Welcome to Gaia! ::

When Acubens first entered the library, it had been pristine. Like no one had entered it for close to a century, though without the cobwebs and dust. It looked, for lack of a better term, like a magazine library in it's perfection. And then Acubens got to work. The book were made of all manner of materials, ranging from fabric to cardboard. Beyond that, however, they were unreadable. The characters that spelled out the title of each book that Acubens could see looking nothing like any system of writing she had seen on earth -- more evidence to suggest just how far away from Kansas they had all been taken. It began simply enough, scanning each spine in search of something... of anything... that she could read. But each spine was the same story. Unreadable, unmistakably otherworldly, mystery writing.

There had to be something. Acubens had spent the better part of an hour combing through this library looking for something that she could read. After a short period of time, it was already a mess, piles of books strewn irreverently here and there, sometimes closed and others left open and marked with a slip of torn notebook paper for later reference. Normally, Acubens would take better care of the books that she found... but this was not normal. Nothing about this was normal... and there might not be time for care at the moment.

The servants cared enough for her anyway. They slid around her, almost frightening in their passive natures, and cleaned up wherever she left a mess. It was frustrating at first, having to go back around and retrieve books that she had set aside for herself which had been put away, but in the end she learned her lesson. Any books that she thought were relevant were balanced on her ample hip to as to avoid being shuffled away when she wasn't looking.

Once her arms were full, Acubens arranged the books on the nearest table and organized them as best as she could. Acubens would then spend the next however long pouring over those volumes. She recorded everything that she could, even going so far as to copy pages of the strange language down. Whens he was finished, she left the table for the servants to clean up and went back to searching. She even slipped some smaller volumes into her bag to take back to her room and puzzle out later.

Acubens glanced down from her perch on a ladder, still on the first floor, but in the end went back to her search. Were she in a better place, she would be much warmer, but given the circumstances, all she could offer was her attention and nothing more.

"Uh... all of this is... is interesting," she muttered, cocking out her hip to balance more books before she leaped from the rung she stood on. She landed gracefully with a sharp clack as her heels hit the marble floor. "The issue is I can't decipher any of it." She opened one of the book to a random page and handed it to her visitor, making her point about the wall of foreign text. She slid around servants and logos herself before she deposited books onto a freshly cleaned table and opened the first volume that she could reach.

"I've never seen text like this on earth. Granted, I'm not an anthropologist, but I mean," she gestured grandly over her collection. "This is just... bizarre. And... frustrating. Really... really frustrating..." She spoke as she copied down text and mirrored sketches into her composition notebook, occasionally scratching things out as she made mistakes.

"Sorry," she said suddenly, voice echoing in the marble room, "that I'm not more of a... a welcome wagon. Normally I am, I swear... ask Lesath... I think I saw you hanging around her, right? Are you one of hers?" Last Acubens checked, Lesath hadn't been awakening anyone, but time had passed, and she had been wrong before...

The girl's demeanor made Acubens pause. She looked up from her books, eyebrows knitted into a thin, tight line across her brow. It wasn't until she had to snatch a book away from the hands of a servant that she finally let her expression break into a lopsided smile.

"Ma'am, huh," she muttered, snapping one book shut and reaching for another. "No one's ever called me ma'am before. You can just call me Acubens there, kiddo," she finished, tossing another smile over at the senshi. "And don't worry about being new at this. I'm just as uneasy on my feet right now as you are. I've never been somewhere that I wasn't at least half-way aware of where I was. Even in mirrorspace which is by no means sensical, it at least is familiar enough to be called a sort of home. This," she gestured around her without looking around, "is a whole new ball game." Around her, servants glided with unsettling grace and stealth, and Acubens didn't bother to hide the shudder that wracked her body at the sight of them.

"I hadn't realized that Lesath was awakening anyone now a days..." Acubens let a lazy smile drift over her lips at the thought of the woman. "She's great isn't she?" The thought escaped her lips before Acubens could stop it, but rather than acknowledge the softness in her voice that she was trying to extinguish she hid her blush behind a thick fall of hair.

"So what can I call you, kiddo? You don't seem like one for pet names and affectionate terms."

"I never really knew mirrorspace. I think there are very few who ever could. Remarque does, I think... at least to some degree. Those who follow his instruction... Laverna, Kiuchi... I think a handful of others... I think that they know it to lesser and varying degrees. But not me. I tried to understand it but... it's a puzzle that has always eluded me." There was no shortage of chagrin in Acubens voice as she spoke the last bit. She hated leaving work undone but... with so many working on the mystery of Mirrorspace she had always felt that her presence in that investigation was superfluous.

And then the anecdote about Lesath's plans.

"Yeah... you'll find nothing in this court goes according to plan. That's why we generally... don't... plan. It just seems to go to s**t whenever we try. It suits me though. I'm a bit of a Fly-by-the-Seat-of-My-Pants Gal myself." She tossed a wink over at Logos and grinned again.

"You never told me what to call you, sweetie."

Acubens shrugged at Logo's question. "About... oh gosh... four years? I think? I spent a lot longer in the White Moon though. I corrupted when I was a super. So... not as long as others but... long enough." Acubens had always been open about her corruption but... in recent times the most curious thing had happened. She had spoken about the time she spent in the White Moon before, albeit through tears because of the pain that she still felt, but recently... since she had dealt with the trauma from before... it was just telling a story. She liked the feeling. That freedom. It was nice.

"But in the end, age doesn't mean anything. I know some damn useless 10+ year old Dark Mirror senshi. Some that were around from the inception of our court and are just... gone. And I know some brand new senshi that are highly effective. So in the end it's not the years. It's what you do with them... and for the love of god, kid, call me Acubens. I'm not nearly important enough to be called Ma'am." She flashed a smile up at Logos as she snapped her book shut.

"You gotta loosen up, kiddo," she sighed, tossing that book aside for a servant to pick up and searching her desk for another. "This job is hard enough, look around." she swept her arm out to the room and, in a larger sense, at their situation. "You keep tightly wound like that, the stress is like to kill you. I can teach you how to have a good time, if you'd like. We can find something to break... or break into."

Acubens nodded at Logo's explanation for her behavior. That made sense... and it kind of made Acubens feel like an a*****e.

"Forgive my insensitivity."

Assistance? Acubens didn't even know what she was doing, how could she ask for help? She cast her eyes around the table she was working at and scratched at her face pensively. Many hands did make little work, she supposed. Even if the work felt meaningless and a little stupid. She ripped out a page from her journal and set it down on the opposite side of the table along with a small cloth-bound book opened to a map.

"If you are in the mood to help, you can do me a huge solid and transcribe maps while I take notes on the books themselves. Otherwise but having the company is blessing enough. Tell me about your time in the court so far. What have you enjoyed, what have you found issues with? Seen any cute people whose butts you wanna touch, that kind of thing."

Another wicked smile flashed across Acubens' face, though she kept it turned to the book before her. She had been talking to Logos for precious little time, but she had seen up straight-laced the girl was. Secretly, Acubens hoped that the invitation to talk about crushes would throw the girl. Maybe even warrant her a little chuckle.

Different certainly was one word for what was happening. Acubens glanced up and around with a small smile and offered a nod. Another, of course, was utterly horrifying. Wait that was two words. Ah well, it didn't matter. It was still true.

"If it's any consolation," Acubens offered from her own work, "there was a science fiction writer who postulated that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So there's no reason to think that there isn't a scientific, logical answer for all of... this," Acubens passed a hand between the two of them and at the room as a whole, "it's just that we aren't advanced enough to know it. It might also just be magic though, so who knows really." Personally, Acubens liked to think that it was magic. It gave her a nice escape from the drabness of reality. It also made her brain feel less hot when she thought about it and tried to puzzle out the reason. But if Clarke's Law brought the girl any stability, then so be it. Acubens was all about people feeling like they were standing on solid ground.

"More structure..." Acubens mused, straightening her back through the protesting of her vertebrae. "I guess we are kind of... disorganized..." More reason to complete her project, Acubens guessed. Get some structure out there for the new recruits or at least give them some of that steady ground Acubens was so fond of.

"I don't know, I feel like that lack of structure makes us who we are. We're more like a... great big dysfunctional family. But I get wanting more structure especially when it's all so new. Something to stand on and know for certain before you get sent off into the big wide world." Maybe she could pass something by the big guns and see if they couldn't figure something out for that. Or maybe she could herself... the journal would be a good start, heavens knew. "But I agree with you about the outfits. I'll never understand why they aren't more functional."

And then the question.

"Is what common? Oh! Not nearly as common as I would like it, no. I mean some members date other members. I'm dating a member, several others are as well. It just kind of... depends, I guess. On what you want out of the court. What you expect of it. If it's a job for you then treat it like that. Get your quota and go home, but if it's more... stay a while, kick off those heels, and see what happens."