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 Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 9:06 pm
In a fit of anger, Aquarius chucked a rock into the woods. It bounced off a tree and back towards her, nearly giving her a black eye. She reached up and caught it just in time, and opened her palm, eyeing the stone thoughtfully.
"Nice catch," she murmured, mostly in a vain attempt to lift her spirits.
No matter how many times Aquarius tried to mark the path she was on, whenever she looked over her shoulder, the cairns she left were gone. At first she thought it might have been the local wildlife scattering her stones. A frog, perhaps, or a squirrel. But when ten markings in a row ended up disappearing, she began to suspect something deliberate.
It didn't help that whenever she looked back, the scenery looked different to her. Aquarius considered the possibilities, eventually deciding it was just her perspective that was changing. It was impossible for a real forest to change so quickly... wasn't it?
"All right!" she yelled, keeping the last rock clenched in her fist. "Somebody has to be out there. Show yourself, before I really lose my temper!"
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 6:23 am
Sailor Walküre couldn't get that creepy laughter out of her head. It was frustrating to her that she didn't understand where it was coming from. The woods were a safe bet for the source, but there was no way in Hell she was going to go in there to find out. Staying along the path was the best idea, even if it was going nowhere.
Eventually, she would find out who was laughing at her misery, and she would pound them into the ground. It was the only sensible thing to do.
Ears perking up, Walküre thought she heard something else in the distance. It sounded like another frustrated and angry girl. At least Walküre knew she wasn't the only one in this strange situation.
Dashing to meet her, and trying to ignore the ever darkening woods, the Senshi of Battle waved her arms frantically as if she were escaping a fire. "Hey!" she shouted, "Hey you!"
Her little brown shoes stirred up dust, and her cape billowed as she ran. Usually, she had no problem getting people's attention. Maybe it was just too dark for the other girl to see?
Walküre shouted louder, "HEY! Wait up!"
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 5:19 pm
At the sound of another human voice, Aquarius nearly dropped her rock. She managed to catch herself just before it slipped through her fingers, and tightened her grip. While it was comforting to know that she wasn't the only one in shouting range, she wasn't about to let her guard down. If the other person wasn't friendly, she was going to be prepared.
It didn't take long for her to locate the source of the shouting. Aquarius squinted, trying to make sure the other girl was not actually on fire before jogging in her direction. Judging by her outfit, she was a Senshi, but Aquarius kept a hold of her rock anyway.
"Do you know where this is?" she shouted, still running. "Is this even the right direction?" Identities could wait. Identifying the location came first.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 7:42 pm
Walküre looked the other senshi up and down as they both got close to each other. She thought, "Nice outfit. Mine is better though." She brushed some dust off of her stockings and pulled her skirt down a little. It was always important to establish a pecking order in new situations, but her mouth got her in trouble more times than not, so she thought she'd keep her fashion opinions to herself for now.
"No." she said. It was to the point, but true. She had no idea what was going on. Turning around and pointing behind her, Walküre continued, "That path goes on a long way. I came from that direction, but I couldn't get back to where I started if you asked me to."
The trees all looked the same, and she really hadn't been paying that good of attention to where she was going. Not that it would have mattered. She had a feeling this place was trying to be confusing on purpose. It was doing a good job of it too.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 7:55 pm
A senshi. It really was a senshi, down to the frilly skirt (which Aquarius was glad to leave to other senshi) and tiara. Aquarius let out a sigh of relief and stopped running once she was close enough to be heard without shouting. She didn't drop the rock, but she did try to smile reassuringly. She had nothing against the other senshi, but she had been caught unprepared too many times.
"Back that way is more path, but my landmarks kept disappearing." Aquarius frowned. "It seems one of us has been going the wrong way. Then again, I've seen a few smaller paths splitting off, but none of them looked very promising. Is it all one road behind you, or does it branch out too?"
She looked over her shoulder again, but didn't see anything helpful. Shrugging, she turned back, eyeing the other senshi critically. "I take it you're a Lunar. Somebody's cast their net really wide." Aquarius smirked. "I think we should show them what happens to greedy people, how about you?"
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:37 pm
Something crunched underneath Walküre's boot, daring her to look down.
It was partly buried beneath the dirt, but shiny -- it caught a bit of the sinking sunlight.
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 8:52 am
All Walküre could hear the other girl saying was a bunch of muffled words. She wasn't really paying much attention to her fellow lost senshi; her eyes were fixed on the sparkle that was under her.
"Huh? Oh yeah, overfishing the oceans is really bad..." she mindlessly replied without looking up. Why was that girl talking about fish when they were lost in the woods?
Quickly moving her shoe back and forth over the object, she tried to free it from the ground. It seemed like it was larger than just the part sticking out. Slowly, Walküre bent over, and then knelled on the path; her eyes never leaving the shiny object.
Then frantically she began to claw at it. Her gloves became stained through the effort she was putting in. Whatever this was, she had to have it.
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 11:48 am
There were a few surefire ways to get Aquarius really ticked off. Walküre had unwittingly happened on one of them: not paying attention to her, especially when she was saying something she felt was important. Though her own methods of communication were hardly normal, she didn't like when other people didn't even try to understand.
Scowling, she looked down at the ground to see what could possibly be so interesting. Her frown faded as she spotted the glimmer in the dirt. "Of course," she said slowly. "I've been thinking too obvious. If we can't get out by moving in two dimensions, it's time to think 3-D."
With that, she got onto her hands and knees and started to help brush the dirt away from the object. Ideas raced through her mind as she tried to work it free. Was it a trapdoor? A submerged spaceship? Even a plain old shovel would have been encouraging.
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 2:26 pm
What turned up under the dirt was nothing so promising as a trapdoor. It was smaller, much smaller -- it was a pair of wireframe glasses, slender and tarnished. One of the lenses was still intact; the other had been broken under Walküre's shoe.
The remaining lens was fairly thick, the sort of glasses a person wore full-time rather than a pair of reading glasses.
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 3:58 pm
Walküre picked up the glasses, and held them up to her face. The prescription was strong, and her vision through the still intact side blurred.
She looked up with the glasses still in front her, "Well, it's not as exciting as I thought it would be, but it means there is, or maybe was, someone else here." More likely the latter; these things were petty well covered under the dirt. Although, they were in better shape until she stepped on them.
Removing the glasses from her face, Walküre began to wipe them off using the long ribbon of her bow. She picked all the broken pieces of glass from the damaged side before folding the glasses up and tucking them into her cleavage.
She stood up. "I didn't catch your name. I'm Super Sailor Walküre, the Senshi of Battle." She spared the girl the long introduction. "We should probably try to find the owner of these," she said while patting her chest.
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 6:52 pm
After all the enthusiasm she had stored up for this discovery, finding glasses felt a bit anticlimactic. Still, Aquarius was determined to make the best of it somehow. "Can I see them when you're finished? We might still find a use for them." Already her head was filling with ideas for how to put the broken spectacles to work.
"I'm not sure I like the implications of that," Aquarius said warily. "I mean, if someone was here, and they left without their glasses, glasses that they probably depended on..." She trailed off, letting Walküre draw her own conclusions. The ones Aquarius was coming up with were not terribly reassuring. Aliens would have taken the glasses too. Whoever did this was a savage, plain and simple.
She blinked in surprise at the introduction, not quite prepared for a Super Senshi. It did explain the cape, at least. "Aquarius of the Zodiac Guard, Senshi of Science. I don't mind looking for the owner on the way, but I think we're better off finding more information first. Like where we are and why we're here. I don't know about you, but the bus I was on was clearly labelled 'Downtown,' not 'A planet far far away.'"
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 7:40 pm
The trees around them were leafy and deciduous, and the path reasonably well-worn. Behind them, the path led west; ahead of them, it turned away north.
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Posted: Sun May 23, 2010 9:08 am
Walküre examined the situation. She couldn't get her barrings enough to know that North was North, but she decided that they should go that way anyway. After all, it was the direction she was already heading, and she was rarely (if ever) wrong.
She walked past Aquarius while she was still talking, and continued on the path. "Zodiac Guard, you say? I haven't met any other members of that group yet." Really though, she was so out of the loop with senshi happenings that she didn't even know there was a Zodiac Guard. She wouldn't admit that though. It wasn't a good strategy to show one's hand.
Actually, Walküre didn't know many senshi at all. Lately, she had been spending all her time with Lt. Variscite, and she wasn't exactly going to mention that.
She continued on the path, "Well, if they depended on their glasses, then they're going to need them back soon, so we should keep moving. I'm sure we'll find more information that way too. There's nothing around us here but these trees, and I don't want to search around in the forest. Besides, the path we're on looks like people have been on it before. If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for us."
Aquarius' last statement stuck with her. "You were on a bus? I was sitting at my desk before I woke up here. The thing is, I don't remember falling asleep, or even transforming. I would definitely not wear this outfit in my dorm.
Did you see anything that could have caused this?" Walküre still had not completely ruled out the... you know... not being living anymore theory.
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2010 2:35 pm
Do I have a sign on my forehead that says 'I don't care, decide without me!' or something? Aquarius wondered moodily. Maybe it was that her usual company consisted of fairly passive people, so when she met someone as decisive as she was, she wasn't sure how to react. There was no time to sulk about it though, so she sighed and hurried to catch up, making a note to think about it when she had time to. For the moment, her mind was taken up with the more pressing issue of finding out what was going on.
"We were at the meeting," she said, still pouting a bit. Then, brightening slightly, she grinned. "With our princess." The princess that they didn't have to run around looking for because they knew where she was, unlike the Lunars. That had always been something that Aquarius was pleased about for all the wrong reasons.
As she thought about it, horror suddenly dawned on her. What if the Princess had gotten caught up in whatever this was as well? The Zodiacs had already been through so much- the fire, Barren Pines, losing Eon and Sagittarius and the Opal Crystal. If anything happened to anyone else, she wouldn't be able to bear it. None of them would.
Aquarius closed her eyes and tried to feel for other Zodiacs nearby, but none came up on her mental radar. That was a relief- until she realized she couldn't sense Walküre either. "Wait a second. Are you sure you're a senshi? I mean... I can't sense you or anything. I can't sense anything."
Tara Kavanaugh was used to being blind to energy, but Sailor Aquarius was not. Either Walküre was lying, or the situation was even more bizarre than she'd first believed. Considering her luck, it was probably the latter.
"Um. I didn't transform either. I was just going to meet my brother, and I'm sure I was awake on the bus. " Aquarius looked up again, trying to organize her thoughts. "I thought it might be another planet, but it's not one I recognize. And that wouldn't explain why we're transformed but still can't sense anything. What about you? Any ideas?"
She was still managing to keep panic at bay, if barely. There had to be a rational explanation out there. Surely, if they kept walking and looking and talking, they would find one.
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2010 7:01 pm
Instead of a rational explanation, they found a huddled red lump of cloth along the path. Rather than blood red, or brick red, this red seemed almost brighter than life -- a brilliant red's red that nearly burned the eye, clean and beautiful and luminous. It was almost unreal.
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