin-bucket’s handle, and he went limp, uncertain what he’d just seen, and where it had come from.…… That couldn’t be real, could it? No way. Brother Horace had never been satisfied with anything, much less proud. He never acknowledged his Loved Ones’ names if he could get away with it.

Brother Horace never forgave anything. And Cryptomelane……

What had that been?!

Cryptomelane wasn’t…… And Cryptomelane didn’t…… He didn’t want that anymore.……

Something hot and wet spilled out, then down Cryptomelane’s temples. Staring up at the sky, he barely even felt the weight of whoever had tackled him. Everything seemed to swim around him, objects and experiences bleeding into each other. Nothing felt real.

Nothing but three words that escaped him in a whisper: “Forgive me, brother……”

Demesne didn’t know what had hit her. One moment, she’d been trying to stop some Negaverse Lieutenant from stealing a civilian’s starseed. The next, his hand had been inside her own chest and everything had stopped. Cold, and heavy, and just gone.

But it didn’t feel that way anymore. Warmth flooded back into her body as the starseed returned to its rightful place, and Demesne gasped back to life. Blinking, she stared up at the face of her rescuer without quite seeing him for a moment. As he came into clearer relief, though, she made a soft, throaty sound.

“You,” she said, “you’re one of the senshi I’ve heard about? The ones from space? I……” Inhaling sharply, arms shaking, Demesne pushed herself into sitting up. “Thank you.… For saving me.… But he……” She pointed a trembling finger toward the Lieutenant. “He has another starseed, there—? The old man, over in the bushes—”

“Apparently, he’ll be fine,” Cryptomelane drawled. He needed to keep this starseed, and he knew that. Doing this was Cryptomelane’s duty as an officer of the Negaverse. He needed to fight with everything he had to protect it……but after the interloping senshi’s magic, he felt like he had nothing left. Dragging himself into sitting up took an incredible force of will. Looking at the senshi and registering that……oh, he had dragon horns and his outfit looked like some mish-moshed atrocity of different pieces that Cryptomelane personally didn’t know the words for? That left Cryptomelane’s head swimming.

The only feeling he could pick out through the fog that filled up his mind was a sense of anxiety gnawing at his nerves, the heavy, leaden chill that accompanied all his mistakes when he felt certain that Brother Horace would find out somehow, and that he would make his displeasure known in no uncertain terms.

Cryptomelane needed to leave. The Negaverse needed him to protect the starseed, but Cryptomelane himself needed to leave.

Rummaging in his pocket, he pulled out the civilian starseed. An impulse flared up in the back of his head, telling him to crunch down on it and keep fighting—but no. Bringing it close to his mouth mostly made his nerves twist and scream as if someone had set them on fire. He tossed the starseed toward the senshi who’d come in to smash up his otherwise wonderful and perfectly ordinary evening. “Take the victory,” Cryptomelane snarled as he clawed his way to his feet. “I won’t let it happen again. Next time we meet, the night is mine.”

He’d need to log more time in the training rooms.…… He’d need to find a sparring partner.…… He’d need to—eugh—talk to someone and get them in on that.…… All of that sounded awful, frankly, but if it was necessary to avoid further embarrassment like this, then so be it. Cryptomelane clearly did not mind humiliating himself if the moment called for it—he was retreating tonight, after all—so whatever he needed to do, he would.