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Nectaris liked the warm weather, too. Getting out got her mind off of stuff, and that was always a plus. This time, she was trying to be productive, though. Instead of just doing parkour off of the rooftops, or smelling flowers, or spinning around in the grass, she had her staff out and she was trying some moves with it.

She really wanted to get a spin attack to work, because it always looked so cool in the video games, and she’d spent a good fifteen minutes on that one, like, the different variations of it. She kept getting dizzy, though, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t practical.

That was so sad. Why did all the practical stuff have to be boring?

Luckily, a senshi coming to say hi kept her from thinking too much about practicality, and getting fed up with the limits of physics.

Her eyes widened as she got a good look at the woman. “You have a tail,” she gasped. “I mean, hi, I’m Nectaris, we can start there, but also, you have a tail! It’s so cute!”

She was practically bouncing on her toes. Take that, physics. Maybe spin attacks couldn’t be real, but at least she got cool aliens.

“I’ve met a couple of aliens now, but not all of them have cool tails like you!”

“I am a Knight of Earth’s Moon, yeah!” said Nectaris. “I think it’s a new thing the Code’s doing? Like, trying to get some protection up there since there’s some important things to, you know, protect!” Like the cornerstone piece! Also, her butterfly garden!

She was still staring at the tail, and then the wings on her head, too. Oh, those weren’t just part of her crown, were they? Nectaris blinked.

“I’m just a human, though, yeah. Sorry to disappoint!” She was also kind of sad that the cape wasn’t actually some kind of fairy wings. Especially if she could fly! “I used to be an alien. Like, in a past life. I had purple skin, with like, these glowing spots on it? I had a vision of it and it was weird. From Encke. Not anymore, though.”

She shrugged.

“Now I’m just. Me.”

Nectaris wouldn't have minded having real butterfly wings, but she was okay with being human, too. She was proud of being a Moon Knight!

"Oooh, you wanna see my skills?" said Nectaris, holding up her staff proudly. "Did you see me practicing earlier? I dunno if I'm an expert fighter, but I've been trying some stuff."

Which just left picking what move to try out first. Puffing out her cheeks, she took a second to think, then decided to go with the spin move.

No, it wasn't the most practical, but Kemi seemed smart. Maybe she could figure out a way to make it work.

"Like this," she said, stepping forwards with a giggle as she held out her staff and twirled.

Oh, hey! It had kind of worked.

Okay, maybe Kemi had just had bad balance and would have ended up falling over that tree root anyway, but Nectaris was gonna take it. "Thanks," she said with a half-giggle, drawing her staff close to her chest almost like she was hugging it once she was done with her spin.

Then Kemi was talking about magic and Nikki was bouncing up on her tiptoes.

"Oh, yeah! You gotta show me!" Even if it was something really miserable, she had to see it, just for curiosity's sake. She loved seeing magic.

She didn't know how she'd dealt with being an agent for so long and not having any cool sparkly magic of her own.

"What are you the senshi of? You didn't tell me yet."

"Oh, that sounds cool though," said Nectaris. Like, okay, maybe deception wasn't the cutest, most appealing sphere, but it souded like the kind of thing that could be tricky and strong and be really useful.

Was her magic working? Was it normal for senshi magic to fizzle out like that?

She didn't have much time to think about it, because just like that, a mist was coming towards her, and-

"Alexa!"

She was in the Bell's house, but it was her mom calling her name with a grin. Not Safira, but the mom who had brushed her bangs away from her forhead to kiss her ever night when she'd been a child, the mom who had looked at her first disaster craft projects and seen the potential there. Her dad was there, one arm around her mom, and he said, "We're having dinner in a few minutes."

She could see some of the others down the hallway in the living room, some of her adopted family, Luke and Richard and Ignacio, and they waved at her, too, as the front door clicked shut behind her.

They were all happy. All together. New, and old, with all of the good and none of the bad.

Then it was gone, and Nectaris was reaching out towards someone who didn't exist.

Her parents were gone. They might as well have been dead to her. There was no going back. Even if there was, they hadn't been a perfect family like that. Her parents fought about money, or they buried themselves in work, or they sat on opposite ends of the house, not talking to anyone, least of all each other. Nectaris knew that they'd ended up getting divorced since she'd purified.

Her adopted family was healthier, if she was super honest, but that didn't help the hole in her chest that still hurt so much whenever her feelings got jostled around.

For a moment, though, it had felt like maybe it could've been real.

Now, there were tears running down her cheeks.

"Oh," she whispered.

"I'm okay," said Nectaris, rubbing at her eyes and taking a deep breath. Maybe she'd cry more later, when she got home, but it wasn't like these weren't the same feelings that she'd been dealing with for a long time.

She just had to think about this the same way she thought about the weird dreams she had about her family and everything sometimes. She had to shake it off.

"That's actually super cool. Super, like, powerful. I mean, imagine if we were in a real fight and you pulled that out. Like, woah."

If someone was in an illusion like that, she could probably get a hit on them with her moon staff no matter how impractical and spin attack-y it was. And if it was someone who she really needed to beat up she could maybe get in more than one hit.

"So yeah, I still wanna be friends. Maybe we can do something else right for this exact second though?"

She didn't know if she wanted to go through that again.

A second passed. "Wanna go to the Moon?"