voidtreckermods: (voidtrain)
VoidTrecker Express Mods ([personal profile] voidtreckermods) wrote in [community profile] voidtreckerexpress2021-02-01 06:00 am

A New Platform [Intro Post February]

On the Train

Three days after the Voidtreckers return to the void after their adventures on the biosphere world, they are awoken by a familiar announcement.

"Good morning passengers, it is day Sixteen of the month of Jelly. Points have been updated on the system."

They have indeed, and everyone can spend the morning shopping. Those who have been on the train for a while will also be expecting the second announcement that comes a few hours later.

"Shortly arriving into a designated void platform. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one." A lurch and a jolt and the windows fill with the fog that means they are at a platform. The fog seems thicker than usual and as they step out onto the platform they will find it is cold, very cold. Icy fog sticks to their clothing, makes it hard to see very far; the atmosphere is dark and gloomy.

As usual the first to leave the train notice nothing as they walk silently, rucksacks on their backs, towards the barriers: Alexis Rhodes, Elfnein, Itsuki Myoudouin, Ken Ichijouji, MT, Neku Sakuraba, Nike Lemercier, Noctis Lucis Caelum, Rainbow Dash, Rei Saotome, Taichi Yagami, Tsubomi Hanasaki, Yuri Tsukikage and Zechs Merquise all pass through the platform, not looking back before they disappear through the barriers and into the fog beyond.

But on the platform itself there are new faces. Wearing hoodies in all four colours, in various states of confusion.

For New Passengers

At first all they can see is steam, billowing around them as they come to their senses. As their eyes adjust, they will see they are on a platform, glass and dark stone rising in sturdy arches around them. Behind them is a set of barriers, and in front of them is a single track extending both ways into thick fog.

They are standing, in clothes that are not their own and a style they might not even recognise. They are carrying a rucksack on their back. For a moment it seems to just be them, alone in the white haze; then the steam begins to fade and they realise they aren’t alone.

The platform is not large with sixteen figures scattered around, all facing the tracks, all dressed in cargo trousers and hoodies. To both the left and right, tracks disappear into the mist. Then there is a roaring sound and out of the fog arrives a train. Jet black with gold writing on the side. The Voidtrecker Express. There is a hiss as the doors slide open and out step a strange assortment of people. Some are human, some are less so. Most are wearing the same hoodie in one of the four colours, red, orange, blue and purple, though some are sporting different clothes in a variety of styles.

The Train

After a short time, the doors hiss open again. Those from the train may encourage those on the platform to board. It’s not like there's anywhere else to go and even if there was, you feel a pull. A need to board, a feeling that staying on the platform would lead to something terrible. If that is not enough, there are plenty of people on the platform now, to encourage them onto the train.

Each ICP shows the same message and next to the screens there are stacks of leaflets written by those on the train, with further information (see
'Publications'). The store rooms have been restocked with fresh ingredients, including several crates of avocados, the ingredient of the month of Jelly, as well as all sundries.

For passengers that have bought items, these are also scattered around the luggage carriage in various suitcases and bags.

New passengers will find their ticket allows them into their cabins. They may need to negotiate for beds, especially if they want a top bunk!

Room is tight but there are storage cubbies at the head of each bed, beds fold up and the bottom bunks double as benches for the small table. There is storage under those benches full of spare blankets and pillows.

Departure

A second horn sounds to encourage any stragglers braving the freezing fog, and the doors slide shut. Veteran passengers know what will happen next, but they may wish to brief their new companions.

The train sets off, the fog obscuring the view again as it picks up speed.

"Welcome aboard, passengers of the Voidtrecker Express." A female-coded artificial sounding voice echoes throughout the train. "Please take the time to read the passenger information displayed on the Information and Communication points and familiarise yourself with the layout and emergency exits."

The train begins to tilt, leaving the ground and rising up into the fog-filled sky.

"Entrance into Voidspace imminent. New passengers are advised to remain seated. Entry into Voidspace in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

A shudder, a jolt, a lurch to the left. A flash of light, colourful and blinding. As quick as it happens it is done. The train seems to steady itself. The fog from the windows is gone now, replaced with a kaleidoscope of ever-changing colours.

Welcome to the Void!
azrthmtrnznthos: (blah)

[personal profile] azrthmtrnznthos 2021-03-05 12:06 am (UTC)(link)
"I'm Raven." A pause. "I've been here for a while now. Some people come and go quickly, others stay. We haven't figured out the how or why, yet."
achickenformylove: (mdzs 1)

Sure

[personal profile] achickenformylove 2021-03-05 02:18 am (UTC)(link)
"Of course. I don't wish to keep you."
theimpatientone: (Default)

[personal profile] theimpatientone 2021-03-05 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
Merwen smiles, sympathetically. "Sometimes we don't understand why we do what we do," she says. "I believe that's human, too."

She reaches over to pat Alice's arm reassuringly, to show she's not bothered. She is bothered, actually, but she also tries not to make a habit of blaming people for the sicknesses they suffer.
theimpatientone: (Default)

[personal profile] theimpatientone 2021-03-05 02:34 am (UTC)(link)
Merwen is puzzled for a moment, because she's not quite sure how to put that more clearly. Slowly, she tries, "The lifeshapers have put the words of stories and history into the chromosomes of the clickflies, and when they breed, they pass it on to their children. If you know how to share speech with them, then you can ask one to share it with you, or you can ask one to record your words for you and then send it to share with a sister on another raft." She shrugs a little, at a loss. "It isn't the only place we keep our history, of course, but the clickflies are simple, even for a child learning to read."
foxyou: (looks away)

[personal profile] foxyou 2021-03-05 04:12 am (UTC)(link)
.............

He casts her a glance out of the corner of his eye...which then stretches into something more like a long look, before he turns awkwardly away again.

"Thank you for the kind offer, Miss Madoka. I...will remember your words." But will he act on them? The fact she offered is kind of embarrassingly touching, so he's a little torn between wanting to make sure she never hears any of his problems ever and wanting to mark her down as someone he can go to when he needs a break from people. But that'd also be kind of embarrassing?

"...The assistance may be unnecessary, but I appreciate it nonetheless." Yes good, a nice neutral response.
swansongs: (To what I said)

[personal profile] swansongs 2021-03-05 04:27 am (UTC)(link)
"You've got a way better memory for this stuff than I do," Dyme said with a bit of a laugh. "After a while, everything starts blurring together. Though I still dislike the first mission I was ever on. I had no idea what I was doing." It hadn't been that bad, at least not for him, but he knew it'd probably been worse for others.
mynameisallen: (182)

[personal profile] mynameisallen 2021-03-05 08:29 am (UTC)(link)
"Then I hope you'd be able to find a way for people to not be curious." He still wouldn't get why people would want to be.

"But ah, I should leave you to what you were doing."
goingthroughaphase: (pic#13971828)

[personal profile] goingthroughaphase 2021-03-05 09:40 am (UTC)(link)
Kitty nodded. "Yeah, I knew him." She couldn't say that they had been close, but they had been friendly enough. And while he had mentioned Azula a few times, including one about needing to fight her, she didn't know all the details about it.

"He hadn't been here too long before he left, but he was a nice enough guy."
blitzcheer: (hand onnnn HIP!!!!)

[personal profile] blitzcheer 2021-03-05 02:35 pm (UTC)(link)
"Which mission was that one?" Tidus asks, curious. He's heard a few things about the previous ones, but only really remembers something about a snow mission, and...

Oh. His voice brightens. "You do the space one?"
irrationally: (we've not sung before)

[personal profile] irrationally 2021-03-05 05:35 pm (UTC)(link)
.. Common ground, huh.

Azula may not be very forthcoming, but on the other hand, it's not like there can be a whole lot of different kinds of common ground, considering the topics Alice has just been talking about. Sure, there are still some varying possibilities, but it's still a relatively narrow scope. Alice mostly figures that Azula must have been locked up somewhere too, or gotten threatened to be locked up, especially if she seems to like the idea of breaking free so much.

Her train of thought is interrupted by the other's question though, which makes Alice pull her shoulders up into a shrug.

"First it was because of my money."

That much had been obvious. Maybe not back when she was younger, but Alice is mature enough to understand it now.

"But.. at this point? They're just afraid of me. And I guess they are right to feel that way."
badassfreakingoverlord: (damn)

[personal profile] badassfreakingoverlord 2021-03-05 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Ugh, of course. "And she was a terrible example, with her coffee-drinking and overworking. Obviously I need to teach you a more balanced life."
firewalled: (get up get out and get done)

[personal profile] firewalled 2021-03-05 07:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"It... it would, yeah."

Geez, did a cold wind blow through here, or was it just him? He was just trying to help her out, though maybe he hadn't worded it in the most polite way. That's... unfortunately a problem with him.

"Sure thing. This basically starts right here. We're right by an ICP, which is like a communicator of some sort. It lets you send voice or video to any other train cars that have one of these. Unfortunately, you can't record messages for later, and you can't send them privately to one person."
xue_yang: (Smirky)

[personal profile] xue_yang 2021-03-05 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
"I look forward to seeing what kind of drunk you become." The kind that either passes out immediately, the kind that has way too much energy or the drunks that become overly talkative.

He'll just have to drink twice as much so that his own drunken level doesn't get too far behind.
10billionpercent: (Sentimental)

[personal profile] 10billionpercent 2021-03-06 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
He chuckled and pointedly poured himself another round, giving Xue Yang a look. "Well let's find out."

He would predict he might be talkative, he usually was after all.
bodyoftheseus: (math meme)

[personal profile] bodyoftheseus 2021-03-06 04:00 am (UTC)(link)
V listened to what Otoha had to say, then took a moment to consider it. When he spoke again it's slowly as he tried to figure out how to better word what he was asking, but he couldn't seem to find anything elegant.

"I don't mean to sound insensitive or stupid, but why does keeping them around matter? Why work so hard at keeping them alive?"
subcircuits: (interface)

[personal profile] subcircuits 2021-03-06 04:04 am (UTC)(link)
It's utility will end up being directly proportionate to the number of people who make the effort to learn it, but. Devero's going to do what he can on that aspect.

"Sounds good," Devero says. He reaches out and claps Yoite on the shoulder (gently). "Come find me when things have quieted down some and I'll show you how to use the books like these, all right?"
swansongs: (Said a million things but now I know)

[personal profile] swansongs 2021-03-06 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, it was the space one. On a space station, and there was a war going on. Everybody was getting hurt and I didn't know how to help." And he knew it was kind of selfish to complain when he hadn't gotten hurt, but he'd wanted to be able to do something to help.
bakegarasu: (the city is at war)

[personal profile] bakegarasu 2021-03-06 06:00 am (UTC)(link)
Oh boy. How to put this... "They're as much people as anyone else. If they're not hurting anyone there's no point in wiping them out. And from what I've been told... it'd just make things hollow. A city without anything to believe in just seems to be going through the motions. It's... right, more things that sound bullshit."

Part of him is yelling that this is stupid, but also he can turn into an armored warrior and a car and a jet so what the fuck ever. "D'you know what 'qi' is?"
myblueskies: (scared tears)

[personal profile] myblueskies 2021-03-06 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
"She wasn't!"

He turned to him, tears filling his eyes. "She wasn't a terrible example!"

She had taught him so many things, had been a good teacher, a great god. Zetta might be his god now but he wasn't about to let him say such terrible things!
weifinder: (hurting | i gotta keep moving)

ARTEMIS YOU CAN IGNORE THIS BUT I WANTED TO GET IT TO YOU STILL

[personal profile] weifinder 2021-03-06 09:22 am (UTC)(link)
He stares at her and is torn in so many directions at once. To smile, which given he's teary eyed, and wants to cry for an entirely different reason now, is almost a feat in and of itself. Should he laugh? Cry and laugh? This is beyond any expectation, because unlike Xue Yang, unlike Meng Yao, Wen Qing is someone he's dearly, deeply missed; someone else whose death was so incredibly unfair, her life and talent rare flames suffocated ruthlessly far too soon.

He's going to end up stabbed for this. Part of him relishes the thought, but it's also the only thing he can think, when she is touching his face, when she's apologising for not having her sacrifice, the Wens sacrifice, be enough, until he doesn't have to think about it any more.

He's a terrible hugger. He knows this about himself. He still steps forward and tries to squash her in a hug, because the catch in his throat and the burn at his eyes is a different sort of emotion than his blind panic from earlier. "I'm sorry," he says in turn, and he does seem to breathe that out as a half-choked sob trying, desperately, to sound more like a laugh, "I'm so sorry that no one was willing to let any of us live."

Because he understands her trying. He understands it, and hates it, because he understands it. And he's sorrier that their series of sacrifices amounted to ashes on the wind, and a missing body, and pain that echoed down the generations, along with so few beautiful things, but oh, there had been those too. A-Yuan living, Wen Ning surviving even in that horrible puppet-forced state. A future for them, if only them. Another cleaning of the ranks, if it changed nothing of the past. "And thank you," he says, and he's aware he's crying, voice tight, "For having tried. Even if I'm mad you went!"

He's not. He's sad, and that anger which had been tied into his fear of loss has already been morphed into later stages of grief, had been the implacability of his features when he sat on the roof and listened to Jin Guangshan justify his ruthlessness on the back of some two dozen hardworking people, with only two cultivators, one a noncombatant, among them. Everything else he's learned, the machinations, the way his loss of control was not only his doing, but egged on further by one man's shadow games for power, all of that doesn't need saying right now.

... And he's still sure, somehow, he's about to get needled, and he can't imagine anything more weirdly reassuring in all this metal encased world.
Edited 2021-03-06 09:24 (UTC)
luckydragonsfoot: (he ran into my fist 12 times honest offi)

i'm so glad that's the icon omg

[personal profile] luckydragonsfoot 2021-03-06 10:10 am (UTC)(link)
"Yup!" Ah- Oh dear though. He follows after, wincing. "...er, 'no' t' the attendants though. Place 's self-serve. Which works fine 'nough, since th' importan' stuff like heatin' an' such is automatic, but we ain't gettin anyone t' massage our backs unless someone volunteers. An' at tha' point, I'm worried about 'professional'." It's not really hard to see that Katsuya's standards are typically low.

A shrug. "Eh, can't say I really got tha' kinda treatment at home anyway though. Nice 'nough t' just be able t' hit th' tub an' sauna withou' havin' to really travel, y'know?" It's a thing Azula might actually be able to relate to, sort of. While attendants and luxury are certainly a thing she probably got, a spa is still going to be some distance from the palace bedroom compared to the carriages on the train.

For that matter, they definitely didn't have automation.
weifinder: (stare | place to be)

[personal profile] weifinder 2021-03-06 10:34 am (UTC)(link)
Wei Wuxian knows, in that moment, he's going to be stir crazy if he doesn't find ways to be productive by the time they reach the next platform. Looking faintly like he's just had a bug fly down his throat, he turns a touch... desperate... look on Lan Xichen.

"Zewu-Jun, please tell me you're around to talk to. Or chatter at? I'm the least restive person on this vessel," he's not, there's another him, there are plenty of personalities which are equally disinclined toward confinement, but still, "Or I'm about to be if I can't do anything but bounce off the walls in the meantime. What do people do as it travels?"

Mediate? He'll fall asleep trying, but that's fine. Read? He enjoys reading, but how much time can he spend like that? Train? Hah, some things are a jest in and of themselves. Train others? Maybe if anyone wants to set up in archery. That's one skill not affected by a lack of a certain qi backing. How would there even be room... he looks despondently toward the Voidtrekker Express. "This is definitely not the kind of travel my and Lil' Apple were appreciating just yesterday afternoon."
weifinder: (concern | and you know)

[personal profile] weifinder 2021-03-06 10:34 am (UTC)(link)
None of what she describes is familiar, but it does make sense to a degree. The supplies were apparently one of those inexplicable circumstances of replenishment, and after he'd found not a smoker, but instead a cold box, he could understand how once in two weeks was enough to keep the whole of the train from starving or sitting around on spoiled goods.

Why he can remember that in all the deluge of information shoved at him was anyone's guess.

"You can harvest as soon as it's grown?" It's nothing quite like lotus blossoms, but he wants to know, regardless. Something concrete to focus on, and a bit nippy, in a fun, don't play bite-me-if-you-dare when you're tired way.

"Is that all that usual? Ending up with food supplies people agree as a group can't be... eaten?" Is there that much of an excess at times? It's reassuring if so, considering circumstances of his own he's lived through.
tactlesstantei: (happiness)

[personal profile] tactlesstantei 2021-03-06 10:35 am (UTC)(link)
Well you know more than me about what to get people, so I probably won’t be much help.

[She doesn’t even know who all is getting gifted, let alone anything about Pokemon, so she has no way to help at the moment.]

Anyway, I came here since I bought my phone back, so I need to find it. Any chance you saw a small package that might be it?
luckydragonsfoot: (nyh-)

[personal profile] luckydragonsfoot 2021-03-06 12:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Aw man, tha' ain't helpful at all...

[But hey. Looking away from the screen and shrugging, he starts to resign himself to a search.] But I guess I don' have anythin' better to do. I c-

[He pauses- eyes glazing over for a brief second- and then automatically jabs his thumb in a particular direction.] ...Down tha' way, past th' brown suitcase. I don' ev'n know why we got suitcases in there, I don' think anyone owns 'm, but it's there.

Yer phone though?

[Don't ask about the glaze moment it's fine.]