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"Swimming would mean no chambers," she confirmed. "It is a little bit far around the island, unless you like to dive. The water over there is warm, a little different from water on earth. It is harder to float, in some ways, but it rolls off skin and magical material easier, you'll dry faster when we get out."

She gestured. "And you won't have to swim back, if you do not want to, I can take us home from there."

Perhaps swimming might even be better. He could have the same slow realization that she had of what he was seeing. She had thought it was a gazebo, with paths leading off... What would he think?

Swimming it was. Without comment, she set the flashlight down at its spot, shutting the door back in place. The soldiers would wait to be seen, in darkness, as they had for a thousand years. Perhaps one day she would earn some level of trust and be able to show him, unless it was a fear of the dark that a flashlight couldn't resolve.

It would be unreasonable to expect trust now. He'd expressed discomfort a few times. She wouldn't get to share her world in one day.

With a gesture back towards the entrance, Jada guided Wo- Gev- to a spot in the beach- and then splashed happily into the lilting waves. "Keep the cliff on your left. There are a few places where it is somewhat worn, if you need something to grab onto.There's a small cove, with an... island."

Island was close enough. And wasn't a lie. "Ready?"

She didn't watch him disrobe, averting her eyes politely so he could take care of what he needed to and set them aside. "Does magical clothing come back when you power up if it isn't on when you power down?" she asked him, the question more theoretical than not. "I've only really had to worry about my shoes, and they always come back." Something like a coat, though... these were important questions. To someone. Probably.

"After me," she told him cheerfully, and led him around the island.

As promised, the water was warm. The current was strong, but there were lots of places to grab for support, the cliff face pockmarked with age.

And the bay came into sight soon enough, the island rising from the waves like something surfacing. There was a path, under the water, and she grabbed hold of it, using it to help her pull out of the water like a ladder, rising to her feet and turning to offer him a hand when she was far enough. The path rose sharple to attach to a flatter piece of rock, which she had once thought was a gazebo. From the gazebo, there were almost a dozen paths, some leading into the rocks, others back into the sea.

All one piece, this island and its paths. Two of the paths led upwards, and one of them had a towel hanging off of it, near a hole in the wall.

When Gevaudan stood in the middle, looking at the arm-like pathways, would he see what she had, the first time she came? Would he realize what this island was on which he stood?

"Good. Just in case we don't remember exactly where we put it, or come back this way, I wanted to double-check and make sure you wouldn't be without." He didn't seem to be having any issues with the current, and so she made sure to enjoy her own brief swim around the cliff face.

When she had first seen it, she had thought it was a strange gazebo, on a strange kind of pedestal. The sheer size of the paths, their odd angles, The oddly-placed little 'footholds'... she'd wondered if it was a design for a garden long-dead. but under the water, the suckers on the fossil they stood on were large enough to cradle her body. Even where the Kraken's tentacles had turned to stone and hardened to join the cliff face, the two "paths" parallel to each other, the very ends were wider than her body.

The ledge above, between those paths, was the entrance to her grave. Jada would have the opportunity to pay her respects, she hoped.

She waited patiently to see if he would make note of the fact that the paths were circular, jutting out of the water like trees. "Yes," she agreed calmly, "It is like an octopus." or a Kraken.

Maybe it would be better if he didn't realize he was standing on a fossil... Should she try to turn his focus to the view of the world pillar? No; she had brought him to see her favorite place on Scylla... here it was.

She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes against the breeze. "Why would I want to claim a planet? I was born on Earth, same as you. That's where my parents were born, and their parents, and theirs. That's where my children were born. That's where my family is, and all the people I love." Why would she want to claim any place other than Earth? But then his next question allowed her to guess at what he was possibly actually asking.

"Ah."

Scylla allowed herself to consider the question in silence, feeling the breeze twirl through the eight-tailed sash at her waist, sending the ribbons twirling around her legs, tangling them like arms. Smelling the salt, and listening to a silence that should be... more. "How I became Scylla isn't a question I've really... considered. It comes down to luck of the draw, doesn't it? Which little crystal is stuffed in our chest at birth. Which planet claims us as protector, I suppose? Is it really reincarnation? Or- some knights are descendants, aren't they?" her tongue clicked against her teeth before she said, "Descendants or not, after this long we're all human. Any alien genetics are probably long since bred out."

That didn't answer his question though. "No, I wouldn't claim a planet. And as for giving this up like it was nothing more than tinder... That would be saying I trust strangers to do what is best for my people. That's giving up my agency, and the claws I can use to fight for what I believe, and protect the people I love. More than that, if I was truly chosen by some higher power as the one person out of billions who could carry this power..." her voice fell. "No, I wouldn't treat that trust as firewood. I wouldn't let this planet burn for no good reason." if this world burned, it would be because she knew the cost would buy victory and safety for everyone she loved.

Even those she didn't.

He was asking questions she felt like she should know the answer to, but... didn't. Gevaudan had been Wolframite, though, and while his power had changed... He hadn't. Still asking hard questions, and looking at Order- himself included, it seemed- like they were... What? Still the enemy? Surely he had learned better, now? But then, who had taught him? Had anyone welcomed him, or did they still see their enemy, just in a traitor's cloak?

But his questions gave her chills, like there was something grander. Like if he could throw who they all were away, he would. But why? She knew- it was her imaginings. It had to be. How could anyone go to these places and not... Well. She resented her homeworld as much as she loved it, sometimes. Like she had resented her parents.

"I don't know," she said at last, choosing to opt for the same honest transparency she had given him so far. Had she ever lied to him? As Wolframite, she thought perhaps she had just elected not to answer, instead of lying. "But the world was almost dead when I came and has come to life around me. Every visit, it is brighter. It is more. Does that make me any stronger? Maybe not. But it gives me hope." She peered at him, considering her words carefully. "Hope. Because if after a thousand years I can heal this world, maybe home isn't beyond saving either."

Once again, though, she was pontificating instead of answering. "If I sacrifice Scylla, what will happen? You didn't have a connection to Gevaudan, as Wolframite. Your power came from that dark queen, and Chaos, didn't it?" But he had shed that Chaos and emerged, connection intact. "If I am Scylla, is this place my soul? What is it, to be a senshi or a knight? If I destroyed this place, what would happen to me?"

It was a selfish question, from a selfish girl. "If I knew that risking myself could save everyone I loved, that's one thing. But not knowing, or becoming a burden, or leaving everyone worse off on a gamble..." Leaving her family to pick up the pieces of a dull-eyed, soulless doll...

You could take prisoners here. The comment made her head swivel back to him, and the horror that flickered there was undefined. "You have been my prisoner before." Her reminder was bleak, and remorse warred with self-loathing in her voice. "I am a terrible jailer. Why would you think I would want to try again?"

And would he want to turn his own Wonder into a prison? Did she want the answer?

His expression was bland, matter-of-fact in a way that she wished she hadn't lost. When she was still in high school, when her mother was still alive, she'd had to worry about keeping that bland neutrality, anything to hide weakness from the woman who would have remorselessly taken advantage of it. She'd let it slip since she'd become an adult, and more since Szelem died- enemies were rarer, far between, and easier to identify when they didn't wear your mother's skin.

Her eyes twitched as he spoke of the suffocation of Chaos- she'd never touched it, but the thought of it overwhelming the monster that lurked under her own skin... yet even the Kraken had been halted, cut down, alone, by the first wave of Chaos.

This energy. That energy. Each with it's own goal to feed itself. Each planet seeking its own renewal. Chaos, at least, had a common goal. Everything. Perhaps it worked together so well because of a lack of personal preference. What did it care where it struck- so long as everything went dark, in the end? Or maybe she was overthinking again, haphazardly flinging herself down irrelevant lines of thought.

The thought of senshi giving their planets over to Chaos, the taint that must surely come along with it- she understood that senshi who had been corrupted by Chaos weren't supposed to feel that call, not the way those of Order did, but the idea of passing it off to anyone... Maybe, if she couldn't' feel it, she wouldn't care. Maybe, if she lost the memory of the call, couldn't remember the visions she'd had of what life had been- what maybe, one day, life could be here again...

She met his eye, two boring into one. He was willing to be the jailer- if it came to that... "You would have to be jailer," she admitted, and she knew the weakness was there, taunting her. "I couldn't do it again. But I have little interest in turning my planet into a prison. What happens when I leave? How would we feed them? How would anyone else get on and off?" her throat clenched, and she swallowed hard. Scylla had always been the judge, jury, and executioner here. He wasn't wrong in his assessment.

He came closer to him and she gave him a small smile, trying to will it not to freeze on her face. "I haven't forgotten." she said at last, and her voice was soft, but steady. "They were my family, once." out there, walking in Chaos. Fallen to chaos, following a friend she had loved. "If I went after them, what would I do? Fight them? I wouldn't join them. Not willingly. Where they walk, I can't follow." Once, perhaps. But now, her family needed her. Two children, sleeping in their beds, needed her to replace the mother that another fallen friend had lost them. "Kill them? I'm not that strong."

He said it so easily. He would kill them- the people who had been her family. The people, however, who had tortured and tormented, and killed, no better than the Chaos they'd banded together to fight. He would so easily clean up the mess she'd helped to make, scrub violently away at the last traces of the Blood Moon Court.

She inhaled, at the thought of leaving a small animal here to die. Maybe a roach, or a spider or something, but a warm, fuzzy mammal- she wasn't so sure she could pull that one off. "You... might want to talk to Pollux or Castor if you're genuinely invested in the prison idea, actually." Scylla wasn't rejecting the discomfiting idea, but realized- "They have familiarity with... disposables."

Bodies. They knew how to get rid of bodies.

But Gevaudan's eye softened, and she blew out a breath, considering. "No, I haven't forgotten. That Court is tattooed on my skin, quite literally. And the things we did- noble as the founding sentiment, the execution needed some work. And... Chaos..." was there anyone left to go after? Of Leto? Of Requiem? Of Ares? How did the darkness spilling into their souls change them? She knew so few people who had been saved- or gone to darkness. "What's it like, Wolf?" she asked, and there was a heaviness to her words. A tiredness. "When you- joined order. You remember, but do you know- are you different? Did your hobbies change?"

But he'd asked her a question too, and she licked her lips. "My goal is what it had been before. Protect my home. My city. My family, and friends. Try not to die doing it. And my youngest siblings deserve to grow up here, same as we older kids did." But there was one other question he'd asked, and she tried to give him a smile, to inject a little impish humor into her reply. Why else would you talk to me now? "If I recall, you found me this time." if she knew him better, she might have bumped his shoulder, playfully. "I guess I talk to you because I liked you. Like you? And I owe you a debt. I gave you a moment, but I should have been strong enough to do so much more."