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Ptolemaeus perched atop a building in downtown Destiny City, watching people window-shop, dog-walk, and eat meals outdoors. It seemed busiest around noon when everyone was going out for lunch or coffee and the Dark Mirror Senshi knew that was the best time to set his mirrorwraiths loose. He had a pair since he was of a super rank, now, and it was much trickier to keep an eye on two than one, but over the months he had managed to adapt.

It was kind of nice not having to do the energy draining himself, too - not just because it would have been more work or easier to get caught, but because he wouldn't know how much energy could be taken from someone before it would have become noticeable to them. Furthermore, there weren't any obvious signs that energy had been drained, such as the glowing balls of it that were visible when Negaverse agents gathered it. However, he had to remember that the more full his wraiths got, the more visible they became. If they were spotted before they were finished, it could have caused mass panic and unnecessary trouble could have ensued.

Luckily, Ptolemaeus found that most people didn't notice things they weren't specifically looking out for, especially among busy crowds and while focused on their own activities. One of his wraiths was zipping through an excitable child munching on a lollipop. The other swept between a couple enjoying brunch together. Everything seemed calm and the Dark Mirror Senshi thought it was a shame the Negaverse couldn't meet their own quotas in such a peaceful manner. Perhaps it was because they simply couldn't run on as little as the Dark Mirror Court did.

When Ptolemy sensed the new Order signature show up, he tensed slightly but didn't tear his gaze away from his wraiths. Not until he heard someone address him - or, at least, thought he heard someone address him. Turning, he gave the newcomer his warmest smile.

"Hello to you too, sweetheart," the hooded senshi greeted. "Fantastical outfit. Let's see...definitely an undersea sphere. But you're a basic senshi, so...new to the game?"

Flourishing an arm, he gave a small bow. "The name's Ptolemaeus. Ptolemy for short. If you don't know, since even a lot of experienced senshi don't, I'm a Dark Mirror Senshi."

He laughed heartily himself and took a few steps closer at the White Moon Senshi's introduction. "An absolute pleasure to meet you, Hypatia," he said, pushing back his hood to reveal more of his tattooed face and Cheshire grin. "I don't blame you. I'm the Senshi of Change, so it's...kind of an abstract concept."

For emphasis, he waved a hand with silver nail polish, fingerless gloves, and mood rings on each finger. "Loving the coral and pearls, though. Does wonders with the blue of your hair. Wishing I had my sketchbook about now."

His brows rose at the mention that Hypatia had had a feeling. "So you know of us?" he asked, astonished. "I'm impressed. But that makes me wonder what you've heard."

Her point that he still hadn't answered her question only caused his grin to broaden. "Ah...so you caught that. Sharp." As if on cue, one of his mirrorwraiths came skittering up to his sandal, solid with energy. It had a tufted tail, a head resembling a bird, but a body reminiscent of a chipmunk. The entire creature appeared to be composed of thousands of sparkling mirror shards.

Ptolemy reach down to pick it up. "I'll tell you what I was doing if you tell me what you know so far. Maybe then I can avoid repeating information you're already aware of and fill in the gaps of what you're not."

Ptolemy cast her a sideways look, still keeping up his own smile, before glancing down at the creature he held.

"This is a mirrorwraith," he explained. "They're usually practically intangible, but they collect energy from people. And when they're full, like this one, they become solid."

Plucking a mirror shard from his pocket, he held it up to the wraith. It eagerly disappeared back inside. "They're from Mirrorspace and the energy we collect with them power our court. It's how we're able to power up."

He shifted his weight onto his other leg to peer over the edge of the building in order to spot his remaining wraith. It, too, should have been returning to him soon. "There's actually very little even our own court members know about the history of our court's past, but I'm one of a few record keepers, so I've done a bit of research."

The second Mirrorspace creature found them in a matter of seconds and Ptolemy had its mirrorshard portal ready for it to return home through. "It's funny you should say we're not allied with the Negaverse because our founder and first princess, Ares, actually made a formal alliance with them.

"It's a tentative thing, since Ares disappeared ages ago, but it's probably one of the very few reasons the Negaverse hasn't tried to wipe us out yet." He shrugged, extending his arms. "From what I hear, one of our current royals, Princess Leto, agreed with Princess Ares. But Prince Remarque...not so much."

Dark eyes flicked back to Hypatia after he had returned his shards to his pocket and he put a finger to his beaming lips. "But you didn't hear that from me."

The slight change in Hypatia's expression hadn't escaped Ptolemy's notice, especially since he took up people-watching as a hobby. He didn't make mention of it, however, and was interested to find that the young lady brought up the subject herself - the subject he guessed might have bothered her. He was pleased to think she trusted him enough to voice her doubts despite the fact that he was an unknown, chaotic being of a higher power level than herself. Either that, or she was very brave. Perhaps even both.

"Heheheh...many of us have sought alternative methods for collecting energy other than from people," he assured her, chuckling at the suggestion regarding solar panels. "But I think it had something to do with the fact that the energy we run on, even if different from the Negaverse's, is still chaotic. On the other hand, since we're such a small faction, we don't need nearly as much as they do, so we don't need to take as much from others, either."

Waving an arm, he gestured toward the busy downtown street. "None of these people even realize they might have had energy taken from them because our wraiths are so subtle about it. And energy generally comes from somewhere else in the first place, doesn't it? Like how plants convert the sun's energy into food and then we convert the plants into our food which gives us energy."

He took a deep breath and sighed. "Our prince worries that the Negaverse will soon have this world and hopes to seek a new, sustainable one for humanity to thrive on within our realm. That realm is what we call Mirrorspace. The way it was explained to me, he hopes to use our energy to save humanity, so we need to borrow a little help from humanity in turn."

His toothy grin flashed. "It's not inside a mirror," he corrected, trying not to laugh. "We just access Mirrorspace through mirrors. It's a whole other realm. And through that is a doorway to yet another place we just discovered recently called the Mirrorscape - but I won't confuse you any further than that."

Holding out a hand, he asked, "Extreme? More extreme than waging a losing war against a more organized enemy and drawing energy from dying worlds of past lives?" Ptolemy tilted his head. "Or am I mistaken in the ways of the White Moon Court?"

It'd been quite a while since he'd met a new senshi, particularly one who was curious about his court, so the swarthy young man was enjoying himself. He often got lonely and appreciated even just the fact that her presence provided him with company. Even if he did realize he was talking quite a bit. Still, there didn't seem to be much harm in sharing what he knew.

"Oh." So neither the guardian cats nor her fellow court members had even explained how her magic worked? "But if you don't know how they're powered...can you really be sure they don't come from some morally questionable source?"

Ptolemy supposed not everyone had a curiosity in regards to why things were the way they were. But if one was invested enough disapprove of how other factions, such as the Negaverse, powered their dark kingdom, wouldn't one want to know that they weren't being hipocritical by understanding where their own powers originated first?

Unless, of course, the connection between the collection of energy and the use of it to power up hadn't been made. For the Dark Mirror Court - and perhaps the Negaverse too, more or less - said connection was pretty direct. But for someone who may not even have been aware they had a past life, let alone that their senshi names were derived from the world protected by that previous incarnation, how could they be expected to know.

"Well...I don't know too much about it myself, since I was never a White Moon Senshi," he admitted with a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck, "but from what I understand, for every senshi in existence, there was a world out there that gave them their name because the senshi was sworn to protect it. I've been told the worlds are all dead or dying, though. That's why so many senshi have been reincarnated here on this world - Earth - to combat the forces that I'm guessing caused the destruction of the others."

He closed his eyes and slowly, wearily rotated his head to stretch his neck. "Supposedly, as White Moon Senshi, you're still able to draw your magic and power from your world. Maybe someday you'll even have a deep enough connection to it that you'll be able to visit it - this place somewhere out there called Hypatia. But so far as I know, Dark Mirror Senshi are cut off from our own worlds." The young man shrugged his shoulders. "Probably has something to do with our connection to chaos. Whatever the reason, we can't rely on the same source you can. That's why we have to find other means of gathering energy to sustain our powered forms."

Raising his brows, he alighted his dark-eyed gaze on her again. His smile and tone remained friendly, but his expression was intense. "I wouldn't go so far as to call it stealing 'life force', since unlike the witches in Hocus Pocus, we don't take years off of people's lives or shorten their lifespan in any way. We just collect energy they can easily renew or might even have an excess of." Growing restless, his legs had set him to pacing as he spoke, carrying him back and forth before the blue-haired sailor scout.

"Alright, so you believe the most important thing is to not give up and to stay alive," Ptolemy acknowledged. "But look at it from another perspective. Sometimes - at least in this city - the only way you can defend yourself or others from certain danger is to power up, right?" he inquired rhetorically. He didn't wait for her to respond before continuing, eager to get to his real question. "Tell me...if the only way you could power up was to take energy from others without their permission, but also without them knowing or missing it, what would you do?"

"Hehe...true, it's not helping," the super senshi agreed, chuckling. "But helping either side would put us at odds with the other. So we're in a precarious situation."

Ptolemy cast Hypatia a wry smile. "I don't know. Remarque is the one who thought of that idea, not me. I think his plans were only to evacuate Earth if all hope was lost and the Negaverse had won, in which case anyone who wanted to escape the Negaverse could be brought to that other world. That is, if we find another world in Mirrorspace.

"Mirrorspace itself won't do for that purpose. Only our royals can stay in Mirrorspace for more than three days. It's like a place between dimensions, so to speak, so after a while, it ejects people back into this world."

It occurred to Ptolemaeus that he might have been revealing too much. He was under the impression that a lot of what protected his court was the ambiguity and mystery surrounding them. If someone was after a Dark Mirror Senshi and knew what Ptolemy had just told the Senshi of Reefs, they would realize that the court couldn't use the place as much of a headquarters or stronghold and could simply wait to ambush them when Mirrorspace spat them back out.

He didn't think Hypatia was the sort to do such a thing, but one never knew who might yet get hold of the information through her or who might even have been listening just then. "Anyway," he went on, attempting to steer the topic of conversation, "like I said, that's Remarque's plan. Me...well." The tattooed young man slipped his fingers through his wavy hair with a sneer. "Call me crazy, but I'm holding out for the hope that one day, all the factions might be able to reconcile somehow."