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When the laughter finally mellowed and softened into a final little huff, Hybris took in the other boy's reasoning and admitted, "Fair enough. And well, he wasn't so mean the next time we met, but everybody was just too busy at the time to be bullying little mirror senshi like me. There was a whole..." he gave a broad, vague gesture. "World eating snake monster from space thing."

With a wan smile and accommodating tilt of the head, Hybris went on, "It was called the Calamitous Hallow, and it almost destroyed the world, except some people stopped it. Though it did kill me before they managed to pull that off." The sigh that followed was extremely put upon, even though it was his own poor impulses and curiosity that were at fault. If he'd stayed put, he likely wouldn't have even gotten his uniform dirty.

"It was interesting, to be unmade so thoroughly, and remade piece by piece. And I got to see something...extraordinary." And here his voice took on a dreamy, besotted air. "I'd be willing to die again if I knew I'd return to it."

It took a bit, for him to return to the matter at hand, and he gave a small shrug. "Maybe he died there too. There were a lot of people dying without a body left behind." Thinking for a second he scowled, "That youma was ******** around with me." And he scowled further as he tried not to smile, a little charmed despite the offense.

"Not as neat and tidy as you. More of a resurrection, really." And here he turned his head to give the other a little n** at his neck. "Once I was dead, and then I was not."

Hybris had thought and daydreamed quite a bit about what he'd seen, so the words trickled out smoothly, almost like a prayer. "The Dark Star is massive and broken. Crowned with crystal, haloed in pure light and violet power, a great gaping maw awaits within its cracked surface, near obscured by its shifting veil of lightning. It doesn't belong here, and wherever it is, nothing else is allowed to remain."

A sigh, and then, "I think it would consume me, but maybe also crush me down into something beautiful, perfect, and nothing at all."

"I thought I'd hate it," Hybris admitted as Eles continued to slide his ******** up and curious fingers under his surface, letting the few honest parts leak out and breathe for a bit. "I like being a body, you know? But I didn't, and it was too fast to be painful. Too fast to be scared."

The rapid signing had Hybris turning to get a good look, to pick out any signs of another attack, but this was different. And as he plucked a pen out of subspace, Hybris felt a sudden and intense relief. How long had he been talking about himself?

Too long by far.

With a flourish, he handed the pen to Eles, curious to see what happened next.

Hybris never minded graffiti in books, they were an addition rather than a defacement in his consideration. And Eles's choice was so very appropriate. Craning his neck to watch, it quickly became clear that he'd been inspired by the description of the Dark Star. Skillful, he noted as the it took on something that was almost a direct glimpse into what he'd witnessed.

No, not almost.

"You were there," Hybris breathed out as the details and the...feeling, oppressive, consuming and grand emerged. Which meant he'd died there. Opening up his mouth to voice his guess, Hybris paused.

Do you ever see me without him?

"You were there," he repeated, and that you couldn't possibly be the boy in front of him. But magic was real, now wasn't it?

Letting out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, Hybris patted his chest. When had his heartrate picked up so much? That's right, there were quite a few people there. Hundreds.

"We were in a special, temporary arena out in space. Yes, literally out in space," before Eles could ask. "And while we...they were fighting the Hallow, it rent dimensional tears in its wake. I don't think anything could even reach the Dark Star without something like that carving a path." He shook is head, "You were there. So! You were a senshi, or a knight, or an agent of chaos...or a cat." And a smile finally crossed his features that had been increasingly pensive. "You had power."

Eles could have been part of any faction, save the Mirror, who lost no one but himself. "It's a lead?" He looked at the other boy with a certain hope. You don't have to be Faustite, who could be anywhere and anybody else.

With everything else strange and improbable that Eles had met while falling down the rabbit hole of a new existence, it shouldn't have been too much a surprise when Hybris sighed, "We're going to have to find a talking cat."