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 Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 1:00 pm
Shopping turned into a rambling adventure in which Jack explained as much as he could about Earth every time Quinn asked a question. Which was often. Apparently, Earth was weird and the weather was terrible. Being more of a fan of summer, Jack had to agree that winter left something to be desired (at least once Christmas was over).
They bought clothes. They stopped for food (seafood, since Quinn liked that). They picked up a phone and sat at a cafe while Jack got everything set up. Quinn tried coffee; Jack hoped the caffeine didn’t end up being a bad idea. Once Quinn was in clothes that fit him and he knew how to use the speed dial on his civilian phone to call Jack, it was time to stop by Chris and Paris’s house for a Senshi phone.
Jack jokingly called it Chateau Gallo.
In his defense, it very much looked like a fancy estate, tucked away far from the road behind a growth of mature trees. There was a long driveway, paved smoothe. There was a wrought iron gate and a perimeter wall of stone. There were stables, and an old carriage house. There was even a fountain.
Chris and Paris were welcoming. They greeted Quinn, introduced themselves, offered him whatever help he might need, then took a step back and directed them to the renovated stables, where the Mauvian lived. They didn’t follow. Jack knew his way around, and none of them wanted to overwhelm their new alien guest.
“I can put them in your phone later, too, and set it up the same way I did when I put my information in there, so you know how to call them if you need to,” Jack offered as they made their way through the backyard.Lucasta was waiting for them.
She knew to expect them, having heard from Paris and Chris that they had yet another alien visitor. She sat at the entrance of the stables, which had been converted into something like a guest house. The lower area had been set up for entertaining, but the loft had a comfortable place to sleep. Lucasta had the run of it.
It was a typical dreary winter day, but at least they had a bit of sun and the temperature had risen high enough to melt most of the snow.
She studied the two as they approached. One of Chris’s teammates who’d become something of a family friend. A Page of Jupiter, it turned out. Funny how things worked out sometimes. The smaller figure must be the Senshi. Blond, bright eyed, with a scowling face. He was fortunate to have been found by an ally before anyone in the Negaverse took advantage of his situation.
Lucasta’s tail flicked lazily. Her mouth stretched in a yawn, briefly warmed by a patch of sunlight.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:02 pm
He was not nervous. He didn’t feel anxious about anything. He was not jumpy nor did he feel like everything was going to flip upside down at any moment.
Okay, this was a lie, but Quinn was trying very hard to pretend like he was holding himself together. There was just so much, and it was so overwhelming and so unlike his World.
He knew there was nothing to go back to, but it still hurt his heart and crushed his soul, because as far as he knew, he’d just gone to sleep and woke up. People he knew hadn’t been dead for hundreds of years. Jack told him there were others, but if he was being honest if Jack said any names they got pulled into the void of white noise of his mind trying to process everything.
He was grateful that Jack was helpful. He was grateful that he offered him Earth’s seafood, although it was paltry compared to the fish and shellfish he was used to. In taste and size and color. But he supposed it was a kind gesture and he wasn’t going to say no.
And then he met Chris and Paris. Valhalla and Ganymede. Although they were nothing like what he’d heard of them. It was just more evidence that everything was different. He might not have been close to them, but he knew of others who were.
So he was polite and kept his head down and gritted his teeth so he wouldn’t let himself get emotional.
Quinn nodded to Jack and mumbled his thanks when he offered to help put them in his phone later, although his attention was drawn to the Mauvian once he caught sight of her.
Even without the thousand years or however long of sleep, it had been a while since he’d see a Mauvian. Most tended to avoid a world that was almost entirely water.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:04 pm
“Uhh… hello,” Jack said, unsure how to address a Mauvian.
He knew the cat. He came by Chris’s house often enough that he’d seen her wandering around, but he had no idea what was so Mauvian about her. Other than the golden star on her forehead. What even was a Mauvian? Something about guarding something. They were bonded with Senshi. Maybe taught them? Got them whatever they needed to do whatever it was they needed to do. Didn’t have all that much to do with Knights, as far as Jack could tell, except that they were on the same side of the war.
“Lucasta, right?”“Bilskirnir,” Lucasta said.
She liked to watch the man jump. He flinched away, startled. He almost hid behind the smaller one. Lucasta leveled them both with an impassive stare.“Dude, you can talk?! Like, actually talk?!”
Jack did not jump. (He did.) He did not flinch away. (Maybe only a little.) If he was surprised, it was only because he’d never met a talking cat before.
Well, no, he had met Lucasta before. Before. When he didn’t know about the magical war and magical cats and magical everything. He thought maybe Chris might have mentioned something about the talking since then, but there was a lot to keep track of as it was without the prospect of talking cats cropping up.“Of course I can talk,” Lucasta said, like she did every time someone happened to point out this very common ability.
She glanced at the Senshi instead, gave him a long-suffering look, like they were the only sane people in their current trio. Given that Senshi required the assistance of Mauvians, nothing about her should come as a surprise to him.
“You are Enceladus? It seems receiving guests from space has become a frequent event since the Velencians arrived.”
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:05 pm
Quinn raised a curious eyebrow when Jack jumped when Lucasta spoke. Was this really the first time he’d met a Mauvian? Then again, he was a knight. They didn’t need to interact with Mauvians.
Almost awkwardly, he reached out to pat his hand on Jack’s arm as if to calm him. It’s not like Lucasta was huge like Roxy.
“Velencians?” he frowned after nodding to acknowledge that he was Enceladus. He looked from Lucasta, then to Jack, and realizing Jack probably knew as much as he did, Quinn looked back to Lucasta for answers.
“I was told I need a… phone… to get back to my World. Although I don’t know what there would be left if I did,” he admitted, trying not to sound too depressed about it.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:07 pm
Jack shrugged in response. He had no idea what a Velencian was. Maybe Chris had mentioned them, too. Were they the other aliens? The tall pastel ones? Jack would really love to meet a tall pastel alien.“I imagine there’s enough left to save,” Lucasta said.
She had a phone for him. Bonded to her he was not, familiar to her he was not, but a Senshi he was, and it was her duty to assist him in whatever way she could. The phone in question was blue — a shade similar to the one she’d offered Ymir, only this one had a metallic sheen instead of a shimmering one.
Lucasta made sure it was calibrated correctly, that it had all the necessary apps and would function for him as intended. It may be new technology to him, but the interface was user friendly. He should be able to figure it out in no time. The others like him were coming along quite well with adapting to Earth.
“There’s Chaos on your world, I assume. It’s the same for the others like you. We’ve rid the Chaos from one world. We can do it again.”“Not Earth, though, right?” Jack asked.Lucasta gave Jack a dirty look.
“Earth is different,” was all she said on the matter.
The Senshi deserved her attention far more than some foolish knight.
Not that Lucasta had anything against Knights. She didn’t. Valhalla was as much hers as Ganymede was, and she appreciated Sessrumnir’s competence even if she didn’t agree with all of his decisions. Knights of Jupiter and Jovian Senshi were her preferred company. She felt a kinship with them, even if she didn’t remember anything about the past the way Ganymede did.
“The Velencians came to Earth from an artificial world,” she explained, since Jack was useless at such things. “They promised to help us destroy Metallia — you did tell him about Metallia, didn’t you?” Here, she eyed Jack severely, waiting for his vigorous nod of agreement before continuing. “—but they inevitably betrayed us to the Negaverse. You may run into them if you’re here long enough. They are not inherently violent, but be wary.”
She fiddled with the phone for a few more moments before passing the device to the Senshi, showing him the relevant applications as she explained.
“This will help you travel to and from your world. This will allow you to visit the Moon when full. Use this to scan another Senshi’s information so you can contact them later. This is a distress signal. This is a light. This will allow you to connect with other Senshi.”
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:10 pm
Quinn was paying attention, yet everything was still overwhelming. How was he supposed to remember all of this? How was he supposed to remember anything at all when every new thing reminded him that his world was nothing but a shell of what it once was. Festering with Chaos. Frozen and inhospitable.
He blinked away the heat that burned his eyes and carefully took the phone that was offered to him.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, because she didn’t have to help him like she did. Jack didn’t have to help him. Chris and Paris didn’t.
He tugged the jacket Jack got for him a bit tighter around him as he shivered. Even if it wasn’t freezing as it had been, he was still cold.
This was ridiculous. He was stronger than this. He didn’t need a world full of people to make him who he was. He would just have to find a way to rid it of Chaos and… maybe one day it would thaw out.
“Sorry,” he said after a moment, shuffling a bit awkwardly in place. “It’s just a lot.”
He wanted to ask questions. He had a million. But there was a heavy despair that was still pressing down on him. Maybe once he became more familiar with everything, he wouldn’t be such a boring, quiet person to be around.
“You’ve helped others like me,” he observed. It wasn’t a question since she said they’d been receiving other guests from space.
“Are they okay…? I mean…” he paused, realizing that was a stupid question. “I don’t know. Um, but it’s possible to get rid of the Chaos?” If they did it once before, then maybe they could do it again.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:11 pm
“Two live here, in the carriage house,” Lucasta said, motioning to the structure in question with a tilt of her head. “Neither of them are here now, but I’m sure they’d be willing to speak with you at another time. If you want to discuss our successful eradication of Chaos, you should speak with Alastor. It took a number of us, but I don’t believe it would have been possible without him, given that it was his world. I can put you in touch with him.”Jack was absolutely not afraid of the cat. He definitely didn’t wince or cringe when she seemed unimpressed by him. She was, after all, just a cat.
(He was tragically afraid of her, actually. Or, maybe in awe. She was a talking cat! She could use and create technology! She could fight Chaos, and all that other magical stuff!
If only Roxy could talk. Jack could only imagine how amazingly cool that would be.)
Jack at least had the wherewithal to pay attention to her explanation of the phone, so he could help Quinn with it later if need be. (Not for the first time, Jack wished knights got cool magic phones, too. The magic rings seemed somehow lesser in comparison.)
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:13 pm
Quinn didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he started getting lightheaded. Earth was nothing like Enceladus, where he could hold his breath for long periods of time with no problem, but in this cold, miserable atmosphere, his lungs soon burned.
Lucasta had mentioned Alastor. And now that he was thinking about it, Jack had mentioned a Devyn before, although he didn’t seem overly confident, and thus Quinn didn’t want to hold onto hope that it was the same person he’d known before.
Before the worlds ended.
“Please?” he requested, because if Lucasta was offering to put him in touch with the other Senshi… Maybe there were others still alive.
And if there was a mistake, if he was mishearing things, or if his head was plugging in information that he wanted to hear, then finding out how to get rid of Chaos was a good thing.
He spared a glance towards the carriage house, but didn’t allow himself to ask more questions at this time, even though he desperately wanted to know more. He didn’t want to push his luck.
“Thank you, Lucasta.”
At least she had an idea of what was going on. Jack was sweet, but he wasn’t very bright about things, it seemed.
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