voidtreckerexpress | A New Platform [Intro Post December]

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A New Platform [Intro Post December]

On the Train

It's only been a couple of days since the Voidtrecker Express took to the void once more, and many of the passengers are still recovering and recuperating after a very hectic end to their latest mission. Nevertheless, they are awoken by a familiar message.

"Good morning passengers, it is day sixteen of the month of Imagination. Points have been updated on the system."

They have indeed, and everyone can spend the morning shopping. Those who have been on the train for a while will be expecting the second announcement that comes a few hours later.

"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 the windows fill with the fog that means they are at a platform. It is warm outside with a pleasant breeze that flows down the platform, rustling the light spread of leaves that litter the floor.

As usual the first to leave the train notice nothing, walking silently, rucksacks on their backs, towards the barriers. Akemi Homura, Alfred the Poisoner, Donatello Versus, Chie Satonaka, Joscelin Fitzthomas, Ronan Lynch, Rose Tyler, Tangle the Lemur, Trowa Barton, Wester Mazaki and Whisper the Wolf all pass through the platform, not looking back before they disappear through the barriers and into the fog beyond.

But on the platform itself there are new faces. Wearing hoodies in all four colours, in various states of confusion.

For New Passengers

At first all they can see is steam, billowing around them as they come to their senses. The second thing they will notice is the swirling leaves at their feet, moving in flurries and rattling against each other softly. As their eyes adjust, they will see they are on a platform, cement and packed earth forming a very practical, plain-looking shelter. Behind them is a set of barriers, and in front of them is a single track extending both ways into thick fog.

They are standing, in clothes that are not their own and a style 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 the steam begins to fade and they realise they aren’t alone.

The platform is not large and it holds eight figures all facing the tracks, all dressed in cargo trousers and hoodies. 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 gloom step a selection of people. Some are human, some are less so. Most are wearing the same hoodie in one of the four colours, red, orange, blue and purple though some are sporting different clothes in a variety of styles.

The Train

The doors hiss open. Those from the train may encourage those on the platform to board. It’s not like there's 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 lead to something terrible. 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 (see
'Publications'). The store rooms have been restocked with more jars of honey, the ingredient of the month of Imagination, as well as sundries.

A new carriage has been added right next to the luggage carriage. It is a second medical carriage, or triage carriage. Downstairs is more open with beds and chairs, upstairs are two surgical bays for those that need immediate attention.

For those intrigued by the claim of a parcel for every passenger they will find several large boxes filled with small blue bags. Inside each bag is ten dark blue coins imprinted on each side with a silver snowflake. Each bag has a small label with a passengers name. On the other side of the label it reads: Keep these safe for now.

Of course for any passengers that have bought items, these are also scattered around the luggage carriage as well.

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 taking advantage of the pleasant weather and the doors slide shut. Veteran passengers know what will happen next, but they may wish to brief their new companions.

The train sets off, the fog obscuring the view again 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!

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There's no burst of light, no splashing of water, just one moment Devero's bolting for the door, and the next, there's something like a wide belt around his hips and he just can't.

Literally, just can't. Forward motion: denied. One tendril of the sutra has looped around his middle, just firmly enough to do the job. The texture still feels like paper, but there's no give to it, not even on a microscopic level. It isn't even damp from being underwater for this whole conversation!

The tendril, of course, leads back to the priest, who only now lifts his head off the side of the pool again. "Devero," Koumyou says gently, actual concern showing on his face, "I can't just let you run off like that. What do you mean, it's not safe? Are you in danger?"

Devero catches up against the sutra with a grunt, not falling on his ass only because it's wrapped all the way around him. He realizes immediately that it's the sutra, but he fights against the restraint regardless. His brain refuses to believe that something that's just paper could be locked so solidly around him.

But it's not just paper, and he can't get it to budge off of his hips. He's trapped, and boy if that doesn't dump just that much more adrenaline and cortisol into his system. (Somewhere at the end of the cabin, his Interface starts to have a little electronic fit.)

He twists around to face Koumyou, and there's naked fear on his face. But despite that, he-- laughs? "No, n-no no no, of course not," he says, unable to control the words falling out of his mouth. "Not as long as I follow the rules!"

Rust and ruin, talking to anyone about this is without her explicit permission is against his rules too. He's going to be in so much trouble.

Koumyou isn't even physically holding onto an end of the sutra; what has ahold of Devero ends in... just a scroll, floating in the air above the heated pool.

The priest gazes at Devero's expression for a second, and makes a choice. This isn't a conversation to have lounging around in the pool. And since the sutra's already 'in play', just the little subconscious thought that he'd like to get out and put his sleeping robe back on, is enough. A second tendril shoots away from the floating scroll, scooping up the robe as Koumyou climbs out of the water.

He accepts it from the holy paper, and shoulders it back on over his wet skin before padding over toward Devero, tying it shut. "You're okay," he tries, "just breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. As slow as you can bear to. Just focus on that for a minute. Anything else can wait."

Edited 2020-12-04 04:57 (UTC)

With helpless fascination, Devero watches the sutra. Why not, when he's spilled how he feels about it and its protector out into the air between him. The way it moves, the way Koumyou interacts with it-- there's almost a hunger in his eyes, deep under the beating panic of everything else that's happening.

Then Koumyou's out of the pool and approaching him, and his gaze fixes on the priest instead of the parchment. He manages to keep his mouth closed, but he does nod, Koumyou's words recalling lessons learned when he was still in creche. Emotional regulation. He closes his eyes, and he breathes.

As it's meant to, the exercise grounds him. Not much, mind, but at least enough that he no longer feels like he's about to choke on his panic. He looks a little bit less like a hunted animal when he opens his eyes and looks again at Koumyou. "I shouldn't have said that," he says, his voice low and rough. "I shouldn't have said anything, I'm sorry."

Koumyou offers his bony, callused hands, if Devero wants to take them. He doesn't try to initiate the contact, just makes the silent offer. "If I let go, will you stay and talk?"

Not, 'if the sutra lets go'. The bigger man had already proven with his words that he understands, at least on some level, that the line between Sanzo and sutra is blurred at best.

Devero might be more capable of understanding that than most folks; after all, the line between jockey and exo is pretty blurry too, especially where experienced pilots in familiar machines are concerned.

He lifts his hands towards Koumyou's, then changes his mind and tucks them into his armpits instead. He huddles in on himself and looks away. "I shouldn't," he says. He laughs once, humorless. "I've said too fucking much already."

Koumyou sighs at that, but lets the sutra drop away from Devero's hips anyway. The scroll is gone instantly from over the pool; now draping over Koumyou's shoulders. Over the top of his now-soaked sleeping robe.

It's not like he can't just grab the guy again if he bolts.

"If being around me is putting you in danger, I would like to know why," he tries instead, folding his own hands into his opposite sleeves, just like he likes to do with his uniform.

"Or should I start making wild guesses? Perhaps you were sent by some powerful youkai lord, all the way to this train, to get close to me and make an attempt on the sutra. Except now you like me, so you don't want to slit my throat in my sleep after all! Oh, the drama!"

Edited 2020-12-04 06:48 (UTC)

See, this is part of why Devero likes Koumyou despite only having known him for a very short time: even in the middle of this fear and misery, the other man still manages to make him laugh. Sure, it's a sputtery, disbelieving laugh, but it's still a laugh.

"Can we say that's it and leave it at that?" he asks hopefully.

But no, he knows they can't. He's opened too raw a wound to try and paper it over with avoidance and jokes about schlocky drama.

"Being around you isn't what's putting me in danger," he says, hugging himself a little tighter. "I'm not in danger. It's just--" This is so hard to talk about. It's been ingrained in him for so long that the nature of his relationship with Administrator Valdana needs to be kept secret. But he owes Koumyou an explanation-- a real one, not the cop-out about the sutra that he gave earlier.

"There's someone back home. And I have rules. If I break them, she'll discipline me." He laughs again, and has to dash the back of his hand across suddenly-stinging eyes. "I'm already in for it for telling you any of this at all."

"Just because it's not lethal, doesn't make it not danger," Koumyou points out, and reaches to try to take Dev's hand before it can vanish under his opposite arm again. And, because the other man has brought them up twice now, he has to ask, "What are the rules? No fraternizing with clergy?"

If Koumyou hadn't caught Devero's hand, he might have been able to hold himself together. He might have been able to come up with-- something-- enough detail to wrap up this conversation without revealing more than he already had. He might have been able to find a way to convince Koumyou that everything was fine even if he'd flown off the handle. (He's such a bad boy, after all. Isn't that what she always tells him? So lacking in discipline, so pathetic.)

But the priest's bony fingers do catch Devero's. He looks down at Koumyou and it's like something inside him shifts, like snow on the side of a mountain that's disturbed and just starting to slide.

"No fraternizing with anyone!" he says, and he laughs another one of those shaky, humorless laughs. He covers his eyes with his other hand as they overflow, as if he could halt the tears if he just presses hard enough. "Madame expects me to always be available to meet her needs and she says-- she says its her prerogative to decide who to share me with, she says I can't be trusted and I've tried to prove to her I can be, I want to be good for her I swear I do, but I always fuck something up so it's just easier to avoid people so I don't upset her, I don't want to upset her and I don't want to be disciplined but--"

He uncovers his eyes and seizes Koumyou's hand with his other. His eyes are wild, a man staring into the avalanche oncoming and knowingit's probably going to annihilate him. ~~Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.~~ "But I don't want to have to avoid you. It's not fair!"

The priest gazes back, as serene and calm as ever. He doesn't know Devero well enough to do anything for his tears, but maybe someday.

"When we first met," he says slowly, calmly, instead, "I said one should live, and laugh, or give up and die. And you said you weren't ready to die yet, so living and laughing are your only options."

Koumyou squeezes the hand he'd captured, just a bit.

"This doesn't sound like it's bringing you any joy, Devero."

It's such a simple metric, and yet Devero has never considered it. Does his relationship with Valdana make him happy? Does it bring him joy?

"Her happiness is supposed to be enough for me," he says, and for the first time that straightforward assertion feels wrong in his mouth. It's what he's been telling himself as his world has narrowed in on him little by little. That as long as he keeps her happy, that's all that matters. If he just acts correctly, if he just follows the rules, she'll wrap him in the affection and praise that so characterized the beginning of their relationship. That's all he's wanted from the beginning, the attention and affirmation of the woman who offered him a hand up when he was at his lowest.

He doesn't get that much from her anymore, does he? She just makes him feel small, and inadequate, and lonely. How pathetic.

He scrubs the heel of his hand across his eyes again. "I sound like a fucking lunatic, don't I? That's something a lunatic would say."

"Well, I don't think you sound like a lunatic," Koumyou offers, "but you really should take that from me with a few grains of salt."

Gods know he's hung out with a few in his time. And is considered one himself by... most people who meet him.

"Your karma is your own, you can't shoulder someone else's no matter how hard you might try, and if she told you to do it anyway..." Koumyou shakes his head a little.

"Your life should be yours to live."

Ah, and that's part of the problem, isn't it? Devero looks away and rocks back on his heels, opening some space between them without quite committing to pulling away.

"The only reason I even have a life is because of her," he says, shaking his head more vigorously than Koumyou had his own. "I owe it to her. That's why I have to-- that's why I can't--"

He falls silent, unable to finish the thought.

"Give me a moment to think, please," is all Koumyou says, but he doesn't let go of Devero's hand. In fact, his other comes up to cover it from the other side, too.

And he considers, now, what Devero had said just a moment ago, about 'Madame' always expecting him to be available to meet her needs. Her prerogative to decide who to 'share him' with. That he can't be trusted, even though he tries so hard... and so on.

Koumyou doesn't have any of the details, but that's still enough to make him feel a bit... ill. That's... he's no expert on how people should treat one another, not really, but...

Devero sounds like a kicked dog, and this woman sounds like she enjoys the kicking. And perhaps even more, the tail-tucked, terrified attempts to make her happy.

"...I think it's very good that she isn't on the train," he says, finally. His tone is deceptively mild, "Because I might actually get angry."

And no one wants to see that.

What else can he do, but keep silent and let Koumyou think? He nods and averts his eyes and seems to shrink in on himself. He tries not to think at all, because if he does he's just going to hear her voice in his head reminding him of all the ways he falls short, all of his flaws and deficiencies-- flaws and deficiencies that are probably obvious by now to Koumyou, who's surely realizing that Madame has the right of it anyway, that Devero needs to be taken in hand, that--

The priest's words are so diametrically opposite to Devero's spiraling, self-loathing suppositions that he almost wonders if he misheard. He definitely doesn't think he understands.

"What?" Now he tries to reclaim his hand, to turn and draw back if he can. "N-no, that's not-- if anything you should get angry at me, I'm the one who's such a colossal fuck-up!"

Koumyou just... doesn't let go. He won't hold on any tighter than he has to, but no looser, either. Devero's not going anywhere.

And he says, calmly, "I'm looking right at you, and I don't see any such thing."

As uncomfortable as he is, Devero doesn't pull too hard. He doesn't actually want to. His fingers do curl, though, and he wraps his other arm back around himself, digging the nails of his free hand into the opposite bicep.

He can't look at Koumyou. "You just don't know me well enough. She knows me. She knows what I really am."

"Well, I suppose it's true that I don't know you as well, but... I think you're sweet, and kind, and that it's terribly easy for terrible people to use that kind of thing to their own advantage."

It isn't hard to remember the puppy eyes Devero had given him when he'd asked if they could dance again. Or his alarm at Koumyou's minor wounds, just a short time before. And the way he'd seemed surprised and then happy, every time Koumyou had grabbed his hand...

Before things had gotten... weird, somehow. Before he'd started to make the bigger man so nervous.

"Imagine treating anyone like they're expendable, like they're trash that can never be good enough... for what? Good enough for someone who has to hold another down just to feel higher up?"

Koumyou glances down at his hands wrapped around one of Devero's, and has a moment of uncertainty. Since when does he hold onto anyone, anymore?

He stares at that physical affront to his own barriers, and says almost too quietly to hear, "...You know, you might be one of the only people I've met who actually sees me?"

Edited 2020-12-05 02:39 (UTC)

His gut reaction is to object to Koumyou's unflinching assessment of his relationship. Madame's not taking advantage of him; he agreed to be her sub! She grinds him underfoot because that's what he wants her to do-- isn't it? She certainly tells him he should want that, if he wants to be a good sub, her good boy. He needs to let her train him, so he can please her, so he can meet her expectations.

...Her ever shifting expectations, nebulous from session to session, sometimes one demand in direct contradiction to another. Her whims, impossible to predict, so that he somehow ends up requiring discipline even when he thinks he's got her just right. How sometimes it seems she sets goalposts he can never reach, just so she can knock him down and punish him for failing.

He's always pushed that mutinous thought down deep, refusing to acknowledge it. But right now, he finds that he... doesn't want to. He lets it settle into his mind, and he doesn't try to interrupt or deny. Instead he watches Koumyou speak; the Sanzo once again compelling his attention and it's like he can't drag it away.

That intent regard is why he doesn't miss those very, very soft words. They pull him closer, turning back in to face Koumyou. "...What do you mean?" he asks, his own voice just as quiet as Koumyou's.

It's nothing. He almost says it, almost lets go, let 'whatever will happen, happen'. It's a pattern he's fallen into harder and harder over the years of his station, becoming just a spectator to the lives unfolding around him. Hold nothing.

"...I suppose it's proof of what I was saying before," Koumyou says, instead, still staring at their hands. "If you weren't what I called you, then you wouldn't see anything you weren't already expecting to see."

Not everyone on the train has been blind to his true nature, per se, but Koumyou hasn't detected even a hint of the usual off this guy. When Koumyou plays, he plays along. When Koumyou is sad, he moves closer. When Koumyou surprises him, it doesn't seem to be because Devero's decided on a pattern that the priest must fit into.

And back home, he might count those who see him like that on one hand. Or less, if the people must be alive. Sanzo-sama this and Sanzo-sama that. Sanzo must teach, Sanzo must not eat meat, Sanzo must be wise and good and save us all from ourselves.

His son sees him. Jikaku sees him. Maybe Ukoku, but... maybe not, come to think of it. Not if he'd really thought that Koumyou would stand by and watch his son die in his place.

Edited 2020-12-05 03:26 (UTC)

Devero's free hand comes up, and finally, finally he lets himself reach out to Koumyou. He grasps the other man's shoulder heedless of the sodden robe, and squeezes.

"How could I have any expectations of you?" he asks, somewhere between baffled and insistent. "You're like no one I've ever met."

Koumyou lifts his head and offers one of his trademark dopey smiles. "You just really like flattering an old man, don't you?"

It inspires an answering smile from Devero. "It's not flattery if I mean it," he insists. "--Besides, you're hardly an old man." ...Pause. For all Devero knows, he could be 1500 years old, kept perpetually young by the magic of the sutra. That kind of stuff happened in the fantasy streams, didn't it?

He squints at Koumyou suspiciously. "Right?"

"It's definitely flattery," Koumyou counters, and then laughs, finally loosening his hold on Devero's other hand. "But I'm not complaining! It's awfully fun."

Harmless fun.

Oh wait, there's a question hanging there, isn't there?

"...I'm forty-seven."

Is that old? Koumyou himself constantly seems to bounce from one opinion on the matter to the other and back again.

Edited 2020-12-05 04:05 (UTC)

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