middleofsomewhere | Ongoing: All Teams

Ongoing: All Teams

The first few days are taken up with solving the problems in the various sectors, all the while getting closer to their goal. The Great-Winter, Great-Summer, Great-Spring and Great Autumn.

On Day 9 of the month of Jelly they will see on their map a clear indicator of where to go. As they draw near it will be obvious what they are looking for.

The Overseers

In the centre of each of the sectors there is a large metal tube, hundreds of pipes lead from it, spanning up to the ceiling above and down below, creating a field of pipes and tubes to clamber over and crawl under to reach the central tube. On the tube itself there is a panel, wrapping around it in a circle. The SCA's of the Voidtrecker show an exclamation mark, if they click on them they will see the message.

Reach the panel, enter the inner systems and give your aid.

As Voidtreckers step towards the tubes it will seem as if the world shifts around them. Instead of metal and wire they will see trees. The Great-Spring is a tree in blossom, pink leaves spreading up across the canopy. Great-Summer has strong green leaves, Great_Autumns leaves are brown and falling and Great-Winter has no leaves at all.

The panel is still there, the only part of the scene that doesn't look organic. As the Voidtreckers move towards their goal the tree begins to move, branches fighting against those trying to get through the roots. The aim seems to be to push intruders away, going as far as flinging them back with higher branches.

The branches aren't the only security measures in place. As they push forwards they will find creatures coming at them from the trees.

Strangely the creatures look like creatures from their own worlds, any creature they would expect to see in a tree. Regardless of species they attack with claws and with lazers from their eyes. They don't move far from the branches, but try and stop invaders from getting close to the trunk.

For those that get through they will find that as they draw close to the 'trunk' the attacks stop, as if they have reached an eye of a storm.

Going Further

The panel is a simple glowing screen, there are no instructions but their SCA's will beep softly and if they press their SCA to the panel they will find everything vanishes, the trees, branches and weird animals.

Or perhaps it is they themselves that vanish as they find themselves in a large white room, everyone is together here. No matter what sector they had travelled through and which overseer they entered through.

There are four tubes filled with liquid, pink, green, orange and white towering over them.

"Our systems have been compromised." The four voices ring out. "Heal what has been harmed, destroy what should not be here. Find the source and purge it from our world."

The overseers and the room vanish and the voidtreckers find themselves in a forest, a forest that is slowly being choaked by red sickly vines.

The Voidtreckers themselves will find themselves looking different, almost like the hard-light holograms of the Helpmates though they certainly feel like themselves. They are carrying a sturdy stick but nothing else and depending how imaginative they are will quickly find they can alter their appearance to fit their wishes.

Heal and Destroy

The voidtreckers will find themselves drawn towards the vines, if they touch them they will be able to soothe, a glowing blue light from their hands that runs down the vine before it fades away, freeing the trees that it held in its chokehold.

There are many pathways, many vines and it will be a long task to clear it all. It is not long also before the first threats find them. Threats that look like mongeese, small creatures that will lunge at them, teeth bared and claws out.

Luckily the Voidtreckers will quickly learn the ability to soothe is not the only power gifted to them.

On the Outside

For anyone who does not enter through the panel it will seem like their fellow Voidtreckers have entered a deep trance. The area they are sat around the tree is calm, no threats enter there. But outside that area there are still threats, the branches attack, the animals attack and sometimes Helpmates try to evict those they see from the area, claiming it 'restricted.'

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Despite his clearly masterclass efforts in attempting to do combat, it's not going that great. Anytime there's more than one of them, he's very easily overwhelmed by them regardless of his freeze them and whack them with a stick strategy.

So, Senku may have collected a few bites and scratches aon his arms. He opened his mouth to answer the question, or maybe complain when the injuries by Devero's hand mended back together.

"I think you mean your power is the convenient one."

"There's no way--" Devero protests automatically, before he realizes who he's protesting to. Unless he missed something big time, Senku's not exactly a magic-user either.

He looks from the mended skin of Senku's arm up to his face. "What the fuck?" he asks in absolute bafflement.

"We've been given some kind of magic, which is kind of convenient in a way. So far I've managed to freeze things for ten seconds." Senku commented. "Then I hit them with a stick. It's....slow going."

Also, clearly, he'd missed some or something because he'd had some nice claw marks that were now gone.

"Sure would have appreciated a manual if they were going to give us-- extraordinary abilities," Devero mutters darkly, finally taking his hand back. He stares at it for a moment, as if he expects it to look somehow different. It... just looks like his hand, though-- well, his hand in the white glove of his borrowed armor, anyway.

"Or even just a heads-up."

"Yeah, really, why would we want anything like that." He drawled a little sarcastically.

"But yeah, this is something else entirely. I don't think I really know how any of this works. I can tell you this is just our consciousness." Senku paused and held up his wrist with the SCA. "Comms still work."

"Which they would, if this is just a sim of some kind. No reason not to be able to transmit messages back and forth, disguised as comms for versimilitude."

Except... "Not sure this is a sim, though." He knocks the back of his hand against the nearest tree. "I think there's a chance this might actually be a physical space."

"Could be." Senku agreed. "I can't be sure whether it is or isn't, but according to what we heard our bodies are just sleeping outside of here."

He sighed. "Could be a mental manifestation..."

A mongoose came running up to him and he cast that freezing spell on it, to make it stop.

"Although I never thought I wanted ice powers."

"You heard that?" Devero hasn't, not yet. "Hnn. Really is no way to tell, though, you're right. And functionally, isn't it about the same?" Whether they're code in a cyberscape or programs operating construct bodies, they still have to figure out how to navigate this space and purge this infection.

Devero takes advantage of those ice powers Senku's so unsure about. He scoops the mongoose up, tosses it into the air, and uses one of his 'batons' to baseball-drive it back into the forest.

"I never thought I wanted to be able to-- to heal, but here we are," he remarks.

"Yes, although he wasn't on the orange team so whether my specific body is there sleeping remains to be seen, but it's likely that if other people are sleeping there, who are in here, then so am I." Senku hummed.

"And if someone did happen to pinch me, the fact I'm still here means that didn't work either." He'd been trying to see if he could get out, and no such luck.

"I wouldn't mind having magic, I think, it's a different feeling, but I can't for the life of me learn it, at least...so far."

"Assuming we were all brought here via the same mechanism, I'd say that's a safe bet," Devero muses.

He does look a little taken aback by the pinching comment. "--I haven't even thought about trying to get out of here. We were brought to do a job, weren't we? Got to get that taken care of first."

And up goes an eyebrow. "Would you even be able to learn if you're from a world without it?" He'd always figured the answer to that would be 'no'.

"Well my plan would've been to see if that was enough to end this...whatever this is, and if it was, if I could get back in." Senku responded.

"It's not that I don't want to help." He felt he had to clarify that. "It's just an interesting phenomenon." He was a bit distracted by it, but since nothing like that materialized, he was focused on clearing vines.

"I have no idea. Some people seemed to think I could, some people seem to think I can't. I won't know unless I try."

"Can't argue with that," Devero has to concede. "I'd love a chance to actually get into the technology of this place. Maybe after we're done here..."

Because for Devero, duty always comes first, and his duty is clear. In fact, as they continue to talk he does a visual sweep to make sure they're not about to be jumped by another creature, then steps to the nearest tree and lays his glowing palm on a vine.

"Let me know what happens, if you do?" he asks. "I'm certainly curious to know if it can be done."

"The technology is certainly fascinating and I haven't determined how the helpmates were glitching out. It's not acting like a computer virus or it would've hit all of them." Senku hummed. It was curious.

"Of course. I'm happy to share any knowledge I have, or gain. I'm a believer in continuous learning, which shouldn't be that surprising, since I'm mainly an autodidact."

"I mean, with how damn big this place is, they could have dispersed server cores that are partially insulated from each other," Devero muses automatically. "--No, wait, you'd still have all the Helpmates in a given area glitching if that was the determining factor." Hmm.

He regards Senku sidelong as he moves to another vine. "I guess you'd have to be, wouldn't you?" he says thoughtfully. "We lost so much expertise in the wake of the Pathogen where I come from. Had to pick up a lot of pieces and try to fit them back together in the first years of Gov. No one wants to risk that kind of expertise attrition happening again, so cross-disciplinary learning is a big thing. Guess that's why Morraine-- that's our chief mechanical engineer-- didn't mind taking me under their wing when they found out I was interested in maintaining my machine, not just riding in it."

"That's what makes it especially curious." Senku hummed lightly.

He nodded. "I did mean beforehand. Now there's no books, I'm mostly in the position of instructor, and my practical knowledge now comes from trial and error. Knowing how to do things only gets you so far if you've never done it. Still needs practice." He explained as he worked on the vines too, if nothing else, he could do that.

"But if I was going to learn more, I would do it indepedently. There's no way school could've kept up with me in the scientific fields. I outpaced my peers by decades." He paused. "Just don't ask me to write you a haiku."

"What's trial and error, if not learning, though?" Devero says. "Sometimes the best way to figure something out is to just do it until you get it right. That's true whether you have textbooks or not."

Devero pauses for a moment to just look over at Senku-- until that crack about the haiku, which makes him snort. "You'd get along with Drs. Adís and Ioleya," he remarks wryly. "They have about the same aptitude for the arts-- and feel the same way about their peers, actually."

"Sure, and most of the time it's not a problem. When it was life or death it was a lot more of a problem, but we're past that part now." Senku responded with a bit of a smirk.

"I used to be a lot less charitable about my peers." He admitted openly. "I didn't think much of them at all, actually. But you know, when you have 3700 years or so to think about things, sometimes you get a bit of a change in perspective and in the world we're in now..."

He paused a moment, considering his words. "They're far more likely to survive than I am. I need help, one way or another. Through science, or people, I can't survive indefinitely on my own."

"All right, all right, fair point," Devero concedes with a wave of his hand. He knows the stakes were just as fraught and high for the survivors on his world after everything went dark in the wake of the Pathogen.

"...It's good you were able to realize that," he says as he resumes the work of soothing vines, "and change as you needed to. Stagnation is death, but there are people who never can realize that."

"I've always admired people who could do things I can't. But at the same time, I wasn't sure what to make of my peers." Growing up was a complicated thing. "Then again I'm not good at knowing how people think. And I definitely wasn't very adaptable."

Senku had faults, and he was aware of them. "But every human is built for adaptability. It's one of our natural gifts, and even if it took the world ending for me to latch onto that then..."

He smiled slightly. "I think humans are pretty amazing that way, the way we've evolved."

"We're definitely that, aren't we?" Devero says with a wan, crooked grin. "Where you come from, where I come from-- there's been no choice but to adapt. Adapt, and overcome. Even here, on the train, it's almost a microcosm of that adaptability, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I find it fascinating." Senku said, even though that might seem like a strange perspective, after all he was a human, but a sole person wasn't enough of a sample. "Humans are some of the most fascinating creatures on my planet."

"I don't think we can help but be, no matter where we are," Devero says with a grin.

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Ongoing: All Teams

Heal and Destroy

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