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Didn't matter how many times she came up against a youma, every time it scared the s**t out of Avalon. Oh, well, the small ones, who gave a ********; it was easy to find a labrador-size monster and break its spine. But when she came up against one the size of a lion or a bear, well, she was about ready to call it quits and bolt home. Except she couldn't, because the damn things could track her, and there were civilians, and she couldn't let them hurt the civilians. Law of the land. Law of Avalon, really.

She took a deep breath and planted her feet, having found herself a nicely box-filled alleyway. The monster could only approach from one direction--the front. Or above, but Avalon had good ears, and a good sense for Chaotic auras, and she knew for a fact that she could kick just about anything into submission if she could just get it on the ground.

Once she graduated, she was so signing up for jujitsu or taekwondo or something. Any kind of self defense class she could jam into her schedule. Come to think of it, didn't DCU offer one during wintersession?

No time! She brought her wand to hand, held it before her, and tried not to feel like a ******** idiot. Raging bear lion monster versus skinny weed squire--not exactly the match of the century.

Avalon was not very good at keeping her focus in critical moments when corny motivational slogans were being shouted. Her chin jerked up, her shoulders slotted forward, and she turned quick enough to give herself a strong case for possible whiplash; another person might have called the motion fluid but in truth it was more like a flick-knife, sharp and jerky and pretty much the antithesis of graceful.

She was not, by-and-large, a graceful person.

It was then that the bear-lion rounded the corner, roaring fit to burst, and Avalon whipped around to kick a box into its face. "Absolutely! Don't wait for an engraved invitation, those take forty-eight hours to dry," she snapped, voice breathy; she'd run all the way there and now there was some crazy guy in a cape but god, he was helping her with the youma, wasn't he? Maybe he wasn't a total piece of s**t, he could just work for DARE or something, maybe. Just say no sounded like the kind of thing he might shout if the first half of his sentence was any usual indication.

Avalon did not want to die. She concentrated as the bear-lion-monster clawed at the air and she planted her feet again. Things would be so much easier if she were just a Knight already.

"I am a knight," Avalon grated out between her teeth. Why was he teasing her! The thing was prowling, evidently having decided that since she was going to stand still it could take its time. Did it think she was trapped? Who even knew how youma worked, Avalon certainly did not. She ought to. She could make a study of it, maybe. Cataloguing the Relative Intelligence Levels of Youma According to Phenotype? It'd be a boring paper that she could never publish, but… "I do not have distracting magic." She had… relatively unknown magic, actually, which was depressing. She'd like to know what exactly her wand did now that she was a squire of Avalon, beyond… well, being a wand.

Well, if he wanted a distraction… Avalon waited for the youma--which, on all fours, matched her height at the shoulders--to crouch, and then leapt forward to sweep its front paws out from under it. The youma howled as it crashed down on its own face, and turned an open and snarling mouth towards Avalon, neatly presenting its back to the unknown man.

Avalon rolled out of the way of the youma. Her own momentum was a huge help in this endeavor; she would have been bouncing away anyway, but with her arms tucked close she didn't lose speed until she was far outside of the youma and the strange man's attack range. She scrambled to her feet as the stranger's sword slid home in the monster's back; it howled, and then burst neatly into black ash and dust.

"Good one," she said, sinking back down to a crouch. Brushing at her hair didn't get alleyway dirt out of it, or at least, not all of it; taking that pratfall had probably bruised her shoulder, too, it already felt sore. "Lucky you came along, I guess." She totally could have taken the monster, but she also totally could have died doing so. She wasn't willing to place any bets on it; her entire schtick was staying alive. Staying strong. All of that, she wanted all of it.

She stood up, brushed at her knees fastidiously. "Avalon Squire of Earth," she said, holding out a hand for the man to shake if he pleased. "And you… you're corrupted?" She hadn't noticed it in the fight, but there was a definite feeling of wrongness. But he'd helped her?… Why? "Not very good at being corrupted," she observed.

His Court? Prince? No one had ever told her about a Prince--she'd think it would have been something that Camelot would have mentioned to her, at some point, someday. She regarded him warily, despite the cheerful and welcoming smile. If her Prince was corrupt, or… some variety thereof, did that mean… She didn't know what that meant. She was so tired all of the sudden. Her head and shoulders drooped in a passable imitation of a bow. "Your Highness," she said, because that's… how things were, right? When greeting royalty, bow and acknowledge their title, she didn't know and the not-knowing was wearing on her.

"If you're a Prince, is there a King or a Queen," she asked, because she was really getting so tired of all the ******** 'trust in me!' she was getting. "By what right do you rule? Is there a--a rubric, or something?" What was she missing here? "What do you mean, many kinds of corruption?"

Huh. Fascinating. Usually it was females who were Princesses until they married a Prince. Was senshi society matriarchal? That wasn't surprising, for some reason. Maybe it was that the only royals or authority figures within the senshi (that she had encountered) were female--Chronos, the Zodiac captain--while knights seemed almost overwhelmingly male. Avalon pursed her lips and considered this.

"I've been awake for a little more than a year," she said. "I awakened in September of 2011." It seemed sensible to leave out the details: the loss of power as a mechanism for growth, the fear, the way the senshi and the knights both seemed so fractured, so frightened, reactive where they should have gone on the offensive...

Chosen by planet and blood sounded like a standard Knightly thing, but it made sense that one of them would be born to something greater than one tiny wonder. The only thing that kept bothering her was the corruption, the Chaos she could feel pulsing under his skin. It made her feel dirty--like she wanted to scrub off her skin. "I can agree that we're a bit… troubled," she said, choosing her words carefully. "But I'm not sure corruption is the answer?"

"Because you're corrupted!" Avalon hadn't meant to speak so loudly, but it seemed so obvious to her. "You say you want to help Earth, but it's the Negaverse and their corruption that's ruining it in the first place--that makes all of your motives suspect because your methods are incorrect. The ends don't justify the means if the means are inherently unjust." If unjust, therefore incorrect. Obvious. Simple logistical decisions based on the morals that Avalon had developed and settled in the time she'd spent alive, dealing with one unfair incidence after another. "The corrupted murder the innocent civilians of Earth, and when they don't do that, they're stealing energy from them--the Negaverse has tried to kill me."

And that scared her. The strident tone of her voice from her explanation before broke, the fear underneath shining through. "You're the Prince," she said. "I'm willing to believe that--it's not entirely unlikely--but you're corrupted."

She shook her head. "Chibimoon?" She didn't even know who that was. The name was part Japanese--little moon? Maybe it was the…

No, she couldn't think of any senshi fitting that description.

"And you helped me," she said. She flexed her hands, balled them into fists. By rights, she should fight a corrupted person. She could probably try to take down this man. But he'd helped her, and he seemed to have information she needed, and… "Can I have the names of the people you've spoken to," she asked. "Not that I don't believe you, your Highness, but I need to confirm for myself." Surely he'd understand that? It seemed logical.