" 'Controlled' by you, you mean?"
Normal people might just meet for coffee if they needed to ask someone else questions. Or we could just meet in uniform where no one would recognize us anyway for it to be a threat to your professional reputation. "We can arrange meet in uniform- the glamour prevents us from being recognized by outsiders or each other until we reveal names or faces to each other. "
He took his henshin pen out of his pocket, setting it on his lap in sight for her- in all its ridiculousness. "Rest assured, it is a very serious, very real war. Yes, the 'terrorists' are both sides, and we are part of that. The news media is mostly in the grips of the enemy. But lets start at the beginning."
"Every person on Earth has a ‘starseed.’ Call it a soul if you like- if you lose it, your body falls into a coma and dies. If removal is violent, your body dies immediately. Some starseeds are connected to the power of whole cosmic bodies, a planet, a star, an asteroid, and awakened these become Senshi. Others are connected to specific locations, and these become knights. Your location is called a Wonder. Your magic is channeled through your globe and is used to either benefit allies or hinder enemies. So far as I know, knights serve as protectors and keepers of peace for the worlds their wonder is attached to- Valhalla of Jupiter has a wonder of some sort actually on the Planet of Jupiter and he draws his magic from there. He served the peoples of Jupiter. As a Senshi Scout or as a Page, the first ranks of either, your primary powers are an increased running speed and the ability to jump greater distances and higher. Roughly two stories. You're body is more resistant to damage- your muscles won't tear or bones blow out from using such jumps for example. A regular civilian punching you will hurt you less in uniform and active power of your Wonder than it would if you were not. "
"Its going to be very important that you, at this point, suspend what science has told you about the history of mankind, the existence of life on other planets and worlds, and such. Unfortunately, the only answer for why things are not as science says is 'Magic'. That glamour that hides us also hides the ruins of Wonders and Homeworlds from civilians. I don't know what the purpose of that hiding is or what was hoped to be gained by keeping people ignorant. "
"This war is centuries old, as far as is known. There are two 'sides' abstractly- Order versus Chaos. 'Order' doesn't mean good or evil, it just means that you fight for independence of yourself and others from being enslaved and subjugated to the harvest and will of Chaos. You're going to find people on both sides that are good or bad morally- the difference is that Chaos servants are supporting a system that steals energy from other people and treats their starseeds, their very lives, as a battery power source for whatever secret ends they keep. They murder people, and justify it in all sorts of ways. Order members are trying to live their lives and protect the right of others to live without fear of some person or monster coming and tearing out their starseed."
" 'Senshi', so far as I've researched, means 'soldier' in Japanese. If there was some other meaning, or word, for us in the language that served the galactic common during the age of the Silver Millenium, when there was a centralized government on Earth's Moon, Luna, I don't know. One purpose is to be soldiers- protecting our individual worlds, people and each others' from slavery to chaos. There used to be many civilizations in the stars- I haven't collected enough information from other senshi about their Homeworlds to compare if senshi had other uses to their people in addition to the first."
"It IS strange that your uniform is a dress, but so is Hvergelmir's. The magic we all bear differs from person to person- some throw fire, some grow plants, some heal wounds. Its some cosmic crap shoot that some people have battle ready uniforms and others have physical-battle inadequate ones. Soldiers we all are, but each with a different role we have to work out and discover in how we fit into the dynamics of the battlefield of protecting others. Hvergelmir might be able to tell you more specifically if there's any missions that Cosmos calls for, or codes of conduct and honor of such knights. "
"Chaos is so far comprised of the Negaverse and the Dark Mirror Court of Senshi. The Negaverse is a military. They have soldiers ranks, they carry deadly weapons like blades and hatchets, they can drain the energy and life force from a person by touch, teleport from place to place at a thought, and can reach into the magic space of a body to access and tear out or corrupt your starseed. Negaverse officers can summon and command 'Youma', the monsters appearing around the city. Experience of other senshi has said that Youma were once humans, turned into monsters somehow by the Negaverse. They even do it to their own officers, or it can happen if one of the youma tricks one of the agents trying to find some semblance of freedom from their wretched existence. "
"Be careful of senshi who wear black bodices and tops, and who's uniform colours are primarily darks. Those with gaping stars on their forehead and chest are corrupted into the Negaverse and serve them with many of the same powers. The Dark Mirror court also wear dark colours, but they follow a senshi called Ares. They don't teleport, but can walk through mirrors, and their servant monsters are wraiths. Their starseeds are corrupted and either converted, coated or ...something with a mirror sheen from their baptism through a chaos mirror. Some parasite is introduced in that, and the host soul...I don't know what happens to it. What information we have on that particular kind of corruption is new and still fraught with uncertainty. " His thoughts shifted to Cassandra standing on the other side of the mirror on the Moon- a mirror with no reflection of their room and of Zirconia.
"There are many combatants on both sides. Rough numbers....I've personally seen, met, fought or such...maybe fifty members of Order, some thirty members of Chaos. The numbers fluctuate, and there are certainly more than just who I know. I've only been doing this a year and three-quarters of a second. New corruptions or awakenings on both sides. Sometimes people can't handle it anymore and give up being a part of it. Sometimes people take breaks from it to try to lead some semblance of regular life. Some of those come back, feeling guilt that they had the power to make a difference and weren't. Some people die. "
"It is a real war."
"With how many incidents there have been for the public- the convention, the mass power outages, the attacks on city council, the strange shade-doubles running around killing each other, and more over the years...anyone with sense of history of events like Kent State knows that this city should have been declared into a state of emergency or martial law. Where is the National Guard? The media, you've seen, is very against Senshi and Knights. There are branches of operations in the Negaverse, one is called Infiltration. How deep it goes into the media, into politics, I don't think any of us have had the time to plumb. Most senshi and knights are just people, some even children, with no heads for tactics, training, hacking, or counterinsurgency and actual multifront combat. I'm a college student. You're a mental health professional. We're not an organized, trained, military machine that recruits based on criteria of filling job necessaries. Our starseeds awaken to their destiny and then we have to deal with that. "
"We do the best we can. "
"Since we last met, have you tested your speed and strength out and about the city? Have you concentrated to feel other auras around you when you were in uniform?"
