Conclusion

[voidtreckermods]

Thank you.

For those inside the system the voices of the Great-Seasons ring out around them once the red mass has vanished and the blue plinth it was smothering is freed once more. They don't have all that much time to reflect on that before they find themselves waking up once more in their bodies around the tree trunks.

Or at least, around the tube that is the Great-Season they entered through. All illusions have vanished now, all that is left are pipes and metal.

The Great-Seasons allow them passage out from the centre, no sentries or pipes attack them this time. Everything seems to have been put to rights, the walls in the Autumn sector have stopped moving, there is no strange weather effects in the Summer Sector, no engineering problems in Winter and all the camaloid creatures in Spring are calm. Any Helpmates they come across are doing their jobs and no longer malfunctioning.

After a small amount of time, enough to check that all is well, their SCA's light up. All Passengers are to return to the Voidtrecker Express.

Considering the vast distances involved it is probably best that they use the evacuation function to return to the Luggage carriage.

Once all Voidtreckers have returned the train returns to the Void once more.

Comments

[subcircuits]

"Is that an Earth, or somewhere else?" he asks. He's stopped assuming, at this point, but Earths do tend to be more common than other worlds.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"You're not pushing or pressuring me," Koumyou returns, "I promise."

Look at these two, so concerned about each other that they're tripping over themselves.

"You know the entire reason I don't teach. If you can handle... me, I..."

[firewalled]

"Aww, you're saying you care about me? That's sappy." Rich beams, but now his face is even more red. Probably that's just the fever. Probably.

"I... really appreciate it, though. I would've just sat here and starved if you hadn't shown up. Don't want people to catch this."

[subcircuits]

"Ah."

Devero doesn't know much about souls. Religion is still a thing where he comes from, but it's a very private thing, and not terribly common in the social circles he runs in. If he has a soul, he doesn't think about it much.

But he doesn't question her assertion, that she does have a soul and now it's transferred into the magical artifact currently on her finger. He does peer at it as she indicates it, but the ring just looks like jewelry to him.

He looks curiously back up at her. "...Why do you think you're not alive?" he asks. He nods at her hand and the ring upon her finger. "You're here, you're present, we're having a conversation. And I saw you helping people in the luggage carriage. Contributing. You seem perfectly alive to me."

[bakegarasu]

His face goes faintly pink. Shh.

“... Don’t do that. You can’t skip meals, especially if you’re trying to put on some muscle.” Why do you think he brought protein?

[bakegarasu]

“Y -“ .... Hang on.

“... Wait, are you from space?”

[subcircuits]

That does seem to relieve Devero, and he lets his grasping hand slip away. "Okay," he says.

He doesn't respond right away, thinking back again to their fight and the reconciliation after it. He remembers another promise made back then: If I ever start to scare you again, just tell me, as plainly as you can, and I will stop.

As far as Devero's concerned, the question isn't can he handle Koumyou. The question is whether or not he'll be able to speak up when he needs to, if he even realizes he'll need to before it's too late.

He looks down and away, ashamed. He knows what it must be costing Koumyou to even think about offering this, and here he is, turning it down. "...It's probably not a great idea," he says quietly. "I don't think I can trust myself to be able to-- stop you, if things go too-- too far."

[subcircuits]

"No!" He laughs, and waves his hands back and forth in front of him to emphasize it. "I'm from an Earth, there's just so many of them, and they're all so different."

[bakegarasu]

“Oh. ... Just checking.” Aliens would be kind of cool... “If you’re from Earth, how do you not know about Japan?”

He may be missing the point.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"...I see," Koumyou just goes back to the massage, digging his thumb into a tense spot at the base of Devero's.

"I don't see how it wouldn't be your place to learn it, from... someone. Or how it would make you any less of a hitek. I can fight with a sword, a gun, a spear, a staff, unarmed -- that doesn't make me less of a chi-user, or a priest. People can be many things."

[magicurls]

"...that's why?"

Mami thinks back on their partnership. He'd been supportive, if a little aloof, but...

She tries to refocus on what's important. Preparing for the future.

"What was the accident? Is it something I have to worry about?

Re: Tie A Yellow Ribbon...

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita winces.

"Lucky for you it didn't cut off life support; I think changing our appearance was one of the built-in features in there..."

Still, she subconsciously gets closer to S'reee, offering a reassuring half-hug.

"One of these months we might end up with a mission only a few of us can do at all; we really should look into that."

[subcircuits]

His first reaction is to try and tell Koumyou how that sentiment doesn't apply in his case. He keeps his mouth closed and lets that first tide of response wash up and then recede again.

"I've been a hitek almost since I graduated from creche," he says. "Always pursuing the next upgrade, the newest Interface-- I have a full neuromuscular biofeedback rig! They don't implant those into just anybody. I've been lucky enough to work with and learn from the leading minds in their fields for years. Geniuses, really brilliant scientists and engineers, you know? Getting to contribute, in even the tiniest way, to advancing augment tech has been the most worthwhile thing I've done with my life since... since my discharge.

"And now I'm here." He gently disengages his hand from Koumyou's and clasps it with his other under the water. "I've been here for-- for weeks now, for almost a month, with nothing, and what have I done to rectify that? Bought a few books, and thought about maybe doing some tinkering."

He shakes his head. "Morraine would have a proper network up and running in this train if they'd been pulled here instead of me. Ioleya would have-- have hacked the ICP and SCA system and taken it for her own.

"Did you know Entrapta was building robots on her first day here?"

He lifts both hands out of the water and runs them through his hair, pulling his fringe back hard from his face. "What have I done since I got here? Fucked around! And now I'm sitting here thinking oh, maybe I could learn magic-- yeah right. That's not mine to learn when I've done jack all with the skills I already have!"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"You have chi whether you learn to use it or not," Koumyou points out gently, "it's already part of you. It has been since before you were born."

He sighs and settles back against the edge of the pool, letting his hands semi-float in the water in front of him.

"Would there be a purpose to you setting up a network the rest of us wouldn't even know how to use? To interfering with the ICP and SCA systems? To building random little robots? Or is that just the sort of thing you think you should have been doing this whole time?"

[subcircuits]

"I have a living body that passively generates electricity and potential energy, just like any living body," he says. "That's all it is." His voice is unwontedly bitter. Where is this coming from?

"It would make things better!" he insists. "Imagine if we had a way to send and store information that everyone can access, that doesn't just disappear when a conversation's over. Imagine if we had 'bots to take over the cleaning, the laundry, the drudgery, so the rest of us could focus on real work. Imagine how much we could accomplish!"

[subcircuits]

"Because there's no such place as Japan on my Earth?" Duh, Otoha. He continues: "There was probably a Japan Before? But that was hundreds of years ago."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"What 'real work' would you have us do, between missions?" Koumyou asks quietly, "most of us aren't... very special outside of combat. For lack of a better way to put it."

He's not trying to put himself down with that statement, it's just a fact.

"As for storing information, we have paper." Sorry Devero, there's analogue stuff aplenty. "Stick everything on computers, and someone like me won't be able to do anything with it."

[magicurls]

"It's not...the same."

How to explain this feeling? She doesn't want to offend anyone, she knows people have different circumstances!

"My life is tied to this gem. If it breaks, I die. But my body can sustain more damage than a human's...as long as my magic doesn't run out. It's just creepy to think about, is all---creepier that I didn't feel any different. "

[subcircuits]

"So I teach you," Devero says insistently. "Computer literacy, emotional literacy-- we teach each other. Share our knowledge, shore each other up. Improve things, for everyone stuck on this goddamn hell-ride!"

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou just goes quiet at that, staring down at his own hands semi-floating just under the surface of the water.

[controlsthedie]

"I've returned to how I'm supposed to be." Thanatos knows that it's the most he can say about being better. He still isn't where he's supposed to be. He hasn't solved the problems which resulted in his removal from home. He doesn't know how he's supposed to fit into this whole thing as Death Incarnate.

[subcircuits]

Devero's so caught up in manufacturing reasons to blame himself for things that it takes him a moment to realize what he just said-- or, specifically, who he just said it to.

"--Koumyou, I'm sorry," he says immediately, as soon as he sees the priest looking so solemn and connects the dots. "I didn't mean--" What you literally just said, Devero?

He stands up, displacing water in sloshing waves as he paces the couple of steps to the other side of the pool, and then turns around and comes back. "I shouldn't be generalizing," he says. "I got-- carried away.

"I'm the one who's not doing enough. Just me. It's not fair of me to fuckin'-- project that on to you or anyone else."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I know you're... wired to think you need to do more, and more, and more," Koumyou says gently, looking up at him, "but... just being is enough, too. You're enough. And if it's enough for everyone to learn from each other, then that includes you."

Not from someone as unsuitable to teach as Koumyou, of course. But still.

[subcircuits]

Devero shakes his head in automatic denial, and this time the first sickly seafoam spray of response surges out of him. "I have to earn my place," he says, parroting what she's ground into him all these years. "Otherwise I'm just a drain on our resources."

[flatteries]

"How?" He echoes, but it's with a smile on his face. Like he's more than willing to entertain this little notion, no matter how weird or hypothetical it is. Anything that can distract Nita's thoughts for at least a moment from the mission and what happened during it are fine with him, after all.

"What, are you saying I couldn't do it?"

He pulls back one of the hands from their little hand clasping pile, but just so he can form a fist with it and pound it against his chest - over his heart.

"I know how much I care for my friends, so I just know every single one of those versions of me would do their utter best for whoever they were with at any given moment!"