Welcome to Gaia! ::

Encke was relieved, in a way, that Ida just redirected to meet up with her at a construction site. It would be hard for anyone to overhear them, for one, and anyone who did want to try and spy on them they'd likely have plenty of warning of, both being eternals with their own wide sensing abilities. For another, why would anyone want to? They were two transcendent eternals at a place that was arguably dangerous to navigate anyway. He might've brought Viatrix along if he thought it necessary now that she knew, but he didn't, so he let that go.

Maybe if Ida was already a bit uneasy, bringing more people wouldn't have been the answer, anyway.

The movement of the aura caught his notice when he arrived at the site, making it easy to track down where Ida currently was. Encke, who was always to some degree bouncing, wouldn't have necessarily picked it up as off except it was Ida, who had always come off as so graceful. There was enough to explain it that it didn't catch his notice beyond that; who was this person he spoke of? She was a new princess; she probably hadn't even done this before? Why hadn't Encke been clear and instead implied this one was a doozy?

"Ida!" The advantage of knowing his father-in-law, though, was that it had gotten pretty easy for Encke to just intentionally stock up on things. Today, he brought two warm glasses of tea, courtesy of Luke's latest blend. It was a floral; he thought that was fitting. "Take a sip of this, let's settle--" he glanced about. Well.

Where did the workers sit--

"There," he picked what was a stable beam against the ground, sitting on it. "How are you feeling?"

Encke offered her a warm smile as she sat, and found himself feeling a bit warmer as she cradled the drink between her hands. It increased that warmth just a bit more to see her own smile.

Alright. It would be fine. They would figure this out, even if he was dumping an absolute bombshell of a piece of news. Being tired, for her, was understandable. He imagined her life itself could be exhausting without the simple fact that she was a princess in itself, being hit up by another senshi about a purification so close to the time that she had gained that rank. No, no, don't focus on that.

He took a sip out of his own thermos.

"Heh, suppose I have been," replied Encke, with a quiet chuckle, as he lowered his own drink. "I'm glad to hear you're doing well, though sorry if I'm incidentally taking away from your rest. I'm okay, myself. Could be better, sure, but definitely could be worse. Civilian life is giving me a lot to do, too. And then there's all of this--"

Better to stop dodging the point.

"We both know Faustite, right?" his voice dropped to a low laugh. "His body is burning him alive. The youma part of him is starting to take over. I didn't ever think about the end stages of being a half-youma until now, but," his fingers tapped against the thermos before he turned toward Ida.

"He approached me on how to get it out. And purification is a bit more complicated than that, but--"

"Because you can't do it alone."

It was interesting to him that Iris tried and failed -- he knew a similar story of Iris' attempts, via Metis, about how she had attempted to force Labyrinthite from his general state to a knight state -- but he categorized that under the image he had of the senshi of rainbows. She was never anyone he met, but the stories behind her were interesting, in any case.

But it also gave him a starting point. He had seen the way Ida's facial features shifted; he agreed, he also had been in disbelief that Faustite actually wanted to leave, and he knew there had to be a lot more to it than just wanting the youma gone. But perhaps it was important to dispel the impression that it was impossible at the forefront. It wasn't impossible. It wasn't.

Encke bounced where he sat.

"The process of purifying youma--and half-youma--requires two components. We have the royal, of course," he gestured in Ida's direction, before glancing forward, "but we also need a court. With the two of them together, what was once merged or become else due to chaos can be separated or restored to what they were."

Like him.

"You're the princess I've called. I've also gotten in touch with the only court I know about, Lysithea's." His brows knit. "Used to be familiar with the Zodiac Court and Princess Chronos, but," but they were all gone now, so far as he could tell. (Gray had to have been dead--) "They're where I'm familiar with this procedure, in any case."

He had not only heard it from a court, he had once been one of the beneficiaries of a court and princess combination.

But that was information he had trouble bringing himself to volunteer, especially considering ... well, everything. To this day, even as he had personally grown more comfortable with it as part of his background, he still didn't enjoy talking about it. It was one thing to be accepting of his own trauma. It was a completely separate one to go over it with other people.

He was relieved, though, that she seemed to trust him at his word on that. Immediately she moved to saying that no matter her personal opinion, purification was always the better option, and as much as he had determined Faustite was perhaps irredeemable even a few weeks ago, he had to agree. Having someone else not bound to chaos was always better than incidentally making them a martyr for the Negaverse. Gaining another person free of chaos' influence was better for the world at large. "I'm glad you agree," he murmured, though his brows rose at the concept of safeguards.

She wasn't wrong. While he presumed he'd be there at whatever happened, he had no illusions that a single eternal with energy transfer could do anything about what the Negaverse tried. If they brought multiple general-sovereigns, for example, what the hell could he do?

"I'll reach out to a few other people that I think might be concerned about... all of this, for whatever reason," whether it be because they wanted to help Faustite or because they wanted to make sure none of them got hurt. "Maybe we can at least get some people waiting in the wings. I don't know how many people he'll want around."

And if nothing happened, well, maybe they could just all disperse.

"There will be at least a court there, which should help stop them from trying to take you alone," though considering how much the Negaverse liked capturing princesses, he wouldn't pretend that alone would make her safe. Especially since every agent above lieutenant rank seemed to be able to teleport people, and if they came with a bunch... "But Faustite is hard to trust, I agree. Better to be safe than sorry."

"I think that's fair," Encke couldn't quite disagree with there being a lot of potential power in the Negaverse's hands. He didn't know that court particularly well either, and the whole proposal that they couldn't know anything about when the purification was occurring until it actually was had a way of sitting uncomfortably in his gut. Would it be hard for them to take everyone when there were several of them there?

Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily resolve it cleanly.

Encke took the empty cup as she offered it to him and tucked it away into subspace. He'd get that--and his own--cleaned up later. "Absolutely. I'll ... also see if I can find some way to get us all talking once I gather some people up. It won't be an ideal solution," especially because he didn't have much contact with the involved court, and his contact with Faustite was primarily by continued chance, "but it'll help us, I hope, know what we plan on doing."

Where and how to hide, for one.

"And of course," the smile he offered was sincere, "and thank you for agreeing to help. Glad to have you on our side in this."

He was looking forward to seeing Ida purify him.