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Kaifeng, Squire of Saturn
Looking around for someone to hang with, and choosing to Friend Aokigahara.

So far, Kaifeng had picked out a few faces that he’d recognized, but all of them had seemed rather busy—or, well. Everyone here was busy, so maybe a better adjective right now was “preoccupied,” specifically with other people. Almost as soon as Kaifeng had spotted Pendour-jiejie, another Neptune Knight had swooped in to catch up with her (fair enough, Kaifeng figured; the Knight he didn’t recognize greeted jiejie like they had history together of some sort, and he’d happily leave them to catching up).

He spotted Halle and Almere as well, and while the former didn’t have somebody with him as yet, he seemed like he was searching for them (probably his brother, Lisse, then—or anyway, that made the most sense). Almere, on the other hand, did have someone with her already: Mechelen, the young Lysithea Squire from the arm wrestling competition on Cybele’s world, the one who hadn’t wanted to be patronized by anybody going easy on her. Playing some kind of helicopter gege to the younger Knights sounded both awkward and incredibly condescending, so it seemed better, to Kaifeng’s mind, if he left them to their own devices and let them spend time with their friends (or looking for their siblings, as seemed to be Halle’s case).

Noticing a (relatively) short and slender person in Ida colors out of the corner of his eye, Kaifeng briefly got closer……but as he did, he realized that the Page in question distinctly was not his Selenga. He looked like someone Kaifeng might like to get to know better later, but the purple hair with the longer, cyan forelocks cut a pretty starkly different image than Selenga’s black base hair with a golden ombré ponytail.…… Even as he reoriented himself, heading in a different direction, Kaifeng hoped he’d run into this other Ida Page again later. He hoped as well that Selenga would power up tonight and receive the summons (mostly for the sake of seeing his cousin-in-law but also a little bit because, whenever they got home, Selenga could verify for Huan-ge and Dewey that Kaifeng had behaved himself and not taken any stupid, crazy, and/or generally life-threatening risks).

As Kaifeng looked around for somebody he recognized who wasn’t already preoccupied, a young Moon Squire in a long, sparkly dress charged up to the Code Piece and started calling it out.…… Kaifeng didn’t recognize that particular teenager, but he liked her, he decided from listening to her put the Code Piece on the spot like that. Her father’s apologetic smiles made sense in their own right—he might’ve had a point about not wanting to enrage the Code Piece, though Kaifeng didn’t know for sure—but the young lady with the feisty tongue was spunky. She had real spirit, and Kaifeng appreciated that.

Finally, someone stood out who seemed distinctly unaccompanied.

Kaifeng didn’t recognize the other Saturn Knight, beyond clocking that he was, indeed, a fellow Saturn Knight and that he bore the shining marks that indicated Transcendence. Something about him felt familiar, though.…… Rubbing his chin, Kaifeng racked his brain and tried to think back to the memories of Xingyi’s that he’d previously recovered at his Wonder. He’d heard the names of a few other Saturn Knights mentioned here and there, sometimes with their Wonders attached (someone who worked nearby Kaifeng had gone by the name Kestrel, and his Wonder had been called Asshai), and sometimes not (Xingyi had worked pretty closely with someone he called “Rin” while talking to Huan-ge, and Rin’s Wonder sounded fairly similar in its purpose to the catacombs and burial fields of Kaifeng, but Liánlí-Kaifeng hadn’t managed to catch the name of Rin’s Wonder and thus, what he would’ve been called as a Knight).

He hadn’t seen what Rin had looked like either, not that it would’ve necessarily meant much if he had. After all, Xingyi had had elfin-looking ears and a pink ombré in his hair, and Liánlí very much had neither of those things. Whomever Rin had reincarnated as might have looked very different from how Rin had looked a thousand years ago.

……Well. Kaifeng wasn’t going to make a new friend from all the way over here, so putting on an earnest, optimistic smile (much easier now, with more and more Knights showing up), he made his way over to the be-caped, glowing gege. When he got close enough, he offered his new friend a little wave “hello.”

“Pleased to see another Saturn Knight around tonight,” Kaifeng said—and immediately felt a little silly, since he noticed two other Saturn Knights who’d joined their number, both quite a bit taller than the gege he’d actually picked out, and one of them definitely taller than Kaifeng as well. But—oh well, they weren’t the Saturn Knights he’d come over to meet (and the Almighty Tallest of their number looked a bit preoccupied with someone else anyway). “I’m Kaifeng. And you are……?”

Amarynthos, Knight of the Moon

(Standing with Ephesus, Sessrumnir, Palatine, and Paradise)

It was indisputable that Sessrumnir was a great inspiration to Amarynthos, but he could never keep that stoic expression the Jupiter Knight had perfect. As soon as Paradise’s arms wrapped around him, he broke into a grin and laughed. Maybe they should have been more serious about all of this, maybe he should have denied himself any moment of joy.

They’d already had a difficult week. The Code hadn’t sent an explosive warning message out, and it looked–more or less–like it was as good as usual. Maybe actually a bit sick, so he’d have liked to think this was just about getting everyone some magical Code flu-shot.

He leaned into Ephesus’ shoulder when they were hugged, and he would have hugged Paradise back if his arms weren’t squished together.

“It’s because his husband brings us lunch all the time, too.”

He said it loud enough for Palatine to hear, mostly because he was pretty sure he’d heard her say something about other halves. Honestly, he was surprised Alastor hadn’t found some way to sneak up here, too. He kept his eye out just in case.

Guine

Paradise, Ephesus, Sessrumnir

Sunshine Alouette

Palatine

Aventine, Knight of Venus

(Standing with Lyonesse. Shoeless, but definitely playing it cool. Does not smell too fragrant and if anyone suggests otherwise she will blame it on him.)

Aventine was falling apart. Her, and her Wonder, probably. Of course, it wasn’t bad enough that everything else had to be wonky, the last straw was when she was sitting on the bench, tapping her finger against the long shaft of her perfume bottle, when it cracked loudly and spilled all over.

She’d only just barely managed to spare herself from the worst of it, but her shoes were drenched.

With hardly any time to lament between that and the sudden message from the Code, she was all too eager to take it up on its offer and get out of Destiny City. Especially when the sometimes pleasant aroma of flowers was currently tearing up her nose. She’d been half-hopping from foot to foot as she yanked off her shoes and threw them into subspace when she accepted the summons, but that meant that when she arrived she was already off balance.

Thankfully, there was a handsome man standing right next to her, and if she was going to fall into anyone, thank goodness it was him. She didn’t faceplant, but her palm instinctively pressed against his arm as she balanced herself.

“Oh,” she said, partly in apology and partly in surprise. She did not always think before she acted, and her hand was already on his arm. She squeezed his bicep. “Oh, you’ve been working on these, huh? These are nice. Oh, I mean. I’m sorry.”

She righted herself and smoothed off her uniform that, thankfully was only slightly fragrant and not downright offensive. Unless her nostrils had been burned so badly she was just noseblind, but she hoped it was subtle enough that she wasn’t going to chase everyone away.

The downside was that she was a few inches shorter than usual, and barefoot in surprisingly clean, white, over-the-knee stockings now that she’d discarded a pair of two and a half foot tall boots into subspace. She’d crammed them in there like her life depended on it and hoped that the top part of her outfit was loud enough to draw attention from the bottom. She could always push out her chest if she needed an extra distraction but she was pretty sure that everyone else had enough on their mind already.

She didn’t move her hand from his arm but she stopped squeezing it, and offered her other hand as if to shake. “Hi, Aventine. Nice to meet you.”

Dunnottar, Page of Lysithea

Dunnottar enjoyed himself on the rare occasion he actually powered up and ventured out to smack some ridiculous Lieutenant around. But it was rare—so rare, in fact, he'd hardly even known something was going on, that something was wrong. When the letter appeared, he'd blinked at it curiously, then shrugged and decided to go—after all, he had nothing better to do tonight.

Once there, on the moon, which... actually felt a bit insane, simply because the moon itself was visible from Earth without a telescope of any kind—made it easier to process—he looked around the crowds of people, trying to find any face he might recognize.

None that he did, so he didn't acknowledge anyone.

[Caer Sidi, Knight of Cosmos]

Caer Sidi had not enjoyed the past week. Trouble powering up was weird. Struggling with her magic sucked. Butt he worst part had been bringing up her shield to defend against a youma's attack--

And having it shatter into pieces, like it was no more than a cheap wineglass. It had cut up her arm pretty badly, too, so when she followed the Moon's summons and appeared there, her entire right forearm was bandaged, wrist to elbow. Probably she shouldn't be straining herself powering up--but she'd come a long way from the selfish teenager she'd been when she first Awakened.

She took her duties as a Knight, and the Oath she'd made, extremely seriously. And she couldn't perform those duties if she couldn't get to her Wonder and couldn't defend people with her magic. So, here she was.

Pharos looked up to the knight who spoke to her, a pluto knight who looked like a steampunk Pharoah so to speak. She smiled and looked around before pointing to the code. "I think the code wants to talk to us about whats going on. Its happened before. I certainly want answer having been barred from my wonder all week, among other weird things going on."

She frowned, "its incased in a bubble, sort of visible, sort of not like an inactive wonder on the surrounding. Its extremely stressful," she admitted.

She heard someone asking questions, but offered up none of her own, waiting for the code to explain.

"It's ...," she started, before sighing, "I just hope we are able to fix this ..."

Emain Ablach, squire of Earth

"I haven't the foggiest." Emain Ablach took Promethei's question at face value and offered a conciliatory shrug. "Got the same notice you got." He shifted, rolling his shoulders and his neck to release pent up energy and the associated discomfort that had settled itself in his posture. It was either a good thing that seemingly eleventy billion knights were in one place, or a bad thing. Emain Ablach was trying to remain optimistic, but it was hard. It was interesting though--eleventy billion knights but no senshi?

It made sense, he guessed, since it was the Code that had summoned them all, but it was odd not to see a single senshi with as many people present as there were. Maybe he was too used to assuming crisis situations. Rocking up onto the balls of his feet, Emain Ablach looked around them. If it was a knight gathering, Nectaris should be around, right?


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Imhotep, page of Mercury

Imhotep folded his arms over his chest and said nothing once they all arrived. Of course he'd wanted to see what the Code wanted. It was a powerful entity, and if it was calling an all-hands, then it was probably pretty important, right? Granted, he would have preferred better timing relative to their own personal activities, but there had been no way--he hoped--the Code would have been aware of what they did in their downtime. They could always go back to what they were doing later. Unless things were about to go very sideways, Imhotep didn't foresee this taking too terribly long.

Then again, he knew better than to assume the best of any situation that required this many people to be powered up in one location. Maybe they'd be getting some answers about reports of their magic not working? He was loathe to join the people questioning the Code. Telling himself they would just need to be patient, Imhotep watched impassively as Emain Ablach looked around.

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Amoris, page of the Moon

Amoris took a more direct approach than Imhotep, seeing Emain Ablach looking around and moving to join him. "Is there anyone specific you're looking for?" He didn't recognize anyone at all, from what he could see. Just a sea of colours and various clothing themes. He hoped to see other people with moons on their outfits. Maybe Nectaris? She had a moon, if he remembered right. Did anyone else have a moon on their outfit?

He, too, got up on the tips of his toes and used his height as a vantage point for scoping out their surroundings, resting a hand on Emain Ablach's shoulder for balance.


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Basiluzzo, transcended knight of Uranus

Basiluzzo had been there to talk to Abzu, along with his father, and had just returned to the room from getting them all something to drink when the note had popped up. It was a no-brainer to power up and answer that note. He rested one end of his staff on the ground, rotating it between his palms to watch the feathers fly out on their tether. It was hard to ignore the wet, soft, spongy feeling to his weapon, like it were made of wet foam instead of wood. Maybe the Code would have something to say about that? Or about how his magic hadn't worked correctly in a little while now?

Lest someone accuse him of playing around when something serious was potentially happening, however, Basiluzzo looked up, idly continuing to rotate his staff between his palms as he looked first to his father, then to Abzu, then to the crowd around them. "My money's on this not being a PTA meeting, I'll say that much." He cast a look around when Michelangelo mentioned Pendour. "I don't see her, but honestly that's not saying much."

It was very crowded, after all. He could yell for her, but it was noisy enough.

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Stromboli, page of Uranus

"Your weapon is making a weird squishing sound. Why don't you put it away for now?" Stromboli fixed his youngest son with a raised eyebrow, getting a shrug in return. That earned a sigh from Stromboli as he turned his attention instead to Abzu. "I take it that these kind of summons aren't particularly common."

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Tikal, squire of Ganymede

She had been doing her bookkeeping when the note had appeared, and it seemed obvious to follow its request. She had tried powering up for patrolling, only for her weapon not to work as it should, for her magic to not work as it should, and for her to not be able to reach her wonder to see if maybe going there would press the restart button and fix things. No one had sent any messages out about it through the communication lines, so she could only assume that no one else knew what was happening, either. Maybe this would give them answers.


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Danube, page of Cybele

After her new clothes and singular metallic arrow had appeared one night in response to some strange-looking dog trying to attack her, Danube had assumed that would be the last of the surprises in her life. The singular metallic arrow had been surprisingly useful for all its dullness, even if it had just meant slapping the weird dog with it until it vanished in a cloud of smoke. And then she'd been able to get her regular clothes back and go about her day.

But the letter that had appeared in front of her? That was weird. Maybe not as weird as the dog had been, all shadows and dripping ink, but still weird. But she'd heeded its call anyway. Maybe here she'd find someone who could give her a run-down as to what was going on. Looking around at all the people dressed in a lurid array of costumes, she figured it was worth a shot.

"Hey," she turned to someone who'd been at her elbow, "this sort of thing happen often?"