Welcome to Gaia! ::

Just speaking to someone who understood did a great deal for Jihlava’s morale. And even if Solaris was not quite as inhuman looking as she, herself, she was still different enough to need help blending in. And Jihlava brightened visibly hearing that the Mauvians were here too. She hadn’t seen one of the cats in ages!

“I’d no idea that any Mauvians were here! I would have introduced myself immediately if I had. They’re utterly brilliant. We had so many little gadgets they made. All of the really important locks at home were from the Mauvians! Can you help introduce me to one? I’d be so grateful,” the owl-ish senshi paused a moment to suck in a breath. Being able to blend into human society would be most helpful. And if they could sort of squeeze her into the human records. Well.

She wasn’t sure she’d need help finding a job though. But maybe…

“Would your Mauvian friends know where I could trade or invest the gold and gems I brought? For human money, I mean. It’s a lot and it is heavy,” she sighed a little before venturing a tiny smile. Then, her expression went serious as Solaris offered to answer questions. Well. She certainly had those. And the most important of which concerned her magic.

“My magic,” she said. “Why didn’t it work? I couldn’t even summon up my most powerful attack and I’d been using that for years even before everything went wrong at home. Can you tell me what is wrong with me?”

Having a potential means of fitting in and being able to function here was so helpful. But perhaps not nearly as important as her malfunctioning magic!

"Yeah sure, I've got one I know well, though to be fair I really want to get more familiar with more of them. You're not kidding when you say they're brilliant." Realta at least had already assisted Solaris herself on the adjustments into human life, so she didn't feel bad about picking her phone back up to send out a text to the feline in question.

The question about finances though got a wide-eyed, brow-raised look from Solaris, till she remembered the things in Jihlava's bag. "Likely. I'm not too familiar with the banking systems on Earth, or the processes that go into converting valuables like that into human currency… but if anyone can figure it out, it'll be the Mauvians. They might have already, to be fair, I just never asked." She also wasn't too sure how that would work, if Earth buyers would need to do scans on them to confirm authenticity, and if that would pose a problem with non-Earth sourced materials… but she wasn't about to raise all that for the moment. Let the smart Mauvians handle all of that.

Sending off a text about that to Realta, she put the phone down, crossing her arms on the table to look at Jihlava. The magic question was… more than fair. She took in a slow breath through her nose, settling herself for the likely uncomfortable conversation. "If your situation is anything like mine, and others I've meet who're not originally native to Earth… I have an idea on what happened, yeah. You were previously an Eternal Senshi, I take it? Before your magic faded?"

Solaris remembered the centuries of that, feeling that strength diminish. Made her infinitely more grateful that she'd regained most of it. The sense of loss was something she wouldn't wish on anyone.

"You also said… everyone was gone. I'm sorry to press on this, but is your world… injured? Are you aware of massive changes on it, or any Chaos there..?"

Eyes narrowing, Jihlava soaked up information. Well, it seemed that she needed to speak with one or more Mauvians, but they’d be able to get her settled so she could at least stop hiding in the park! That would be wonderful and if she could go around without having to lug a heavy sack, even better.

Her happier thoughts were swiftly trampled by Solaris’ well meaning questioning. Turning her eyes downwards towards the table, she could feel her tail twitching and the feathered ruff at her neck had slicked down again. This was, clearly, not a subject she wanted to face. But she would if only because that seemed to be the only way to get proper information about what was wrong with her. All the same, the question about having been an Eternal previously caused her to look up and give the senshi sitting across from her a sharp look. Was she not still…?

Pausing, she turned slightly and squinted, trying to get a good view of her back. The white feathered ‘wings’ were gone! She hadn’t noticed since she hadn’t seen a mirror since arriving and what reason would she have to twist herself about and examine his own a**? Still, she was a bit ragged due to rough camping. A lack of decorative wings was not definitive proof of a thing. Holding out her hand, palm up, Jihlava concentrated and pulled her henshin pen from subspace. What dropped into her hand had her skreeing softly in distress. This was not the pen she’d held for centuries. The pen resting in her open hand was the one she’d been given when she’d first become Jihlava’s senshi. Oh hell.

Still, she pushed aside a rising panic to answer Solaris’ other questions. The way they’d been asked had her suspecting that it was all tied together. And telling someone else what had happened might ease the horrible, twisting knot that she’d had in her gut for ages.

“Injured,” she began, voice harsh, “is a very mild way of putting it. Everything and everyone died. Plants, then animals, then… children. They all turned feral. Violent. Then, they seemed to quiet and just wasted away and died. We lost an entire generation and we thought it was just some strange new plague. Poppa had anyone who showed the same signs as the children quarantined. We actually thought it was working, that we’d be able to save them.”

An ugly, broken laugh tore itself from Jihlava’s throat. How ******** stupid they’d all been.

“Mum died in the second or third wave. That was when we realized it was Chaos somehow getting in and infecting everything. Nothing I did rooted it out. All the books imaginable at my fingertips and I couldn’t find the way to purge the Chaos. By the time Poppa began showing signs, hardly anyone was left.”

Her voice trailed off and her eyes seemed to stare into the distance, watching something that wasn’t there, but was all too clear in her memory. When she resumed speaking, her voice was distant, removed from the story she told.

“Poppa was the worst of the infected. He didn’t fade like everyone else had, he just got more violent. But it was an odd, shrewd sort of violence. I found him one night standing in the center of the Great Library, trying to set fire to everything. Including himself. I put down my own father to spare him the agony of burning. And I have despised myself for it since.”

Suddenly, she was back in the present and looking directly at Solaris with wide eyes.

“Do you despise me as well?”

Solaris sat in silence, keeping her hands still on the table and giving Jihlava the space to process whatever it was she needed to. Yes, the responses were somewhat confusing to her, if a bit concerning, but she only had her experiences to compare against. So she just remained quiet. She could only watch as Jihlava looked about towards the back of her uniform, then… summon her pen. If anything, she winced slightly, not having realized it had been a topic she should have approached more… delicately.

Another deep, quiet breath through her nose, and she listened as Jihlava described what she'd lived through on her world and… yep. The losses. The decline. The Chaos. She nodded here and there to confirm she was listening to the recount. All of it sounded horrific, and the notion of being unable to stop the Chaos…

Solaris sat in silence, focusing on the person in front of her instead of letting herself fall back into the pits of her own memories. She could empathize enough without them at the forefront of her mind.

She did speak up, though, when Jihlava turned her gaze from the past onto her. Her shoulders tightened at the question, wings flexing and feathers fluffing up in an immediate influx of… anger? Sadness? Disbelief? Solaris wasn't even sure what she was feeling, but she felt a p***k of heat along the bottoms of her eyes and blinked a few times before the lamp lights and fireflies could reflect off of anything. Her expression remained calm, at least--she was far better at schooling her expressions than controlling instinctive reflexes.

"No," she said gently, letting one of her partially gloved hands slide across the table towards the other woman, palm up, in a silent offer. Solaris wouldn't touch her if she didn't want the contact, but it was offered. "I don't despise you. I'm so sorry you've had to endure all of that, Jihlava, and that you're carrying that burden." Words tangled at her throat, trying to condense into sensible sentences that were reasonable to say to someone in a situation like this--but were any? Saying she wished the other had never had to experience all of this did nothing. Saying no one could despise her wasn't fair, either--people could, if they mistakenly blamed Jihlava for everything.

"You had to make an impossible choice. I would have done the same thing you did, from the sounds of things. As horrific as the situation was… you offered the best sort of mercy you could at that time."

”An impossible choice,” Jihlava repeated softly, tone doubtful. It had been the only choice she’d felt that she had at the time. She couldn’t have watched her own father immolate himself, nor could she have allowed him to burn the Library to the ground. And there was the question of if there had even been anything left of him inside that wasted shell of a body that had grinned and laughed so horribly at her as he began to burn. But up until that point, she’d still hoped to find something, a cure, a purge. Anything that would have healed what was left of her home and people. Shuddering a little at the memory, she closed her eyes for a moment and blindly groped for the outreached hand Solaris had offered, latching onto the comfort offered. “Yes, perhaps it was. It felt like it all happened so fast yet so slowly at the same time.”

As she sat, she focused on the hand holding her own and nearly broke down again. How long had it been since she’d actually felt another’s touch? She tried to remember the last time she’d hugged her parents and felt the memories skitter away, leaving only vague and clouded impressions. Had hands always been so warm?

When she opened her eyes, they seemed dull with exhaustion, some of the brittleness gone from her voice and posture.

“I never told the few people who were left what I’d done or what I’d seen. I only told them that my father had succumbed to the plague. I don’t remember much after that. I did what I could for the people I had left, but it was never enough and they all faded away. Until I felt the call to come to this place, I just existed in a haze of not… really feeling anything beyond shame and grief. Because I’d failed. I never even realized my magic had fled from me,” that last admission stabbed at her pride. How was she supposed to protect anything without her magic?

No wonder the Chaos had taken her world.

When her hand touched hers, Solaris curled her fingers tightly around Jihlava's, trying to ignore the sick pressure that coiled in her chest. She was… angry. Angry so many people had been put through such suffering and catastrophes, over and over. How many more senshi were like them? How many more worlds and peoples and animals and plants and insects and--

She breathed out slowly through her nose, nodding silently to the fact of not informing others about what'd transpired. That everything faded. She could understand living in a haze, certainly, and to hear another say I'd failed it…

It made that pressure in her chest tighten.

Hadn't she just said similar to her empty world?

"My…" Her voice was stiff when she started, needing to pause to clear her throat, frowning slightly before smoothing her expression once more. "When my world lost communication with the rest of the cosmos, we were stable for a short while. But eventually… disputes broke out, wars. Limited resources became even more limited as time went on." How many generations did she watch be born, grow up, die in useless battles, how few managed to grow old? "By the time I understood it was Chaos on Solaris causing the… problems, travel was largely impossible to sectors of the planet. I'm still trying to find the source so I can rip it out for good."

Some… venom might have edged her last few words despite herself.

Taking another breath, she squeezed Jihlava's hand, offering a small, if tired, smile. Sympathetic to the brutal reality she'd faced. "I've seen another like us rid his world of Chaos. That tells me it is possible for others if we can locate the source of it all. We can't undo the past, but we can ensure a future for our homeworlds, and honor those who were lost."

She glanced up, head bobbing slightly side to side as she considered her words and gave a small snort. "Or whatever someone feels is best, I guess. But." Her eyes refocused on Jihlava, free hand gesturing to the park they sat on. The life around them. The very creatures that hummed around the lamp light. "You need to rebuild your strength. Food, water, shelter--there's a fair bit to learn about Earth, too. There's Chaos here. Hasn't destroyed everything, but who knows when that'll change-- …well. Some with it say they fight to protect Earth. They did, recently. Whole story there, too…."

There were… a lot of stories and information to absorb, really.

The smile she offered then, though, was brighter, warmer. "There's a lot of people here who might be able to offer some different insight or perspective you hadn't considered before, when it comes to the Chaos on your world. You're here. After all of that, you're still here, Sailor Jihlava. So… you can decide what comes next in all this."

Hearing that she hadn’t been alone in her troubles loosened something in Jihlava's chest. Yes, things had been very bad on her own world, but from what Solaris told her, it sounded like the other senshi had had things just as bad, if not much worse. It was, she decided, oddly comforting to know that the galaxy had not singled her out for suffering. Not terribly helpful, but comforting. And Solaris had witnessed a senshi like them clear his world of the pervading Chaos… So it was possible. It wouldn’t bring back her people or her parents, but the thought of her world being free…

Expression shifting subtly into something more determined, Jihlava nodded once. Very well. She was in a new place with new rules. She would learn and then, perhaps, someday. She let the thought trail off. But then, her scattered mind picked up on something else Solaris had said. There was Chaos of a different sort here. And those infected with it weren’t withering and fading. That alone would have piqued her curiosity. But to hear that some of the infected claimed to be protectors?!?

“And people believe them?” she skreed softly. “It’s Chaos. It only twists and destroys. If it’s protecting anything, it’s to serve a worse purpose later on.”

It was all becoming too much for her to take in at once. Senshi leaving their homes for Earth, Chaos that apparently had spread much further than she’d ever realized and it was all tied together somehow with her lessened magic.

“It’s too much,” she whispered. “How do you keep from screaming into the void regularly?”

Taking a moment to compose herself as best as possible, Jihlava took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds. Right now, she needed to focus on the good things. And the things she could directly control. Everything else could be dealt with another time. Perhaps after she’d gotten a proper sleep and meal. Exhaling, she gave herself a full body shake and twitched her tail. She didn’t feel good, but she was starting to feel better.

It was something.

“You’re right,” she said. “I have a great deal to learn. But starting after I’ve had a chance to sleep. In the meantime, I believe speaking with a Mauvian should be my first step. And integrating myself into the culture here. Does that sound reasonable?”

Though it pained her, her world would have to wait for a little. She needed to learn and grow and discover so that, when the time came, she could purge the Chaos from her world forever.

The outburst was rational to Solaris, who gave a tired nod and smile. "I don't get the logic they try to wrap themselves in, either, but… just be mindful of it. They're called the Negaverse. We can talk more about them later." There were bigger, better priorities to be more concerned with at the moment.

But she was absolutely going to clarify what a youma was, at least.

To the softly spoken question, though..? Solaris' laugh was… dry. "I shout at things and kick rocks when I go back to my world, or I train here or there, or I find things to fight here to keep people safe, or help people if I can. Trust me, I very much scream into the void on the regular--if anyone tells you it's not normal? Don't believe them."

Jihlava seemed to collect herself, at least, and Solaris' smile brightened. One step at a time, one victory at a time. It was the only real way she knew how to keep moving forward, personally, and it at least seemed like the best place to try and help Jihlava.

"Sounds perfect to me. I can give the Mauvian I've got in mind a call--oh." She paused as she picked up her phone again, frowning somewhat as the thought hit before she looked back to Jihlava. "People keep their uh… powered, magical mantel and civilian identities separate in most cases here--it's a safety thing, since… Chaos present. Plus I'm sure there's people even aligned with Order who might be willing to sell information if they have any." She couldn't think of any specifics, but given every war seemed to have their own plague of similar types…

"I'm comfortable sharing my civilian identity with you, but it's up to you if you'd like me to know about yours. I can head out once Realta, the Mauvian, gets here, if you'd prefer? She can make sure you have my senshi number at least, once she gives you your own phone."

Nodding along, Jihlava found it comforting on some level to know that Solaris reacted as any sane, normal person would to the insanity present here. And her methods of coping were all quite good. So, she would take Solaris as an example. Certainly, at the moment, she couldn’t imagine a better one.

She even nodded in understanding and agreement when the idea of keeping both sides of her life separate to a degree was brought up. All pretty logical, though her stomach gave a twinge at the idea of anyone from the White Moon willingly selling out their own kind to Chaos. Surely… surely it wasn’t that bad here. The desire to sell out your comrades usually came from a greed for power. Or the mistaken hope that if you gave someone over, you and yours would be safe and protected. Which, as far as Jihlava had been able to ascertain from her books, had ultimately never been the case. Sighing, she reluctantly accepted the warning. She would be mindful, of course. But Solaris, she was sure, could be trusted. Therefore, she would be.

“I look forward to meeting this Realta and I am incredibly grateful to you for, well. Everything. This… Negaverse, you said? Well, they’re certainly welcome to try to get to me, though I doubt they’ll have any success. I am not in the habit of betraying my comrades or entertaining the lies of Chaos. All that to say, I see no reason why I should not trust you with my other name.”

Smiling and looking more composed, Jihlava’s neck feathers began to fluff up as she tilted her head comically to the side, studying the other senshi for a moment. Then, reaching out a hand in greeting, she said, “Once, I was called Tyta Odilen. I see no reason why I couldn’t take up that name again.”

It was strange to say a name that she hadn’t heard or said in such a long time. But there was something hopeful about it as well. She’d take it as a good omen.

Solaris withheld any comments about how corruptions were a thing, forced even, for the moment. There'd be more time for discussions and further explanations later--Jihlava already had enough on her plate, never mind whatever else now Realta would be sharing.

Her brows rose and grin grew to see the fluffing feathers and head tilt. She at least could guess the fluffing had as many meanings for Jihlava's people as they did for hers. Which…. was quite a range, but the offered hand and introduction cemented something on the not angry and hostile range.

So she took the hand in a gentle, firm grasp. "It's good to meet you then, Tyta. My name's Kyrie, I go by Kyrie Superstes here on Earth. And all the fun paperwork that comes with that," she added with a laugh, letting go of the other's hand to refocus on her phone to send off texts and locations.

The golden ball of a wisp hovered in slow bobbing circles around them, seemingly pleased with the atmosphere. There was a lot they'd covered, but far more to still go. "She'll be here shortly," Solaris said, a new sort of relief settling on her. At least she could do this to help others. She was quite okay with that.

Fin! <3