Welcome to Gaia! ::

Naturally when she had some place important to be there was always someone ready and willing to break the law. After all… this was Destiny City and since awakening as Rainier, she had quickly learned that several of the incidents involved powered individuals as well.

Hard to tell how many were by order versus chaos but she felt it was safe to assume that stab wounds reported by recent victims had a decent chance to have had a run-in with a captain or general; both of whom often wielded lethally sharp weapons. Then again, she'd seen at least one of those aliens, the Vanguard Cadet, with a blade that looked questionable. Bruises or wounds that looked to be inflicted by a bludgeoning weapon or a well-struck hit could be anyone from what she’d observed…

Either way, it was always a mystery after taking someone's report if they themselves were someone of the opposite faction and fortunately it was outside her jurisdiction to investigate. Leave that to the Counter Terrorist Units to discover and look into while she dealt with the petty crimes and occasional domestic violence calls.

This evening was not unlike the rest except that the report took longer than expected and put her into nearly an hour of overtime.

Ideally, she would’ve liked to have grabbed dinner before meeting up with Larissa but doing so would make her lateer than she already was. Notifying Alphubel’s girlfriend that she was about ten minutes away would have been a courtesy. Unfortunately, she wasn’t well versed in how to use her ring quite yet. The best Rainier could do was get there as soon as possible before the Eternal Senshi decided to leave without her.

“Larissa!” Glad to see she hadn’t been left behind she raised a hand above her head and waved. “I’m so sorry, I would have been here sooner. We weren’t quite at shift change at work and I got put on a call.”

Rainier suspected that the feeling Larissa described, about feeling disconnected from her homeworld, was something others felt to varying degrees. Acrucis had actually mentioned that it had been well over a year before she finally visited hers.

Still-

It seemed that Larissa was rearing to go and rather than dwelling on reasons that she might be feeling distant, Rainier showed no restraint when she instead reached for the Eternal Senshi’s offered hand. “Your homeworld sounds beautiful.”

She gave Larissa’s hand a reassuring squeeze and smiled sincerely. “Anything I can do to help you find that connection, I’m here to help.” With that, she was ready to be taken to a place that could not be found here on Earth, to a place far from the smog-filled air of Destiny City or the stench of those who refused to bathe that had to be escorted to the precinct in the back of her patrol vehicle.

This’ll be fun… at least she felt optimistic about this adventure.

Rainier felt dumbstruck by the scenery. It was like being instantly teleported to the center of a national forest that had been undisturbed and left to thrive. Larissa had warned her what her world might look like, but actually seeing it just proved how far off her imagination had been.

She had followed after the Eternal Senshi, looking around in awe but not touching just in case something might be poisonous; even though she did have gloves on and should be fine, or so she assumed. Still, best not to lean over and randomly smell the flowers as she would back home. While Rainier had no known allergies, that only pertained to Earth plants, there was no knowing what the ones here might do to her.

When they came upon a clearing and Larissa pointed at a boat, Rainier felt varying levels of confusion and intrigue. “Has this always been here, or did you somehow have this made and brought here from Destiny City?” She approached the vessel, ready as she could ever be but with more questions she wanted to ask while they traveled.

“No need to apologize.” Rainier helped move the boat forward with her oar while Larissa steered them down the river.

“My wonder is a mountain and I thought that was overwhelming. There is a labyrinth of ice caves that were formerly used as prisoner-holding cells. It’s not online yet, but from what I can tell, there used to be a fairly sophisticated security system in place.” Truth be told, Rainier felt like it was less of a coincidence that as a civilian she ended up as a police officer. They lived in Destiny City, after all. Seemed to reason that this path for her was preordained or written in the stars somewhere.

“I can’t even imagine being responsible for a whole world. You could easily spend a lifetime here and never see everything.” Granted with proper transportation, food, and clean water, it wouldn’t be a bad way to live.

“I do wonder though, why a camera wouldn’t work here.” That was a bit puzzling. Then again, she hadn’t thought to bring one with her to her own Wonder to know if it was a space thing, or perhaps something else. “Maybe next time you could try bringing a manual camera with film?”

For as beautiful as her world appeared to be, it would be a shame to not be able to bring images of it back home with her to document the places she had been and map it out in a way similar to those National Park passport booklets with descriptions and photos of notable places to visit.

“Honestly, from what I’ve seen so far, your world is like stepping into a world for some CGI movie, like Avatar.” Magical, fantastical, something pulled out of someone’s imagination and made real. “Mine’s just- just typical of mountains you’d see back home.” Except for more ice, lots more ice.

Her wonder did have a few notable points of interest and perhaps the two of them could explore it together. Yeah- it might take a couple of visits. But would be doable in a reasonable amount of time, so long as she remembered to inform Larissa that she’d need to bring something warm to wear.

“Thank you,” Rainier accepted the offered hand and stepped out of the boat with one foot. Why she thought a lily pad that supported the weight of a building would fold underneath her was beyond her but she did hesitate before taking her second foot out of the boat.

“I can only imagine the size of it…” her voice trailed off. Rather than beautifully colored flora attached to the side of the building there was something more concerning. A black area, an inky void where color should be.

Rainier took a step towards it and reached a gloved hand out to touch its surface. “It’s here too…” Her lips pursed into a thin line the corners of which tugged downward into a concerning frown. “I’ve heard rumors of these appearing on worlds and wonders.” It had been well over a month since she’d visited her own, definitely, before she caught word of anything amiss, therefore Rainier had no idea if her own wonder had been infected.

“Is this the first time you’ve seen something like this here?”