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One of the difficulties -- or maybe of the advantages, if one was inclined to look at such things in a more manipulative light -- of a knight's communication device was that it was excellent at sending outgoing messages, but nigh useless for receiving them.

Hvergelmir could, with no particular difficulty, compose a message to Sailor Thraen and be reasonably assured of his receiving it -- assuming he was alive and that a google search hadn't given her the wrong spelling of his name. However, as Thraen was, himself, not a knight, his options for replying to a knight's message involved considerably more effort, or else the option of radio silence. This meant that, whether or not she particularly intended it, when Hvergelmir sent Thraen a message asking if he'd meet her in the park (at the same place as before said enough, she thought, and provided some insight as to her intentions) on a Tuesday at 10:00 pm (not her usual night, not that she expected he'd necessarily know), this put some pressure on him to turn himself up.

She didn't really intend it that way, truthfully -- not in this instance. In her estimation, they'd -- well, they'd gotten off on less than the right foot, to say the least -- and while she knew little of Thraen and understood even less, she doubted that inconveniencing him even slightly was going to advance her cause with him.

Still, absent any messages to the contrary (she imagined it was possible he had friends who were knights, and could've proxied a reply), the squire had no reason to believe he wouldn't turn up -- so she sat at her bench and waited. It might seem rude, she thought, to bring busy reading to a meeting she'd requested, so she'd left any notion of books at home. Instead, she waited with her distaff curled into the crook of her arm, spinning with the nimbler fingers of her right hand.

He would turn up or he wouldn't. If not, hopefully she could ask for an alternate appointment. If that still bore no fruit, she wasn't sure what she'd do -- being blown off would be a little more of an obvious message that further contact wasn't welcome. Harassing Thraen would be a dead end, if he wasn't willing to talk of his own volition.

Well, she'd bank on his showing up -- even with the choice of venue. No point in worrying about the alternative, yet.

Well, then. Thraen seemed, on third acquaintance, rather similar to himself on the first and second. Distant, to her perception -- and inscrutable. Hvergelmir was glad she'd contacted him by missive -- he was the sort of person that, if she'd had to request an audience face to face with, she'd have been too intimidated to follow through on. Now, at least, he was here, and she had little choice but to see the conversation through to whatever ugly end it might find.

Bischofite was so, so difficult to talk to -- she was eternally out of her depth. Logically, it was entirely likely that his lover would be no easier on her attempts to hold up her end of the conversation competently.

"Thank you for coming," she said first, finding herself hard pressed to dispense with politeness even if it was, at this point, rendered perfunctory by his having launched past where social mores dictated that that particular convention was meant to take place. "Forgive me if my answer to your question seems, um . . . roundabout. Or if I tell you anything you already know -- I'm afraid I don't know how often you and A--" She hesitated a moment, briefly uncertain if it was ruder to call Alois by his given name to someone who had a much closer relationship with him, or if it was ruder to call him Bischofite and thereby ignore his request to acknowledge his lost human life. In the end, she opted in favor of the second being the ruder, and stayed with her original wording. "--Alois are in contact, and how much interest my activities might or might not make as a topic of conversation."

She dismissed her distaff, wanting to be sure Thraen understood that he had her full attention. "I called you here to make a -- sort of a request to the BlackWatch that I'm hoping you'll communicate for me, if you're willing -- I'll explain in a moment. And because -- I'm frankly not equipped to deal with Alois on my own." She frowned.

"I'm in this park, on this bench, three nights a week. Has Alois, or anyone else, explained my, um -- " Her work? That sounded so self-aggrandizing, compared to the reality of what she did, which was immature and slapdash enough to have led her to exactly no success stories so far. "My intentions, I guess, in doing that?"

It took Hvergelmir a moment to understand what Thraen was trying to get across with his first comment -- but when she did, her face softened visibly, and not just with sympathy for Thraen's human visage having been threatened, or for Bischofite's poor health. It was also a feeling of keen pathos for what had to be a painful position for him. While Hvergelmir enjoyed the privilege of her powered form in her interactions with Alois, Thraen did not. By Bischofite's own admission, he considered Thraen an enemy, and no source of help. Any aid he wanted to render to his lover, he could only do under his civilian guise, at significant risk to himself and lessening the protection he could provide to his loved one. A difficult circumstance, whether or not he said so in so many words.

"Thank you," she said, accepting the mug with a slightly quizzical look. Here he was, on the one hand not particularly fond of her that she'd noticed (not that he really had reason to be, considering) -- but on the other hand, he'd brought her tea? Fancy-sounding tea? Did he think...?

She shook her head. "You didn't have to do this. So you know. I appreciate the gesture, but I would never hold my help hostage to anyone's manners. Whatever help I can give to Alois, I will -- so behave however you're most comfortable."

Hvergelmir took a testing sip of her chai mate. As expected, it was still comfortably hot on a chilly evening. "This is good," she murmured, thoughtful for a moment. Then, more clearly, "I've sworn an oath, on my life, not to raise arms against officers the Negaverse so long as they're fighting in the belief they protect the Earth from alien conquerors. We know this to be a false cause -- but many Negaverse agents don't. I come to this place to meet with them openly and exchange information -- to find out what they know about the nature of the war, and how the Negaverse works to indoctrinate them -- and to share what I know with them, to try and show them they're waging a hollow campaign."

She gestured back to her bench, briefly, one-handed. "This is where Alois first met me -- where he first asked me to help him arrange his attempt at purification. I'm here after sundown on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. You mentioned that the BlackWatch might help organize partnered patrol groups for people -- I'd like you to ask the Watch to arrange to route any patrols away from North End Park on those nights."

Hvergelmir tried to imagine Thraen outside of interactions with strangers. What did he look like sitting at home, curled up on the couch? Did he order pizzas and spoon marshmallow fluff right out of the canister? Did he cook for himself, was he on the Paleo diet? Did he yell at the TV when Hannity was on? Did he own a TV? Did he put on his pants one leg at a time?

Impossible to know. "Well, I'm sorry I didn't bring anything for you in return. I didn't want to be seen as trying to curry favor. Thank you again, for the tea."

This was awkward.

"The names you listed are the only ones I have," she confirmed. "They're all that Zirconia named for me. But any information I have is yours for the asking.

"Princess Polaris -- she dates Niflhel Knight of Saturn, and is bonded to a Mauvian named Snowball. But -- it's bad news there, I'm afraid. Niflhel mentioned her to me this week, and he says she's in Alaska, and has been for some months now. The best I can do is put you in contact with Niflhel there, and see what he can do.

"Princess Chronos -- princess of the Zodiac Guard. I only know one Zodiac senshi, and she's..." Hvergelmir looked away, subconsciously curling both hands defensively around her travel mug. "She won't see me right now. Try Bifrost -- she's one of the knights who came to the Moon meeting, she's a knight of Chronos."

Hvegelmir shifted her stance a little, holding up her left hand. The crude outline of a star was scarred there in faint pink. "I'll see to summoning Sailor Cosmos, if I can. I tried to call for her that night -- when I asked you for the knife. It's worked before. And Camelot -- I can talk to him, or put you in touch with him."

But then -- she had skipped one. One that she wasn't sure how to talk about.

"Prince Castor is . . . he could be dangerous to Alois. He has the sort of hardline execution stance that -- um." She hesitated, then -- in the interest of conveying the seriousness of her intent, said what she meant anyway. "That Alois ascribed to Sailor Thraen. Kairatos might know who his contacts are; you can try there. But be careful how you deal with him. Please."

Would saying that make a difference with him? What warnings had an impact on someone who avoided having expectations? What kind of a person was Sailor Thraen, between what Alois and Ida had described, between the man she'd seen at Alois' side and the one who'd attempted eloquently to form a powered charity and the man who stood before her now? She was still struggling to make sense of him.

Hvergelmir shook her head sadly, looking down at her chai mate. "She and my zodiac friend have a great deal in common, I'm afraid. Everything, in fact."

Aquarius was a dead end for Thraen -- he was making that much clear with his assertion that he didn't think he'd be able to approach her again. Truthfully, Hvergelmir didn't disagree; she couldn't imagine Aquarius bestirring herself from her Outpost to go seeking the Zodiac princess. Anything that involved leaving her self-imposed exile seemed out of the question.

"As for Sailor Cosmos and my connection with her -- as I said, any information I have is yours for the asking. I don't believe in hoarding knowledge or perpetuating ignorance, and I'm -- well, I mean, I'm not in any particular hurry to leave.

"Sailor Cosmos is the princess of the Galaxy Cauldron -- where starseeds are born and return, and rise again every thousand years. Her, err -- demesne sits at the center of the galaxy -- and she's very powerful. She doesn't need to assume a royal form to access powers that're basically on a level with purification. She can draw a starseed out of the chest of a living body, and likewise can take one nearly destroyed, corrupted by Chaos, and restore it fresh to start anew.

"Knights share a, sort of, a bond with the senshi whose domain they share. A princess, like Sailor Cosmos, can sense when the knights of her order are in pain and need her help. Stabbing yourself is rarely the, uh, preferred method of communicating with anybody, of course -- but it does work. For something less urgent, I was actually planning on -- well-- sending a letter."

It was all she really had to offer on that topic. Sailor Cosmos, while powerful, was a remote figure. Hvergelmir wasn't sure whether she'd even met the woman in her former life.

"My one experience with Sailor Castor and his brother was about a month ago. Evidently, they lured a bunch of weak lieutenants to an old newspaper warehouse, trapped, mutilated, and slaughtered them -- then sent out an SOS text message to summon as many senshi as possible to their location. Kairatos and I were out on patrol and confused by the lopsided auric energy, so we just went to investigate, you know? Castor and Pollux had drawn everyone there to show off their handiwork, and to spread their message that they were 'declaring war on Earth' -- their words -- and that all senshi and knights should begin targeting and killing the Negaverse's weakest officers to 'send a message' that we're 'not afraid to kill.' Because apparently this will make them scared and will cause them to make mistakes. Notwithstanding the questionable wisdom of pounding one's proverbial fists and demanding not to be underestimated, Prince Castor also seemed... mentally unstable. As far as we could tell, when people raised their voices around him, he had some sort of... cognitive dissociation? Where he seemed to think he was somewhere else, maybe in the past?" She shook her head. She couldn't really claim to be certain of what had been happening. "Any person you meet is a risk, of course. But it's better to take a calculated risk than to go in blind, right? Just... bear in mind the possibility that he'll agree to help you, then double-cross you and murder Alois anyway."

Thraen's suppositions on the nature and consequences of purification were interesting food for thought. They shed some light, perhaps, on his feelings on the matter, if only a little. She might dropped them as a topic, too -- if they hadn't been so close to the front of her mind lately.

Instead, she sifted through the matter a little, unable to meet his eyes as she spoke. Her grip on her tumbler was nervous, tense. " 'He will cease to be Alois or Bischofite.' In an abstract sense, maybe. Yeah. Depending on what memories he loses, what effect those have on him. But... can you tell me which memories contain his crippling depression? That he'll be fine without them? Because that's what I need help with, why I asked you here. Because maybe you'd know -- and I don't. I don't know how to reach him, he's always pulling away -- he's such a stranger to me -- but if I have his ear for even a few moments, there's a responsibility to..." She fumbled for the right words. "To make a sincere effort to -- provide the best help I can. To get the information I need, to understand him better. I can -- I can put a Negaverse agent in front of a royal and purify them, but if all I did was offer them a cosmetic fix, if I never considered why they turned to Chaos in the first place, they're still just as badly off as before. And I mean, I know this is someone you know and care about, and I'm sure you've done everything you could to understand those things -- I don't mean to accuse you of - of neglect, or something -- but until you assure me that you've got all that covered, I'm offering to try and help, that's all. And I'm asking how to do that from the person who'd know best. From the only person at the BlackWatch meeting who I saw giving any credence to the belief that Negaverse agents might corrupt for reasons as simple as financial privation and need, not just... amoral self-interest."

When she was nervous, she rambled. Well, she always rambled -- but when she was nervous, Hvergelmir especially rambled. She looked back up, finally, with trepidation, to see how he was responding to her request.

Hvergelmir absorbed what he was saying with a heavy frown. Exchanging information with her comrades, she found, was a depressing endeavor -- so many of them struggled on at a desperate loss for information, forced to fight with their backs to the unknown. Even those few that she thought shone with a little light into the darkness -- like Thraen, with his BlackWatch meeting and his willingness to at least apply problem-solving thought to matters -- had precious little information, it seemed, to bring to bear. What was even in the senshi primer she'd heard about? Who wrote it -- and did they know more that they weren't telling? If so, that was information Hvergelmir meant to have. And why did the Mauvians know so little, if they were supposed to be some kind of guides?

It was all miserable and dark all the time. Hvergelmir was glad, at least, that she'd asked the Code what questions she'd known to ask back when she'd had the chance. It seemed such opportunities were few on the ground.

"I don't know what Cosmos's responsibilities are," she said warily. "Or what she can and can't do. But whether or not she can, we should keep looking. Maybe we can capture a youma and try to study it, or something. We build a better mousetrap. If what we need doesn't already exist, we figure out how to invent it. If we have but world enough, and time."

Their enemy in this regard was what it had always been: the racing of the clock. What they could do was limited by how many resources they could bring to bear on the situation, and how quickly. Wasn't the war, too? Wasn't everything? Time marched ahead and doomed them all, limited what they each could carry. It was all the more reason, though, to act smartly. To approach the problem with discipline and rigor, trying to address as many variables as possible. Power was one variable, but there was no guarantee that that was what had been lacking -- and if it wasn't, advancing a solution that only addressed that would be a painful and costly waste of time.

"Thank you for the information. It helps me to understand things a little better. I'll do what I can for Alois," she offered. "I can't promise much success with your methods -- he finds me dull and pedantic, at best. I'm not smart enough to... " She shrugged. "I'm not a peer. I'm just a high school dropout with a Kindle and a lot of free time. But for whatever it's worth, I'm still the one thing he needs me to be, I guess. Available on a schedule." She indicated the bench with an incline of her head.

And there it was. That was her world, in a nutshell: available on a schedule. But then -- it was, wasn't it?

"That's the work I've chosen to do," she said. "That's how I've committed to contributing to our cause -- by being available on a schedule. By being safe and harmless. By offering help and acceptance without the threat of knifepoint -- so fear isn't an obstacle to communication. Look, you don't have to talk me into it, and you don't owe me a debt. If you did, I wouldn't be taking what I do seriously. So please don't offer to be indebted to me again."

Hvergelmir wondered vaguely if that sounded, maybe, a little too insistent. Too strong. Backing off a little, she said, "I'm not trying to be rude. I just want you to understand -- this isn't a burden you have to carry alone."

Hvergelmir nodded, staring into the spill-proof lid of the travel mug. It was empty, nothing left to proof against spilling, but she still imagined she could feel the warmth of the chai mate that had been there. "The wounded need a great deal," she said, matching his gaze after a moment with a soft smile. "But so do the people that care for them. They say lifeguards are taught to put the victims between themselves and the rocks -- because if they sacrifice their own well-being instead, nobody's saving anybody. And, um, what's the other one -- make sure your own oxygen mask is properly secured before assisting the person next to you? So anyway -- if you need help, too. If you need someone to talk to, or there's anything I can do. I'm the only Landscape Sutton in the phone book, I'm pretty sure." Hvergelmir shook her head self-deprecatingly. It did, at least, have the benefit of being a unique name.

"A few last favors, too, if you can. I'm trying to ask around to see what limits people might've found to how many people they can bring to space with them at one time. Alois is considering my wonder for a purification attempt, but numbers are a factor, depending. I can try to pull together an experiment, but -- I hate to reinvent the wheel and waste valuable time if someone already knows. If you could talk to the people you know, too? The other thing is -- the senshi primer. Would you mind letting me read it off your phone sometime? I mean, whenever -- at your convenience, definitely, just -- we don't have one, and I don't know many senshi to ask. I could come to your office hours or something -- is that a thing for a TA? Office hours? Whenever it would be convenient, I promise, I'll be quiet as a mouse."

Hvergelmir nodded, taking the phone in hand. It felt light, like a regular cell phone -- it just seemed to have a basic GUI that wasn't one of the typical cell phone standards. Experimentally, and with great care (in case she was about to get some sort of protective electric shock or something), she drew her finger across the screen. As she'd hoped, the little apps flickered around beneath her fingertip. "Okay, well -- well, that works," she announced, showing him. "So that's good. We'll figure out a time and I'll come by and borrow your cell. Thank you again -- I really appreciate it. It would just be useful to have this information."

His other offer -- to test the limits of space travel -- wasn't unwelcome. This was the kind of thing she needed: people to volunteer to gather the information they didn't already have. "I'll try it out myself, if I can -- and any amount of people I can transport, Cosmos should be able to at least double if she'll come, since it's her homeworld too... It's just that I'd rather bear the brunt of the energy burden if I can. I think we can all agree that that's the last thing we need becoming a setback for us, if one of our royals is too drained to use their full power."

She handed the phone back, then quirked her head to the side a little thoughtfully. "Actually," her voice carried in a more vague tone, "Something like that might be good for people, to bring them together more and break the ice a bit -- testing the limits of space travel. Sometimes having something concrete to work on makes people more comfortable interposing themselves in a group. And people aren't always good at remembering to make people feel welcome -- so these things matter. Sometimes it's nice to be able to accomplish something together. I don't know."

She wondered who she could ask to help her with her own experiments that she hadn't gotten much of a chance to get to know. Bifrost, maybe, from Mistral -- Hvergelmir was a little worried about her, after the way she'd left things there. And Falias, the knight who'd survived alongside Sarras. (Thinking of Sarras was a little worrisome on its own -- was he alright? Was he still pulling away from everyone?) Maybe one of the senshi that had come with Princess Iris to the park that time? Hvergelmir would have to make a list of contacts she wanted to get to know better.