A return

[knifewithnoname]

Who: Little One and Open
Where: Luggage, Cabin 1:C and then throughout the train
When: Egret, day 21
What: Little One wakes up in a suitcase and then investigates any changes in her time away
Warnings:

Waking: Luggage

This had happened to her before. A voice from the screens and then waking up in a suitcase. But this time she had been on the mission and now she was here.

Why? Why had they taken her off the mission? She had been doing well. She had figured out the stupid space ships and the guns. But she had still disappeared and was back in a suitcase. She sat up with a sigh and looked around, instincts kicking in. Checking for danger, for people, for anyone who was too close.

Once she decided it was safe she clambered out and moved towards the exit. She paused near the door to bring up the ICP and click onto the passenger list. New people. Some names missing. She did her best to commit them to memory. She checked the day, she had been gone a while. Longer than last time. Most people were still here though. That was good.

Cabin 1, C

The first place she headed to was her room. She still had the bag she had carried on the mission and she wanted to put it down before she went elsewhere. She headed to her room quickly and opened the door with a wave of her ticket. It was strange that things that had seemed so strange only months ago now felt familiar.

She entered, planning just to throw her bag onto her bag and get changed out of the flight suit and into trousers and a hoodie.

Throughout the train

She is headed to the kitchen, as she's pretty hungry but not so hungry that she isn't going to investigate the train as she goes. Checking up on people she knows, watching them from a distance. She takes note of new people, doing her best to match their faces to the pictures she had seen on the ICP. It's difficult though, there are a lot of new people to keep track of.

But she watches, listening and taking in everything she sees as she makes her way from carriage to carriage.

Comments

[knifewithnoname]

She nodded, surely if people chose to be here then it would be their own stupid fault if they didn't like it. They would not blame the train and it's drivers.

She didn't roll her eyes, as hard as that was, at his statement about not being prone to violence. It told her enough about him. She held her tongue.

"It has been yielding lots of results if you do be counting stupid people getting their heads cracked."

[iamnotgod]

Webmind would have had the projected face roll his eyes - if he were that sort of person.

"Were people trying to charge through the wall? Or simply headbutt it?"

He sounded almost incredulous; breaking hands was to be expected, but slamming heads seemed even more risky.

[knifewithnoname]

"No." She blinked for a moment, confused and then sighed. "They did be punching it. But when they did be punching it they did be flying across the carriage and then probably they did be cracking their heads."

She hadn't meant it so literally.

[iamnotgod]

"That is quite an impressive amount of rebound. Not entirely proportionate to the action in the moment," he added.

"Unless they really were moving that fast?"

[knifewithnoname]

"Maybe they did be. Some people do be having weird powers."

She shrugged. "You would have to be asking them. I do no be being stupid. I did no be punching no walls."

[iamnotgod]

"That is certainly something I've had to adjust to. Magic being real - in my world, while there are still mysteries and things without explanation, there's no sign of a true external source for them."

That is, no proof of God, and hence no need for such - not that most of the world didn't value religion anyway!

Webmind smiled again. "That is indeed smart."

This was not said or meant in a dismissive fashion.

"Now, was there anything else people had tried to contact the train or its makers? I know of the Feedback and Suggestions page but, and I suppose I should be forgiven for saying this, the responses seemed a touch generic."

[knifewithnoname]

"Magic do no be being real where you do be coming from?"

People came from weird places indeed. She wrinkled her nose, in a thoughtful rather than dismissive way.

"I do be thinking Peter did be trying just asking, on the computers and outloud. But I do no be thinking he did be being answered."

/casually references a line in canon. XD

[iamnotgod]

"No. And if there are - or were, I suppose - any deities, they are almost certainly not online."

Weirdness was in high supply, here.

"I can see why people would think that," Webmind said, nodding the robotic head again.

"Perhaps it is not given to being loquacious? It seems an odd loophole to overlook, though; it has a voice."

If the passengers' occasional doubletakes at SXT-2 were any indication.

"Though, on another level, does this train have external radio capabilities? Or somesuch way of hailing other vessels."

[knifewithnoname]

"Yes, I do no be thinking the gods can be hearing us here." She had come to a similar conclusion herself. If that's what this weird metal man meant. He was quite difficult to talk to.

"I do no be knowing? Do that be being a thing that trains do be having normally?"

Hailing other vessels would be useful. But she knows nothing about trains. This was the first one she had ever been on.

[iamnotgod]

"Though people certainly seem to still have abilities they've received from their gods; the cutoff doesn't go that deep."

Which left him continuing to wonder.

"Being able to communicate warnings to people on other vessels is standard in some form, even if there isn't a radio."

He paused. "I have seen an educational module on the ICPs, about semaphore or flag training. But the train itself does not seem to have flags."

[knifewithnoname]

"I did be noticing that." She nodded, "But I did just be using my socks when I did be learning it. We did be getting lots of socks."

She had never had socks before coming to the train and it turned out they were very helpful, they kept your feet warm, they were good for hiding presents and they could be used to communicate.

[iamnotgod]

Webmind subtly alters the projected emoticon on his face to a half-smile, half-:/

"Well, if they're suitably bright enough to contrast with the void - or regular space - then it should do well in a lack of other materials. Socks are very small, though."

But it gives him something to do with his own sets of unneeded cloth, so that is an idea he wouldn't have come up with himself!

"Thank you for informing me of that unorthodox purpose."

[knifewithnoname]

"You could always be borrowing Dread's socks. I do be being sure he will no be minding."

She had no idea actually. Dread was pretty nice despite his huge size so he might really not mind.

"Or you could be using your spare polo shirts. They do be being bigger than socks."

[iamnotgod]

"Shirts do seem a more plausible item of clothing."

But that seemed enough of that particular line of thought for now.

"Has anyone tried to get under the train? If it's traveling through the void and not on a railway, what does it have instead of wheels?"

Or did it have them anyway, for appearances?

[knifewithnoname]

"No." She shook her head. She hadn't done that. But it was a good idea. "Next time we do be being at a station I can be crawling under. I do be being small."

Not that she knows what the underneath of a train was meant to look like. But she knows what wheels are, she can check that easily.

[iamnotgod]

"We do have quite a few Voidtreckers on the shorter end of the spectrum," Webmind agreed.

He himself, alas, did not count, and there seemed a lack of remote-controllable drones around for a safer method of inspection.

"And for climbing the train? Though I expect that area's been handled before."

Given that they had both people used to climbing and actual flyers on this train.

[knifewithnoname]

"I did be climbing it yes. So did Edge be being. Probably other people too. It did no be being hard."

But there had been nothing interesting up there, just a train roof. Climbing was fun though.

[iamnotgod]

That seemed all in order, then.

"If there wasn't a device to facilitate communication up there already, then it is likely internal equipment instead."

Webmind shook his head.

"Inside the engine compartment, I suspect."

Where no one could get.

[knifewithnoname]

She nodded, though if there had been a device to facilitate communication up there she wouldn't have known it for what it was. Mostly because she didn't know what one was.

This metal man was weird.

"Probably."

Most things were probably in the engine, as that was the bit that made the train work.

[iamnotgod]

Webmind could tell that he was losing something of Buttercup's interest, here.

Or at least that's what it sounded like from analyzing her voice.

"We can talk more about the more accessible parts of the train after you've changed clothes?" he offered.

"If that is what you were seeking to do here."

[knifewithnoname]

He was, she was trained to be able to stand and listen but that didn't change the fact she was an eleven year old, she had just returned to the train. In her mind moments ago she had been in the depths of space on a mission and now she was back on the train. The change was jarring and it had eroded her patience.

"Yes. I will be putting normal clothes on. Or what they do be calling normal clothes here."

[iamnotgod]

Webmind nodded.

"They do seem a little eccentric, don't they? Firefighters, at least, tend to wear yellow where I'm from, though I understand that to be regional."

He let that statement lie, odd as it might have been, and waved the precocious preteen goodbye.

[knifewithnoname]

She just blinked, tried to look like what he had just said made any sense at all, nodded and waved as she walked towards her bedroom.

Strange metal man.