Faustite felt remarkably lost.

He thought, for a time, that only the Negaverse proved capable of confiscating someone's autonomy. That his only real fear lay in the Negaverse's dubious assessment of his usefulness. Schörl provided ample threats herself, of course -- she knew a plethora of ways to wring out the efficiency of someone until they knew no taste for life. That was her talent, he supposed. Her insidious little pleasure. But the depths of the Negaverse's power was what twisted him so, what bound up his biology into a ramshackle mess. Their magic confiscated his childhood. Their prerogatives separated him from family. Their direct orders bade him down this terrible path.

But what occurred last August was not of Negaverse ilk. Nothing about it spoke of operation, or efficiency, or order of any sort. No part of it offered any explanation for what occurred or why it chose the victims it chose. The whole affair simply happened, in the same way that earthquakes or hurricanes or spontaneous human combustion happened - with no single or obvious trigger. He simply touched a mirror, and in the next instant, it drew him through drowning into a world unimaginable.

There, he expected to die. He expected to rot away with the lethargy that laced his bones. He expected his impromptu roommate to snap under the duress of her self-professed ADHD and throttle him. Perhaps she'd do it just to occupy her hands. Maybe she chose to do so for desperate sustenance. Instead, they fell through the floor unbidden and joined an inexplicable rat race through another illogical dimension. And in the end, what came of it? Nothing, as far as he could see. Drained and buffeted and beaten with debris, his trials amounted to nothing.

The mirror remained the most telltale clue. Only one brand of powered entity carried 'mirror' in its name. But the Dark Mirror Court exhibited such a meager influence over the war that such an interference seemed unfeasible. If they kept to themselves but to torment him pettily, then why bother with such a feat? Why draw Negaverse and Knight alike through the mirror, if not to drain them and force them to kill each other? Was that the insidious plan all along? Have half the population of victims kill each other, and the weakened other half would be destroyed in a gauntlet situation? A bold game, certainly -- one that drew far too much attention to themselves should it fail.

And by Faustite's continued life, it did. Now he looked on at the lone floor-length mirror, nestled deep in the park trails. It sat far enough off the beaten path that it only glimmered in the dark of night, when the moon pierced through heavy branches. Now that he faced the innocuous mirror, he yearned to test its surface. Would it suck him through invariably? Would it do nothing in his presence? Was the action worth the risk? Uncertainty stayed his hands as he looked on from beneath an elm's canopy. There was time yet to reflect on the threats of the past.

Slippered feet took the darkly dressed senshi through the park. The dark coloring of his uniform going a long way in keeping him hidden within the shadows he kept to, not wanting to be spotted by anyone much less confronted. Already he had a wraith out and gathering energy for him, a couple nearby and a few other people not too far off, he kept his distance and let the wraith do things for him. The senshi of gorgon’s liked to keep his distance from his work, at least this work, he liked to explore mirrorspace and the scape. What was offered there was what he enjoyed and spent personal time on.

As he moved through the shadows he gave pause, picking up on something...an aura which was darker than his own. They were off in the distance, whoever they were, he had yet to really deal with the Negaverse so had no idea on who might be out there or what their opinion of his own kind might be. Slipping further into the shadows, in an effort to hide despite the negaverse agent being a distance away, he hoped to keep himself from being noticed should they come seeking him out.

As his wraith continued to work, leaving a couple tired and getting up with the intent of going home to bed, the teen shifted his weight as he moved from foot to foot with nervous energy. He hoped they wouldn’t come, he didn’t know what to expect and he’d heard a mixed bag of things about the Negaverse. Fingers unconsciously moved to play with the hem of his uniform, toying with the end and pulling at it gently only to grip it moments later. Had someone else been here, at his side, he’d already have grabbed onto their uniform and held on out of a need for comfort and calm.

“Will they come…?” The words just a whisper, maybe less, as his dark eyes watched the area around him.

Faustite reached, one finger extended, and touched the mirror's surface. It did not waver. It did not ripple. It did not give in any way. As Faustite removed his hand, he looked to the fingerprint left behind. There it remained as a marker for a solid surface -- a slight made to memory of alternate worlds. Faustite sighed, dissatisfied.

He whispered aloud, his voice trapped in the forest's intimacy. "I was a fool." A quiet admission. A guilty one. He parted from the mirror then, finding no further answers, and started toward the woods. They bunched around them in their own jungle, peering in at those who strayed from beaten paths. Deeper he went, toward street lights and walkways and store fronts and lawn decorations. He felt a faint auric trace on the air, humming electric and beckoning to all the predatory parts of himself. Smoke left his pipes in steady streams while he dreamt of answers given and action bidden. He would have his questions asked, regardless of the Mirror child's wants.

By feel, Faustite thought him super. Of equivalence to himself. It couldn't always be Sinope --

It wasn't. He cleared the brush, left behind the tendrils of the forest that clung to him so. There, across black swaths of lawn, stood someone unfamiliar. Blacks and dragons and sheer material peered through by peeking street lights. Sodium lighting bleached out the accent colors to his black eyes. A boy at best, shifting weight restlessly, with one of his shadow creatures acting for impotent company.

"Your mirrors aren't working tonight," he greeted perhaps unkindly. He approached in slow, measured step. Grasses wavered under his footfalls and formed a chronicle of their meeting. "I haven't been sucked into one since August. What happened with that, Senshi? Do you know?" He halted at conversational range with hands frozen at his back. He, too, found little patience for standing still; he had precious seconds to pass before he would feel the need to pace.

He had hoped they wouldn’t come, he really didn’t like the idea of a potential fight, and yet he knew they would likely come and seek out his aura. They hadn’t disappointed he supposed, though he really wasn’t pleased with their appearance or their words. He had heard what had happened to other people in August, how could he not? But the reason was unknown. It was, without a doubt, connected to what had happened to his own court but the reason for others being brought in...was a mystery to him.

Summoning his wraith back to him, and back into the shard of mirror he carried, the dark haired male turned slowly to his companion? He wasn’t sure that was the right term to use but did it matter? They were here, in front of him, and asking questions and trying to hold some form of conversation.

“The mirrors are working just fine. You don’t walk mirrors though...so they won’t work for you…” Hesitating and slow, his voice was low and polite, as he looked over the figure who had joined him. They were...strange to say the least. He’d heard of youma, knew they were monsters of a sort, but this was no youma. This was a person...but they weren’t entirely human either - were they?

“You weren’t meant to be - no one was. Mirrorspace is ours.” Were they mad about that? Was that what this meeting was about? Would they attack him once they were don’t speaking, and gaining a few words in return from him? His fingers fisted at his own uniform as he took a step back from the captain, unsure of his own safety as they continued this...conversation.

“I-I don’t know….I know o-only some things. I don’t know why you were brought there.” Feeling rather small as the other spoke he shrunk down into himself, seemingly to reduce his height so he appeared smaller.

Only a few words into the senshi's answer, Faustite started to pace. Dewey grast bent underfoot when he chose a slow, yet tight, path. The accent did not escape his scrutiny, nor did the stutters. Nerves? Few relished speaking with the not-quite-human. Or perhaps, in retrospect, he was too human. A maddening thought.

Faustite switched directions. Switched considerations. Perhaps the senshi had a speech impediment. Or speaking of this Mirrorspace provoked an emotional response. Perhaps getting caught with his wraith out meant something significant. This one seemed skittish by how he carried himself as well. "So this place I was sucked into -- it's called Mirrorspace?" Every question came with gestures, as if assembling thought together in a coherent pattern. "And having gone there is abnormal? There were others, too. Knights and agents and senshi alike -- yet none of your kind. None of the Dark Mirror Court. It's peculiar, isn't it?" Faustite halted, regarded the boy.

A silence fell between them for a time. He looks young. Maybe no older than me. I wonder -- was it a choice? Or does the powered world make a habit of absconding with youth?

"I'm concerned," he stated as he resumed his pacing. "I'm concerned for your Court. How do you think it looks to the rest of the factions when we're pulled through mirrors, held hostage, and then put through a death race? Maybe some perished in there. Their friends will pine that loss. They'll look for the source. They'll find the Dark Mirror Court suspect -- for good reason, I suppose. Their absence speaks a lot on the matter, doesn't it?" He paused and looked to the senshi questioningly.

"Do you want to help your Court, Senshi? Tell me what you can. Even if it isn't much."

As the questions continued he nodded his head, slowly. “For you all to go...it’s not normal - it shouldn’t happen." Twisting at the sheer fabric of his uniform, his fingers moving and showing how nervous he really was. Kiuchi had never done well with being in such situations, and he was like an open book to read. He might be able to lie...but when under pressure, or nervous, it showed. He might be able to, at times, lie or play things off but if he wasn’t doing so or someone could read past the verbal lies - he was an open book.

“N-no...we were elsewhere...I don’t exactly know where. But we went missing as well. I - I don’t know how you got pulled into the mirrors or why…” He knew, sort of anyway, where he and most of his court had gone but that...that was a whole different story and one he didn’t much want to tell though at the same time it did seem like he should. It did look bad for his court after all...and people might come after them. But even if he told….he couldn’t possibly tell everyone and get the word out anyway. Not to mention he himself didn’t know exactly why the senshi and knights, and others, had wound up in the mirrors.

“We didn’t know what happened to everyone else. We came back...to the same thing you must have.” The stories of some sickness and some other such thing. “A-and my name isn’t senshi - it’s Kiuchi.” As if it mattered...but it was better than being called senshi, which was similar to just being called boy or anything similar.

'It's not normal -- it shouldn't happen.'

But it did. It did and it happened to devastating effect. It may not be normal -- we may have no more power over mirrors than you do over teleportation -- but it happened. It happened undeniably. The question remains: was this an accident, or did your Court try to engineer the collective destruction of two factions? Which is it, Senshi? Why the nerves?

The boy drew the ghost-feel of super over his skin. Of a rank equal to his own. And while Faustite knew no great secret about the Dark Mirror Court to declare undeniable equivalence between its power structure and the Negaverse's, Faustite imagined they may not have been so different. As a captain, he took precedence over lieutenants, but gleaned no greater information into the faction's inner workings. If knowledge on operations was disseminated on a need-to-know basis, he still didn't know. So perhaps it wasn't such a stretch to assume the senshi had no great insight into his Court's plans. Perhaps he was only a pawn. Perhaps he was fodder set out for conversations like these.

"So you were elsewhere." An interesting thought. Sequestered to prevent harm, perhaps? Restless fingers ticked off against each other behind the agent's back. He tossed his gaze to the ground, where dewey grass caught park lamp luminosity and shattered it into a thousand scattered stars. "'Went missing'. It's an interesting turn of phrase." He glanced sidelong at the senshi, even if the gesture was lost in his lack of irises.

"'We don't know what happened to everyone else'. And no one else knows what happened to you. That leaves the lot of it at a standstill, doesn't it?" Faustite reached a stop in his stride. "Not knowing is a dangerous concept, Kiuchi. Not knowing leaves all these interstices in the mind -- all this room for doubt and uncertainty. And if you've met anyone on this planet, if you've spent one iota of your time outside that dark garb, you'd know that people grow their worst case scenarios there. Their unmentioned nightmares.

"Maybe you're right, Kiuchi. What happened could have been a mess of not-knowing. A trick of the August heat. But think about the sanctity of your Court. Does it not behoove you to close up those little gaps? To set to rest as many of those insecurities as you can? Think of the lives it could save." He waited then, burning for answers.

”It’s not interesting when it’s technically true...we went missing.” People had just...well been pulled into mirrorspace and from there they’d been, sorta saved but not saved? He couldn’t say they’d been saved, since he really didn’t know what would have happened had that Queen not pulled them out of mirrorspace. They may not have actually come to harm, or death. It was one of those thing she supposed they’d never know, unless there was some sentience to mirrorspace which could tell them. If there was, which he didn’t think any of them knew of, it hadn’t spoken yet.

“I can’t say where we were...as it wasn’t here but elsewhere...an unknown elsewhere…” Even if he could give the name that didn’t mean it was a name which would turn up in any book found here on Earth. There was no starmap where he could point to where they’d been...he was trying to word himself to the best of his ability, without saying exactly what had happened.

Tilting his head as the other...scolded him? Or maybe tried to give him some lesson, he wasn’t sure which, he shook his head lightly. “I can’t close a gap when I don’t have the answer...because there is no way to prove what I could say and none of us have a full answer either….” He didn’t like the threat to his court, even if this was just a Captain, he wanted to do his best….to protect his family. But giving out information could be just as harmful, perhaps even more so, but he really wasn't sure. He didn’t know what to make of this situation. Maybe he could try and...say something a bit better?

Fiddling with the hem of his shirt he picked his words carefully, trying to make them make sense while at the same time hiding what he could. “Mirrorspace...it changes - every time you enter. Nothing is constant.” Aside from the one room...the one room where he had awoken. “It has...a mind of it’s own...maybe. Or there is no mind...and just action for the sake of action with no purpose to it. Maybe some mind behind it...an unknown level. I imagine it isn’t like senshi and their planets...or you and whatever the Negaverse has….it’s solid and stable what you have.” It was safe, or at least a bit safer? He really wasn’t sure. But mirrorspace wasn’t always safe...it was ever changing, maybe even moreso now than before since the stones they had and what they could create with them.

“We do not influence it….it did as it did to you and others on it’s own….” Since they couldn’t influence and they hadn’t even been around for it, they’d been...occupied elsewhere. “So when I say we were in an unknown place - I mean it….how do you say where you are inside a mirror when it changes?” They had started out in mirrorspace and ended in mirrorscape but in between was...well space but where in space...he didn’t know. Hopefully that would suffice, it was the best he could give for an answer, the most accurate and yet he still was able to hold things back. He hadn’t stopped fiddling with is uniform or speaking in that soft, nervous, sort of manner of his but it was simply how the senshi was.

You've told me nothing. You meander through the english language like a boat lost at sea and still you say nothing.

What a waste of time.

Faustite watched the touch of fingers to hem accusingly. The line of Kiuchi's figure bent double under his own anxiety — under his weakness. Where lay the strength of the Dark Mirror? Where lay its intelligence? Its drive? Its perspective? You bore me, Kiuchi. You stutter-step around details and damn your court by talking yourself in circles. By trading vagueries for vitriol. Is that what you're after? For the Negaverse to come and blow down your doors, to paint your mirrors red? If this doesn't clear up, they'll be well on their way. This truce has been on thin ice while you suck up our resources.

Better that you return to this 'unknown elsewhere'. Better that you disappear.

Faustite smirked at the assumption about Negaspace and the conjoined Rift. Had Kiuchi ever attended their halls? He imagined not; while Faustite himself had seen Mirrorspace, the Dark Mirror Court was under no rigid protocol to ban agents from visiting their halls. But since the invasion, the Negaverse saw fit to ban all outside contact without excessively good reason. Unless Kiuchi was one of the insurgents that sieged Negaspace, he wouldn't have known.

Greens and golds and blacks stood out from the Mirror Senshi's uniform as Faustite traced it into memory. The capri cut, the notches in the hem. The matching notch in the tanktop beneath his shroud overlay. The collar, large and commanding, sitting over top the lot of it all with an equally commanding brooch at the fore. A tied rope sat precariously over a crop of dark hair. He would remember the uniform well enough to submit a report. Dark Mirror Super Senshi Kiuchi, senshi of misinformation.

"So that's all you have to say. I'm disappointed, Kiuchi. My general will be too." A breath, and he was gone.