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 Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2025 5:17 pm
He had no real idea how this was supposed to go. Tianyi had pointed out the app on his senshi phone, and he'd been dying to give the app a poke. Did one need to be Powered up, or could they just go up as a civilian?
It seemed like an unsafe idea to go up unprepared, so he'd quietly moved some relevant supplies into subspace, like food, water, blankets, a pillow, a flashlight, some batteries, a very thick, unused notebook, and a few mechanical pencils, with some spare lead and extra erasers. Whatever was up there, there was no guarantee it would be habitable, or even hospitable. He could guess, based on his outfit, that it was broadly like ancient Egypt, so probably very arid, except along at least one riverbank, and not fun to outsiders. In the same vein, it made sense, when using magic to visit an uninhabited planet in space, to go Powered up.
He'd also waited for a time when Yasmeen was at a sleepover, and their mother was away for the evening, to set out.
Khaz took a deep breath, pulled out his pen, and whispered, "Aberdonia Power, Make-UP!"
His senshi outfit wrapped around him, glowing softly for a moment, feeling like rushes and soft linen enveloping him. Pulling out his phone and tapping it on, Aberdonia took another deep breath.
Show time.
He pressed the center button, closing his eyes and concentrating on a desire to see the place that gave him its power, that must still need him, even if he couldn't help it out yet.
A flash of light blinded him, and he found himself no longer seated on his bed, but splashing into water.
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Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2025 5:41 pm
Startled, Aberdonia splashed to his feet, looking around.
A river, its banks choked with reeds--no, not just any reeds, papyrus reeds--under a starry sky. No. Not big enough for a river. And, beneath the mud--was this a canal of some kind? Glancing around, he found a ledge, and started wading toward it, through the dense vegetation, scrabbling up its stone surfaces to sit on its ledge, shiv--
No. It wasn't cold. Instead, it was comfortably warm, and the stone beneath his butt was already gently baking the damp out of his kilt.
Aberdonia let the warmth of the stones reduce the damp a bit further before getting up again, and scanning the canal.
It seemed to be very wide, just not quite the size of a river...or, well, not the size of the river he'd envisioned Aberdonia to have. Still lined with stone beneath the mud, so still a canal. A crumbling, cobblestone road led away from the canal, grass and other weeds poking up.
Hiking along it, Sailor Aberdonia made his way toward whatever it connected to. The road seemed very broad, and soon interlinked with a much broader road lined with buildings. Or at least the ruins thereof.
The walls were massive, geometric things, seeming to enclose small compounds behind the remains of gilded gates. The vegetation had pushed its way between the stones here, too, seeming to fill vast courtyards enclosed by colonnades. And the further he traveled, the grander they got, until he found himself in a vast square before the greatest compound he had yet seen.
Palatial. Gleaming in the light of stars, sun, and moon. Like so many other columns he'd glimpsed, the capitals were carved into the shapes of papyrus blossoms, the bases seeming to match that style, but these...these seemed somehow grander. Like they were carved from solid stone.
Something gripped him in that moment, seeing golden gates decorated with a motif of papyrus reeds hanging bent on their hinges.
Aberdonia ran.
He ran right past the gates, up the walkway, dashing blindly between columns, heading he knew not where.
Alabaster urns, delicate glass jars of a pecular blue-green hue, the tattered remains of the sheerest of linen curtains--it all blurred together for him as he came out in a grand room. A gilded throne carved from stone sat on a low dais at the far end of a colossal, colonnaded space, its ceiling still decorated in the flaking remains of gold and ultramarine paint that revealed a star-spangled sky.
Aberdonia panted as he gazed at the throne, gripped in a memory he knew hadn't come from Khazran Khalid.
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Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2025 6:47 pm
"Your Celestial Highness," someone dressed in purples and greens, with a faint Indian, or maybe elven, vibe to them was saying. "I bear greetings from Ida, and an offer of an alliance."
The language wasn't English. He understood, but he also got the distinct feeling that if he heard these words now, they'd be nothing but gibberish to him, which filled him with an ache he couldn't articulate, a profound sense of loss.
"You may approach the Pharaoh-Senshi of Aberdonia," said a woman with the black ears and tail of a desert cat formally.
Pharaoh-Senshi? OK, so was the senshi the ruler of Aberdonia? That seemed kinda...wow, ruler of a whole planet? That was a looot Khaz was going to be unpacking later. But the cat girl...she seemed...familiar??? Was she another Guardian Cat? Had she known him? Was she somewhere on Earth, looking for him?
"Thank you, Neith," a feminine voice replied, startling Khaz. "I think we can let the representative from Ida take it from here--" The memory shattered like glass around him.
The throne room no longer shimmered with gold and colorful murals, was no longer softened with linen furnishings, no longer rang with the sound of music and conversation. Instead, all that he was left with was the almost sepulchral remains of a throne room, the stone merely worn down, papyrus threatening to invade through the open courtyards that flanked it.
That voice. That feminine voice.
It had been his.
Had...had Aberdonia been a girl last time? Had he been a queen? Khaz plucked at the outfit. His lower arms, lower legs, and midriff were bared, but the more reproductive aspects of the human body were covered, for either gender. His outfit would have looked equally comely on a girl.
Shaking himself out of his stupor, he drifted toward the throne, stumbling into its hard, stony seat. The proportions seemed to neatly fit him, almost seeming to reify his status as the soul intended to sit here. Khaz was still breathing hard as he leaned back, throwing back his head and closing his eyes.
After a moment, he opened his eyes to gaze at the remains of the beautiful ceiling mural. The spacing looked correct for a map of the night sky, but not the night sky as he knew it. Was this the Aberdonian sky? Who was the cat-girl? Wait. S/He had called the cat-girl "Neith," which, by coincidence, was the name of the family cat. He'd just thought it was a cool name. Had he advocated the name based on some weird kind of unconscious memory of the Guardian s/he must have once known? Also, Ida. Who, or what, was Ida? Were they another senshi? Were they on Earth, too? Were they already Awakened?
Khaz didn't realize for a moment that he'd Powered down, until he tried scrabbling for his phone. Either phone. He finally located his mortal phone in the pocket of his hoodie. No signal. No way to find out about Ida from that quarter. His fingers closed on the senshi flip-phone next. That had a signal, so that was good...but he didn't really have an app for conta--wait. That red app with a white person-plus-person icon. Was that a way to look people up?
It took a few minutes, of scrolling, but he found it.
Eternal Sailor Ida. Did that mean she was more advanced, more powerful than him? Probably. A princess, and a nurse, a healer and a restorer, a member of the "Koronis" family of asteroids, which...come to think of it...wasn't Aberdonia also part of the Koronis family? She seemed trustworthy, though Khaz was pretty sure he shouldn't just trust someone just because of what a magically online profile said, or a hazy, fragmented memory of a (probably) past life.
Still. It was the only lead he had to go on.
Snapping the phone shut, he relaxed into the throne, rubbing his eyes wearily. Khaz was tired. He'd had to set out in the evening, had burned some energy, gotten sucked up into a weird memory of another life on another world, and was currently hanging out on said other world, which seemed to be completely abandoned. Not creepy at all.
The throne room felt safe enough, though.
Running a hand through his hair, Khaz started pulling stuff from subspace. If he was going to spend the night here and figure stuff out about the asteroid, he'd need supplies to do it with, and he'd need to make sure he was feeling fit enough to do so safely. And his best option would be to get something to eat, explore and take as many notes as he could on the throne room, and then get some rest. If he woke up early enough, maybe he could explore some more before needing to get home to his own bed. Khaz had no idea how time passed on the asteroid, but it would be kinda stupid to do things incautiously.
As he pulled out Tupperware containers of falafel, toasted chickpeas, salad, and a bit of flatbread, Khaz looked around. Whatever the future contained concerning Aberdonia, it was going to take a lot of work to figure stuff out, and he'd need resources, supplies, and advice to do it. After he got home, he could start figuring out how to get himself in contact with Sailor Ida, and start looking for any Guardian Cats that went by the name of "Neith." But first, a snack, some extensive note-taking, and then some sleep.
When Khaz eventually bunkered down in his cobbled-together bedroll, cushioned by the remains of linen curtains and wall hangings he'd managed to pull down to make himself a little nest, he fell asleep quickly, tired out by the experience.
At the front gates of the palace compound, the gates softly squeaked as a dent removed itself.
Aberdonia's senshi had come home.
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