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

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Mmhm," Koumyou just sort of... lets the green and white paper of the sutra drift up off his shoulders and into the air high overhead, unfurling into a straightish line and then just... hovering.

"The Seiten sutra. It can easily imitate the sun." To put it very, very mildly. But if Koumyou keeps the Light of Creation extremely toned down and still almost entirely inactive, it can certainly mimic the distant glow and radiation of a single burning star.

It made all of them, after all.

[worthallthis]

"Huh." Soldat eyes the paper with a kind of sleepy interest. There was a paper witch back in Beacon, they remember. Made them a very complicated paper star. "Why would that freak people out?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Well, it can do a lot more than float and glow," Koumyou explains that much anyway. And to put action to words, the holy sutra begins to glow.

Brightly.

In fact, it takes a second for Koumyou to dial it back a bit, but then the light and infared energy reaching them is... identical to being out in the hot sun.

"It's one fifth of that which made everything. Specifically, this fifth is the light of creation itself -- it made the stars."

And a whole lot more than that.

[worthallthis]

Oh, that's nice. It's warm and about the right color and they can feel it. Soldat shuts their eyes against the light, but tilts their head back to just bask in it for a moment.

Only after soaking up the light for a minute do they reply lazily, "Seems pretty important. For somebody stuck on a magic train to be holding onto."

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou stretches where he's plopped down, and gets comfy. "I'm its protector; it goes where I go."

He's here, and thus so is the Seiten.

[worthallthis]

"Then you must be very important, yourself," Soldat offers, leaning back on their hands to try and get as much of that sun as possible. Too bad they've got like three layers on, which does make soaking it up a little harder.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I have my moments," the priest says with some mild amusement, digging into one of his billowing white sleeves for a cigarette. Once obtained, he sticks the filter between his lips and lights the tip with a press of a finger.

There's at least one smoker on the train who only does it in the luggage car. That smoker is not Koumyou Sanzo. He's polite enough to not do it in the sleepers or while passing through medical, but that's about it.

"So did you get here last platform?"

[worthallthis]

"Yeah. It's not even been two weeks." They open their eyes again at the sudden smell of smoke, and watches with... something like envy, maybe. Rosinante had been sharing his cigarettes pretty regularly, back in Beacon, but they haven't asked anyone here yet. "It's pretty different from where I was last."

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou sees that look, and actually holds his cigarette out on offer. He remembers being too new to even afford his own smokes! It sucked!

"I have plenty, if you want this one," he hasn't even taken a drag off it yet.

[worthallthis]

Soldat looks briefly embarrassed, mostly at being caught out, but accepts. "Thanks. I used to smoke a lot of these. Way back in the war." And they can probably afford some, they're just saving their points for important shit, like better weapons and body armor.

But it's still soothing to take the cigarette in their mouth and breathe in the smoke. It's a familiar, comforting habit.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou pulls another cigarette from his sleeves and lights it just like the first, without the need for a lighter. Just a tap of one fingertip against the end is enough to send it glowing to life.

"I don't smoke enough to go through them very fast, thankfully," the priest says after taking a good first drag off the new cigarette, letting the smoke out with his words. "One or two a day, usually. And the train gives you a whole carton of packs for... twelve points I think?"

Really not a bad deal, that.

[worthallthis]

"Maybe once I have enough weapons. And proper body armor." And their broken chest full of precious things, like memories and gifts and disassembled clockwork fish. God, they miss that chest and digging through it to reassure themselves of all the things they remember and know now....

The cigarette is nice, though, and they'll take what comfort they can get. "For now I'll just bum off people now and then." They give Koumyou a little sideways smile of gratitude for this one. "It's not like they do anything for me anymore. Except the motions of it."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"There's a lot to be said for the ritual of a smoke," Koumyou agrees easily, and honestly. But he also feels the need to ask, "You're immune to the chemical effect? No wonder you haven't bought any, then. My addiction is fairly minor... and several cartons plus a kiseru and loose tobacco for it are still among the first things I bought."

He'd had no one to bum any off of, so even with his minor addiction he'd felt like climbing the walls by the time he got his first influx of points. Particularly after all the combat of the Nion mission.

[worthallthis]

"Can't get drunk either," Soldat says wryly. "Not without a lot of really high content alcohol." They consider the cigarette a moment. "I guess if I smoked a whole pack in ten minutes, I could maybe get something. Doesn't feel like it's worth it, though."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"That sounds disgusting, to be perfectly honest. And like a whole lot of work."

Neither of which is great if you're looking for a little nicotine calm.

[worthallthis]

"Exactly. Not worth it. It's okay, though, I don't really need it. This is good enough." It's all psychosomatic, all based in nostalgia for the time before they weren't a person, and that's plenty. After another puff, they ask, "How long have you been here? On the train?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Uhhhh..."

Good question.

Give him a moment here. Koumyou even visibly seems to count on his fingers.

"A... month and a half...? Roughly. I think. I don't really keep track of time very well."

[worthallthis]

"Doesn't sound like that much longer than me," Soldat muses, trying not to smile at the finger-counting. "Are there people who've been here for longer? For years?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Mmm, I don't think anyone here has been on the train for a year yet," Koumyou says slowly with some thought, "It had a crew before us, but it lost them. How? I don't know."

[worthallthis]

"Might have to do with her being rogue, because of her world being wiped from existence," Soldat muses, mildly, as if worlds are wiped from existence all the time.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Oh, undoubtedly," Koumyou blows a few smoke rings up at the ceiling.

He doesn't seem particularly concerned by it, but that's pretty normal for him.

"Personally, I'm fine with being here anyway."

[worthallthis]

Soldat wants to get to the bottom of it, wants to save worlds that might be in danger, but they're also not really great for working out big-picture strategy. They're made for details, practicalities. This whole over-arching, world-ending threat thing? Not really their wheelhouse. It sucks.

"Rather be here than back home, with your important paper of creation?" they say, only a little bit dryly.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Well, I'm very much dead back on my world," Koumyou says it so very casually, like he says most things to most people. He takes a drag and blows another smoke ring up at the ceiling. "So if I wasn't here, I imagine I'd be reincarnating into someone new right about now."

But.

"But I have someone here who likes me, so I'd like to stay 'me', at least for now."

Until Devero's tired of him, at the very least.

[worthallthis]

"Oh, yeah. Me, too. Being dead, I mean. But I was somewhere else after, before the train caught me, and... well, maybe I'm dead there, now, too. I don't know," they admit. "I'm glad you have someone here to live for, though. That's important."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Somewhere else... was that the place with no sun?"

Speaking of the sun, Koumyou lets the light and warm radiation from the sutra start to taper off. He doesn't know about the other guy, but he's going to have a sun burn if it keeps going much longer.

And the longer it's floating up there and glowing like one of the stars it created, the more likely someone is to wander in on this and freak the hell out. Koumyou's learned to expect any number of reactions to it; his own boyfriend wouldn't be precisely thrilled to wander into a car and find it active.

Let alone any number of other people who know what it is.