Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Don't be talking to yourself," sang out Joy from behind her, more cheerfully than she felt. "God knows we're probably all a little insane right now, but don't be more insane than you can help, you know?"

It was comfortable that there was no presence to be felt nearby beyond Ekstrom's, as Joy could only assume that the tenuous truce had long since gone up in smoke. The shallow posturing of the whole damn war seemed outlined with specific clarity in the fact: that they could have peace, if the people playing the game would just call it a draw and let it go. Instead this endless protracted bickering at the cost of human lives, united only when it was strictly necessary for the purposes of self-preservation.

"Anyway, fight's not over. Just changed back to what it was before."

The hug had been given freely, without hesitation. She did pause, however, before taking the USB, making an expressively disgusted face at all this chatter about the apocalypse that she'd rather not think about.

Turning it over in her hands, she wrinkled her nose again, this time with an air of bewilderment. "What is it, exactly? Just - spreadsheets, or what?"

Data gathering had never been an especial strength of Elaine's or consequently Joy's. She had been academically capable in high school, but was of the type to research exactly as much as required, and then forget everything that wasn't of immediate interest to her as soon as her grade was received. It was good that others were researching - it had probably saved all their lives - but she was aware that her strengths might lie more in the "stick a sword in it" direction, which was pretty shameful, considering how bad she was at sticking a sword in things.

"Folders of what?" she asked after a moment, making a face of vague confusion. "Like - personal dossiers of Mercury knights? Ekstrom folks? Or what? Or I guess you don't know for sure," she conceded, handing it back to her, "if you can't even get into most of them, or read your own. That must be frustrating as hell. Everything that you could maybe read on the Garde - that I've gotten my hands on anyway - kinda just disintegrates if you look at it too hard, and that hasn't been much."

It was a little difficult to imagine Gouvernail playing the gracious host. But perhaps, falling as it did under the banner of intelligence sharing, he would have been more generous, here. But there had been others, before him, that might have been more free-handed. She waved a hand, eventually, dismissing the topic.

"I can't deal with more stupid Bullshit-related stuff right now," she said bluntly. "Let's just hang out. But I'll remember it," she promised.

---

Which was how, a month and some change later, Joy was seated across from Ekstrom once again, meeting up for the express purpose not just of catching up, but of taking a peek at that USB. Her latest visit to the Garde had thrown her into an agony of indecision about how much she wanted to know, but unsatisfied curiosity is a cruel hunger, and she was out to sate it.

"How do I do this?" she asked, looking a little wary, as if the device might somehow bite her.

In truth, she was a bit distracted from the task at hand by looking around with curiosity. Ekstrom was so thoroughly different from the Wonders she had visited so far that she was busily running her eyes over everything and drawing her fur collar closer around her throat against the cold air.

Maybe it suited her friend, but it did not suit Joy. It would have made her unhappy to have been chained to a place like this, and the thought reminded her that somewhere on it there was a dead man who still needed a nebulous sort of saving. She could barely repress a shiver at the thought, passing off what she couldn't control as a response to the chill.

But she paid attention when Ekstrom began giving her more explicit directions, taking the appropriate seat and wrinkling her nose before proceeding to do as she was told.

She paused, wondering if there was a hand she ought to use, when it occurred to her that perhaps the one that she wore the signet ring on was the natural answer. So she extended it, after a moment's hesitation, and placed her palm down, her other hand resting on the whip coiled at her waist.

It occurred to her that she had never used her magic in front of Ekstrom, a thought that passed through her head briefly as the smell of night-blooming flowers erupted around her in response to her reaching towards it, there-and-gone as, abruptly, the device responded.

"Oh," she said, startled, the smell instantly dissipating as she let the magic go. "It worked. I didn't expect it to work," she added, somewhat stupidly.

She hesitated, feeling suddenly as if she was doing something that she ought not to do - a child, irrationally concerned that she was breaking some unspoken rule when confronted with uncertainty.

"What do I.... do?" she asked at last. And then: "Open it," she prompted, and it was a request, but it was - as her requests often were - halfway to being a polite command.

It became evident that her hesitation had been less from wanting to hide things from Ekstrom and more from a reluctance to possibly break something, as she watched her friend navigate before taking over with the kind of wariness a very old lady might use when being handed Snapchat.

But it was more familiar than she'd expected, and so after a pause she began scrolling around. But she was almost immediately flummoxed by a block of text which she, of course, could not read, and she turned to Ekstrom once again with a helpless look. "I can't read it," she pointed out.

It wasn't much, to be honest: desultory notes of the kind that Joy herself could have given, or that Ekstrom might even have figured out on her own from her single visit to the Garde. But there was an aside to note that the Garde was considered with both respect and appreciation - almost a kind of reverence - by the nearby human, Earth civilians that it largely considered itself in service to. This was nothing in the way of useful intelligence.