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It had been too late the moment Captain Lyonsite had decided he was a good target in a fine afternoon at a cafe.

Promethei was not necessarily naturally inclined to violence. He was a professor. The most violent things he was inclined toward were experiments that might have exploded just a bit in the name of science. (He would admit that he did like a controlled explosion.)

But he didn't take well to a militaristic faction that thought they had some ******** up rights to his own body and what it possessed in the name of saving the world from aliens or whatever the ********. (And then they worked with aliens to mass corrupt them. More violations of self.) There were a multitude of reasons why he had decided that they all needed to die or at least go away, and one of the more obvious ones had stared him in the face when he powered up that afternoon. A corruption of humanity? Likely against their own control, from what he was ******** that.

And so, he punched with the hook he was getting known for, and the hook that had gotten him into the database. It would take him a few moments to notice when the energies in the air had shifted, focused on this.

And when he did, he offered a surprisingly merry, "Howdy," after he weathered a bite.

Back to work.

He was surprised that the knight was staying at a distance, but that was fine. He could handle this drooling gnashing thing.

"Yeah, I'm ah'ite! Gotta hit me a lot harder than that before it starts hurting!" He had gotten injured plenty in his life considering he used to regularly go scouting, and he was a chemist, and that chemistry came with a lot of experimentation. He could handle a couple bites, even if he did seem to be bleeding and he had a bite mark as a result of it.

Not exactly a bite mark he wanted.

As the youma snarled at him again, diving for him again, Promethei met it with a, "Calm down, don't gotta be so fired up--,"

Of course, he was saying this while punching it in the face again. The youma recoiled and hissed, but it didn't make Promethei back down.

He would back off once these things stopped prowling the city and killing them. He didn't feel safe thinking Diryas and Tobias were at risk. ... And he supposed Elliot too...

Don't be nice?

The commentary took him by surprise. He was just trying to have a little fun with it with trying to razz it because it kept things interesting when he was trying to burst something into dust; he knew the youma wasn't going to back off, so he needed to do what he had to do. If he didn't dust it, he risked it actually trying to kill him, which was... Not his want, to put it hilariously lightly.

There were no other options available.

But why was she crying for it?

"Y'all got healing magic?" That sounded useful, at least, while he continued to beat up the youma he was not allowed to razz. Best just to get it over with he supposed. "Suppose I am bleeding. Could probably use a hand when this is done--"

Ow. He gave it a good boot to the gut to back it away from him, and then went for another uppercut when it bit him again.

It stung, but that did the trick.

Looking at his test tube that he pulled out of subspace, and then the dust that gathered, he mumbled, "One of these days I want to figure out what's in that stuff..." Chemically, what was the composition of monster dust? Was it like normal organic matter, or was there something else to it-- "Anyway, it's down now. You can look."

As he didn't have any magic of his own, even the concept that her artifact did something useful was fascinating. He knew it was possible, it wasn't like he hadn't met other knights, but he had never actually seen it in action beyond chaotic battles where his primary concern was himself and his husband. He supposed gaining more power as a knight would imply the ability to gain some sort of magic, though he couldn't quite figure out what a test tube would do.

Maybe it would give him the ability to chemically analyze this s**t!

He watched as the water poured over his bite mark, watching is the bleeding stemmed off and the bleeding eased back. It wasn't an entire fix, but it felt considerably better in any case, and he probably wouldn't have to explain what the hell he had done to the other two.

... Three, in theory.

"Thank you ma'am."

He agreed that he hated youma, and he easily slipped back into that conversation instead of thinking further about his own angst. He didn't expect her to immediately start talking about the fact that they had feelings and emotions and things they liked, though. In his opinion, it didn't excuse their behavior at all, and it seemed she agreed with that, but it left her a loss.

Ah, that's why she was crying, probably.

Of the four of them, he wasn't the least equipped to handle emotional breakdowns, but Tobias--or Elliot with his confession experience--would probably be better equipped than him. Zebulon did have some experience, in that he was a professor and he had seen students break down. Part of being a good professor was figuring out how to deal with that, and not being the research guy who would rather not deal with students at all.

He did primarily become a professor for the research sake, but he didn't want to be a douchebag.

Fortunately, though, he already had a lot of thoughts about youma

"They're animalistic in some way, even if they have those feelings, right? But they're driven by instinct, and that instinct is why they attack things, and why they take. They can't be stopped, and no matter how much they don't want to be heard, it doesn't excuse their behavior."

If left to their own devices, they would murder, and he didn't want himself or his husband's to be the next one on the chopping block.

She seemed to have a problem with the youma, which was why he wasn't stopped at all in the process of taking it out, but she hated it. Hated that he had to attack them. Hated that there wasn't a better way, probably.

It reminded him of Tobias, in a way. He understood why they went out and patrolled. He wished they didn't have to. If he had magic like them, he was fairly certain Tobias would go on patrol, too. But despite other matters, he was always the softest of the four three of them.

Of all of them, he was pretty sure Tobias would be the most likely one to try and make peace.

"Sorry about that. Honestly, I wish this s**t didn't exist at all. Would very much rather be doing almost anything else. But can't risk who is going to be next y'know?"

Maybe it would help her calm down a bit if they focused on something else. Like the fact that she had come over to check on him, that was kind of cool. He appreciated that the elder knights, even if they weren't elder because he was pretty sure he was older than she was, seemed to have a habit of checking in on the pages.

"Promethei with this garb on. Sometimes wearing a coat with it, but I didn't feel like it right now so I put it in subspace." It wasn't hotter than the devil's a*****e today, and he was from Texas so this Virginia weather was nothing, but that didn't mean he felt like wearing a whole fluffy coat. "I'm doing alrite. I appreciate the checkup."

Well, he was doing all right physically anyway. Mentally was a bit of a mixed bag, but he wasn't oft one to vent his frustrations.

Though at least he wasn't talking to a bartender this time.

"Hah, agreed. Didn't ask for this bullshit when I saw a test tube floating in front of my face." (Well, perhaps to some degree he did.. he was tired of agents draining him.. ) Honestly, he would much rather not fight at all! He certainly could hit a mean left hook, but he'd rather be doing almost anything else. For one, he'd rather be studying the strange monster dust that developed every single time one of them got murdered.

Or not murdered? He wasn't exactly sure how that s**t worked, only really knew that they kept coming back for some reason. Probably the same magic that apparently kept everyone else on some endless reincarnation roller coaster ride...

Did youma just get it at an accelerated pace, or was it something to do with the ******** magic that drove the entire Negaverse in the first place?

Maybe she knew that one, but then again, perhaps it was just a mystery of the damned Negaverse and it's damned existence.

"Been a page for uh, couple years now?" ******** hell. "Woke up about when that mass corruption happened. Definitely a bit of an alarming wake-up call, but I already knew about the Negaverse by that point. I already had two people ******** drain me, and those are just the two I knew about." Cafes and park benches were apparently no longer safe spaces to just sit and spy on people. Let him have his people watching-- "There's some pieces in the finesse I'm missing, and some of the more lofty aspects like the fact that we're on some kind of reincarnation cycle bullshit, but..."

He chewed the inside of his lip for a moment.

She was... Neptune, right? "Yup, Mercury here. A place that is obscenely cold despite the fact that it's one of the hottest places in the solar system. Wasn't expecting that one, but also wasn't expecting to be able to breathe." He snorted. "Neptune similarly unexpectedly inhabitable?"

Who the ******** would ask for something like this? Well, he supposed some of those who were devotees to chaos did, no doubt. Maybe it had something to do with that Metallia he heard some angsting about during the attack that should have never happened.

It would have been nice to awaken to the end of all of this. Then he could have just gone back to his normal academic life, maybe looped in the space university he was apparently in charge of, and not spend his time worrying about himself and his husbands. Of course, that s**t would be too easy. What would even be the point of a knight if there was nothing to defend? Kind of skewed the point, didn't it?

Reincarnation being a legitimate thing brought a lot of things into question for him, though perhaps not as many as it might for some others. He had to wonder what Elliot would think of that news...

Nevermind.

"Suppose it makes sense, the reincarnation thing. I've gotten some odd flashes while up in the space university that definitely aren't connected to, well," he gestured, "Zeb."

He paused.

"Uh. Nickname outside of this garb. Anyway. Heard murmurings about the Cauldron thing. Space soup or something?" He laughed. "Wonder if it's more like a gumbo."