Niflhel had not expected to venture to his wonder on such short notice but he him and snowball headed up because of the reports of some strange purple storms. They were experiencing the issues on earth as well so he wasn’t sure how bad it was on Niflhel. He sighed, “Alright snowball.” He said softly when they arrived, “Keep your eyes open, we need to go check on the code and see what’s going on here.”

He looked towards his chain; after several battles it was feeling forgine to him, like it wasn’t complete. This was starting to bother him and made Niflhel wonder if he’d be able to handle what was going on here. His hand gripped the chain.

Snowball was watching the knight as he seemed to question what was happening. The cat shifted to human form, “I don’t think you need to worry.” He said softly as his tail swished behind him. “The code should know what to do and how to help.”

He knew Niflhel had been fighting his own demons again and while there was only so much, he could do, maybe the code could do more for the knight of Saturn.

There was a nod from the knight and he started to head for the code, looking up into the sky as he walked the familiar path. “I don’t like this; the sky is abnormally purple.”

Snowball paused as he looked up, “The sky was always a weird color, it feels like everything’s charged though. As if there’s a spark in the air waiting to ignite the excitement; I wonder what’s coming.”

The knight shrugged and walked boots falling heavy on the cobblestones that lined the homeworld. While everything was typically an obsidian color it seemed much darker and spookier minus the electrical charge. It got Niflhel on his guard as he didn’t want to just walk into a space of just electrical storms.

“I hope the code knows something.” He said softly. Niflhel paused and changed course something told him that the way he wanted to head wasn’t their typical trek.

“Oi where are you going?” The sudden shift in path caught Snowball off guard, was there another entrance? He turned and started moving to follow the new direction.

“You could warn someone. Ya’know. We both agreed that sticking together would be the best idea with this crazy storm and the reports we’re seeing. What if something ambushes us?”

Niflhels’ brow lofted as he looked at the cat, the vibe he gave off was a grumpy keep up but he sighed, “You’re right. Sorry, something is pulling me in this direction.” He wasn’t really sure where they were going to end up but Niflhel felt like it was important to go this way, “You know the catacombs have several entrances like there’s a reason it’s underground.”

Snowball nodded and followed silently as the pair entered a library the cat’s ears twitched upward looking curious as there were books galore. “Oh man, this is a bookworms paradise!”

Niflhel stopped and looked back, “Yeah but how many do you think we’ll be able to read?”

“None.” Snowball answered with a pained laugh, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and there’ll be picture books.”

The knight seemed unamused by the mention of picture books but the cat had the right idea. He walked through the shelves of books, “I wonder.” Niflhel was looking at the spines which all had runes on them or some other sort of language that he couldn’t decipher. Most of them felt like they were fairly basic books uninteresting.

Him and Snowball had split up here, maybe one of them could find something interesting. He saw the cat pick up books and thumb through which wasn’t a terrible idea. Niflhel did the same occasionally but there was a pause. This wasn’t the right section. He moved feeling drawn to an area, “Snowball.” He called watching the cat’s head pop around.

“Sorry I found an interesting book on some of the inventions that had diagrams and stuff. While I couldn’t read the writing the pictures and manuals were fascinating!” The cat had placed the book down and moved to join the knight. In that moment something happened and caused him to shift back to a cat. “H-hey!? What gives. I didn’t want to be a cat.” He complained looking around. The sky outside of the library was darker now, and the storm seemed to be closing in.

Niflhel’s brow lofted as he looked at Snowball and also glanced outside, “Maybe it’s a good thing we’ve come inside then.” He scooped up the cat and settled him on his shoulders. Though Snowball was a heavy cat, he preferred to balance the cat on his shoulders when he needed to keep up with him; and Snowball didn’t normally protest that.

“Are you sure doing this is a good idea? If that storm made me shift what’s to say I won’t shift again?”

“It’s fine.” The knight said in a deadpan voice walking into the room. “This looks like it’s history of the knights that served here.” He said looking at the cases that housed some artifacts and the books were displayed differently. Some of them held the knight’s symbol too. He picked up one of the books that were displayed on the pedestal carefully and opened it.

“Interesting.” Snowball said softly as he watched Niflhel flip through the book, he placed a paw suddenly when Niflhel came across a picture, “Look at that.”

Niflhel stopped when the paw was placed very deliberately to pause him, the knight was looking at the illustrations that were on the page, they depicted something fairly dark as if it was a depiction of death itself. “What an odd thing to place into a book.”

He slowly thumbed through from that part looking further into the pages and studying them, “I wonder what this means.”

There was another pause when he came across another illustration of several chain type weapons. His head tilted and Snowball mimicked the head tilt, “I think I need to ask the code about this.”

Snowball’s tail flickered. “Maybe this has something to do with the reason you’re feeling like your weapon is incomplete?” Did this book mean anything? Did knights of the past beyond the previous incarnation of Niflhel have different weapons? “I think it’s interesting, maybe the code can shed some decent light on it.”

The cat looked around, “So how do we get to the catacombs?”

Niflhel paused when the cat asked, “Actually, I don’t know but surely there’s an entrance here. There were a bunch of paths and this place likes hidden corridors so it’s not farfetched to assume that there’s an entrance here.”

Snowball sighed heavily as he hopped down and started looking for maybe a secret entrance, “Welp this would be a good place for it. If it’s stuff on you and any one else who served as Niflhel.” Snowball started pulling on random things. “Gotta be a switch here somewhere.”

“Be careful what if some of those are a booby trap?” Niflhel sighed at Snowball’s recklessness.

The cat was about to reply when suddenly he popped into his Sailor form. “Oh, for ******** sake.” He was standing now precariously on a bookshelf fairly high up and hoping his weight didn’t break anything.

“Also why are you even looking up that high?” Niflhel seemed to think it funny, he knew originally where snowball stood was where he was looking but the fact he’d just suddenly shifted and had to acrobatically keep from falling ended up with the cat in a rather high place. Niflhel walked over to the fireplace that was in the room and looked at the area. “I think . . . it would be here.”

He said softly as he searched finally pressing somewhere on the mantel which did cause the fireplace to move. He heard a thud from where the cat landed boots first on the cobbled ground of the library. “Good of you to join me back on the ground.” The knight said darkly.

“Ha, Ha.” Snowball replied as he looked disgruntled at the sudden change. “Let’s go. I want to get away from this storm if I can.”

Niflhel nodded in agreement, wondering why it was messing with Snowball but not him. Though he didn’t linger on it long as he walked through the opening into the cool dank air of the catacombs. It didn’t take them long to reach the code, which Niflhel was thankful for though Snowball did end up shifting forms again several times. “I think this storm likes messing with you buddy.”

Niflhel was trying to sound very studious when he said that without laughing at the cat’s irritation. It wasn’t often the knight seemed to truly enjoy things but this was one of the rare exceptions.

“Glad to see someone thinks it’s funny.” Snowball said with a sigh as they reached the area the code was in.

Niflhel though shifted into a more serious face as he turned to the code itself and Snowball trotted up to the code piece as well tail flickering behind him.

“I felt you calling” Niflhel said softly looking around, “I hope everything is okay, asides from these storms we’ve been having lately, are you feeling safe here?”

“Should I not? I am away from the worst of the storms down here. A lot of good that’s done me. Everything feels so foggy and uncomfortable. Maybe I could get a better connection if I were somewhere else, but perhaps that is more dangerous. No, I think here is a good place for me. Unless you have reason to believe I should be moved.”

Niflhel listened to the code's response, "I'm not sure if you should or should not feel safe here, the storm is weird and unpredictable it's caused the cat here to shift multiple times and we keep seeing reports of odd happenings from others. Do you know what it is?"

The code seemed to swirl in front of them before answering, “I’m not sure what this storm is. I thought it was abnormal but every now and then there’s a bit of bad weather. This is different. Ever since the first one, I’ve felt cut off. It’s like I can’t feel anything beyond this Wonder. Everything feels foggy. You should speak to other Saturn Knights to see if they have any reports. I know there were other storms, I just don’t know how bad they were. It would be best if you could be united.”

Snowball’s tail flickered as he listened to the code and started thinking because he thought he’d seen mention that other knights code pieces were feeling disconnected. “I wonder if I could come up with some sort of Mauvian tech to help you connect back with the rest of the code pieces until we can solve this storm issue. Do you think that’d help?”

Niflhel looked over at snowball when he mentioned the tech and asked about his opinion on if it would help the code but before he could answer the code responded for him.

“You ask an impossible question. I am not a Mau Technician. I do not know what your science could produce, but if you’re offering you might do well to create something to stop these storms. I am not a radio signal to broadcast. Have you been able to isolate what’s causing the storms? Does it even rain? These clouds are not normal. If you want to help me, you should start there. Perhaps you can build a fan strong enough to chase the storm away.”

Snowball’s ears lowered when the code spoke but it was right, perhaps trying to fix the broken signal wasn’t the correct thought process but . . . trying to figure out what was causing the storms and if they didn’t rain what type of storm were they? The cat was curious and wanted to help the code as much as Niflhel but it sounded like indirectly helping the code was the only way.

Niflhel sighed softly but tried not to show any annoyance with the cat in front of the code, it was at least a thought and the knight appreciated the attempt but he felt the code was right, “I do have a concern, if we’re to try and figure out what’s going on and what’s causing this, I’ve found a distraction lately. . . “

He paused and sighed, “My weapon has been feeling weird; I’m not sure what’s going on but it’s like . . . missing something.”

”In this day and age, there’s plenty to be missed. Before these storms started, I was getting some questions about weapons. Let me see if there’s something wrong with yours.”

The knight nodded and summoned his weapon and offered it out to the code standing quietly as he watched. The weapon glowed with a soft light – it was oddly almost comforting to the knight as he watched the change from shackles to a meteor hammer.

“You’ve had a lot of extra energy built up in this thing. You must be in a lot of trouble, Niflhel. I hope you can make good use of it.”

“Thank you, I will make good use of it.” Niflhel said giving a quick bow to the code and looking at the weapon itself. It was very different than what he'd had, the weight of the ball which earned the weapon it's name was quite a difference and would take some getting use to as he weighed softly the difference in his hands but he couldn't help but feel some amount of comfort that having this improved version of his weapon brought him.

Snowball’s tail flickered looking at Niflhel, “Sounds like the code knows you’re a troubled soul at this point.” This gained the cat a glare.

Niflhel sighed softly as if he was relieved the code felt safe enough, “Good I was worried, since I’ve been wondering if there’s a big bad behind this and I didn’t want to leave you unprotected if you felt there was such a thing coming. Do you know if there is a big bad villain behind this??”

“I don’t know what’s causing this. But before the storm I felt something. A ripple. Like a great creature swimming through the ocean, I think. I see no motivation. I understand no reason. I know only that this is unnatural, and whatever is causing it needs to be handled. Swiftly.”

Niflhel nodded, “Well since you are safe, I think we need to go back and work on a plan Snowball.” The knight looked at his feline companion, who also nodded, “Thank you code, we will see if we can solve any of these issues.”

The pair slipped out of the catacombs and Niflhel paused as they entered a clearing that was like a practice field, he pulled out his weapon to see what it felt like and how it worked. “This is going to be interesting and take a bit to see how it works.” He said softly looking at the cat.

“Ah I’ll help you when we get back to earth, I need to update the database as well with the information we’ve collected maybe it’ll help someone else or we can pool together as a collective.”

Niflhel nodded and after a few more swings he was ready to head back to earth for now. Snowball was right they needed to update the databases and let folks know what they learned, but also - he needed to practice with the new weapon he gained from the code and see if there were any other changes while he was at it.