Welcome to Gaia! ::

Technically, Sylvite probably could've been taking it a little easier. The secret mission was over. She didn't have to worry about getting that intimidating amount of energy anymore. The Negaverse in general seemed to be kinda taking a breather, maybe training up its new recruits, and having people recover if they'd gotten hurt, and stuff.

Sylvite had never been good at sitting around, though. She definitely wasn't good at it right now. If she was still for too long, that was when the thoughts started coming in. She'd start thinking about the Ochre situation, and what she should've done better to keep him from being stupid. If she managed to pull her thoughts away from that, half the time she'd end up thinking about what her other friends had looked like, all hurt, after the battle.

Yeah, it just wasn't a good situation.

It was so, so much easier to just stay so busy that she couldn't think. She'd been spending a lot of time in her office, writing up stuff about just about everything that was connected to recent events, but there were also days when that wasn't enough and she needed to move.

Those nights, she went out to the city. She sprinted through parks and climbed buildings and did fancy flips from rooftop to rooftop until she couldn't breathe anymore. She snatched energy when she could get it easily. She kept an eye out for anything more interesting than that, although for a while, auras were sparse. It seemed like Order was kinda taking a breather too.

That was why when she felt the knight aura nearby, she stopped short in the middle of her stress parkour only to dash after it, instead.

Getting some information from a powerful target would be a welcome distraction.

It had been awhile since Sylvite had actually come face to face with the enemy on her own like this. Her scouting missions had kinda tapered off when she'd hit General and started spending more and more of her time training her underlings, and getting caught up in tracking Cybele, and stuff like that.

Which meant, basically, that when she rounded the corner and found herself face to face with the Knight, she realized all at once that she wasn't prepared at all. She should've brought a starseed as a bargaining chip, or maybe a youma for backup, or at the very least, maybe activated her medallion so she wasn't gonna come off as someone intimidating, or generous. She'd been distracted, though, and she'd been trying to empty her head until all at once she wasn't, which meant that it was just her that showed up in front of the guy. She was empty handed and carrying a big aura and her cheeks were flushing pink from the jog over.

Her eyes were wide when she looked him over, somewhere between nervous and curious. At least her thoughts snapped back into Information General mode pretty quick. She made a mental list of everything she saw, from the purple on his coat to the symbols on his shoulders to that thing he was leaning on.

Okay. This wasn't going terribly. It had been five seconds and she already knew what his weapon was.

Of course she also noticed that he didn't look happy, but, not knowing what else to do, she waved at him anyway. "Hi," she said.

It was pretty rare for things to leave Sylvite at a loss for words, but the thought of someone thinking all of the Generals had just kinda died, somehow, had her just blinking at him for a couple of seconds.

"Nah, we're around," she told him, still unarmed, still unassuming, still smiling at him in a way that wasn't even wicked or anything.

Although, of course that comment had her thinking about Ochre again, thinking about all of the stuff that she'd just been parkour-ing around the city to try and forget. Half to the Knight, and half as a reminder to herself, she muttered, "Only the traitor ones die."

Sylvite exhaled and started shifting from foot to foot, 'cause sometimes that helped to keep the nerves from building up too bad.

"I haven't seen any knights in a while, but I guess you're still around too, yeah?" She didn't say it like she was upset about it, even though she was. Instead, she kept smiling.

"I like your clock thingy."

The words new Eternal stuck out to Sylvite more than anything else this dude had said. Eternals weren't really new in the Negaverse, except under very specific circumstances. She also knew that things had happened and the Negaverse had walked away with a lot of new members. Sure, she guessed that he could have been talking about someone who'd just gotten an upgrade, which could also make sense given how the recent mission had gone, but Sylvite had other suspicions.

"Are you mad at this General for saving your friend?" she asked, raising an eyebrow while she kept a careful eye on his face. It was a guess, but she'd figure out if she was on the right track or not by how he reacted.

"Are you looking for 'em so you can give either of them a hard time? 'Cause, you know I can't let you do that, right?"

Sylvite still stood pretty relaxed, but her daggers showed up in her hands.

She had no idea who he was talking about. Plenty of the Generals were almost as little as her, and almost all of them got worked up in a fight sometimes. Still, it was no good for any of them to have a Knight after them.

Okay, that had gotten him talking.

It had gotten him talking in a way that almost--

No. Nope. He was just being dumb. He was a Knight, they were always dumb, and this one was just straight up dumb and wasn't trying to hide it under a layer of being fake sweet or a savior or something. He knew he was bad. He knew his knight stuff wasn't gonna help or save anyone.

Yeah.

"I mean the other option was to just kill her, I dunno if that'd make you happier?" said asked Sylvite, still willing to try chatting about it.

Except, then he was talking about kidnapping people and sending them back in pieces, and that just like that, Sylvite couldn't talk. She could barely breathe. All that air felt stuck in her chest, and that was before he hit her in the stomach with the big clock hand.

She gasped and coughed as she stumbled backwards, the pain hitting her entire body, and fast.

She teleported before she could fall over and landed behind him, gripping her daggers and slashing out.

There was a reason Sylvite was Information. There was a reason that when she went out in the field, she relied on her bargaining chips and her tricks and her teleportation. There was a reason she was only really, truly scary in battle when she had a bunch of people at her back, or maybe an alien generator pumping energy into her.

When it was just Sylvite and her knives, she wasn't actually that great at fighting.

He caught her wrists easily, and when he twisted, she screamed. She dropped the daggers. They hit the grass with a soft thump.

Being restrained by the wrists like that brought her back to the warehouse. Her eyes went blank for a second there. She thrashed, but she didn't see the knee coming towards her. That hit, too, driving the breath out of her. She coughed and sputtered and whined, and even though that brought her back into the present moment, it was a present moment that was all wrong.

The trees were drooping, then collapsing. The grass, too. Sylvite couldn't actually see her hands under her gloves, but she could just about feel them getting all bony and useless. She could definitely feel her breath getting even shallower.

"Stop it!" she gasped, weakly tugging away. "Stop it! I'll ask about that girl."

She wouldn't give her back, but she'd say whatever she had to to get him to let go.

As Sylvite blinked images of crumbling trees and just general awful out of her vision, as the Knight shoved her backwards, she didn't think that she was gonna end up telling him anything.

Not if he was gonna be a jerk like that.

Jerks, kinda like traitors, had to die.

It wasn't gonna be by Sylvite's hands, though. Those were shaking, and her daggers stayed where they were under the guy's feet.

He shoved her away, but that was fine. Before she even stumbled all the way backwards, she vanished.