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 Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 12:49 am
The problem with running away was that there was no destination to reach. And thus, no end to the running.
Aquarius found herself starting to actually run when she went on her nightly jaunts. Sitting and looking at her notebook, or up at the stars, worked for a while. But eventually she found that she was too restless to stay put for long. What if someone found her? At this point, being found by a friend would be even more devastating than being found by an enemy.
So, she ran. Across rooftops when possible. There was a sort of freedom to that kind of movement that she lacked in her everyday life, and it was a wonderful release to be able to hop across a path hidden to all but those who were already doomed. And then she'd run faster, to try and stop thinking about the whole doom thing.
She made sure to stay aware of the power signatures around her. Getting caught unaware (again) would be disastrous. Still, a part of Aquarius longed for contact with someone, anyone. When she felt a senshi nearby, she trotted to a halt.
Exidor came up behind her, looking puzzled, but not tired. If he was a ghost, he was too dead to be tired, she supposed. And if he was a hallucination... well, she really didn't want to finish that thought. "Thought I'd catch up with whoever's out there," she explained, mentally kicking herself as she spoke. She was so lonely she was reduced to talking to a dead man. But not for long. Walking to the edge of the roof, she peered over while calling out. "Hey! Olly olly oxen free!"
Asahi Kumoru Lemme know if anything needs changing! <3
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Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:58 am
Asclepius was down on the ground below, able to sense the senshi above her, but her attention was focused for the moment on a lantern she held in two hands, the chain for hanging it trailing on the ground beside her.
while Aquarius spoke to a dead man, the Senshi of Medicine conversed with the artifact: "I wasn't expecting an 'on' button or anything, but seriously, how do you work?"
She held it up to the nearest street light, observing the light that shined through the figures painted on its surface; her focus shifted as the other senshi addressed her from the rooftop, though.
"Oh, hello," Asclepius replied. She lowered the lantern, twining her fingers in the fine chain to allow it to hang from her hand; raising her other hand, she shaded her eyes now from the street light, trying to get a better look at the other senshi. The other girl looked vaguely familiar, but Asclepius could not recall her name.
So, rather than risk getting it wrong, she went with, "Can I help you?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:17 pm
An answer! And this, time, Aquarius was sure, the voice came from a real person. It took a moment for her to locate the other senshi, but once she did, she could recognize the long skirt and twining ribbons. "Oh, hey, you're... uh..."
Next to her, Exidor looked aghast. "Can't you remember anyone's name?"
"Yesssss," Aquarius hissed back, stretching out the sibilant as she realized what she was doing, and redirected her speech towards the other senshi. "Yes, I totally know you. You're, uh, that one. With the medicine, and the planet or whatever it was." That was a terrible attempt, even by her standards, so she decided to give it up as a lost cause and move on. "Thanks for the phone lessons, by the way! I've found some interesting stuff and hey that thing you're holding looks cool, what is it? Some kind of lamp? Kudos for being prepared. That's why I lug this thing around."
She patted her messenger bag, briefly wondering whether this meeting would be going any better if Exidor wasn't there. Somehow, she doubted it.
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Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:32 pm
The Senshi of Medicine appeared relieved that the other girl apparently couldn't recall her name, either. "Asclepius," she supplied to save her from having to ask.
"Oh, you're welcome." She could just fake remembering names on her end until it really mattered maybe. "Yeah, I found this on my planet, too." Asclepius held the object up for the other senshi to see. "I'm ... not honestly sure what it does yet, but I'm working on it. It looks like a lantern, but there's a thing inside that looks like a dead bonsai tree or something."
She shrugged then, lowering the lamp or whatever it was. "What are you up to tonight?" Had she been talking to someone before?
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 7:39 pm
"Riiiiight, that was it. Asclepius." Aquarius gave herself a mental pat on the back for being able to pronounce that mouthful, and jumped down from the rooftop she'd been perched on. This time she stuck the landing, and rather than wave her hands in the air, she offered one to the other senshi. "Aquarius. Nice to re-meet you!"
The lantern, upon closer inspection, looked really cool. She reached out to touch its surface, but pulled her hand back when she heard what was in it. "A dead bonsai? Seriously? You're not going to set it on fire, are you? I mean, you can if you want, but can I get a sample first?" Not that Asclepius was likely to burn up her relic, even if it was her right. But she was the senshi of Medicine, and the plant probably had medicinal properties, and Aquarius wanted to get a look at it at some point.
For the moment, she was mainly content to shrug in an attempt to play it cool. "You know, just the usual. Same-old, same-old."
"I thought you were seeking input on your research from other senshi," Exidor reminded her dryly.
"I mean, I'm doing research. Yeah." It wasn't the smoothest save, but she did manage to keep from glaring at the ghost while she spoke. "Hey, could you maybe take a look at my notes? See if anything rings a bell?" Even before she got an answer, Aquarius was reaching into her bag for her notebook, not willing to let a potential source of information get away.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 12:03 pm
Asclepius accepted the handshake with a small smile and a nod. She never bothered being offended by others who had trouble with her name. She had to say it right to henshin up, but beyond that, it didn't really matter, she supposed. The Senshi of Medicine just wished there were something convenient to shorten it to, to make things easier for those who had trouble with all the syllables.
"Set it on fire?" She laughed once and shook her head, brown curls bobbing. "Don't worry, I wasn't planning on it." The thought had not actually crossed her mind before. "Basically all the other plants on Asclepius I've found glow to give off light, so I guess I just figured that's how this was supposed to work, too."
She let the lantern hang on its chain then as Aquarius pulled out some notes, and stepped closer, peering curiously. "Sure, I guess I can try," Asclepius replied. "What specifically are you researching? I've tried to look in to some past life things a little bit, but that all seems to reveal itself at its own pace, so I can only move so fast on that...."
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 2:45 pm
Perhaps her assumption had been a bit misguided, but really, what was Aquarius supposed to think? Dead trees were wood. Wood caught on fire. Fire lit up lanterns. It was the natural conclusion.
Unless the dead tree in question had its own innate light. "Huh, that's really cool! I haven't looked into space botany much yet, but it would be really interesting to compare the properties in plants from different planets. I guess you probably have a bunch of medicinal ones, but I wonder why they glow. Something about the chemical compounds, I guess. There's gotta be a way to use that in another way." She peered closer at the lantern, frowning. "I can't tell if yours is lit up, though. Probably because it's too bright out here. Does it glow in the dark?"
The possibilities were so fascinating that Aquarius nearly forgot about her own project. Her hands relaxed, and the notebook she'd been holding fell to the ground with a "flop," and a few loose papers scattered across the ground until she was able to snatch them up again, crumpling the edges.
"Sorry about that," she muttered, cramming the papers into her bag haphazardly. "But here's the important stuff- the character catalogue. Ideally I'd like to be able to translate the literature left to us, but for now I'll settle for being able to identify the languages they used. There's a whole bunch of different alphabets in there. Maybe you recognize something?"
It wasn't really a long shot. Aquarius knew Asclepius had been to space, had been looking around. It was quite possible that she'd seen something helpful. And if not, well, she'd wasted her time on far more boring conversations.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:18 pm
"I've brought some samples of some of the glowing mushrooms back in the past," Asclepius replied. "I don't really have the equipment that's sophisticated enough to really get a good look at them, though." Her brows furrowed. "Also they stopped glowing not long after I got them back to Earth."
She then shrugged a little. "Do you have stuff to study plant samples? I guess if you want, it's no huge deal for me to bring back some more samples next time I stop by my asteroid."
Holding her lantern up again to look through it, the Senshi of Medicine shook her head. "This hasn't done much of anything since I found it. I guess I may just have to try lighting the little tree eventually, to see if that turns it on or something. If nothing else, if I'm not supposed to burn it, it might work some kind of magic to keep me from doing so."
Asclepius moved to help retrieve the dropped pages, but Aquarius got to them first. She then accepted the notebook the other senshi handed to her, and looped the chain of her lantern around her hand several times to free up her fingers for reading. "I saw a fair amount of writing up on Asclepius," she said, hazel eyes scanning the pages of alien text. She was quiet for a long moment, flipping through several pages. Then the brown-haired senshi remembered, "Oh, right, and I took some pictures of some of it, too."
Tucking the book under one arm for a moment, she conjured her senshi phone and flipped it open. It beeped softly as Asclepius touched several buttons, and then she handed it to Aquarius. "You can look through these while I keep going through your notes, and I guess let me know if you have questions about where I took any of them."
There were several shots from a few angles of a larger-than-life statue of a bearded man, who looked like he was stepping from the stone behind him, draped in robes and carrying the quintessential Rod of Asclepius. Another dozen photos featured a large carved door covered in several rows of figures performing various tasks ranging from medieval-looking medicine to farming - one of the whole door from a distance and then the rest of various close-ups of different parts. There were a couple of fragile-looking pages, as well, and one of a map, a bit washed out because they had been taken with the flash in a dark room, but nonetheless featuring visible writing that looked somewhere between cuneiform and Cyrillic.
.... There was also maybe a selfie out a window, too, with all of space as a backdrop. Asclepius hoped Aquarius wouldn't judge.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 4:04 pm
"Hmmmm. If they're still glowing after they're picked, but not when they come back to Earth, then it must be something in the plants themselves, something they absorb. It could be from the soil, but it also could be from the air, or the water." Aquarius sighed. "I'd love to get some slides, but that's probably the best I could do on my own. With the equipment at HITS we could probably find out more, but I'd have to explain why I wanted to use the lab. Unless we snuck in." Hey, that wasn't a terrible idea. Dangerous and illegal, but otherwise, it could work.
Her mind went to the preserved plant samples at her outpost. Many of them were ruined, but others had potential. Considering the relative absence of greenery there, at least some of them had to come from someplace else. If she compared the samples to plants from other planets, it was possible she could find out the people her past self had associated with- which could lead to a breakthrough on the language front.
It was a roundabout idea, but it just might work! "I want samples of everything! I mean, whatever you're willing to bring, but it's so much more than the plants! It's the soil, the water, the rocks, the building materials... and hey, maybe something up there can get your bonsai glowing again! That way you won't need to light it up!" This was totally not a self-serving request! Really!
She handed the notebook over, and was somewhat surprised to get the phone in return. "Pictures? Oh wow, let's see what we've got!" She eagerly tapped through the photos, oohing and aahing at the ornate door, and at the crazy big statue. "Who's the guy? Is he past-you, or really-past-you, or someone else? I've got a statue too- in a fountain, if you can believe- but I'm pretty sure he's not past-me." She glanced at Exidor as she spoke, grinning. "The statue looks cooler than past-me, anyway."
Exidor, who had been looking at the phone with apparent interest, simply shrugged. "If you're aiming to insult me, your arrow has missed its mark. Physical appearance is nothing more than the result of biology."
"Yeah, well, biology goofed." Which, from any other point of view, was a non-sequitur, so Aquarius quickly went back to looking through the photos and hoped it would go unnoticed.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:46 pm
The Senshi of Medicine glanced up from the notebook at the question about the statue, and nodded. "Yeah, apparently in a past life, I was a bearded guy." By her tone, this did not seem to bother her. "My-- his name was Evagrius. I don't know if that would ring a bell to you, though."
She flipped another page of notes, turning her attention back to it briefly, and half-caught Aquarius' comment about biology goofing.
"Huh?"
Then a thought struck her. "Oh, I have like a safe house type place I've been using, like to do my work and stuff. If you'd like, I can show you where it is, so you can use it if you want? If we need to, I can leave the samples there for you when I get them, if I can't meet you in person to give them to you?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2014 9:44 pm
Evagrius. Something about that name sounded familiar, but Aquarius couldn't place it. She looked at Exidor, who seemed to be staring off into space, shrugged, and looked back at the photo. "I guess beards were popular back then, since I had one too. Not that I'd consider myself to be the master of style or anything."
Even that didn't make Exidor snap out of it. What was his problem?
"Safe house, huh? Not a bad idea. I'm always worried my brother will find my notes, but it's not like he'd know what to make of them. I leave the detailed stuff up there." She pointed skywards, then used that finger to flip through the photos again. There was a map, which was a really handy tool since you didn't need to be able to read to get some use out of it. And then some writing-
Wait. What was that?
"Hang on hang on." Leaning over Asclepius' shoulder, she tugged at the pages of her notebook. "I think I might've seen this before. It's later- I don't have as much of it as some of the other stuff, but if it's what I think it is, then maybe..." It was hard to hold the phone and turn the pages of a book someone else was holding, and she stomped her feet with impatience. "Go more towards the middle! I think it's in there!"
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2014 3:10 pm
Asclepius half-turned and started to point to explain how to get to the safe-house from where they were, but then something caught Aquarius' attention in the photos.
"Huh?" she asked, leaning slightly to give the other senshi easier access to the pages of the notebook. Her brows furrowed as she scanned the pages that went by as quickly as she could manage, and she absently offered a hand for her phone back if Aquarius needed her to take it.
Something caught Asclepius' eye in the notebook, too, then, and she pointed quickly to a page to mark it in case Aquarius kept flipping. "This looks like some of the writing on my asteroid, too, I think, except with the curly parts pointing the other direction? Was that what you were talking about?"
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2014 11:01 pm
"Yes! Yes! That's it!" This was a breakthrough! It was amazing! It was... the same language, maybe, in two different places. What did that tell her, exactly? Nothing that brought her any closer to translating anything. Or even understanding anything. So she could just dial it down a notch, and stop with the premature celebrations.
Once she'd calmed down a bit, Aquarius held the phone next to the open book and tried to compare the texts. "My copying isn't exact," she admitted, moving the phone as needed to match up similar characters. "I try to get it as close as I can, though. And this is too similar to be a coincidence. So I guess it means that my people and your people knew each other at some point, huh? But why the subtle differences? I can't tell if that's the equivalent of a different font, or a handwriting quirk, or a major difference of some kind."
After everything, there was still so much to learn. But at least this gave her specific questions to ask, and a point of reference. If the worlds of Asclepius and Aquarius shared at least some documents in the same language, then they must have communicated at some point. Maybe there was more to be found, even Aquarian writings located elsewhere. There was still a chance for her to crack the code. Especially if she had help.
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 7:35 pm
"Do you know your past self's name yet?" she then inquired. "They translated the Rosetta Stone by finding names first, didn't they? Although I have no idea if we would find each others' names on our planets, I guess, since we don't really have things side-by-side like they did for hieroglyphics...." Asclepius trailed off and frowned, reconsidering how to approach the problem.
After a long pause, she shrugged, returning the notebook to Aquarius. "I really don't know anything about how to translate stuff, unfortunately."
Then she extended one hand as another idea struck her. "Oh, here, let me see my senshi phone. I'll text you the address and the door code to my secret base, and I'll see about printing or otherwise storing copies of all my photos there for you?" Ordinarily Asclepius was reluctant to record information about the safe house anywhere, but the senshi phone was the most secure method of information transfer she could think of.
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