Welcome to Gaia! ::

Materializing on his home-world, Murikabushi found himself, Fang, and Soyala (currently perched atop his shoulder)………well. He certainly found himself somewhere.

“Huh,” Muri said, blinking out at a place that definitely looked quite nice? But all the same—“I didn’t tell the phone to bring us here or anything……? I mean, I just pushed the app button like normal and this……” Rather than shrug when he had a Mauvian on his shoulder, Muri settled for making a throaty sound that loosely approximated the gesture and sort of sounded like I don’t know. “This has never happened to me before? I’m pretty sure I’d remember if it had?”

Every other time he’d come to his world, no matter whom he’d brought with him, Muri had shown up in the same place: the park in the center of the capital city, with the fountain in the center where the bronze statue of Airan in his senshi fuku towered over everything like a benevolent protector. That place had grown familiar to Muri, over so many repeat visits. He now recognized the way the cobblestones felt under his feet and, thus, how best to balance on them in his heels. He recognized the twists and turns of the alleyways branching off from the thirteen boulevards that spoked out from the park. He recognized slight variations in the colors of different buildings’ walls.

Past life memories that he’d recovered in the area had helped with that, as well. Given him more context he could use to familiarize himself with the area. Different specific cramped-together buildings had started standing out to him as “the little bookshop where the owner refused to sell anything critical of the senshi, even before the revolution, and had stood up for Airan while he was disguised as a common street urchin” or “the tavern where Airan had to apologize for Xingyi Kurogane—the Silver Millennium’s Kaifeng of Saturn—making a heinous mess while s**t-faced, and then Xingyi hung all over him, whining about how it was Liberation Day, until Airan could finally hand him off to Helene”—all thanks to the stories from Airan’s life that he could associate with the locations.

But today, an even bigger garden sprawled out ahead of Kiyoshi-Muri and his friends, without any encroachment from the city fencing anybody in. Green grass and trees, as far as the eye could see—not to mention the flowers. None of the black roses that Murikabushi had associated with his senshi status since before he’d purified—at least, none that he could see at first glance, but knowing his world, they would turn up somewhere—but a veritable rainbow of blossoms grew all over, as free-standing plants and as bushy thickets. Maybe his black roses had yet to make themselves obvious, but even so, thorny vines climbed up thousand-year-old trellises with rose blossoms that came in reds, pinks, and purples, and oranges, blues, and greens. Some of them even came in swirled patterns, with two or three colors mixing together, psychedelic and beautiful in ways that took Murikabushi’s breath away.

Lush was the word that came to mind most clearly, as Murikabushi peered out at this whole new garden for him, Fang, and Soya-hime to explore. Plenty of other places he’d found in the capitol had overgrown plants, but he hadn’t yet seen anything like this. Hedges easily taller than Fang spiraled off from a white-and-gray gravel pathway in the center, which led deeper into the garden. Amidst said hedges, Muri noted different colors of gravel on smaller pathways, in which the stones seemed coordinated with the specific colors of flowers growing on the hedges. Overall, the effect reminded him of French formal gardens, as if some immaculately designed parterres had grown wild when left untended—and considering how long it had been since anyone had lived on his world, that felt like a pretty solid guess for an explanation.

Desperate not to miss a thing (but moving very carefully so as not to upset Soyala), Murikabushi turned around, checking for anything behind them. More garden, maybe? Hopefully not another enormous bronze statue of Airan? Please, not another of those, like one of them was enough for the next foreseeable eternity?

Fortunately, he did not find another enormous bronze statue of Airan.

“……Oh, daaaaaamn,” Kiyoshi-Muri whispered, staring up at an absolutely château de Versailles-a**-looking palace. Sat atop a hill—not particularly tall itself but broad enough to count as large regardless—the palace glimmered, all silver and gold beneath the mid-morning sunlight. “Well, uh. That answers where we are.……”

Still moving carefully, he turned to face Fang a bit more, trying to include him in everything as much as possible. Gardens like this definitely weren’t typical of what Muri had seen on Fang’s world before, nor of Destiny City. If Fang had ever seen a building like the one above them, it was probably only in books or on a screen, whether that meant a TV or a computer. All of that might have made this discovery disorienting for Fang, and in case he felt unsteady or uncertain, Muri wanted to be there for him, to remind him that somebody from his pack was here and he was safe.

“I haven’t been here before? But I’ve had some past life memories about this place,” Muri explained. “Not happy ones, usually? Some awful people in Airan’s life kept him trapped here. Cut him off from his family and the people he wanted to serve and help as their senshi. And it got better, eventually, when they had their revolution? How he’d been kidnapped and basically imprisoned all came out, and all the ways he’d tried to help people, even within his very limited capacity to act.……but still, y’know?”

Murikabushi sighed, full of compassion for and awe over his predecessor, the way he usually felt about Airan. God, what had Kiyoshi done to live up to that kind of example, recently? Intervene at Scandals because some really pushy meathead wasn’t listening to some poor, worrisomely skinny little twink trying to insist that he didn’t drink, just look at his wristband, but Meathead would listen to a drag queen about that? Ugh—it wasn’t nothing, but Airan had helped Citizen Rochetenue and the revolutionaries liberate their entire world. After that, he’d spent years doing all the active outreach work that he’d wanted to do.

By comparison, Kiyoshi-Muri couldn’t help but feel like he was slacking off.

“I wonder if Airan ever got the garden put in,” he said offhandedly, slowly starting down the gravel path before them. “It—I think there must have been different words getting used in whatever language he was speaking? But in one of the memories I’ve gotten, he’s telling his lover how much he hates the big showy, ornamental stuff, and how much he wished he could turn this place into the kind of garden that grows food.……”

Even if Airan had never succeeded in that, life had found its way to the garden without any people here to chase it off. A hole burrowed into the grass might have been unsightly by their standards, but Muri smiled, seeing a little white mini-rabbit poke its head out. Aside from him, some of the teacup piglets that Fang had helped Muri and Yuki find stood nearby, happily munching on some grass. More delightfully, one of the tiny foxes that Muri had started seeing around recently, with a coat whose orange almost seemed to match Fang’s fuku, ran right over to Fang, scampering around his feet while making a series of loud, squeaky cackling sounds.

Maybe it wasn’t the same as the palace gardens feeding the sapient population of Murikabushi, but……since there weren’t any more native Murikabushians, maybe Airan would’ve been happy about the garden feeding so many little creatures.

Fang's tail wagged gently as his excitement to be on Murikabushi's planet grew. He wanted to look around, get a good view of the place, sniff out animals—being on a new planet was always so much fun.

The huge building and garden stopped him in his tracks, mouth agape as he stared at it all. He'd gotten used to living in the city with its skyscrapers, but it all got so... boring. Loud and smelly and monotonous. This building was much grander, the garden much grander.

He would absolutely get lost if he went inside. Big buildings weren't fun, as pretty as they were to look at. He much preferred the squat, small buildings of Fang.

Fortunately, he was distracted by a cackling little creature that looked... right, kind of like an earth fox. Its pretty coat was so similar to that of Chrysocyon that Fang's heart leapt in his throat and he whined softly in return, kneeling to the ground then turning to lay on his side with his head upturned, trying to imitate the sounds it was making, lost in his own little world.

Soyala nodded, thoughtfully. "Many hands will make light work, as they say." Not her hands, of course, they were made for shaping fabric, not digging in dirt, but many hands for her to direct in making the most aesthetically pleasing layout for Murikabushian-grown vegetables. Just because it was practical didn't mean it shouldn't look good.

But that was for another day. She was content to leave Fang to play with the animals for now--not that she wasn't given to a little whimsy herself, when it came to these sorts of places, and honestly, his delight was something wonderful to witness.

"Catch up with us," she offered him, since he seemed to be having such a good time, as she moved to keep pace with her Senshi.

"The growth is impressive," she agreed, leaning in to examine the hedge. "I confess I don't understand very much about all this--you and yours probably know better than I." The Negaverse was not exactly big on the restoration of extraterrestrial worlds. She supposed she would have to get informed quickly; surely, this was part of her duty as a Mauvian. "Is this unusual? Do you think something is interfering?"

“I gather it’s a bit of a unique process, actually,” Murikabushi said to Soyala when she tried to discount her own intelligence and ability to contribute. “It’s very, like, every planet is different, just like every senshi is different? You can maybe find some recurring themes? But ultimately, what’s true on one senshi’s planet might not be exactly the same on someone else’s, and what works in one place might not work in another. So……y’know, don’t rule yourself out, right, himesama? Whatever you might notice or think of something, it’s worth sharing and being taken seriously.”

Being new to Order didn’t mean that Soyala’s intelligence, observational skills, or prior experience meant nothing. Nobody was allowed to insinuate that around Murikabushi, not even Soya herself.

Similarly, Murikabushi met Fang’s suggestion by turning toward him and listening. Both Soyala’s question and what Fang had to say somewhat overlapped, or it seemed that way to Murikabushi in the moment. Listening to Fang, Muri nodded and turned his friend’s words over in his mind a few times before letting himself speak. Thinking out loud felt like it would work better in this case, but Muri still wanted to have a somewhat solid starting place.

“I don’t think something’s interfering exactly? Or I’d expect things to look more like they did when the old civilization fell,” he said, edging past the hedge to the next trellis. The wisteria spilled all over this one, draping over the wood in heavy vines, same as the ones that sat before it and opposite it, across the path. “But something here might be different from how things have been in town. Which might be somewhat tied to what you’re saying, Fang? About nature wanting to return to the way it was before the people who used to live here tried to tame things? And that might make sense. Maybe things haven’t been able to do that so well in the capital city, but the garden leaves more room for that to happen? I just feel like looking around some more might give us a better idea, y’know?”

Further down the path, near what Muri thought was the center of the garden, the fountain loomed. Heading there felt like the most reasonable idea. They could get a better sense from the center of what else might’ve been going on in the garden. For his own part, Murikabushi didn’t notice that, as they moved further down the path, places in the hedges had broken little branches, as if something larger than the tiny creatures he’d met so far had rubbed against them. He missed coarse strands of black fur strewn among the leaves and grass, and the husks of shed scales in as many shades as the rose blossoms all over the garden.

All he knew was that something was going on here, and it made the most sense to keep his eyes up on the garden, more than the individual flowers.