Event: Expulsion (Day 24)

[voidtreckermods]

"Good morning passengers, today is the twenty fourth day of the month of Apple." The morning announcement sounds as usual as dark turns to the ever shifting colours of the void outside the train windows. Some passengers may stir. It might be that they are an early riser or bad sleeper and get out of bed the moment the announcement wakes them or perhaps they roll over and go back to sleep.

Either way the morning rolls on for a few hours whatever they might be doing. Until a sudden judder runs through the train, followed quickly by another. Much like bad turbulence. Really bad turbulence. A third follows and there is a crackling sound before an alarm starts going off blaring loudly, the lights begin flashing red, white and red again.

"Warning. Void engines failing. Warning. Void engines failing. Warning Expulsion from void imminent." More shaking, worse each time, enough to knock them over and then a bang, the train plummets into darkness and lurches, sending everyone flying...

… They never crash land. Instead they float, suspended in the air. In the darkness it is hard to orient themselves or even understand what is happening. There’s a roar in their heads as pressure builds, their ears pop. "All systems critical." Breathing is hard, for one terrifying moment there seems to be no air to breathe.

"Oxygen levels stabilising." They can breathe, the pressure in their heads fades, their ears eventually stop ringing. "Pressure levels stabilising." They are still floating, suspended in darkness. "Gravity systems critical".

Emergency lighting flickers on finally, a red glow from either end of each carriage, in the cabins and along floor strips, enabling them to move without bumping into anything. If they can figure out how to move at all that is. Outside the windows is dark. Not the blackness of the void at night but the deep vastness of space. A few moments pass, enough time to just about process that fact before the voice over the speakers is heard once more.

"Passengers of the Voidtrecker express, due to technical issues we are currently experiencing void engine failure. Thank you for your patience as we endeavour to continue our journey as quickly as possible. We ask that all passengers help in securing the train for re-entry into the Void and on behalf of the Voidtrecker Express I apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Then there is silence. Broken only, no doubt, by the passengers on this now stranded train.

(OOC: Event information is here.)

Comments

[afterburner]

"It's not magic, though it looks like it. Something in me gives me powers. There's a whole convoluted reason, but that's the real simple version." Not because Renee thinks for a moment that the kid is stupid. She just knows when she was that age, a whole, long explanation would've been boring as fuck. So she's not gonna make the kid suffer through it. "If you wanna know the whole convoluted reason, ask me later. Or if you want to be bored to sleep."

Because let's be real, if a person's not invested, genetic theory is boring.

"They call it kinetics on my world 'cause it has to do with movement, or inertia, the lack of movement. See how they spin? I'm gonna take their movement away and make them stop in place. Since there's no gravity right now, they won't fall, they'll stay right there and we can grab 'em."

Renee reached out her right hand and extended her fingers at the spinning items floating around the store room, and true to her words, they ceased to spin and just hung there.

"Like that."

[knifewithnoname]

Something in her gave her powers? What was that if it wasn't magic? People on this train are weird, she rolled her eyes slightly. But listened as she used more words, kinetics, inertia. They probably meant something. She wondered if Renee and Peter were friends, they could sit and talk nonsense at each other all day and know what each other were saying.

But she used her not-magic and the items stopped spinning. "So now we can be picking them all up?"

[afterburner]

Renee was no telepath, but the eye roll kind of gave her a starting point to push off of, conversation wise. "It's not all its cracked up to be. People are afraid of us, hate us, try to kill us 'cuz of it, and most of us just want to be left alone."

She was certainly in that category, but there were plenty of reasons why she hadn't been, back on Earth. Big brother being a felon, for one--folk liked to think if there was one bad seed in a family, they were all bad apples.

"Yeah, they shouldn't float away, you should be able to grab 'em." Not that she was gonna let the kid do all the dirty work. "If we can wedge them someplace until we can get a web to hold them down, we can do that. Otherwise I guess I can take my hoodie off and we can shove it in there." It had been clean when she put it on that morning, and she'd gotten a clean polo on, too.

[knifewithnoname]

She frowned at that. People tried to kill magic users in her world? Hated them? What kind of twisted terrible place did she come from? She can't imagine it at all, it seems so alien to her and she is currently floating in space in a train so there's a lot more she can imagine than she used to be able to...

She focused on the practical for now. "We can be putting them in the crates, the lids do be having locks I do be thinking."

No need to use webs, though webs would be pretty useful right now. There was a spider, who would maybe help them and Renee had mentioned this Charlotte... Peter only had some webfluid left, he shouldn't waste it.

[afterburner]

"They lock? Sweet! That works!" Renee hadn't spent a lot of time in stores, yet--usually she got asked to help chop things as prep. She'd warned the other Purple team members that she was an abysmal cook, but she was also willing to try to change that, but either way, she was slow.

"Okay." She was going to help, too, and with the gravity gone, she didn't have to make either of them uncomfortable and ask if the kid needed a lift. "S'pose I ought to lock one of those crates to the ground to make life easier for the two of us? Though you might be better at getting the ones that are higher..."

She was already floating, after all!

[knifewithnoname]

"If you can be, I can be bringing the higher ones down to you." Once she had gotten the hang of this floating thing it was actually quite fun. She pushed off gently towards one of the smaller crates that were suspended in the air. Slowing was still quite difficult. But she managed to get to the crate, grab it and then grab on to a shelf that was bolted to the wall to stop herself from bouncing off somewhere else.

"I do no be thinking I can be managing more than one at a time."

[afterburner]

"That's a good idea, you do that. Besides, I don't think it really matters how long storing this stuff takes, so long as it gets done, right?" Not like there was a ton of other stuff to do on the train, either. And while she hoped it got fixed, Renee sure wasn't going to be the one fixing the mechanical things. So at least in her mind, she was where she was supposed to be.

"And if you get tired of floating, well, I can always get you down to the floor and lock you down like I am. For a little while, at least. Doing this makes me tired after a while, but you probably don't weigh a lot, little slip like you." She chuckled at that, but Renee wasn't the type to give too much crap to anyone--unless your name was Tony Stark.

[knifewithnoname]

"It do be feeling like I do no be weighing anything at all." She agreed, though when the gravity magic was working she was much heavier. "I do be liking it though. Peter do be saying it do be like swimming but with you no getting wet. I did no never be swimming though."

If it felt like this without the fear of being stuck like this forever though she might not mind it.