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"Am I sure I'm a senshi?" Walküre replied, "of course I am! What kind of question is that?"

She was kind of annoyed by the question. It should have been obvious she was a senshi. Really.

Although, she had to admit that things were getting more and more strange each moment. It was possible that there could be some sort of magick or glamour around them. Walküre wasn't sure where she was, but she was sure that she didn't like it.

She stopped walking when she saw the red cloth. It... it was stunning. She wanted shoes in that color immediately. There was nothing else like this.

Bending over, Walküre stared at the cloth, yet didn't grab for it.

It was a lush, beautiful red cloak that felt like it was spun from wormsilk, lined with perfect, absurdly red pinfeathers of a thousand cardinals. There was a wide-brimmed hood at the top of the cape, and a worked golden clasp in the bright burst-shape of the sun. The beautiful cloak also unfortunately stank rather redolently of sweat, but nothing in the world had ever been wholly perfect, after all.

Having picked up the cloak, Aquarius could now see that there was a woven basket beneath it.

The basket had a very faint fruit smell -- as mild and pleasant as the cloak was neither. It was hand-woven of a fairly dark, grayish wood, as though a paler wood had been stained with smoke. There were carved suns on the lid of the basket. Banded around the trim of the basket was a soft, inky wash in loose, vaguely floral shapes -- apparently indicating that the artist who'd added this decorative element had been less than talented.

Picking up the basket, Walküre gave it a closer look. It was an unfashionable accessory for her to carry around, but it was better than that smelly cloak.

She crept over to the edge of the road, and looked out into the woods. She squinted, looking for signs of life. Turning back to Aquarius, Walküre asked, "What do you think about this situation?"

It wasn't that she never asked for opinions, but it wasn't exactly frequent. Even though she was smart, she still wasn't clicking two and two together. Maybe Father hadn't told her the fairy tales of the old country often enough for them to stick. Maybe the situation was just too frustrating for her. She wanted to cry again, but wouldn't dare start tearing up in front of someone else.

"If I were running and dropping everything I had, I'd probably look for a place to hide," she said while motioning at the forest.

Most people who knew Aquarius well knew not to ask what she thought unless it was strictly necessary. She put up a fuss when she wasn't consulted, but that was generally easier to deal with than the matters she brought up when she was. The former required an aspirin, the latter, a bottle of them.

"There's a number of possibilities. The most likely one in my mind, as I already said, is interplanetary transportation, possibly through some sort of teleportation or lightspeed travel. This planet doesn't look terribly familiar to me, but that does not mean a great deal. It could even be a planet I recall, altered in some way.

"Which leads to the second hypothesis, that this is some kind of barrier or the effect of other magic. That happened before; when the Negaverse sealed in Barren Pines, the sky turned black. In that case, we could be in the park for all we know. Although I doubt that; I don't think Destiny City Park is big enough to have this much woodland area. That would still beg the question of where we are.

"The third option that occurs to me is that this is all an illusion, but that begs the question of how we're able to interact with the items we find. Most illusions- at least, the kind I'm familiar with, whether created by magic or science- can't be touched. Another possibility is that certain parts of what we see are false, and some are real. Maybe we are in the park, only it's been made to look bigger and more densely forested.

"None of these options take into account how we got here from our various starting points- the downtown bus and your dorm, respectively- or how we transformed, or anything like that. Without more information, I can't really form a solid hypothesis about either of those conundrums, though I could try, if you'd like. Off the top of my head..." Aquarius sighed and shifted the cloak to her other arm. "I'd have to guess it's some kind of Negaverse trick. Maybe. In which case, we might not want to go chasing off after our mystery runaway. Then again, it could be someone in distress, in which case we're duty-bound to help."

Aquarius looked at Walküre pointedly. "You see what I mean? Without more information- just a little, even- I can't accurately predict what our best course of action is. I can't even be sure that one of my ideas might be the right one. I don't mind not having all the answers, but we need some of them, at least. The sooner the better." With her lecture over, she took a deep breath. "Anyway, that's what I think."

Walküre did ask.

"What about you?"

Within the basket was a pair of finger cymbals, made of carbon steel, slightly nicked as though they'd been used fairly often. One of the two cymbals seemed to have been purposely inlaid with a sharp piece of rock. The basket was lined with deep red cloth, but otherwise, Walküre didn't see anything else in the basket.

Continuing north, up ahead of them the pathway branched into three new roads: northwest, north, and northeast. Each path looked lush, verdant, and reasonably worn, and there were no signposts of any sort to distinguish them. Surrounded by trees taller than they were, they couldn't seem to spy any landmarks around them other than, to be certain, plenty more trees.

Walküre pulled the items out of the basket to show to Aquarius. Finger cymbals? At least it wasn't a half-eaten, moldy sandwich. She clanged them together, and they made little ting-ting noises. It was cute.

Sighing, she just rolled her eyes when she was asked what her theory was. She was freaking out earlier over the chance of being, you know, non-existent anymore, but wanted to play it off as being cool. A level head was a sign of a good leader, and being a leader was one of her strong points.

Standing up, Walküre continued down the path while talking, "I just think we should wait to come up with any ideas until we find out more. Or at least ask the person this stuff belongs to, if they're still around that is."

She clanged the finger cymbals together more as she walked. Each step was a little clang. "Let's keep heading North."