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It wasn't often Andronicus got a call from someone she didn't know on her signet ring. It only really seemed to happen when something terrible had gone wrong or they were all being sent to a planet for 'Code' work. She was three blocks south of the knight when she got the call.

Well s**t..

The Squire spurred the wind to give her speed, racing across the rooftops until she got to the intersection. She looked down, catching the sight of purple and silver, and jumped from the three story roof top. Andronicus landed with a thud, caplet snapping in the wind. Blood wasn't really a problem for her but, by Andronicus that was a lot of it.

"s**t woman who stabbed you?" she asked the knight. She pulled her caplet off and balled it up, moving to press it to Megiddo's throat and offer more pressure.

Castor had two things going for him when it came to senshi communication. One, better ability to sense s**t. Two- a not shitty phone that would break if dropped old phone mode for life.

He loved a classic what else could he say.

But, a classic phone didn't help when he noticed a small gathering signal of order not to far off. And while he might not have gotten any message, he certainly didn't miss a beat on what he was walking into.

"I am." Castor's voice cut the air as he walked forward, flicking between the knights, Megrez and the fallen.

Kneeling down he focused on the knight bleeding out. She was dying, and yet no dead body was nearby, and no chaos was lingering. Someone had intended to leave her for dead.
"A sloppy job. So long as she stays awake her chances of survival are high- But an ambulance won't arrive for a few minutes which will only risk her bleeding out. She's lucky who ever it was had s**t for aim.... or wanted her to suffer."

Flipping open his phone he swallowed, his voice shifting to a deeper accented new yorker manner of speech. "Spring Street and Fair Avenue- lady bleeding out- somebody got real nasty with her, ******** I don't know who but ******** s**t ********-" He raised his voice with each word, finally hanging up.

"If we wait, she risks bleeding out. If we take to the roofs, we might not make it in time. Either way, don't shift until it's absolutely needed. Whatever, whoever did this might be lingering, or, getting someone to come and finish what they started."

There were a lot of signatures nearby! It wasn't meetup night with Astrophyllite, so she was kind of just going for a run. Not really a run--her uniform had jack s**t for support--but she was outside, picking up eggs for Dada in the morning, since Dad had forgotten.

So when she got the message, it was with a CVS bag over one arm and a hoodie thrown on to hide her chest. "Hey, what's--"

That was a lot of blood. Colchis blanched. "Oh my god! Is she okay?" She stopped near another Page, this one in the same colors as the bleeding knight. "Are you guys just watching?" She tossed her eggs aside (they splatted, it was sad) and knelt in the blood puddle next to the fallen knight. This had to be Megiddo, she thought, pulling the woman's violet hair away from her face. "Not you," she said to Andronicus. "You're cool. Hi. I'm Colchis?"

She pulled off her hoodie and offered it to the other knight. "This's more absorbent," she said. "It'll be better to keep the wound clean and dry until the ambulance gets here."

Colchis squeaked at Megiddo's surprisingly tight grip, the muscles in her forearm going tense as the blood was painted across her skin. A chill went down her spine at the name. Astrophyllite said that most Negaversers' names ended in -ite. This one didn't. "It was another knight," she said, her voice superstitiously low. Then she repeated it at Megiddo's confirmation. "It was another knight. Camlann. He's... he's gone now, though, I don't sense anyone but us."

She looked to the two Eternals for confirmation, her arm held carefully away from her body. They would want to remember this. Someone who would attack their own couldn't be trusted and had to be found. "You guys can hear really well, right? Like... do you hear sirens? Or sense anybody? My friend Astro can sense people for miles and miles but I can't. I'm bad at it."

Ploutonion had not expected to know the name of Megiddo's attacker, and that had been a reasonable expectation. He had been a Knight for what, a week? His breadth of knowledge was not exactly particularly wide.

But Camlann - Camlann he did know. And he had seemed decent enough, certainly not the type to go slashing the throats of other Knoghts of their same order. But Megiddo certainly had no reason to lie, and who the hell wrote a name in blood (on someone else's arm, eugh) and made a false accusations?

"Camlann Squire of Saturn," he said. "I met him, once." It seemed the younger Page was taking care of as much of the medical side as any of them could manage, and that made him feel even more useless and uncomfortable. "Is there anything else to be done for her, before the ambulance comes?" Not that he would have any ******** clue this side of his planet. He just felt like he ought to be doing something.

"I am Megiddo Knight of Saturn," the voice whispered faintly through her ring. Hvergelmir's ears perked up. "I am bleeding out in the alley at Spring Street and Fair Avenue..."

Hvergelmir had always considered herself a fan of the signet rings that, as knights, they'd been given. With them, they could communicate with others and use their aspected magic -- which were most of the things Hvergelmir did as a knight. She'd never found cause to shirk Mistral's upgrades -- not when so many had died for them -- and she was truly grateful for them now. She didn't know Megiddo of Saturn, except by name through friends, and Megiddo didn't know her. But it didn't matter today: Mistral had brought them together in their time of need. Hvergelmir could help.

She was hindered by the distance to the problem; city blocks were slow and indirect, a frustrating zigzag of west-south-west-south-west-south to get to where she was going. Eikthyrnir would be fastest, of course, but she knew from experience that the great caribou was good for only one jump -- and Megiddo would need that one to get to the hospital. It was miles off, even as the crow flew. So Hvergelmir took to the rooftops instead, skirt tied up and off to the side. Her soft shoes smacked hard against the cement and gravel with every landing, not made for running. She wished -- slipping precariously a few times, and having to even skid into a slide and catch herself once -- that she'd spent more tie practicing this aspect of knighthood.

Running, jumping, climbing trees -- tall buildings in a single bound -- ricochet jumps from rooftop to alleyway -- none of these were things she bothered with too often. Her comrades were, as ever, so much more experienced in anything that required any real physicality.

What could be said of all this, thought, was that at least she arrived in one piece. One leg and hand were gravel-scraped, and she made the last ricochet jump from wall to ground more or less landing on her rear end, but Hvergelmir had hurried as best she could. She got up, a little dirtier for wear, and ran the last turn around the alleyway toward the bright conglomeration of power signatures right ahead.

There were two senshi and four knights there, all surrounding the fallen knight who'd called for help.

Hvergelmir thought of Mistral, seeing so many who'd rushed to Megiddo's call for aid, and she thought: You did this. You should be proud. She wondered, after everything that had happened, how the Mercury knight was holding up.

But there wasn't time for it now. Right now, Megiddo was in exactly as dire of straits as she'd indicated: she was quite literally bleeding out on the ground. From the neck.

There were times and places where Hvergelmir felt very, very useless as a knight. In fact, in most times and most places, she felt very useless as a knight -- and was. But here, for once -- this was something she could do. If it worked, she'd be grateful for all the time she'd spent spinning thread and weaving at her loom, avoiding her other responsibilities.

Hvergelmir reached into the little void of subspace and yanked hard, urgent -- pulling back a glimmering ribbon with the tug of her wrist. She focused to activate its little flow of magic, then turned to find someone -- anyone -- she recognized. Andronicus was first and closest -- but she and a young-looking Mars knight were keeping pressure on Megiddo's wound, which was too crucial to be interrupted.

"Glitnir," she said with some relief, locating another knight she knew. "Tie this around her neck, just under the wound. Quickly, but make sure it's secure." She moved to hand the ribbon over, already looking for more faces she recognized to help her with the next bit.

This presented a problem. The remaining people present were a page of Saturn she'd never met, and two eternal senshi she'd rather she'd never met again.

Megrez and Castor. She couldn't imagine worse luck.

Hvergelmir felt herself inwardly falter. Her eyes skimmed away from them and back to Megiddo, still bleeding.

Babylon would not shirk help for a dying comrade. Naeroyfjord and Kairatos wouldn't, either. And Ida -- Ida least of all. Hvergelmir didn't want to disappoint any of them. She didn't want to live with the regret that poor Persephone had suffered.

"Megrez, Castor," she decided, trying to assess the situation quickly, like she knew Ida someday would. "Get her armor off. I can teleport her to the hospital, but I need her light enough for me to carry."

Hvergelmir turned last to the page of Saturn, the dark-haired stranger. "You're a knight of Saturn, like she is," she said hastily. "I need you to talk to her. I need her to hang onto her powered form as long as possible. The ribbon I gave her will help a little, but it's mostly her own power that's keeping her alive right now. Tell her something she needs to hear -- I don't care what it is. Can you do that?"

Castor took few things seriously in his civilian life. Actual work that had actual legal ramifications, wrapping his willy, driving, and making sure to put on the most presentable front for the cameras and media. As a senshi, he was quite the same. Patrolling? Not serious. Teaching senshi? Kinda? But not too serious. But when it came down to purifying, to bringing someone over at the risk of his life and their own, Castor felt a few key things. Obligation. Responsibility. Guilt. Whoever he brought over was ultimately, his responsibility- he was the one who had given them the choice, and he was the one who had committed the action and judged them worth the risk of the balance shift.

Camlann had been his first purification.

Camlann had according to the other knight, attacked her and left her to bleed out. That much could not be disputed, not right now with her life slipping away.

"We have approximately 2 to 3 minutes until we see an ambulance or officers on scene. As for Camlann," he knew the knight would reject his line of reasoning, as would others, but it would buy the man time lest he be found dead by his own blunder, "he is under my protection, as I was the one who deemed him fit to purify. His actions are my responsibility and if any of you have an issue with that you can take it up with me." Castor boldly proclaimed.

"He will answer for this, but if you try to take matters into your own hands then rest assured, you will then be the one answering to me." He let the threat linger before emphasizing his point. "And I can assure you, any answer you give me to justify this or any form of justice or retribution will be met with something far worse." It might buy Camlann time. Royal or not, power and a reputation for brutality or not, he had no true allies here, at best, kindred spirits or like minds; if they chose to hunt down the knight then it would simply be a race against time to get to Camlann before them. He didn't purify some knight just to have them killed over a claim of aggression.

A pause as he glanced to Hver before he cracked a smirk. "A knight ordering royalty. Really-" His face turned to the knight currently bleeding out as his hands began working at the armor, clasps and belts undone with alarming precision that only could be explained by experience. "-Can you believe this girl?" He looked back at Hver clearly trying to make light of the morbid situation. "Really- this is a page's job. You're just lucky you asked me to take something off a pretty woman, I mean how could I say no?" His eyes flicked towards the others and then motioned towards the the street hoping she'd pick up on the unspoken reality. They were running out of time, and soon, the ambulance would arrive, along with police. If they were spotted, lingering, it would be disastrous for 'PR', and for their own safety as well.