middleofsomewhere | Not with a Bang: Conclusion

Not with a Bang: Conclusion

The base camp is a mess by the time the fight is over. The heavy rain alone would have been enough, but the battle has churned up the earth itself. The previously peaceful clearing is pockmarked with craters and dark puddles where ash has mixed into rainwater, along with oil and blood that swirl unpleasantly through the shallow pools. The trees are bowed outwards with the force of the powers that waged through the area, trunks shattered and torn, boughs hanging haphazardly or draped with the remnants of tents and equipment.

Perhaps all that can be said is that it gives the Voidtrecker Express a decidedly clear landing spot. The train snakes its way through the jungle, coming to a stop in a familiar, though now lopsided, coil around the clearing, and opening its doors to allow injured to be carried on, or anyone from the train to disembark.

It’s clear that there are indeed people aboard - as the doors hiss open, activity is already visible inside, as well as voices audibly going back and forth over the tinny speakers of the ICP.

Now that the saboteurs are dealt with, the final repairs can be made to the damaged stations and the shields locked into place. By the time they are done, nothing and no one will be able to enter the planet - from space, anyway.

The train will remain in the clearing through the night of Imagination 12 and the morning of Imagination 13, until all the stations are prepared, the pandas returned to their rightful place and everyone has rejoined the train.

By midday of Imagination 13, the train is ready to leave. Everyone gets a message on their SCA to return to the train, if they haven’t already. Once all are onboard the doors shut and the train begins to snake through the jungle.

“Re-entering Voidspace in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

The train rattles and shakes as the greenery around them (and the purple of a few farewell pandas) fade into the colours of the void.

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"The Four in Flight...." The words are more a breath than anything, even as she swallows again. This time, the lump is bigger; this time, there's a very real chill as memories, old and faded, are dredged up.

She pushes them away just as fast. She doesn't want to remember that spring and its Empress Tide Storm and the thing that had been washed into Pallet on it.

"Who." It's not a question and as shaken as she is, she needs to know. "Who's missing, Nita."

Edited 2020-12-01 01:48 (UTC)

"Trowa," she says, one of the first names she recognized.

"Tangle and... Whisper, yes. A few people who arrived in the last platform or so, that I hadn't talked to. And-"

This may be the one name Eva knows the most, out of all of them. "Joscelyn Fitzthomas."

Nita tightens the hug, just a little.

She hasn't really talked to Trowa or the most of the others, but it's still once person to many to lose, and all she can hope is that it wasn't because of the mission.

"Joss-san?" She seems to crumple into Nita; for all she hadn't truly talked to the boy much, he'd been a steady face on the train for months. "Gods. I can't say I saw him or any of them on the mission, but if they were and-" they died - Joss died again because of it- and then went right to gold...

"Platform's gonna be hard on those they were close to."

"And Wester," Nita adds softly, belatedly.

"It really is - there's people we'll all want to check on, make sure they're safe, or at least know they're not alone."

"Legends of the four-" It's a bitten-off curse. Sure she didn't know them well, but at the same time... They were a VoidTrecker. One of them.

"I'll do what I can in the jun after Platform."

She means that very, very literally.

"You're on."

With that, Nita went back to the hug. If Eva was going to mention a topic of her own, or make a suggestion, now was a good time.

And Eva is more than happy to lean into the hug. It's a good enough distraction from, well, everything and if Nita's not careful, she'll end up trapped for a while.

There'd be silence for a time, but then-

"Hey, Eva? Want to show me Roro's video again?"

Assuming she, y'know, had them within reach.

"Again?" There's a slow blink of confusion- she didn't think she'd shown- "Ah, that one I promised to show you?"

And not the one of Princess meeting a female clefairy (much cute, much Cute Charm. Much balls of fluff.). "Sure - Roro."

The Rotomi zips into Eva's hand as she straightens, and, after a few seconds, Eva brings up a video- and hits play.

It opens to a rock, sticks and fur nest of several rocky-grey eggs. It then pans out to reveal it's in a den of some kind; clearly artificial.

And then a head comes into view. Compared to the eggs, it's massive, yet the care shown as the creature -the hydreigon- shifts and rearranges the nest to better protect the eggs is delicate with precision care.

The clip then cuts away to the same nest, but this time with very young deino that tumble and play and gnaw toothlessly on each other) until the mother comes into the view - and regurgitates meat and bone for the young before carefully breaking the side of the nest with what looks like another head? Smaller but rather head-shaped- so the seven tiny dragons can stumble towards the food.

They near faceplant in it in the Quest For Food and the video cuts out.

"Don't get me wrong; these are one of the most dangerous pokemon known to humankind, but at the same time... they care for their young. This one was filmed by the dragon's tamer. It's how she was able to get to so close to a mother and her nest."

Edited 2020-12-06 15:40 (UTC)

(The power of fluff was NEVER to be underestimated!)

Nita whispers a soft /Thank you,/ to both Eva and the Rotomi, as the video starts playing.

Watching - they sort of look like dinosaurs, but the fossil versions, and she's admittedly not sure what to make of the ones with multiple heads - Nita finds herself smiling.

"That sounds like it would take a lot of trust." To tame such a dragon...

(That and Cute Charm = Win.)

"Trust and respect and Watanabe-san knowing when it's safe to approach without 'balling it," Eva says simply. "Dragons are some of the more intelligent pokemon and there's more than enough tales that tell of tamers thinking it safe only to end up dead. Sazandora are..." She makes a so-so gesture with her hand.

"They have the 'Brutal' moniker for a reason and are generally considered restricted to those with years of training experience, but I wouldn't call them anywhere near dumb. At least they only have one brain though."

"Viciousness doesn't need a license; anyone can use it," she replies.

It sounds almost philosophical.

"And - yeah, I was going to ask about that, but... honestly, I've seen weirder alien body types, I should know better."

Just a bit of self-deprecation, there.

"True." And that is the weight of experience on just one word. "So very true."

She doesn't even want to think of the havoc that has come about because when anyone can train a pokemon, it's inevitable some will use that natural viciousness for their own ends.

"It's fine; for the longest time people thought they had three brains."

"Awful anthropocentric - or, vertebraic-centric? - to think all brains are in beings' skulls," Nita points out.

"Or that a skull has to have a brain in it, which I think is what you're getting at here?"

Better to be corrected on this one, she thinks.

"True, but can you blame us? Pretty much every pokemon has a skull with a brain in it. The same for the non-pokemon stuff that lives in the seas. Fish."

"Except for jellyfish."

And a few others, but Nita is too tired to use the Speech - or to go to her Manual to look up the exact ratio of skulled-vertebrates to non-skulled-vertebrates.

"And- I think fungi are thought to have brains throughout their root networks?"

She's in a weird mood right now; things can only get weirder.

Eva's eyes light up. Rest? What is rest? That's Alien!

Time to Plant Nerd!!!! "They do, though not in the traditional sense; Like, there was this study done decades ago that used a unicellular fungi-slime known as Physarum polycephalum. These things are known to grow up to several square meters in size, and basically, the study showed the thing can solve labyrinth mazes, make complicated trade-offs, anticipate periodic events, remember where it has been, construct transport networks that have similar efficiency to those designed by human engineers and even make irrational decisions."

Nita grins, her eyes widening.

"Let's hear it for slime!"

After that, she started digging in her head a little harder; surely she could remember something even neater!

"That's just the start," Eva says excitedly.

... And then for at least the next hour, longer even, Nita will learn all about slime, fungi and other plants, and even things she didn't need to know.

Though, At least medical use wise re: plants, Eva really only knows the basics, if that.

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Not with a Bang: Conclusion

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Heading towards wrap, you think?

I think so unless there's anything from a mission thread you want to follow up on?

;)

lets pretends I have live action images for these

mood. And I'd figured Eva would have shown it during camp, but that's all right. ^^

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RIP Nita. We can wrap this here I think XD

Yee!

Wrap!