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 Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:59 pm
"I think you're going to like this," Valhalla said with a small grin as he lead the way up the stairs at Chronos's Outpost. He'd been there only once before, and it was only for a short while before he was needed elsewhere, but he'd been looking forward to getting another chance to check the place out.
In the past few weeks Valhalla had been doing his best to keep himself distracted. Things like homework and working out at the gym and practicing his batting only kept his mind busy for so long, and when nights were slow and there were no youma to take care of, Valhalla made his way to the Surrounding to see how everything was going. He often brought extra supplies he picked up on his way to the meeting point for a Zodiac member to take him into space — it was the least he could do for the civilians stuck there.
He'd run into Sailor Ganymede completely by chance, and since the other young man didn't seem to be in that high of spirits, he thought that showing him a room full of treasures might inspire him, or at least cheer him up a little.
The doors were carefully pushed open once they reached it, and he lead the way inside, his arms spread a bit dramatically to introduce the room to Ganymede. "See? And they're not just random, either. I think they've been given to the Zodiac over the ages. I found a gift from a senshi I know... so... I was thinking that maybe they'd have something from your past, too." It was a nice thought, at least. And hopefully it would serve in distracting the both of them for a while.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:22 pm
There was something therapeutic about being in space.
Ganymede had noticed it more the more often he made the trip from Earth to his moon, and then more recently as he was taken from Earth to the Surrounding by members of the Zodiac. It was a bit humbling in a way, to realize how small they really were in the grand scheme of things, and it made his problems seem so tiny and insignificant in comparison. He thought he should be upset by this, but it was actually a bit of a relief. It might not lift all of the weight, but it took enough off to allow him to breathe for a time.
He'd been concerned at first, running into Valhalla up here after he and Chris had broken up, and especially in the last couple of days after he'd revealed himself saving Chris's little brother Peter, but Valhalla didn't react any differently around him than he had before. He might seem a little sad at times, and his temper was easily ignited by the youma they sometimes happened across on their Monday night patrols -- which they'd attempted to continue, though Ganymede had skipped out on the first one following their civilian break up -- but he was pretty sure Valhalla continued to have no idea of who he really was.
Which suited him just fine. It might make things difficult sometimes, but if he couldn't be with Chris normally, at least he could be with him like this.
"These are all... artifacts? From other worlds?" he asked, staring around the room Valhalla had led him to. "When you said 'treasures' I thought you meant gold and jewels or something. This is way cooler."
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:31 pm
"Oh, sorry," he apologized, smiling sympathetically at his false advertising of the place, but it didn't seem as though Ganymede minded. In fact, he said so himself that he liked it better. Or thought it was cooler, at least. "Well, I don't know what else to call it, other than a treasure room. I've never really heard of an artifact room," he said with a small shrug as he glanced around at the objects on their stands and up against the walls, even hanging on the walls.
"This is really something isn't it? And the design of these buildings is nothing I've ever seen before. Well, I guess that's to be expected, right? It's in space," he laughed lightly, moving over to inspect a leather bound book on a pedestal, but when he didn't recognize the name he stepped away.
It had been rough over the past few weeks, especially in just the past week when he parted ways with Paris. He would be surprised if he ever saw him again after that. But he should be happy, right? He was moving on with his life and putting that bit of awkwardness behind him. But he couldn't help but worry about him. How he was doing, how his dad was doing, his cat, his work — so much time had been invested into their relationship that it was difficult to completely forget right away.
Valhalla frowned at himself, wishing there was something he could do, but what and why and for whom he didn't know. "Let's check over here," he said, realizing that he had been staring off into the room for a few moments and probably looked like an idiot who didn't know what he was doing.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:55 pm
Ganymede followed the page further into the room, looking around at a few of the objects, though he was careful not to touch anything. Things didn't look quite so broken as on his moon, but he knew it must all be very old. He imagined some of it might crumble to dust if he happened to brush so much as a finger against it, unless they were better preserved than objects on Ganymede, which they very well could be. Still, it was better not to risk it. He didn't need anyone shouting at him after he accidentally broke something.
"It looks a lot different than Ganymede, but then I guess that's to be expected, too. Different places and all," he said, following close behind.
He hid a smile as he noticed some of Chris's passion for architecture leaking through. Seeing distant worlds must be ten times more exciting for him because of it.
They looked at a few of the artifacts for a while, weapons and bottles of things he wasn't sure he wanted to try and even a few gem stones here and there, and then some other things he didn't recognize and pondered the origin and purpose of. He kept his eyes peeled for any names he might recognize -- Europa, Callisto, Kallichore, and the rest of the Jovians -- but saw nothing until he came across a certain plaque under a small shelf holding a decorative bottle. The plaque itself was partially covered in dust, so that only a portion of a word, "Gany," was visible.
"Hey, I think I found something," he announced. Carefully, he brushed off some of the dust to read the rest. Sure enough, the entirety of the word "Ganymede" was revealed to him. "Mist of Desire," he read, then looked up at the bottle. "Looks like perfume to me. Not much of a gift, don't you think?"
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:07 pm
Valhalla paused in his browsing to move back over to where Ganymede was standing, glancing down at the plaque beneath the little bottle. "Well, look at that..." he mumbled to himself, a little surprised that they had actually found one of the items they'd been looking for. Well, it wasn't like they knew the items specifically, but they knew the names to look for.
"Hey, it's not like perfume was never given as a gift before," he grinned lightly in amusement, but kept his hands to himself. He didn't want to pick it up and end up breaking it, especially if it was Ganymede's. "Frankincense and myrrh..." he mumbled, as if to prove to himself that he knew what he was even talking about. Well, they weren't exactly perfume, but they were treasured for their aromas.
"I wonder how it smells," he said, trying to subtly convince Ganymede to try. "Waft, though... who knows how strong it is and if it'll knock you out," he said, wary that it might have turned into some kind of corrosive chemical over time.
He glanced around again, up at the ceiling and the walls, marveling in the perfect curves of the walls, as if there wasn't anything to it. "It really is different... Makes me wonder what Valhalla's like..." He hadn't been there yet. He was a little afraid of going and being disappointed or... something happening, like with Ganymede. The senshi had a little bit of difficulty deciding what was real and what was memory... and Valhalla didn't want to end up walking off some balcony on accident because of that.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:30 pm
Reaching out as if he expected the bottle to burst into a million tiny fragments the moment he touched it, Ganymede hesitantly removed it from the shelf, wondering if he was even allowed to do so. Technically, it was his, right? Technically. Or it had once been his, or... something like that. It was still all really confusing.
Worried that he was about to smell something especially foul but hoping he was pleasantly surprised, Ganymede used the attached atomizer to spray some of the mist in front of him, leaning forward to chance a sniff.
He had a good reason to be worried. It smelled absolutely revolting.
"Ugh. Gross!" he said, quickly placing the bottle back and stepping away. "I hope it didn't always smell like that. It's horrible. Who would give that as a gift? Does perfume go bad, you think?"
He was going to assume it did. He didn't know from experience, but he would never give anything that smelled that horrible to anybody. The bottle looked as if it might be close to half-empty, so someone had to have used it at some point. He hoped it had smelled nice for them.
"Why haven't you gone to Valhalla yet?" he wondered as he came up behind the page, waving a hand in front of his nose as if something as simple as that could dispel the horrible smell. "It's been a while since I took you to Ganymede. I thought you'd have gone by now."
He came to a stop beside him, glancing up as he recalled the visions he'd experienced on his last trip. "I saw you last time," he said.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:42 pm
"Careful! I said to waft!" he groaned, lifting a hand to cover his nose once the aroma reached him once it had been sprayed. "Don't look at me. I don't know if perfume goes bad. If it was made from organic stuff, though, then yeah it would." Perfume was made from things like flower oil and other stuff, right...? He wasn't sure but he assumed it was something like that.
Well, that was a little less than exciting. At least they were able to find something from what they were looking for, though.
Valhalla paused to glance over his shoulder at Ganymede, before turning around all the way. "What do you mean?" he wondered, frowning curiously. He could assume what it meant of course, but it seemed... strange. "You saw me...?" That was kind of a weird thing to say...
He shrugged about going to Valhalla, though. "I don't know... Things have been busy, so I didn't want to waste time exploring what is probably just a bunch of ruins. Between school and this place, well... yeah, I've had my hands full," he said, trailing off at the end. Up until a few weeks ago he'd also had a girlfriend, but now that all of that had been thrown in the dirt, well... it wasn't really his fault that he was lacking motivation to do things like exploring space on his own.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 11:07 pm
"Oh," he said, faltering a bit. He knew those things Val had had his "hands full" with had pertained to him. For a second he felt bad, knowing he'd messed up things so badly for him that he couldn't even find excitement in exploring his own place, but he told himself not to worry about it now and forced a small smile back on his face. "Well, you'll have to make some time at some point. You don't have to stay there for very long. Just an hour would be good enough to start with."
He never spent very long on Ganymede when he went. He wished he could, but he never thought it was wise. Besides, he needed time to think about the things he saw there. It was a lot to take in -- confusing, with too many questions and not enough answers.
"Last time I went to Ganymede, I saw you," he told him again, stepping around in front of him to look at Val with a bit of a wider smile. "Well, I saw Valhalla from... whenever I was that other person. You and I... or they... met when they were younger, although they weren't really all that young because I'm pretty much the same age now, but for some reason I hadn't met anyone else yet. I think they kept me, or him or whatever, sort of isolated, but... you and I were friends..."
He was making an assumption on that. He hadn't been back since, and that was the only time he'd seen himself and Val together, but he thought it could be true, that they'd been close to one another somehow. Perhaps he was reading the present too much into the past, but he wanted it to be true.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 11:16 pm
Valhalla shrugged lightly, not thinking it was all that big a deal, really. Sure he should probably go and see what it was like. He'd heard about a communication device that would allow him t stay in contact with the other knights, but he didn't think it was anything his headset and phone couldn't take care of. He still used his, even if the other knights he'd given them to didn't. "I'll get to it eventually, don't worry," he tried to reassure him, showing him a small smile, hoping it didn't look too forced.
An eyebrow raised, curious about what Ganymede had just said, wondering if he was making it up for a moment. "Wait, you saw both of us...? Together?" He just wanted to make sure he'd heard him right. Well... that was really convenient. Not that he didn't like the idea of being friends with the senshi in the past.
"Well, I guess that would make sense for us to have known each other. You knew others in the past, right...? Or your past self, at least... Didn't you tell me you knew Europa?" he wondered, taking a step back to continue slowly looking around at the objects, wondering what else they might find. "I mean, Valhalla was a knight of Jupiter... Maybe you didn't see me... but you saw my ancestor. I haven't met another knight who said they had a past life..."
The thought was a little more depressing than he'd meant for it to be. It kind of liked the idea of having known Ganymede in the past... And now he'd kind of thrown that idea on the ground. Way to go, Valhalla.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 9:22 am
"Oh..." he said again, floundering a bit more.
Hearing that, learning that the other boy he'd seen might not have been today's Valhalla after all -- not like Liesel had been him -- but someone else of his blood from so many years ago, made Ganymede feel somewhat... lost. He'd been thrilled to see him there, happy that they may have had some sort of connection in the past. Even if they'd simply been friends and compatriots, he'd liked the thought that their souls had known one another, and perhaps, deep down, they still did.
But if knights didn't have past lives like senshi did, if they didn't have those memories, if they were merely descended from people of the same blood to take up the mantle in the present... it suddenly didn't feel as special anymore.
Who had that boy been, then? What had he meant to the Ganymede of the past? What was he supposed to mean to him now?
"Um... yeah, I knew Europa," he tried to move on, not wanting Val to see how suddenly out of sorts he was. He moved a few steps away from him to look over some of the other artifacts, but his interest had been somewhat lessened. "Or Europa told me she and I knew each other. I haven't seen her in a memory yet. I want to. I like seeing people then that I know now. It... sort of makes all this a little more meaningful, I guess. You know, like it was sort of meant to happen. When I first awoke I kept thinking 'why me.' Going to Ganymede and seeing these memories just makes it seem more right in a way, like me being what I am now isn't so random or just some cosmic mistake."
He still couldn't say he liked what he'd become, but he felt slightly more comfortable with it when he thought that it was meant to be all along.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 11:09 am
He hadn't meant to be such a kill joy! He knew it would be nice if they had known each other in the past, or rather if their past selves had known each other, but he knew so little about Valhalla and if he was just descended from someone or if he was reincarnated. He could always try and find out, of course, but that would require him actually going to Valhalla. But if they did know each other... it just seemed too convenient to him...
"I know how you feel... or at least a little bit, I think," he said, glancing over to Ganymede as they continued looking around at the artifacts. "I didn't know why I suddenly became Valhalla... I mean, I'm not much of a fighter... Even you thought I was pretty helpless the first time we met, remember?" he asked with a grin.
Of course, he was still pretty helpless, although he thought he was getting better with experience.
Valhalla paused at a pedestal, looking down at the orb sitting on top of a three point stand. "This looks familiar, doesn't it...?" he asked Ganymede over his shoulder, before leaning down to inspect the plaque that went with the orb of Jupiter. "Know anyone by this name...?" he wondered, reaching out to brush away some dust from the metal. "Globe of Jupiter... from Sessrumnir... is that a moon?" He didn't know all the moons of Jupiter, but there were quite a few, so who knew...
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 1:39 pm
"We're all pretty helpless in our own ways," Ganymede reassured him. "I don't think anyone could ever be perfect at this right from the start, and if someone is I think I'd like to punch them in the face."
He thought the initial struggle of coming to terms with such a change was part of what being a senshi was. Those who strayed failed, and those who were able to find some sort of a path ended up succeeding. More recently, Ganymede had begun to feel that he was on the right track. He wasn't great yet. He still had some problems to work out, he still needed practice and experience, and a bit more patience would be a nice thing to acquire, but he was definitely better than he'd been months ago, and he was proud of that.
He wasn't great yet, no, but maybe he could be one day.
Curiously, Ganymede came up beside Val again, glancing at the large glass sphere and the gases swirling within. He'd seen it hanging in the skies of Ganymede too many times not to immediately know what it was.
"Sessrumnir...?" he wondered, glancing at the plaque as well. "No, I don't think it's a moon. Most of the moons have Greek names. That doesn't really sound Greek to me."
He tried going over the names of the moons he knew in his head, but there were so many and he'd only bothered to memorize the first dozen or so.
"You think it could be another knight?" he suggested, intrigued by the idea. Val was the only knight of Jupiter he knew of, but that didn't mean there couldn't be more.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 2:01 pm
"Another knight?" he repeated, as if trying out the idea. "I don't know... I mean, I know there's more than one from other planets... So I guess it would only make sense if there was more than one from Jupiter."
Valhalla frowned, wrinkling his nose a little at the thought. "I don't know. I kind of like the idea of me being the only one," he said, glancing over at Ganymede to see what his thoughts were. Hey! He liked being the only knight of Jupiter. It meant that there wasn't anyone to tell him what to do or how things worked or who knew what. Yeah, they were all supposed to work together, but... he hadn't even been to Valhalla yet. He wasn't really thrilled about another knight of Jupiter getting to the planet before him when he'd been around for quite a few months!
"That sounds kind of selfish and unrealistic, though," he admitted after a few moments, letting out a small sigh. "Well... okay, maybe there's another knight. I haven't heard of a Sessrumnir though. Maybe they haven't awakened yet?" he wondered with a shrug, reaching out to see if he could pick up the sphere of swirling gas, turning it to the side. "Whoa, look, it's like a Weeble..." he grinned, amused that the poles of the gases stayed in the same place, even if he turned the orb. "How do you think they got it to do that? Maybe hologram?"
Either way, it wasn't really what he'd been looking for and slowly placed it back on the stand before he did something stupid... like drop it.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 2:15 pm
Ganymede's mouth twitched into a small smile, and he lightly jabbed Valhalla in the side with one of his elbows. "Don't be greedy. You can't be the only knight of Jupiter out there. I mean, look how big the planet is. I know you like having me and all the Jovian girls all to yourself, but you need to learn to share," he joked.
He'd met very few others knights himself. Just Val and Babylon, and that female knight who was friends with Callisto, but he couldn't remember if he'd been told what planet she served. It didn't seem as if there were very many knights to begin with, not when their numbers were compared to the number of senshi, but there had to have been a lot of them at one point, and if knighthood was passed down through descendants, then there had to be quite a few still left around somewhere, unless their lines had died out.
"Don't worry, you'll always be my favorite knight," he continued to tease him, watching as he lifted the glass sphere. "Careful you don't drop it. I don't know how pissed off these Zodiac people would be if we broke something. Besides, you don't know what those gases'll do to you if they're released."
The globe was sort of cool, though. He'd grown to like seeing Jupiter -- like it was some large, powerful guardian looming over the moons that orbited it. Its presence was almost reassuring to him whenever he set foot on Ganymede. It was always there.
He moved off after a few moments, letting Val continue to examine the globe while he took stock of some of the other items. After a few moments, a disk shaped object on a small table caught his attention, and he stepped over to it to examine what looked like a circular map of the stars. He reached out to gently touch it and found that it moved. The plate of stars spun beneath a disk with an opening from which they were viewed.
Looking at the plaque he saw that it read "Valhallan Planisphere."
"Hey, Val," he said, glancing over his shoulder toward the page. "I found yours. Or you ancestor's or whoever."
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 2:41 pm
Valhalla glanced up from looking at some kind of large hammer that had been moved away from its plaque. "Really...? What is it?" he wondered, not really seeing anything sitting on the table. Oh, it was flat... that's why...
He moved over to stand beside Ganymede, reaching out to run his fingers over the various inlaid stones and points that indicated a star. "A planisphere...? Don't we have those on Earth? I think I made one in grade school," he mumbled, turning the chart with his finger. There were symbols for all the planets and various others, but none of Jupiter. But that would make sense if it was a scene of the night sky from Jupiter.
"Looks kind of overdone, don't you think?" he asked, figuring it was supposed to be impressive, but to him it looked like they went overboard. "Kind of tacky..." Hey! He could be a critic of his own wonder's stuff if he wanted!
"Makes me wonder what Valhalla was known for... If they made Planispheres and used compasses, I mean..." he said, reaching down to were he had his compass tucked under his belt. Yeah, he learned that he could just hide the weapon away into subspace, but it was so little, why bother...? "I bet they did something with navigation... what do you think...?" It was a fun thought, at least.
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