voidtreckerexpress

Entry tags:

A return

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.

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"I didn't have one either until I escaped the Artificer facility I was raised in," Xander said with a shrug. Though he has to snort a little, and ask a flippant question. "What were you being trained for?"

Not that he'd precisely been getting trained for anything but 'be a good experiement'...the idea of which he trashed when he escaped. But he had not a shred of remorse for it. Maybe he'd have been trained at some point. Nowadays, Xander had no clue about that.

"I...suppose coming back in a suitcase is as good a place as any...so long as it's not otherwise occupied..." He shrugged at that, as well.

"I look forward to that, then! I didn't get to use my wings at first, so now that I've learned, I like to fly!" he said, chuckling. Then he paused.

"Well, witches have familiars, but I'm not a witch. More like a wizard, I guess, but I call what I am a mage. An Earth mage, since my magic is drawn from the ground, mostly. But Cottonball...she kind of helps me with doing it? Focusing it, sometimes. Keeping me grounded, which might sound silly, but for some mages, it's important." Since Xander had met mages who didn't even need that sort of thing, in his time.

So Cottonball was a little like a Warrior. Someone to help those with magic use their magic. Though without the protection role, unless this little fluffball was a lot more fierce than she looked. "I do be understanding."

"What do an artificer facility be being? How did you be getting your name? Did someone be giving it to you?"

She's interested in someone who hadn't had a name until they were trained. It was the closest to anything that worked the same as her world.

Cottonball didn't seem very fierce at all, no. She was just cute, getting her face all pink with strawberry juice as she tried to stuff the slice of fruit in her maw as fast and far as she could...

"I took my name," Xander admitted. "I'm a clone, which is...a copy of a person, basically. So I took the name of the person the Artificers made me from. Their facility is gone now, but it was...a big building. There were lots of machines and stuff in it. Even I don't know what they all were, but at least some of it was to create me. And cyborgs, because there were a lot of those there, too--people with machine parts, instead of all regular meat parts." He didn't think this girl was dumb, not in the least, but he wasn't terribly sure if she came from a place as advanced as Spectrum City was. And if she wanted clarification, well, Xander could try.

"Before that, I just had a designation. They called me Subject 29145, but I don't want anyone doing that...ever again, really, so I'm just glad this place went by the name I took. But I call myself Xander. I've met the guy I was cloned from. He calls me his brother. He's Alex."

She listened carefully about the facility and the machines and him being created and there being metal people there. It sounded confusing but interesting. He had had a number name, but he didn't like it so now he had a brother who was called Alex, close to Alexander.

"Do a clone be being like a twin?" Lan Wangji had told her about twins, this sounded very similar.

She's interested in the fact he was made from a machine. It seemed Peter was wrong, not all people were made the way he had told her about after all.

"A little, but not the same. Alex and I have different birthdays, for example." It wasn't like his hadn't been clearly marked in his records, and yet when he'd asked Alex, they were a full seven days apart, at the very least. With what had happened with Alex's foster family and their strange magick-with-a-k and Xander's own predicament, they'd decided to just...not mention the years.

He lifted a brow--Xander did notice that skeptical look on Buttercup's face. "My brother was made in a completely normal fashion, though. I'm the abnormal one." Though he at least could chuckle at the irony. "Or at least so I've been told by his--our--father."

Camael had insisted that he was his son, after an uncomfortably long look into Xander's eyes. Xander still didn't get it, but arguing with an angel usually got you nowhere.

A bit but not exactly the same. But Lan Wangji had said you could say things were twins when they looked the same, even if they were not born at the same time. Like him and his brother.

"Do clones be having fathers?"

It doesn't quite occur to her that these questions might be quite personal to Xander, she is confused and trying to understand what he is telling her.

And because he can tell she's confused? He's giving the girl--Buttercup--a lot more leeway he'd give an adult asking those invasive questions. She just wants to understand. Xander gets it.

"Well. My progenitor has a father, and he sort of adopted me." Not in any legal sense, but Xander figured angels didn't really give a crap about that sort of thing. "I guess since it's informal, he isn't really my dad, but he acts like it?"

Xander shrugged, but he seemed willing to let her continue this line of questioning, too.

"Someone can be being your dad who do no actually be being your dad?"

How did that even work? She is so confused. This whole thing is stupid and confusing. "What do a prog...enitor be being? And what do 'adopted' be meaning?"

He's answering her questions, so she figures he doesn't mind them.

"'Progenitor' basically is a big word for 'the guy I got cloned from'," he explains. "Adopted means...they want to be your parent, even though you aren't their kid. They care enough about you that they want to do what's right for you, I guess? I mean, that's definitely what happened with me. I know that doesn't always happen, but I got lucky I guess?"

Xander wasn't 100 percent sure, and he knew there were foster families who weren't...family, not in the good sense of the word.

"I guess if someone tested me, tested my progenitor, and tested his dad's genes--that's science stuff, though I'm pretty sure there's a way to do it with magic, too--we'd all read as related, though, so that's sort of a confusing thing."

The nephilim paused, thinking--then it came to him. "Though one of my friends, she got sort of adopted, too. Her parents died, and she was homeless. So Drake and his wife Rose decided to be her guardians, at least until she turned 18." He figured that might be a bit confusing, too, but he could try to explain that more, too.

They want to be your parent even if you weren't their kid? Was that allowed? She nodded slowly. She knew that Peter's aunt looked after him after his parents died but did that make her his parent? Was that how that worked?

"Only until she do be being eighteen?" See that made sense, but. "There do be being really old people here on this train that do be having parents."

That was the bit that didn't make sense. Parents were for little kids.

"Well, if you have parents, it's a 'they're always your parents' kind of thing? But everything dies, you know. Entropy's a thing." Xander said it matter-of-factly, mostly because it was true.

"If your parents die when you're a child, you're an orphan, so sometimes people adopt you, then. I think my being adopted was more of a formality, because they liked me. Sometimes you find your family, if that makes sense?"

He was still trying to understand the particulars himself, especially since he could never, ever call the Artificers his family. They were the furthest thing from, really.

She nodded, it was true everything did die. But she nodded at his words. She understood what he was saying even if it didn't make sense, all at the same time.

"No it do no be making sense. Family do be sounding complicated."

She sighed, it seemed the more she learned the more questions she had.

Xander laughed at that--not Buttercup, but her statement. "Yeah, family sure can be complicated! But usually they make up for it by being supportive, too. I mean, Alex always has my back, and I have his, even if I don't always think some of the things he does is wise, for example."

Like reaching for his mastery of Earth magic, when Alex knew darn well his powers wouldn't settle until he was eighteen years of age--that was like clockwork, every Elemental Mage knew that, and yet, still Alex tried...

"You can still ask questions, I can tell you're confused." Xander offered her a gentle smile at that. He really wasn't bothered. And really, it might help him narrow some things down, too.

Her nose flares, suspecting he is laughing at her but his words are not against her. He seems to be agreeing even.

"I do be being confused." She sighed, "It do be sounding complicated. Peter did be saying everyone did be having parents, but you do no be having them and you do be having a clone who do be being like a twin but with different birthdays but what..."

She wrinkled her nose, "Can you be having a clone with the same birthday? Two clones who do be being brothers like you and Alex but neither do be having parents? And how did you be finding your family if you did no never be having one to be losing in the first place?

"Oh, no. Alex has parents! I don't, because I'm his clone. But then his parents sort of adopted me? So yes, now they're my family too. It is very confusing, and I don't blame you at all! It'd probably be confusing to me, too, if I didn't live it, you know? It is right complicated, though, I agree with you."

He chuckles a little now, ruefully. "Alex was born the normal way, the whole nine months and all. He was a baby, he grew up." Xander won't go into the more difficult bits of that, because Paradox realms are an entire other concept to wrap one's brain around, and he doubted it really made much of a difference, here. "I wasn't born the normal way, I was cultivated in a test tube and..." His brow furrows, now. "I think I was grown in like...either a vat or a synthetic womb, the Artificers, the people who made me, had a lot of weird technology that even I don't understand. So I can't really explain that to you, and for that, I'm sorry."

He continues, then. "You probably can have clones with the same birthdays, if you time it right. I just ended up being chronologically early by a week. So either I just was stubborn and decided I was ready, like a real baby might, or someone miscalculated. Either way, I'm seven days early."

"Oh." She wrinkled her nose, she sort of understood it. But it hadn't really answered her question. It didn't matter. The point was Peter was wrong. There was more than just one way to make a baby. You didn't necessarily need parents at all.

"So you do be being seven days older than Alex?"

She nodded, technology was always weird, even before you added babies to the mix.

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A return

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