voidtreckerexpress | A New Platform [Intro Post April]

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh no, he'll fully own being a bitch. It's what's gotten him through the apocalypse. Mostly? Does it count if you died and came back? Whatever, screw it.

"I'll probably take that advice, might as well let it know what it's decided to inflict on other people." Better to let out your venom in small doses than let it build up until you poison yourself. She does sound like she toils over the world, though? That's kind of funny. She's got this little private school vibe- no, that's wrong. She has this 'died in a private school and came back to haunt it' vibe. That's the more accurate one.

He leans against the wall near him.

"Hey, at least it's kind of clean and the food's free? Smells a little like smoke." Thanks, Koumyou. But he'll give it that.

There's definitely a twitch near her eyebrow at the word 'smoke', though Alice is trying really hard to contain her reaction to just that. The girl quickly folds her arms across her chest, just so her hands won't start shaking or her fingers idly fretting with nerves in front of a total stranger.

"Well, it does dump us into active warzones every month or so."

Look, Alice is not good at not being blunt about these things. And Murphy seems like the kind of person who can take news being delivered in such a blunt pessimistic way to begin with, so she's not going to hold back.

"So that's less of a good point about all of this, unless you particularly enjoy fighting."

"That doesn't sound too different from what I'm used to. ...Honestly at this rate it just sounds like this train picks people and says, 'oh, they usually go through that, how about them'." He puffs out a breath.

"Because, of course, those people would look forward to so much of the same bullshit." There's definite crankiness but also the resignation that this kind of thing is what his life has become. "In other words, no, I don't particularly enjoy fighting. But I do enjoy having stuff for the first time in six years so apparently I'm going to have to make a choice."

Which, okay, why is the private school ghost here, then?

"What about you? They get you because you like it? Or because you're used to it?"

Huh.

The man feels strangely forthcoming with information. Either loose-lipped, or he just doesn't care what people know about him - Alice is starting to lean towards the latter as she observes him, thinking about it. But there is a lot of things she can glance from what he's saying. That he's somewhat used to these things - fighting, battlegrounds, whichever - and also hasn't.. had things in a long time?

Not that it's entirely unthinkable. Alice didn't own anything but her stuffed rabbit for ten years. But it's not exactly circumstances anyone finds themselves in.

Alice pauses as he asks her that question, having to think a lot about what she does or doesn't want to say to a stranger.

"A little bit of both?" She says after that moment of thought. It's not a lie. "Though I suppose that may partially be conditioned. After you're stuck in a cramped space like this for long enough, you just start itching to have anything else to do, even if it's just whacking robots or demons around."

"Mmmm yeah robots are new. Demons too, despite the fact I'm totally rocking the Satan look."

He gestures over his face, because really, what else are you going to do when you turn red and are living their best 'I'll dress the way I want' life?

"At least that gives me some idea of what I have to look forward to." Yay, party. There's resignation there, again, because he really was looking forward to a more mellow life. Maybe this would end up being pretty mellow. The food might very well be worth it. But, still, it's that age old weight of 'I had better things to do than deal with this'.

"Well, my name's Murphy." He offers her a crimson-skinned hand to shake.

He holds out that hand.

And Alice? Well, she just stares at it for a moment. Her gaze lingers on the hand, but then after a few moments does slowly make its way up to his face.

"You do realise that it's kind of suspicious to offer me a handshake right after that claim about the Satan look, don't you?" Which he honestly is very much right about. He can totally pass for some sort of devil impersonator. Too bad the train reveals everyone's true names, huh.

Her tone mostly just sounds relatively dry when she speaks. "Are you sure I won't be stuck with some sort of devil contract after I shake that hand?"

He looks at his own hand then.

"Is... Satan showing up an actual problem that might happen here?"

Because this is strange enough. No one's brought Satan into the mix yet.

"Well, if he does I'm keeping the look." But what the hell, even?

"Well, I do know at least one demon on this train."

Does that sound right? The devil himself is just a kind of demon when it comes down to it, right.. Even though the demon she knows here looks absolutely nothing like this guy, she thinks.

"Perhaps you two could start a club. Though I am assuming that you aren't an actual demon, if you're going around talking about your Satan look so easily."

Is she... is she trying to make him scared to have his ~~very admittedly strange~~ fashion sense. "You're not much of one for fun, are you? When my skin was white I wore a lot of blues and when I was blue I wore a lot of gold and black."

He's been through some changes, okay.

He gestures down the length of the train. "Well if there's going to be elves and vampires and gods and demons there's all kinds of interesting people to meet, it sounds like."

Look at Alice's face. Look at the complete lack of joy or even the slightest hint of a smile on it.

Listen to her incredibly flat and dry tone as she says: "Gee, what tipped you off?"

(Everything, Alice. Everything.)

But at least it seems like she is totally disinterested here. If not just since Murphy is so weird, and weird has always been good in Alice's books.

It leaves her curious enough to ask: "Why does your skin change colour?"

"It's the remarkable talent at looking unimpressed." He points lightly. "You've been practicing! I can tell."

He still cracks a grin though because he's like that.

"That good old-fashioned unwanted experimentation. Hated it! But now if you throw a particularly bad virus or bacteria at me, my body creates antibodies to kill it and I get to go through big life changes. At least the color changing isn't so bad. The first time I lost my hair. That was terrible."

He sounds flippant and irritable, but the first Shed had been nightmarish. His teeth coming loose and regrowing, his hair all falling out and growing back in patchy. And woof, his skin... He's so damn glad photography didn't exist in the apocalypse.

Does she know a lot about viruses or bacteria? Of course not. Alice is from Victorian times, stuff like good health or hygiene wasn't exactly a priority in the slums of London. But while she does have a vague idea, she's not sure at all how getting some of those could change someone that much. That's.. not a normal human thing, is it? She's pretty sure it isn't, anyway.

It still makes her frown for a moment as she tries to process the idea in her head, before giving up when she realises there's no way she's going to be able to figure it out herself.

"Why did they experiment on you?"

Does Alice think this is apparently just a socially acceptable question to ask a stranger?

Apparently, since she's already said it now. But he offered up that nugget of information first!

"Because they were assholes."

That's his best explanation. Really, in his opinion, he could leave it at that. But he's Murphy, and either he likes to hear himself talk, be bitter, or very occasionally enjoy a companionable conversation.

"They wanted to fix a sickness going around, a bad sickness, they used prisoners to do it. Went through all the violent ones, got to the low-level guys like me."

And he didn't get much of a yes or no in the matter. He's pretty sure he'd take a life of normalcy over being some zombie messiah or 'savior of the human race'. He could have been a news anchor! Or... something! An accountant? Not this.

.. ah.

Well, that's kind of recognizable, now is it. Alice didn't know they did that sort of thing to prisoners too, whether it was in her world or some different one.. but it's not too surprising, right? They always find the people who aren't in any position to be able to protest and exploit them. Like a cycle of abuse that sweeps through the multiverse.

And though she's kind of curious what he was in for - what constitutes low-level where he comes from, exactly? Is he some pickpocket? That's her first assumption - she doesn't mention that first. Instead..

"I suppose I should be grateful then that my skin stayed the same colour it is now." Look, Alice doesn't think she could rock that Satan look, alright. No, thanks.

Essentially a modern-day pickpocket. 'Mail fraud' isn't exactly the sort of crime that usually opens one up to unethical experimentation. It's also kind of a strange one to explain.

Ooooh, so she went to the bad kind of boarding school, huh?

"Gotta love people, right?" You can see the love in his whole 'I would wear their skin as poncho' smile about those scientists. But suddenly everything seems to make a lot more sense.

"Did you at least get to take something with you they couldn't have?"

She very much recognizes the sentiment in his statement about people. If not just for the expression he wears as he's saying it. But Alice doesn't judge him for it. If anything, she gets it. If she would've had a way to get her hands on the doctors back home..

"I took myself," she simply answers. "I got away from them."

So in the end, they couldn't have her. Even though getting there too way too long, in Alice's opinion.

"Or did you also get away from them, and this skin trick is just something you are stuck with permanently now?"

"Good enough."

Okay, he's impressed. Honestly he had to get dragged across the country before he truly got away, and that took months. Once his supervisory crew went their own way he took his fate in his own hands.

Isn't easy getting loose.

"Yeah. Eventually. They never got exactly what they wanted from me, and happy end! The doctor who did it died." Good riddance to bad rubbish. He'll just omit the part that he pretty much stole all her knowledge while he was at it.

"Died?"

Look, it's not the death part that surprises her about it. No, it's more the wording, because it seems to imply something.

"You make it sound as if you didn't have a hand in it." And who doesn't personally try to dispatch of people who hurt them? Please, don't we all embrace violence. "Isn't that terribly disappointing?"

Murphy's been pretty playful so far, but there's an expression that sinks into his features and he just seems to consider if he wants to tell. But from what she said, she's someone else who's been through... similar circumstances.

"It is, but not for the reasons you'd think." He says with surprising seriousness, considering how the rest of his demeanor has been.

"She killed herself to get away from me."

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?"

"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."

She doesn't say anything out loud, reluctant to admit that to a stranger. Even though he's entirely spot on - the only way to survive in that asylum, and even on the dirty streets of London afterwards, was to act like that. Not show emotion. Not showing any sign of caring. Biting every hand that stretches in your direction.

But her silence speaks for her, especially since she's wearing that expression even now, while she listens to him.

"I've never seen any of them show fear like that. But.. it is likely as you say. That they don't expect it." So they didn't see her actions coming until it was already too late.

"But none of them are here."

Not for her, at least. And not for him either, she's assuming, or he wouldn't be walking around so casually as if he owns the entire place.

"So I suppose it's a very slight upside of being a captive here instead."

"The big upside? Food in the stores. That is amazing." No, he refuses to get over it. And he's back to his stranger, more eccentric, bitchy self rather than the harder bladed edge of a personality that just peeked through.

"And it let me keep my jacket. And I can buy some things from home? Lots of high points to this kidnapping, yeah, I'll admit it. Second best abduction I've ever experienced depending on how bad things get when they inevitably go to hell."

".. I'm very glad they got you your jacket, old man." Ah, there it is. The whole entirely unimpressed act all over again. Just making some sort of deadpan joke at his attachment to a jacket of all things.

Though at least nothing about that 'old man' sounds like it's malicious when it's said that flatly. Alice is a lot more direct about it when she actually means to insult someone, and while people who are old and male usually rank pretty high on her danger list, there's at least something about Murphy that softens it a little. It's not often that she comes across someone who has gone through something so similar to her.

But he's still not going to escape being called old even with that, okay.

"At least I ought to be able to count on you giving a piece of mind to the people who are keeping us here when we meet them, right?"

"Old to you, Emo girl! I'm still rockin' it." He just sounds amused by that more than anything, but he does realize, distantly, that he does only really indulge his more playful clothing leanings when he's not wearing any sort of natural skintone. Being inhuman gives him permission to be himself.

Something to think about later, or never at all, he guesses. Introspection is for birthdays and break-ups.

"Oh, I absolutely plan to give them a piece of their mind." Inwardly he adds that, if he has his way, they'll give him a piece of theirs. "You sound pretty sure we will."

A New Platform [Intro Post April]

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CW: Graphic special effects scars in link

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