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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Koumyou shakes his head, carefully since his hair is being worked on.

"Even if Ukoku had a reason to use his sutra against a distant world like that, it was far too sloppy to be the Muten's work. We wouldn't be talking about it now. The train itself wouldn't exist -- the world was its home world."

And then, there had been Halo.

"The woman the five of us tried to rescue on Nion wouldn't have existed anymore, either, to tell the tale. Or if she had still existed, she certainly wouldn't have remembered her own home world."

The sutras don't leave scraps like that.

"But, even an imitation of a sutra is a considerable threat."

Edited 2020-12-08 05:00 (UTC)

On the one hand, it's a relief to hear that one of the incredibly powerful relics from Koumyou's home is not in play currently. On the other hand, by all the virtues what he's saying about its abilities is terrifying.

"Whatever it is that caused that-- that destruction is overwhelming enough as it is," Devero says. "I'm glad it's not the Muten. But--if there's anything you know about it that might help us figure out what's going on, maybe we should bring it to the community at large?"

He goes to one knee behind Koumyou, to spend some time squeezing water out of the ends of his hair. It is, perhaps, very good for his libido that their current topic of conversation is serious. "That woman-- you mean that captain, don't you. They played her final message at the meeting? You met her...?"

Koumyou makes a noncommittal noise at the idea of discussing this with the community at large, and holds still while Devero moves down behind him. He's only vaguely keeping track of what the bigger man is doing, and only that much out of pure habit.

"I did, I was one of the people who found her," Koumyou confirms, "I healed her with the Seiten, and held a barrier over the area while she talked with the others."

But healing her hadn't been enough. Not with her ship littering the area around them in fragments no larger than a door.

"...What happened to her?" he asks, his voice so low as to be almost hard to hear.

"They didn't tell you at the meeting?"

Koumyou produces his cigarettes from his arms band, and lights up before answering.

"The same thing that happens to everyone. She died."

He doesn't sound upset, though, just... resigned. Tired. The priest has watched a lot of people die, after all.

"...Not from her wounds, but, it seems that when a void ship is fully destroyed, the crew's minutes are numbered. So everyone should take good care of the train, if they don't want to join her."

"It was implied, but they didn't..." he murmurs, then just stops and listens quietly. Koumyou's words make him inhale sharply, his fingers clenching into the wet weave of the towel. "Rust and ruin. They... really should have brought that fact up at some fucking point."

He stands, tossing the towel aside as he does. Koumyou's hair is as dry as it's going to get. He missed where the other man had appeared those cigarettes from, but he doesn't ask, too distracted otherwise.

"Thank you for telling me," he says finally. He hesitates then, one hand lifted and hovering uncertainly in the air, and almost leaves it at that--

He grasps the priest's shoulder, bending enough to just lightly rest his forehead against the crown of Koumyou's head. Battling down a feeling that it's presumptuous of him to even ask, he says, "You've seen a lot of people die, haven't you?"

Koumyou does him the courtesy of holding his cigarette off to one side, at least, so the smoke doesn't drift straight up into Devero's face.

"Yeah."

His other hand comes up to settle on one of the bigger man's shoulders, in turn.

"Sometimes," Koumyou says slowly, and evenly, "all you can do for a person is to not look away, not even for a moment. So they know they're not alone, as they go.

"So that their death matters, even just a little bit, even to a total stranger. So it didn't just happen in a vacuum somewhere, unnoticed or recorded. So that they know someone can accept the karma of their death, and shoulder the load."

Even someone who's seen too many last moments just like it.

That was what he'd done for Halo. No tears, no emotional oaths, no platitudes. He'd simply not looked away.

Devero is aware in this moment of a profound gulf of experience between himself and Koumyou. Not in the sense of the peculiarities of their unique worlds-- that one he's been aware of from the start-- but in the sense of experience with the fundamental nature of life.

Everyone dies. People he's known and cared for have died. Beneath weapons in his hands, people have died. It's not that he's untouched by the pain and grief that comes along with the end of a person's life. But in the even cadence of Koumyou's voice and his unflinching gaze lies a closer acquaintance with death that Devero has personally never known.

For a moment, he feels very young, much younger than the age difference between the two of them can account for.

He reaches up, careful not to knock the cigarette hand, and takes Koumyou's other shoulder. "You've been carrying alone for a long time." It should probably be a question, but it's not.

It's his turn to not look away. After everything that's happened between them since the priest found him in the bath, he owes Koumyou that much. "If there's anything I can do to help you shoulder that burden, Koumyou Sanzo, please let me know."

Koumyou turns his head to take a long drag from his cigarette, over the bigger man's hand. He holds his breath in for a moment, then exhales the smoke away from Devero's face, too.

And then the cigarette is being held out to the side again, and the priest is back to watching Devero steadily.

"I wonder..." he says, after some thought, "if you mean that enough to not run away, anymore."

From him?

From whatever this tension is, slowly building between them?

Devero breathes in deeply, ~~slightly regrets it because of the acridity of the smoke, despite Koumyou's efforts,~~ and considers his response. He doesn't want to answer too glibly; he too feels the tension between them, weightier and more significant now than his initial creche-kid crush.

"I try not to say things I don't mean," he says finally. "Being around you is electrifying. You make me feel better than I've felt in--" He pauses, and is the one to look away. "--in a long time."

But he looks back a moment later, recalling what Koumyou had said to him earlier, and tells him, "You make me feel seen."

He releases the other man then, and steps back to give them both a little space. "I think... I think I've been lying to myself about... a lot of things, lately. And I think that maybe around you, I don't have to keep doing that? If you'd even let me."

It's an overwhelming thought, and his voice wavers as he says it. He has been lying to himself, but all those lies were defensive walls in a fortress built to protect his heart. The wounded creature inside that fort is gibbering in fear to even put it into words, this barest acknowledgement that Valdana has treated him badly. He's been hiding in the dark, trying to survive her abuse-- and Koumyou's been a light, lancing and insistent, finding its way in.

"I don't-- w-want to run away from this anymore. And I definitely don't want to run away from you."

A pause, and then a rueful laugh. Once more, he looks away. "If you'll have me, anyway. I don't want to impose or presume."

Devero's got a way with words, an earnestness with them, that makes Koumyou pay attention. He holds very still through most of it, not necessarily even breathing.

That last bit, though, about imposing or presuming? Koumyou laughs lightly, and reaches out to give one of Dev's shoulders a playful poke with one finger.

"Don't overthink it," he suggests cheerfully, "I'm just glad you're not running."

Leave it to Koumyou to boil it all down to something so concise!

"But right now, I have to get dressed."

And just like that, Koumyou pierces through his self-counsciousness and punctures his uncertainty. Delighted, he laughs. "I'd better warn you now, I've been accused of being a chronic overthinker.

"R-right!" He's not as sheepishly flustered as he's been around Koumyou before, but he definitely had sort of tuned out the fact that the priest had conducted his entire side of all that in swim trunks. "I'll leave you to it-- oh!" He pulls the purple drawstring out of a pocket and holds it out. "Here, for your hair."

"Oh! That's very sweet of you," Koumyou accepts the cord, beaming. "It should only take me a few minutes to get ready to go get ice cream with you."

Because that's still the plan, right? Right. Ice cream is important, especially after spilling so many complicated and heavy feelings all over the place.

Koumyou wanders over toward the laundry bins, accordingly. He's still not the least shy about changing around someone else, thanks to his own background with shared baths. So, his swim trunks go into the laundry along with his discarded towel, the priest slipping back into his train-issued blue boxers.

A flash of light from his arms band vanishes his soggy sleeping robe from his hand, and produces his uniform, all wrapped up in a tight bundle.

The jeans go on relatively easily, at least. Koumyou pockets the cord Devero gave him and has to set his cigarette down somewhere to fight the form-fitting black top, and manages to get slightly stuck with it half on. All that damp hair--!

"--Ah."

Help.

Edited 2020-12-08 23:54 (UTC)

Devero's actually not terribly body-shy himself, not after his time in Guard, but he still turns away. For one thing, it's polite; for another, dat ass. The first blush of Devero's infatuated ardor has been undeniably cooled by all those feelings they spilled, but he still finds the sharp, spare lines of Sanzo's body alluring.

Only that little sound makes him peek over his shoulder-- and he bursts out laughing. Sorry, Koumyou.

"Are you stuck?"

"It's not funny!" Koumyou whines, from somewhere inside that shirt. "Help!"

It's super funny, and he knows it. There's definitely a laugh hiding somewhere in that pathetic tone of his.

But also, help!

Devero, very kindly, manages to stop laughing, but he definitely his to clamp his lips to keep it in as rejoins Koumyou. He examines him for a deliberately long moment, humming thoughtfully.

He steps up behind the Sanzo and grips the hem of his top. "Brace yourself," he murmurs in wicked warning--

Before he yanks, straight down, with his not-inconsiderable strength.

"Are you going to help?" Koumyou whines, as that long moment drags on, and then, "Brace myself against wha--!"

Down goes the shirt! Koumyou's arms and head all manage to come out the correct openings, though with the nature of all that loose, damp hair, the priest's head jerks back as far as it can go. That's so much pulling on his scalp!

His face is even flushed from all the struggle! Long bangs all mussed, too, from the shirt, half in his face. The priest looks like-- maybe--

"My hero," Koumyou says only, with a breathless little laugh, his bony hands immediately darting to the back of his neck to start pulling his hair up and out of the obscenely tight shirt by the handful.

Oh. Oh, isn't that a lovely sight, especially at so close a vantage? Devero can't help but pass a faint, reverent breath as his eyes roam the curve of Koumyou's jaw, trace the sweep of his neck, admire the fall of his hair across his face.

His arms are already halfway around the smaller man and oh, how easy it would be to wrap them the rest of the way. To be close, oh, to be close--

Steady, Devero. He steps back and jams his hands into his pockets, lest they betray him. Koumyou's comment makes him smile, and if it's crooked and a little wistful, well. There's myriad reasons why it could be, right?

"At your service," he says, sketching a sarcastic little bow. "Shall I help you with your hair next, good citizen?"

Koumyou tugs the rest of his hair out of the back of his shirt, and gives Devero a quizzical look as he reaches for his arm-warmers, next. "Do you want to? You've already helped me a lot with it..."

He wants to, but he knows that the reason he wants to is inappropriate. He may be attracted to Koumyou-- at the moment, incredibly attracted to Koumyou-- but he's not going to try to sidestep seeking the man's consent for physical intimacy by pretending he just wants to be innocently helpful.

"Your hair's lovely," he says, by way of indirect explanation for the offer, and then, "but I actually don't know how to braid, so I should probably let you take care of it. Maybe another time you can teach me."

He makes himself move a little further away, sitting on one of the poolside loungers, and takes his Interface out of his pocket. Opening it back up into its eye configuration, he fits it against his ear as a further distraction from how much he wants to bury his hands in that hair and taste that slender curve of neck.

"What? You don't know how to braid? But it's so simple!"

Sorry, Devero, Koumyou has no idea why you might hesitate to follow through on that offer. He follows the other man to the lounger, even as he's rolling -- yes, rolling -- the second arm-warmer up over his bicep.

"Here, I'll show you."

And now the priest drops down to sit seiza on the floor in front of him, pulling his hair forward over a shoulder. Lesson time!

"So first, you want three sections, right? As equal as you can make them. I should really comb it out before this part... makes it easier to divide, but, it's fine for a little demonstration, right?"

Oh no. Oh no. Devero did ask for this, he just hadn't expected to be taken up on it immediately. Maybe he should have known better.

But the thing about Devero is he meant it sincerely. He's always had a little bit of ah, ahem, fascination with hair, and the prospect of helping Koumyou with his is genuinely appealing. He's just. Going to need to not let the proximity get to him.

Right.

Concentrate, Dev. "Hold on just a second," he murmurs. He's got his eye back on, so he might as well take full advantage of the demo. His gaze goes distant for a moment as he looks through the screen and moves a finger through the air.

"Smile," he tells the priest with a quirk of his lips, "you're on camera. Go ahead."

Blink, blink. "...Oh! Right, you can do that video thing!" And Koumyou does indeed beam for the camera. Complete with a wave. "Hello, future Devero!"

It might be precious if there wasn't that underpinning problem of Devero's. And here's Koumyou on his knees on the floor, in the base layer of his uniform.

You know, as you do.

"Right, so, three parts...! Normally it'd be like, one on either side and one down the middle," Koumyou demonstrates as he talks, trying to peel his hair apart from itself. "But it's hard to get it started on yourself, you know? Even if you're really flexible."

Unspoken but perhaps understood; a martial artist of Koumyou's caliber was very flexible.

That is. so charming. Devero has to bite his lip to keep from doing more than smiling in return. He tries to keep his eyes on just Koumyou's hands, but the priest's hands are in his luscious hair, and his luscious hair is draped over his sculpted chest, and--

Fortitude, Devero! Virtues, not vices! Discipline!

He has to lick his suddenly-dry lips. "I-- I'm following you," he says, trying to sound normal. (Koumyou casually bringing up flexibility is not helping.)

And once again, the air is so humid, the material of that black top and arm-warmers has that extra... shimmer to it.

Koumyou glances up at him for a moment, and... okay, maybe on a later viewing, Devero might notice his eyes going right to the lip-licking. And a fraction of a second of interest in those pretty brown eyes of his.

But in real time, the priest is rather sneaky about it.

"Okay so, this is going to be harder to show because it's flipped around, but," Koumyou drops his attention to his own hands for a second, gathering up the three sections in his hooked fingers. "It's like this, right? And then you pass this section over to your other hand like... this. See how it went under? And then the part that hand already had goes like... this."

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two guys standing in a spa 6 inches away, it's absolutely gay

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