middleofsomewhere | The Endless River

The Endless River

On the morning of day twenty one of the month of Kazoo there is a message on the ICP screens around the train. Their SCA's will light up the colour of the Void and show the following information.

World #398050 is a void nexus known locally as Tshering. As a void nexus this world has strong links with the void and the connection through worlds. World #398050 is home to the Endless River. Legends speak of this river being powerful enough to send thoughts from one heart to another across any distance. All that is needed is for you to know who it is you wish to reach.

On-board

The dressing carriage is open, filled with clothing best suited to a pleasant spring day. Light, airy and in a rainbow of joyful colours and florals. One closet is entirely filled with wide-brimmed hats bedecked with ribbons, feathers and ornaments. A stack of picnic baskets and containers filled with an alarming variety of passenger-suitable foodstuffs and flasked drinks sits in one corner, next to rolls of thick, weatherproof blankets in the four team colours.

The large box marked Do Not Use Yet, filled with small, empty jute bags, is hopefully still sat in the Luggage carriage, ready for passengers to grab handfuls of its contents as directed by the announcement.

Upon landing (after an appropriate countdown), the train remains on the surface, its carriages partially curved to form a gathering site for the day. Welcome to Tshering, the eighth void nexus!

A Day for Picnics

Tshering, system #398050, is a strange place, only habitable by grace of the passengers' SCAs. The sky is shot through with colours, a cascade of sunsets, and through it, the void shimmering through it in seams like a child's painting of the milky way. Still, there's a beauty to the chaotic mash of colours that soaks through its landscape, and in the shelter of the forests of towering funghi that dot its surface, the Void can go unseen by its visitors.

The temperature seems mild, suitable for the provided clothing, and if there are weather patterns around the world they've taken the day off. The funghi are sturdy enough that what air flow there is doesn't disturb their stalks, and carved grooves and holds in some of the larger examples indicate that climbing them to sit atop their glowing crowns is eminently possible, and, in fact, encouraged.

the Endless River

The Endless River is a font of pure chaos, flowing from a multitude of small rivulets across the area to a central reservoir, from which it pours directly upwards, away from Tshering's surface and out of sight, beyond the world's atmosphere.

Anything bagged and placed within the Endless River will also flow upwards and soon be out of sight, passing, presumably, into the Void. Scattered across the surface of Tshering are small, glittering pebbles, as described in the announcement.

The stones are pleasantly cool to the touch, and all passengers need to do is feel. Messages can be in any form that the Voidtreckers wish. Perhaps words, perhaps feelings, perhaps an image from their mind into the stone. Perhaps a mixture. Once they begin their message the stone will glow slightly and continue to glow as they secure it in the bag and cast it into the river. They will feel, almost instinctively, that they need to focus as they do so, thinking of the person they wish to reach all the while.

There are plenty of bags and many more stones; passengers will not be limited in their sendings.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Which principle? The principle of stupid nonsense?

[ Bakura smirks, then slowly curls her lips to show a hint of teeth. ]

Of being a thief.

[He's seen worse - he's fought plenty of Shadows.]

You can only store and carry so much on you, duh. You have to be selective in what you grab.

[He just folds his arms over his chest, looking incredibly unimpressed.]

I'll swap when something better comes along. [ A shrug. ]

Or are you trying to tell me you want these....?

No. Just wondering why. They're probably not something you should eat anyway... and it's not like we can sell things for money so there's no point in taking that kind of stuff unless it's interesting.

Oh.....

[ She's very interested, kid. Very interested in being as defiant as possible.

Bakura takes out a mushroom, turns it over in her hands. ]

This train's fulla people who want to know why.

[ "why did you stuff your pockets full of useless fungi, thief king bakura?" "why did you remove that irritating stifling feeling from your clothing?" "why did you burgle, kidnap, and murder the body-doubles of the people who inherited a legacy of mass slaughter disguised as justice, then buried in the shadows?"

She crushes the mushroom. ] Busybodies.

[He huffs, unimpressed by her crushing the mushroom. Have to do better than that to scare him off.]

Or just bored, honestly. At home there were always monsters to fight, or things to do for fixing up the warehouse. Or information to gather. Here... not so much.

Poor you.

[ Is he looking for a monster to fight....?

Nah, she's not that bored. Or willing to jeopardize her own goals this early in the Heist. ]

What, you're not bored already?

[The mission was fun, but... they're a ways off from a mission, aren't they?]

[ Bakura snorts. ] I'm stealin' plants! Whattaya think?

[ You know what? He is right. Fuck the mushrooms. She stands up, grabs a fistful from her pocket, and chucks them over the edge. Hopefully they will land on someone! Muahahhaa! ]

I, y'see, have been grievously wronged!

[It'd be funny if they did.]

Oh yeah? Wronged how?

[Sadly he doesn't care about her enough to want to help with vengeance, but... it'd be funny to hear.]

[ ~~YOU HAVE STUPID HAIR ANYWAY, VESSEL OF THE PHARAOH!!!!! GROW FUNGI IN IT!!!~~

Bakura rears up, almost not slouching (amazing). ] I have unfinished business onboard. A resentment so great a thousand years and a thousand reincarnations won't be enough to erase it.....

[ Pause in memoriam of the lost souls of Kul Elna. Rage simmers. ]

But! [ She clenches a fist. Grits her teeth. ] A buncha nosy brats like you won't step aside. They're putting themselves in the way of my ultimate heist. And for what?! So they can call themselves the heroes, so they can judge my intentions - as if that verdict is theirs to cast!

...It doesn't even matter. [ She chuckles. ] Once the King of Thieves, Bakura, sets her sights on something, all defenses become useless.....

I'm stealing their time.

[Ah. Okay, so she wants to rant like Sakaki, but more aggressive. His unimpressed look does soften a bit as she continues. He can understand resentment.]

I mean, I went to go carry out my revenge at home. No one on the train... who hurt you?

[he doesn't really care about her. He does care about staying out of the way of someone taking their shot for something that's clearly affected them like this.]

[Or maybe that's just how she is. Who knows?]

[ Everyone is always so hung up on THAT, like it MATTERS. Bakura clicks her tongue against her teeth. ] Allies. Sympathizers. Tools.

[ If he was looking for names, more fool him, that is the literal plot of Yu-Gi-Oh!. I mean, what.

She shrugs. ] Have you ever heard of the Millennium Items?

[You can't just take revenge on no one in particular, Bakura.]

No, I haven't. Should I have?

Your world's better off.

[ That, or they're a secret....? Oh, whatever. She begins laying out mushrooms in a mocking parody of the slab in the hidden shrine in Kul Elna. Which she has memorized. She has spent a lot of time down there. ]

Seven objects that judge the hearts of men, created in a sacred ritual....so goes the story. But just like every heart has light and darkness - the Items keep a secret.

[ She smirks. ] Bet you can't guess.......

[Okay that sounds bullshit, but so does shooting yourself to summon a giant buzzsaw-monster to fight monsters for you. So he can at least recognize that it might not be bullshit in her world.]

Something to do with hurting someone you care about.

[He's not sure what. And any guess he has is probably wrong, anyway.]

What is it?

Slaughter.

[ The seventh Millennium Fungus is placed. ]

A power that great can only come from the darkness .... and for shadow alchemy, there is a cost! The lives of every man, woman, and child in the village of Kul Elna, ripped from them because they weren't living the life the king wanted!

[ How many times has she told this story in the past few days, after so many years of silence....? Well, whatever. The time for secret-keeping died with Akhnamkanon. If he'd been so determined to carry the truth to his grave - she'll scream it across the worlds!!!!

UP YOURS MOTHERFUCKER. ]

I'm the last survivor of a massacre. The living ghost of a crime! And I can't even escape self-proclaimed "do-gooders" in another world....

[ honestly that part is just as funny as it is annoying, she laughs at it ] People never change, huh?!

... Okay, that's fucked up.

[To say the least.]

I mean, I chased after a guy who killed my mother for years... I can't imagine how fucking furious you'd be after that.

Heh...I passed "furious" long ago......

[ Bakura grins with the full force of just how much she means that statement behind it.

Then, having vented (for the moment), she tries to clap the kid's shoulder. ] All right! I'm elevating you from 'small fry' to 'catfish'!

[He flinches slightly at the sudden physical contact but doesn't otherwise react.]

Oh yeah? Well. Uh. Thanks?

[He thinks.]

... But yeah if someone named Shinjiro Aragaki shows up here, he's mine.

[ Have you SEEN a wild catfish? They're predators. Territorial. Why, the very first King of a united Egypt was named for the catfish.....!!! A lofty pedigree.

Bakura nods: name means nothing to her, no problems. ] And I get the court of the mighty Pharaoh. Deal.

[ "what pharaoh"

the pharaoh, any pharaoh, every pharaoh

all pharaohs are phar game ]

I literally do not give a single shit about any sort of court. Not Egyptian, not Japan, not whatever.

Then we're golden.

[ Hm. Okay. She's in a good mood now. She'll bite. ]

What's Japan?

[ and can it also be taken over by the forces of darkness commandeered by the great evil god zorc necrophades

asking for a fiend ]

[Great, she's from either an old-timey place or not Earth.]

So uh... it's islands to the east of Egypt. Like... really far east. Probably a third of the way around the planet?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

itt: sudden ancient egyptian trivia?????? i found a podcast

excellent

can testify catfish get touchy af, island swamp swamp is raising one

i wouldn't know they're not kosher so i ignored them growing up lmao

fair enough!

no subject