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Hvergelmir followed where the Mars knight's eyes led, over his shoulder. God, she'd nearly forgotten. The man was still alive -- there was still time. It wasn't too late.

The squire's words were slow to register with her. She put a hand down to the wound on her torso, only just remembering that the painful stitch in her side wasn't from running, but from the long slice of a sharp bracer. Her fingers came back bloody, the skin sharply stinging where dress and flesh had been torn open -- but her rib cage had done its job, protecting her internal organs and deflecting the blow from doing more serious harm.

A few stitches, maybe. It could've been worse.

The man across from her was already showing the marks of worse injuries. She'd live. And the lieutenant on the street, his face a mess of red -- he'd barely moved while they fought. He needed immediate, professional care.

She shook her head at the offer to take her somewhere to tend her wounds, her eyes not connecting with the Mars knight, but over his shoulder -- with the prone form of the lieutenant on the ground. "No," she said absently, stirring herself back into motion. "No, I have to, um -- I have to -- "

Hvergelmir pushed her way around the side of the squire and grabbed her skirt, running over to sink to her knees by the fallen lieutenant's side instead. Up close, his prospects looked potentially grim: his face barely held its shape, skin pulped and torn. His eyebrow ridge was cracked on one side, as was the cheekbone beneath it, dented in so that it no longer protected the soft tissue of his eye. If the eyeball itself had survived the squire's assault, she couldn't tell; beneath all the blood, his eyelids on that side were already swollen shut. He peered up at Hvergelmir now through just one eye, now, nearly as swollen as the other.

His nose was broken, so he breathed through his mouth -- his lip torn into a horrible split -- and she thought, in the dark, red space, she could see the shadows of broken and missing teeth.

One of his arms seemed to be broken in at least one place. His breathing was short, wheezy, and desperately labored -- part of his rib cage seemed to move in the opposite direction it was supposed to when he breathed. Without being any kind of a medical professional, she knew that was a bad sign -- flail chest, maybe. She'd looked up major rib injuries back when she and Sarras had had their run-in with a youma two months before.

"I'm -- I'm going to get you help, okay?" she told him, watching his one open eye carefully to see if he seemed to understand. "You'll be okay. Just stay still."

He stared at her with that one eye, then coughed -- she couldn't tell if that was supposed to be a response. Either way, he didn't seem to be going anywhere.

The Mars knight didn't come to her aid, didn't try to help her to save the life that was dwindling in front of them. She hadn't held out much hope that he would -- plenty enough people had shared their opinions with her that this war was too bloody and too dangerous to spend it doing anything but killing as many people as you could -- but it still presented a problem, all the moreso when he departed.

How was Hvergelmir going to get the injured man to help? Even with the added strength of her powered form, had she been in top physical condition, she didn't think she could carry an entire person's worth of dead weight anywhere -- but particularly not with a nasty cut along her rib cage, and not without doing a lot of additional stress to the lieutenant's injuries, maybe killing him from the effort. The Mars squire had maybe been strong enough -- depending on how badly he was hurt -- but he was gone now. What should she do?

Beneath her helpless gaze, the injured officer let out a long, low groan of pain.

"Okay," she answered it reflexively. "Okay -- I get you. I'll get help, you just hang on."

Even if she powered down -- which she knew wasn't safe whatsoever -- it wouldn't do any good. On the nights when she went to the park, or out on patrol, she didn't carry her phone or any ID when she was in civilian form. If something happened to her, she was too worried about dying and leaving a corpse that could lead the Negaverse back to her family or her friends. Better to assume that they'd have little problem identifying her body if the worst were to happen. She came from relative privilege -- the police would track down her parents easily.

She still had her ring. She could call Babylon, or Camelot -- but how long would it take? Would the lieutenant even be willing to power down and risk his identity? Would the hospital even be enough?

Without much other recourse, Hvergelmir settled on calling for Camelot's help once again -- but as she looked around for something to write on, another thought came to her. Another avenue she could try, one that might show more promise of actual help.

It took her a few minutes scrabbling through the dark before she managed to find where she'd dropped her puzzle book and pen when she'd run at the Mars squire earlier. It was another few minutes running back to where the injured officer lay, tearing out a page from the book, then scribbling a hasty note on it.

I practiced his name, all their names. I looked it up, to be sure, just on the off chance I ever needed it. Thank God.

There was a lot of blood on the ground, and some smeared on her hands, her pen, the note itself. Normally she would've found some other option, but she didn't know how long it would take to figure something out -- so, eager to get her missive on its way, she dipped the head of her signet ring in a nearby bloodstain, then pressed it hard to the page, stamping the mark of Hvergelmir in blotchy scarlet. The paper shimmered in the air -- a crossword puzzle printed on either side, completed at some earlier date, with Hvergelmir's writing scribbled in the white space by one of the puzzles, and sealed in blood.

Titanlåvenite -

lieutenant found badly injured

cherry & madison ave.

near aquarium

please come

- Hvergelmir of Cosmos

She settled in to wait, trying very carefully to pull the hair away from where it was starting to stick in some of the officer's congealing wounds. "Help's on the way," she tried to reassure the fallen officer. "You'll be alright. A captain's coming for you."

In truth, Hvergelmir had no way of knowing when, or if, her message would be received. From what little she knew of Titan, she was fairly confident he'd show up if he got her message, if he could -- but if not, she'd give him a few minutes and then try Camelot instead. Then Babylon. Then anyone else she knew. Someone would have to come.

It was Titan's very evident tone of concern that clued Hvergelmir into the fact that, at that moment, she probably looked like some kind of minor train wreck. She was kneeling in a pool of blood, and had wiped blood-soaked hands off on her dress a few times already; her hairstyle was half collapsed and falling around her face from when she'd been knocked to the ground; her left cheek and her side were both bleeding where her skin had been no competition for Gehenna's armored elbow and fist. Dirt stains were everywhere.

Despite what he'd called her, she was pretty sure she looked nothing like a lady, and more like she belonged on the cover of a Les Miserables playbill. No wonder he sounded alarmed.

In any other circumstance, she might've spared a giggle for the notion that she possessed the kind of martial prowess that could lay a lieutenant flat out like this with only a few injuries for her trouble. As it was, though, not wanting to be blithe, or to make the situation sound more worrying than it was, she opted just to stick with the truth.

"No," she gave a quick shake of her head. "I got here late -- he was fighting a Mars knight. A squire -- one with very dangerous magic." She considered how to explain what she'd seen, settling eventually on something she figured someone with a Norwegian(-ish?) background might understand anyway. "Kind of like a berserker?" Hvergelmir continued her inspection of the fallen man's neck, trying to see if it seemed safe to move him. He had so many injuries -- it was so hard to tell. "I got in his way, that's all. I don't think he meant to."

It had happened quickly, and been over just as quickly. She still hadn't really had time to process any of it. Her hands were shaking, she realized, pulling them back before she caused the wounded officer any more distress.

Titan was here, though. He'd come to help. She was so relieved.

Hvergelmir pointed unsteadily at the fallen man's torso, his shallow, shuddery breathing. "You'll have to, um, be careful of his chest. See how the ribs puff the wrong way, kind of? It's maybe a lung injury. I think."

Hvergelmir managed a faint smile for the utterly sincere way Titan seemed to react to things. She was relieved, frankly, that he seemed to lack anything resembling a powerful temper: it had occured to her that he might take the reality of the wounded lieutenant's state badly, and nurse a grudge against Hvergelmir's side for it. She hated to imagine driving him further into the arms of the Negaverse, or bringing down the Negaverse's wrath on a single Mars knight. If a man hadn't been dying in the street, she wouldn't have risked it. Apparently she needn't have worried, though.

Actually, her decision to call Titan had apparently been wiser than she'd realized. While Hvergelmir's level of presence-of-mind in this particular situation had apparently been "panic and scribble on crossword puzzles," Titanlåvenite was steady as a rock. He took to the emergency and started addressing it with startling aplomb, while she sat there essentially twiddling her thumbs stupidly in spite of all the helpful first aid training Sailor Gunn had tried to impart to them.

"No, God, I couldn't!" she passed on his offer to piggyback her to a hospital along with the fallen lieutenant. She had no doubt he could manage it easily -- especially considering the matter-of-factness of one moment while I break a bench, but -- in addition to the fact that this was a very inappropriate situation in which to be blushing -- it would've been a completely needless situation, and she didn't want to squander his good graces on self-indulgent shoulder rides. "I've asked you for enough favors already! It's fine, I can walk. I'll, um -- I'll call Camelot to come pick me up, no problem." (In actuality, she was lying blithely and had no intention of calling anyone to escort her anywhere, but he didn't need to know that. She couldn't call Camelot every time she had a bad day, no matter how much she sometimes wanted to.)

"I'm just so grateful you came," she said, pushing the tangled mess of her hair back over her shoulder. "Thank you so much."

The flaw in Hvergelmir's plan was that, in addition to being infinitely tall, cut like a superhero, beautiful with all his silky blond hair and unfair gray eyes, and bighearted probably to a fault, Titanlåvenite was also apparently just a boy scout extraordinaire. List of known merit badges: Bench-breaking Badge, First Aid Badge, Bedside Manner Badge, and now Carrying Emergency Notepads Badge. It was a little bit galling, all things considered.

She hadn't planned on sending anyone any messages -- but of course now she was going to have to. Hvergelmir bit her lip, hovering her pen over the paper and trying to figure out what kind of message she could send to someone that would conceivably appear to do a magical disappearing act and then not actually reach anyone. Without much time to come up with anything terribly clever, she settled for drafting a note that was unhelpfully vague:

Hey Babylon! I'm on my way home but only if you feel like it do you want to walk with me? Further to follow.

She wiped her signet ring off on her stained dress, then scribbled a little bit of ink from the pen onto the head of her signet ring -- hopefully not enough to make her insignia very easy to make out. She hadn't left a name, or any indicator as to where she was, so it wasn't like he'd show up. If he wrote back, she could just wait to summon down the incoming message until Titan had gone, then reply to let him know he could ignore her previous note. Problem not very cleanly solved, but hopefully solved, nonetheless.

With a bright smile, she tore the little paper off the top of the pad, then stamped her ring lightly to it to mark it on its way. With a tiny magical smear in the air, like summer heat distortions off of blacktop, the little piece of paper vanished. "And voilà!" she announced with a little flourish of her pen in the air. "All sent."

(While Titan was busy with his injured charge, she took a moment to surreptitiously scribble something on the next page of his notepad; a single sentence with a big smiley face drawn under it: You are a good person!)

When she was done with the little notebook, she closed it up and made to hand it back. "No thanks needed," she said with a smile and a shake of her head.

I was already in your debt once over, she wanted to say, for Babylon. It's thanks to you he's alive and well now, not dead in splinters and cracks and a pool of blue energy. She would've said just that -- well, maybe not the gruesome parts, but basically that -- but the lieutenant with them was conscious, if badly injured. Hvergelmir was already worried Titan was risking getting in trouble with his own people if they found out he was letting knights buddy up to him. Best not to mention anything else in mixed company. She didn't know how much trouble he might already be in.

"Do you have a -- like a quota, for energy like that?" she asked, referring to the orb he'd produced earlier. "Will you be in trouble for using it? I could -- ?" Hvergelmir held out her arm, inside forearm face up, in the universal gesture for blood donation.

It came as some relief that Titan accepted her chipper little bluff without question, seemingly as happy to have the matter of her escort home resolved as she was to pretend to have it resolved. It was a few cuts, that was all -- neither of them pleasant whatsoever, and the gash on her ribs was going to need some real seeing to, she was sure -- but nothing fatal, all told. A thrown elbow and a punch to the face weren't exactly ICU-worthy.

It was a funny thing, though, the curious unawareness a person had of themselves. Just like she had no idea how mauled and bedraggled she might look to the outside observer -- her cheek felt kind of puffy, but who could say -- Hvergelmir had no idea exactly what kind of expression must've been on her face when the captain bent to kiss the inside of her arm. She shivered, with a soft, nervous giggle that had probably never been appropriate to any situation in existence, much less this one, and she felt certain that her face was at least three different tints of red (bloody side notwithstanding).

Chivalry Merit Badge. Courtly Manners Merit Badge.

Watching him pick up the makeshift stretcher with the lieutenant on it was no less impressive. He completed the task with the kind of fluid grace and care that made it look ridiculously easy, like pulling a rabbit from a hat. It reminded her of a Seabiscuit quote she'd read once: He's a 1200 pound horse, Sam. I'm an afterthought. That was how it looked -- like carrying a full-grown, dying man on an enormous plank of wood was nearly an afterthought. There was something exhilarating about that, which was kind of odd. Maybe the whole night had just been exhilarating, and it was starting to catch up with her.

"Not long at all," she assured him. "You should both get going. I'm glad he's in good hands." Hvergelmir took a step back, clasping her hands in front of her like she was settling in to wait, so this could close the matter and get them on their way. When they were gone, she could write a second note to Babylon belaying the first, then once she was sure her aura was out of Titan's range, she could go home.

Then she just had to figure out what she was going to say to her parents about her face. Great.

Well, maybe they wouldn't ask. That would come in handy for once.