Welcome to Gaia! ::

Now that Hvergelmir had finally recovered her connection to her Wonder's great old creature, she was eager to get comfortable with what it made her capable of. There had been too many times, lately, where the chance of a single jump through space would've been all too crucial. Pain that might've been averted. Lives that might've been saved.

It wasn't enough to have Eikthyrnir to hand: Hvergelmir had to know her business in and out. Perfectly, down to the specifics.

Presently, she was perched comfortably on the caribou's broad, blue-furred back, eying adjacent rooftops. One leg was tucked leisurely under her, the other foot dangling.

A Coca-Cola billboard glowed about eight blocks off; she wondered how precisely she could dictate her leap. Could she land directly behind the billboard, if she meant to? Could Eikthyrnir drop them directly on its narrow catwalk, as simply as thinking about it?

Hvergelmir was on the verge of making her leap when she felt the auric thrum of an energy signature nudging at her senses. She looked away, pinpointing it. A lieutenant, unfamiliar. She raised a tentative hand in greeting.

Hvergelmir couldn't help it. She really couldn't help it. At the lieutenant's words, she cupped a hand over her mouth and giggled.

It wasn't that it was an unusual or inexplicable assumption -- you are a knight, we fight to the death -- it was just. She was Hvergelmir Knight of the Cosmos, poster child for ineffectual battle tactics. Notorious bleeding heart, even more notorious crappy fighter and butt-faller-onner. Her reputation so often preceded her these days.

"No," she said with a rueful smile, pulling her hand away from her mouth to hold it up in a conciliatory gesture: peace, peace, pace. "I'm sorry, it's a fair question, I just -- no," she reaffirmed, slipping smoothly from Eikthyrnir's back to meet the lieutenant at ground level. Water dripped lukewarm from the caribou's impressive rack of golden antlers, spattering gently down onto one of her shoulders and rolling trails of sparkles down her arm. She hardly noticed it. "I couldn't attack you if I wanted to -- it's against my oath."

Hvergelmir held her hands folded politely in front of her, relaxed: a contrast to his keen, guarded pose. The teleportation had been a little more alarming than she'd intended: she'd meant to land with a bit more distance from where the startled lieutenant had been, not mere feet in front of him. She'd have to practice her aim a bit more.

A lieutenant. Perhaps he was knew to the Negaverse. "I'm Hvergelmir of the Cosmos," she said evenly. "Does that name mean anything to you at all?"

"Umber," she echoed with a warmer smile. "I'm pleased to meet you." You're talking to me -- you gave me your name. That means my foot's in the door. That's the first step.

Good.

His stance remained hostile, but a little less flight-prone, which Hvergelmir took as a good sign. Good enough that she could continue, at least: "I recently enjoyed the Negaverse's hospitality after the New Year's Ball." She held her hands out palm-up, open-handed: a gesture of alas, what can you do? The left palm now bore the star of Cosmos deeply scarred from two iterations of cuts. "I didn't know if they'd sent out any kind of an APB about the escapees or anything. It's not that I'm very memorable otherwise."

Hvergelmir shrugged delicately, swishing one hand to dismiss Eikthyrnir from where the creature stood behind her, then lowering her hands to her sides once more. The bangle bracelets on her arms let off pleasant little jingling sounds as they moved.

"My goal isn't to be an enemy to the Negaverse," she reiterated. "As long as your army fights in the belief you're protecting the Earth from an alien conquest, I'm oath-sworn not to raise arms against Negaverse officers." She pointed to the seal on her shoulder, shimmering iridescent. "My own magic binds me. I have no desire to fight you."

You're new, she thought, if you missed New Year's. Or the Negaverse is worse than I thought at disseminating information.

"Can we talk awhile?"

Umber seemed hesitant -- standoffish. Neither of these was particularly surprising, especially for a first meeting, so Hvergelmir didn't count them as remarkable. Just an obstacle. Well, all she could do was try. Most of her attempts with Negaverse officers were duds anyway -- she rarely made a real connection.

"No," she agreed, making note of the information. "I suppose they have other uses for their lieutenants. As far as I can tell, the beginnings of your careers there are the crucible they forge you in." She left off there: it was never good to go too far down the road of badmouthing the organization until she knew more about an officer's experience. Gentle Astrophyllite, as strong as her moral center had been, had had good experiences with her superior officer, and it would've been the wrong move to insist things about Avalon that would've made her bridle.

Hvergelmir stood with her back to the ledge along the front of the billboard, propped both hands on it, and gave herself a boost up to sit there. It felt more natural, more like what she'd grown accustomed to, to do it; that, and it was less naturally aggressive. Seated, she wasn't going anywhere, wasn't pressing anything -- just waiting for things to come to her. "No," she said with bald honesty, "the Negaverse has never formally acknowledged my oath as valid, where my standing with them's concerned. My interactions with your agents have been strictly on a personal basis -- people that choose to risk a conversation. I've been doing this for about a year."

She smiled, some wryness sneaking in. "As to whether or not I'm any assistance to the Negaverse -- that's up to you. Some people take advantage, others don't. What I have to offer is information. Another perspective. What you do with it from there, terra di ombra, is up to you."

Hvergelmir looked at her hand, flexing her fingers automatically. The muscles seemed to pull a little stiffly sometimes, but they all still worked, thankfully. "An experiment by one of your Generals," she said. "From my New Years' stay. "Another one on the small of my back."

The separated parts of a person struck Hvergelmir as an odd comment. She traced a path through her memory into a little makeshift room she'd made to store information about the Negaverse, picked out a drawer above a table lamp with a seashell for a pull-knob, and stored this phrase inside, to be taken out and turned over later when she had more time to ponder it. It was the first potential puzzle piece she settled on in what she hoped might someday be a complete picture of Lieutenant Umber: his placid manner, and an evident willingness to take things in stride but not without judgment.

Then it's a waste. Maybe the man just liked efficiency.

Too early to say.

"I was thinking of survival," she clarified, crossing her legs at the knee and folding both hands over one kneecap. "I can't speak for your circumstances, but I've known other lieutenants handed gag gifts as weapons and sent out to patrol on their own, unsupervised. No teleportation, no commanding officers or youma -- it can be a challenge for some."

She frowned. "You can get up and leave for any reason you like," she said. "But there are those among your people and among mine who'd say that any conversation across battle lines is a mistake. The consequences of being suspected of treason tend to be greater for you than for me -- armies don't always reward initiative."

Hvergelmir looked skyward, gathering her thoughts to summarize the New Year's Ball, since it was Umber's first request. "The New Year's Ball," she said. "A large-scale operation under General-Queen Apatite." She'd gotten the name from Kadyrelite with a little bit of effort -- then had to turn to anonymously googling "appetite mineral" to figure out how it was exactly spelled. Fortunately, Google rarely steered her wrong. "The Negaverse arranged a masquerade ball for the new year. There were a number of us, my comrades, in attendance, and the Negaverse had set up some kind of energy-draining system using the masks at the ball to slowly weaken us. I guess the idea was to make us weak enough to be handicapped in a fight, but not so weak that we couldn't or wouldn't reveal ourselves by powering up to defend ourselves from an attack. The Negaverse captured about a dozen of us and took us to be held at an old fairground site on the outskirts of the city. They interrogated us for almost two weeks -- at least three people were turned into youma, and another two were corrupted into your ranks, before our people managed to track us down and rescue what was left of us."

She looked at the palm of her hand. "They asked me what I knew about Sailor Cosmos's recent activities, what I could tell them about travel to the Moon, why I had a star scarred on my hand, and what I knew about a senshi with glowing marks on her body. If there were other things they wanted to know, they didn't ask me. They kept us sedated with regular energy draining so we weren't strong enough to escape. It's my understanding the mission is considered to have been a success."

Hvergelmir glanced down at her feet, the tops of them each dotted with a messy scar where the nails had been driven through. It wasn't an experience she enjoyed mentally revisiting.

"Is murder ever not a waste?" she asked curiously, rewinding to an earlier subject, to see what -- if anything -- he'd say in return. It was open-ended: a question that mainly served to get to know him better rather than to extract any vitally sensitive information. A soldier's philosophy was always keenly important to understand. They all had one, however blackened some of them were.

Hvergelmir watched as the lieutenant summoned some bit of magic to his hands -- gloves, evidently. It was a little chilly; she'd opted to forgo the stardust cloak for the time being, favoring mobility over comfort since she'd been practicing with Eikthynir. She could bring it to hand if she needed to -- but compared to his plain-looking gloves, that might look rude. Best to weather the evening chill for now.

"Do I think so?" She pondered the question, collecting the little scraps of thoughts she'd been turning over in her head for the past several weeks. Nights spent on her bench in the park offered many opportunities for woolgathering. "Well, in my case, I'd say that was the likely intent. Maybe with some of the others, the ones that corrupted, they were a little gentler, but that wasn't . . . " She shrugged, tension stringing her shoulders a little. "Most of the information I have is free for the asking to anyone who wants it -- anything that's mine to give. They were pretty adamant about getting the rest from me, too -- adamant enough it was more of a priority than trying to make me want to join their side."

Hvergelmir cast her eyes out across the city, in among the brick and cement of scattered rooftops, the colored lights of night life that hadn't yet buzzed out. "They could've corrupted us all," she pointed out. "Whatever information they wanted, they wanted it badly enough not to want to risk losing it to the partial memory wipe that comes with conversions between Order and Chaos."

She left a pause there, meant to be considerate: did he know much about the conversion process into or out of the Negaverse? Did he want to ask to hear more?

Hvergelmir badly wanted to ask him her own questions, her usual ones. How did you come to join the Negaverse? What do you know about the history of the war? What do they tell you about why we're fighting now? Not yet, though -- it was too soon to try, not when she was a knight of full rank and he was a new lieutenant: things weren't the same anymore. When she'd been a page, asking these things of captains and generals, the risk had all been hers, and they'd known it as well as she did; any of them could've cut her down with the sweep of a hand. Here, she had the advantage -- it meant she had to be more careful. Press more gently.

She propped a hand underneath her chin, looking to see where this line of thought -- the nature of killing -- might lead. "Killing could be both of those things," she considered. "Or neither. Or one of the two, and not the other." A waste, she thought, turning the odd wording around in her head once more, tilting it to try and find new angles. "Suppose we agree the most ideal kill -- for the sake of argument -- is necessary and not wasteful, and the least ideal is unnecessary and wasteful. That leaves the two in the middle. Which would you prefer -- killing when it's unnecessary but unwasteful, or when it's necessary but wasteful?"

Hvergelmir nodded to acknowledge the question, recrossing her legs in the opposite direction. There was something about Lieutenant Umber that put her in mind of someone else, though she couldn't quite place it. It was in the way he looked at things, maybe, or his quiet manner. She couldn't be sure.

"Someone who's awakened to Order and later brought over to the Negaverse -- or vice versa -- always seems to lose part of their memory with the change. There's something in the magic that does it . . . afterward, the person either can't remember their regular life as an everyday person, or else it's the memories of what they've done when they're powered up that go. As far as I know, there's no controlling which."

Again a pause. Then, carefully: "More? I'm told that Negaverse agents who ask their own superiors about the purification process aren't told anything. It's up to you how we proceed. I'll keep this conversation confidential, but you should know that I can't promise you any protection from your own people."

She smoothed her hands over her dress. Two streets over, a neon sign was flickering. "I share your opinion," she said. "I'd rather a killing that's necessary but wasteful. I think it's hard to ever make a sure argument that something's not wasteful -- someone can always argue opportunity cost. But I don't see most of the killing in this war as necessary. Do you?"

"It's a lot to give up," Hvergelmir agreed. "Or to have taken away from you." And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. "Most people that do it make that sacrifice because they find it necessary, to salvage the rest of themselves -- it's not a choice to undertake lightly. People come to it with their own convictions, on either side." She frowned. "But some people -- occasionally you find someone who's got memories they're desperate to be rid of. And they're willing to go over to the enemy, or anywhere else, for the chance to get away from themselves."

Persephone. She was thinking of Persephone, desperate and failing to have her memories of a dead young girl wiped clean. Shame had driven her into the Negaverse's arms back then.

She considered the two alternatives against each other: the cost of losing powered memories versus the cost of losing everyday ones. Each was its own burden, as far as she'd seen.

"I've met people in both circumstances," she acknowledged. "People who lose the memories of the life they had before, as normal people . . . some of them have difficulty reconnecting with that world. It's hard, I'm sure -- everything seems dull and unimportant compared to a life where your continued existence is at stake. And starting over -- new identity, new career, new home, new friends all still to make -- is pretty demanding. But the people who lose their other memories . . . I don't know. Some of them can't seem to reconcile what they've lost. Not knowing what they've done, and to whom, and if they can live with it -- it haunts some of them. They bear the weight of unknown regrets, forgotten transgressions -- things they can never atone for."

She cupped her chin in her hands, contemplative. This one -- Umber -- might be a tough nut to crack. There was nothing overtly hostile in him, though he was rightfully guarded . . . but then, there was no particular passion or drive in him that she'd been able to suss out yet, either. He seemed to simply be neutral-minded on it all -- which made it difficult to find some place to make inroads. With a lever, anyone could move the world . . . if they could find someplace to stand.

What matters to you? Hvergelmir wondered. What makes your heart sing and shriek and shudder? What would you fight desperately for?

He would take time to get to know, she suspected.

"Death and change as the same concept . . . you find that in some systems of thought. There's the Ogham rune, Ruis -- the elder tree. There, all death is its own transition. What ends also begins, what changes also dies . . . and we're always changing, always dying, always becoming. Change has its own value. I'll give you that." She paused. "Is the war itself necessary?"