voidtreckerexpress | A New Platform [Intro Post April!]

Entry tags:

A New Platform [Intro Post April!]

On the Train

Two days after they return from their mission they are awoken as usual "Good morning passengers, it is day sixteen of the month of Egret. The shop has been updated and points have been applied to passengers tickets."

Those that go to check the shop terminals will find they have indeed updated, with the option to buy larger items and also animals. The morning goes on until just after noon there is a second announcement.

"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 they are soon surrounded by the fog that means they are at a platform. Though the fog is thick, thicker than usual perhaps, there are patches on sunlight shining through and it is pleasantly warm.

The doors open and the first few to disembark do so with rucksacks on, hoods pulled up, silent and almost blank faced. Cu Chulain, Dio Brando, Disreputable Dog, Heiji Hattori, Loki Maedhros, Maglor, Naruto, Thor, Tobias Fangor.

They walk to the barriers, show their tickets and disappear.

But on the platform itself there are once again new faces. All are stood, waiting for the train.

For New Passengers

At first all they can see is steam. Billowing around them as they come to their senses. They are standing, in clothes that are not their own, styles 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 but then as people begin to shift or call out it will become apparent they are not alone.

The platform is not large and it holds eighteen figures all facing the tracks, all dressed in cargo trousers and hoodies. It's warm but foggy making it hard to see much, but there are clearer patches bathed in sunlight found across the platform. Both left and right the 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 into the cold step a selection of people. Some are human, some are less so. They are wearing the same hoodie in one of the four colours, red, orange, blue and purple.

The Train

The doors hiss open. Those from the train may encourage those on the platform to board. It’s not like there is 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 not be a good thing. 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. The store rooms have been restocked with an abundance of onions, in case the passengers weren't bored of them yet.

Passengers who are not brand new will notice that the train has gotten yet longer again with a sixth sleeper cabin for new arrivals.

New passengers will find their tickets allow 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 and you will hopefully find a pillow for your bed if it has not been nabbed by a roommate, there are also spare blankets for if it gets cold.

Departure

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

The train sets off, the fog obscuring the view 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. 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

"That figures," Xander says, snorting just a little. He's more used to getting answers...but then again, he's also had the proper people to ask. Here, being such a recent passenger...he doesn't know who to ask.

That was a step up from the streets of Spectrum City, too. Xander knew enough about living on the streets that while there were places to get good food for cheap, because the proprietors were soft-hearted. Most of the time, the problem was getting the copper for it.

Well, save for him, with his powers...better than stealing, really. "Really? Yeah, I'd have to say that's an upside, all things considered."

An upside Xander is just about to discover, since they make it to the kitchen right in time. And with Cottonball being an absolutely adorable distraction, it means that of course Alice first starts to look for a piece of fruit to feed her. Sorry Xander, one day you'll probably win her attention from cute animals, but today is not yet that day.

Once she has found some fruit though to give to the adorable creature, she finally glances back at Xander.

"Do you want something to eat as well?" Well, at least she's nice enough to ask as much instead of completely ignoring him. Maybe it's the slight sense of solidarity, knowing he's been experimented on as well.

All in all? He's okay with that. Xander's canny enough to know that Cottonball has somewhat disarmed this girl, and so he chooses to be very careful in what he asks. She's been through a lot, that's clear, and having also had to deal with a lot of crap in his life? Well. He understands, and isn't terribly inclined to take advantage.

"If they have sandwich stuff in the cooler, you can wrangle her for me? Please? I mean, you're feeding her, so she should be okay, but at this point, if I was trying to get food for me without that, she'd be trying to eat my food too. And meat is no good for her--but try telling her that!"

He laughed a little, but the look of concern he gave Cottonball, and the shake of his head, probably spoke volumes. But she seemed content enough to let Alice feed her, and that trust was enough for him.

"So do you want me to make you one while I'm at it?" Because honestly, she was whipcord-thin...Alice could decline if she liked, but maybe she'd eat just because he and his familiar were both inclined to snack time...

"Of course," she simply replies to the initial request. Alice may not be super inclined to fulfill requests for strangers or people she's only just met (or so she likes to think, anyway, considering she still ends up helping out people like some sort of hero when they request her help half of the time with her hero complex..), but considering it's for his cute bat's wellbeing, she's totally up for it. She's so easily completely wound around a cute animal's finger. Or.. well, wing, in this case.

It's only when he asks another question that Alice actually does bother to look up from her little feeding session with Cottonball. If not just so she can give Xander a pretty confused look. Making food for someone is not that grand a gesture, everything considered, but it seems to be to her.

"I.." She stops. Pauses. The requests throws her off so much that she doesn't seem quite sure of how to respond. It takes a moment or two before Alice shakes her head and continues. "I suppose some food wouldn't be bad."

Is she answering it so indirectly on purpose? Yes. Directly requesting that from another person just feels too weird. So weird, in fact, that she glances back to the bat. It feels easier.

"Do you often make sandwiches for others?" Why else would he offer it to her, right?

"Well, considering the place I live right now--well, before I came here? It's with a big family. Parents, five kids of their own, and then my brother and I and Carolyn's friend Aya...there's a lot of us. I pick up and help where I can, so I mean, I do, yeah. But I mean, here I am going to have some, and you're helping me by feeding Cottonball. If you're hungry, since you're taking care of her, I can help you out and make you a sandwich too."

Because otherwise, he knew Cottonball would try to get into the peanut butter OR the jelly, or both, and she'd make a mess. Of everything, including herself. And Alice was distracting her in the best way.

"Why do you ask? Is that kind of weird where you come from?" Xander is not the best at history, so Victorian England is not a place he's on top of, as these things go. Likely he'd be horrified to learn about conditions there. He'd also probably make absolutely certain that Alice got to eat. Even if that meant grabbing her a plate when he got his own.

Even if she didn't want him to.

Now she's paying more attention to him than to Cottonball, there's a few things she can't help but note from what he's saying. Mostly the way he describes the family he's living with - so they're not his family. Or not his parents, anyway, from what it sounds like.

But before she can think too much about it, there's a question being returned to her. It makes the confusion fade from her face, but instead it's replaced by something rather wry.

"It would most definitely be considered strange. There's usually so little food to go around in London that it's every person for themselves. Even the children at the orphanage I was staying at barely got fed."

Hence why Alice is looking like a zombie with her extremely pale skin and panda-levels of dark circles around her eyes.. Lack of sunlight, nourishment and an absolutely atrocious state of your mental health will do that to a person. Yet she manages to say those words so calmly, as if it's just the natural state of being for things.

Not that Alice's description makes Xander very happy about any of it. He stares at her for a long moment, but stops and goes back to making sandwiches before it can get really uncomfortable for either of them.

"Call it strange then. Call me strange, it's not a big deal. I mean, there's not even that many nephilim where I'm from--you can pretty much count us on one hand, and most of them, I know." He'd call them cousins, though he's been told repeatedly that angels aren't related, it's more a brothers-in-arms thing than actual brothers when they mention that.

"There's plenty of food to go around on Artepus, and even if there wasn't, Drake is..." How to explain it? "He's an experienced mage, though he calls himself a Scientist. I'm not sure of the difference." He offers a self-deprecating smile, there, and shrugs. "He's got an entire section of his home that grows wild, and I'm sure he's got food growing there too, it's just finding it. Apple trees, all sorts of things, I don't even know. I wander through there, but I don't know everything about it." Mostly because it was a LOT.

He bustles around the kitchen a bit more, pouring milk and even cutting up an apple like he might for Nicky, the youngest of the clan back home, and slides everything over to Alice.

"It's just peanut butter and strawberry jelly 'cause I like strawberry, but it's something." Something's more than nothing, at least in Xander's mind. And he knows well that there's something important in food made with care, even if it is just a simple sandwich.

Something is most definitely more than nothing. And Alice doesn't seem to be looking down on his sandwich at all. Honestly, even something this simple is so much better than anything she's had back home - and she hasn't been on this train for quite long enough yet to be entirely used to all these new and different kinds of food.

So after eyeing it for a moment, the young woman takes it, taking an experimental bite while gently petting Cottonball with her free hand. Apparently it's good, since she just continues eating without any sarcastic remarks. (Which honestly is Alice's way of saying it's good, really.)

It's not until she's a few bites in that she looks back over at Xander, at least bothering to swallow and not speak with her mouth full when she speaks up.

"I don't think your looks are strange." To other people the nephilim part of him may be the strangest thing, but honestly, a person with wings? It doesn't even register on the scale of oddness Alice is used to. "It's your personality that's strange."

.. Maybe that's not the nicest thing ever to say to someone, but Alice has never been good at this. There's at the very least no real malice or even a harsh edge to her tone - it sounds more like she's making an objective observation.

Some people might be offended at that, but Xander? He just throws his head back and laughs. Not at her, but the fact that it's his personality that's weird to Alice? It tickles him for some reason he can't put his finger on, right now.

"Okay, why is that? Why is my personality strange?" He's got a guess or three, but for the moment, he leans on the counter and takes half of his sandwich and crams half of that in his mouth, chewing and swallowing it before he continues.

"I imagine there's not a lot of empathy in your time," he says, giving Alice a somewhat sad look. "That's probably what's strange about me. Nobody where you're from cares that much about others, and it's everyone for themselves, huh? I can't do that. I'm an empath. I can tell how people are feeling, and that kinda makes me react accordingly. That and...I mean I care. I guess a lot of it is my power, but..."

Xander shrugs, then. "I can't turn it off, so I'm not trying to be sneaky about it, but in the same breath I think that I've got it? That makes me a better person, because I can't always think about just me."

He does kind of expect Alice to be upset about it--he can see where it could be construed as an invasion of privacy, but he's always done his best to not use it against anyone. Well. Except the Emerald Bastard, but that guy had it coming.

Since Xander is an empath, he should be able to feel it very well. It isn't entirely a feeling of someone being upset, but it's like a jolt goes through Alice the moment he mentions being an empath. Because this train is odd enough that Alice doesn't even doubt the fact that someone could exist who could sense other people's feelings.

But.. she really doesn't like that thought. Not just because it's an invasion of privacy, but mostly since she's always so careful to tuck away the feelings she doesn't want anyone to see away inside of her. She can hide it under a layer of disinterest, or anger, or snark. Alice doesn't want anyone to know how sad she constantly is, how constantly ragged, just how much she doubts whether anything she sees is even real or not all the time.

But if what he's saying is true, then he can sense that, somewhere deep down. All of that. She's not angry, since he did say he's trying not to be sneaky about it, but it's still terrifying.

Alice's grip on what's left of her own sandwich tightens.

She needs to switch this subject. She needs to angle it in any direction other than herself.

".. Is that why they experimented on you?"

She thought it was the whole wings deal. But this power sounds like a much more likely reason, knowing what she does about awful doctors and the like.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," he murmurs. Mostly, it's defensively. He's met plenty of people before who, because he is an empath, think that means he just instinctively knows their life stories and will spill that out to anyone...

Xander would like to point out that that sort of thing takes a level of mental powers that he just does not have. Telepathy, mostly, and he'd probably be even more tetchy if he had that power than he is now with 'just' empathy.

Though Alice's question just makes him sort of snort. "No. I don't--well, some of them might have been aware on some level that I had empathy, but they disregarded it." Part of him was surprised that they just didn't burn it out of him. If it wasn't useful, why keep it? Maybe they thought they'd break him. Maybe the Artificers thought he'd be completely useful if they destroyed that part. Now? Xander really couldn't know.

"No, they experimented on me because I could heal pretty much anything they did to me." The easiest thing was to just show, Xander guessed. So he turns over his right arm--the one with the bar code tattoo on the wrist--and tugs up the sleeve of his hoodie to expose an ugly, thick scar that goes up his arm to be buried again under the bunched purple sleeve.

"I think they were trying to install a gun in my arm, there. I can't really remember? They didn't bother giving me painkillers when they did any of it...so generally after they tried to modify me was a lot of fugue states," Xander admitted. "Since basically my body didn't like their machinery and tended to reject it. They'd see how bad or how well I took things, and decide if it'd work for their willing victims, afterwards."

Really, sometimes Xander was surprised he still could heal so well, after all that, but then again, the earth tended to heal itself, too, if it was left alone...

Alice stares with wide eyes as she listens to his words and sees the long scar that had been hidden under his hoodie a moment ago. It's a surprise to her that he'd even share this much with what is pretty much a total stranger, but that surprise is quickly buried under so much else. There's the red hot fury that Alice always feels at the thought of people exploiting others like that for no good reason, but there's also something else that starts out slowly in the back of her brain, but then grows more powerful.

It's her own memories. Something about the way he talks about what happenened to him reminds her so much of what happened to herself. She too can remember flashes of injections and knives and drills and faces hovering over her, and Alice has to quickly push her free hand over her mouth to keep herself from throwing that sandwich she just ate right back up.

It's then that she realises he must have felt that surge of emotion from her too, even if he wouldn't know the details. He'd still know what a wreck she feels like. It's a wave of misery, mixed with intense anger and nausea at the edges.

"I hate people," is all she's able to trust herself to force out after a moment. The people who did this to her. The people who did all that to him. The thousands upon thousands of people out there abusing others.

"They're gone now. They can't do anything to me any more. Drake made sure of that." It does make him a bit angry, resentful, that he had to be rescued--just one more way he's not his own person, in Xander's mind. One more way he's just a copy. He doesn't say that, though, It's probably not going to help. Drake was just trying to help...

Xander does do his best to project tranquility. Even as irritated as he is about his current thoughts, the way things are now? They're a damn sight better than it was when he was under the Artificers' thumb. And at least the train seems to think--as strange a thought as that is--he can do things to help other people. So it's worth taking the chance, right? Not that he was trying to control Alice's emotions in any way. Just try to take the edge off the anger, and hope it would rein back on everything else. Gentle insinuation.

"I'm not fond of most people myself, but at least most people are merely self-centered. They don't try to go around hurting people for their own benefit. They just don't think, you know? It sucks, but it's not worth harming them for."

Really, Xander felt it was unlikely to change things. You just had to treasure the people who didn't act that way. Most of the people on the train so far? They weren't that type of person. So that was worth valuing.

She would gladly harm those people too, honestly. Alice is so sick and tired of the way the world is, filled to the brim with people who hardly even deserve to live. (At least she's fair in that assessment, considering she doesn't think she deserves to live anymore than most of them.)

But the way he's projecting tranquility does take the edge of the anger, keeping her from full on lashing out at the thought. And thankfully it's subtle enough that Alice doesn't quite realise it's influence from something outside of her, rather than her being able to slightly reign in her emotions herself for once.

"That doesn't mean I have to like them."

That proclamation--that Alice doesn't have to like them--just makes Xander laugh a bit.

"No one's asking you to!" Certainly there were enough people back home who he'd thought he liked just fine, and then? They'd turned around and bit him in the ass. Even with empathy, people could be a confusing conundrum. It annoyed the hell out of him when in one breath, someone claimed to be his friend, and then got pissed off at him for...what? Shake that magical eight-ball and get something like 'reasons unclear'.

He didn't expect it to be any different on this train, either.

Nor did he really want to push his soothing of Alice very far, either. It felt too much like attempting control. So he dropped that, pretty quickly.

"No, I get it. Some people expect you to like them just 'cause of who they are, regardless of whether or not they treat you like junk. And then when you get mad when they treat you shitty? They act all shocked! Like you offended them! What bullshit!" he snorted. Sure, Xander might have had a certain person in mind, but he was pretty sure she was still back in Spectrum City. At least, he hoped she was.

It's easy to notice he must be having a very specific experience in mind when he talks like that. Not that it's too surprising. Once you've been stuck in a situation where you could get experimented on to begin with, you usually don't end up in the highest parts of society afterwards from Alice's experience. You end up somewhere near the bottom, where plenty of other people are able to wipe their feet on you as if you're their personal doormat.

"Far too many people act like that. They seem to think that respect or kindness isn't something to be earned, but something naturally given. They are wrong about that." Hence why Alice seems so cagey even now. She's very much like a cat in that sense. Closed off until she deems you worthy of more than that. "It's good that you do seem to understand it though."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A New Platform [Intro Post April!]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject