We're all in this train-gether 🚂

[adregem]

Who: OTA. If you’re a passenger with a ticket on this train, then you are most welcome here!
Where: Upper Music Car
When: Imagination 18, at around brunch.
What: Welcome to the train’s first ever community open forum. Come for the food, stay for the best discussions ever.
Warnings: Lots of top-levels for easy access to relevant topics to your characters, but apart from that, nothing right now! (Not a warning but a heads-up that one TL will be dedicated to the dissemination and discussion of the bonus trek during the last mission. For your OOC reference, please see here.)



Someway through the 18th of Imagination, an announcement for the already spoken for meeting is shared by the ICPs, giving people twenty minutes to come to the upper Music Carriage for the gathering. While the chairs mostly face the stage, they’ve been curved to allow people to face their fellow passengers too, so not to put the sole focus in one place.

This is a meeting for all, and everyone will have their chance to speak and be heard.

The promised snack table sits to one side of the room, and on the stage, the white board from the standard coach has been brought in, written on it bullet points for the planned topics. To assist in the flow of discussion, familiar moderators stand in place to help jot things down, carry conversation further should one idea end while another is ready to begin, among other such administrative tasks to organize the forum. Plus, the ICP’s are in constant use all throughout the meeting, with basic announcements about what’s being discussed now, and how more people are still welcome to catch up to the Music Car if they hear something that interests them.

Grab a plate, settle down, and let’s get to work.

(OOC: Specific top-levels will be set-up for ease of tagging. Select ‘Show Top-Level Comments Only’ if you would like to skip ahead! And as much as possible kindly keep to a single thread in that TL, unless a very special or private point has to be made with regards to the subject! :) Of course if you will be tagging the snacks table, the extra suggestions, or the meta-thread, this does not apply any longer.

Also, very important: Please see here for an example format of how documentation of missions can go! It is most relevant during the discussion on information gathering.)

Comments

Trunks OTA

[light_of_willpower]

[Once he's made his main points, Trunks will come lurk not far from the snacks and drinks. Feel free to approach him to ask about the armor he brought up (and is wearing or about capsule tech. He brought his capsule mini-fridge with him for demonstrations as needed, so he can also provide some drinks for people.]

[nutkrusher]

Speaking of snacks, look who's over here looking like one.

[Cassie moves in quickly to kiss him before he can duck his head away and blush.]

That's some nice armor.

[light_of_willpower]

[She can move in quickly and get him before he ducks his head, but his blush is pretty instantaneous. Bright pink, and then he's being kissed--and that's nice. They're in public, so not helping his blush, but nice. Soon as the brief kiss is over, he's ducking his head shyly, still bright red.]

When I arrived, I had my capsule case with me. Instead of the usual 3 capsules, it had two storage capsules and my mini-fridge. One of them had this

[Gesturing down to what he's wearing]

in it. It's what I was wearing while training for the tournament.

[nutkrusher]

[Cassie traces her hand along his back, getting a feel for the material.]

And I'm guessing it's as practical as it is fashionable.

[light_of_willpower]

[It's definitely some kind of polymer material. It feels like armor, which means he probably can't feel her tracing along his back.]

Part of why I wanted to bring it, and bring it up at this meeting. It's flexible, and designed to be worn by a variety of people.

[subcircuits]

[Here's someone Devero's actually been looking for, and he hones in on Trunks like a big, dark guided missile. Still, he stops a polite distance away and nods in greeting.] Name's Devero. Something you mentioned earlier caught my interest-- what's Capsule Tech?

[light_of_willpower]

As I said before, it's a means of compressing stuff into a smaller space for storage and travel, and then decompressing it again. My Grandfather invented the most successful version, back on my world.

[Trunks looked around before motioning for a little space as he pulled out the small device labeled 2031.]

This for example, is a mini-fridge. You need a bit of space, but click the top...

[Demonstrating as he did so, before giving it a very light toss since space was limited. There was some smoke, and a 'hoipoi' sound, before a mini-fridge appeared.]

[subcircuits]

That... that's incredible! [His eyes light up. He drops into a crouch to examine the mini-fridge, peering at it from multiple angles.] How does it work? We don't have anything like this where I come from.

[light_of_willpower]

I don't understand a lot about how it works, and I'm honestly kind of happier that way. I just know it does. I do know I don't recommend using storing it in an ARMS band, or an ARMS band in a capsule. Or other similar type of space-and-size manipulation technologies. You also can't store living things in it.

[Devero is welcome to look in the fridge as it's fully functioning. Trunks has beer, Hetap (which seems to be a kind of sports drink), and a sparkling juice. Also a water bottle or two from the train filled with cold water.]

Re: Trunks OTA

[laurefindil]

That's nice armor.

That Cassie was wearing earlier.

Re: Trunks OTA

[light_of_willpower]

[Oh crapbaskets. The blush is instantaneous, and Trunks kind of ducks his head.]

I knew she'd be interested even if no one else was. I figured others might be too, though. Easiest way to bring it up is to just show it, right?

Re: Trunks OTA

[laurefindil]

Oh, yes, I was shown...many things.

I am glad that two of my friends have...developed a connection. [His smile is only slightly smirky, as he really means this.]

[light_of_willpower]

[So not helping his blush, and he manages a half-hearted glare at the other. Even managing to hold it for a bit, before he sighs. Crossing his arms self-consciously.]

She's not subtle. Except, I suspect, when she really wants to be--which I haven't seen yet.

[pleple]

Armor like that would be reassuring. As you can see, I'm not very... large.

[ Going on five foot two, but also scrawny as she should be for her age. ]

[light_of_willpower]

Neither is one of the strongest pure humans I know.

[Said with a reassuring grin.]

I haven't worn this before now, since I found it in my capsule in my bag, so it's all clean if you want to try the breastplate on.

[pleple]

[ Yeah but Krillin is fucking shredded dude have you looked at those pecs? ]

I'm not quite there yet.

[ ...she's pretty fit for an eleven year old, but she's not a magical kung-fu alien, alas. ]

It fits all sorts of shapes and sizes that easily?

[light_of_willpower]

The armor my mother reverse engineered to make this?

[Gesturing to what he's wearing.]

I saw it worn by a good number of shapes and sizes. Mom also made this and 3 other identical sets for me, my father, and Goku and Gohan. Gohan wasn't much bigger than you in height, and his fit fine too.

Seeking out Curufin

[light_of_willpower]

[Trunks is keeping a particular eye open for one person he wanted to speak to, but hadn't wanted to distract from the group conversation. Still, Curufin was busy, but he was hoping the other elf would have a moment... Ah. There.

Trunks makes his way over to Curufin, bearing a cup of tea he offers to the other immediately.]

Sorry, you've probably got a lot on your plate but I wondered if you could clarify and expand on something you said earlier, Curufin? About us being called Anomalies, and the Train jumping between alternate realities and timelines.

[so_dark_a_road]

[ When the main discussion is finished, Curufin heads for the snack table. As soon as he gets there, Trunks intercepts him and offers a cup of tea. Curufin takes the cup, smiles and thanks him. He takes a sip. ]

You don't have to apologize. I'll gladly expand on what I said. Which topic do you want me to start with?

[light_of_willpower]

I have some familiarity with alternate timelines of the same world.

[Some to put it mildly. In the form of direct experience.]

So I just wondered if you'd expand more on what you said. We've been called anomalies? and the Train might be on its own alternate timeline, relative to its...what? Past? Future? We don't know, do we?

[They might end up needing a whiteboard for this.]

[so_dark_a_road]

If you have some familiarity with alternate timelines of the same world, I'd be interesting in hearing about it. I believe that I have some, but I'll get to that later.

When the Inspectors of the Ministry of Void Travel boarded the train, my cabinmates and I had a brief conversation with them about that concept of an anomaly. They said "There has been an anomaly recorded. It is highly unusual. An inspection was necessary." Reigen and I protested that we were just ordinary people, nothing anomalous about us. They replied, "You are all an anomaly." They didn't continue with any sort of explanation, and I had a sudden feeling that they hadn't meant to say even that much, and that they wished they hadn't.

I've had some thoughts about the possible meaning of that word. Maybe it's a reference to the passengers being pulled out of our own universes, and are therefore no longer occupying our natural places in the multiverse? How would the Ministry detect that, I wonder?

When Kaiba, Roland, Koumyou, Reno, and I activated Captain Halo's SCA device, we found she had left a recorded message on it. In that message, she said some things that gave me pause. She said, first off, that her home planet was called Enrara and that it was in System #1015. They seems to have been specialists in Void travel, and they are the home of the Voidtrecker Express. However, there is no record of that planet and that system ever having existed, at least not according to the Ministry. And this is despite the fact that Halo worked for an agency of Enrara that coordinated with the Ministry. Halo found this out when she traveled via the Voidflash, her own ship, to System #3, and they tried to arrest her on the grounds that the Voidflash wasn't a registered transport, and that there was no such planet as Enrara and no such system as #1015, that Halo's papers were invalid, and that therefore she must be some sort of spy or criminal. She fled to a planet where she knew a lot of people and had underground contacts, but no one recognized her and they turned weapons on her. She fled that place as well. But it was the same wherever she went. She went to her own home system and it was gone. Not only physically gone, but vanished from Void history and from the history of any other planet that she knew. The only trace left was some legends of the Voidtrecker Express, but these were only stories, legends, rumors. There was no official history left anywhere that acknowledged the Voidtrecker, nor the Voidflash, nor Captain Halo and her planet and system of origin.

She heard some rumors about strange shadow beings that destroy worlds. She heard of refugees from these worlds, and that they themselves remembered their own planets. But no one seemed to remember Enrara except Halo. That would make it the only place that the shadow beings destroyed that also somehow had its history erased. Halo was wondering if she had accidentally entered an alternative Void, in which Enrara never existed.

That would explain why she is the only one who remembers Enrara. And that might relate to those memories some passengers experienced on the that world with the Memory Cave, those particular memories that seemed to refer to the origin of the Voidtrecker and the disaster that killed its original crew. I was wondering if the Voidtrecker Express somehow escaped not only from its own world and universe, but from its original timeline, in order to exist in an alternate timeline where it might conceivably escape from the perils it fears.

We don't know, of course. That's one reason why I want to seek more communication with the train. I don't know if it will ever talk to us, but if it doesn't, than we are left with attempting to discover the facts by detective work.

[ Bring on the whiteboard! ]

[dreamtamer]

[ Takato had gone to listen to what everyone was saying, but he hadn't said much. They all seemed like good ideas, and he did want to help. But he wasn't sure about what he could do. He and Guilmon... they could fight. But they weren't fast or good at healing or science or any of the other things people were talking about.

But it had gotten him thinking, even as he follows Guilmon over to the snack tables. He blinks a little as he recognizes Trunks. ]

Hey, are you doing okay after that last mission?

[light_of_willpower]

[Considering Trunks was in armor, he supposed it made sense he might not seem okay to Takato. Privately he did a quick mental check--he'd been more quiet and slightly broody after the mission, but most of the time he'd been busy, so hopefully he hadn't seemed off? Or at least that obviously off compared to his normal demeanor.]

Hi Takato, Guilmon. I'm alright. I brought this

[Gesturing to what he's wearing.]

Because it's one of the things I wanted to bring up. I figured the easiest way is show people.

Are you and Guilmon okay? I didn't see you on the mission.

[dreamtamer]

"We're okay. We tried to help where we could." Takato sighs a little. "But I do wish we could have done more."

[light_of_willpower]

"I think that's a sentiment all of us share, Takato. This mission was rough in many ways. We weren't prepared for those ways, either.