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 Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:22 am
DivineSaturn
How many months had it been since she had done this? The correct answer was "too many," but that wasn't good enough. Tara needed to know the truth, if she was going to move past what she had done. Or what she hadn't done, for eleven months. Almost a year. It was far too long to go without fighting, at least, if you were a reincarnated alien superhero. When she was a kid, she would have dreamed of this. Now she knew exactly what it meant, or at least, she thought she did. She looked at the pen in her hands for several moments before raising it high above her head, ignoring the pain in her chest.
"Aquarius Zodiac Power, Make-Up!"
Did it always feel that strange to power up? Sailor Aquarius couldn't even remember. Her chest still ached, and she put one hand to her side, where the stitches were. If a youma came at her tonight, she wasn't sure she'd be able to handle it by herself. But she had to come out anyway. She had been shut away for far too long. The senshi world had changed during her hiatus, and she had to know how. All she could do was look around, and hope she found someone willing to talk. Preferably before someone less nice found her.
Hiding about three months' worth of newspaper, though, was another story. And while Pollux's hideout had become a good storage spot, Asclepius was also starting to worry about whether anyone like her parents or neighbors had noticed the lack of newspaper out in front of her civilian home with their weekly recycling.
As she hauled this week's bundle to the less-nice part of town, the girl tried to reassure herself that no one would really ultimately care too much about their garbage. She smirked; Osama had burned all his garbage at his compound, according to the news, and that had only attracted so much attention. She was supposed to be a terrorist, too, right? Stealing used newspapers and squirreling them away.
She did worry, though, about whether or not she would be able to take all however many stone of paper up to space, though. Hygiea and the cat had been a challenge, although Asclepius wondered if the two of them together weighed as much as Chaonis. She had taken passengers plenty of times before, it seemed like. Hopefully junk would not be much harder.
Stopping for a moment on a rooftop to catch her breath, Asclepius realized there was another senshi nearby. Part of her wanted to try to keep going, so she could avoid the possibility of having to make another tourist run to her asteroid, but ... well, jumping around with a bunch of newspapers was tiring, even with her heightened physical abilities while powered up. The Senshi of Medicine set the bag of papers down on the roof beside her and leaned down to rub her calf muscles, and hoped for the moment she could avoid detection.
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Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 9:53 pm
There! It took long enough, but Aquarius finally felt a senshi approach. And not just an everyday ordinary senshi either. All the better for her; someone who'd been around long enough to be promoted had to have their head in the game. Or else they were like her, all form and no substance. Bad, but could be worse. At least there were no chaos flares nearby.
She went the wrong way once, having not tried to track anyone from their energy in ages. Luckily, the senshi seemed to have stopped for a moment. Aquarius kept to the rooftops, enjoying the wind in her hair, the rush as she leaped from one building to the next. There were some good things about being a senshi. All of the bad things had made her forget that. In her eagerness to re-embrace this part of herself, she almost missed the senshi again, and had to backtrack a building or two until she found the right one. Anyone keeping tabs on her energy would wonder what was wrong with her.
"Hey there!" she called, standing on the other edge of the roof and trying to catch her breath and sound casual all at once. "Do you have a minute?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:31 pm
Hearing a voice, Asclepius turned around, setting the bag of newspapers down and resting one hand on her hip as she studied the stranger. Blue cloth printed with stars rather liked to blend in with the surrounding sky, but the brown-haired girl could pick her out well enough.
"A minute?" She tilted her head slightly to one side. "What do you need?"
Leaving her sack of fuel for the moment, the Senshi of Medicine took a few strides closer. "Do I know you?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:54 pm
"Do you?" Aquarius asked, slightly startled by the question. She could count on one hand the number of White Moon senshi she had met. However, the White Moon probably knew of the Zodiacs. If this was a veteran senshi, it was even possible that they had met briefly at the very first big meeting. Aries had insisted that everyone show up. That was a long time ago, when the Zodiacs still got things done, when Aries wasn't dead-
"Maybe." She spoke in stops and starts, trying to cut off her own train of thought. "Were you at the first big senshi meeting, with Luna and, um, the cellphones and stuff?" Admittedly, she hadn't been paying a whole lot of attention during that meeting, so that was about all she remembered. "Otherwise, probably not. I've, uh... been out of action for a while." Which was true, and sounded better than 'I was hiding because I don't want to die again.'
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Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:21 pm
"Big meeting?" Asclepius replied, then shook her head, curls swaying at the motion. "Sounds like it would have been nice, though. I got my senshi cellphone about the same time I got my pen, from one cat and the one senshi with her." The temptation for sarcasm was strong - a big meeting would have been wonderful, and it also implied some greater organization whenever it had happened. But, well, Asclepius had made her own way, sought her own connections, learned her own lessons, and she took pride in that.
"I'm Sailor Asclepius," she went on, stopping as she came within arm's reach, and extended a hand to shake. "Super Senshi of Medicine."
Once introductions had been made, she inquired again, "What did you need?" While Asclepius did want to get it done eventually, her newspaper delivery to the safe-house was not urgent. Though she was partly curious and partly worried by what would require a favor from a stranger. Especially since the other senshi had mentioned that she had been out of action for a while. Asclepius, in her civilian life, was all too familiar with those who had been injured by all the various crazy things that happened in the city, some of them spending lengthy stays in the hospital. It was not lost on her that any of the people who turned up there could be senshi, themselves. But, of course, she would never be able to match a senshi's face to that of a civilian in the hospital.
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Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:02 am
If this senshi hadn't been at the big meeting, then she hadn't been awakened when it happened. Aquarius was sure of this; the cat who ran the thing was quite insistent that everyone show up. She knew there had been at least one other meeting at some point, but since she had missed that one due to being in a coma, she couldn't be sure of the date. It seemed like she was barking up the wrong tree anyway. They couldn't know each other from before, but that didn't mean they couldn't get to know each other now.
Then came the introductions. Asclepius was an interesting name, her domain even more so. Both stirred dormant images in her mind. But when it came time for her to introduce herself, Aquarius had a moment of doubt. Did she really want people to know who she was, and all that meant? To berate her for abandoning her post? No, but she had earned whatever scorn they would give her. She was here because she'd had enough running away.
"Sailor Aquarius, of Science." She left it at that, reaching out to grasp the offered hand. If Asclepius knew about the Zodiac Guard and connected the dots, so be it. If not, it could be a tale for another time.
With that out of the way, her heart felt a little lighter. "You're lucky you got a cat all prepared like that. I mean, mine came with a senshi too-" some dude with long hair she couldn't remember well- "but I didn't get a phone. Man, I really wanted one, too."
As she spoke, something appeared in her hand. In her surprise, Aquarius almost dropped it, but caught herself in time and held the object up. It was, to all appearances, a cell phone. The latest senshi model, even. She goggled at it for several moments before looking back at Asclepius, puzzled and delighted at the same time. "Is that supposed to happen? Sweet, it's upgraded too! I mean, the flip phones were cool, but they looked kind of bulky. But maybe the screen scratches- oh man, is it a touch screen one?" She slid out the keyboard and started poking at it with interest, her old topic of inquiry completely forgotten for the moment.
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 12:18 pm
Asclepius shook the other senshi's hand, nodding at her name. She had not heard anything in particular of the Zodiac senshi, but wondered if they might be somehow important. As for the moment, though, she was not going to ask about it; the Senshi of Medicine was still more curious about whatever help this other senshi required.
"It's handy, I guess," she replied with a light shrug, taking out her own phone to scan Aquarius into her contacts. A small smile tugged at one corner of her mouth at her partner's delight in discovering her own phone, but, after giving her a moment to get over the new toy, she was interested to get to the point.
"What was it you wanted me to help you with?" Asclepius asked again. She wondered not for the first time if she came off as a touch abrasive sometimes, but the brown-haired girl was mostly pleased that she was finally starting to feel more her usual straight business-like self again in uniform. Finally, she felt like she was really settling into this whole new role. ********* confidence in her that had led to her recent promotion must have helped.
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Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 1:24 am
It was difficult, but Aquarius managed to tear herself away from the new gadget to see Asclepius doing something with hers. "What was that you just did?" she asked curiously, moving closer. "I don't suppose these things come with a manual, do they? Astraea was such a- I mean, she insisted that we weren't getting them, anyway, so I never asked for a closer look at one." Mostly because she was too busy pouting. And hiding. Pouting and hiding ate up quite a bit of her free time.
If left to her own devices, she would have chattered about the phone for hours. Fortunately, one of them was focused. "Oh! That's right, I'm sorry. You have places to go, people to save, that sort of thing." Aquarius was still chattering, just not about the phone. She was nervous, not sure how to put her question to a senshi who was clearly experienced, probably more so than she was. It was a great stroke of good luck that she had managed to find a veteran, but that didn't make it easier to discuss her problem. No, there was no reason to panic, she told herself. She just had to spit it out.
"Could you maybe fill me in on everything that's happened in the past..." She counted backwards on her fingers. Before Tartaros, she decided, just to be safe. "The past year and a half?" That sounded terrible. Why did she have to be so blunt? "Just the senshi stuff, I mean. And Cliff's Notes version is fine. I just, um... I mean, I know bits and pieces, like something happened on Halloween and there was that ice queen thing at Christmas... but I need to know more. And it's not like there's a wiki for senshi events."
Yet. Aquarius filed that away as an idea to propose to someone, once she was better informed.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:22 pm
"Doing with what?" she replied, moving closer and holding her phone up to show Aquarius her current screen in order to discern what her new-found acquaintance was trying to do and if she could help guide her. Her phone had not come with instructions either, but, well ... a phone was easier to figure out than super powers, that was for sure.
"Year and a half?" Asclepius repeated a moment later, looking up again at the other girl's face, then quickly away, though her expression betrayed nothing. If anything, she felt bad for Aquarius, assuming she had been somehow laid up for all or most of that time, with some sort of Negaverse-related injury, either as an innocent civilian or as her senshi self.
"Well, I've only been a senshi for about that long, I suppose," she replied, after thinking back. "I don't know about the universe at large, but I've encountered some of our allies and some of our enemies. Some corrupted senshi as well, though I can't say I know too much about them." Asclepius shifted her weight to one foot, resting one elbow in the opposite hand and her chin in the other palm. "There are apparently some senshi who have tortured some of the Negaverse, though I don't know the details about that." She chewed her bottom lip. "There's a Negaverse general or something, too, who came from a giant youma phoenix cocoon...."
The Senshi of Medicine trailed off then, turning to Aquarius once more. Partly to see if the girl wanted more details on anything in particular, and partly because she was trying to recall more of what, exactly, had happened on the night she had seen Tanzanite. It had been decidedly crazy, and maybe Asclepius had tried to forget. Hopefully she would not need to bring up details, though.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:12 pm
Nothing Aquarius had said was a lie. She hadn't been entirely truthful, either. The outcome was a sort of shady middleground that made her queasy. If she couldn't even be honest with the people who were on her side, how could she expect complete strangers to trust her with their lives? Not that they would have any choice in the matter, when and if the time came. But she wanted to be useful again, to know that she was making a difference, and eventually, she was going to have to be upfront with people about where she had been and why she had been there.
"Ummm, you were... scanning?" She tried to remember the basic functions of the phones from the meeting. "So that you can contact me. Cool! Is that with the camera, or is it a different function? Does this thing even have a camera? I don't know what about half of these buttons do. It's not much like a normal phone, is it? Can it make calls to regular cells, or is that outside the service plan?" It would be far easier if she only had to bring one phone on patrol.
The phone, while a very cool and unexpected bonus, was not the reason she had tracked down another senshi. Aquarius managed to keep quiet while Asclepius recounted the basics. "So they're still doing corruption? I'm not surprised." She only knew the peripheral information available, that senshi had been corrupted even back when she was still fighting. And not just senshi, but the Cavaliers, in the past. "I wish we could talk to Kunzite, she would have some answers." Aquarius had only seen Kunzite at the meeting, and had heard through the senshi grapevine that the lone Cavalier had been killed during the coma epidemic, just like Aries. So that was out.
Her puzzled expression twisted into a scowl. "Are we torturing now? I know they told us to use force, but..." The mere thought left her shivering. She hadn't expected the standard senshi M.O. to change so drastically. "Wait, you said some. So not everyone is doing it?" That was a relief, but a small one. Even if most senshi still fought by the book, that meant that some had taken things a step farther. "They're escalating the war for everyone, don't they realize that?"
For people not used to Aquarius' manner of speaking, half aloud and half in her head, it could be difficult to deal with. "A general is only to be expected." Frankly, she had expected there to be several generals. "It's the General-King you have to watch out for. Charonite. If he turns up... well, hope he doesn't." There was no way for her to know how far the Negaverse had progressed, or with whom the leadership fell. On the night of the Black Phoenix, she had been watching a movie with her brother, blissfully unaware of the battle that raged elsewhere in the city. All she knew, all she could remember, was Charonite, and fire, and that sometimes it paid to be afraid.
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Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 2:12 pm
"Sort of like the camera," Asclepius replied, "Or the button for it is where the normal camera button is on my phone, at least. No idea about your civilian cell phone, though. No two of those are quite the same, I swear...." She trailed off momentarily, jabbing a few more buttons as she realized she was not sure she had ever located or used a normal camera feature on her senshi phone.
A brief questioning look crossed the senshi of medicine's face at the mention of Kunzite, indicating that she did not recognize the name, but did not ask for the moment; if there was one thing Asclepius had learned, it was that she did not know a lot of the players in this crazy game of war. She was not fully sure she recognized Charonite's name, either, but, by what Aquarius told her, that was a good thing.
Relief washed over her at the other girl's obvious disgust at the mention of torture - the more she found who were against the idea, the better Asclepius felt. "I don't know a lot of the details, and frankly, I don't care to," she sighed. "I ended up with some healing and restorative powers, maybe because I'm studying to be a doctor in the non-insane half of my life, and I just cannot imagine being so willing to hurt others like that. I mean...." Realization that she had been about to admit something personal to a near-stranger made Asclepius trail off. Or maybe she just did not want to hear herself say that she had grown more comfortable with throwing punches and kicks, even if it was in uniform. The seifuku hid Marcella's identity from the rest of the universe, but it did not make Asclepius and Marcella two separate people.
"Oh, I don't know how long everyone's known how to do this," she began again after an awkward pause. "But another thing you can do with your phone is go home." The brown-haired girl raised her eyes and she smiled faintly to see how Aquarius reacted to that. Then realized she should clarify, "Like, your senshi home," and pointed upwards, to the stars overhead.
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