I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take.

[unfavorableinstigation]

Who: Nita and YOU. Preferably close CR, but anyone can stop by.
Where: Quiet Car, second floor, a room near the front of the carriage.
When: Middle half of Grasshopper; post-platform, pre-event.
What: A(n ex-) wizard retreats. Some may come to reprimand, some to console, some just to find out WTF happened.
Warnings: ... Discussion of what's basically psychic assault in this log, folks. Mind your headspace!


After the platform, Nita retreated into herself. That was the best way to describe it; she could not be 'booked' in one of these rooms the same way she could have been in the Medical Car, but she spent as much time as she could in just the one room, not speaking unless spoken to, not leaving except to go to the restroom or fetch another journal.

No matter when one arrived to check on her, she would be either resting - staring off into space more than actually sleeping - or writing.

Some of the words were crossed out, as if she had had a tough time finding the right ones, but the writing looked to be formal in nature. A report. And, most notably, it was in English, not the alien curves of the Speech.

If she had to live with her actions, Nita figured, the least she could do was explain them - and explain why they were wrong.

Mostly, though, what encompassed her mind was the emptiness of it all. She couldn't even be angry now.

Fitting.

Comments

[unfavorableinstigation]

Gaze rising from her 'desk', Nita watches Zetta leave and Persephone enter.

"It-it's fine! Persephone, it's good to see you!"

She sounds mostly surprised, but she is happy.

"Did you just get back today, or did you show up the day we made our last platform stop?"

She waves the goddess on in, writing business forgotten for the moment.

[springforth]

"On platform day. Not any thing to do with the platform--just arbitrary, I guess." She takes a seat, with a little hesitant smile.

"I hear I missed a lot. Then and now."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita makes a wry face. "That happened to me, last time. Missed almost two weeks, myself. It really sucks you missed the mission as well, though!"

Not so much that Persephone had missed Nita's own bad behavior, but that's neither here nor there.

"Has anyone else gotten to catch you up on that whole thing?"

If Zetta had found an excuse to brag, perhaps... Nita would be the first to admit the situation had turned into something of a slog, though.

[springforth]

"Apparently you fought a great deal of monsters? I mean, Romeo gave me the basic rundown, very quickly, and Zetta just said it was a lot of fighting. Also Romeo said there was a god as big as a cave?" Persephone gives a wry smile, "As if size mattered. But I imagine it was impressive."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita nods.

"I was with Romeo on Blue Team, so I missed the fight up top, but we were clearing down monsters in the caves as well by the end of the week. Trying to protect The Burrower. Still not sure if it was the god of the Gry, in that it had made them, or just some extraplanetary being that had gotten attached to them over time. It wasn't exactly talkative."

Which was an all-too familiar refrain, these days; settling back against her bench, Nita shrugs.

"It did pass on the feeling of gratefulness, though. And satisfaction. The train came to pick us all up a short while after that."

[springforth]

"Well...I'm glad it got what it needed, by the end."

At least she thinks so. Honestly, the 'Burrower' could be anything, with any agenda. But it feels ridiculous to question every little aspect of the mission she missed. It's over, things are done with. It wouldn't have mattered if it was a real god she could speak with or not, it's not as if they'll stop there again.

"Did anyone get too badly hurt? I hope you stayed safe at least."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita looks just a bit grim, and she nods.

"No one died, but we were lucky in that we were smart enough to distribute healers among every team. Gerome broke his leg in a rock slide; not sure if Inigo got caught up in that..."

She sighs. "That wasn't anywhere near where I was, so I couldn't say where the worst injuries happened. As for me, I uh-"

She winces. "I might have ended up in the center of the action, at the end? The monsters were weak to light, so I had all the rocks down in the cave system start remembering the light they were exposed to over time. Glorfindel was a powerhouse too, though; have you met him?"

She's quick to change the focus of her story.

[springforth]

"Of course I have, plant buddies. He was looking--odd." She frowns, but doesn't pursue that line of conversation. She's fully capable of changing the subject right back.

"It sounds like you did a lot for them, down in the tunnels. Did you get hurt and are avoiding talking about it or just didn't expect to end up in the middle of things?" She props her chin in one hand, leaning forward.

[unfavorableinstigation]

That ekes a frown from Nita in turn, though she lets the subject drop.

"I didn't get hurt much, really; it's not that. During platform..."

She sighs.

"I lost another person I really care about, here, and took it out on the train."

That's the shortest version, anyway.

"No one's treating me like I'm in jail, though. At worst they think what I did was stupid rather than... illegal."

'Evil' is what she wants to say.

[springforth]

Persephone listens, quietly. She'd sort of expected to have to come at the reason she's hiding out from the side, to ease into it, but Nita explains without much prodding.

"Well of course they didn't treat it as illegal. We've been kidnapped by a train to do it's dirty work, of course no one is mad you took out your frustration on a train."

[unfavorableinstigation]

To which Nita responds, softly,

"How do you feel about psychic assault?"

If it'd been any other kind of attack, it'd have been the same old reaction. Even if she'd tried to communicate, make it another group wizardry like last month-

So much pain she could have avoided, if she'd done just about anything differently.

[springforth]

"Well--I don't really know. It's just a train right? It's not a proper being." Gods, she's the wrong person to ask these sort of things. She's probably saying the wrong thing. And the whole time, her own crimes are hidden carefully in the back of her mind.

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita looks away.

"I wish... I could feel it had a mind, though. There wasn't any malevolence in there when I started, just confusion. Then anger."

A very abstract sort of being for a train, rather than something grounded in the senses it experienced - the mechanics of it all, whatever being made of void meant - but still something alive. Simple, even.

Then there came a wry sort of smile. "Surprised no one here had tried that before. Guess all the other attacks people have tried were physical."

And that's what her action had been: an attack, not a communication.

And that's not even beginning to mention that some of the passengers on this train were machines.

[springforth]

It's more the lack of--corporealness that does it for Persephone. Is it real if she can't see, touch or speak to it? Hard to say. It's slightly disturbing to hear it has a mind, that it has feelings. It makes it much more--dark.

"Almost everything we've tried is physical. I even tried to worm some vines in the engine room once, no dice." She leans back, placing her hands in her lap and searching for the words to say.

"If it is a being, it's one that kidnapped us and keeps us trapped for weeks. When we are freed, we are sent to do things that injure and kill people, to help others. A lot of the time it's been fairly clear cut who is at the wrong. Yes, we have amenities and it gives us 'time off for good behavior' occasionally." She does the finger quotes, of course, "But it's still a gilded cage. Anger--especially the kind brought about by losing someone you care about, can make you do awful things. Things you didn't think you were capable of. But it doesn't even--really seem like you did that. You say it was a mental attack, did you really hurt them? Or just make them angry?"

[unfavorableinstigation]

"... I don't know."

'Pain' hadn't exactly been the signal sent across.

"But, back home, psychotropic wizardries - especially the kinds done without consent - it's like giving the green light on torture, or more mundane kinds of assault."

[springforth]

"Were you? Or did you do something because you were angry and immediately were horrified with yourself?" Persephone gestures the room around them.

[unfavorableinstigation]

"That doesn't make the assault more okay."

But she's looking at Persephone curiously, now.

"... Sounds like you speak from experience, though."

Her look is nonjudgmental, despite how the conversation's just turned.

[springforth]

"Not about me. I'm not a psychi-whatsit wizard." She says automatically, curling in down on herself as if that would avoid the question.

"But you're not wrong, it doesn't make the assault okay, especially to you. You're holding yourself to a standard and failure to keep control of your emotions hurts. But it's understandable to lose control. All you can do is apologize and try to make amends. Wait can you apologize to a train?"

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita snorts, but does her best to stop slouching. Something in the way Persephone asks that question at the end makes her smile, as well. It doesn't hurt that the goddess's observation is spot-on.

"... I think so? We do have the feedback post, not that apologies are what it's remotely intended for.

"Or there's just going up to the engine wall, I guess. I just don't want any apology I make to sound fake."

She did not want to become an utterer of platitudes!

[springforth]

"There isn't really a concrete way to apologize to it, is there?" She screws up her face in thought and then makes a weird wide gesture around her head, "Can't you do--like the talking to it thing? That you do. Or is not talking to you anymore?"

[unfavorableinstigation]

This time, Nita makes a face.

"Not exactly a wizard at the moment. Kind of freaked out wizardry itself with what I did, too. ... I think I scared him."

Among other things. Explaining it to Zetta hadn't gone well earlier, and she can't speak for Bobo in any case, but:

"Whenever it comes to the edge-cases, whatever a wizard thinks is the right course of action, he has to go along with. So now, I could talk to the train, but I wouldn't know if it was listening."

[springforth]

"I--I'm confused. I thought this was a part of you, like my powers." The sheer breadth of types of power in a single train usually led to her making assumptions. Poor ones, it seems.

"So you... Scared the concept of your powers--your wizardry. It got upset and scared and maybe angry? I imagine? So now it too isn't talking to you. Along with the train."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"... Yeah. That's the gist of it. The Powers That Be back home entrust wizards with the power of Speech - to convince the universe to do anything, almost, for the sake of doing right by Life and slowing down entropy. And, with what I did..."

Not exactly anti-entropic!

Nita sighs. "I don't know when he'll talk to me again. And I think I was one of the only wizards in the first place who could actually hear him back home, too. Some people here can overhear things, though, like Xander. Have you met him?"

[springforth]

She continues to be baffled by the whole concept of it but it feels easiest to just accept and move on.

"Um--no. I don't think I have. As least not by name." That throws her if a little, to be honest. "Uh, have your tried talking to your wizardry, see if they will also accept your apology? Or get this Xander to pray it on? If they can talk and not just listen, I suppose."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita blinks, surprised at the acceptance - but hey, things could be worse.

"Xander did have a word with them, actually - it was weird, hearing only half that conversation."

Not normal for her, these days.

"But as long as I'm not a wizard, I can't hear them. I could talk at them..."

She trails off, staring at a corner of the wall, thoughts churning.