middleofsomewhere | Conclusion

Conclusion

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.

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"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."

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?"

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."

"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?"

"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."

"... 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.

"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."

"... 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.

"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."

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

Secret gays.

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."

"... 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... ?"

Edited 2021-02-10 04:03 (UTC)

"Good for him," Devero says briefly. Whoever this Reiji is, he isn't even here, but Devero has heard so many tales about bad behavior passing normalized and unrecognized that he has to call out a guy who realized a sexual advance was unwelcome and stopped.

(At least, that's what he assumes happened.)

A disaster? Or is he-- "You could be asexual, then," Devero says, casually dropping that queerbomb out there as well. "A lot of people are into sex, but not everyone is, and that's okay too."

Otoha's question makes him cock his head. He contemplates it for a moment, but has to shake his head. "I'd have to know more details about this-- hypothetical situation."

“... Okay, fine. Look. He and I... he was the only friend I ever had, before here. He hated how my brother used me, who - uh. Different sort of fucked-up sex stuff there.” Better not to get into it. “He was driving me from a hit and the car TV was playing something about New Zealand. ... Islands south of Japan. They don’t speak Japanese there. He said we should run away to there, and we both said we’d go wherever the other went, and so we stole some money from the group’s safe. I... had to try to shield him when we were chased. Got shot off of a fire escape.”

He sinks down a little more, expression dark. “I rescued him from where he was being held later on, but my brother shot him. ... I... I don’t know how... shit. It’s been two weeks? Or something.” He presses his hands to his face. “... I shouldn’t have dumped that on you.”

Well. That's a lot to unpack, isn't it? Devero starts at the end, with the only friend Otoha's ever had getting shot-- and that's about as far as he gets, actually, because if it only happened two weeks ago...

"That must have been right before you ended up here," he says. "Shit, man, you must be worried sick about him."

"... There's not much to worry about. He's dead." He lets that hang for a moment and takes a deep breath. "Even if he'd survived that shot - and he didn't - my father's backup shot at me with rocket launchers after I killed him."

He doesn't like these emotions, someone make them stop.

Sorry, Otoha, Devero is the worst person to help you stop your emotions. In fact, he stands abruptly and sloshes across the pool to Otoha's side. He splashes down beside him and throws an arm over the other man's shoulder.

"Rust and ruin," he breathes, "I am so sorry."

He freezes and takes a moment to breathe. "It's... not your fault. None of us in the yakuza expected to live to old age, especially at the lower ranks..."

He doesn't sound convinced.

"Of course it's not my fault," Devero says. "Does that mean my heart can't break for you? It sounds like the two of you wanted better for each other, and who can blame you given what you've told me?"

It takes a minute for his brain to reboot a little bit. "I... we did. He... was a good guy. I don't... people don't normally feel sympathy for me. Or think about my feelings at all."

"Maybe back where you come from," Devero says, "but I bet you're finding it's different here, aren't you?" Call it a hunch.

"... Yeah. I'm talking... a lot more than I'm used to. And people are... nicer."

"Good." Devero squeezes him once around the shoulders, then releases him and scoots down, though he stays on the same side of the pool for now. "There's a real good crew around here, in my experience."

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Conclusion

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WOW DON'T KNOW HOW I MISSED GETTING BACK TO THIS

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