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Killing wasn't in truth, something he took a great joy or pride in. It was an unfortunate evil in war, and often those that he found were ignorant of just who they challenged until it was too late. Ignorance and arrogance. The pitfalls of youth, of forced that followed orders without question or fed a string of lies so far they had lost their way from reality.

His hand was stained a dark brown, flaked of blood flicking off here and there and the previously pristine dark grey of the fabric that were his gloves, and the once scarred tan flesh of skin held the dark stain of old blood. The body he'd left covered in a discrete location where it would be found. It would look like they died in the cold from exposure at first. Only if they looked more would they notice the wound in the side.

Yet the blood clung to his hands, even an hour later. It smelled of copper still, and he'd remained powered, still watching for more agents, waiting for the body to be found so he could move on. Once he heard the sirens he'd go. Sirens or officers nearby come to steal a corpse for who knew what. He's seen enough of their abominations not to truth them with their own dead.

Yet he knew the reason why they took them. Yet another unfortunate evil in war, only that was their perspective. As he sat, waiting on the water tower, he felt the flicker of another order and simply waited. If they came they came, if not, he'd let them be.

Oh boy. Castor hadn't expected the person to find the body but, they did. A powered eyes tended to bee a bit more keen than civilians in just what to look for, so Castor shouldn't have been too surprised. What was a surprise was it being the woman who had as far as he knew, ire for him and his thoughts and stance. But, so did half of order.

"A dead body if it wasn't obvious. Or, alternatively, a body watched until it was found and authorities contacted, I've seen enough corpses turned youma to know that they are not the most kind to their fallen comrades." He walked over and very calmly, recovered the corpse, making sure the death would was still hidden.

"Defilement of corpses isn't something I particularly endorse. Though, I'm guessing you would doubt that?"

She had seen him at his grand return.

"But I digress. If we talk, lets take it else where. Being too close they'll pin it one us." Even if it had been technically him.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her undisguised distaste for him. Still he gave once more a look over the body and feeling that it was fine, he nodded, allowing her to lead them away. The further from view, the better.

"Do you ever consider the art of war Hvergelmir?" He knew her name, if only from notoriety, much like most knew he was simply Castor when he arrived to places royal.
"You ought to consider it."

Still he followed her lead, and figured there was little wrong in talking to pass the time. That and, two powereds from order would be easier keeping any offers seeking the body to corrupt at bay.

"As for the person they were a captain of, unfortunately, little consequence. Once I permanently removed their youma from existence, I used a shard of ice from my attack to stab them in their side. I missed-" he sighed, visibly displeased with the fact, "-their artery, and had to finish it by knocking them out. They bled to death not far off, and I moved the body so It would be found."

Castor showed them his hands, blood still lingering. "If it comforts you, they were not aware when they passed." He didn't even know the captain's name.

Had Castor knew her mind he would have answered that he expected she coddled the knights and pandered to flawed ideals and risked too much with no hope of gain. That and not tea but more coffee and croissants.

"If I had known their name, you think I would not care to recall it?" He asked her, tone all but bland and the taste of annoyance on his tongue. "They were an officer who offered me no words other than a declaration that they would 'hang my head upon the crystal throne'. As to know my enemy? Yes. I know them because I have seen them at their worst and greatest. I have seen their strongest at their weakest, and their weakest become their kings. I have taken their Ascended General to my world as a guest, and seen the promises in her skin and eyes of our fate should we fall."

He tilted his head, clearly wanting to get something from their conversation. Curiosity mixed with trepidation. Castor wanted to know more than he lead on.
"And you shouldn't claim we have an army. We have nothing as far as a unified front. Yet still? Lacking an army? Lacking any sort of leadership than the name of a dead princess who we will never see in our entire lives? Without any true unified morality or basic dignity and respect for the enemy, much less each other? Order the largest, most apparent advantage in years and we're too busy playing moral compass to even act on it and frankly, it's infuriating."

He walked towards her.
"Does the phrase, to fool my enemy I must first fool my allies strike any chord with you by chance?" He was close, still the expression of curiosity remained.

"Respect is not a right given to those who have nothing to respect. Respect and decency are not interchangeable, as many of order somehow thinks they are." He thought back to how some would treat their enemies, the utter contempt of basic concepts of battle and war- and just what was indeed, reprehensible and deplorable and what was otherwise unjust- a concept he often found himself at odd with. This was going to be a long conversation and for a moment he looked to the knight. She would never change her position. She was stubborn and likely, headstrong. She cared too much, too passionately.

She was too much himself in that sense. She was too much in his eyes a reflection of himself, of what he could have been once upon a time before he'd become jaded. Before he'd felt and seen his past and future shadows return to haunt his mind and memories.

"Certain times our situations call us to sacrifice certain moralities to make tactical advances. Every action bears consequence. Just why I refuse to coddle those who seek to purify. Why I would 'torment' Teide of Cosmos before she knew herself as Teide." Castor was fighting for an even tone, yet his mild aggravation and exasperation were leaking through, becoming open as he used air quotes to the word torment.

"You move, act and speak in a manner that show more than I think you gasp- You move like you lead. With the thought of our people before your own motives. I am trying hard, very, very hard I might add to express my admiration on that, even if I don't agree with your stance."

He sighed, leaning his body on a leg while the other scratched at his calf. Fingers picked absentmindedly at the caked dry blood in his gloves.
"If you think we are a proper army you are mistaken. I am not going to pretend on something as definitive as a unified, cohesive force that answers to it's leaders and that we have soldiers who are equipped to take up arms, defend and fight at a moment's notice. A force that can react in an instant to an attack. None of them are trained to act as one. Those that are act in small easily disposed of unit. In a true fight against the face of the might of Chaos, if we were to face tomorrow, a full scale invasion, what do you think the result would be? How fast before we would see ourselves making any sort of retaliation?" He let her dwell on it. He would let her think and come with her defenses.

"We have no defenses. We have no chain of command. Everyone answers to no one. Those who answer to others do so out of courtesy and respect. Two traits that while good, and not the complete formula for a unified force. We stand no chance against the tide of darkness if we remain as we are. That is just why we have the upper hand for the first time in years. Because for the first time in years, we are seeing weakness in the ranks of the negaverse. We are seeing systematically their efforts becoming less overt, less public. They are moving, but the have moved from their hunts of us to something else. Their gaze is not what it once was."

Once more he looked at her pointedly.
"Have you not wondered something basic then- why would I pointedly expose myself and my weaker sibling in a manner to highlight a weakness in our ranks? Why sow dissent against myself and ignore all sense of self preservation and risk allies new and old after a three year absence? Why would a royal, a being who poses perhaps the greatest threat to chaos in terms of power and potential, let his brother claim to be his keeper and let it be known they have a weakness of such depths?" He'd spell it out if he had to.
"You move and speak like a leader, you act to protect order and save those who have potential. Yet you blind yourself to our faults, and that is a risk I want to understand. If you accept that you have chosen this path, or if you truly think we are as without flaw as you say and do."

"We cannot save everyone. That is the nature of war. That is a point I want to understand from your gaze. A brash, crude and often arrogant prince I might be, but I am not ready to gamble lives in this war. I will not see us fall, and that means I must understand those who oppose my views. Who would lead without knowing they do."

"And so one life is worth a thousand innocents who have no place in our war?" His tone had become harsh and judgemental.
"You say things as if purification is simple and that it's effects are not so far reaching. You want to know the fallout my ascension, the purification of the one I love cost, ultimately?" His arms had folded as he looked down upon her, pointed and blatant.
"I was the shift in the balance that helped create created Tanzanite. I was the one who's involvement with her and my encounter with Beryl that cost her her arm and had them graft a youma into her flesh without her consent, how they forced her to live and would not even grant her the peace of death. Later, when I took from them the woman who was later my wife, when I became a royal, what do you think the balance did? That it simply accepted a loss? That a sudden rush of powerful energy flowing into order that the cosmos would not seek to right itself?" He took a deep breath, the memories sad and bitter. The wound scabbed yet never healed.

"She was connected to us, and it was her that was chosen to fill the void very likely for such a reason. She lost all of her humanity, the woman who might have once been human was gone, replaced by a monster so grotesque that I am ashamed to know I was the one who helped set her upon that path. And yet she was never fully consumed until the very end, she was doomed to die no matter her fate. She filled the void Linarite left, and became a general queen to match my rise. She did not just kill a few, she killed hundreds, very likely thousands Hvergelmir. With the power of her queen, with the power of Metallca, with the power of Chaos, she alone was responsible for countless deaths, and each one of them utterly innocent in our war. She was the answer to balance, and it cost innocent people their lives. People who had nothing to do with us. How many agents of Chaos have taken innocent lives acting on behalf of chaos? Unknowingly, filling a role in the balance?" He was angry. Angry because it was not a truth he liked to relive, to admit.

"I have to test each one, I have to tell them the truth of exactly what purification means, what it can mean. Just because it is right, does not mean it is inherently good. Freedom is not coddling, freedom is a sacrifice, made in blood of innocents and the suffering of another who will take their place. Coddling, is not telling them such truth, not telling them that if they take such a path, that they will suffer, that some likely will die for that choice, and no matter what, someone must fill the void they leave behind. I risk everything, not just my own life, but the lives of untold numbers of innocents each time I purify someone. Nothing is without a price. Not even freedom, not even the choice. Knowledge is the price they must pay. Understanding is a price they must pay. Purification is a choice, but is not one that can be made ignorantly. If I make a single mistake, if I misjudge someone's intent, their remorse, their want, their fear, I can and will die. Except my death will leave no void, there would be none to replace me, and none to stem the insurgence of chaos and the deaths of innocent lives."

He was angry, and the old would had split open, raw and gaping and fresh as if it was new. "I regret that night I became a royal, that Linarite became Lina. Because had I known what it would cost, I would have done a great many things differently. I would have perhaps, even chosen a different fate, even if it would have cost me a part of my soul to do it. Ultimately, Tanzanite acted as she was created to do, but my hand in her creation cannot be ignored. The lives she took rest not only on her hands but mine as well. I was ignorant of the price of balance, and it was only later that I realized the depth of what I had set in motion that night. 'Purification will always be the right thing, will always be the correct course of action'." He was quoting and he felt older than he was, felt himself regret deeper than he should have.

"That is a truth, but it is one that must be tempered with understanding of all the consequences. All the possible outcomes. They do not buy themselves back for me or from me. They buy themselves back from chaos, and must pay for it in their own lives if not with the lives of others. It is a burden they must carry and know, unless they wish to truly be free of chaos and it's grip upon their hearts. If I do not do this for them-" He shook his head.
"If we do not give them this truth, that knowledge, it is a doubt. It is one they will discover all too late, and it opens them back to the lure of chaos. What you do is right, but if we omit truths, we risk hurting them more than we can heal them. We risk losing them and if we did?" He'd not see another fall as he had. He'd not let his mistake be repeated, let such sufferings occur when they could be stopped.

"My role is to protect and serve. But it is also to maintain what balance we might have. Mitigating the loss of life. It is not just for civilians, senshi or knights alone that I might do this- I must too, do this for the universe itself. We fight a war and like any war I cannot simply act ignorant. Our moralities cannot focus on us, on being better. Righteousness is not always the way of Order. It is a single strand of a much larger tapestry if you want a visual. You are not wrong, but each time we meet, I feel you ignore the depths of what ideals you promote. It will not matter if you wish to lead or not, only that people look to you to lead and guide them. To lead an army you don't need to send them to war, to fight. You can simply exist, and they will fight for you. How many fight for a princess that is dead, who's ideals they will never know the depths of, and who will never have the chance to lead them? Who they look to for answers is just as much a leader as any other. That is an advantage of Order. The advantage of choice and knowledge."

In the distance he sirens of police and an ambulance drew near. The body had been found and reported.
"I do not want to lead them. But I know some might want or see me in a place to do so. It is better I remain as I am, because we need chaos to underestimate us. We need them to discount the threat we pose. I can only advise us, give us a sliver of an advantage for the most dire of fates if things should begin to fail. You ask who I would save."

They were not the same, but he'd begun to gasp her sights and goals. She was noble in her pursuits, idealistic in her hopes for them all. "There is not a correct choice in whose life is more worth saving than another. There never will be. My choice would be to save both, and carry the consequences of my decision. If I made the wrong choice, if it ended in death and suffering?" He looked towards where they had left the body.

"That will be upon my hands, just as all my decisions are."

He shook. It was not the shaking of anger, but the shaking that came with deep breaths, suppressing feelings and emotions. The breath that came from swallowing down things that one wanted buried. "No." The tone was definitive.
"That's the problem. One of our problems. They exist at the same time. Subjective and absolute. You cannot simply say something that just is, you can only hope to give it a quantification."

He motioned towards the area where they sirens were wailing, a white noise to him now, yet a reminder of what had brought them there.
"How do you have the law of gravity, yet there is a way to counteract it? A way that is subject to nothing more than spoken words and a means that was latent in a body that is molecularity no more different than you or I? You code is not incorrect. The universe has been out of balance for a long time. A thousand years of senshi and knight dormancy has left chaos and it's forces run unchecked. Yet you just spoke a truth that is over looked."

He wasn't wrong. He refused to be wrong. Not just because he wanted to be right-
But because if he was wrong, he had failed in a way that there would be no recovery from. He'd saved someone, and then failed to keep them safe.

"Purification is one way to correct it. Unlike chaos, forcibly purifying is a dead man's task, and holds little gains. Purification is a course that is limited, and perilous. The White Moon senshi have lost their queen and her would be consort. Her revival will not come for a thousand years if we are lucky, but yet senshi and knights hold onto her like children clinging to the skirts of a mother. Had she survived, her crystal quite possibly would have greatly allowed us the opportunity to gain traction in recovering our losses Yet she is dead and she is not going to come back. She will not return to lead them. Her crystal and it's powers are for all purposes, lost to us."

"I used to think that she might help me, that when she reached out to me, that she might come back, that it was her way of trying to guide from beyond the grave." He gave a barking bitter laughter. "It was that kind of fool's thinking that let me believe that good will triumph over evil. That we, that order was good. Then I grew older. I grew wise. I saw the costs and price that a fool's dreams could be. I saw my dream die the instant the flowers I had brought from earth to Castor for my beloved died over night. Dream and hopes are for fools who do not know the harsh realities and sacrifices they must make to keep them alive." He looked at her, a hollow stare of a man who had broken and shattered a part of his soul yet still fought to march on wards to a battle.

"You said it yourself. 'Earth has fallen to Chaos, all except our last holdout in Destiny City.'" He left his power wrap around him, the hum of cold and sound of ice crackling as he changed.
"It is not a matter of if I purify. It is never a matter of how. It's is only a matter of time. How long until we have the chance to retreat? To strike? How long before we must take the final stand?" He let his words drop lower, an admission. "How long before purification is no longer an option, and our only recourse must become wholesale slaughter if we are to merely survive?" It was a bleak future they had seen. It was a fear- and a possible reality.

"I cannot forgive myself for my mistake. My pride. You are not the first to tell me that, you won't be the last. There is no one left alive who can forgive what I have done to them. I want to believe that maybe we might win, that maybe, we are wrong, that this is not the last place that might host our starseeds, that humans are not the last viable race. If your code is right, if we are the last?" He didn't like it. He didn't want to admit that he felt his failings were going to send them further down the path of the end.

" I am Prince Castor, senshi of hail, and through me, justice shall rain down from the heavens. I am the fury of ice and force, I nature's devotion to whim, I am the bond of a few to become the power of many. I am a royal who's power is in destruction. Hail was never gentle. I was never gentle."
"I will kill them Hvergelmir. I will kill every single last one of the agents of chaos until we are safe again. I will kill them so they will fear me and hunt me. I will kill them as quickly as I find them to thin their ranks, to fight an ever growing tide. Until we have retaken what was been stolen from us. Those that will take the risks of death, that will face their once allies are few and far between. You are a road that leads to a paradise. A woman who believes in peace and that order is good."

"You will be the beacon of hope for many, and the day you fall I will mourn you as I mourn each life I must take in this war for a lost cause. I will mourn because you give them what I cannot. You have faith and believe we are good at our core."

The cold came closer to his skin, the water in his eyes making the dark blue shine in their hollow gaze.
"My problem was I was never good to start with." With that Castor turned his back to her and left earth, the only sign he'd been there a small patch of frost where he'd been standing moments prior.