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The inside of the Denny's was, well, a Denny's. College students and drunks scattered across the tables there as if the Wall Street bull hadn't just come to life and rampaged across the park, as if one of Prince Alexandros's Cavaliers hadn't come to this world barely a mile to the east. It was a little comforting to see a corner of Destiny City presently unstirred by what was stirring everything else up.

The manager at the counter didn't look too thrilled to see two teen boys, who exemplified the demographic who sat for hours and hours and didn't order anything new, but seemed resigned at least that at least they weren't more teen boys. Two could only be so loud, though she cast a suspicious glance at Dylan before grabbing two menus and leading them over to a corner booth.

Dylan slid in to the seat with his back to the wall, automatically, and picked up his menu. He gave it the glassy once-over of someone who spent enough time at Denny's to know what he was having each time but always needed to look at menus anyway, then set it aside.

Their waters were set down in front of them. Dylan picked his up with his left hand, which started trembling as soon as he closed his fingers around it; he ignored this and took a shaky sip.

"I am sorry about all of this," he said without preamble. "I'm sure you're more than sick of the subject, but I fear I'm no less wretchedly stubborn than I ever was," he smiled at his glass, "so you'll have to put up with it, I'm afraid."

"Perish the thought," said Dylan. Alexandros had perished a fair number of thoughts over the years. It was an Alexandros sort of thing to say. "I was already considering you by the time I checked you -- contingent, of course, on how you responded to the check -- I kid, we're not actually going into a chess tournament on this side of the mirror. But I was. It was if that bull showed up to push me along a little in the decisionmaking process. Helpful creature," he said with a morbid smile that was, in turn, very Alexandros, and took a drink of his water.

The smile vanished on his face and he set his drink down so quickly that it was nearly dropping it. He pressed his lips together in a thin line and folded his arms over his chest and blinked, several times, at the table in front of him. His placid expression was shaking a little. He blinked very hard -- in fact, it looked like he was trying not to be sick.

He stared a little while longer and then straightened up, the moment gone. But he glanced at the water and set it aside anyway.

"I suppose Hector might've preferred I bring Aeneas over," he said. "But you're better at chess."

"Yes, of course." Dylan stared at his menu flat on the table, submerged in thought. "To be frank, I can't say it would be well-advised to keep a lot of secrets from you at this point in time. My cavaliers number a grand total of two, excluding myself, and as much as I'm grateful to have Helen as an alliance here -- she's not part of our team, she's not used to working with us. Ah, well. You work with the battlefield you have, not the one you want." That sounded like a line straight out of the mouth of King Alexandros, the Prince's father, the first conqueror and Athenian Emperor-King who had brought the Earth together under one Imperium, but Alexandros was not in the habit of quoting his father: evidence that their thought processes ran parallel on occasion, if anything. She's not used to working with anyone went unsaid. Nehelenia was a young Queen, wary and guarded in her power, suspicious of flatterers and sycophants, and she was not always easy to make alliances with. The Prince had managed.

"Aside from us, there's a fair number of senshi who don't seem to have a leader, a Zodiac Outer Guard, and the fragments of this Earth's Cavaliers, who appear to have been shattered by corruption: they underwent a great war when half the Prince's Cavaliers betrayed him. It seems they're still dealing with the rebellion, in the form of a usurper queen who calls her rebellion the Dark Kingdom."

"Grand Slam with oatmeal, grits, and biscuit," Dylan placed his peculiar order, resting both his elbows on the table and his chin on the backs of his hands. "Thank you." The waitress gave them both a look sussing them out for being drunk or high, but finding no evidence of either she nodded and walked away. Dylan went back to contemplating the answer to Johnny's question: he was a person who valued precision in communication, particularly in explaining things. He always had been. He always had liked to explain things, too.

He leaned over the table a little more and motioned for Johnny to do the same, so he could talk more quietly. "The Dark Kingdom's preying on the people of Destiny City, so it's our business to fight them whether we like it or not, I'm afraid. They've been the main adversary till recently, though the Zodiacs have turned their attention to our enemies also since the Opal Crystal was stolen. We call the wizard 'Dale Cooper' as a code name in public, though what he calls himself is 'Wiseman,' and as for Princess Serenity, we call her 'Laura Palmer,' though she now goes by the name 'Black Lady.' The Marcasite Crystal is 'the One Ring.' Great Crystals at large are 'MacGuffins.' Got that?"

Dylan's face looked more sick up close; he was a little flushed around the nose and eyes and sallow around the rest of everything else, which made him look like he had a very bad flu. He seemed to recognize it, too, as a moment later he said evenly: "I've chosen to break my own addiction to heroin. The withdrawal is impacting my archery."

That was all he had to say about that.

"Not by us," said Dylan with a frown. "The Outer Guard encountered him once, when he stole their MacGuffin, but he didn't do much other than that, I'm afraid. Actually, that appears to be all he's after for the moment. I'm still not sure whether that's reassuring or troubling."

It could be either, really. But for the presence of the White Moon princess, Nehelenia could have mistaken the wizard for some servant of King Alexandros bringing war before the Millennium could react. As it stood his motives were, to the Prince's Cavaliers, as entirely mystifying as everything else about him. The Marcasite Crystal was a feared weapon, capable of infecting masses of people with powerlessness and obedience, the Pyrite practically a nightmarish legend on the Black Earth -- but if the thief could use the Marcasite, surely he would have already. It was clear enough that he hadn't.

"We don't know what Palmer's doing with him either. The White Moon group here seems to be at as much of a loss. We have, however, gotten a slightly better picture of their abilities," he grimaced, "or at least those which they've demonstrated so far, anyway. Outlook's not great."

Their food started to arrive -- an inexact science that started with one piece of Dylan's Grand Slam, a bowl of grits, and then refilling both their waters, but then completed itself with the rest of the Grand Slam and the chocolate cake. The waitress gave Johnny another sidelong glance, like she suspected he was preggo and having weird cravings, but left them alone pretty shortly. Still, Dylan watched her go and then watched her a little longer to make sure she wasn't coming back before he either picked up a fork for his array of bland food or started talking again. The Prince had always been a little picky, and had always benefited from being a little paranoid.

"We're dealing with Cooper, who's telekinetic and can teleport, we don't know what else but we suspect some form of scrying is in the picture: there's no other way he could find the things and people he finds without being detected. So we have to consider the possibility that just about anything we do," he looked up at the ceiling, "could have Big Brother watching us. We don't know how far it extends. But we can't afford to assume anything. Same with the TK -- you'd think if he could move buildings he'd be doing it, but we can't assume anything. As for anything else, I'm not sure. One presumes he corrupted Laura, so that's within his power, anyway. And Laura's not from this time or place, I think, so someone had to have brought her here. Laura is the Moon Princess, though, Helen can confirm that. And Cooper, God only knows. I postulate he's one of her servants, maybe, corrupted and taken control, but that's idle guessing. For all I know he's from Earth and the here and now. He talks like he is, from all reports -- very colloquial, very jovial, very informal. I would like to hear him talk to see if I could ascertain anything, were it not for, well," Dylan smiled grimly, "I'd probably get my MacGuffin stolen. And that would be bad form."

He drank more of his water and started on his biscuit, the first in a series of dishes seemed designed to avoid upsetting his stomach. "Laura's a little more straightforward. She can teleport, we think, though Cooper does it for her more often. She's got some kind of energy attack. The Dark Kingdom's abilities have been pretty well-tracked by the senshi -- they're led by a Queen they don't know much about, but she has a General who works for her who uses some kind of magical whip. He used to be a Cavalier, I think they were all started by Chaos-infected Cavaliers. Might all be, I'm not sure. Girls in labcoats, though," his eyes unfocused for a moment or two, "make awfully strange soldiers."