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

[bakegarasu]

"Oh." Right, different worlds. "Japan, yeah. Shinjuku, specifically." He shifts a little bit, cracking his neck. "It's a series of volcanic islands, so there's hot springs everywhere."

[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.

[bakegarasu]

“Y -“ .... Hang on.

“... Wait, are you from space?”

[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.

[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."

[bakegarasu]

“... Oh. The other science fiction option. Though, uh. I guess not ‘fiction’ for you... huh.” That’s... interesting. “Anyway, yeah. Public batting’s a common thing. I mean, people have their own baths now, but still go to them sometimes.”

He lifts a hand and gestures to Devero. “They probably wouldn’t let you into most, though. Tattoos are associated with the yakuza. Organized crime. I grew up in it, but never got a tattoo. “

[subcircuits]

That comment makes him raise an eyebrow, but Devero lets it pass. "We have therapeutic springs and public baths where I come from too," Devero explains with a bit of a wry look. "There's definitely an appeal."

Devero glances at himself as Otoha gestures, then looks back up. He snorts. "Their loss, then," he says easily, not taking it personally. He does regard the other man with a bit of a tilt to his head. "Why not?"

[bakegarasu]

"Why no tattoo? I... it's not like I needed to be sneaky or that there was a problem with the pain, I just never really settled on a design I liked." There's not really a deep meaning to that one.

"I thought of getting an oni mask - big scary demon would be a good pick for an enforcer. But I could never think of how I wanted it to look, so I just never did it."

[subcircuits]

Devero laughs, and sinks down into the water until its almost closed over his shoulders. "That's fair," he says. "Been wanting to get some new ink myself, maybe expand the circuitwork some, but..." He shrugs, water rippling away from him. "Not going to happen around here, is it?"

[bakegarasu]

"Depends on the kind of tattoo. A full tattoo machine, maybe. Traditional tattoos might be different, but I dunno if there's anyone you trust here to stick you with ink-covered needles."

[subcircuits]

"Yeah, I'll pass," Devero says with a laugh. "I don't want the new ink that badly."

[bakegarasu]

"Probably the better option." He's quiet for a few long moments, just enjoying the water, before he speaks up again.

"Why did you say there's more than two genders?"

[subcircuits]

"Because there are."

Devero had been hoping Otoha would come back to him on this, and he sits up again in the water. "Where I'm from, we understand that there's more to gender than just male and female." He holds both hands up out of the water, palms up as if presenting the two options. He brings those palms together and then spreads them apart again, describing an arc in the air. "There's so much in between those two options, and beyond them."

[bakegarasu]

Otoha stares at him blankly. "Okay, I know you can go from one to the other and it's not the same as crossdressers, but what else would there be?"

[subcircuits]

Oh, buddy. "So plenty of folks feel like they're either a man or a woman," he says. "Enough that those are still sort of-- the reference points, where I come from. But there are plenty of people who feel like they're both at the same time, or neither one at all. People who feel like they're mostly one gender, but partly another as well. People whose identity is in flux, so that they are sometimes their male self, and other times their female self-- or whatever other self they are. There are people who feel like they're a third gender unrelated to man and woman, and people who feel like they have no gender at all, and-- even more than that, identities and relationships with gender that I don't know about or understand."

He shrugs, and looks a little sheepish. "I've been a guy my whole life, so I'm not the best person to explain it all, but that's the basics."

[bakegarasu]

"Uh." That... is a lot. He's doing his best to wrap his brain around it, but it's... not really processing completely. "Okay... so... what... you talked about pronouns. What is there other than guy and girl pronouns?"

[subcircuits]

"So you know he/him/his and she/her/hers," he says. "A lot of non-binary folks use the singular they, so they/their/theirs. That one's probably the most common, but I've encountered ey/eir/eirs and xe/xem/xir pretty regularly too."

[bakegarasu]

"... Which one is non-binary? You listed a lot of things." He's so out of his depth. He sinks a little bit further down into the water, suddenly feeling very stupid.

[subcircuits]

"Oh, I'm sorry," he says, as if Otoha's miscomprehension is his fault and not the other man's. "Anything other than a he and a she is non-binary; that's the term we use that kind of encapsulates everything else."

[bakegarasu]

"... Okay." He's trying. He feels like he needs notes, but he'd just lose them. "... So you ask someone their pronouns to be polite?" Yes? Is he following this correctly? "... None of this is stuff I'm used to dealing with. Hell, I don't think I even knew anyone who was gay at home."

Yes, Otoha. Yes you did.

[subcircuits]

"Exactly," Devero says with a smile. "You can't know for sure just by the way someone looks, so you ask instead of assuming."

His smile turns a little sad. "You probably did," he says gently, "but just didn't know that they were."

[bakegarasu]

"... And there's no way to tell unless you see their porn stash or they tell you, right?"

Secret gays.

[subcircuits]

Devero gives him a little bit of a look, but-- okay, he has to admit that's a valid way to tell. "Pretty much," he says. "Although if somebody's showing you their porn stash, I would think you're probably already close enough to know if they're into guys, girls, or others."

[bakegarasu]

"... Yeah, I have to give you that one. Though I've seen a few more than I wanted to from guys I wasn't close to, but uh. ... Never mind. Not gonna get into all the things that yakuza run." Not now. He's always felt weird about that aspect of his world. "Reiji showed me his but... honestly I don't remember a lot of what I saw. He saw me looking uncomfortable and closed the laptop."

He sinks down in the tub a bit more. "... Never been all that interested in stuff like that, myself. I guess that's weird. It just always seems so... uh. Fake. Not my thing." Yep, he's a disaster.

A thought occurs to him and he looks so surprised by the thought that he sits up suddenly. "... Hypothetically, if someone wanted to run away with you... could that be a best friends thing or... ?"