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"You know, I'd provide a few bars of "Grandma got Run Over by a Reindeer", but I'm not that good at singing, and you don't so much look like a Grandma."

Good punches and Bad Humor, two traits he figured he was probably fairly known for at this point, but hey, if you had a thing that worked...

"Hope you're not offended if I offer some help with the beat" He offered, summoning his net, and trying to lash the creature around it's antlers to drag it back. Not entirely what the weighted net was -for- but, the red-headed Senshi looked like she could use a break, and not in the bone variety, even if the horrible pun, (yeah even he had to admit that one was pretty awful) probably heart as much as the headbutt. "I mean if you've got this I'll butt out..."

...Ok that one was an accident. Mostly an accident. Probably an accident.

Kairatos wouldn't have blamed her in the least if he'd known he'd startled her, seeing as to how she'd been up to her neck in fighting with a youma, which made for a poor time to be focusing on... well... much of anything else, including how close auras were or weren't.

"Yeah no... problem" The last word was emphasized by an gruesome jerk as he twisted the net sharply, delivering a swift kick to the youma, already battered by it's struggles with Denebola, finishing it with an crunch less humorous than the terrible puns and dismissing the net, which was weighted with what looked like pieces of horn as well, as the creature crumbled into dust. "Jeeze. If most of them weren't basically as dumb as stumps I'd say youma had some kind of sense of humor... but the ones that are capable of it would probably think of something a lot nastier than Rudolph the red nosed Maim-deer."

He nudged at the dispersing dust with his toe and snorted, then offered a hand to the redhead as she sorted herself out.

"Kairatos." He offered, by way of introduction. He didn't bother with the 'of Mars' part. That seemed pretty much a given at this point. Mars knights were hard to miss. "You are?"

"You did most of the work, don't worry about it." Besides, he wasn't entirely sure but he thought he might be slightly more powerful, though on a sliding scale between Knight and Senshi, lines weren't necessarily that clear. "If you do get jumped by an Elf-youma, be careful, half youma and humanoid ones are sometimes a bit smarter in trade off for not punching as hard.... but I'm preaching to the choir aren't I?"

"Youma are tough, they regenerate in the rift and come back, they've pretty much literally got nothing to loose." He offered, as reassurance. "It's easy to forget there are some very strong, terrifying things in the wings when you get used to dusting the foot soldiers. There are things down there that would give a royal pause."

He still hung up a little before giving her that last piece of information, but he'd sworn when he purified to hold that banner high, even when it wasn't always easy.

"Could have been. Did it look the same?" He suggested. "...I wasn't at the surrounding, but maybe. Before I purified, I went to the rift to bond a youma. There are things down there... things I couldn't begin to describe. They're so damn old and dark I think they must have been there since before the rift was the rift, if not older." He could easily imagine some of the things from that deep darkness having come here in attendance to Metalia herself, her truest, oldest courtiers, though really he didn't know. It was just altogether too easy to imagine.

"You... -can- permanently dust them, but it's hard. That's the point, it's why they're everywhere. The main downside to them is that the ready to launch ones aren't necessarily that smart. Redline wasn't smart. They were just... fast. But anything else... I don't know how much I can tell you that's static. I mean other than Schorl. You see a woman with pale blond hair, green uniform and an cane... run like ******** and don't stop. She's not an General King or Queen, but she doesn't have to be, and I hate to say that."

"I tend to think of it as sending them back to a holding cell until we find out if there's a way to to fix them... they're victims of chaos too, even if there's not enough left of their starseed for any of us to put back together right now." He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking about it. "I did. I used to be Captain Realgar. I jumped ship before I made General. The universe gave me an upgrade on merit or something when I swapped over, or... maybe it just figured I'd need to hit as hard as possible. It's dangerous to swap. Glamor helps but you loose part of yourself anyway. I...lost my civilian memories, but I remember everything I did as Realgar. As for how it's done... as far as anyone's seen you have to be a Royal, no one with less power can stand up to it, and they can only do one at a time, it takes... literally everything out of them. Probably why no one else can do it. It knocked Iris on her a** for a good week. Probably kill either of us, and since we aren't chaos, it's not like they can just pop a starseed or an energy pearl and feel better. I don't reallly know what it felt like for her but for me it kind of... hurt. So did corrupting but... it was..." How to describe it.... "Different."

He gestured vaguely, trying to explain with his hands the parts where vocabulary failed. "Corrupting felt like it was feeding everything in you that's dark. Or did for me. All the resentment, the hate, the parts of you that really want to just haul off and punch someone on the bus for stealing your seat, that kind of thing. Like it was following the fault lines in your soul. Purification was the opposite, it hurt but the way you hurt when your bones are knitting back together, you know it's important, even if it's not fun. I... have no idea if any of that makes any sense. Does it make sense?"

"It's not easy to get out. You spend a lot of time hearing about how you're fighting the good fight, sacrifices must be made for the greater good and all... And by the way they'll kill you if you leave. And the chaos it... makes things easier the more powerful you get. Easier to justify things. Unless someone actually ******** up your star seed it doesn't actually break your mind, but it's like novacane. It makes you slowly more numb to the things that would have bothered you once. I got cocky, I was out for a full goddamn year before anyone took notice. Zinkenite always treated me like an embarrassment in the first place, the dog you tie up in the junk yard and forget about, I guess he must have swept it under the rug when I bailed. I made it a point of being loud too, so people would know there was a way out, that you could get out and stay alive, and Schorl's the one who finally came around to take me to task for that. It'll be harder to sneak people out from under her now, but there are people. They just need to know it's an option, and that people will help them when they get here. Definitely worth it though. I mean... it was for me. But at that point I didn't think I had much to loose. I didn't have the big... the big family ties some people do. The ones that do... they're in worst. Even if they get out, they can't necessarily protect their own family."

Lots of questions, good ones, and he didn't blame her.

"Um. Iris... there's Polaris I think but I haven't seen her since I was an Lieutenant. Just haven't crossed paths I think. Big city and all... um. Camelot, he's the only knight I've seen that can do it. Kinda hoping we see others, but I guess that's down to the Code. Um... There's Ganymede, Cosmos... and Castor. ******** Castor he's out of his goddamn gourd. He about half killed me -after- I purified, then acted like we were best pals. I think he gave himself frost bite on the brain or something." He growled.

Didn't matter in his book that Castor HAD the power, the Castor he wasn't likely to forget was the one who, with his brother, had stood over the corpses of dead Lieutenants with their hearts ripped out, then stolen their bodies into space so their families would never have closure. Angry children, lost children, children who never had a chance to choose another path and never would in this life.

"There's not a lot of them, and it's difficult, but it's possible. The big thing is getting them to and from safely, and making sure they've got a support system waiting for them afterward. Doesn't do any good to purify someone then just... cut them loose afterward."

"Of course they're in danger... but the negaverse half runs on the illusion that as long as you comply, you meet your quotas, you obey orders and fight like a good soldier, that they're somehow protected. They aren't. They're the first link in the chain they'll wrap around your throat to make you obey."

He couldn't help turning a bit red when she called him brave though. "They sell the line that you're protecting them, that the Senshi are invaders, conquerors, the threat. Doesn't help that they ALSO tend to offer you two choices. Corrupt, or die. Anyway we don't need to rip star-seeds to kill people. Just makes it... cleaner. Easier to forget the damage you're doing until you don't care anymore. I'll be the first to admit even I'm not innocent, but they did harvest starseeds more back in the day. Zinkenite had me take two on the first night I corrupted. That was his idea of an entrance exam. An actual resource for someone to turn though... that's pretty damn invaluable. I'll tuck your name away, if I find someone who can use it, I'll try and get in touch? I mean I don't know of anything going down right now... but if you're ok with helping..."

Was he babbling? He was probably babbling, but it was -freaking fantastic-. There were people out there that needed this, like they needed things like Babylon's safehouse, but... more of them. And jobs, and identities...