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 Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2012 10:33 am
"History," Zia said sullenly like that was suddenly less interesting. It was dwelling on the past, keeping logs and statements of a past that applied to few and was known by fewer. It did nothing to move forward. Her theories did, but they were only theories.
She snapped the book in her hands shut with a loud 'thrump'. "History and theories and nothing solid." Her demeanor had dampened.
"I don't recognize anything." Yet. There was a yet there, even if hanging and unsaid and unacknowledged. She had to recognize something, eventually, but nothing was jumping out right at her this second and that frustrated her. She was impatient.
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 11:58 pm
"Ew." Not the most tactful response, but Aquarius had a sort of knee-jerk reaction where history was concerned. "Why history? It's all boring stuff and crumbling monuments and dead people." So said the dead girl talking, but that was beside the point. She had her eyes on the prize. Even though she was translating ancient dead languages (or at least trying to), her real goal was the scientific information contained within. Science was real and living and relevant. History was must and dust and mold.
That wasn't the most encouraging thing to say, though so she went and got her master notebook instead. "Here. I think I've isolated the characters that make up the Aquarian language. It's the easiest to work with since there's so many samples here. But if nothing there looks familiar, other pages are characters from other languages here. I can't be sure that those collections are complete, since there's far fewer volumes to compare, but it might give you a jump-off point or something."
After handing off the notebook she went and started leafing through one of the binders on the table, not wanting to stare in case that stilted any progress, but unable to resist sneaking the occasional questioning glance.
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Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 7:21 pm
"Someone's a bit judgmental," Zia said with a whistle and a roll of the eyes before flouncing into Aquarius' personal space, leaning in with a smirk, "History can be as recent as three years ago. Challenged and battered and forgotten already. And only your monuments are crumbling," She said with a light poke meant to annoy more than anything.
She backed off and gave an open armed shrug. "Sometimes it helps when you're stuck in repetitious cycles. It doesn't make it any less boring."
She took the notebook and started leafing through it ravenously. Even if she wasn't getting any bells rung, it was still new information and she was dying to understand it.
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Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:02 pm
Aquarius shrugged, not denying the accusation. History was a sore subject for her, and no amount of pretending would make it anything but that. "I don't like history, okay? It's complicated." She really didn't want to get into the details, like how her mother was a history teacher and always disappointed in her disinterest, or how her rival was a wannabe historian who'd fallen out of contact with her. This wasn't what they were there for.
The poke at the state of her outpost made her eyes twitch. "Yeah, I know," and this time she sounded dejected rather than offended. Had Zia seen the giant hole in the back room? Aquarius wasn't sure, but the fact that she had failed to protect her post and the people inside it still hurt her, deep down. It was one thing to joke to people about being a failure as a senshi, and another to have to face things that she knew she had screwed up head on.
"Anything's gotta be better than staring at the same things again and again. I swear I must have memorized most of these characters by now, not even trying, just because... what else is there to do with them? Can't read 'em. Can't translate 'em. Can't consign 'em to a bonfire, though I've been tempted once or twice." Fortunately, the temptation had not been able to overcome the profound sense of loss she felt whenever she contemplated it. She had the world at her fingertips, if only she could access it. She couldn't sacrifice that possibility on a whim, no matter how bored she became.
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Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 5:28 am
"You're so depressing," Hypocritical Zia chirruped as she found another book with renewed interest. This one seemed to have more decoration than a decent sample of writing, but the fact it was pretty was what attracted her to it in the first place.
"It'll just take time, that's all. Maybe more people from this universe, they're all starting to get memories, you know," 'this universe' was unfortunately emphasized.
Though, flipping through the pages, a small note that had been tucked between them fell out. Zia cringed, wondering if she'd damaged it, and delicately tried to pick up the aging parchment, only to frown and stare at the characters inked on it. "Oh... I've seen these before," She said, trailing off as she tried to think.
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Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 8:42 pm
Hearing something like that just made Aquarius' shoulders slump even further. It wasn't her fault she was depressing. She was depressed, and that stuff was contagious. But having Zia say it so bluntly just made her feel worse about it. She didn't like being bummed out, and she didn't like raining on other people's parades, but she had seen the weather forecast and knew that the grey skies weren't going to clear up anytime soon.
"Yeah, whatever," she responded, neither confirming nor denying the accusation. Aquarius' autopilot was set to "avoid," and it was good at following its programming. She opened up another book and skimmed a couple of pages before recognizing it as Aquarian language and shutting it again. "Memories? What kind of memories?" She had remembered a bit about her past when she was awakened, but nothing since. "Surely they'll have remembered whatever they get already, right?" Or was she somehow totally wrong, yet again?
She was about to push the issue, but Zia's reaction stunned her. Someone recognized something? Someone who wasn't her? "What? where? What does it say?" Aquarius ran over and squeezed herself in next to Zia, trying to occupy the same space and hold her head in the exact same way. "It's not Aquarian," she murmured, only mildly disappointed. "I'm not sure what that language is, actually. Do you know? Is it something from your world?"
How would the previous Aquarius have even gotten something from another universe? That seemed to imply that travel between the two was possible, and that the outpost might hold the answers after all. Or she was getting ahead of herself and jumping to conclusions. One or the other.
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Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 10:08 pm
"Ah, they're getting them slowly, like flashes as they slowly wake up," Zia said with a weird motion on the side of her head, and completely ignoring the way her words had made the poor girl slump. Zia could be depressing too, but she didn't think of it as much of an insult. s**t was depressing, talking about it was depressing, and sometimes you needed to talk about that s**t or it as never going to get solved.
She stood up a little straighter and blinked, though, as Aquarius tried to squish into her space.
"No, it's not from Zirconia's memories," She said matter of factly, as if she could tell the difference. Hell, half the time she forgot she wasn't Zirconia, the trans-dimensional space cat who left Mau for Black Moon Court intrigue.
"It's from..." Blank. Oh god, she couldn't remember. But, it was definitely familiar. She'd seen that character before and she was certain that one there was... where was it from?
She ground her teeth together in a cripplingly embarrassed grin. "I... uh... I don't remember."
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Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:10 pm
Other people were getting memories slowly? How did that work? "Weird. Maybe it's different for them than for Zodiacs." It sounded confusing, but maybe it was better that way. Aquarius had remembered things she really didn't need to know, but she was at a loss for the more important things, like reading. Even if the other way was slower, there was the potential for them to learn more overall, while her knowledge was capped. She had the immediate reward, if one could call it that, but the others had better potential. Once again, she was stuck with the short end of the stick.
Those thoughts, interesting as they were, went straight out the window when Zia spoke again. "Wait, this is something you remember? You, Zia, saw this somewhere?" Was it an Earth language that she didn't know? That hadn't even occurred to her, to look into other languages from her own planet. What an oversight!
She waited to hear where it was from, but was slightly disappointed. "You don't remember? Well... how many places have you been? You've been here before. Anywhere else up here?" If she hitched rides with other people, maybe it was a space language after all.
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Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 4:14 pm
"I uh..." Zia laughed nervously, a little embarrassed. "Uh. Hm." She was going to go ahead and blame her faulty memory on Zirconia. Like always.
"I've been to some knight wonders. Uuuuh... Jupiter... Been to a few outposts around here besides this one."
She shrugged. "Whoops?" There were weird symbols everywhere, she thought it was amazingly unfair Aquarius expected her to remember which ones might be languages. Not that Aquarius had even said anything indicating she did but Zia's mind had gone nuts accusing herself and defending herself is a very weird circular thought.
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 7:01 pm
"Knight wonders? Which knight, and why are their wonders so special? I wonder plenty of things, and nobody seems to give a damn." Aquarius shook her head in frustration and looked at the paper again. The suggestion that the writing might be from another outpost was not appreciated. That meant that she would have to talk to someone, and if she talked to someone, they would almost certainly bother her about all the stuff she hadn't done and wasn't doing now. So not worth it.
Jupiter was considerably more hopeful. Aquarius studied the paper again, then went to bring her binder over. "I'll copy this down," she told Zia as she began scribbling, doing her best to copy the general shapes of the letters. "I'd like to keep the original here, if you don't mind, but take this with you. That way you can compare it to writing when you go off visiting places." As she copied, another thought occurred to her. "Can I give you some Aquarian characters too? Just to provide a baseline, in case you find them anywhere else?"
This idea had potential. Already she was planning to make several copies of the guide she had made herself, to hand out as needed. A pity she didn't know more people to give them to, but that was her own fault, as was the case with many- but not all- of her troubles.
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 7:48 pm
"No, like, wonder, like," Zia waved her arms, in a way that her logic said was trying to interpret she was talking about a solid structure but by anyone else's logic she was probably having a stroke.
"Like seven wonders of the world? I dunno, my brother's is like, this city of towers in a valley or something." She paused, and laughed. "It's really terrible, really, senshi get entire worlds, knights get a city. I don't even know if Valhalla's is even that. I was a little distracted by him threatening to leave me on Jupiter to die, though."
She too the paper and nodded, trying to hide her disappointment she wasn't allowed to steal the original. "I can focus on hitching more rides, see what matches up. I got a few connections. I'll take whatever samples you want."
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 8:13 pm
Aquarius watched, but her only conclusion was that Zia was trying some sort of tribal dance. Was that a wonder? Because she was definitely wondering what it was.
The truth was much less interesting, at least to her. "So knights protect places like that? Why? If the senshi's doing their job, why should they need someone else to fill in the gaps?" An awfully brash statement for someone who had spent a great deal of time figuring out how to not do her job, but Aquarius was nothing if not hypocritical.
"Your brother is a knight?" She put her hands over her mouth. "I'm so sorry." Not about her criticism of knights, but about the fact that he was a knight at all. If Kent suddenly started waving a weapon around she would be worried sick. "And... wait, this Val-guy did what? Fear quickly turned to outrage, and she folded her arms to keep herself from hitting something. If all knights were like that, maybe she wasn't missing out by not talking to many of them. But Pharos had seemed so nice...
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Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 7:41 pm
"I dunno. I know back in the Black Moon 'verse there were Cavaliers that works with senshi. Kind of an alliance. And a bond that helped them both do a lot more than alone. I dunno what the hell knights do other than have fancy places and tease me," Zia shrugged and laughed at Aquarius' outrage. "Yeah he can be kind of an a**, but he was at his breaking point and just wanted me to play nice."
She ran her fingers across the seam of her folded paper in one quick 'so there' motion with a grin. "And I still don't really place nice."
She shrugged again. "My brother, eeeh, I'm taking it a lot better than him. Or Valhalla. Or our ancestor. Or really anybody, they all seem very angry about it. He's downright traumatized, poor baby, he just wants to hug all the Chaos babies to death and I am trying to convince him that's just a very good way to get your starseed ganked."
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:48 pm
"Princess Chronos had a Cavalier." Aquarius didn't think about him too often, because it was depressing. She hadn't known him that well, but he had seemed like a nice, level-headed guy who hadn't deserved his fate. Well, as much as any of them deserved being senshi. "He sacrificed himself for our rebirth." She snorted derisively. "Some rebirth. Aries is dead anyway, and Sagittarius, and then there's the others..." Thinking about that would just upset her even more, which was the reason she tried not to dwell on Eon or Aries or any of the others too much.
Making fun of knights was much more fun. She giggled at Zia's description of her knight friend, and her mirth wasn't entirely forced. "He thought dumping you in the middle of space was going to make you play nice? Who dropped him on the head as a baby?" If someone tried that with her, she would tear them a new one. After she finished studying her surroundings and everything.
"Of course he's traumatized," she replied matter-of-factly. "If being a senshi sucks, being a knight can't be much better- especially if two devilishly clever gals like us can't figure out what they're supposed to do." At least she had a mission, even if she didn't prioritize it much. "I'm kind of surprised you're not more freaked out by it. I mean, if my brother was out there with a bunch of, er, 'Chaos babies,' I'd flip out, no question."
And then they were back on a depressing subject. How had she gotten to the point where practically everything upset her?
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:34 pm
"Wait what?" Chronos had a Cavalier? With as much as she'd been talking about them and asking about the, she mostly just got snarky 'well those don't exist here, get over it'.
"So, like, wait," Zia shoved her paper in her back pocket to use her hands like she was working out a puzzle while she thought. "I mean... like... you guys had one, but just the princess? Was he from Earth? Did he have a rapier? Were they bonded? What did he do? Do you know anyone else with cavaliers?" She rattled off rapidly.
It took a bit to calm down from it, though. "My brother? Oh. Whatever," She said with a flippant handwave. "He was getting attacked and victimized before he had powers, if he manages to survive being human hunting fodder, but gets wasted as a knight with powers and all, then uh... hm." She just kind of shut her mouth, not really wanting to think about how ridiculously unfair the universe was or how likely it was that her brother would be killed.
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