Welcome to Gaia! ::

Eric liked to refer to himself as "semi-homeless", he didn't actually "own" a home, but neither did he sleep on the ground or wear grungy dirt stained clothing.

Well, except for tonight.

Not the clothing thing, Eric actually had a jacket on over his shirt and was in a sleeping bag. But he was on the ground.

The problem was the Eric was living with his friend, Steve, and Steve only had a 3 room apartment. 1 of those rooms was a kitchen, another was a bathroom, and the living room was combined with the bedroom. Normally, Steve drew a curtain when it was time to sleep, separating the couch from his bedroom and giving them all the privacy they needed to sleep.

However, Steve had an active romantic life, and sometimes Steve needed the bedroom to be more private then what was offered by a thin sheet hung up in the air. On those evenings when Steve and some girl made their way to his double bed, Eric was left to find his own lodging. he didn't mind, it was one of the conditions of his remaining in the apartment.

However, sometimes it wasn't easy to find somewhere to stay. Steve had gotten home pretty late, so his attempts to find someone else’s house to crash at had been unsuccessful. As had his attempts to find a lady friend of his own. So, with the evening wearing on and his first job interview in months (maybe something Alberio had said stuck?) the next day, Eric settled down underneath a bush in a local park, trying to stay somewhat out of sight of the police, to catch six or seven hours of sleep before he had to trudge his way back to the apartment and get dressed for his interview. It didn’t take many sheep for Eric to be off in la la land, completely unaware of the danger he was in.

Eric’s reaction was not a normal one to being woken up.

His first reaction is to roll over, murmuring something incomprehensible.

"Buwhabouthepinolibuthter..."

Then, suddenly, without any other provocation, Eric jerked up.

"No! I wasn't sleeping, I was...."

He blinked, unsure what he was seeing. Turquoise, blue, and gold? Hmm. He had known there was a midnight showing of Rocky horror somewhere around here, but he didn't think they would be an issue.

This definitely wasn't, however, a police officer, or anyone with authority over the park. He rubbed his eyes, looking up at the strangely clad man.

"Uh, what seems to be the, uh, issue?"

Eric was definitely interested now, though he wasn’t sure how the man could have though he fell asleep on the way home. Was the man under the impression that he had tripped into a conveniently placed sleeping bag? Still, not important.

"You saw Senshi around here? What were they doing? What did they look like? Did one of them have a sort of blue dress on? Actually, wait up."

He reached into his jacket, pulling out a small notepad and a mechanical pencil. He flipped past the first page, which appeared to just be a crude, poorly defined drawing of a squirrel. Or maybe some kind of dog, it was hard to tell, the tail really needed work before a clear definition could be made.

Eric scribbled some words down, and Remarque could clearly see what they were "Cos-player met in park:"

He looked back up.

"All right, now if you could answer those questions from before. Oh, and who are you? And how did you learn about the senshi? And zapping up into space? Were you one of the ones who recently returned from being abducted?"

Had he been more awake, he might have phrased things better. Alas, he was not.

Eric looked at him blankly for a moment. He wasn’t entirely sure if this was how interviews were supposed to go, he had the idea that it wasn’t supposed to be a teaching session, but he would work with what he had.

"Oh right, I get it. Well then I should start with your name. It'd probably be polite to answer your question first though. I got kicked out of my mates place as he has a lady friend over, and I couldn’t find anywhere to crash for the night, so I figured I'd sleep in the park. I didn’t actually think about the senshi though..."

Ironically enough, wondering whether being out at night might put him at risk of a senshi attack hadn't crossed his mind because he'd been working too hard on trying to work out "Sky watch". He’d been thinking about where they could meet, and what their secret signs could be so that they would know each other when they encountered one another.

None of which would have mattered if hed been captured by one in his sleep.

"You think getting off the path will keep me safe?"

Eric shrugged.

"It was pretty late notice, I didn’t even get a hold of most of em."

He ran the name through his head for a moment. That wasn’t a normal sounding name at all, maybe it was French or something.

"Remarque... That an interesting name. And how did you come to know about senshi?"

He needed to get as much information out of this guy as possible; he was the first real "lead" Eric had. Of course, how he answered this question would serve in part to determine how reliable a lead he actually was. Only time would tell, really.

Eric shook his head. This was too big to pass up, ANOTHER group trying to save the world from the senshi!? He had to know more!

"No, I’m all right thank you. What is the name of this group? Tell me more about it. I'm part of a small group of people who got abducted by senshi who are trying to keep an eye on senshi activity in destiny city. You know, to protect it."

He didn't mention sky watch by name, what’s the point of having a secret organization if you just told everyone about it?

"Maybe we could share information? Your group could provide us with valuable intel, and we could be good eyes on the ground for your group."

Eric was hopeful. An alliance for the Sky watch could be pivotal in their goal of protecting destiny city, and might net them more members.

He nodded. He was waking up now, and things were starting to make more sense. The senshi had special powers, who knows what they were capable of? The walls had ears, so to speak, or maybe the trees in this case, the closest wall wasn’t close enough to hear them anyway.

He’d have to be more careful in the future about identifying himself to strangers, or mentioning his group on public. He could have easily made himself a target and he realized that now.

"All right... Well I will put this park on my list of places Senshi have been seen, your information has been useful as I didn't know this was one of their stomping grounds."

Still, he needed to know more. They were practically in the dark about what the Senshi were, and until that was fixed he couldn't possibly hope to win against them.

"But I still need a few, more general questions answered. We don't know much about the Senshi, and the more information I can pass along to my group, they better we'll be at protecting ourselves and destiny city. What do you know about the Senshi in general?"

Eric bit his lip. This was deep. He was DEFINATELY in over his head. He should be scared...

But he really wasn’t. He was excited. He felt... powerful. In the know. Worthy, so to speak. Like his life had meaning, he was doing something worth doing. He hadn't even realized he hadn't felt that way until he did.

Guitar playing was fun, but this was important damn it.

He nodded, jotting down everything Remarque said.

"Right. I’ll remember that. Reconnaissance only, no engagement, I’ll pass that along to my friends. How do I get your attention if they're planning something? I might not run into you."

That was important if he was supposed to leave the senshi fighting to this mysterious Remarque person, he’d have to be able to call him somehow if he got in trouble or knew something that was going to go down.