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 Posted: Sat May 07, 2022 1:15 pm
Concern was perhaps a light word for what Ida felt as she pondered the leaf in her fingers, twirling it by the stem. Deep suspicion was probably a better word, and under that, a hint of dread. She kept telling herself it was nothing, just a dead spot on Puck's world, and even if it wasn't, they'd dealt with similar things many times... but that didn't soothe the worry.
The leaf itself was immaculate, and a wonder all on its own. Life, from another world, that was as green and verdant as her own asteroid. It was beautiful for its tenacity in the face of adversity and a thousand years of destruction and neglect. But it was also a reminder that there was something... wrong with Puck's world. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was a natural feature of his world, despite what he'd told her. Maybe it was a disease that could be fought and cured. There was no way to tell and she had no methods to do more than guess at it.
She hadn't had time to press the leaf like she had intended yet, so it had stayed with her, tucked into her subspace pocket. Sometimes, like now, she brought it out when she had paused in her patrol, her thoughts on what she'd seen. The city had been surprisingly quiet tonight, which probably accounted for why her brain was more on this than on her patrol. The area around the university had people, but she'd felt no energy signatures that lasted more than a moment before leaving, likely sensing her in return. She'd found to quiet struggles in a shadowy corner, no passed out people or screams as twisted monsters came out of nowhere.
It gave her far too much time to think, in truth, as she sat on the edge of the fountain in the empty side garden, listening to water trickle down behind her. Too much time to consider how similar that dead spot had looked to one she'd seen on her world years ago, on a far larger scale.
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Posted: Sun May 08, 2022 9:45 pm
Concern was -- Anakeion was just kind of concerned all the time, at this point, perpetually? It was a state of being, like breathing, like being awake. It wasn't something she did as much as it was something she was. (Of course, if anyone had asked, she would've said she was way too cute to be this stressed, and maybe she even would have meant it. But nobody was asking! Which sucked, but also it was good, kinda?) She didn't want to be out alone, tonight; she'd been hesitating, circling the block as a civilian, waiting for someone else powered to show up she could remora her way onto. Usually they weren't too subtle, with the lightshows and frills and sparkles and capes; if you looked up enough or checked your six, it was easy to spot. It was practical, right? If she died, if she got corrupted, someone else would know; someone else would report back, if she teamed up with someone who had already taken the initiative. That was the important part, having a backup plan. If she said it enough times in her head it made sense and was totally not her being needy. So, okay, it was one of those self-critical nights, whatever, she was working with it. If this Senshi took offense to Anakeion crashing her party of one, then she was going to have to make that distaste very clear, because Anakeion really wasn't feeling the whole 'leaving' thing. "Hiiiii," she said, rounding the corner in a way that was maybe a little too fast to come off as casual as she wanted it to, "how's it going, do you mind if, like, I sit here? Okay, great, thanks." As things go, there were better segways by far, but her heart just wasn't in the funny tonight. "What's the leaf for?"
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2022 8:55 pm
Despite having felt the Squire approaching, it was still startling to have her sudden pop out from cover with a bright greeting and insert herself into Ida's quiet reflection. She didn't quite jump, but she was left blinking a little owlishly at the other woman before she relaxed and put a smile on for her.
"Oh! Hi there!" She said as the other sat down, shifting in her seat so she wasn't faced entirely away from her. Water fell with a quiet, comfortable noise behind them as she lifted the leaf, glancing down at it again. "This? Oh, this is a leaf from Sailor Puck's homeworld. He took me there to see it, so I took one as a sort of souvenir. I'm going to press and dry it when I get home."
It sounded just a tiny bit lame... who kept leaves as keepsakes? Besides her, obviously. But it was a good excuse to push down her worries for a while and focus on this new acquaintance she was making.
A look over the other showed her Castor symbols, so that was likely the planet her wonder was on. Ida hadn't had a lot of contact with knights from that world, but she'd certainly met their Prince. Of course there was no reason the knights should be anything like him, but it colored her perceptions anyway, enough to make her wonder what this one was like.
"My name is Ida." She said, offering out a hand.
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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:01 pm
Ida might have been a little embarrassed at admitting the purpose of the leaf, but, hey - Anakeion wasn't going to judge. At least that was a relatively normal hobby, out of all the weird things someone might be enabled to do by a homeworld visit. She could think of a million things off the top of her head, and a lot of them probably involved hospital visits, because that was what happened if you screwed around in space, probably -- Ahh, she was getting distracted! No time for that, what with a pretty girl talking to her. She took Ida's hand and shook it, grip on the looser side, trying very hard not to come on strong. "Anakeion! Of, uh, Castor." Oh, she wanted to mumble so bad about allegiance, since there was a pretty good chance Ida didn't know who Castor even was judging from past encounters, but. One thing at a time!! One thing at a time. "Do you go to other people's homeworlds a lot? There's gotta be a whole variety of 'em out there, huh..."
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:19 pm
She nodded as she pointed at the symbols Anakeion wore.
"I recognized your planet. I don't meet many Castor knights, but I know the symbols." She said. The hand in hers felt warm, though she noticed how lightly she returned the grip. That was okay, not everyone returned the gesture the same. This one seemed a little on the flighty side, bouncing from topic to topic, and Ida's eyebrows rose at the new question.
"Sometimes I do. I enjoy taking people to my world and it is always really fun to get to see someone else's. I always make it a point to go when someone offers. Puck was having some trouble with some dead plants on his though, so I went with him to take a look at it, since I garden a lot. He wanted to see if I had any tips that might help, or if I could figure out what was causing it. It was pretty strange... but I don't know if that's just because its a whole different planet from Earth. Have you been to other homeworlds? Have you seen your own?"
That was definitely an interesting question, and Ida was unabashedly curious about it. What was Castor like, as a planet? What was a Castor Wonder like? She'd never been invited by the Prince to see his planet, and she didn't know enough Knights to have been fortunate enough to go. Some day, she thought, it might be a fun goal to get to see every planet Knights hailed from... or even every homeworld there was, though that seemed like a near impossible dream.
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2022 11:53 am
Well -- now was a moment for self-consciousness. Sure, she got this way most of the time anyway, but Ida had experience with this kind of thing: experience Anakeion could dream of having, mostly, but she'd hardly been anywhere else except Cepheus, and that had been maybe thirty minutes. For a second, she wanted to be so jealous it burned... but that wasn't any good, right? She was a reasonable girl. "I went to my sister's homeworld for a bit? She got, like, super worn out from taking us both there, though, so we didn't stay long." She shrugged fitfully. "But I haven't been anywhere else 'sides my Wonder, so." But - okay. That sounded familiar. Maybe it wasn't just Anakeion's Wonder that was dying and strange and withering in spots. Maybe it wasn't her fault. "Aaaactually, though, okay, so -- I, uh, actually spotted some dead plants on my Wonder recently?? And I know they were totally alive last time I checked." ...which had been a few years ago, but semantics. It made her look bad if she volunteered that unprompted, right? Right. "Was there, like, this perfect line between the dead stuff and the not-dead stuff?? "
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2022 6:18 pm
Ida felt her heart sink in her chest and she nodded slowly.
"Everything inside the area turned to ash when you touched it, like it had been burned or... drained of everything that was alive about it." She said, trying not to grimace. "It seems like they've been showing up on different worlds... I keep finding new people with them. I don't know what's causing them, for sure, and no one else seems to either..."
The problem was proving to be far more wide spread than she had expected, and every new planet she found just made that worse. Where had this... disease come from? How did it end up on so many worlds? And... why was it appearing now? What had... prompted it? There had certainly been enough weird things happening on Earth, but this felt like the first time that had echoed out to the planets and wonders.
"If you don't mind, why don't you tell me what you found on your wonder, and we can see how similar it was to Puck's? Maybe we can find something that might... give us some clue about what's going on." She said.
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Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2022 7:22 pm
Good! Good. Well -- it wasn't good, actually, it was pretty bad, especially given the look on Ida's face, but it was good to know Anakeion wasn't alone in this. She hated being alone in things - and until now, she'd been concerned it was some deep personal failure of hers as a Knight where the greenery was, like, inherently wasting away because she was a shitty Knight who'd ollied out of doing her celestial reincarnated soul job for a couple of years, and now everything was unsustainable and gonna fall like a Jenga tower. But it probably wasn't! "It's like, uh. So Anakeion has this big courtyard area, right, it's close to where I usually wind up first off when I go there? I went back in April, and right where the grass started there was just... this huge dead chunk of it around the entryway. Super-precise division between it and the normal grass, smelled like ash, basically dissolved when it actually got touched, the whole shebang."
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Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:40 pm
The purple senshi nodded along as Anakeion described her wonder and what she had found. Her shoulders lifted and fell as she sighed. As she had suspected, even though she had hoped otherwise. What exactly was going on, that the same thing was happening on entirely different worlds? Did the worlds have some sort of connection, either now or in the past? She didn't think Anakeion had ever been to Puck or vice versus. Had they in past? And... it had just slept dormant till now? That seemed like quite a long shot.
"That does sound exactly like what we found on Puck." She said, her voice falling. "So it seems you have the same problem he does. It doesn't really tell us what is going on though, unfortunately."
Worrying her lower lip with her teeth, Ida considered what to do now. They need more info. There had to be more than just what they were seeing.
"If you don't mind... I think you should investigate it more. Maybe look for other places where its showed up on your wonder, or places where things aren't how they are supposed to be, other than the dead spots. If you find anything out, can you let me know? I'm going to try to keep track of everything I hear, and spread the word about it as much as I can. I feel like the more people we have looking, the more likely we are to find some sort of answer or solution." She said, feeling her resolve firm. They could figure this out. They had to.
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Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2022 7:06 pm
"Yeah," Anakeion said, before she'd even entirely really processed what Ida was actually saying, just agreeing because she already didn't want to be thought badly of, "yeah, I can do that! I can do that, totes." She nodded empathetically, hair bouncing with the force of it. Could she do that? Look for places where things weren't right, where they were in disarray, where death had sprung up around the growth she'd managed to bring back to her Wonder's lands? ...Probably? Probably sounded about right. "I'm not, like, great at looking for things," and she wasn't, she'd lost her phone while she was holding it before, "but I can definitely see what I can do, y'know? How's your name spelled -- izzit I-D-A?"
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Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2022 7:41 pm
The simple admission startled her into a smile and Ida's eyes crinkled at the corners.
"You don't have to be great at finding things. Just keep your eyes open. Anything you find out is more than we knew before, right?" She said, waving off that consideration. She nodded then, belatedly pulling her phone out of subspace and into her hands.
"Yeah, I-D-A. Pretty simple, yeah? Is it okay if I add you to my contacts? So you can reach me if you need me, or in case I have some information for you." Ida held up her phone to demonstrate, thumbing it open to find the camera function. Easier to use than a lot of civilian phones... she was glad for that. She didn't know how knights had functioned before their rings had gotten that upgrade.
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Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:48 pm
"Could've been E-Y-E," Anakeion mumbled under her breath, less 'intentionally saying anything' and more 'letting her brain output directly to her mouth'; then she perked back up, shaking herself out of a moment of distraction. "Yeah! Yeah, that's totally fine, that's cool. I'm pretty much free, like, most of the time, at least afternoons and nights? Morning shift. So if you need me, I'll probs be able to head on out pretty fast."
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Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2022 9:34 pm
Ida very carefully took a photo of the squire with her phone's camera, letting it do it's thing to log Anakeion into her contacts. It felt just a little bit like an achievement, adding to the list of people she knew and could call on if there was something that needed them. Of course, with that came worry too. Another planet with dead plants. Proof the problem was wider spread than she'd imagined. How far did it go, really? Would she find out?
"Thanks a lot." She said as she thumbed her phone off and banished it back to its subspace pocket. "I should get back to my patrol, but I'll send you a message if I find out anything else out. You do the same, ok? Or really, reach out for anything, truly. It really was nice to meet you."
They might not had time to share much, but she felt warmly towards the other girl anyway. Hopefully they'd run into each other again, outside of all of this mess. Ida lifted a hand to wave before she turned to go, her mind still turning over what she'd seen and heard. Yet more to worry about, but she could hope the problem was no bigger than just these few places, if they were connected at all.
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Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2022 4:09 pm
"Yeah!! Yeah. Good to meet you too." Anakeion nodded empathetically, a little more careful to not do it with too much force, this time; she did try to be self-conscious, sometimes, and part of that was the spontaneous self-realization of wow! I've kind of looked real stupid this entire conversation she was starting to slowly have. It was good Ida was leaving before the full force of that really got into trainwreck town, really; anyway, Anakeion waved back genuinely, smiling at Ida's back. "If I find, like, anything, I'll let you know!"
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