[001 ☿] Normal Human Dreams

[waterfell]

It's a lovely day at the local park. People are nibbling at ice cream, children are running and laughing, it could be any park anywhere though the people, the kana on a few signs, and the cityscape suggest Japan; specifically, Tokyo

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[guiltapalooza]

This isn't a specific spell that she's practiced - there's no rote Latin to recite - there's no guarantee that it'll work. There's just Willow, her knowledge of Roman mythology, and her power. But she has a lot of power.

"Juppiter Tonans," she calls, louder, "bringer of cosmic justice, right the wrongs here, purge this plane of the pollution of the dead!" It was Jupiter she'd called on after all, though in the aspect of the deity and not the planet, so Mercury wasn't wrong in expecting lightning. It cracked down from the sky and took out a good portion of the attacking shades, flickering across the lake and the flattened grass in stark contrast of white and black. Not the total destruction she was going for, but it would work. It was a lot to expect from an unpracticed spell when her magic was already funked.

Which, why had this spell even worked, exactly? The others hadn't. Willow let that thought drift to the back of her mind to be worked at later and climbed to her feet, one hand on the rock for balance. "I don't think I can do anything else," she called to her impromptu ally. "Can you get the rest or are we running?"

[waterfell]

The senshi did not take their names solely for the planets. They were once worshiped as goddesses, the immortal beings of the Silver Millenium who watched over Earth's evolution.

"I never run!" Mercury calls out to Willow, deciding to forget the ever-increasing number of questions for now. "Let's take them out."

She crossed her hands in front of herself, and suddenly ice and hail filled the skies along with Jupiter's lightning, forcing Mercury to confess to herself that the combined attacks had always been much more powerful, more even than the sum of their parts.

Well, better Willow than Jupiter, at least.

[guiltapalooza]

She never runs. Well, kudos for her. Willow was personally a fan of running when it looked like she was about to get consumed by a black death cloud, or whatever was going on here, but some people were just hero types. She was more of the sidekick type, at least until lately.

Ongoing internal monologue aside, it wasn't too much longer before the rest of them were disposed of. Willow peeked around her hiding place to check, wary from experience of surprise last minute attacks, and eventually came out into the open. She shook the dirt and grass off her skirt and did a double take now that she had a better, less crazily-dodging-behind-a-boulder glance at Mercury.

"Not that I mean to sound ungrateful or anything, but you... don't look like--" or rather, dress like-- "anyone I've ever seen in Sunnydale. Who are you, exactly?" Did she miss a convention somewhere? A convention of... cosplaying, demon-fighting magic-users? Scarily enough, it was looking likely.

omg i love willow XD XD XD <333

[waterfell]

Blue hair.
Short skirted sailor-type uniform.

Yeah, definitely convention type.

However, the girl tossed her head proudly and gave what apparently passed for a formal introduction. "The soldier of Water and Knowledge, Mercury."

FFFFF look it's plausible to her!

[guiltapalooza]

Willow sighed. "I'll buy it. I'm Willow, not a soldier of anything. Just a witch.

"You said those things were lemures, like from Roman myth?" she went on, clarifying the particulars. She pushed some hair over her shoulder and took a few steps, trying to get a better view around and see if there were any remains left behind. It was strictly from a threat assessment standpoint and not an academic one. "I figured Jupiter would be the god of choice, since his priests ritually cleansed lemures from their temples, so it'd follow that he'd be kinda testy with them." Yes, this is the sort of thing she just happens to know. Long sleepless nights spend researching myriad demonic problems left her with a strange knowledge base.

She's epic. I'm taking her home.

[waterfell]

"I don't have any reason to like Jupiter," Mercury says rather bluntly. "However, you and I fighting together for now worked pretty well."

And, to be honest, a part of the Soldier of Knowledge appreciated Willow's quick thinking. No wonder the spells had been so effective. Versatile, too.

I'm flattered XDD I do think she's pretty epic, though :3

[guiltapalooza]

"We took care of them pretty quick," she agrees, nodding. Ordinarily Willow wouldn't be so circumspect, but there was a part of her mind that was always thinking of Buffy, now. Of how she was in hell and it was Willow's responsibility to save her.

The fact that this wasn't true didn't matter: she didn't know that, after all. She forcibly discarded the thought and made herself focus. "Anyway, I'm not a huge Jupiter fan, it was just convenient. I call on whoever I need for the task. It's weird, though. My magic is being funny."

<3 She isss

[waterfell]

"Funny?" Mercury repeated. She glanced away, looking thoughtful. "If it was only right now, it may be that the existence of Jupiter's reincarnation made it difficult for someone else to call on the same types of power."

This world, after all, was very different. There were only a handful of people with power. Adding more power to the mix, so to speak, perhaps that had simply unbalanced things for Willow.

[guiltapalooza]

There's a short pause. "A reincarnation," she says slowly. "So you being named Mercury isn't a coincidence? There's a whole planetary-- theme?"

Willow adjusts fast to new rules, particularly since other dimensions are documented fact where she comes from. Not well known documented fact, but known to her, and something she has some small experience with. The concept itself isn't about to phase her, she's just... not quite there yet. Right now, it all seems slightly weird.

[waterfell]

"Mercury is what stays constant," she confirms. Some day, Mizuno Ami will probably die. Mercury will not. She will live on in a new incarnation, just like there was a past life, too.

[guiltapalooza]

"Can I have a little more explanation here, or is this a trade secret?"

It's rote by now to gather as much info as she can about anything mystical that she comes across. Willow can't help but try to anticipate when the random things she runs across end up being hugely important.

[waterfell]

"It'd be easiest to understand it as reincarnation." She didn't mind talking about these things as Mercury; but it struck her that it was very rare for her to stick around like this. Or for the victims of a battle to be able to defend themselves well enough to still be around to talk to.

[guiltapalooza]

It's a Scooby thing. Bust some bad guys, stand around and hash out your melodramatic lives afterward. Willow was definitely at home with it.

"Okay, but a reincarnation of what, exactly? I'm trying to... understand."

[waterfell]

Mercury smiled faintly. "Wanting to understand is a good first step," she acknowledges. "The fault is mine. I'm not used to speaking about it with humans." Willow, she still assumed, was human.

"I'm the reincarnation of Mercury, an immortal being who lived watching over Earth a long time ago." She neatly cuts out the Moon Kingdom from her story; she refuses to acknowledge any tie to them now. "That planet was also my home."

[guiltapalooza]

Willow is in fact fully human, and she's been called that as a term of address before, so she doesn't take any offense to it. She does raise a skeptical eyebrow, but the whole thing seems off to her - not just what Mercury's saying, but the surroundings, the talk with Angel, Anya mentioning that the Magic Box customers didn't know about magic...

"You're doing fine, I've just never heard of this," she admits finally, shifting her weight in place as she thinks. "There's been some strange things happening lately. People not knowing things they should know, my magic doing its-- thing... and usually I'm pretty knowledgeable on all things mystical, but suddenly not so much. So I get this sense that something's going on, and I want to get to the bottom of it. I'm just not sure how."

[waterfell]

She'd be right there with Willow if it was the same. But in her world... Mercury shakes her head. "People weren't meant to know of our existence. It's possible we're hidden in your world, or that we don't exist there at all."

She was very experienced with dimensional travel, thanks to the nexus - although it usually made her associate with worlds connected to the senshi. If this was truly one with no senshi, she liked it that would be worth researching.

"I sort of want to know, don't you?"