A New Platform [Intro Post September]

[voidtreckermods]

On the Train

"Good morning Voidtreckers, it is day one of the month of Nebula. 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 doors open. As usual, those who leave first notice nothing, walking silently, rucksacks on their backs, towards the barriers. A-Qing, Atem, Beauregard Lionett, Casper LeBlanc Jr, Donatello Versus, Frankie Bacon, Ichiban Kasuga, Kumoko, Lena Sabrewing, Mami Tomoe, Mono, Peter Parker, Reno, Shi Qingxuan, Tobari, Wen Ning; all pass across the platform, not looking back. And then they're gone, disappeared 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. The platform is open to a bright blue sky, speckled with a couple of clouds. It's very warm, enough that they will not want to stay in those hoodies for long. Behind them through the fogs is a set of barriers, set in a brick wall and in front of them is a single set of tracks extending both ways into that same 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 on the foggy, blistering hot platform; then the fog begins to fade and they realise they aren’t alone.

The platform isn't large, but it is enough to hold the 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, perhaps ten minutes or so, 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'). They will also find a bunch of posters around the train and might notice the new clock in the standard coach.

The store rooms have been restocked with fresh ingredients, the ingredient this month is a strange meat, yaddon tail.

For passengers that have bought items, these are also scattered around the luggage carriage in various suitcases and bags. There is a box labelled for purple team containing a stick of rock for each member of purple team, including those who are new. Join in your teams success!

New passengers will find their ticket allows them into their cabins. In most rooms, the occupied beds are obvious, leaving the spotless, empty spaces for the newcomers. 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 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!

Comments

[fennu]

The immediate and obvious response is, of course, that he doesn't deserve this kind of recognition or kindness, especially from someone he has wronged so cruelly. Jiang Cheng has spent enough time looking back over his mistakes and his choices to realise where he had mistepped, where he could have done better, and Jin Guangyao had made it clear enough just how stupid he had been as a child.

(It doesn't seem to occur to him, of course, that he had been a child and unprepared to lead; he ignores the rationality).

Instead, his fingers brush awkwardly over the shape of the rabbit and its head, not sure what to do with himself no more than he knows what to do with it. He feels a little overwhelmed, in fact, more than anything else, and breathing out for a moment makes it feel all the worse for the pause. He knows what Wei Wuxian says without words and it makes his heart ache.

"Where am I supposed to keep it?"

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, likewise sees his own missteps, his own mistakes, but not entirely isolated anymore from those of the people around him. He failed in trying to stand alone and bear burdens one man simply couldn't; connections are paramount, and while he'd known it, he hadn't acted like he did. Hadn't understood the depths of that reality until it was too late to do anything about it.

Sixteen years later, and he'd been working on being better than his own worst moments, not because it could make up for them, but because it was his way forward.

A rabbit, a brotherhood, and now, a smile.

"Greenhouse carriage! I'll help you build a hutch, all the, ah, waste can be used in the plots to help the plants there grow." There being two smaller rabbits in the area could only be a benefit, in his eyes.

[fennu]

They're both trying to repair the bridges broken between them, both literal and metaphorical; trying to repair what had been torn from them. Jiang Cheng had grown used to a life without his brother in it, had adjusted to the pain and isolation that came from that strange abandonment, but he recognises it must feel different for Wei Wuxian. It must have felt like blinking between death and rebirth, and rationalising that makes some of the awkwardness fade.

Not all of it - Jiang Cheng isn't quite that rational yet - but he is trying to get there. Companionship and proximity are helping.

His hand pets at the rabbit idly and he recognises it for what it is, takes it as an olive branch, and tries not to let his tongue be coated in bitterness.

"Do you think I'm going to clean up after this?" He scoffs, as if they both didn't know he would be taking the best care of his new pet and spoiling it rotten. "You better put your muscles to work soon, then."

[weifinder]

He continues to try and balance the oddity of a weight of dark, missing years, to the sudden reintroduction into a living world that he'd fallen behind, that he didn't know enough about, that surprised him and offered no explanations, no way to process and only the need to keep moving. He'd be swallowed whole, spit out, bones left to fall to dust unburied if he stopped.

Until he'd not, and he'd been in that space after, the one he's come from before the train: his feet on the paths of their world, Little Apple at his side, and the skies in all their warm blues and dreary browns overhead.

He beams again, because it's hard won, each time there's some concession that doesn't feel like all it could possibly be is guilt. Harder to build than tear down, and they both know that, both have unfair shares in what they take on themselves without truly having asked, support me and not compromised on what form that took.

"I'll need to when we're building that hutch, ah?"

[fennu]

Relearning how to be brothers isn't as difficult as he had imagined it might be, at least in some ways. Patterns are easy to fall back into, familiarity as comfortable as breathing, as long as he ignore the gaps and the things they're still uncomfortable with saying. Jiang Cheng knows that he has a great deal to work on, he has many things he has to swallow back and other things he needs to voice, but he doesn't quite have the strength to do it.

Not right now, not when he is relearning, not when he doesn't know what he can and cannot do. He's adjusting to this world still all the same and he has to muster up his strength and has to give himself the time to grieve for his losses and celebrate his gains. He'll get there, eventually, but emotional resolutions have never been his strongest suit.

Instead, he scoffs, plays the part he's always played, and shakes his head, moving to sit down and let the rabbit settle down in his lap, the little (big?) thing leaning up and flicking its ears at him.

"Tsk," he shakes his head. "You might want to go and find some first."

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian being not better prepared, but through his own habits and nature being someone who has to look forward, who does not allow himself to stay fully mired in the past. Less full ignoring it than when he was younger, and more realising he has to find himself through it, complicated as that may be.

Harder as it is, to deal with the tears and the fears and the broken edges of promises he had never set out wanting to break. Of the dead between them, and around them, and what filled Jiang Cheng's sixteen years of living, and Wei Wuxian's sixteen years of dark.

Seeing his brother, with his oversized puppy rabbit, and knowing there are things which will never be right, but other things which can be, in this new space they carve with each other, he smiles.

"I'll bring it, I'll bring it. Should be all in luggage. You wait here—we can start working once I've got the things here." And they could, and would, much as it would likely become a series of silly arguments in the process of building a hutch for an unnamed rabbit, because that's simply what the former heroes of Yunmeng would do, grizzled adults that they were now.