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It was the middle of the night, and Hvergelmir had just begun debriefing Niflhel about the latest news with Prince Castor and his brother Pollux. She'd wanted to reconnect with Niflhel for a while, considering their shared origins in the wreckage of Barren Pines so long ago (though she couldn't, per se, remember it) -- but she also wanted to make sure she and Kairatos got to as many people as they could before the brothers did. The last thing they needed was anyone else joining in on the navy-clad twins' dangerous shenanigans.

" -- so Kairatos -- you know, the Mars knight? -- " Hvergelmir indicated who she was talking about by doing the universal gesture of throwing the bull horns -- "Kairatos and I were out patrolling, he was going to help me brush up my youma killing skills. Suddenly we can feel about a dozen auras -- just our own, no Chaos, no cats dampening it -- and we figure that's kind of worrying, at best, as we go over there to check it out."

She sighed. "Apparently they'd sent out a fake distress signal on their senshi phones to trick people into showing up. Well, Prince Castor and his brother Pollux, they'd lured a bunch of Nega lieutenants to this old warehouse, then they trapped them, then they basically gruesomely and painfully slaughtered them. And they tell us they're declaring war on Earth, and we've all got to go out and start doing like they do, murdering the Negaverse's weakest to send them a message."

Hvergelmir looked over to see how Niflhel was taking it.

Hvergelmir considered it. Asking the Code to pull them away to Olympus for another meeting -- people cranky and irritable for the disruption to their lives, each with their own experiences and opinions, but without the floor to really give them all due time.

"I don't mind the idea," she decided, "but for something like this, person-to-person conversations might work better. When you pull people together into a big group, everyone shows up already with their own ideas on the matter -- and all you end up hearing is the very beginning of someone's perspective. You can't have a conversation like you can one-on-one. Minds are harder to change. I'd like to hope there aren't too many knights who'd side with Castor and Pollux, but -- I don't know."

It wasn't the same for senshi as it was for knights. The two factions were both born to Order, but they had their own people, their own ways, their own interests. The Negaverse -- its people were the knights' brethren in vast majority, in a way they never would be to the sailor senshi. It was hard to bear arms against people who were supposed to stand beside you. Maybe that wasn't so easy for the senshi to understand.

"I think... we have to get the other royals to make their stances known on the matter. I know some of them -- I could talk to Iris and Camelot. Whatever we do, someone has to make it clear that we're not part of a united front with them."

They could feel a rumble of energy in the distance. Youma. Instinctively, they both turned toward it.

Hvergelmir quirked her mouth into a frown. This area was kind of residential -- not a very happy place to find a youma. She hoped people were all safe indoors and not being eaten.

"Well," she said noncommittally, "I'm... better at killing youma than I am at killing anything else."

This was her idea of a grim joke. She was capable of killing youma, had certainly done a fair bit of it, but that didn't make her good at it.

Around the corner, the youma came into sight. It was cut in the shape of a terrifying, evil marionette -- but fortunately, all its strings on its left side had gotten hopelessly tangled and caught in the topiary on someone's small front yard. The monster was presently yanking at its strings, trying to dislodge itself, getting more tangled as it went. It was making sad groaning noises. Now its right arm was caught, too.

"So, uh." Hvergelmir shrugged. "I guess we can just.... go.... deal with it?"

It was sort of almost cute, watching the puppet youma struggle in vain with its strings, looking as agitated and thwarted as she'd ever seen a youma look. Sort of. Almost.

"I feel kind of bad for it," she said, stepping forward gingerly. "I mean, here it just came out to do a little spot of menacey monstering, and just when it's about to really get its whole man-eating death routine going, it runs into this, like, wardrobe malfunction, and now who's going to quake in fear from it? Nobody."

She looked around for something to hit the youma with, past experience having taught her that this was the most efficient method of disposing of the things.

There were a few heavy branches laying on the ground beneath a nearby tree. Hvergelmir started picking through them, selecting a nice hefty one and giving it a swing to test it out. Yes, alright, this one would do.

"Kickboxing?" Hvergelmir said, interested. "I didn't know you did that. Have you been at it for a while?"

She took up her tree branch and started hacking away at one of the youma's knees, keeping careful not to accidentally detangle it from the bush that currently had it pinned. It yowled and tried to lurch at her, but couldn't manage it. "I take self-defense classes now at the women's center near my house. Merlin and Snowball -- cats?"

Hvergelmir nodded, sobered more by the conversation than by the battle. The battle was a little surreal -- she'd start to feel pity for the youma, struggling as it was -- then it would turn and yowl angrily and try to snap at her with sharp, razor teeth, and she'd remember that it was a youma, no longer a person, and if it hadn't gotten tangled up like this, it would be out killing people.

"I was never able to remember anything from Barren Pines. No luck with a counselor, even."

A hard swing caused the youma's knee to give way with a wooden crack. It staggered, now trying to reach Niflhel to bite (since his arms were closer). Oh, she thought, trying to memorize more names and identities to add to her pile. Snowball, Mauvian, guardian of Princess Polaris.

'String it back up' was a pun -- and such a wickedly zingy one that it caught her by surprise, even mid-strike. Hvergelmir dropped her arms, resting her branch momentarily on the ground as she giggled furiously.

"Sorry," she snorted, unable to compose herself. "I'll get back to it in a minute, I wouldn't want to leave you to tie up the loose ends by yourself...!"

One of the marionette's arms fell loose as Niflhel battered it. Hvergelmir let out a brief, whooping cheer, then settled back into giggling. She raised her makeshift cudgel again and set about hitting it marionette in its jointed midsection while it went along howling wordless fury at them. "This thing's not a bad weapon," she commented. "I'm really glad I branched out!"

(The worse the pun, the more she liked it. Laney had always been partial to the Peter Parker style of crime-fighting, and privately wished she could incorporate it more into her daily life.)

The subject of Barren Pines (pun not intended) was a more interesting one. Were their memories really gone forever? Did Tara know things she wasn't telling them? What was really left, at the top of that hill?

"Maybe we should... go there sometime," she suggested warily. "Back to the school, have a look around. Have you ever been?"

Despite the fact that this was definitely one of the easier youma battles she'd had, Hvergelmir was starting to break out in a sweat. Dismantling wood, even mostly subdued, was fairly difficult, especially when one only had another piece of wood to use. Hvergelmir mopped her brow with the back of one forearm, then went back to hitting.

One of her strikes took out its elbow -- then the youma whirled just hard enough that Niflhel's next hit neatly happened to detach its head entirely. For a few long seconds, the severed head rolled on the ground, teeth still snapping, and the body writhed there, its neck ending in a round wooden ball like a proper puppet.

Then it all crumbled away to dust.

Hvergelmir let her branch drop to the ground. "Well," she said, cocking one hand on her hip, "It looks like that was a real joint effort!" She let a satisfied grin show on her face.

"Let's do it," she said. "We can always turn back if it looks blocked off... but if there are answers there, I'd like to have them. I've always felt like something -- important was missing, from that time."