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"Yeah, but only mercury." As if that wasn't extraordinary enough. "All the knights can do it, but they can only go to the planet they're pledged to. We all share our respective planets, unlike the senshi that have their own. And yeah, Baikal." He shrugged, then frowned as he looked down at her.

"Are you sure?" She was shivering pretty damn hard. He didn't want her to get sick, or worse. "I mean, yeah it is mine but if you're too cold..."

They could postpone, come back again with more weather appropriate clothing for Rory.

Taking a quick look around the ruins probably wouldn't take that long, though. If she was sure she was alright they could take advantage of being there now, and maybe even come back if there was anything she happened to see she'd like to check out again later.

He continued to frown down at her for a moment longer even after she'd managed to calm the chattering of her teeth. "Alright." It was reluctant, worried, but he perked up pretty quickly at the idea of showing her around.

Hand on her back, he guided her along what had probably been a path at one point in time but it was packed with snow that crunched crisply beneath their feet but didn't held firm. "Well it's weird. I was walking back to my dorm after thanksgiving a couple of years back, and this guy, a knight, dropped from a roof into a dumpster right as I was walking by an ally. Cool guy, he checked on me a few times after but I haven't seen him in well over a year now. Anyway." He waved his free hand as if waving away the wandering train of thought.

"We got attacked by this thing that looked like a polar bear, but not, and this monster, youma," he added, glancing side long at her. "That's what they are are. The one that attacked us, too." His lips drew into a thin line, and his free hand lifted as if he meant to touch the fresh claw marks at his neck but stopped himself. "Babylon, the knight, was going to dust the youma, but it got him in a bad spot, was trying to bite his face off. And then, it's weird, but my snowball just appeared in my hand." He realized how ridiculous that sounded and it made him snort. "That's what my weapon was at page, a snow ball, pretty ******** useless."

He kept getting distracted, mind veering in different directions from the story, but there had been a lot going on that evening. "So the snowball appeared, and then the whole page get up, and I could feel the youma, and Babs, and that was kinda it, really. I distracted the youma and gave him a chance to dust it, and that's how I became a knight."

Snow crunched under their feet as they walked slowly through the ruins of ice around them. It was hard to make sense of what was still there. Buildings, he thought, but for the most part it was just a lot of what had probably been jagged edges however many hundreds of years ago this place had crumbled. What was left had been weather dulled into soft curves. Baikal lifted a hand to trail his fingers along one arching slab.

"No, no one helped me, not with that. Not with much, honestly, but I don't think I'm a very good knight. I took a long break from it when I was working on graduating, and even before that I really didn't know what I was doing." He wrinkled his nose, recalling how aimless he'd always felt. "There's two sides, you know. There's order, like me, and there's chaos, too." He glanced at her to see if she understood what he was talking about. It all sounded crazy, he knew.

"Chaos, they're supposed to be the bad guys, but I've met more of them that were just trying to survive. That weren't hurting anyone." His shoulders came up in a shrug. "And I've met plenty of order folks that were willing to do some truly ******** up s**t in the name of what they considered right. It's not simple. There is no black and white, it's all just shades of grey," he sighed before pulling on a smile to answer her questions.

"I know a handful of people, but as many as some. I know there's a ton of us out there, but I haven't met them." In all honesty he'd never really gone out of his way much to meet other soldiers. "And I guess I like it, there's perks. I can run faster, I'm stronger. If I wanted to I could jump up probably ten feet at a time, which is just bananas."

He rolled his shoulders in another shrug as he glanced down at her. "I guess since I know wht it's like to be hunted by those you a. I mean aside from the first one, when I got my weapon, i was attacked walking home from a movie with my brother. And then that ******** bird," he snorted, featured going stony.

"And you're right, but I don't think the lines are as clearly drawn in most things. Not that I'd say they're clearly drawn in this." A sigh then, weary and resigned.

"I dunno if I would have picked this, but if I hadn't beena knight i don't thinki would have been able to protect you." The possibility of having been corrupted instead didn't occur to him. He assumed she meant would he have picked a life as a knight or not.

He chuckled though. "I don't want to be a superhero. I don't want to have to be responsible for people to that degree." Fighting the youma was enough ofa pain in the a**. "I only do whati do to keep things safer foryou and anyone else I care about."

"Maybe," he admitted quietly, like he wasn't sure he believed it. Maybe if they could have found somewhere to hide, but that hadn't seemed like an option at the time. It'd all happened so quickly, and gone down hill so rapidly. Literally...

When her boats stopped beside him he stopped as well, half turning to watch her scoop up snow. "But if I don't, I could lose you." What if the one youma he ignored was the one that ended up finding her? Or his brother, his parents, Desdemona. He didn't think he could take that chance. Being a knight was dangerous, but at least he was doing something.

Maybe not much, but still something.

The snowball she'd made exploded against his shoulder and he ducked his head away from the spray of snow before pegging her with a faux stern look. "Oh, that was a mistake. On my own wonder, even." As he spoke he was scooping up his own snow, packing it into a loose ball before lobbing it back at her.

It wasn't a promise he believed she had the power to keep, but he let it go, smiling back at her as she cleared the snow from her face and called back to him. It left him chuckling as she bent to scoop another handful, packing it before flinging it at him.

It smacked him right in the chest, exploding on impact, and he was bending to grab another handful before the last of it had fallen from the front of his jacket. "I'm a big fancy knight, I'm supposed to be serious." Which wasn't true, and the playful done betrayed that.

She'd taken off running, and he sprinted after her, boots crunching loudly against the fresh snow that was literally everywhere around them.

"There's no where to hide, Rory. What's your end game here?" He had to pause to throw the snowball in his hand, lobbing it at the back of the girl's shoulder.

Down, but not out, Rory sprang up from the defensive crouch she'd taken to pelt Baikal with not one, but two snowballs in rapid succession. The first hit him in the hip, the second caught him right where neck met shoulder and he jerked back, sputtering as he got a face full of snow and then falling backwards as the heel of his boot caught something solid buried in the powdery snow.

He landed on his a** with an indignant grunt, and swiped at the snow in his eyes before peering down to see what the ******** had tripped him up. "Ex-cuse you? I am lightened up," He insisted as he leaned forward to clear snow away from a something small and solid.

It was a figurine of a seal. A very round seal. He pulled it out of the snow and blinked down at it curiously. "Hey, time out for a minute, look at this." It was clear and cold to the touch, but for one reason or another he didn't think it was made of ice.