The first world they find is made of water, steam rolling off the waves in an aqua mist. But it feels warm to the touch, and across the bobbing coil of its currents lie pathways stretched through the rocks, seaweed strung through the gaps in place of ropes.

The inhabitants which hop over these watery pitfalls are brown and small like monkeys, with muzzles that slope off into a long curve like a horse's. These allow them to whinny softly at Tsubasa and Gelsadra as their pass over fish with seven-fingered hands, all of them with scales that flash like mirrors and Tsubasa can't help but marvel at the prism of sheer purple branching off these fins, letting off a soft 'uwah!' in appreciation. For a moment, it feels truly wonderful to be alive.

But as they wander, both her and Gel, across trails lined with eight-eyed crustaceans, they find blood spilled down into the cracks where their shoes meet darkness, and bodies washed onto stony lanes, placed there by hands rather than tides. And as Tsubasa, with trembling fingers, rolls them onto their sides, blood rushes out from between their teeth, slopping out in small streams of murky scarlet. All of these corpses, every one of them: drowned. But on land, with their lungs cranked to the brim with blood instead of water.

The blue mist rolls on and in, and Tsubasa shivers, nearly slips, before Gelsadra lifts an arm and launches a few sickles of wind round her waist, the tunnel of air shoving her foot back onto the rock before she trembles off entirely.

But then there is a jingle of a laugh, and Tsubasa blinks, turning to stare into the face of slack-jawed chaos. It grins, stares her down, the face of a madman present in its leer, all wrapped within the body of a brown-furred friend. And yet, from their hand, drips blood.

Tsubasa snaps.

'How could you!' she shouts. 'You're awful, absolutely awful!'

And then she becomes lost in her rage, in the red of her transformed Gatchaman suit as her sakura whips glance through the air in a fizz of pink. The swing through mist, cleaving it into colour as from beyond, she hears chatter, the other inhabitations becoming excited at the bobbing weave of the lightshow she sprinkles through the fog. But the flickering lights are not just for show, for no organic life-form can match a Gatchaman in speed. Within seconds, she pins him down, wrestling him to the rocks so hard she is sure he can feel the grit against his teeth.

'Why?' she demands, 'tell me why!'

He gurgles. Loses his smile. But not his laugh. His oh-so-familiar laugh. Tsubasa's fingers, her giant, oversized Gatcha-fingers clench into fur and muscles as he screams into her face.

'Shitty flower princess! Did you think you could swap a rock garden for the real world? Huh? Huuuuuuh? Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot.'

Surprisingly enough, the inhabitants aren't too keen on sharing their fish afterwards. And Tsubasa can't hold Katze, not when he can slip free of another's body so entirely and bleed out into the stars, out where the light will rip him of his sound, if not his substance.

But that, to Tsubasa, is fine. She has never seen Katze face to face, in his body after all, and now never will. No, to her, the scary thing about him is his voice and the way it chortles, delighting in its own meanness.

At least out there, in space, no one will have to listen to him talk. Until he finds the next world, that is.

She sighs, pressing seaweed more firmly into the side of the injured alien, red still running free of his palm.

'Can you tell them that it wasn't his fault?' she asks Gelsandra.

And he nods, turning to the gathering crowd to chirp out sounds that sound more like the tap of a drumstick against wood, than the words Tsubasa has heard in her own human tongue. But either way, at least the fur beneath her hand will stir with the breath of the formerly possessed. And as long as they can make the others believe, it will stay that way.

She sighs. They saw her turn into a Gatchaman. Next to that, what's a story about a disimbodied spirit worth?

'Katze was in Hajime,' Tsubasa says slowly hours afterwards, as they sail among the stars. 'But I guess that didn't mean he had to di-'

She falters, but holds herself steady on the dreaded word, pushing it out between her teeth as Gelsadra, eyes uncommonly sharp, wrestles her fingers back round the ceramic pot he gives her.

'-die.' She finishes firmly. 'I don't know how he was in Hajime in the first place. But he doesn't have a body anymore. Where else can he go?'

'Lots of places,' Gelsadra says, the lines on his face dipping down into a frown. 'Onto many, many worlds.'

Tsubasa looks up, out into the curved windows of the spacecraft. The blackness stares back at her, with no offer of blue to meet her eyes, not here, inside the gap between earth and the rest of the universe.

'We'll just have to save them all then,' she says decisively.

It is hard, saving things. Worlds especially. For Katze does not start wars. He simply murders, and never of course, with his invisible hands. It is always another who throws the first blow, who tosses cruel jibes into ears, even if their limbs, and their words, are not quite their own. But it is always strategic, placed within times designed for peace, like festivals or funereal services.

Tsubasa's blood runs cold at the symbolism.

She charges in, this time darting through pillars of black, a purple urn in the shape of a small bird, already spilling free of Katze's hands. He looks at her, a sneer perched on the trim tuck of his borrowed lips, as the wife of his borrowed body wails and clutches at his tasselled sleeves. With one, sharp, swing of movement, Katze reaches in, among her robes, and disembowels her.

Tsubasa screams - out of frustration, or of grief, she doesn't know which. And her strides become longer, fireworks sprinting from her fist as they fly out to gather round his head, blocking the downward arc of his arm as he yanks it free of the body and attempts to plunge it, like a needle, into the terrified face of a child nearby. He grins, surprised at her speed before, with a mad cackle, he is off once again, lifting free of that body with a few trailing sparks of red.

With Tsubasa left staring into the blood-flecked face of a child whose mother she could not save.

It is always the same. She charges in, each time preventing one last murder, before he flees and she is left there, standing, while family members yell at her, berating her in their alien language for not arriving sooner or for not moving quicker. Mostly for failing to save one last life. And it makes the breath in her chest stop, to think that once she promised the earth that she would always be there when tragedy was about to fall, arriving there in place of the CROWDS. Always on time, and never too late.

Gelsadra at least usually only gets blamed for collateral damage. His winds scratch buildings and LCD displays, tosses aside plant-life and one time, triangular-shaped boxes which Tsubasa thinks might have been bins. But he always cries afterwards.

'I'm sorry,' he yells this time, half-weeping as his arms wrap around her sides. 'They're so angry! I can't get them to listen!'

And her fingers find his hair, gliding into it as though it belongs to a pet.

'Good idea Gel-chan!' she says. 'It's time we get him to listen.'

She spends long hours scoring the surface of a moon nearby with her whips, helping to coax fireworks into fountain-like springs across the darkness of its craters, all to let them rain out like explosions. Each design is careful, well-timed, and traced out by memory from the sheets of paper she had liberated from her Great-grandfather's office before they left Earth. Gel-chan had watched her intently at the time, asking questions about colours and designs, and she had answered him half-heartedly, pencil trapped between her teeth.

'But how are you so sure, Tsubasa?' he had asked. 'Berg-Katze is so scary...how can you be sure he will be watching?'

'Um...' Tsubasa had paused and scratched her head. 'Instinct?' she offered lamely before laughing. 'No, I'm sure he'll be there. He talks like a villain, and acts like a despicable person...and I don't get why, but people like that, they always seem to be watching. Remember Suzuki Rizumu? He just sat back and watched Rue crawl through his own blood like...like...it was nothing.'

No, Katze will be here, laughing at her efforts, she is sure of it. For he haunts the stars they circle each hour like a phantom, his laugh tearing through their dreams as they curl together in the pilot's seat. He does not seem to care for the way Tsubasa's sleepy voice tries to ward Gelsandra against the guilt that shakes him awake each night.

'Don't worry, don't worry! Tomorrow, is a day full of new possibilities! You and me Gel-chan, we'll do the impossible. You'll see.'

But her words, small as they are, aren't strong enough for anyone anymore. So this time, she makes them big, spreads them across this moon's surface like an ice-skater writes lines through the ice.

WE MISS HER TOO.

Then she steps back, and prays.

He comes to her, snarling in the night.

'Stupid bitchy manure-head! Where's your ugly, crying face? Oh? No red-rimmed eyes, no panda look-a-like! Stuppiiid! You big liar! You're a hero now!'

Then the shouts dip down, morphing into a cruel, cold whisper, one slightly sultry at the edges as though there's a lust buried in there, all for something that longs to spring free.

'Uwah! I can save people, that's what a true he-RO would do, not bother to stop and talk to people, not when I can charge and use my fists. I'm a true hero, not like her.'

Tsubasa's temper leaps up. Like a flame, it roars.

'You won't let me talk to anyone!' she explodes. 'You make it so that everyone's mad at me, but I'm not the only one to blame here, Mr Atmosphere! It's not just me, it's everyone! We all killed her.' Then she pauses. 'You can try and punish the universe for it. But it won't bring her back.'

'Stuuuupiiid,' Katze drawls. 'The universe is too big for me to take on. But you, you and your pretty, pre-tae face are small enough for me to scar.'

'Go ahead,' says Tsubasa without meeting a beat. 'I'll chase you forever if that's what it takes. Focus everything on me; I deserve it. If Hajime's not here to give the attention you need, I'll gladly do it. But I won't be as nice as her, or as upbeat or friendly. So don't expect a miracle.'

There's a silence then and it stretches so long, that she fears she's lost him, this ghost who has drawn the cloak of a devil about him. But then out of the darkness, comes a whisper.

'Alright,' he croons, voice like honey. 'Alright, shitty flower princess. You got yourself a deal. I'll follow you, and I'll laugh when you fall.'