Welcome to Gaia! ::

The public garden in the park was gorgeous.

It wasn't exactly as pretty at night, seeing as the lighting was fairly limited and he couldn't see much detail, but it was about the right time of year for all the plants to be sprouting flowers and even a few fruits here and there. Some day soon, some of these fruits would be picked and used to feed some people. It wasn't much, but even an apple could brighten someone's day, right?

The saying was keep a doctor away, but--

Perhaps there was some way they could mirror something like this with their homeworld plants? Methone had brought up before the idea of exchanging plants, but perhaps they could find an isolated place on Earth they could try to grow a few of them together. Maybe the guardian cats would know something about that, too. Perhaps they could make some hybrids, too. With alien plants. Alien hybrids.

-- Okay, now he just sounded high --

He backed away from the garden, pleased that, at the very least, no battling shenanigans had totally destroyed it yet. It was nice to see the civilians trying to improve their lives in Destiny City, even if just a bit.

It was also nice he felt no Chaos auras lurking in the area for the moment, but he was fairly sure he felt a weak knight's one nearby. It was strange to him how weak some auras felt now...

Encke was fairly sure, if the aura he had felt from Methone was any indication, he likely felt like a beacon by now. If the knight wanted to come see him, they'd be able to find him -- and they did, evidenced by the voice he heard behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, before turning around to face her fully, waving.

"Enjoying the garden too?" She was holding a couple of cherries in her hand. He'd have to ask what tree she managed to find those on, seeing as all he had seen so far were the unripened apple trees--

She had asked him a question. Right.

He was starting to get used to hearing himself referred to as transcended and transcendent, even if he still couldn't get over how ... ridiculously grand those words sounded. Encke wasn't sure if the pretentiousness of it all suited him. He was fairly sure the glowing and the ability to visit his comet more often and the ability to transfer energy did, though. That had all been easy to adjust to.

"Yeah, I'm transcended." He lifted his hand, wiggling his fingers through the air. In the darkness, he was fairly sure they left light trails. "I'm Eternal Encke, Senshi of Plasma. Encke's Comet or Comet Encke, depending on which astronomer you talk to. I prefer Encke's Comet."

Made it sound like it belonged to him.

"My comet makes me think of a sci-fi movie, honestly. If you want to know more about it, I can tell you. But who're you, and what're you a knight of?" He didn't really recognize her attire from anywhere. He had a limited knowledge of knights, but the only two he knew with any real connection were Scholomance of Saturn and Venice of Ganymede. It was hard to tell where she was from, but he could tell she wasn't of Saturn or Ganymede. She didn't look grim enough or flowery enough for either.

Her dress was gorgeous, though. Whichever planet she was from could probably make dresses for a gala...

Encke didn't entirely miss the fact that Pendour seemed mesmerized by his hands; he'd take it as a compliment.

Encke liked the upgrades to his outfit, too.

She didn't seem to know much about senshi, especially considering the way she pronounced senshi. This knight must have been really new. He could help her out, maybe. Give her some advice. Show her the ropes. The fact that people would automatically see him as an expert now, and not have to realize that he might have been, was admittedly a little exciting. Encke had never wanted to be a teacher, but he was happy to be a mentor in this case.

"We have all sorts of things on the senshi side! I've seen comets, like me," he paused, and thought a bit about the other senshi he had heard about or seen reference to, "asteroids, moons, stars, constellations, and I've heard about planets too -- but of other systems, admittedly."

Why had he never seen a Sailor Neptune or something? It seemed kind of strange, that with everything he had seen, he had never seen a senshi like that...

Encke shrugged it off for the moment. He'd ponder that a bit more later.

Apparently Neptune was where the past lives got their gala gowns. Noted. "I can see the elegance and ocean theme in your outfit. It's very pretty," laughed Encke, gesturing to what she was wearing. "But yeah, the dead theme kind of carries. At first, anyway."

And this was where his eyes lit up.

"As you care more for your planet or your wonder, it starts to come back. There's plants on my comet, now. Flowing water. Electricity, in my case, though I understand quite a few places were less modernized. It's amazing. I haven't heard any cases of any human life reappearing or anything but..."

Admittedly, that would be pretty crazy.

Encke nodded in reply to her asking him about planets. She actually had a good question there. How did the stars work?

He wished he knew, honestly. He'd have to go find a senshi of a star and make them take him there. Maybe they didn't actually live on the star? The idea of living on a star seemed ... unrealistic. Of course, so did the idea of living on a comet, but at least comets had actual ground. They weren't just boiling gas balls of death. They were just hurdling balls of rocks flying through space. Not much different than Earth really.

(Okay, there was more to it than that, but--)

"I honestly don't know how it works with the stars. I'll have to find a senshi of a star and ask them to take me to their home," remarked Encke, with a laugh. "Maybe it's just a nearby planet or something?"

Then how did planets have senshi?

-- He'd figure that out later.

Especially because she was asking him something else. Water was life. It hadn't necessarily surprised him that Neptune didn't have water -- he really didn't have a whole lot of context for what Neptune was supposed to be like -- but when Pendour qualified that water was supposed to be Neptune, Encke did look a little surprised. "Maybe you haven't spent enough time there yet? Or I suppose Neptunians had to live somewhere. Maybe they lived on your wonder. Could explain why it's a bit drier. Do you have any plants at your wonder?" That would imply the presence of water, somewhere nearby...

How often had she gone? Maybe some water would start filtering in as her wonder started healing itself...

At the mention of his wonder again, he grinned. "Oh, it is lovely! I haven't explored the whole thing yet, but I've explored the main city and it's immediate surroundings a bunch. I can only imagine what it was like before we all," he gestured vaguely, before finally coming up with the rather grim, "well, before we all were wiped out."

Encke loved hearing about other planets, and Pendour definitely had his attention while she described what Neptune and her wonder were. He had an image blossom in his mind of endless water, like what one might see in the middle of the ocean.

It seemed that Pendour itself, though, was a place for people to live, so he had at least guessed that correctly. She said it was gorgeous, but honestly it sounded gorgeous. Columns and stairs and places for waterfalls and rivers sounded like something he might have seen in a movie in Greece. Perhaps from Ancient Greece, though from the pictures he had seen, parts of Greece still seemed like they fit that description...

He was getting sidetracked and he knew it.

Yanking his brain back into focus, Encke offered a grin. "That sounds like it's gorgeous for sure, but yeah, lack of water might be a problem. There has to be some way to reactivate it. Might just take finding it." He rubbed his neck. "I actually ended up transcending in a similar manner. When I figured out how to get the electricity on, I ended up like this.

"But yeah, I've been fixing my comet for a long time. I started out with some small stuff, trying to dust things off, cleaning off surfaces. Then I started bringing things up with me? I brought up a whole bucket of concrete a while ago to piece together some of the sidewalks and pathways, a vacuum to clean off some of the rugs, that kind of thing. It's a labor of love really, since it's not exactly easy work, but with everything I do, it starts to look more like I see it as in my mind. I love doing it, and I think the comet loves it, too. It seems like the comet is doing some of its own work, and often when I go, I notice something looking a bit better. And sometimes, as I'm working, I see things in my mind. Like memories of who I was before, before I was reborn on Earth?"

He cleared his throat, realizing he might have been babbling.

"That part might be different for you, depending on if you have an ancestor or not. Scholomance told me it works a bit differently for knights."

Encke offered a sympathetic smile. "If it helps, at the start, I didn't either. I actually got a memory flash that told me how to turn the power back on, funny how that works..."

Maybe it would work similarly for Pendour? It seemed to him that his comet always gave him the information he needed, eventually, even if it came when he didn't expect or want it. The memories had grown more frequent since he transcended, though that might have just been an element of being able to visit more...

"If you ever want help getting started?"

And Encke meant that. He wanted to help restore every planet, every wonder, to its former glory. It didn't matter if it wasn't his own.

He loved space.

"But anyway, my own comet," laughed Encke, finally getting to the point. "Yeah! My comet's still ancient like the other places you've been to, but I suspect that my society was a bit advanced for it's time. Sidewalks, electricity, flowing water and plumbing, seems like we have the whole gamut. I've even got some monitors back on recently. Like actual flatscreen computer panel things? Can't quite tell what they're doing though..."

He suspected they had something to do with the surface of his comet from the imagery, but it would likely take more poking around before he could figure out what. Too bad he couldn't read Enckean.

"It's full of tall, ancient buildings with spires coming off the top of them. Feels a bit like a fifties sci-fi at times. I even see electricity flying through the air from one spire to another sometimes." He laughed. "It's a pretty rocky place, but I suspect that's an element of the fact that it's a comet. Probably not the biggest society but I'm fairly sure it housed a lot people at the time, the main city seems pretty decently packed..."

At the description of being 'his own ancestor,' Encke couldn't help a small laugh. He wasn't necessarily laughing at her, it was just that the mental image of possibly being his own great times ten grandfather was rather amusing to him, all things considered...

"Yeah! So far as I can tell, all senshi are reincarnated, not descended. Seems to be a bit different for knights though. You're probably one of the descendent knights then, from the sounds of it..."

He rubbed his neck.

"Ancestors sound pretty handy, except when they're not and are kinda violent towards you." He was specifically thinking about Scholomance there himself, which it sounded like Pendour knew as well. Did that knight just get around a lot, or was it just a coincidence that they both happened to know him? Maybe Scholomance patrolled in the area they were in pretty often... "Sounds like yours isn't though, so that's good. It admittedly would have been nice to get a bit of guidance at the start of this space stuff, and you have that!"

Encke noticed the way she was spinning the charm on her bracelet, and it reminded him of the way he fidgeted when he was nervous or trying to keep himself focused. She seemed to be doing it out of excitement though, which pleased him. He loved when other people loved space as much as he loved space.

Space was one of the most amazing things about this crazy life they had all gotten themselves sucked into, honestly.

(It was too bad he couldn't share it with--)

"Honestly? I hadn't either." Encke laughed. "At least, not extensively. I had a sense there might be ancient technology, I mean there's the Mauvians and stuff, but," he grinned. "I hadn't really realized it'd be right on my comet, too, not until I started seeing signs of it. And to actually see it in action is pretty wild, especially since it clearly doesn't run the way we're used to things running here, but also kinda acts like the stuff we're used to here?"

With a laugh, he added, "It'd be nice to figure out if any of it could help us now, eh?"

Encke couldn't help grimacing.

He had made a misjudgment.

A major misjudgment.

Perhaps Pendour's ancestor was nice to her, but it didn't sound like he was so nice to literally everyone else he had run across. Violent seemed to be the proper descriptor, considering the bones around. Encke admittedly had never considered what to do with piles of bones. He would probably need to consider it eventually, unless whatever had taken out his people had just ... evaporated them.

He kind of hoped it was that.

It was a little odd he hadn't managed to find a whole lot of bones yet, admittedly. He hadn't exactly not seen any bones, but--

"Mauvians are the guardian cats," explained Encke, briefly. "You may run into them, possibly. They have little stars on their heads and for the most part, they're actually cats." Or cat people, he had learned. "Knights don't need guardian cats like senshi do, but we're all still on the same side, right?"

He smiled back, offering a, "It does make me happy," before deciding to move back to the subject of getting rid of bones, because that definitely sounded like a major problem. He bit down in his lip, offering a, "But I'm sorry your wonder seems to be a bit, ah, more like a graveyard at the moment. And I'm sorry I made the misjudgment on your ancestor, there, though at least he's not actively hurting you."

For now.

"The bones, though," what a disturbing thing to have to think about, "we'll need to get rid of those somehow to bring your wonder back to its former glory." He paused, before asking, quietly, "Is there a crypt on your wonder, maybe? Or something like it? Perhaps they can be given a proper burial."