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Sylvite had a dilemma.

She'd found a senshi. At least, she'd found the aura of a senshi, and that was good, since tracking down senshi to learn about was kinda her job. It was a first level one, too, which was usually even better. They were a little more likely to talk and a little less likely to, like, kidnap her.

To be fair she'd only gotten kidnapped once, but ever since she'd been on the alert to make sure it didn't happen again.

Based on the way youma auras were popping like bubbles around this one, she felt like things might be about to get a little more complicated than a little chat. Hopefully not kidnapping level complicated, but she could really go for some kind of bargaining chip. She liked bargaining with starseeds, but she didn't think her usual starseed trick would work in the middle of what was already a battle.

That left the last resort, which was that if he tried to attack her it would probably give her most of the information she needed. Not exactly fun, but then this was a war. She grit her teeth and teleported to a little bit behind where the aura was.

Even from a good several yards away, she could see a decent amount of the carnage, mostly because of the sheer amount of youma dust. That was a lot. That was more youma dust than she'd ever seen in one place.

"Wow," she said. "You must really like to kill things. Like, really."

She sneezed.

He wasn't immediately trying to hit her, and that was always a plus.

She took a couple steps forwards, still keeping distance from the senshi, but she wanted to make sure there weren't any youma left, like, buried in the dust and suffocating on what was left of their friends. That kind of situation would have to take priority over figuring out what was up with this guy, but it looked like he'd been plenty thorough.

Youma were weird, and Sylvite still wasn't sure if she liked them or not, but she was getting a lump in her throat looking over all that dust. She finally looked over to him, her eyes very, very wide, and she gave a tiny shake of her head. "Were they all trying to eat you?" There was still the littlest bit of accusation in her tone, but mostly she was curious. With how many there must have been, they woulda had to been either resting together or trying their hardest to team up and fight him.

When he asked who she was, she looked over and started taking in his outfit. It had those weird cutouts, like a bunch of the senshi outfits did, but other than that is was red and kinda Egyptian, with a heavy focus on the bugs. She could remember that.

"I'm Sylvite," she said with a little nod, since her name was already out there, but she left it at that. "What's your name?" Maybe they could do this the easy way.

There wasn't really a good way to be sure someone was super new unless they, like, told you, but Sylvite was getting that kind of feeling from the way he was looking at her. That was okay. She could be on her best behavior. She could try to be a good representative for the Negaverse, although the youma situation was gonna make her spiel harder.

"Yeah, they do go after senshi sometimes," she said, now really shaking her head. "They're servants of the Negaverse, you guys are the enemies. That's how it goes in a war sometimes." She shrugged and gave an apologetic smile. "I agree that they can be a little much, a little bit, uh, one track mind."

Like, anything that could slow down Order was good, but then they tended to make people enemies more than friends. It got complicated fast. Hopefully he wouldn't be one of the ones who got all weird about philosophy.

She took another step closer, tilting her head. "They're mostly pretty solitary, though. Did you do something super flashy to get them to swarm you like that?" Magic. What kind of magic could bug boy be hiding? "They should leave you alone more if you're more chill."

Sylvite narrowed her eyes. It looked like he was gonna get all weird about philosophy, or like, barely even philosophy, just blind accusation that made her skin prickle. She understood him not liking youma, but the getting personal was something else.

"It's not like that," she said. The slow, measured tone of an Information officer not letting anything slip was gone. She was louder, and talked faster and faster until the words started blurring together. "I don't hurt people. I mean, not unless they really come after me or they're being actively dangerous or something. Notice the part where I'm not fighting you despite the whole youma situation." She wasn't gonna count draining as hurting people. It wasn't, they just got sleepy, and she usually spread her quota out so much nobody even noticed she was taking from them. Senshi and knights still liked to use that as an excuse to beat her up, though.

"I've definitely never killed anything. I'm not stupid, I know it might come to that sometime, but I don't go all judge, jury and executioner on anything I think might be evil." She leaned forwards like she was telling a secret, even though she was still kinda far away. "And I bet Order's already telling you they're all innocent, but trust me. I've got plenty of reason to suspect every one of you guys."

The old scars itched under her gloves.

What she was doing?

"Oh, you mean energy draining?" Sylvite tilted her head and then shook it. Her smile was half-cocked, and there was something hard behind her eyes. "You guys always get so pushy about that, like you don't need energy, too. We take energy from people who can just like, take a nap and be fine. You guys take and take and take from your planets until they can't even support life anymore."

She sometimes wondered how literally every senshi and knight could be so dumb to not notice that the entirety of space was dead, that Earth was the only place that was doing kind of okay, and then they kept trying to get the last little dregs of energy from their planet just to come attack agents for the littlest things. Some of them figured it out, she guessed, but this guy didn't seem to be one of them.

She was trying to be nice, anyway. She really was. It wasn't until he mentioned context that something completely shifted. She went suddenly still, and quiet, and blank-faced.

"There's context for some things," she said. "Sacrifices like people who die in battle, or maybe executing someone who's hurt a lot of people. Self defense. I even kinda get killing the youma, but there are some things," she shook her head again, more harshly this time. "There are some things. What justifies capturing fourteen year old girls and then leaving them tied up to starve when it turns out, surprise, they don't have any information?" She resisted the urge to rub at her wrists and curled her hands up tight at her sides, instead. "What justifies torture, or breaking into a headquarters, which is where the people with desk jobs work, and killing like fifty of them in one night?"

Although her tone had shifted, she was still taking too fast. Something in the back of her mind said she was saying too much, but something louder said he needed to know.

Maybe Sylvite was a little caught up in her emotions and wouldn't have noticed the little change in the set of his jaw when she mentioned offices, but the way he stopped talking for a whole second afterwards was pretty telling. Right. She exhaled sharply, some of the emotions coming back into her eyes.

"Are you saying space isn't dead?" she asked, since she wasn't about to reveal her sources.

Then she sucked in her cheeks and bit down on them so she couldn't say anything, at least not until she listened and thought about what she was gonna say. To be fair she felt like the office thing would have been pretty common knowledge, like, she felt like Order would have been bragging about their invasion for months, maybe even years, at their senshi parties or whatever they did. Knowing about Information was a different layer, though, and he was getting dangerously close to that, which meant getting dangerously close to figuring out that she was trying to figure him out right now.

She was getting a pretty good idea of that, with the way he was getting so vehement about the Negaverse despite the lack of any evidence of anything they'd done that even came close to the stuff she'd seen Order do. The way he was talking about whatever it took made her skin crawl. Yeah, she'd heard that one before.

The tidbit about green senshi was interesting, but she pushed it to the back of her mind for later.

When he seemed to be done, she let out a breath. "Look," she said. "I've been watching both sides for a while now." She spoke with all the confidence a five-foot nineteen year old talking to someone bigger and older could muster, and in a much cooler tone. The desperate speed was gone. "And yeah, before you ask, even before I got caught up in stuff personally. I haven't seen the Negaverse go nearly as low as your side. Yes, both sides kill people. Both sides start battles, but the Negaverse doesn't do things like go after kids, even your senshi kids. The Negaverse doesn't go on slaughter sprees in your guyses sanctuary. If you think us and the youma energy draining is anywhere close to that," she just shook her head.

"It's the little stuff, too. No matter how gracious or diplomatic or whatever we try to be, you guys always treat me and my freinds like we're some kind monsters right off the bat. I mean, you even call joining us corruption."

She looked at his face one more time, just to be sure, but ther was nothing kind there. "But I don't really need to tell you that, do I? You're the same." She straightened and gave a tiny nod. "You're an enemy of the Negaverse."

Sylvite full-on scoffed. "Wow," she said. "Wow. Okay."

At least it was obvious that this guy had no idea about Negaspace and might even waste a couple days running around the city looking for office buildings full of uniformed secretaries or whatever, but still. "A. You guys broke in. B," she shook her head so hard her curls started bouncing around, "That is some really, really gross victim blame-y logic you got going on."

Like, what kind of person heard about a mass-murder ambush type thing and went yeah, I guess they deserved it for not being careful enough? It would have been bad enough to say it had been because they were enemies, or because they drained energy or something. Maybe one day Sylvite would stop being surprised by how low Order people were willing to go, but today was not gonna be that day.

He was calling Chaos a parasite, too, and just going on and on about the rest of it. She had to stop shaking her head because she didn't wanna get dizzy, but she did sigh. "Yeah, let me know if you find anything up in space, but here's the thing. You gotta check your sources, too."

She crossed her arms. "Chaos is just energy, same as anything else." It made sense that they tried to make it sound all gross and corrupting, but that was obviously some kind of distraction. "And sorry you don't wanna wrap your head around you guys coming after kids, but you do." She hesitated. She swallowed. She stepped forwards, finally breaking the distance between them to look him in the eyes up close like they were two people having a real conversation Then she continued in the same empty tone as before, "It was me. I was the kid who got tortured."

That said, she vanished.

It took most of the rest of her energy to teleport to the edge of her neighborhood. She was shaking when she appeared, and slumped down into a cross-legged seat, but it was better than hearing him come up with another gross justification.

A smile spread across her face, though. She'd learned a couple things tonight, and that was always good.