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Sailor Grieve of Grieve

"Aw ******** me," Grieve uttered in total dismay. Couldn't she just fight a magic dragon again?

Leaning in close to the orb, she strained her mind and finally offered up the riddle wisdom she'd gathered over the centuries to the orb: "Cosmos' Big d**k?"

As if Daphne wasn't having a bad enough time, someone was now being gutter minded in the middle of a sacred observatory. If this had been happening on her world, she would have thrown a fit.

She had thrown fits, actually. She'd done it multiple times, although a certain evening in the botanical gardens came to mind. For Urania's sake, though, she resisted getting up in the yellow senshi's face and going off about how she was being disrespectful, and unintelligent, and crass. She might have even been reckless, saying something so out of the box when they were working against both time and Chaos

Her eyes still rolled, though. There was no stopping that. She clenched her fists. The sigh that came out of her was very, very disappointed.

Her tail was still puffed up from emotion, but she walked primly over to the orb.

"The dawn," she said.

She'd read some poetry describing it as artwork, over all. It was also something that actually made sense, and she nodded proudly.

“From afar I grant wishes, up close I destroy all in my path.”






❂

Tjilaki, Eternal Senshi

Tjilaki considered the hint carefully, her mind racing to make the connection. She paced back and forth. At first she thought it could have been a comet but now she realized it must be a meteor. It made sense - meteors were known for streaking across the sky, appearing as if to grant wishes from afar but causing destruction upon impact.

Emain Ablach, Squire of Earth
Ah, how he loved being locked in dark room with a spooky--albeit pretty cool-looking--orb in the center of it. It would get rid of the fog, at least, and that was no small ask of it, considering. Emain Ablach rolled the riddle around in his mind, glancing to Promethei and Imhotep to see if they had any clues about it. Riddles were fun and all, and he'd done alright with the last set of riddles he'd encountered on Urania's home world. He still remembered arrows being shot at the two of them as he inched them forward behind his shield, inching toward a centaur that had not seemed to want to let them come any closer. The centaur had not had a riddle, but the pegasus had, so this was at least on-theme.

He'd done alright, sure, but he was not precisely a mastermind at the ways of double-speak. At least, not the kind of double-speak that riddles often used. Cosmic paintbrush? Fast-fading strokes? He glanced to the other two again. "I don't suppose you two have an idea yet?" Probably not, but hey, maybe they had something occur to them instantly.

Imhotep was good with riddles, after all. No offense to Promethei, but of the three of them, Imhotep was probably the most likely to actually get what the riddle was referring to. Others in the room were working through the riddle and offering up their answers. He tried not to let himself get distracted by what those answers were. They sounded good, but there was always the chance they were wrong.

Imhotep had just shrugged at him, and Emain Ablach wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. So he let that be, for now.

Back to the riddle. Fast-fading strokes with a cosmic paintbrush. Cosmic, so it was in the sky, right? Or in space. It was probably in space. So a paintbrush in space that could paint with strokes that faded quickly. He squinted upward, even though he couldn't see anything through the thick fog. He could imagine the space and stars beyond it, in any case. What would be up there that would paint anything, much less something impermanent? A lot of space seemed pretty permanent or, at least, long-lived enough that it might as well be. Unless something crashed into something else.

Maybe he was being too literal? Maybe he needed to try thinking in metaphor. That's what had been the solution for the pegasus riddle, before. What had been the answer to that one, again? Stars, right?

Right, stars.

Was 'stars' the answer to this one? Probably not. He couldn't think of a way a star could paint anything. Stars didn't move in the sky. At least, not unless they were shooting stars. Wait. Wait wait wait. Wait a minute. Shooting stars. Meteorites? Maybe the answer was meteorites? Shooting stars left a streak in the sky and the streaks vanished pretty quickly. But they didn't destroy anything, and the second hint had clearly mentioned destruction.

So whatever it was left streaks in the sky, streaks that didn't stick around, and it destroyed whatever it touched.

He saw Imhotep go up to the orb and murmur something, then, which didn't help how puzzled Emain Ablach was. Something was maddening about the way Imhotep then stood off to the side and just... watched Emain Ablach and Promethei. "Showoff," muttered Emain Ablach. What was it? What left marks and also destruction and came from space? What could he think of that came from space and destroyed things?

'Chaos' was an answer, but probably not the right one.

So space and destruction. It did remind him of one thing--the end of the dinosaurs. Something had come from space and destroyed the dinosaurs. It was... what, a comet, wasn't it?

Was that it? Comets had trails, right?

Setting his jaw firm as Imhotep kept just watching him, Emain Ablach walked over to the orb, murmured, "comet", to it, and then stood off to the side, an arm's reach away from Imhotep. "So... not to copy your homework, but what'd you get for number seven?" Imhotep just stared at him some more. "...Fair enough."
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Imhotep, Page of Mercury

It took Imhotep a second, admittedly. It didn't help that Emain Ablach was talking out loud, distracting him. Imhotep wanted to tell him to be quiet, but didn't think it would be worth the energy. Besides, he'd be doing it for what? To be an a*****e?

So he stood off to the side and watched Promethei and Emain Ablach puzzle through it as he also puzzled through it. At least Emain Ablach was quiet, then. There was another hint given, which Imhotep paid close attention to. So something cosmic that left marks in its wake. Big ones, destructive ones. Ones that people could wish on, if they wanted. So that left shooting stars or comets, at least of the astronomical phenomena that Imhotep could think of. 'Asteroids' didn't seem right. It had to move, so 'star', 'planet', and 'moon' were right out. Moons and planets moved, he guessed, but not the way the riddle seemed to be hinting.

So, again, either shooting stars or comets. Which did he think it was? Shooting stars granted wishes but weren't destructive, and comets could be destructive but didn't grant wishes. Well. Okay, that wasn't quite true. Shooting stars were usually the result of passing through a comet's tail or something similar, if he remembered right. The Taurid meteor showers were from a comet. The Geminids were from... something else he couldn't recall off the top of his head, but he was pretty sure it was also a comet or something. So, really, shooting stars and comets were the same answer, and that answer was 'comet'.

Pleased with himself, Imhotep stepped up to the orb, gave it his answer, and stood off to the side to wait for the other two.

Antisana, Squire of Pluto

Ah, that hint had not been as helpful to him as Antisana might have hoped. He was still laboring under the impression that all these variations were the same, so differentiating them- well, there was nothing to differentiate.

If they were all the same thing (and as far as Antisana was concerned, they were: he knew next to nothing about space terminology), then all that mattered were the semantics of the question. All the most popular options left a trail in the sky visible for a short while. And destructiveness… He’d definitely seen some Netflix show about ancient Rome believing that comets were ill omens, harbingers of destruction, but anything hurtling through space at mach a billion would destroy anything in its path. That part of the hint was negligible.

So the only part of any significance to Antisana was ‘wishing.’ Maybe people made wishes during meteor showers or for the appearance of comets, but he knew for a fact that people wished on falling stars. There were at least three songs about it that he could come up with off the top of his head. Why they sang about ‘stars’ instead of ‘comets’ or ‘meteors,’ he didn’t know.

With a dip of his head in Crisium’s direction, he rumbled out a quiet, “That seems as good of an answer as any.” They all seemed perfectly acceptable to him, and the Moon page at least seemed to know what he was talking about. “I will also say shooting star.”

Meighei

He'll go with shooting star too.

a-disgruntled-dragon

Wallia, senshi of Fortification

It was the large gathering of Order-aligned people that had got Wallia's interest. Once he had known there was an emergency going on and the pretty lady was in need of help, his mind was set. He would help her.

When they were gathering and contemplating their plan to cleanse Urania’s observatory, Wallia had mostly been quiet. He was new at this senshi thing and they were talking in english, the language which was introduced to him by school and different media platforms. It was kind of difficult to listen everyone and figure out what was important information and what was not.

Now they were in the small room, trying to solve a riddle. Let them handle it, he decided. Wallia was sure he wasn't going to be very useful here. Not in secluded place like this.