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Mistral had spent most of her summer on her wonder or otherwise indoors. The heat hadn't used to bother her so badly, but with her kidney troubles (that being, she only had one kidney), it was best to avoid sweating, heat stroke, and dehydration. It had simply been too hot for her to be outdoors most nights, and that had set her back significantly on her work.

Not that she was feeling sorry for herself or anything like that, of course. Mistral very seldom allowed herself the luxury of pity.

The heat and humidity had broken - at least briefly - and it so happened that she was between wonder visits. The timer was annoying, but trying to defy it resulted in a splitting headache and not much else. It was an experiment for another day, once she had some of her other projects finished and out of the way. One thing at a time would see it all done well. So, stranded as she was, she harnessed up Mendel and headed to the streets.

Mistral would never be able to walk a beat like other knights, but she could circle the neighborhood and let her dog sniff at the neighbors' landscaping and call it a job well done. Perhaps she'd been wrong about the heat, she thought, as Mendel trotted circles in the ivy. There was sweat pooling at the back of her neck.

She tugged at her collar. These were ceremonial robes, meant for the cold valleys of Mercury. Not Destiny City, and certainly not in August.

Mistral's thoughts at seeing the woman approaching her did not immediately go to squire. Perhaps there was a convention in town for Frozen cosplayers. She'd heard of conventions for weirder things. Auras didn't lie, however. "Mendel, heel," she said, and Mendel, being a very well-trained service dog, lifted his head from the ivy and trotted back to her side.

"Now there's an idea," she observed, eyes going to the coat folded over the squire's arms. "Layers. All the wonderful minds of ancient Mercury, and I'm naked under this"

Maybe she'd be able to have a hand in designing her uniform for her knight stage. After all, someone must have drafted these costumes once upon a time. Who was to say they couldn't change? The cosmic wardrobe department clearly had issues understanding weather appropriate as a broad concept. All her fancy Mercurean fabric did nothing for the fact that she was wearing fur.

"I'm Mistral," she said, and waited for the other squire's reaction. If she'd never heard of her, then good. Word of the labyrinth had spread far and wide. "Of Mercury. And it is too damn hot."

Mistral sighed. She could try ripping off the fur, but getting into the habit of pulling things off your uniform every time you powered up was a dangerous path that she did not aim to follow Sailor Gunn down. "It would ruin the look of the outfit," she said wryly.

"I should have realized," she said, looking the girl over. She'd never personally met a knight of Polaris before, but Babylon had told her to put their symbol on his alethiometer. "It's nice to meet you," she said, offering the squire her hand. "I've never met a knight of your order before. I'm curious - are your wonders on the star Polaris itself, or on a planet orbiting it?"

It seemed preposterous that wonders would be located on the actual stellar surface, but then, perhaps no more preposterous than being asked to believe that there were wonders beneath the clouds of Jupiter. If one, then why not the other?

At her side, Mendel flopped onto his belly, having clearly determined that they were not going anywhere anytime soon.

A snow covered star. How strange, thought Mistral, but then everything about this war flew flagrantly in the face of what earthlings thought they knew about science. It was her duty as heir to the labyrinth to pick up where her past incarnation left off, to let the circle be unbroken and continue their research. "I think," she said, a faint smile on her lips, "That I would like to go there sometime. I'm clearly already dressed appropriately for the weather."

"My wonder is the Great Labyrinth at Mistral," she said, choosing to omit the gory details. If Delphi had not already come by them on her own, then she was certainly not going to be the one to fess to such bloodshed. "It is built deep beneath a crater on Mercury, and it's full of research labs. My ancestors were all scientists, and I do the best I can to uphold their mantle."

Her eyes dropped to Delphi's hands. "Do you have your signet ring?" she asked. "I have an invention that improves upon them. No doubt you've noticed their limitations as a method of instant communication?"

Notably, that they were useless.

Mistral eyed Mendel, considering the offer. "Perhaps not tonight," she said. It would probably be terrible for her reputation if she took her dog to a wonder and he decided to mark his territory everywhere. Mendel was well-trained, but some things were pure instinct. "My uniform is a sort of smart fabric, so I ought to be okay, but I don't like the idea of my dog freezing to death on an alien sun."

That just sounded un-fun all around.

"I understand how frustrating that can be," she added, changing the subject to keep up with Delphi. "I have access to every note ever written at Mistral, and I can read absolutely none of it." Well, some of it came more easily than others - she could at least recall having written some of it as Asimov. "Some of the greatest research ever done, and unless I can find someone to tutor me in ancient Mercurian dialects, it's useless."

She leaned forward to inspect Delphi's ring. "That's beautiful," said Mistral, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a thin ring of wire with a loop at the top. "Here," she said, "This fits around the bezel, and then you can send voice messages and holograms."

Mistral nodded at the idea of a translator. "I'm sure that there's a way to translate things," she said. After all, she'd built things in her lab that others had surely thought impossible - for starters, the communications device that she was now applying to Delphi's ring. Or Babylon's alethiometer, a device that probed the fabric of the universe to predict the impossible. Just because Mistral didn't personally have the time to devote to the project didn't mean it couldn't be done.

"A long time ago," she said, fitting the wire into place around the ring, "it was my knighthood project. The thing that would prove me worthy of my birthright. But the Negaverse rebellion made things unsafe, and I was sent to Earth before I could finish it." Asimov's indignation burned in her throat, twelve years old and full of rage at the prospect.

"When I returned to my wonder, I found the blueprints, and all of my notes. The parts were fabricated - they just needed to be recovered."

She swallowed back an awkward lump that was forming in her throat - she was not going to talk about her labyrinth here, about all the deaths it held. "So I finished it. It's a bit from my wonder and a lot from me."

She handed the ring back.

"Try it out," Mistral suggested. "Try calling me."

"I could remember writing the notes," said Mistral, "which made it easier - it would probably have been nearly impossible without that. And it was still... very hard." So many deaths. She would carry that on her soul until the end of her days - but it was a private burden, not something to spread around until her good name was well and truly trashed.

"I might be able to help with translation issues at a later date," she said, "But right now my plate is rather full..." The chivalridex would be finished when it was finished and not a moment sooner, and it would likely be thankless work until then (and after).

Looking back towards the ring, she said, "Yes. You just speak the name of the person you're calling, and then your message."

"I think it's worth a try," said Mistral, not wanting to oversell herself. If she left some uncertainty, it would be more impressive when she was successful - or less of a fall when she wasn't. "I've invented plenty of things that people tried to tell me were impossible. If you think about the basic mechanism you'd like to work with, then I'd be happy to help you out."

She raised her ring, nodding to the tiny hologram of Delphi that appeared before her. "Delphi," she replied, "You're very welcome."