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 Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:20 pm
She stared at the ugly little flip phone, sitting like an ancient toy in the palm of her hand. It sat open under the late afternoon sun, where rays cast over its screen and rendered it half illegible, and Pavo looked down on its scanty options with a growing distaste. It sat open on the homeworld button. It said as much in pixellated writing much like what she'd expect off the first Nokia phones. Homeworld, as if going to a place so many lightyears away from here would somehow solve her problems.
But Pavo's problems weren't in space. They weren't even a part of space. They weren't a part of Pavo. Pavo's problems were Ayesha's problems were Jon and Anette's problems for how the two shared a unique propensity to get stalked by the Negaverse. She couldn't just squirrel them away on a planet she'd never visited before and expect them to live their lives without any aims. Nor could she burn all her time on following them when she wasn't taking care of her employment responsibilities. But the alternative — that they might be killed, and Ayesha would be considered responsible for it — still hung over her like a sword on a string.
Pavo stared at that homeworld button a moment longer. Then she touched the 'up' button on the ovoid pad twice to highlight contacts. She clicked it, found it nearly empty, then located the first number she saw that was worth a try. She pressed call.
Holding the bejeweled phone to her ear, she looked perfectly nonchalant. Perfectly normal, too, if it was common for highly decorated belly dancers to have a seat on a wooden bench facing the park in the late afternoon. She waited one ring, then two, then reached out with a simple, if dubious, "hello?"
Even if Cybele didn't agree to help, she might have some advice. Maybe a few solutions for a senshi that never had to do this before — this game of protecting people.
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Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 11:14 am
Spring was most welcome for the warmth, which was much more conducive to Cybele's flowing, flowery outfit than the winter weather. The upgrade had come with a few extra layers of very welcome fabric, but still. Another benefit of the season was the extra hours of sunlight. The Negaverse did seem to prefer to steal souls and whatever other abominations struck their fancy on a given day under the cover of darkness. The fewer hours in the day they had that cover, the better. Also, Cybele did enjoy seeing the sunsets while she was out on patrol instead of cooped up backstage. The mix of nice scenery and general quiet in the city had Cybele settling fairly happily into a patrol. That was when, for the first time in her life, she got to experience the jarring, unmistakable sound of a phone ringing inside her head. What? She was a professional twenty-something, admittedly not the most tech savvy, but she knew enough to keep her phone on silent. As a senshi, she relied exclusively on text messages. It was a new experience, but she still summoned her phone, glad to at lest hear it ringing for real. She glanced at the caller ID before she brought the phone to her ear, leaning against a brick wall. "Hello? Pavo?" Her brow knit a bit as she wondered why, exactly, the other senshi was calling, her ind going quickly to worst case situation, although she didn't feel auras on auras anywhere. "Are you all right?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:09 pm
When she first heard the response, her brows rose. Sitting there, on the bench, connected to no cell phone towers, with her planet however many lightyears away, Pavo knew the phone in her hand made no sense. There was no radio signal to carry it, no satellite to bounce a signal from one phone to the next. But Cybele answered nonetheless, and her voice sounded as clear as if she was standing there next to Pavo. There was, as Pavo fumbled for words, no delay. Cybele's tone kept coming, her worry nearly palpable.
"Yes, I'm fine," Pavo managed. "I've never called someone on one of these before. It took me by surprise. I apologize if it did the same to you."
Maybe she broke an unspoken rule by calling Cybele. How often did senshi contact one another? How often did they work together? They were all so solemn and driven in their own aims that Pavo wondered if she stepped into a second cutthroat word like academia.
"I… Had a question." Pavo sat back against the bench, her outfit jingling lazily as she crossed her feet at the ankles. One bejeweled hand felt the woodgrain absently. "More like a favor. I have these two students whom I tutor, and the Negaverse has been targeting them. I can't be around to guard them at all times, but I don't want anything to happen to them. Would you be able to spare some of your time for guarding them? I understand it asks a lot.
"Though if you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears." And all out of ideas. Protecting others to the point of stalking them for their own safety had never been part of Pavo's plan for herself.
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Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:11 pm
There was nothing coming from the phone that indicated a struggle of any sort, but it wasn't until Pavo confirmed that she was fine that a bit of the tension left Cybele's shoulders. "No, it's all right," Cybele said. "I'm trying to be more available. I just tend to assume the worst. I'm sorry." A wry smile flickered across her face. It's a bit of an occupational hazard, her mind supplied, but she managed to bite that back. She stood up taller, instead. Supportive. She was trying to be supportive. A mentor, even. She was an Eternal now and needed to act like it. The request came quickly, and it was both specific and direct, another variation on the vague texts asking for patrols that she was getting more used to. Cybele stood silently for a few long seconds simply trying to wrap her mind around the situation. Targeted could mean anything from being drained once to being put on a list to be hunted down. Cybele wasn't sure if she would be able to stop either situation, but she kept that thought to herself, too. She would always try. What she said was, "I need more information, but I can probably help," and she kept her voice confident and steady, as if she knew what she was talking about. "Would you like to meet up? If I know who these people are and where this is happening, we should be able to at least make a plan to keep them safe." She'd been finding lately that thinking ahead worked a bit better than just chasing auras.
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Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 4:25 pm
"Of course. Can you meet me on the DCU campus? I have an office in Richmond Hall that we can use. No one will be there at this hour except for a few grad students. There's a lot of construction going on where they've removed access to the eastern side; we can slip in there to power down." Pavo rose and started toward where she understood the campus to be now. It wasn't a long distance, not for a senshi, but she didn't want to keep Cybele waiting.
"And thank you for doing this. I'll see you there." She hung up then, and shifted to a brisk jog. Her outfit made announcement of every movement, an impedance she didn't much care for, but she'd weather it for the moment. She finally gained a chance to determine an actual coverage method — something that might finally safeguard these students so she wouldn't need to resort to Pavo more often. She could go back to her life. Her real life.
Once she reached Richmond Hall, dusk was setting in. It left the place looking older, dustier but for the newly-renovated parts. She leapt onto the veranda, then ricocheted her way up overblown architectural detailing to reach the roofline. There, she decided, she would wait for Cybele. They could slip in from a skylight and power down with minimal risk.
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 1:58 pm
“Of course,” Cybele repeated, and ended the call. She didn’t hunt around the university so much these days, and honestly hadn’t even back when she’d been attending there. It had been, for the most part, fairly quiet, and she’d had better luck finding youma in the parks and agents downtown during those years. It seemed that things were changing. It was sill easy enough to find her way back, and even though she started out about halfway across the city, she was also an Eternal senshi. She knew which alleyways to slip through for shortcuts, and also, at full speed she was fast. She took the trip over at close to a sprint, enjoying the way the spring breeze felt in her hair. The campus, once she got to it, was familiar enough, even the smattering of construction sites that seemed attached to every few buildings. It seemed like there was always something to be improved. That wasn’t a new thing. Richmond Hall wasn’t a building that she was especially familiar with, but she could have found her way to it even without the aura. Still, she felt Pavo before she saw her, and even when she reached the grand doors, she had to look up. She knew that she had a fairly extreme reaction to heights, but she didn’t know how anyone would want to just casually sit on the edge of a roof. “Hello, Pavo,” she called up, raising a hand but not making any move to join the other senshi.
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Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 1:51 pm
The sensation of Cybele arriving was much stronger than she'd expected — than she'd ever been used to, really. Not that there was much opportunity for her to grow accustomed to how a person felt in her head, which was itself a foreign enough concept. Even with the years that had passed, its newness hadn't faded; Pavo continued to resist adjustment.
But Cybele was here now, and dwelling on the strangeness of auras would not lead her any closer to the answers she wanted. Instead she poked her head over the edge, spotted the senshi, and made motions to come up. "We won't be seen from the top," she urged as quietly as she could. Passersby had no view onto the top of Richmond hall, nor would anyone have ground floor access to disparage their trespassing. Had she not explained this?
Unless — "You don't sense anything, do you?" She shifted, wary, to look out at the campus remainder.
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Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 1:55 pm
The small knot that was forming in Cybele's throat went tighter when Pavo beckoned her up while she just stared at her for a few moments, her brows slowly knotting. So much for looking like she was competent. She might have tried to force herself to climb around for appearance's sake if it wasn't for just how badly things had ended up last time she'd pushed herself, and how she could already feel the anxiety creeping in just thinking about it. No, becoming frozen with fear was neither helpful or a good look. "I can't," she said, trying to at least keep her voice solid. "I can't do heights. I'm sorry." Not that she wanted to dwell on that too much. She glanced towards the corner of the building, trying to see what doors were closed off. "Is there another way in? Or somewhere else? Space, even. That could be more private." Cybele din't actively seek out time on her asteroid, but it seemed like it might be better for a meeting like this than trying to climb around through a construction site, especially if the point of it all was to protect their civilian identities.
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