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 Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 5:05 pm
"Why?" Aquarius asked bluntly. "Why go so often to a world with no people, no progress, in a thousand years? Do you care that much about what happened so long ago? That's then, and this is now, right? So what's the point of all of this?
For someone who'd expressed an interest in the past, she was coming off as being rather hypocritical. "I usually go when I have to, or when I need to check something. But every week, up there? I'd go nuts." More nuts than she already was, anyway. "I mean, it's impressive and all, but jeez!"
There was also the fact that Aquarius was feeling a bit insecure. She'd spent a good amount of time at her outpost- though she couldn't claim to have gone once a week for six months- and she didn't even have a fraction of this information about, well, anything. And it wasn't for lack of effort. What was she doing wrong, that this senshi had done so right?
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 5:30 pm
The answer for the "Why" was not an easy one. It had been a long amount of time since her first visit immediately after Kurma had shown her the way. Her current knowledge of all that had happened greatly overshadowed what she had learned before obtaining the rights of a royal senshi. If she were to estimate what she remembered prior, it would have maybe been equivalent to 2% of all she could remember. Her prior memories had been huge points about who she had been, where as she now had been spouting little nuances to things such as language and trade.
"...my initial visits were to escape... however, after the first memory I received... ya can probably say curiosity got th'better of me... and as time went on and I learned more about th'people... th'land... th'friends I had... my visits became a sign of respect. I can't change the outcome of a dead world, but I can honor those who were dear to me then."
Though she had just met Aquarius for the first time, this one was living up to the previous one's reputation. Even during the Silver Millenium, Iris had never had the pleasure of meeting the Zodiac. All she knew of him were whispers she heard whenever she visited the world of Uranus.
To take a break from all of the seriousness weighing down the air, Iris casually mentioned "...well... I kinda figured ya were already kinda nuts... so I don't see how going t'space frequently would change ya all that much!"
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 6:13 pm
The desire to escape was one that Aquarius could understand. Except for her, escape worked in the other direction, when she had tried to lock her senshi self away. It hadn't worked. She was under the impression that escape was impossible. It didn't seem to have worked for Iris, though she'd gotten something else out of her escape method.
"Respecting the dead, huh?" That, too, was something she could sympathize with. She just hadn't figured out a way to do it that didn't leave her completely crippled with sadness and fear.
Aquarius was starting to like this Sailor Iris. At least, until she started making fun. "Well, excuse me for being nuts," she shot back, rolling her eyes. "You'd be nuts too, if you'd been through hell and back." She froze, then looked down at her knees. "That wasn't an invitation, by the way." If she had to describe her past to one more nosy senshi, she'd scream, and then everyone would know just how nuts she really was.
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 6:52 pm
Despite the defensive that Aquarius seemed to take, Iris' grin remained upon her face. With all the explanations and attempts to hide information, the blonde could tell it was a sensitive subject. Not that she'd ease up to the point of spoiling this practical stranger of the Sciences.
"I am pretty sure I classify as nuts already by most standards." Having two sets of memories stored in one person probably qualified one for some sort of psychological therapy. She shrugged again.
"Whatever... ain't important!" Her gold eyes glanced about the immediate vicinity. What was keeping Irene? The eternal senshi could have swore that Irene wasn't usually this bad about keeping to planned meet-ups. The company Iris was keeping at the moment was odd, but not unwelcome.
"...so... are there any other questions, or we done here?"
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 7:46 pm
At that, Aquarius' bitterness ebbed a bit. "It's not your fault," she said in what was meant to be a soothing tone. "Being a senshi screws you up inside. At least, it screws up all the ones I've met. Some handle it better than others. You seem to be taking it pretty well." As for her, well... that wasn't really the point.
"Questions. Right." This little digression had been interesting, but not particularly on-topic. "So there was a common language. Who spoke it? Was it just people associated with the Silver Millennium? Within a certain radius?" Aquarius tended to separate the world into "inside the Surrounding" and "outside the Surrounding." Still, that was a highly subjective way of viewing things, and there was no guarantee that others would see it the same way.
A thought suddenly occurred to her. "You say you couldn't read it... but could you recognize it if you saw it? The common language, I mean."
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 8:58 pm
No, it's her fault Iris easily mused as Aquarius attempted to "make things better." The blonde had been fine with being a senshi. There were some issues that had taken their tolls, but at the same time, the bulk of the blame went to one person only.
And sadly, that person was technically Iris, in a sense.
Until the questions resumed, Iris remained silent, but once more questions were brought out, the yellow-suited senshi resumed giving answers.
"Many spoke it, though I don't think I could list every world that relied on it. Back then, I was very prone t'travel... so it would be nearly impossible t'recall the specifics. However, it was quite common in general."
The blonde paused to ruffle her own hair a bit as she thought over the final inquiry of this batch. "...I think I could recognize it... couldn't read it... but saw it plenty enough..."
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Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 10:31 pm
"Many" was hardly the most descriptive term. Aquarius was a little disappointed, but she knew that this was still a breakthrough. She'd gotten more information during this one conversation than she'd gleaned from hours of work sessions up at the outpost. Just because she didn't have a demographic breakdown for use of this common language didn't mean that she couldn't keep going.
When Iris said she could recognize the language, though, Aquarius was floored. Had she taken up the invitation to sit on the bench, she probably would have fallen off. Since she was already on the ground, she just swayed dizzily. Then she nearly tied her arms in a knot in her hurry to pull her notebook out of the bag she carried.
"Here, is this it? Not words, but the characters." She opened her book and pointed to the first page- what she had originally thought was native Aquarian. But if there was, in fact, a more commonly used language...
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Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 8:10 pm
A pair of eyes blinked as she suddenly had a notebook thrust in her direction, opened to the first page.
Someone was excited.
"...so... are ya like this with every senshi 'round here? Or am I a special case, Aquarius?" With another cheeky smile, she glanced down to take a look at the page.
It didn't take much time for her to respond. "...never seen anythin' like this set before..."
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Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 8:52 pm
"Damn straight you're special." Why bother to hide it? Aquarius wasn't opposed to flattering people, especially when she was impressed. "I admit I don't get around much, but nobody I've talked to has known even a fraction of this information! It's just 'dead planet' this and 'ancient history' that. Don't get me wrong- I hate history. But when you've got a resource that could potentially help end an intergalactic war, why wouldn't you use it? You, though- I don't know what your reasons are, but you put in an effort to find this stuff out. That makes you special, at least to me."
Honestly, Aquarius was expecting the bulk of the books she found to be written in the common language, so Iris' response took her by surprise. "Really? Huh. Well, keep looking." As she spoke, she turned the page, revealing yet more alien characters. "There's a bunch of different languages in there, so just keep going until something looks familiar."
If there was a common language, at least some of the books at the outpost had to be written in it. If she could find which ones, she could use that information to... well, she'd figure it out when she got there.
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Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 9:44 pm
"Things are different..." she said in a much more distant tone, briefly pausing to look away from the notebook and out to the distance. There wasn't anything in particular she was looking at for a handful of seconds, and soon enough her eyes were back to the pad of paper.
With the newly obtained permission, the eternal senshi thumbed through the pages. Rather than say something for each page she recognized, she seemed to just go through the first 10 pages silently, scanning over the pages intently.
"...Page 4 through 8 and page 10 are the common language..."
She paused.
"...Ya know... I think I might need t'leave. I was waitin' fer someone and... they aren't showin' and I need t'figure out why..."
It wasn't like Irene to stand her up like this.
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Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 10:06 pm
"Things are exactly the same." Both in the past and in the present, Aquarius was isolated and constantly in danger. Granted, the isolation was mainly her own fault, but the danger wasn't. It seemed that when you were a senshi, some things never changed.
She waited patiently, second-guessing her second guesses, until Iris spoke again. Her eyes bugged out, and she snatched the book back, leafing through the indicated pages. "All of these? I know I have some duplicates here, but that means that this is a really expansive language. But some of these parts came from books. Is there such a thing as a written dialect? Minor differences based on location? Surely a language as widely spoken as that must have undergone changes over time and distance, but then why..."
She was so engrossed in her work, she never saw Iris leave, shaking her head as she went.
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