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Think of the devil. As it happened, it was exactly this person who came around the stacks at exactly this moment -- in the form of Miriam Jacobs with a hefty chemistry textbook cradled in the crook of her elbow. The weather was getting a little warmer, but Miriam still wore a long-sleeved blouse and white stockings under her Crystal skirt; she hadn't taken off her knit gloves, either, so she must have just come in from the cold. Her long hair was pinned back in a ponytail. She was walking very fast, almost marching (well, limp-marching), as she had a tendency to from time to time as if the ground was an irritating obstacle between herself and her destination. She was almost past Rea by the time that she noticed her, which made her blink, slow and bring herself to a stop like she'd just been reined in.

She and Rea looked at each other for a few long moments, as was their tendency whenever they crossed paths in Crystal. Usually neither of them said anything, and they went on their respective awkward ways. When the Crystal girls had group outings Miriam and her friend Larissa would break off and join Rea's group without explanation; Rea knew the explanation, but they never discussed it. The High Priest needed protection. The Captain provided that. No more needed to be said.

This time, however, Miriam edged with a self-conscious twist of her mouth to the seat across from Rea. She glanced at her for a moment, and then put her bookbag down -- then glanced at her, and pulled the chair out -- then glanced at her, and sat down in it.

It was a few moments longer before she said anything. "So," she began in a low voice, looking off somewhere to the side. "You look upset."

If there was one thing Captain Kunzite could do, small talk was not it.

Miriam blinked at her. "I'm here to do my chemistry homework," she said. "Now why you're here, I have no idea, but I was under the assumption that you could avoid being attacked," she turned up her nose a little, "by the forces of the Dark Kingdom while in the library."

The Dark Kingdom had attacked stranger places. They both knew that. Nevertheless Miriam shot an uncomfortable look to either side of them, not looking for youma but, clearly, for eavesdroppers: there were friendlier places to go around dropping words like Dark Kingdom and Dream Priest than the library at Crystal Academy. When she was satisfied that they weren't being listened in on by anyone, friend or foe, she opened her chem textbook to the appropriate chapter and made a rather unsubtle show of trying to read it for a minute or two.

"I'm not concerned about you," she said without looking up, pronouncing concerned like it actually meant cockroach or something like. "I just know that things are happening that you don't know about. And that I don't know about," she said reluctantly. "And I thought that we could. Well. We don't have a regular schedule for -- talking about -- well, we don't."

Time passed. Silence multiplied, became multicellular, sprouted legs and evolved into an amphibious creature.

"I'm not concerned about you," Miriam felt the need to repeat with a frown.

"No, I mean." Miriam stared at her book still. She clearly wasn't reading it. Her eyes weren't moving at all and it was open to a page they'd covered in November. If Destiny City ever needed secret agents, they could probably do to look elsewhere than to Miriam Jacobs. "I mean --"

There was another yawning chasm of silence, and she looked like she was only just working up the nerve to build a shaky rope bridge over it.

"-- I mean that we need to see each other more, you and I, Helios. Rea. There's too much happening, I don't know how I'm supposed to find out about it on my own. I don't have Nephrite or Venus. I have no idea what is happening."

She said this more like a general complaint than a plea for help, and she screwed up her mouth in determined annoyance. But the Captain had never, ever, ever once been able to ask for the help or, God forbid, the company of another human being in a normal manner. Not back in the Silver Millennium and not since. That was one of the many things reliable about old reliable Kunzite.

"We're the only ones left," she said, and it echoed what she'd said when she'd been death warmed over in her hospital bed not long before. "Do you know the Zodiacs are telling us that Serenity's corrupt and has attacked Chronos?"

Miriam reached out and closed her hand over Rea's fist and squeezed it: reassurance, maybe, but it also clearly carried the meanings of listen to me and pull yourself together. It was forward. It was definitely more forward than Miriam Jacobs was ever forward. It was thus clearly an unthinking gesture between the Captain of the Cavaliers and the High Priest of Elysion: two men who had known, not liked, but known each other for a very long time. Listen to me. Pull yourself together.

"The Opal Crystal's gone," she said. "A wizard stole it, they're telling us. And a girl who called herself Black Lady Serenity. Chronos, Aries, and Gemini together weren't any match." She'd been speaking in a low voice, but at the last it shot a little higher, earning a couple looks from further down the library aisle. "You're the only person I know of who might have any idea -- who might have any idea what this is. Unless we're to count on Luna," the emphasis was distasteful, "to tell us about this -- about this magic and this false princess. Do you have any idea about any of this?"

She sounded demanding through all of this, but the look she gave Rea was clearly hopeful: painfully, desperately hopeful. It was the Dream Priest's job to know things. It was the Captain's job to do things. Clearly she was relying on the former to even remotely begin to try and formulate the latter.

The Cavalier gripped her hand in response and said, resolutely, "Wait. Helios. Wait." She stared at her for a while before saying anything. Kunzite's eyes had always been pale -- Kunzite had always been snowy-pale in general, a desert child who better resembled some sort of yuki-onna. Quite the stark contrast to the Prince, now not at all unlike the Prince in coloring: though God only knew what form the Prince would take in this time and world.

"Slow down," Miriam was saying, though Rea had been going pretty slow actually. "Nehelenia? The Marcasite Crystal? I don't understand." The expression on her face made it clear: in Kunzite's world, there was a Silver and a Golden Crystal, and that had been all he'd ever cared to know. That was all anyone had been after.

Miriam watched her with those eyes as she explained, blinking several times at confusing terms that were brought up -- parallel court, White Court, maiden, future daughter -- but saying nothing until Rea was finished. The librarian was definitely staring at them now: Rea Marshall was a regular in the Crystal library, but Miriam Jacobs was not. It wasn't that Miriam didn't study. It was just that she didn't study around other people. She was a little less scarcely seen in the new term, where the company of a handful of silent librarygoers was clearly the lesser evil to the company of Hero Barrett.

"Okay," she said after a while, blinking a few more times. Apparently coming to terms with the existence of a parallel universe and a future daughter of Endymion and Serenity took a lot of blinking. The jury was out on which was the more difficult concept for Captain Kunzite. "Okay. So what you're saying is that some sort of -- alternate universe Serenity came through and tried to rule the world here, something which I -- for some reason -- don't remember." Miriam had an expression like she was trying to explain the entire plot of Doctor Who. "And now she's claiming that a future daughter of the Prince has stolen her Great Crystal?"

Silence. "And you're certain this is true?"

Silence. Miriam frowned and curled her fingers in on themselves; it was about then she realized she was still holding Rea's hand. She dropped it like a hot potato and put her hand back in her lap, blinking a bit furiously. "I see." Silence. "All right. Let me try to put this ridiculousness in an order that makes some sort of sense -- the Moon Court," she said hesitantly, looking to and fro for eavesdroppers again, "they were the only people I knew of who had control over time. The guardian of Pluto. But that was just superstition." She leaned over the table, talking half in a whisper. "Do you know if that's true?"

Miriam covered her eyes with her palms and rubbed them in aggravation, her forehead still about three inches from Rea's. She paid it no mind. "So the Prince has a daughter and the daughter's been corrupted," she said. "To hear tell of it. Why are we trusting the word of some madwoman from another universe? You said that she tried to take this world once -- how do we know that this isn't some other kind of game?"

But she didn't look assured of her own words, about any of it, and once she uncovered her eyes she was looking off to the side. "Never mind," she said. "I don't know. This kind of -- sorcery is your domain, Holiness, not mine." This was a bit pointed. In truth it was neither of their domains, but it was closer to being Helios's, for certain. "All I can tell you is what Chronos has told me. She was out on patrol when a woman with pink hair who looked like Princess Serenity accosted her, accompanied by a man in blue with glowing eyes. The man ripped out the Opal Crystal and dispatched Aries and one of the Geminis when they tried to defend their princess. But no one was killed; the two just vanished with the Crystal." Her brow furrowed a bit more. "I don't know what to make of it."