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 Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:01 pm
He had to go back. There was no denying it - his asteroid was calling him, a tune inaudible for anyone else, a nearly silent siren song that beckoned to come closer and closer.
But he was afraid. Perhaps it was silly, but he was afraid as to what else he might find - what else he might unearth. It might not be pleasant, but in a way, it was his duty to unearth these things, to make them their own. What if he found something that was important ? No, he could not afford to be scared of what... who... he had once been. This was a war - every little thing was important.
Still, he didn't want to go alone. Tallulah was skiing somewhere on a mountain with Jaimie, but even then... No, Tallulah wasn't the one that Xavier wanted to have at his side.
Not this time, at least.
It was probably odd for him to take the hard way in when he had a key to the place, but at this time of the night, Ainsley was probably asleep, and he intended to keep it that way, as much as he liked the little girl. Ainsley had no reason to see this.
It would probably be startling for Bell to see Sailor Themis tapping lightly as her window - he probably should have called first. No, he should have called first, but it had slipped his mind completely.
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Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:12 pm
Calling probably would have been preferable. Bell was sitting on her bed mulling over paperwork - she had to get Ainsley registered for school after all - with a puzzled expression. The tap at her window made her jump. There were no trees near enough to scratch the glass, but the tapping sounded more purposeful, more sentient. Youma? That would be a first. Bell set the papers aside and pushed the curtains away. The window was made of frosted glass, so all she could see was what looked like a dark humanoid for. Ok, so no Youma. She unlatched the hook that kept the bay window shut and gave an amused smile when she saw Themis.
"Hello there~ I'm not going to question how you got up to this window," was her first, light hearted, reaction. Then she determined that since he was here in that form something more serious might have been up, what with the senshi form and the appearing at the window instead of using the front or balcony door.. Her tone afterwords reflected this. "So, whats up?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:20 pm
"I can jump, you know." He said, slightly amused. It was an easy jump, honestly. The ledge was just large enough for him to land on it.
In retrospect, he should just be glad she didn't smack his face in after opening that window. He spared no time sliding inside, so that she could close the window behind him - it wasn't as cold as it had been, but it was still winter, after all.
"I. uh." This was the embarrassing part. "I want to go back... well, you know." He pointed upward. Talking about 'outer space' still felt a little like crazy talk. "Do you.... want to come with me ?"
Just a kind offer, you know. He wasn't about to admit he was scared stiff. Nosire. "Ainsley won't even have time to notice we went anywhere."
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Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:29 pm
Bell had been adamant about her opinion on the whole space thing as far as her own 'home world' was concerned. She'd clearly expressed her desire not to go. Maybe it was the beginnings of cabin fever setting in, or maybe it was the simply fact that it wasn't hers she'd be exploring that made her consider agreeing. Or maybe it was the memory of how distraught he'd been upon return. Still, it was space, and from what she had heard, everything out there was all ruins anyway. Their concern should be this planet. The one they called home now.
The look on Bell's face as she straightened the registration papers and walked across the room to place them on top of her laptop told that she was trying to come up with a yes or no.
"That's a harder question to answer than you'd think..."
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Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:35 pm
"You don't have to if you don't want to." Themis said, softly. He'd noticed the look on her face, of course, and felt a little guilty for it. Clearly she must have much better things to do that go hang out on some dead asteroid, no matter how pretty it could be. The last thing she had to do was to play babysitter for her scared-stiff boyfriend.
He was a big boy. He could do this on his own.
Right ?
"I don't want to make you do something you don't want to do... So it's okay." He could go on his own. And hopefully not return into hysterics like last time.
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Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:45 pm
"I don't really see the point. It's the earth we have to protect now, after all. Unless someone has gone and spewed some 'Learn from past failures' or something, in which case tell me who and I will smack them. With a cast iron pan. I hate that expression~" She said as she sat, or plopped rather, back down on one corner of the bed.
She truly did hate that phrase. And other phrases like it. like 'history is doomed to repeat itself.' What damn cynics sat around and thought this s**t up anyway? It obviously wasn't working. How long has history been taught in schools, and yet stuff repeats anyway? Well, that was a rant for another time.
"However," Bell grinned, "If your scared, I don't mind providing a little support," she teased. As much as she wanted to focus on earth, the desire to actually get out of the house was greater. Not only had she been home bound while sick, but she couldn't really just leave whenever she wanted to anymore because of a certain little nine year old girl. And Bell didn't do home bound well. Bell was also pretty sure he wouldn't have dropped by to ask if he didn't have some problem going alone. Sooo~
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Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:51 pm
"Im just thinking I might... remember something important." He admitted, shaking his head. "Maybe not about history, or about anything else but..." But about himself, he wanted to say, but it didn't come out. She probably would think it was silly anyway.
"It's not like we're gonna be gone for days anyway. A few hours, tops." And no one would be the wiser, and then she said exactly what he'd been hoping to hide from her.
"Im not scared !" His tone of voice, however, said much otherwise. It wasn't loud, thanks to the young girl sleeping a room away, but it was plain and obvious that Themis was, in fact, scared, when he turned to look at the wall. "Power up, I don't want to see if normal girls can breathe on asteroids."
That could be bad experiment to run, indeed.
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Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 6:00 pm
Bell giggled. Ah, so it was fear. She ruffled his hair before standing and moving to a more open part of the room to transform. The last time she had been in this form had been that battle Christmas eve. The golden metal bits of her uniform had gotten so cold they had actually burned her a bit - as if the redness of her skin there on Christmas day hadn't been a dead giveaway... Thank goodness for sweaters. Like the scar that ran up along the center of her back, she was content to hide such marks. She didn't necessarily go out of her way to do so, but still...she didn't want him worry about her as far as battle went.
Now, thankfully she was well again, and the temperature was actually normal for winter, and actually quite warm compared to the temperatures in the weeks before the battle.
The Amazon warrior walked over, full of that confidence and collected-ness that the senshi half of Bell seemed to possess in plenty. Some might call it borderline arrogance. It was simply the Amazon in her. Bell often wished she could be so collected and in control of her emotions.
"I'll leave the spear home. Assuming there are no space youma." She was sure someone would have told her if there were. And a spear wasn't exactly good for fighting fear or sudden unwanted memories. Bellatrix felt it her responsibility to protect him from it all. Sentient monster or mental. She had failed once already, and once was more than enough.
Bellatrix smiled, "Ready?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 8:42 am
"There is no space youma." Of this, at least, he was certain. If there had been a space youma, it had missed it's best shot at eating his head off.
Or so he liked to think.
His left arm looped around Bell's waist, and his phone took form in his other hand, a flick of the wrist opening it. Now he just had to find it again and..
Ah.
There.
A flash of bright light later, the two were gone.
**********
Well, at least Bellatrix could be assured that there was one thing that was true.
They weren't on earth anymore.
If she was sick of the snow, then it was too bad for her - the road under their feet was pure ice, though a faint blue rather than translucent. There wasn't really snow, but there was frost covering everything, everywhere - the broken buildings, the trees that seemed silver even though the faint layer of frost that covered them. It wasn't cold, at least not as cold as it had been on Earth, but nonetheless all that ice refused to melt.
It took a moment for Themis to figure out where they exactly where - they'd landed a little further back than on his first time here, more toward the center of town - right at their side was a fountain caved out of pure ice, though it had chipped, and some pieces outright fallen.
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 11:21 am
It wasn't winter itself that bothered Bellatrix, but rather the cold that came with it. Her first reaction was a deadpan, 'There is ice.' And then a 'Oh hey, but it isn't really that cold!' So any grumbling that might have been issued otherwise was silenced. Some part of her seemed to expect this to some extent, given his fuku. They always seemed to give away at least some detail of the past.
Also as expected, was the sight of ruin. Whatever had happened was precisely what they were trying to keep from happening on earth. It wasn't like she needed to see the destruction to understand that - nightmares were bad enough. Personal exploration though was another matter. To get to know one's past self... She wasn't all that concerned with that, although she should have been. There was a lot about Bellatrix that Bell wished she could be, and she wasn't quite as 'one with her sphere' as she should be. Bell was simply being stubborn though. She'd made up her mind and it was gonna be hell convincing herself otherwise.
"Home sweet home?" Bellatrix said, glancing around at the structures around them.
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 11:46 am
"Sweet home indeed." Not that he expected things to be different - why else should they be ? - but seeing the town in ruins had been depressing the first time, and it was depressing now. Like the reminder of something long forgotten.
But then, this was exactly what this place was, wasn't it ? And he was the only one that could figure it out. The buildings around them where all in bad shape, ruins of something that had once obviously been beautiful. Some windows still had remains of a translucent purple material acting as drapes, now old and tattered. Silver wood and ice everywhere, as well as empty cages of silver branches along the ice road, which had once held... lanterns ? Something else entirely ?
The sky over their heads was pitch dark, with only the faint dots of distant stars and more nearby asteroids to keep them company. They where smack dab in the main belt, after all.
Finally, he let go of her waist - only now realizing that he had still been holding her - and took one step forward, stopping again. The ice echoed his step in a way that was a little hard to explain - it definitively amplified and echoed anything nearby, though not in an overwhelming way. "This is the same town I ended up in last time..." He mused out loud.
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 11:54 am
Bellatrix wasn't exactly sure how the whole transportation thing worked. Maybe you ended up in or near the same place you were last time you visited? She wondered just how many fellow senshi had ended up in a lake or something upon their first transportation to their home world...or else some where precarious.
"Looks like you get to start where you left off then." Because it would totally suck to come back in the same place all the time, especially if you had to walk everywhere and had a lot of ground to cover. You'd never get anywhere or see anything new, unless you had allotted days worth of time to said exploration.
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 12:08 pm
"Maybe it just depends on where you are on Earth ?" Themis looked back at her, then shrugged. He held no pretension of knowing what the ******** was going on here, or even how it all worked. How people breathed in space. Whatever.
Well, they came here to explore, didn't they ? He reached for her hand, almost on reflex, and walked toward one of the houses. One part of the front wall had crumbled off - it was easy work for a pair of senshi to jump their way into it.
The inside of the house was nothing to atypical - table, chairs, what looked like a bed on the other room, but something had Themis' attention - ice shards on the floor, oddly rectangular, and the leftover of what looked like string. He tapped the ice lightly with a gloved finger, and it not only echoed - it played a note. The next played a different note.
"A wind chime... ?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 12:24 pm
Bellatrix had taken to glancing around without breaking the hold of their hands, checking out any and everything from where she stood. Perhaps she was a bit nervous to touch anything, whether it be because it wasn't her place to touch anything or some other reason - kind of like how you know you're not supposed to touch anything in a museum. It was the trill of a random note, then another that brought her attention to just what Themis was focused on.
"Maybe?"
She knew you couldn't really discount anything now a days. After all, they were in space so really, anything was possible. It could have been some weapon of mass musical destruction for all she knew...and she'd be inclined to believe it too. This was Themis' home world though, so she was putting her faith in his first impressions and instinct here. If he said it was a wind chime than it was a wind chime.
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 12:38 pm
No, not maybe. He was certain of it - something deep within him said that this was right, that this once had been a wind chime. He had no mean to prove it, however, so he rose from his crouch and left it right where it was. It had been sitting there for heavens knew how long - it seemed almost like a sin to disturb it now. Nothing else really stood out, and so they made their way back outside.
Themis was quiet - quiet even for him, which was saying something, since he was often quiet, but this was different. It was hard, too hard to explain what all of this was, and how all of this made him feel, so he didn't even try. At least, not at this very moment, not while he was neck-deep into it.
The town wasn't what held his interest - no, the tall, triangular looking ice structures and spires was what did hold his attention, it was obvious, and this was where he was leading her next. This was where he had to go.
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