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It had been difficult, but Silas had managed to slip out of the city.

This should be the meeting point, he thought to himself has he stepped into a forested area outside the city. He knew the Order Headquarters was probably somewhere nearby, but not too nearby; as a Watcher, he couldn't risk going too far from the city limits. He had been wearing a cloak to try and obscure himself, and after a few more steps, he slid the hood off. That little bit of extra exposure felt better. It was hot out, even for the nighttime, and so taking the hood off was a relief.

There was no one in sight at this particular moment. Silas found himself wondering just who would meet him here. A senshi? A fellow knight? A refugee? It was all up in the air right now. He had interesting information percolating in the back of his mind, and he wanted to transmit it as soon as possible so that he could slip back into the city without tipping anyone off as to his absence.

Mimis's sharpness caught Silas off guard, but really, he wasn't exactly sure what he was expecting. Why wouldn't the liaison want to get right to business? "Yes, that's right. To both." He reached into a pocket in his cloak and pulled out several sheets of paper that had been folded together into a neat square. "These papers have all the information I'm about to tell you and more, but I had to write it in a cipher to get it past the guards going out of the city. It's just a direct symbol-to-English kind of deal, so you don't have to do too much work to translate it. If you have a computer, look up Hymmnos. If you don't, look for a senshi named Megrez and she should be able to translate it for you." That girl was a little nutters, but hey, she had introduced Silas to the cipher, so that was good.

"Anyway, what would you like to hear first? New recruits to either side, new policies, rumors of purification or corruption? I hear a lot of rumors just standing in my classroom, so."

"Good. I'm just glad she didn't try to get me to write it in the language, too," Silas said. Did they really have computers at the headquarters? Perhaps they'd gotten some recently. Then again, the woman in front of him was clearly a Mercury Knight. She probably had access to some out-there technology that would allow her to look it up. Some of the tension slipped out of his body when Mimisbrunnr softened up and removed her mask; it was good to see that she would be a bit more at ease with him. He couldn't help but feel a bit envious of those glowing lines on her face; the benefits of Transcendance would have been quite a boon, and he had never made it beyond Squire. "Ah, so you did?" he replied in response to Mimisbrunnr's mention of teaching. "You'll have to tell me about that some time. I've got some interesting stories, for sure."

Then the Knight got back to business, and Silas did the same. "Alright. There was a press conference recently. First, they made the regulations for leaving the city stricter. You have to show up in person with proof of identification and citizenship. You also have to provide proof of needing to leave, and even then the permits only last 6 months tops. Getting all of that information doctored up was really hard, to say the least. They've also made energy donations more frequent. They're every two weeks instead of every three." That was a little worrisome, to say the least; some of his students had enough trouble staying awake in class already, and having energy sapped more frequently would only make that worse.

The name and the mention of the news hit a note of recognition in Silas's mind. "Talaitha Lovel... they said that you murdered all your students and left. I remember seeing that news broadcast and doubting it immediately." He frowned, his face shifting from relaxed to grave. "Why did the Negaverse kill your students? Was it just to get at you? Those bastards..."

The focus shift only made Silas feel more tense. "Yes. That's got to be it. I don't know what they're using that extra energy for, but it can't be good. For all I know, they're going to pack it into some superweapon and blow us all up. If we're lucky, it won't be that and they're just using it to heal their generals... or something like that. Or maybe they're just trying to keep the civilians underfoot so they can't make any moves." That first suggestion was a little melodramatic and kind of terrifying. He could only hope the energy was being used defensively and not offensively.

"That monster," Silas hissed. Mimisbrunnr had a point in changing the subject; spewing invective over a villain long past would not change what had happened or save anyone who had been lost. "Anyway, I wouldn't be so sure that they'd have made it already... most of the Negaverse's technology leaps have been recent. Maybe one's in progress for all we know." He really didn't want to think about that. "There have been a few protests here and there, mostly from rebellious high schoolers. They get broken up pretty quickly, probably because none of those kids want their parents to hear about it."

Silas didn't want to address the point of it getting worse. He was trying to maintain a strong face for as long as he could, and dwelling too long on how everything seemed to be going downhill would probably break him. "As for purifications and corruptions... mostly vague whispers. I have heard one name, Fangite, and another name, Natron, but not much more than that. What I've heard actually sounds good, though. Purifications, you know. A Captain or two who's popular with high school girls might want to purify, too." It was kind of odd, hearing his students whisper things like "Did you hear about So-and-So-ite? He wants to leave the Negaverse!" as opposed to hearing "Such-and-such just joined the Negaverse, and she's really cool!" Normally, it was all bad news.

"So he already purified? That's good to hear." Every defection from the Negaverse meant that Order got a tiny edge over the Negaverse in this battle. A tiny, tiny edge, but an edge nonetheless. "Yeah, I don't know much about Fangite. Only little mutters that he might be intending to purify or already has." The mention of recruiting through schools made Silas frown, if only because it his so very, very close to home. "Not directly recruiting," he said. "But we are required to teach what is effectively Negaverse propaganda. It's amazing how twisted the history curriculum became after the Negaverse got their hands on it. And there are definitely kids in my classes who seem interested in joining the Negaverse. I'm supposed to send them to City Hall for more information. Heck, there might even be a 14-year-old kid who just joined the Negaverse. That's just a guess judging from how tired he seems to be in class, even on non-donation days, though." Being a high school teacher effectively made him privy to the next generation of Negaverse officers, Silas realized. It was incredibly worrying to him.