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Another day, another patrol.

To be honest, Encke had mostly gotten out of his house because he was feeling a bit antsy, his body in an unstoppable motion as he thought about everything and nothing at once. There were thoughts in his head about what he could do for Barren Pines memorials, thoughts about the fact that the Velencians were apparently not the only ones who were still alive -- and one of them was now living with them as a last survivor, thoughts about the blooming life on his homeworld and if there was a way to test if that meant his world was fully thriving in a way that he had never dreamed was possible, thoughts about that role he had just auditioned for a few days ago--

Going on a run would help.

Going on a run as powered would mean he could sense if anyone might have needed his help as a bonus, and it sent him outside on a brisk jog -- which was probably more like an unintentional dash at his speed -- which only slowed when he sensed an aura at the edge of his senses that felt like a general of the Negaverse.

He hadn't exactly been planning to chase off a general that day, but he'd do what he had to do, and he quickly altered his path to intercept them.

His steps slowed to a near stop when he realized who he was facing.

That was the general in pink he had met up with a couple of weeks ago, the one who had him tapping into archaic knowledge from back when he was a teenager living with his parents before the war was a known thing in his head, who was mourning the loss of the people who kept leaving her or dying on her -- And she was coming right for him.

Well.

Encke cautiously stepped out of her way so there wasn't a direct collision, asking, gently, "Everything alright?"

He was fairly sure it wasn't considering their last conversation, but he had to open conversation somehow.

It wasn't convincing, but something about her mannerisms seemed at least a bit less on the teetering edge of breaking. That could either mean that Encke was in more danger from her, or they could have something of an actual conversation--

Oh.

She took a step back and put her hands up in the way he had when he implied he meant no harm. Just wanted to figure some things out. And was asking him. To have an actual conversation about it. There was a moment where his heart thumped in hope that perhaps he could do something here, but it was for the best he didn't show that even if he did find himself bouncing on his heels just a bit. "Sure. I can talk if you don't pull the knives out. Generally a bit more chatty without lives at risk."

It was an attempt at a joke. Perhaps it was a bad one.

An attempt at levity considering what she was confronting - the Negaverse being bad.

His opinion might have been obvious on those matters, perhaps by the side he was on and the fact that there were glowing marks on his skin, but he promised to keep himself from seeming too biased. "I'll help however I can. Is there something specific you'd like to ask?"

Starseeds, maybe.

The biggest signifier of what the Negaverse did that bothered Encke, and he did his best to not immediately show his bias in the way he bit the interior of his lip. It was a relief to hear that she hadn't taken one, admittedly; there was a part of him that was worried she was lying but he would have to give the benefit of the doubt in this case. She seemed very passionately against the starseed-taking, or at least, she seemed to think it wasn't as common as it was. Encke didn't hesitate with the response of, "Yes, unfortunately. More frequently than you might think," but he did take a moment to think of the proper examples to give.

He had a few.

He certainly had more than a few.

"There was another Negaverser I would talk to frequently. Every time we met up, I'd pat her down and take the starseeds she had collected that day with plans to give to the stash." It was the calmest start he had. "There was an invasion of a theatre, locally, named the Autumn. On their last day of opening, there was a play. Wicked, I believe. I was in attendance. There was a team of Negaversers, led by a general I believe was referred to as 'Beni,'" Benitoite, a name he didn't fully have, "who took to the stage and withdrew the starseeds of the people who were simply in attendance, killing them, and eventually left the place on fire, I believe killing several others. I tried to get some of them out."

Tried. He did everything he could. Even Richard had, who hadn't even been a knight at the time--

"There's a general I run into fairly frequently -- don't know his name," he knew the name Faustite, but he didn't necessarily want to hint at how much he actually did know. "He's had a starseed in hand more often than not when running into me. One time, he brought me closer to check to see if he had any starseeds on him, and then tried to withdraw mine. Didn't work, on account of." he gestured to himself. "Most recently, he took one from," his breath caught, "someone very important to me."

That was a gamble. He almost said husband. Even implying that man's importance was risky if this was just an attempt to get him to talk-- too late now, keep talking-- "I managed to get it back, but he was still stepping on his neck. A Mauvian saved him. From what I found out later, he was trying to rescue another civilian who had been attacked near the movie theatre."

He let out a shaky breath.

"There's more, but I've already said a lot."

"The friend's a knight," he was fine with pretending Basiluzzo was a friend, even if he wasn't just that. For the sake of protecting him, for the sake of protecting that link-- "But he was protecting a civilian. A civilian who had just been leaving a theatre."

A civilian who had only managed to get away because Basiluzzo had retrieved her starseed at the expense of his own. His husband stressed him out. He also loved his husband and wouldn't really have him any other way, because then he wouldn't have been the stubborn person who had talked the dazed, traumatized Ignacio into staying with him instead of continuing to wander and go through life as if he wasn't even there--

"Yeah, Beni," he otherwise stayed quiet after the confirmation, listening to her explanation of the situation. It was interesting to hear her name him as 'weird,' one of the ones that had let the power get to his head, one of the ones that wasn't necessarily encouraged -- he nodded, considered, and waited for her to finish before continuing with, "Not encouraged, but not stopped, right? He had an entire team with him, other people I presume your leaders let work under him. Other members of the Negaverse were called in and pushed in from outside of the theatre, too, including people who weren't part of his team."

It's systemic sounded like the right phrase.

"Order doesn't really have a unified force. If there're individuals who have done bad things," he hadn't really interacted with any, no one who had done anything beyond self-defense, anyway, hence the if reinforcement, "that's all they are. Individuals who just happened to have a starseed with power in it. And we can't do such things as take starseeds. We don't have to make the choice not to. We just can't. For the Negaverse it's different, right? You're recruited. Your leaders do things such as give you the ability to take them, and energy, no matter what."

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "And while you don't take them, and I'm very glad you don't, there are people you're aligned with that do, with regularity, and none of them are actually stopped, because your leadership is alright with it. That's where the systemic comes from."

He worried over his bottom lip. "And that's why so many of the Negaverse agents I stop, I stop from taking starseeds, or end up retrieving starseeds from them."

The generator ambush was something Encke hadn't necessarily expected her to bring up, but it was interesting that she did. It was something that had bothered them immensely on the side of Order, especially, from what he gathered, those who had former experiences with Chaos. He wondered if it bothered those in Chaos too; had it woken some of them up to the problems to see so many people recruited like that, or with the way they mined resources for it, apparently--

It sounded like it had, to a degree. She mentioned "recruiting someone who didn't want it" -- a forced corruption. He wondered if he knew who that was.

It sounded like she had come back to Order, in any case. A few names bubbled to mind: he wondered if she knew Sedna. He wondered if she knew Cybele.

"Forced recruitment," corruption was usually what he'd prefer, but for the purposes of keeping her from becoming hostile, he'd use her terms for it, "is one of the things that bothers me the most that the Negaverse does. The way it wipes your mind of everything and you can't get it back - it's harsh. It rips someone away from everything they know, makes them hollow, and makes them work for the Negaverse. I'm glad to hear you agree that it's bad."

The invasion of the Negaverse hadn't necessarily been something he brought up when she brought up starseeds, but considering the root of this conversation, it was shockingly relevant. He couldn't imagine that people on the side of the Negaverse enjoyed their castle being invaded. He also couldn't necessarily speak to what everyone had done during that invasion -- only what he knew that came afterward.

"We're less organized as a unit than that may have made it seem, though I don't think any of us really knew what we were doing when we arrived," started Encke, with a quiet laugh.

"It was actually an outside force," he wasn't going to name Caedus directly, didn't know what words had been spreading about the Negaverse about him, didn't want to make him a target for more than just the Velencians, and he also didn't necessarily want to put the Velencians as a whole in danger even if he disapproved of their seeming alliance, "that gave us access to the castle, not a member of Order nor Chaos, and not even everyone who came to see that portal open up went in."

He paused for a moment, letting that sink in, before he continued, "I can't speak to everything every person did during that, but I can speak to what we were able to accomplish through that invasion. We rescued hundreds of starseeds. Hundreds of people that had been collected because of the system and stored for the Negaverse's use, and now hundreds that will now get another chance. And we recovered a piece of the Code--where the knights get their power--who the Negaverse had been holding captive for probably a thousand years."

He let that sink in too, pondered something, and then offered, "I think we're more like an alliance than a unit. While most of us will unite for common goals, we don't have a leader that expects anything from us, nor do we have a central system we report into. Everyone has their own approach. Some of us are so united in those approaches that we form teams and courts, but those are small groups, not the whole."

To be honest, Encke hadn't known much about deaths that occurred in the invasion. He knew that they had to have happened. He knew, in particular, that a general-queen had been taken down that night, and it was something that would have brought Encke more relief if he hadn't seen them find a new Queen and several other general-sovereigns. That bit hadn't felt like an advancement, hadn't really felt like a win.

And he could understand why the general in front of him could see it in the way she did, especially if she had nearly died.

"The Negaverse has nearly killed me more than once," he admitted, his voice pitching down a bit. Was careful to sidestep the mention of Barren Pines for now, but to say more than once wasn't wrong even ignoring that situation. Sedna had tried to take his starseed. Faustite had tried to take his starseed. Jet had recently attempted to run him through-- "So I get it. It's hard to really see a side that's doing good or bad when both sides have killed."

He swallowed.

"I am sorry for the collateral deaths. And I'm sorry that you nearly died. There's nothing about you or them that deserves that." Encke believed that so many of the Negaverse were deluded, that they were following something terrible, and that in a lot of ways was inexcusable but he also knew the effects Chaos had on the mind and he couldn't simply ignore that. Knew some were likely unsaveable. Didn't think for a moment she was one of them. "Those of us who joined the invasion were primarily hoping that perhaps we could finally save the people of Earth from dying. That we could finally save the people we know from dying, permanently. That, maybe, our friends and families could finally be safe from the threats of having their starseeds or energy taken, or being attacked by youma. And that can sometimes make people act in desperate ways."

Encke found himself bouncing on his toes inside his shoes as he attempted to regulate himself before tears welled up. He had been hopeful. He had been hopeful that the strike on the castle would end the Negaverse. And it had done so much good, and he had been grateful for it, but the reminder of what happened then and what happened most recently reminded him that every step that they seemed to take against the Negaverse was so quickly squashed, so quickly stifled--

Had to keep his hopes up. He had lived for a reason. The universe could be saved.

One step at a time.

"I think that's the only real questionably successful strike we've had. And I say questionably successful because, for the most part, you recovered, right? As a unit. Negaverse has new general-sovereigns. A new queen. And it feels like your missions haven't really taken much of a dip. Look at what happened with those generators, even, even if you don't agree with those forced corruptions. And, ultimately," he looked into her eyes, briefly, "it comes down to the fact that the side of Order doesn't have an impetus to mine from the population of the Earth. And I've seen it. From schools, from theatres, from people on the street--"

Encke didn't like the change in position. Told him that something he said either wasn't quite going as planned or something he said fed into her own impressions. Bit his bottom lip when she started, found himself internally wincing when she said his main regret was that there wasn't more murder. No, that wasn't really it--

He could see where she had gotten that impression, though, if her main conclusion from the events of the Invasion was that Order were Murderers. If he told her he wished more had come from it, then he could see where the connection of 'He wished there was more murder' could have sprouted from. Didn't necessarily fault her for that, found himself bouncing and swinging his arms a bit despite that as he tried to work through his mind for a good way to respond to that.

Appreciated the benefit of the doubt, at least--

Though wasn't sure if he appreciated the implication that everyone was bad, and he didn't quite think she did, either, considering the way her gaze went distant.

He let her have that for a moment as he worked through his approach and tried again.

"No, my main regret isn't that more of you didn't get murdered. Otherwise, wouldn't be sorry you experienced what you did. Because I am." His breath was slow, evening, and he slowed his own signs of thinking down. Funny that neither of them could really stay still. In a better situation, he might have jokingly asked if she was also a member of the ADHD club-- "My main regret is that it didn't result in my family and friends being protected from the youmifications and from the youma, that it didn't protect them from their starseeds and energy being taken, from being forcefully recruited. Because that shouldn't have to come with murder."

Shouldn't, because as much as he yearned, he had a feeling that it would never not come with murder. He knew some of the Negaverse were irredeemable. Metallia didn't count, but he knew some were so devoted to her that convincing them otherwise would never even occur to them.

Even if it was a hard pill to swallow.

"I don't want to make you believe that everyone is bad. I appreciate you giving me the benefit of the doubt." He fidgeted by tapping his fingers against his leg. "That's something I've wrestled with over the years, myself, especially after ... big events. Traumatic events, like what it sounds like the Invasion was for you." Barren Pines. "Believing that everything is hopeless, that everyone is bad, that there's no point -- it's a bad place to sit in. But I've determined that can't be the case, right? If we're here, people like you, people like me, we can do some good. I have to believe there's good in the universe, and I can do everything I can to bring that out. To protect the people I know. To protect the world -- the universe.

"And I think I can better do that on the side of Order."