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It had been a few weeks of fretting over it -- a few weeks of coming to terms with it. Sarras was not going to forgive Hvergelmir any time soon -- maybe not ever. She ruined his chance to avenge his mother, and rescued a Negaverse General. That was not the sort of thing people tended to forgive and forget.

But he was still her brother-in-arms. Still the first Cosmos knight she'd met, the one she'd fought alongside. They'd lost so many comrades already. Hvergelmir was not prepared to risk the possibility that they might lose Sarras, too.

It had been hard to think of a person she could enlist for help, though. If Sarras had any friends among knights or senshi, Hvergelmir didn't know about them -- he always seemed to be going it alone, doing his own thing. Little Hyperborea had been an option, or Teide -- Cosmos knights like Sarras and Hvergelmir both were -- but she'd discarded both of those ideas as soon as they'd come up. Hyperborea was too young, not to mention too green, to be put in the position of minding an adult. Teide wasn't much older, and she was going through a lot more right now than any of the rest of them were. What she needed was time to worry about herself.

That left even more tenuous, less certain connections.

In the end, she had no real idea whether Falias of Earth would even respond to her request to meet, much less be interested in helping with Sarras. What she knew, really, was just that the two of them had been the only survivors of their level of Mistral's laboratory. If their level had been anything like the Archives, surviving something like that forged powerful bonds.

Powerful enough, she hoped, for an Earth squire she barely knew to agree to a scheme.

That, and besides, she had other questions to ask, too.

Hvergelmir waited anxiously on the basketball court in the park, periodically looking up through the orange hoop to see what stars she could line up within its circle. Her note had been vague -- would he show up?

There were any number of reasons to want to meet with Falias. A few of them were obvious -- the trouble with Sarras, the desire to learn more about Earth knights -- but beyond those, she had another motive: she wanted to meet more knights. She felt like she knew so few of them -- difficult going when she was trying to figure out how to portray their order to outsiders. What could she tell Negaverse agents about the knighthood she was trying to talk them into?

Falias arrived with impressive punctuality. He was, interestingly enough, still a squire. In Hvergelmir's limited experience, that seemed fairly rare. Most knights she'd come across, herself included, tended to linger much longer at their page rank than at squire, if they lingered long at all. Whatever it was that most of them needed to find within themselves, opening that first door seemed the hardest. From there, it was unusual for a knight to have difficulty progressing.

She wondered if something had interrupted Falias's course. Real life maybe, or --

Or what had happened at Mistral. It had taken Sarras till now to rank up to knight, himself -- and they all knew how bad things had been on Level Six, where Sarras and Falias had been the only ones to walk away from it at all. Something like that . . . if growing in rank, as a knight, was about accepting yourself and your knighthood, growing into your role -- something like what they had experienced could definitely stunt that growth. Make a person hesitant to progress further.

Something to think about.

Hvergelmir approached, clad in her usual white and rainbow uniform, and held out a hand to shake. "Thanks for meeting me. You and I haven't really had a chance to talk, but -- I think there's something you might be able to help me with. Well, a few things, but. I don't know how off-base I am, but I think Sarras is in trouble, and I'm worried that you might be the closest thing he has to a friend."

Hvergelmir shook her head with a rueful smile. "It's not you," she reassured. "I mostly work alone, so. I'm sort of behind on meeting other knights, I think."

Should she explain why she worked alone -- what it was she did? Would that put him off?

Maybe it was better to stick to the topics she'd come here to discuss, and hold off on the often-controversial topic of her oath until it came up. Or until she was more sure of Falias.

"Sarras is, um. Well, I guess I'm worried about him. I think what happened at Mistral was hard on us all, but I think -- I think he had a lot of trouble coping with what happened. He hasn't been the same ever since then. I -- I don't like to air out other people's business, but Sarras has always been sort of -- sort of separate. He lost family to the Negaverse before he ever became a knight. One of them killed his mother, and he's been trying to hold his family together ever since. He was already so isolated, and then after what happened at Mistral . . . he just. Withdrew. I mean, we were never close, but. We were the same. Cosmos knights. It was something, you know? But after Mistral, I think trying to get justice for his mother was the only thing keeping him going."

Hvergelmir sighed, getting around to the point. "I guess recently he almost got his chance. He found the guy who'd done it, only it's just . . . I got in his way, and he didn't get to get any revenge for what happened to his mom. Now he's furious with me, and -- " She sighed, shaking her head. "I don't know, he was already in such a bad place, and now I don't know if he has anyone at all. It's not good for him, and I just, I know the Negaverse likes to prey on people when they're at their weakness, talk them into making choices they wouldn't make if they were at their best."

She looked up, plaintive. "He needs someone looking out for him."

Hvergelmir tried not to lose heart at Falias's reluctance to get involved. She'd prepared herself for this, after all -- for the likelihood that this was such a desperate reach of a request that it was sure to be turned down.

"No," she admitted. "I'm sure he'd hate it. He barely tolerated me being around at all, and I don't even think we got on that badly. But I promise you the Negaverse isn't going to give him the space he wants. They'll see that he's angry, they'll offer him an outlet -- he needs to know he still has connections here. People who notice whether or not he's around." She put out a hand, conciliatory. "I'm not saying you have to pry -- I'm not even saying you have to try and get him to talk to you about it. Just . . . just be there. Ask him to go on a few patrols with you. Spend time with him -- make him feel like he's got some kind of a regular connection that's important. I know he may not be your friend, but . . . he may not have any friends. He's still our brother, our fellow knight. We still have a responsibility to look out for each other." Hvergelmir clasped her hands together, hoping she looked sincere enough to convince Falias to take on the job. "Please. We're losing him."

"Oh," she sighed, relieved. "That's great! Thank you." Hvergelmir relaxed a little, her shoulders going slack. Don't tell him I put you up to this didn't even require saying. Anyone who knew Sarras at all knew a handful of reasons why telling him that would be a horrible idea.

She lowered her folded hands to clasp them loosely in front of her. "There was something else I was hoping you could help me with. Another knight and I are looking to try and organize some kind of informal classes for knights -- just meetings to help us share what we know with each other, kind of fill in some of the gaps in our resources since we don't have the Academy anymore. And since the aspected magic -- the kind that uses our signet rings? -- is common among each order, and a lot of people don't even know it exists, we thought we'd try to talk to people from each of the knightly orders and see if they could tell us what theirs does. Have you ever used it?"

Well, this would be interesting. Like many knights, Falias seemed not to know about his magical aspect, which meant he also wouldn't know what it did. It seemed pertinent to share what she knew, of course -- but she wasn't sure how much either of the two of them would be able to figure out about his aspect.

"Your aspect lasts about five or ten minutes," she said. "I haven't timed it. But all you have to do is touch your signet ring and sort of . . . try to imagine yourself tapping into the power of your world -- Earth, for you, basically. And the aspect will activate. It stops the same way."

She demonstrated, passing her thumb over the top of her signet ring. A bright shimmer sparkled over her skin, illuminating her in a soft glow. "For Cosmos knights, it's like this. Harmless to people like us, but it reacts with Chaos badly -- it's like a burn, if they try to touch me."

She deactivated her aspect again, letting the glow drop. "If you tried yours out, maybe we could just . . . figure it out?"

Hvergelmir waited, watching closely while Falias attempted to go through the motions to activate his aspected magic. A few long minutes passed -- Hvergelmir eventually began to wonder if his magic wasn't visible to the naked eye. Something subtler, perhaps? She squinted, scrutinizing -- and then it was as though the sun literally broke through the clouds over him.

This was particularly remarkable in the middle of the night.

"It's working!" she cheered, pressing her hands together happily. "You're doing it. Look, it's sort of -- " She passed her hand in the air over Falias's arm, where it should've disrupted the sunlight, if it were real. The dappled glow on his arm remained unchanged . . . like he was standing in a sunny glade on a golden afternoon, not a basketball court at midnight. "Sort of sunny. Do you feel any different?"

Hvergelmir stared at Falias, puzzling over his strange sunlight -- and continued her curious staring long after he'd dismissed the dappled glow again. What was it? she wondered. What did it do?

A dead end -- but it was at least a clue. She supposed she'd have to try Camelot or someone else next. At least she was better off here . . . Hvergelmir wasn't sure she even knew any knights from some of the cosmic orders. Were there knights of Neptune? Did they even exist?

"I'll ask around," Hvergelmir said, not wanting Falias to feel dispirited about the mystery of it. He'd succeeded in activating it, after all -- that was an accomplishment worth being happy about, for a start. "Maybe someone out there knows. I'm actually trying to collect information about all the different aspects -- Babylon and I are trying to put together as much information as we can, so we can start calling meetings of knights and maybe get all this out there for people, so we're not so in the dark about ourselves and what we can do." She folded her hands together in front of her. "If there's a meeting, will you come? Just to listen."