voidtreckerexpress | A New Platform [Intro Post May]

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A New Platform [Intro Post May]

On the Train

Like clockwork, the Voidtreckers are awoken by a familiar message this morning.

"Good morning Voidtreckers, it is day one of the month of Llama. Points have been updated on the system."

With points updated, everyone can spend the morning shopping. Most people will 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 air is sticky and warm, the windows almost immediately dewing over with the humidity outside.

As usual the first to leave the train notice nothing, walking silently, rucksacks on their backs, towards the barriers. Azula, Prisoner, Amery Vallet, Dyme Graydon, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, Yoite, Piccolo, Bulla Brief, Xie Lian, Kurosaki Ichigo, Hua Cheng, Renee Corbin, and Ran Mouri; 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 find themselves on a platform, rich wood and pale stone forming a natural, tree-like structure overhead. Behind them is a set of barriers, and in front of them is a single set of tracks extending both ways into thick fog. The air is rainforest-hot, and the sound of frogsong can be faintly heard over the drip of the artificial canopy.

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 fog begins to fade and they realise they aren’t alone.

The platform isn't large, and seems smaller with twenty-eight figures scattered around, all facing the tracks, all dressed in cargo trousers and hoodies. 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 pours a strange assortment of people, over a hundred at least. 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.

Behind them, the doors close, and the train is cloaked in the same fog that hides the world beyond the platform.

The Train

After a short time, the fog clears and 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 nori, the ingredient of the month of Llama, as well as all sundries.

For passengers that have bought items, these are also scattered around the luggage carriage in various suitcases and bags. For each member of Purple Team, a small silver box with their name on it contains a glittery cupcake.

New passengers will find their ticket allows them into their cabins. They may need to negotiate for beds, but at least they won't be alone in their confusion - since the sleeper carriages are now double-decker, and experience isn't going to avail the passengers in finding their rooms.

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.

The new double carriage's transfer ICP is active, allowing people to move to a double room should they meet the requirements with another person, though they'll have to move their belongings themselves.

Departure

A second horn sounds to encourage any stragglers taking advantage of the fresh air, 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!

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Lapis looks as though she might readily go for a second round, standing in the middle of the pool with narrowed eyes. "You were spying," she replies. Somehow he tried to go unnoticed, but he'd failed, and she wants to make sure he understands that. People with good intentions don't wreathe themselves in shadows and creep around. "Why were you spying on me?"

In other words, not buying this casual, mild act. If she's a target, she wants to know why.

Oh, so that's how it is.

"I'm in a strange place with unknown security for an unknown reasons," he counters. There's a bit of a hard edge to it. "Is investigating to make sure that what people say when they don't know I'm there matches what they tell me to my face that unbelievable?"

And since she seems to have taken it personally - "You seemed like something enough like me to be worth a second look. That's all."

"It makes you suspicious if someone finds you out," she re-counters, pointed. "You can't expect that people wouldn't find that suspicious. Especially if they're saying or doing things that have nothing to do with you. People don't like to be watched."

She definitely doesn't like to be watched. It places her at the mercy of someone else's will and intentions, and she can't abide that.

"What do you mean, 'like you?'"

And why would that matter?

"I'm a dark blade," he says blandly, well aware that it means nothing. "People find me suspicious regardless of what I do, so I might as well get something out of it. And you're only the second or third person to ever notice."

He's good at what he does, when he's in an environment where people have the abilities he expects. But someone as on-guard as she seems to be... Well, he can't really do much about that.

In answer to her question, he hesitates, and then strips the hoodie over his head. He needs to wring it out anyway, so might as well.

Glowing lines criss-cross the parts of his arms that are now visible, though their pattern is erratic; most notably, they're swirls that vaguely resemble flames on the lower part of his forearms, closer to his wrists. Probably more relevant to Lapis, though, is how he then yanks his collar aside so she can see -

The glow is brighter, but it's not unlike a Gem, the shimmering red crystal set into his chest a bit above where a human's heart would be.

(It matters, because why wouldn't it matter.)

"Something like a blade," he says. "Obviously not the same." Considering she doesn't glow, but...

Her eyes flicker over him, taking in patterns, lingering a moment on the gem. He doesn't seem like a Gem. He doesn't conform to any Gem that she knows, and honestly, he's the wrong coloration. Gems tend to adhere to hues of their gem's color, and he doesn't entirely. It doesn't seem likely that he would bother to have shapeshifted, either -- why would it matter, once found out?

Overall, though, he's right: It doesn't mean anything to her. "Blade" isn't anything she knows.

"If you want to know more about me," she replies, "you should talk."

She's going to hold firm on that.

~~It's not his fault that your world only has Opals via fusion.~~

"That's fair," he says. But whatever she might want to hear is going to wait for him to wring out the hoodie as best he can before applying fire ether, carefully, to get rid of the rest. A little bit of steam wafts upward from it.

"Blades are beings of elemental energy born from core crystals. With only a handful of exceptions, each of them is associated with a particular kind of elemental energy; if you tried to pass for a water blade, no one would probably ask twice," he adds. "Everything other than the core crystal is solidified energy; we can be hurt and even killed, but as long as the core is intact, we can be revived eventually."

He shakes the wrinkles out of the hoodie.

"We used to be reliant on humans for that," he says. "We used to be reliant on them to live at all, instead of being rocks. It's only been a few years since that changed."

With that not-at-all-bitter statement, he wedges the mostly dry hoodie under his arm and twists the worst of the water out of his hair before starting to apply the same steam trick.

Lapis is admittedly still a little wary, though she's eased a little with his agreement. He seems to be giving her a lot of information about himself, and she's not sure why; it's not something she tends to readily do herself until she's more comfortable.

Maybe that's a sign, though, that his intentions are what he says they are? She takes a cautious seat on the rim of the pool opposite him, watching him steam the water out of his clothes and hair. Though she's been in the pool, neither her clothes nor her hair drip.

"You were . . . hoping I was like you?" One of these "blades," at least. Other aspects sound similar to Gems, but she's not sure what she wants to share yet.

He takes another breath, and says, "Blades have been in fucked up situations for as long as we've existed. We were reliant on humans to be. For every good person, there were two who didn't think of us as real people. So we had to look out for our own."

It's not hoping, exactly. It's not something so distinctive, or really so optimistic. Blades look out for each other, in the same way any two strangers who have been in the same shithole will look to each other before people outside the group.

(It would be weird if she did drip. Whatever she may be, his expectations are still parsing her as a high-tier water blade, and water blades above a certain level are only wet if they want to be.)

What else can he say? That just the way she jumps straight to an accusation of spying, so personal about it, screams the same sort of situation? If she's that paranoid, that will probably only make things worse.

Instead, he says, "So it was one part curiosity, and one part keeping myself safe while trying to figure out the answer. I didn't, and still don't, mean you any harm."

"So you were looking to protect me if I was." That's what she's surmising from the first part of his statements. "Or be sure I was all right."

Looking for people like him, finding solidarity.

The others in Vista City cultivated that -- that idea of a team, people who supported and watched out for each other. In time she'd learned to watch out for them, connected enough that it mattered. Though they'd offered the same to her, she'd had yet to develop that same solidarity -- that they would give that to her freely, without guile or expectation.

Or possible betrayal.

It's a nice thought. Even one that she's been lured towards at times -- sometimes one that she would like to buy into. But she won't -- can't -- ever give it blindly, as some do.

"I'm not like you." He should know that upfront, if he has any expectation of solidarity -- which he shouldn't; he's a stranger. He shouldn't expect it from her just because there are some similarities any more than she expects it from him. "I'm a Gem. We're born from the ground. I hadn't seen a human before . . . " Something flickers through her face. "Before not very long ago."

And harm came from her own kind, not from them.

He doesn't seem to mean any harm as he says, at least. If he'd meant to attack, he likely would have done it by now -- and certainly not share the things that he is.

She doesn't say that she's okay.

That's the thing that strikes him first. She says, you wanted to be sure I was all right, and then offers no indication that she is, not even the faintest bit of reassurance. Not so much as an 'I can take care of myself.'

Combined with the way she reacted... Well, he's not going to forget that.

"No one's really sure how blades are supposed to be born anymore," he offers in return. "Humans have produced a few artificial ones, but natural blades... No one's sure, anymore. It's probably been thousands of years."

It could have been from the earth. In some ways, it might as well have been; the only blades who have parents, those parents were human, not other blades. Blades simply are, in whatever brief moment they grab a hold of.

Still, she seems to have accepted that he doesn't mean her harm, for the moment, and the atmosphere relaxes just enough to give him some breathing room.

"I can't imagine how strange that must have seemed," he says. It's honest, with a bit of amusement underneath, because he really can't imagine it. It's easier to imagine humans without blades than it is blades without humans. Gems are something different still, as though the spectrum was extended out further past blades, but that doesn't give him a reference for life without humans. "I was surprised by how many people here are just humans."

She didn't say before I got here, either, but he won't push her to clarify it.

In honesty, she hadn't realized he would want that reassurance, especially after confirming that she's not one of his people -- and therefore not a candidate for that type of regard. Especially not being sure why he'd be uncertain if she was all right in the first place. She continues on, unaware.

"Strange to meet a human?"

His statement provokes a moment of quiet. When, exactly, did she get so used to humans? At some point it's gotten more natural to see them than to see her own kind -- and more anxiety-provoking to see her own kind than to see them.

It really should be the other way around. But it isn't.

She's not sure what to feel about that.

"I was in another world like this before," she says at last. "Most of the people around me were humans like this. They also came from all different worlds. I guess . . . it seems less strange now."

And before that . . . well, that goes unsaid.

"I don't know why there were -- are -- a lot of them in both places."

Maybe humans had an overall higher rate of getting dragged off into other worlds against their will.

"At least in my world, there's a lot more humans than blades," Asch says. "If other worlds are similar in that regard, then that might be part of it."

Just wild speculation on his part, but his wild speculation has a tendency to be right. He gives the space they're in a once-over and adds, "Or maybe the train itself comes from a place with mostly humans, and it's picking out people that are more familiar to it." That feels even more on the money, but of course he has no way of confirming it. Still, the cabins were set up for humans, and the medical facilities seemed to be that way, too.

"Is there anyone from that other place here with you?" he asks, before continuing on, "There's someone else from my world here, another blade. I'm just looking for patterns at this point."

"But there are other planets too." She herself comes from a different one, after all -- and if she and others from other planets still managed to be pulled in amid all the humans, why do the humans still outnumber them? Logically it seems that with all the life in the universe available to pull, humans should be a very small minority.

Maybe it is as he says, though -- maybe the train is familiar with humans. It's hard to say without any further information.

And probably not of deep consequence. It's not going to get them out of here.

Slowly, she shakes her head, one foot trailing through the water. "No one else came with me."

Softer, "I . . . hope they don't come."

Because she's not entirely sure that her being here isn't her fault . . . and she should be the only one who has to pay for it.

"...I'm lucky, I suppose," he says, tone also going softer. "Jade and I have a complicated history, but I'd consider him a friend. There are certainly people I wouldn't want to be here, either."

She isn't paranoid from nowhere, that much at least he's certain of. And so it's perfectly reasonable that there's plenty of people she wouldn't want to be here with her. It's hard to tell if there's anyone she actually feels positively about.

(Asch hopes she has friends, somewhere, even if they aren't here.)

"Not much point worrying about it until it happens," he says instead.

From his reply, he'd taken her words as the more logical interpretation -- that there are people who would mean her harm, and that she hopes the train doesn't manage to draw them in.

He's not wrong in that. There's a chorus of people in that category she hopes not to see -- from Homeworld, from Earth, and from Vista City alike.

Does she want to clarify? Does it matter?

She can't imagine that it does for this person she's just met. Their conversation isn't far beyond what most people new to each other and new to an environment might have.

But. She still finds herself saying it, still soft, eyes shifting back up to his face: "I mean there are people I want to protect."

He's regarding her with interest, and perhaps a bit of melancholy at the words. It's good that she has people like that, even if he can't help but think, and people who would protect you in turn? which is definitely on the list of things he's not going to say.

Instead, he says, "I have a brother," like it explains everything. Even though it doesn't, really - humans are all too often confused by the intensity of bonds between blade siblings, so there's no reason to think she wouldn't be, as well.

So he continues, "I've killed for him before, and I'd do it again without a second thought." And that, probably will get the message across well enough.

She studies his face a moment, evaluating, before her head dips a nod. "Yes," she replies simply.

Like that.

Just like that, huh?

"I don't know if I'd want him here or not," he says. "It's been... a damn long time since the last time we saw each other." Long enough to want to see him again; long enough to be scared of it.

So: He gets it, really.

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A New Platform [Intro Post May]

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