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Hvergelmir twisted idly at a lock of her hair, surveying the new billboards and marquees that had popped up in the theater district lately. It served as a reminder that she'd skipped out on her usual beat lately -- she hadn't been to the area in, what, a few weeks now?

She considered youma patrol to be the easiest part of her job as a knight -- especially the area where she patrolled, which was relatively peaceful -- but lately she'd been too busy to keep up with it like she usually did. There had been the camping trip, and her scheduled nights in the park, then Zippeite, and Bischofite, and trying to arrange all of that --

-- and then there had been Tara. Searching for Sailor Aquarius, who was still missing. At this point, it had been long enough that there were few possibilities left for where Laney's best friend could be. If she was dead, no amount of searching could do anything about that. If she was kidnapped, and the Negaverse somehow intended to ransom her to someone, surely they'd have heard about it by now. If she was corrupted, well.

Hvergelmir didn't like to think about that. She preferred to believe that she'd know, in her heart, if Aquarius had been corrupted to Chaos. She'd somehow feel it, deep down, if she'd died. There was no logical justification for why either of those things should be so, but it didn't matter. It was what she wanted to believe, so for now, she believed it.

Aquarius was somewhere else. But there was only one place left that Hvergelmir hadn't looked.

(But why would she go there and not say anything? Why hadn't she come back, or sent word somehow, in all this time? She'd fought with her brother, maybe, but she hadn't fought with Laney. Laney and Tara never fought about anything. Why would she just . . . disappear?)

Tonight, she'd decided to go for a walk -- more precisely, a patrol -- to clear her head. One way or another, she was going to have to decide when to complete her search for her best friend, and find out whether it was ending in success or failure. She couldn't put off finding out forever.

At the moment, though, her thoughts were drawn away by something else. It was a senshi presence -- another corrupted one, like Ate and Persephone had been.

Tracking it was difficult. It moved fast, and she had to scale a fire escape to the top of a building to keep up with it, and then make several utterly terrifying building-to-building leaps to keep up, but she was rewarded for her efforts when the senshi finally came into clear view.

"Wait!" she called out, huffing for breath as she ran. "Please, hold up, I just want to talk!"

Hvergelmir put up both hands immediately, slowing her approach now that the corrupt senshi she was chasing had stopped. "Easy, it's okay," she said hastily. "I don't fight Negaversers. My name's Hvergelmir Page. I'm a neutral party -- I just want to learn more about you. To understand your people better, that's all. I just want to have a regular conversation, one on one."

She raised her eyebrows questioningly, hoping that by leading right into talking, she could get the corrupted senshi to go along with it, rather than leaving or deciding to turn violent. "What's your name?"

"Acanthite," she repeated the name, stowing it in her memory along with this senshi's face as best she could. "Nice to meet you."

Her aura was, she supposed, a delicate subject in some ways. It betrayed her as Order-aligned when she would've rather radiated something benign, like Zee. No one ever attacked Zee just for sending out enemy vibes.

"I'm . . . Order-aligned by birth," she said carefully, trying to be as diplomatic about it as she could. "But I'm neutral by choice. I don't want to be in anyone's army -- I only want to fight if it's on my own terms, for something I believe in. I swore an oath not to hurt your people." She gestured to the mark on her arm. "This seals it."

Her response was true, if kind of incomplete. It was the opening stance she'd decided she was going to try with Negaversers -- talking about the facts of her decision in a broad sense, leaving out a crucial piece that she worried would shut the conversation down early: I'd never join your army. Chaos corrupts you; it'll destroy everything you are, change what kind of a person you are. Your mind isn't your own.

You're a slave. A puppet. And it'll only get worse.

The gentler approach might take longer -- but she was just so worried about screwing this all up. Scaring people off.

"The army life's not for me," she deflected slightly. "I'd make a terrible soldier. What about you? Is this the kind of thing you're into?"

Not many people had really talked to Hvergelmir yet. Still, for those that had, she was well aware that there was nothing official about her oath from the Negaverse's point of view. That meant that anyone who chanced talking to her was running the risk of being accused of sedition if the wrong person found out. What was more, proving herself to be a person who couldn't keep other people's secrets was no way to get anyone to confide in her. So, even though it might've solidified her standing in Acanthite's mind if Hvergelmir named names of others who'd taken her oath seriously, she decided it was best to refrain.

"It's my Wonder -- the land I serve -- that holds me to my oath, and that'll end my life if I break it. A General witnessed it, and I've met a few others since -- but the oath is binding on me whether or not you accept it. I can't hurt you."

She walked closer to the edge of the building and peered out, contemplating the city at night. Hvergelmir wondered, too, what Acanthite's duties were -- if they weren't, as she claimed, having to be a soldier. "It can be easier to have a system, like the Negaverse has. You have a built in support network -- I can imagine that would help. But if you're not a soldier, what exactly do they expect you to do?"

Hvergelmir noted that Acanthite had declined to comment on what her actual duties were, but she didn't push the issue. Not yet. She would wait, she decided, until Acanthite was more comfortable with her. Maybe after a few more meetings.

"My wonder isn't livable in the long term," she countered, shaking her head with dismay. Perhaps it would be, barely, if she could get the little garden replanted and get some vegetables growing, but -- "And even if it was, that'd be a lonely existence. There are a few places with plant life, but as far as we know, other than that, it's all been wiped out. No creatures left at all. No people. I can't go live there."

Hvergelmir gave Acanthite a strange look, confused by her response. She wondered if she was about to hear some very strange bit of Negaverse propaganda. "I can teleport there every so often," she said matter-of-factly, returning her focus to the previous statement. "I didn't invade Earth -- I was born here. What do you mean antagonize you?"

Another skirted answer. But this time from uncertainty, she thought -- not from reticence. That was fine -- Hvergelmir could work with that. It meant she'd gotten Acanthite paying attention to the fact that there were things she was uncertain about, at least.

Besides, what she went on to say and do was incredibly promising. Hvergelmir put out her hand to clasp Acanthite's firmly, all too happy to engage in such a positive gesture. "I'd be happy to take you to my Wonder," she assured the senshi. "It's still in a bit of a huge cleanup process since no one's touched it in a thousand years, but underneath the dust drifts it's actually really pretty."

After a moment, she let the handshake go. "Take care of yourself, alright? And if you need anything, you can look for me at North End Park. I'm there some nights."