voidtreckermods: (voidtrain)
VoidTrecker Express Mods ([personal profile] voidtreckermods) wrote in [community profile] voidtreckerexpress2021-04-01 06:00 am

A New Platform [Intro Post April]

On the Train

Once again passengers are awoken by the morning announcement.

"Good morning passengers, it is day Sixteen of the month of Kazoo. 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 after lunch. A lunch that may be a bit sparse: between the big eaters and the stress bakers, the stores have been stretched thin the last two weeks.

"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 steam is thin, with blue skies seen above. The sun shines brightly down, warm light pooling on the platform.

As usual the first to leave the train notice nothing as they walk silently, rucksacks on their backs, towards the barriers: Cassie Lang, Glorfindel, Jessie Custer, Olivia, Paddra Nsu-Yeul, S’reee, Thea Queen, Wei Wuxian.

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, open, with a vine-covered wall stretching high either side of the barrier. 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, and seems smaller with eighteen 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.

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 doors close behind them.

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 plenty more tomatoes.

For passengers that have bought items, these are also scattered around the luggage carriage in various suitcases and bags. There is a suitcase stocked with spare wash kit items, for those who are running low as well as a box labelled Do Not Use Yet that is full of small 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 who are making the most of the sunshine. 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!
knifewithnoname: (worry)

[personal profile] knifewithnoname 2021-04-10 11:20 am (UTC)(link)
"We will be dealing with that if it do be happening."

She's in the emptiness. Emotion doesn't enter her voice. She keeps it steady.

"There do be being people with water magic. We do be having many people with magic and they did be stopping an entire demon army. So I do be thinking they can be handling a fire."
melodiouspacifist: (Nort Oh yeah got carried away)

[personal profile] melodiouspacifist 2021-04-10 11:23 am (UTC)(link)
"I play sitar. Uh, if you've seen me do anything, it's probably that. I haven't listened to much music on this thing and most of what I learned and the places where I went it was more instrumental than anything." He could remember all the different songs he heard, he could play songs he heard. He had an excellent ear for that sort of thing.
fennu: (UNTAMED-003)

[personal profile] fennu 2021-04-10 11:24 am (UTC)(link)
"So you are a trained warrior who fights to protect a friend and you think 'that's all'?" Jiang Cheng raises his eyebrow, but he lets the matter drop.

It's not his fight, is it? Not when there's something else capturing his interest.

"What is a photographer?"
knifewithnoname: (blank)

[personal profile] knifewithnoname 2021-04-10 11:24 am (UTC)(link)
Widows. Children they trained. To be assassins and spies.

They trained children to be assassins and spies.

They trained children... Like her. Sort of. She had never learned to dance. But...

They were like her guardians. Good kids... They thought them good.

She just stared at them, lost, deep in thought as she tried to take in that information.
melodiouspacifist: (So Very Interested)

[personal profile] melodiouspacifist 2021-04-10 11:25 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah!" Demyx said with a smile as he lifted it up and discarded the paper, swinging around to sit down and strum it lightly. It wouldn't sound like a guitar of course, being that it wasn't one, but the note reverberated easily. He began to tune it.

"It's also a weapon." He admitted, mostly because people had seen me fighting. "This one's lighter than my usual one. Hits harder."
fennu: (JC8)

[personal profile] fennu 2021-04-10 11:38 am (UTC)(link)
Jiang Cheng frowns, shaking his head.

"Then it is very different. Where I am from we're trained since we are young to cultivate, to grow our strength, to fight with the martial arts. When we are old enough and skilled enough we choose our own blade and name it, to keep it as a companion for life."

Jiang Cheng's hand flexes; he feels the loss of Sandu almost painfully right now.

"The people from my world are used to fighting."
mtsilver_conquor: (Unsure of this path)

[personal profile] mtsilver_conquor 2021-04-10 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)
"You mean Senku? Trust me, if he says it's happening, it'll be happening. No matter what, he's a good person and he's 100% committed to getting us all home without things going sideways." She sounds 1000% sure in that belief. "If it does go sideways, that's out of our control."

For all she says that though, there's a small frown at the lie to kids part. "I... I understand not wanting kids to be upset and they'd have no reason to know fairy rules, yet... surely there's a better way to deal with it?"

She was told the truth; that each tooth lost was a step closer to being mature enough for her Journey.
Edited 2021-04-10 13:05 (UTC)
mtsilver_conquor: (headscratch)

[personal profile] mtsilver_conquor 2021-04-10 01:16 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh, aboutish my height at her shoulder," Eva says with a shrug before turning serious as she does some mental calculations.

Yes, she counts on her fingers a bit. She's trained so many pokemon of the years that sometimes it's hard to recall off the top of her head.

"Well, if I factor in the training, about seven years, though one year of that was probation due to the regs around owning the species -and trust me, there's a lot. P'tera are predators through and through- then I had to register her. And that's not counting the eight hundred page book that came with her when I picked her up from the Revival Labs on Guren."

Looking after her kabutops is easier. Just feed it fish. "I had to read all of it. The book that is."
Edited 2021-04-10 13:17 (UTC)
mtsilver_conquor: (Your kidding me right?)

[personal profile] mtsilver_conquor 2021-04-10 01:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Eva honestly wants to know why religion and science can't get along. For all the beliefs she has, she very much knows one is facts and one is a matter of belief. Every often those facts will prove belief right. Or, at the very least, point the way for newer understandings.

'Atheists' does get a nose a wrinkle though, and he'd very much pick up on an 'ugh' feeling. Though, given the world Eva comes from, with very real gods, it's probably no surprise.

"Let me guess, your religion-people thought he was wrong?"

She has to actively bite down on the why.
yondu: (0 2 2)

[personal profile] yondu 2021-04-10 01:46 pm (UTC)(link)
"Predator, huh? Hell, I come from a species of hunters. Now, I weren't so much raised by 'em, but I know enough that I know they'd love such a thing."

Did Centauri have anything that big? Nobody ever mentioned it to him, and he was too little to remember much more than trees and song before he was taken off-world.
zombiemessiah: (m07)

[personal profile] zombiemessiah 2021-04-10 02:00 pm (UTC)(link)
"Most kids are lucky if they even have a pillow anymore, so I don't think if fairies were around? They'd have all that much to worry about anymore. And some of them don't even have the chance to grow up."

And he does actually sound a little sad about that. As much as he can drive himself to not care in a moment, in other moments it wells up in him. Especially as he's in the proximity of something leaking its emotions right into him.

He used to be so hateful, so indifferent. He is capable of it, still, but he slips more and more often.

But he can't give the wrong impression. "I'd still make a Bug-Out Bag, one guy that's super determined to do the right thing can be fucked over by the ten other guys ready to spoil the party."
irrationally: (i don't know what is real)

[personal profile] irrationally 2021-04-10 02:12 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a good thing that he lets them out of the balls like that, otherwise Alice would still have no idea what kind of creatures he was refering to. But with them out like this, Alice can just stare at them with her own eyes - even in her current state, still kind of panicked.

"Is it.. Is it really okay to do so?"

Usually she wouldn't be this worried about it, this insecure. She'd just go for it. But everything feels more unsure in this world that may be on fire, where the flames may catch up and consume her any moment now.
irrationally: (i was travelling through the past)

[personal profile] irrationally 2021-04-10 02:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Alice raises an eyebrow. Mostly since the idea is so new to her. She can think of a few reasons as to why that doctor would have gone that far - either because she was afraid of what Murphy may do to her in revenge, or maybe something about his skin condition would put him in the ideal position to be able to finally get the upper hand.

But she's never heard of anyone with power doing that. Even when she was out of the asylum, no one feared her, let alone enough to go that far. Everyone underestimated her.

So.. why would that doctor go so far?

"Why? Was she that desperate?"
happyends: (better than the rest)

[personal profile] happyends 2021-04-10 02:39 pm (UTC)(link)
.. oh boy.

That's a story. And it's not necessarily a story Madoka minds explaining to people when they ask, but she knows it's kind of a big story, and kind of complicated too.. Though maybe an adult like Yondu would have less trouble wrapping his head around it. Maybe she can tell him it here in bits, making sure he understands each part before moving on to the next, she thinks..?

"Well.. We got them from this.. creature." It suddenly feels a lot harder to describe Kyubey now she knows what he's really like.. "He kind of looks like a white cat, but a little odder than that. He was going around on our planet, asking girls our age if they had a wish they wanted to have granted, and become a magical girl in turn by making a contract with him. When someone makes a contract like that with him, their soul is taken out of their body and put inside one of those Soul Gems.. so that's where those come from."
zombiemessiah: (m122)

[personal profile] zombiemessiah 2021-04-10 03:02 pm (UTC)(link)
"She sure was."

She'd found it easier to walk into a hungry horde and let them take her than dealing with what Murphy had planned for her.

"She was a coward who couldn't face her mistakes when they came back after her. People like that are always cowards." He almost says 'humans like that' but he does manage to stop the word before it can happen. Assholes can come in inhuman too. Hey! He is a prime example.

"And they never expect how strong they make whoever survives them. I can guess where you get that practiced unimpressed thing now."
yondu: (1 5 1)

[personal profile] yondu 2021-04-10 03:10 pm (UTC)(link)
"Their soul? ...So that's just their soul-"

And suddenly he puts it together. That thing Mami said a while back. Kyoko showing him her gem. Maybe not why them gettin' dirty was so bad, but he still understands they need to kill witches to clean it up. And the biggest witch was comin', one only Madoka had a big enough wish to deal with.

"Y'all really ain't too different from all these other kids around here that got their bodies all messed up for someone else's damn cause, are ya?"

He reaches up to touch his own fin, the heavy and unsightly scar around it mostly. Whatever was there before now completely gone.
happyends: (that has been plucked)

[personal profile] happyends 2021-04-10 03:11 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh, y-yeah. That's an idea. You could look at all the options.. There's a lot, after all."

Just going through all of them, reading about what's possible, may take a while. Especially since he'll have to learn all of them at once, rather than see them gradually being added one by one like Madoka has with how long she's been here.

"Um.. good luck with it. And if you have more questions later, you can always ask me.."
mtsilver_conquor: (casual)

[personal profile] mtsilver_conquor 2021-04-10 03:19 pm (UTC)(link)
And how Eva's got an image of Centaurians as a bunch of dragon clans.

"I hope I can get her one day, then. Though... Pretty sure the train wouldn't let me, even if I keep her in her 'ball on-train."

It'd bother her, yes, but she's also a responsible pokemon trainer.
philosopherspotato: (:0)

[personal profile] philosopherspotato 2021-04-10 03:24 pm (UTC)(link)
"So they get crunchy and flakey then too?"

Friends in Potato Discoveries!
mtsilver_conquor: (Behind these eyes)

[personal profile] mtsilver_conquor 2021-04-10 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)
For a second or three, there's honest heartbreak and understanding on Eva's face. For all she's not from his world, her world is monster-filled.

"Gods, don't I know it," And she does. How many times had she seen the adults of Pallet rouse to fight off something. Wild monster, rouge trainer... or worse yet a trainer who'd lost control of their pokemon. Too many and it's the with her joining the efforts.. the search parties...

She swallows and it's shoved down and down until there's not but understanding and sympathy. "Trust me on this: make one if you want, but I've been here ten months -since the beginning- and we tend to come down hard on those who spoil the train party at least."
helborn: (Default)

[personal profile] helborn 2021-04-10 03:31 pm (UTC)(link)
"That's right. It might take a few tries to get the right oil temperature and figure out how long to cook them, but that's why I'm going to start with just a few."
irrationally: (reverberating through my dreams)

[personal profile] irrationally 2021-04-10 03:36 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yes."

She says the word, softly, but Alice still doesn't sound too convinced. Sure, somewhere deep down she knows the girl is right. That it's only logical. But in Alice's mind no other danger could live up to a fire. Fighting entire armies? That's easy. She'd do that without blinking. But an all-consuming fire..

.. she starts walking a little quicker, just to make sure.

"Are we-- Are we almost there?"
mtsilver_conquor: (Thinking it over)

[personal profile] mtsilver_conquor 2021-04-10 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"They're pokemon, why'd you be imposing on them?" She's honestly confused, here.

Yet for all Eva is confuse,d it doesn't take Princess long to find Yuume's lap and let out a happy thrum-purr at the scritches. Eva grins. "See if he minded, you'd know it.

And then just as soon as she grins, she scoffs, looking away a bit. "The last mission... I got too confident and was caught in the illusions."

As far as she knows, she wasn't mentally strong enough to resist. Realistically: her Player had Life Descend :(.
happyends: (better than the rest)

[personal profile] happyends 2021-04-10 03:41 pm (UTC)(link)
"Hmm.. It does seem to be pretty different across worlds.." Especially since his description of his world isn't the first Madoka has run into when it comes to people being used to fighting, or even fighting at ages close to Madoka's own.

And yet she knows there are also others like her, who come from a world with relatively little conflict, or where at the very least children aren't expected to participate in combat.

"It's weird. How the train takes people here, regardless of how used they are to fighting.. Even though pretty much everyone has to do that on these missions." So one can imagine how much of an uphill climb it's been for a girl like Madoka, totally unused to anything like this and still so young.
shadowslipping: (Sigh)

[personal profile] shadowslipping 2021-04-10 03:48 pm (UTC)(link)
"They're alive, aren't they?" It's that obvious to her, after all. Not all 'Shadows' are speaking beings- many may as well be housepets for all they manage. "Whether someone is human or not, deemed as 'intelligent' or not, is a reason needed to respect that?" That's all it takes, right?

...In any case. "Princess might be happy right now for example, but I wouldn't have known necessarily if even he wanted me here, neh? I would rather he be comfortable, than otherwise. Which it seems he is for now~" the woman coos, gladly adding letting him soak in the attention.

The happy mood fades, however. "Those illusions... ...I confess I have a fair amount of experience in throwing such things off, but even so they were quite strong. If you're feeling upset about it...please, know that even with training, it required focus on my part to keep it out." The woman bites her lip, looking to Eva with some mild concern. "I'm glad there don't seem to be lingering effects however... ...I have a bit more confidence in running diagnostics on others now, but I won't be of much help if things become too severe."