Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ignacio hadn't quite known where he was going when he left the house, but he knew, for a fact, that he couldn't be there anymore. Not with Viatrix's concern, not with the inevitable further questions from Safira and Luke -- or perhaps the admonishment at digging so hard at each other -- not with the reminder that he had chased Richard off with the confused Luz sitting where Basiluzzo had once been.

The answer, though, was as obvious as the light of a summer day or perhaps as the bright streaks of lightning through the sky of Encke's Comet, and he had henshined after about fifty steps and used his cell phone to teleport away in about eighty. He kept walking through the city, ignoring the immediate comfort and surroundings as his boots clicked against the stone paths. Pushed through the door of the Ruling House that was always kept ajar, pushed into one of the side rooms, pushed through again, and then stopped.

He stopped because there were no other rooms, no places where he could continue to pace, no places where he could avoid thinking and simply walk until the stress eased out of the edges of his vision and stopped feeling like small points that could stab him if he blinked too hard. His breath rattled as he looked at where he had ended up, a weak laugh making it out of his lips in minute disbelief that of all of the places his legs would take him, it would be what looked to be an Enckean library of all things. He had never had any luck understanding the texts of his homeworld without the assistance of memories, so clearly instinct decided that was the perfect way to ease back his stress and give him none further.

Encke deflated.

Despite himself, he walked up, snatched a book that was hanging slightly off a shelf, and sat himself down in an ... oddly luxurious chair that Richard might have liked to fall asleep in. Mm. But couldn't, since Encke had not only fought with him until he felt like his only choice was to leave, but also hadn't even offered an alternative place to hide. In retrospect, his planet would have been the perfect place. Nothing here except some plants. No one would have bothered him for a few days if he wished.

Though he supposed Basiluzzo's wonder was likely much the same. Would it have even had plant life at this point, or was it just as much of a desolate disaster as Encke had been when he first stepped foot on his comet?

Best not to focus on it. He needed to destress. Basiluzzo needed the same thing.

Hopefully that was all it was.

He didn't see why it wouldn't have been. As Encke flicked the book open and scanned it for anything of interest, he noted the way Richard had also lost his will to keep arguing when Ignacio felt the panic bubble up into something of a flashback, a flashback mutated into a hallucination or a nightmare where that foot on Basiluzzo's neck became more than just a foot on his neck and more like a crack of it-- he hissed a curse to himself, hissed a curse at the book, hissed a curse at his surroundings. He couldn't have chosen a place to rest that was in the garden? Or in his old room when he once lived in this place? Or even in someone else's abode? He had certainly fixed enough of them, fixed enough of them to have given him a place to hide for a bit if that was truly what he desired instead of hiding his nose in books he didn't even understand--

"I'm not a mage. I'm a senshi."

He thumbed through the book, snorting under his breath at archaic drawings that looked more like the cryptic circles he saw in birth charts than anything with any meaning.



Within the confines of his memories, the pages in front of him made some sort of sense. Stress stopped threatening to take his hair and the skin of his arms as he gathered and scraped at what he could, hyperfocus taking over his mind as he tapped his fingers against the pages and sunk himself into the memories his world provided.

It was as good of a distraction as any, he supposed, one which his homeworld had decided he had needed in that moment, pulling his mind away from the images of Richard's death and replacing them instead, momentarily, with the images of his own victorious laugh when he realized energy was pulsing all-around him.