Welcome to Gaia! ::

Of course, the office would be locked. Dualite had expected it but still found herself annoyed as she paused in front of Chalcanthite’s office. The man was meticulous when it came to keeping people out of his business, and she’d found herself wanting to dig into it more and more now that there was a new human in the manor back in the city. One that looked awfully similar in features to him. There was an information lockdown when it came to it, as well as rules on what could and couldn’t be brought up in the manor for the time being. But she’d also seen him more on edge, something she hoped would lead to mistakes, ones that would let her find out more about the man she wanted so very much to just punch in the face.

Straightening up, she took a breath and let it out slowly as she walked down the hall. Door after door, office after office, there were so many, and yet she found herself too annoyed to poke into any others. It was only when something caught on her shoe a few hallways down that she paid any mind to where she was again. The notebook gave only slightly as she stepped on it, enough though that she looked down and picked the thing up. It wasn’t much to look at, old maybe a bit worn down, but curiosity caught her, and she leafed through it with only the slightest attention at first. She’d only cared because it had bothered her, but when she found that the written words made little sense, if you could even call them words, she found herself looking for where the thing came from. A puzzle, a cipher, something she was at least familiar with, even with so much of herself scattered in the fragments that remained of over a thousand years.

Tucking the notebook under her arm, she pulled out her own and wrote in it, watching as the words faded into the page before a response appeared.

Data not found, encryption not in records, keyword not in records, formatting regular and patterned. Pursue the owner for a solution?

She stared at the ink as it gave her a response she didn’t exactly like. Interacting with anyone outside of Desiree or Melpomene was a chore. But she was curious, so with a final little shut of her own notebook, she started looking around at the offices to see if any of them had writing that matched that in the notebook she had under her arm.

The fact that someone walked right into had her bristling slightly, already considering the option of bringing one of her pens from subspace as an improvised weapon, but then she thought better of that, considering that would be frowned upon due to this being someone else also in the Negaverse. She was annoyed even more as they looked up at her and demanded her current curiosity back.

Shifting her weight as she rested a hand on her hip, she held the book up and open so she could look through it again. “If it’s yours, then what does it say? I didn’t see any name in here.” Just a blurb would be enough for her to maybe figure out the formatting, whatever key to look through the rest of it.

Something about this man seemed different, slightly oppressive in the way Laurelite felt, but it was difficult for her to really know given how rarely she graced these halls with her presence. Perhaps they were like Chalcanthite, another secretive and bothersome man she unfortunately had to stick around.

“Though I guess if you don’t know what it says either, I can just keep it and figure things out myself. Ciphers are something I enjoy untangling.” Keeping her voice even, she tilted her head slightly as she looked at them.

While what he said made sense, she felt that even with it coded, there was enough repetition and spacing she could sort out things against what was written, at least with assistance, she figured. But what caught her was a name she recognized.

“Oh, you know Benitoite. The gardener.” She’d seen the man before things had happened, back with Desiree at the run-down Victorian she’d been staying in. She’d seen him again and again outside the Sharp manor, as it seemed to be a pet project for the small blonde to surround the whole place with different plants every season. It was tiresome, but from what she could tell, it seemed like Aloysius allowed it because it was easier than dealing with the blond otherwise.

Closing the notebook, she held it out, not yet giving it back but more pointing it towards him. “If you know ciphers, then I want you to look at something. It’s from… how did he call it?” Shuffling through the words that she’d heard from Desiree and Chalcanthite, it took another few moments of pause before she continued. “Off world, that’s what they call it, I believe.”

“Then I’ll give this back.” Waving it just out of reach, she sent it to subspace before flipping open her own notebook and writing down something in the standard Portian encryption. The page bloomed black with ink, that manic and unintelligible scrawl of cipher that still seemed to cling to her even when she was otherwise deeply occupied with a project or book.

Tilting it forward for him to see, she didn’t quite hand it to him but implored him to look.

At another person’s touch, the words warbled for a moment, almost as if they were debating whether to fade or not. But when the book wasn’t pulled from Dualite’s grasp, the text remained almost begrudgingly.

“I can’t read it, but its repetition makes it seem like it’s one single sentence repeated over and over.” Which meant it would be harder to solve without additional context. Trailing a finger over the text, she frowned and tapped the page twice to make the ink fade once more.

“None of my records have a cipher relating to it, though Earth has ciphers that I’ve never experienced.” There were interesting devices that she’d read about that helped facilitate mass production of ciphers, though she didn’t exactly like the fact that it wasn’t done by hand in the same way she knew.

But the way it seemed to eat at him satisfied her; at least it meant she wasn’t the only one haunted by this now. Tucking her own notebook away, she pulled his back out and offered it back to him. “So what kind of cipher is yours?”

Looking back towards the door he’d come from, she nodded towards it as she fiddled with the ring on her finger. As she did, for a moment the brown hair and tan complexion she had seemed to muddle and fade before settling back into place, almost as if a stone had been dropped in a body of water.

“I can write it down for you; nobody can access this but me otherwise.” The reason why wasn’t as clear to her as other things. But she knew when she used the thing she could feel connected to it, almost as if the words being written were pulled from her starseed’s memories. It was useful enough, though she loathed the idea that someone might take it from her.
“Perhaps in your office? As for when I obtained it, I can’t tell you.” Though she didn’t really care if he knew, it was more that she couldn’t place anything in any sort of timeframe still. The amount of time she’d been around meant nothing given the fact that each flash of memory had no context as to when it had happened. The gaps were so large that she just saw things for what they were in the instant, not in the grand scheme of it all. It was good enough, even if she felt that rage picking up at the mention of her homeworld.

“A personal cipher, interesting. I had worked on one, though I find it difficult to apply to the language here. There are… so many things that seem so situational in the language here.” It had been trial and error for her to learn context and history through the books Desiree had left her. Even now, she found most of it tiresome. It was better than being bothered by Chalcanthite and his incessant questions over what she remembered from the past thousand years. The questions had become more pointed, specifying a relation to Neptune and a certain knight named Hamelin, neither of which she particularly cared to answer.

“Dualite is what I’m called, though perhaps the record might still have Portia included.” She’d only momentarily looked over the intelligence database and found all the listings of other senshi and knights more bothersome than useful. Whether or not someone was dangerous or likely to join didn’t matter to her. At least with the ring and its glamour, she wouldn’t be bothered by anyone else who might remember her and seek knowledge again.

She nodded just once and followed him inside, only glancing at the odd metal hand for a moment. She’d seen information about things called prosthetics in a book though she felt it might be vanity that led to the man using a glamor to cover it up outside of these offices. Idly she considered he might hide it to avoid questions or notice, but she still had a poor opinion of others who hid things.

Standing in his office, she took a moment to look around as he spoke, not lingering too long on anything just yet as she decided if she wanted to ask questions about anything particular or not.

“It would seem you bumped into the right person then, cryptography is what I’m best at.” Though as she thought about their mention of glamor, she thought to check the watch Desiree had given her. Time was still foreign to her, its flow and passage going completely unnoticed by her mind and body. It was frustrating having to rely on something to keep track, even more so as she noticed the timer only had mere seconds before it would beep.

With a sign, she turned back to face him as the alarm went off, the magic fading for the day in the ring. Had it really been a few hours? Time was frustratingly fickle.

“Close the door, if you please.” Not that she cared if people here saw her exactly, she just didn’t feel like answering questions from more than one person right now. It was terribly annoying, something that made her prickle when the whole reason she was here was because she wanted to be left alone.

“Zinkenite, that seems familiar. If you know Benitoite, does that mean you know Chalcanthite as well?” Her voice got a bit sharp at the mention of the second general’s name. Her distaste was clear as she crossed her arms and waited for a response.

A dead end it seemed, at least on finding out more about Chalcanthite, so for now she wrote it off and took the offered seat. “No need to lock it.” She was tired of locked doors for the day.

Looking over the stack of notebooks, she took a moment to consider both his question and the fact that he wasn’t pushing for an answer. Something she appreciated from Laurelite as well when she’d met them. “I find bothersome questions annoying; I’ve had enough of that over the millennia.” It was simple, short, and a good enough answer as she leaned forward and looked for scrap paper. Already, she had one of her fountain pens pulled out from subspace in preparation for transcribing things.

“Chalcanthite is officially the one I report to, but I find his questioning exhausting.” She wouldn’t mention that she disliked how evasive he was when questions were asked about his past and factors regarding the missions she’d been enlisted in. More so, why did he deem it necessary to actually do something that could be construed as helpful when he’d pulled her and Ako back from the attacking youma in the Rift?

“I assume you hide things for a similar reason?” Nodding towards his arm momentarily.

“Understandable,” she said plainly. It was enough of an answer for her for the time being and now that there was something to write in, she flipped it open and started writing. Instead of it being as manic and scrawled as it appeared when brought up in her own notebook, this time it was done neatly and less chaotically. Though it wasn’t in English, which she understood to be the main language used in this city and apparently across quite a bit of this planet.

Looking up, eleven as she continued to write without looking at the page, she thought for a moment before responding. “Desiree found me; Chalcanthite simply facilitated my meeting with Laurelite. I prefer her over him.” Which meant the credit would be seen incorrectly at first glance, and she still prickled over that fact as well.

“Perhaps you should talk with him; I find him vexing.” It was at this point she’d begun to put together that the man was probably higher up the chain of command, if only considering the fact they had been around longer. Finishing her writing, she slid the book back towards him.

“It’s not in Portian; that’s all I know, well, not in English either, I assume as well.” Tucking her fountain pen back away, she sighed at the mention of quid pro quo. “I do what’s expected of me, but that doesn’t mean I want to be pestered. What is it they say… I have a right to privacy?” It was something that she liked the sound of, and honestly, she had been harassed less by people since assuming her current position. It was only by happenstance that someone had come to her home, though it was a normal human, which was less bothersome than someone who knew that she knew things.