Welcome to Gaia! ::

Red and orange hues painted the horizon as the sun sunk lower into the evening. Clouds had begun to roll in, blocking the blossoming stars from providing more light to the citizens of Destiny City who chose to go about business as usual, to the best of their abilities, despite the strange occurrence that had placed a good portion of the city into a mysterious slumber.

The night air rested heavily upon the outskirts of the city in spite of the gentle breeze that accompanied the rolling clouds. What mere humans didn’t understand was that the city was slowly changing. They could sense the ominous presence of an unknown shadowy figure, or even suspect that something, in an unknown plane, was off balance, but they remained unaware of the war billowing into reality around them.

A man in his early twenties leaned, haphazardly over the open door of a beat up old sports car, inspecting the starseed he now possessed, glimmering in his palm. He was built well with strong arms; muddy blond hair reached the nape of his thick neck. Accompanying and surrounding him were mounds of metal and broken cars; items of no use now, save for their scrap value. The young woman barely put up a fight and now lied motionless, soulless, among the broken glass and pieces of rubbish that littered the unkempt ground. It wasn’t the brightest of starseeds, but it would still go towards his Queen’s ultimate cause.

Now he had to decide whether to push his luck and find another suitable victim, or to call it a night.

To say that Sailor Atlas felt sort of lost without Alycone was a bit cliche, but also true. Like many others in Destiny City Simon was spending a lot of time wandering wearily through the hospital, hollow-eyed, ending up hovering at the bedside of Alba Delores. What could he do, he wondered, and sat and waited for nothing in particular, as if he'd come to some revelation about what actions he could take by sitting there and holding her hand and making stilted attempts at talking. It still jarred him to talk to someone who wouldn't talk back.

Alba and Destiny City Memorial both were miles away at the moment, however, something Merope reminded Atlas of with his voice and his map. The printout of Destiny City, he could pinpoint where Hillworth, the public auditorium, the animal shelters and the memorial hospital were located at just a glance -- but as much as his mind was on these places, that was not where they were at.

The newly-Super Sailor Atlas, had his mind not already been clouded with its laundry list of worries, would have been lamenting the timing in which he'd earned his super rank: just in time for summer, he had finally gotten a decent pair of pants. His only acknowledgment of that for the moment, though, was noting with some discomfort that his socks and under-sleeves were starting to sweatingly stick to the skin of his ankles and arms. Wordlessly, he held out a hand to take Merope's map, and tucked it into the lopsided fanny-pack that came with his new uniform (that was one thing to be grateful for, he had pockets where most senshi had none).

"I don't know," he had answered, regarding his much more practically-dressed companion with a look of unease. "It might not even be there anymore."

The junkyard. Hopefully Merope would be more focused tonight, instead of getting distracted by piles of tires they could practice daredevil stunts on -- then again, one couldn't expect that even Carter Martin would be without focus after the dire atmosphere the epidemic and the presence of the National Guard imposed over the city. With a slightly wary nod he followed the other senshi inside, hoping that the worst they'd encounter would be a temperamental guard dog.