Not with a Bang Start and Ongoing

[voidtreckermods]

"Good Morning passengers. Today is day seven of the month of Imagination." The voice echoes through the train as passengers wake up in their beds. Not long afterwards their SCA’s glow with the colour of the void and a holographic image will appear.

Preperation

They have about an hour to prepare, a little less than usual but perhaps expected, given the urgency of the task.

The cupboards in the dressing room are open to reveal rows of tents, in all four team colours as well as some basic camp cooking equipment. They are in bags that should be easy enough to carry.

"Shortly arriving on System #6416. All passengers get ready to disembark. Next stop world 6416. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one." The train rocks and lurches, bright colours of the void filling the space and then fading as they fly downwards towards a very green landscape.

Arrival and Initial Task

The train lands in a clearing, curving round in an attempt to fit. Once everyone who wishes to disembark has done it flies back into the air, vanishing from sight.

The air is heavy and humid, though it is not currently raining. The clearing is open to the sky and looking up will reveal a worrying sight. The sky is an angry red colour, colours shifting as if the clouds themselves were on fire. It's an unnerving sight.

Their SCA's show three points, one Orange, One purple and one that is half blue and half red. The three control centres. Each are a few hours treck through the jungle and it certainly feels like there is no time to waste.

Those that don't want to treck through the forest can start setting up camp, though the darkening sky might be a little distracting. As time goes on flecks of fire drift down, though they extinguish before hitting the forest floor.

Orange are to travel to the north, Purple to the south and Blue and Red must travel together to the west. Each route takes them through thick and unrelenting jungle. Flying is difficult here unless you can get up past the canopy layer, which means vision of the ground is severely hampered.

The control stations themselves are half buried in vines and require cutting into. If voidtreckers are unlucky they will meet their first security robots here, firing on the intruders. They might even meet their first giant Armadillos, the creatures are curious and may wish to investigate. They are not helpful or constructive to trying to power up the stations and prevent the destruction of the planet.

The control stations are simple enough to operate, but there's quite a lot that needs to be done in way of repairs and clearing. It will take a team effort to get it in working enough order to activate the shield.

The shield itself, when it is activated, is mostly invisible but there is a loud humming sound. The meteor, which has gotten more visible throughout the five hours, hits the shield and splinters, fire enveloping the whole sky. It is visibly terrifying, but no fire falls to earth, no rocks get through, the planet is safe.

Ongoing

Once the planet is safe the voidtreckers deserve a rest. But once the next morning dawns it is time to start with their next tasks, to make sure that this planet stays safe from future threats.

Red

The robots at the control stations are not the only malfunctioning security robots around. They roam the jungle, or are more often stranded in the jungle, powering up only when faced with a new threat.

Some are benign, terraforming machines whose only crime is using up precious power. These need to be dismantled so that power can be saved for the shield system. Others are security robots that will attack the intruders to the planet.

Though the machines are scattered they are often obvious, emitting warning alarms or flashing lights. Their SCA's will show some areas where there are larger clusters but machines can be found anywhere.

Purple

Their SCA's are filled with hundreds of purple dots, each a solar stations that needs cleared and brought back online. It's not the most glamourous job, the stations are deep in the jungle, the treck is difficult and most of the work needed is weed clearing.

But once the weeds have been cut away they will need to patch up the station, doing basic maintenance to get it back online. In some cases wires need to be patched back together but it shouldn't take any great feats of engineering to get the stations up and running.

They may run into some of the security automatons, needing to fight their way into the stations before they can begin the clean up operations.

Orange

Like the red team their SCA will show areas where there are clusters of the small insectoid automatons that need to be rescued and restored. However they can be found anywhere throughout the jungle, they are not too suited for the terrain outside of the stations and so they have gotten tangled in vines. They can be found powered down, stranded and in dire need of maintenance.

Tools and spare parts can be found in many of the solar stations that purple team have been locating. Actually repairing the robots takes some engineering knowledge but once they are restored they will go about their tasks in the stations. They will need help getting to the further flung stations as well as the main control centres.

They are very basic in design and follow pre programmed instructions rather than being able to hear and listen to orders. But once in the correct place they are very effective at their job.

Blue

Once the shield is up there is a faint humming that can be heard throughout the jungle if they listen closely and find it among the sound of rain and insects. But once they hear it, it is obvious where it is louder and more prominent.

Their SCA will pin point some of the larger control boxes but there are truthfully too many to show on a map. Not all of them have attracted Violet Pandas, but many of them have.

They are curious creatures, both of the power boxes and the voidtreckers. They are protective of each other but not so much of territory and therefore it is not difficult to move them on. Keeping them away is another matter, the power humming is interesting and they will unearth wires and chew through them. It doesn't seem to do them much harm, there is clearly safety stops in the system for such eventualities. It does however cut power off to entire solar stations and require a lot of patch work.

Good luck voidtreckers!

Comments

[blitzcheer]

Honesty is never an easy face to confront. The appearance it takes, who it's spoken from; Tidus has never learned to deal with it from men like Roland, so for whatever emotion that bubbles in his gut from Roland's sincerity - 'You're good. If I ever met him, I'd tell him that' -, Tidus doesn't meet it, doesn't acknowledge it except in the way his eyes dip, the press of his mouth.

The humidity of the jungle clings on like plastic wrap, an uncomfortable restriction in every step, in every working muscle. Their mission, the jungle itself however, is an afterthought, less burdening than the stifling subject of themselves. Their family. The future.

He understands Roland's hesitance. Stops now himself. What is it for him to say? But, even the wishes he had now, when he thinks about what's waiting for him. A father he never really knew.

"I wish-" Tidus starts, stopped in his steps, facing a jungle ground. An honest hard to spit out for anyone else when he half-acknowledged it to himself. "I wish I knew my old man. I wish I knew more what he was like. Your kid..."

His fingers twists into fists, embarrassed making him more flushed than any climate could.

"You can't give a kid too much."

[adregem]

"You're right." Roland answers, smiling but its empty of joy. He's stuck in a memory - a Memory Lane - and he can't get out. For a minute, the mission is forgotten totally. They're not in a jungle, either of them. They're somewhere, on a beach sending messages, or in Spira catching spheres with tales of another man's life. Another father who failed, and only wanted to do what was right, at whatever cost that warranted.

"I'd give William the world." And he tried to, god knows he did everything he could to ensure his life without Roland would be one of comfort. Of love and adoration. That the bills he passed for a decade only meant to serve kids like him a better tomorrow, a future to look forward to. That he would visit him secretly, in the middle of the night as he slept, alone in a ward with only the beeping of monitors to keep him company; I hope I'm doing right by you, champ. I hope daddy is making you proud.

"But, well. We all know where that led me, right? Heh." The laugh too, is empty of mirth. He looks around, in in that moment he returns to reality. A humid jungle, with the sky to remind him of home. The silence that drapes over them is thick, a blanket that forces them under the same veil. And again, he tries. Roland is always trying, even with people like Tidus who he would have failed too, had things turned out differently.

"I'm sorry." He says, a little more assertively, with emotion forthcoming. "I'm sorry Jecht could only give you spheres to remember him by. You...you deserved more."

Just like Will. Kids who deserved more than just the love from their father's shadow.

[blitzcheer]

Kids don't want the world. He thinks it, before he has a chance to think or say it, there without further prompt. Stardom and bright lights and the glory that shone Jecht's way, illuminating him, turning him larger than life; a father he could be proud of, a father to admire.

A dad never proud of him, the friction and the tears and the lording over what his son could never be. Does it help him to remember that boy now? To not be the same as Roland on that shore, waves ebbing and flowing, sending adrift letters to worlds. They'll reach them. Unquestionable. Things will go the way they want.

But they don't. Waiting on a pier for his family to come back never made them appear.

"It's- life's like that," he speaks, resigned to those facts that no one can deny. Not even an optimist as him. "But... I got to know him, a little. Anything you can say to him... it's not giving up. Not to a kid. Knowing you were thinking about him..."

What would you do on your last day?

'Maybe I'll send a bottle out to sea.'

"Tell him your story." Tidus lifts his gaze, if to a back, a shoulder; to Roland's face looking at him. "Let him know who his dad is. You want to give him the world? Give him his dad."

[adregem]

"His dad's not enough."

He slashes the vines at last, violently, his actions speaking louder than his voice that barely comes out from his throat. The plants fall lamely to the ground, and Roland turns his back, gaze low and ashamed. Like he hates to say it, but it's what he's been hiding all this time. Behind the resolution, the desire to rebuild what has been lost. He doesn't know how to be the father Will needs because the way he loves has always been through service, and when you have a child born with every disadvantage known to mankind, in a country at the center of global warfare...What else is Roland to do? Roland the President, twice voted; Roland the father, unprepared, alone. The version of Will in the Memory Lane could have been Tidus. Growing up not having him, neither Jecht, nor Roland. Wondering if the stories their fathers left them is the answer to the loss.

This empty book, it's yours right? We'll fill it up with all my adventures. I'll come back to you. We'll read them together.

"Sorry."

He shakes his head, looks back with a sheepish smile, lips moving but not by much. The path is clear before them, but neither of them really seem to want to move. Heavy but it's what makes them stay. He tries to interject humor into it, a dry little chuckle coming out of him with the back of his neck rubbed by a calloused hand. "You sounded like my wife back there. Did she possess you or something?"

He exhales audibly.

"...Would you want the same?" Is all he can offer, an ask, a reach for help. The vulnerability he's outwardly showing, too much that it almost chokes. He's this far gone, though. He might as well ask for someone to save him too, from his own grief. "This. More messages. More from your old man. You'd - you'd be happy? With just a story?"

An empty book filled out. Will smiling. 'You help people, right daddy? Promise me...

...that you'll keep helping people!'

[blitzcheer]

It's not a joke that lands. They're too far from those safety nets, that Tidus meets it with confusion, a vulnerability that doesn't have the mouth to quip back. He's not ready to move from this, will fight it if he has to; for now he doesn't, grounded as Roland's own attempts to move forward become slugged by where they've ended up.

What did he want from his father? His love, his support. To know he was proud of him, that he could amount to something. Anything. That he wasn't wasting his time, learning how to kick a blitzball; that he wasn't just a crybaby, that it wasn't bad, how easily he cried. What did he want? Everything. He wanted everything. He wanted his dad.

"You're a busy guy, aren't you? What else are you gonna have time to give him?" He wants to reach out figuratively: give this kind and this family what he didn't get to, what was taken away- from even Jecht, what he wasn't given the chance to offer. "Give him you. If you can't be there with him, then give you another way, I don't care what it is. You're some bigshot back home, and you know, your kid's gonna be proud of that! But who's his dad to him?" His voice rushes, two lives intermingling; what he wishes he could have told the Jecht back there, made him understand in place of the tears that told his frustrations instead. "You know how much a kid wants their dad to talk to them? I didn't want him to stop being the Great Jecht. I just wanted... I wanted to know I wasn't a disappointment. I wanted him to say it!"

His voice rises with the emotion, the tears that threaten the corner of his eyes, everything he didn't get. Thoughts slurring with what's rational, what's been talked about.

"Every kid's dad is enough. What kind of stupid idea is that?" Bitterness, decades old- "You can't put off being a good dad 'til tomorrow."

[adregem]

"Tidus..."

It's back here, back to the same Memory Lane where emotions, thoughts, and memories all jumbled together as if they could not exist, one without the other. Who was he even speaking to now; Tidus's eyes glazed and and unfocused all at once. In Roland's mind, he doesn't quite understand. Giving Will himself meant staying away from him, because if he didn't work to save his life, who would? Widowed now, all alone, no siblings, no one. Absolutely no one. He'd die of his sickness if he stopped, and even then, if Roland quit, the world would do the deed and kill them all.

Your kid's going to be proud of that!

He looks at his feet. The apparition turned real; the boy in his dreams, reaching out a small hand to him, asking him to come home when all is said and done. To give him stories to read while he's waiting for Roland to fix the worlds he's been tasked with. 'Promise me, you'll keep helping people!' The only thing his son ever wanted from him -

- no, he wanted Roland. Tidus wanted his father. Who was he speaking to? He's muddled, his head is twisting in places that it makes him disoriented. It reminds him of a feeling once, long ago, waking from a nightmare he's not sure where it came from. This too, he chokes down, tries to ignore.

But how could he now, when those closest to him seemed like fragments that make up the disappointment of his own flesh and blood? I didn't want him to stop being the president the Great Jecht. I just wanted to know that my daddy loved me. I wasn't a disappointment. I wanted him to say it that he would stay with me.

Roland's not sure when his sword disappears from his hand and back to this arms band. But now he's met Tidus's indignation - or fear, or both - head on, with hands to his shoulders as if ready to shake him back to reality. It's not what happens. The two of them seem possessed.

"You're not a disappointment!" Roland exclaims passionately, but his eyes are blurring the details. His son didn't have blue eyes. No, not at all. He took after his mother, eyes downturned and curved at the edges. Not sharp, like Roland's. "You're not. You're..."

The words die on his tongue. His hands grow limp and fall back down to his own sides.

"...If your father never told you what you needed to hear, if he didn't give you enough, it's not because he didn't love you. Every father loves their children more than their own life. I promise you that. It's the absolute truth. It's - It's just that sometimes we...I..."

Who is this? William, can you hear him? It's dad. He's here. He -

He sighs deeply, feeling it in his bones. Suddenly, he's tired. Suddenly, he doesn't know that there are stations to be saved, or robots to be fought. Suddenly, Tidus is too close, a reminder that fathers and sons are never as easy as they always make it to be.

[blitzcheer]

He starts when the hands grab him, shake him, a fight he wants to have until he sees who it is. His throat closed as tightly as his fists, old scars threatening to ache phantom aches. He's over it, he is, this anger and grief surrounding his old man, but somehow they've poured out now. Thoughts about the dad he never knew, the few chances that hey got to; holding him in his arms, getting one last time to speak. That he's out there, waiting for him on the other side.

A son without a father. Is a story enough?

'We...I...'

"You think you know everything," he finishes for Roland, not as bitter as it could be. The tears not coming, though his eyes feel damp. His gaze drops from Roland's face to the space that he occupies. A silence between them, that ghost possessed loosening its grip.

"...He suffered for ten years. He gave his life because he believed. I wish- he found a better way, but... he tried. I'm proud of him."

What else is there for him to say? The exhaustion takes over him too, whatever point he was making, wherever either of them were going lost in the sea of their histories.

And yet.

"It's not wrong...to talk to your son."

[adregem]

He wants to say it. He's itching to.

That a father giving his life for something other than himself; leaving behind messages for his son; remembering to tell him to be good...It's what's right. Roland would and will do the same. One day. It's the natural arc of things. The passing of the torch. The passing of life, from one to the other. He'll never stop regretting it - that he's getting a third chance at this while his poor, sick, tired, lonely, wanting son had nothing. Was waiting in the fringes of a dead world for his dad to finish the job and save him. With just stories to keep him busy. And the last story to tell; an empty book in Roland's arms.

The culmination of his memory, his final tie to his son.

Tidus won't understand. It's just not enough to be the father Will wants him to be. If he did that, then Will would die. Will would die if Roland stopped, so he can't. He won't. He shouldn't...

'Dad is too busy. He wasn't even there when Mommy...'

Everything feels like it should be sinking. Even the sound of his own voice registers as not his own.

"Evidently, I don't know everything." We wouldn't be here if I did, would we, pro?

He decides to be the first to step away, proximity too much, Tidus's tears that are unshed too piercing for Roland and what he sees behind the pool. How he is now so close to someone else's abandoned son is a punishment, and a gift. A blessing, and a curse. To see the Great Jecht's kid who is probably waiting like Will, waiting also in the fringes of nothing, a dream that's wanting to awaken in the hope that his father will be waiting with the words he wants to hear. I'm proud of you. You did good.

The distance however, is not cold. Roland reaches back with an open hand, and a strange expression on his young face. Its the shadows beneath his eyes that will give him away, it's always that sternness that tell others he's more than what he is.

"Give it to me." He asks for, no heat, just a simple request. A beckon with his palm, once. "The sphere. Give it to me."

[blitzcheer]

What a strange place to be lost in: himself. Navigating waters that he was sure he was over, is, but this - no, this pain. This grief. He grew up with it, his only way to hold onto the man he knew as his father. The great. The legendary. The drunkard, the man getting on and the whispers a kid shouldn't hear. Always wrapped around him, engulfed by the shadow of who Ject was, or suffering by the hole in a son's heart where a dad should be. Those murky waters don't entirely dissipate, despite the pride that now lives in them, when there's reasons for the tide to push them in.

The hand is a mystery, entering his vision. Tidus blinks, staring, looks before Roland gets to explain. Nothing but the draining of feeling in his chest to allow him a reaction, except to comply. His hand raises, and second a second, it appears: a sphere surrounded by a disk weightier than the orb itself.

He hands it over without a word at first, low on the conversational tank. But, after a moment: "...You press the button on the bottom to start it. Red button makes it play."

[adregem]

"Okay."

Not quite a bottle, not quite a message rolled up from discarded pages of his journal, but the weight of it remains familiar. Roland swallows thickly and sees it for himself, the sphere in his hand, gripped tight. His head is bowed down, as if in reverence. Spheres all over Spira, huh? With tales from a father who thought it better to leave Tidus with this, and not the love his son wanted. The time.

Roland feels like he shouldn't be here. That he's done some great offense after all. He has, he knows it, but to whom, he isn't so sure anymore. And what would he want to say into this device from Spira - or Zanarkand - or both? That he's ready to give his life for his land? For William to live? For them to exchange roles; Roland to disappear and William to be reincarnated in a healthier body, a stronger one, to be the boy - the man - he was meant to become?

No. He only needs to see Tidus standing there, close but not quite, to know what he really wants to record into the sphere.

What would you do on your last day on earth? Son, I would stay with you until the end. I would read you your stories, and nothing would tear us apart ever again.

(That not a day goes by where Roland doesn't remember his kid, waiting, waiting...Maybe.)

"Tidus."

The sphere disappears in his arms band.

[blitzcheer]

"I get it."

He cuts Roland off, not wanting to hear what he says to say. No. He's found the words again somewhere from inside himself. Rising from that exchange, letting him remember who he's speaking to. The two of them in his room, the world and life Roland came from. All the sacrifices he took, the role of a leader, the responsibilities and expectations.

'They weren't going to take me seriously, baby faced and all and with long hair, so I got rid of it.'

"You're a leader. You'd do anything for the world you come from - for any of us." Anyone, anywhere; Roland's proven that plenty. Tidus's eyes meeting his, or where they would be, though fluttering somewhere lower on his face as well. "You wanna give him the perfect life. You're a good man for that. A good dad. You... I..."

But they settle back into his eyes, wanting to speak to him directly. No accusation, no force. The real meaning behind what he's been trying to say.

"Speak to him, the way you want. It doesn't need to be a sphere. But he'll never get tired of hearing you. I promise."

[adregem]

"..."

He'll accept that, even if he knows better. The one thing he can't let go, that he's a good dad. No. Roland has to earn that. He's not a good dad until the story is complete, and everything is reversed. Until he returns and faces his fate, in the hopes that what he does, what Tidus believes he is capable of doing, is enough.

It's so bitter in his stomach, bile rising high until he can taste it. A good dad, what a joke. A good dad as he lets his son be turned to ash, alone, always alone, no time at all...'I'll be waiting!'

Roland was cut off, but he takes his share before he reels himself back in. He won't know when else he can say it but in the moment presented to him, here and now.

"You're better than what he thinks you are." He says it like a fact, subdued but no less strong than what warrants it. "If...If it felt like I was assuming, that I thought I knew..." - Jecht, a man who could have been Roland at one point in this vast universe, leaving a son and hoping he would find his way...Thinking that he could speak for him, just because what? Of lofty ideals, of fatherhood? The way Tidus talks about him is not the same. It's not the same and Roland shakes his head. The paternal instinct in him drives him to do it. To make amends.

"I'm sorry." For speaking on his behalf, or excusing a man he barely knows, only by name, only by title. "I just know that you deserve that too." The unspoken. The perfect life. "Because you're a good son."

He lets that be it, his last take on it, a period to the sentence where his hand falls on the juncture between Tidus's shoulder and his neck. A smile, because Roland means it, has seen it, and will continue to believe that all should be well for men like Tidus who have so much more left to give. Even as a dream. Even as he wishes he could have done his people a better justice than to give in to letting them free.

The act is tender but quick. He walks about and summons his sword again, ready to move out.

[blitzcheer]

There's more that needs to be said. Another tale, a tale of his father, not told from the misery of a kid and instead, the fairer picture he wants to paint. Not that of a perfect dad- but what is that? But he wants to give him a better memory in the people he shares him with. A bastard, but his bastard - the stubborn figure of a man that wanted to see him. Holding onto the last memory of him, eyes filled with animosity, tears waiting to fall. His connection to his humanity.

A man he loves. A mother too. Waiting... ever closer than they ever were before.

But there's no spur to fight on to speak again. It'll be a talk for another time and day, when the heat doesn't make his thoughts slip so easily from him, mix them into a mess that won't blend.

Tidus takes backup his own sword and moves forward, catching up with Roland to get on with the job.