middleofsomewhere | No Place Like Home: Outside

No Place Like Home: Outside

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: OUTSIDE

HOME SWEET HOME

You find yourself not on a wide station platform, in the clothes you last remember, holding what you were when you went through the glas door. There's no longer a train behind you, no sound of its whistle, with no other passengers around you in similar style of clothing to your own.

You're somewhere familiar, or just - the last place you remember being before your life became tethered to the Voidtrecker Express. A field, a city, a kingdom, or perhaps even a space station. You should be nowhere, yet you find yourself somewhere, despite all odds.

People - if there are people - don't at first notice you; but attract enough attention to yourself, and that will all change. Friends, family - are they near, a phonecall away? It's either everything you wanted or everything you imagined (for good or worse), and it could seem unbelievably real. But it is real - you're off the train, back somewhere you know.

Finally - the journey is over...

...If only.
You're moving away from where you arrived, for whatever reason. Who wouldn't? You may be far from home, have business elsewhere, or want to go sightseeing. It's time to return to - and live - your life, and that doesn't include sticking to one place.

But you'll find that when you reach a point, the world becomes...foggy. A fog that you hadn't seen in the distance before it appears, and when you walk through it, you'll find yourself in a place some have already found themselves in.

Because for some passengers, there was nowhere for them to return, and so the barriers lead only to fog, and then straight back onto the platform. The Voidtrecker Express may be stationed, or there may be a blanket of fog where it should be; sometimes, it can be caught trying to leave the station, only to come back a few minutes later. The doors are shut tight, and the windows are obscured, showing nothing inside.

Those who came from somewhere can go back, should they go through the turnstiles again. And if they want, they can take people along with them, too...

But sometimes, they go to a world no one knows. They go through the barriers into nothing, a black emptiness. Not space, for those that know space, and it doesn't seem to be the void either. But it is a void, devoid of anything at all. Just a darkness so complete they will not be able to see anything at all, they will only know their companion is there through touch and sound. How they are breathing, how they are living at all, is a mystery; one probably answered only by the SCA on their wrist.

Being there brings an unease deep down inside them. This place is not natural, not somewhere that they should exist in. Not a place that should exist at all. Luckily they are never there for more than a few moments before they return once more to the station, fog covering them like a safety blanket.

A DIFFERENT CORNER: LOCATIONS

In the first couple of days (whatever that means, when time doesn't match up between most places), the only way to move to another's tethered location is by them leading another there. But after that, individuals will show up in other locations when they reach close to the distance limit. Indeed as time goes on everything gets a lot less stable. They may know their five miles perfectly but still one step to another leads them back to the platform. Attempting to return to their world leads them somewhere else entirely.

And there's quite a few places to end up.

SETTLEMENTS

Buddhist Temple, China ( Koumyou Sanzo | TL )
Rebel Camp, Lothal ( Hera Syndulla | TL )
Homestead, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA ( Nell Ingram TL )
Capsule Corp ( Trunks | TL )
School Grounds, College ( Idia Shroud | TL )
City Ruins, beach ( Najaran | TL )
Hakkei Palace, Tai ( Taiki | TL )
Gusu Lan, mountain sect (China) ( Lan Jingyi | TL)
Lotus Pier, riverside, China ( Jiang Cheng | TL )
The Endless Abyss, Hell ( Shen Qingqiu | TL )
Hyrule Castle Town ( Zelda | TL )
Haven Palace ( TL )

COMMUNITIES

Spaceport ( Yondu | TL)
Mobile Station Base ( Kiyoiri )
Arkwood, Town (Ryo | TL )
Techstead, Town ( Devero | TL )
Tatsumi Port Island ( Ken Amada )
Mor Dhona / Town, Mountain, Lakes ( K'zeka Tai | TL )
Hyrule Field & Lon Lon Ranch ( Link | TL )
Ishigami Village, Japan ( Senku Ishigami | TL )
Aether Paradise/Artificial Island/Natural Preserve ( Katsuya Jonouchi )
Nautilus ( Spark/Clef TL Clef | TL Spark )
The Underworld, Hades ( Zagreus and Thanatos | TL )
Sanctuary ( TL )

CITIES & KINGDOMS

Saillune City ( Zelgadis | TL )
New Mantle, City ( Ruby Rose | TL )
Brooklyn, New York City, USA in 2017 ( Jake Peralta | TL )
Azabu-Juban District, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan ( Usagi Tsukino | TL )
Hau'oli City ( Eva Iden'no | TL )
Gauig City ( Little One/Buttercup | TL )
Kyoto, Japan ( Masumi Sera | TL )
Shinjuku, Japan ( Yosuke Otoha | TL )
Kingdom, Evermore ( Roland Crane )
Garlemad, Kingdom ( Zenos | TL )
Kingdom of Knothole ( Mina Mongoose | TL )
Domino City ( Yugi Muto | TL )
Amnity Park ( Danny Fenton | TL )
Garlemald ( TL )
Lothal ( TL )
Los Angeles ( TL )
The First - Crystarium and Lakeland ( Elidibus | TL )

OOC NOTES

OOC post. Ask questions here.

LOCATION TOPLEVELS: Since it'll be easier for players to engage with settings presented by those offering them, when we see a toplevel for one of the above locations put up, we'll add it to the list! We've also included the OOC comments for settings to the side, so any questions can be left with the player, as well as extra details. Please always speak with the player first if you intend to do anything drastic to the setting!

A REMINDER: Time of log is Poi 22-25, but time within worlds can last up to a maximum of two weeks. Minimum is whatever you want it to be.

During Poi 22 and 23, characters will need to be led to a location to be able to access it. From Poi 24, people will show up in locations regardless of invitation.

The second half of the event will go up during 20th to 25th February (Poi 26-28). But as always, play around in here and do as you like!

If your character's setting isn't above, link us to it in the Questions post, along with your toplevel! We'll add it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She turns to watch him as he makes his circuit of the doors. His apparent unconcern for the weapon in her hand is alarming and she definitely doesn't want this man going behind her back.

--Okay, forget alarm. The weight of fear that's formed in her gut grows colder and heavier with every word Koumyou says, until she's rooted to the floor and her skin's broken out in a clammy sweat.

"Who-- who do you think you are?" she asks, shaken enough that it takes her a moment to reclaim the facade of the insulted queen. "How dare you judge what you obviously don't understand? Victim? Pah!"

She draws herself up, finding her righteous anger again. "Someone like him does need a firm hand and he knows it! He could have ended our relationship at any time, but he stayed."

She brings the baton up again, pointing it at the center of Koumyou's chest. "He stayed, because he needs me."

"Right, because brainwashing is super easy to turn off, especially when you're isolated from everyone outside of the situation, and you've been eased into hell like the slowly boiling frog. Wrapped tighter and tighter in someone's control, someone's willful manipulation."

Koumyou's smile is at perfect odds with his words, with the freezing rage in his eyes.

"And why? For your ego. And so you could use him as a bribe, for all your little friends. It's extremely convenient you found him right after he was discharged from the Guard, isn't it? At his lowest point in his life... before you dragged him lower?"

Still, that absolute disconnect between the soft smile of a priest and the hard eyes of a killer.

"Besides, he told you to get lost, and your reaction was to take out the love-child of a taser and a club, and come right for me."

Slowly, he steps in closer, not the least concerned with her zappy stick.

"Also, I'm not sure you realized this, because you are pretty dumb, but all your nasty little looks at him over the top of your politician smile? I was looking you right in the face for those, too. You know, standing in front of him? Clear, unobstructed view? And I saw how surprised you were when he didn't grovel for your forgiveness. You know exactly what game you've been playing on him, and you're just too big a coward to admit it out loud. Ego's that fragile, huh?"

She laughs, the sound shrill and, again, a little unhinged. "Brainwashing? You have no idea what you're talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about."

She waves the baton at him again, raising it with a jerk to aim now at the approaching man's throat. "I brought this in case I needed to defend myself," she says, voice tight in her mental scramble for control and poise. "Obviously it was a good instinct. With Devero talking nonsense and threatening my life in the company of some-- some teknull stranger of dubious civility, can you blame me for wanting to neutralize the dangerous parties?

"Now you're talking all this nonsense too," she continues. "The two of you are clearly very sick and need care, so--" Her eyes harden now as she gathers herself.

"Let me help you with that!" She lunges again, jabbing the baton forward as quick as she possibly can.

Koumyou almost lets it connect, making direct eye contact and smiling his little smile, and right at the very last instant--

He side-steps, and puts a booted foot in her path.

"--So, as I was saying."

Like there was no interruption at all.

"Breaking him down like you did, loaning him out to your friends as a bribe? Was that part of the firm hand keeping him in check? You know, in the uncivil land where I'm from, we call that sex trafficking. At least Dev's eight kills were just bodies, you kill far more important parts of your victim. Or victims? Was he even your first?"

Valdana trips over that boot and goes sprawling, the tac baton skittering out of her hand and away across the floor. She starts to scramble after it on her hands and knees, until Koumyou's continued words stop her dead.

She flips over and surges to her feet, backpedaling away from him until she butts up against a worktable. She braces against it with both hands, gripping the edge so tightly her knuckles are white.

"You're deranged," she tells him, voice trembling with rage and fear combined. "These accusations you're making are absolutely ridiculous; you obviously don't know anything about the kind of relationship Devero and I have. They must not have kink where you come from, if you think the kink in our relationship is sex trafficking." She makes herself scoff.

Splitting her attention between Koumyou and her Interface, she reaches out and taps her open conversation with Ioleya. Get control of this, she types rapidly, or starts to at least. And get the guard here NOW.

"That's not very convincing," Koumyou tells her, following her retreat. As soon as she starts moving her fingers, he plucks the interface off of her ear, and--

Edited 2022-02-20 06:22 (UTC)

She may not have the martial arts training of someone like Devero, but she does have good reflexes. When he takes her Interface, her hand shoots out and catches his thin wrist, her neatly manicured nails digging in.

"Give that back," she snarls.

"Or what?" Koumyou asks cheerfully, keeping a little of his focus on her other hand. He knows Dev can do shit with his one-handed, no doubt she can too.

His wrist probably feels thin and fragile, under his black arm-warmer.

Devero could have told her differently. He kind of had, in a way.

She doesn't answer him. His wrist feels so thin and so fragile that she just yanks down instead, intending to pry her Interface right back out of his hand.

Of course, it doesn't budge. Koumyou glances at his SCA on his other wrist, strapped over his armwarmer. Not quite ten minutes, but that's fine. It's been about eight, and really, anything over five is probably enough for Dev to be safely tucked away, exo unhooked from its spot or otherwise.

Discarded on the floor somewhere, Valdana's stun baton starts to crackle and hum, alarmingly loudly. In seconds, electricity is arcing up through the air from it, the end of the arcs snapping and popping against the walls, the floor. Koumyou looks over at it. "Is your zappy stick a bomb, Valdana? Planning to take us out with you? Disappointing."

Valdana's eyes have gone wide again and she stares from their hands to Koumyou's face and back. She tugs again, not that it has any more effect this time--

And then her attention is arrested by the rising column of electricity. "What? No!" She snatches her hand back and scrambles-- well, there's nowhere really to scramble, with Koumyou to one side of her, the badly malfunctioning baton to the other, and worktables hemming her in otherwise.

She decides to take her chances with the man, charging him with her hands up. "Get out of my way!"

Koumyou steps to the side to let her run away unhindered, and crouches down himself as though to take cover--

The baton explodes. Miraculously, almost all the force goes up.

Less miraculously, at least from Koumyou's perspective, it just happens to be the right amount of power and at just the right frequency to form a crude EMP. A big one, probably affecting more than one building for at least the next fifteen minutes or so. Crazy! And it's definitely fried itself, who knows what was inside it now??

Koumyou stands back up even as something crashes down from the ceiling, all the lights as dead as almost everything else in here.

And then he starts to laugh, a high, delighted sound.

Edited 2022-02-20 06:57 (UTC)

Valdana hasn't gotten more than a few paces away before the baton behind her explodes. She dives to the ground with a scream, covering her head and rolling under a worktable.

When his laughter rings out through the room, she shrinks even further under the table. She bites her lip and tries to quiet her breathing. Surely he won't be able to find her in the very dim glow of the emergency lights marking the locations of the doorways.

"You really should have just listened to him for once in your entire time together and left," Koumyou says in the semi-dark, tucking her interface away into the ARMs band for safe keeping. "If you'd been in an actual relationship with him, you'd know it goes both ways."

Something... papery rustles from his direction, and then the entire room is full of light, almost bright enough to hurt, emanating from the long tendrils of sutra now floating in the air all over the place. It's very pretty, and also very bad for Valdana's safety.

Koumyou continues, conversational as ever, slowly making his way along in the direction she'd fled. "Hell, I might have let you leave if you'd tried before this point, even after he left the room."

He wouldn't have.

Her inhale is loud as the room lights up, revealing-- she doesn't know what. Streaks of something in the air, so unexpected that she can't even recognize the sutra as paper from where she is. She turns carefully over, moving as delicately as she can as she starts to crawl along under the table.

Koumyou hasn't even paused to peek under the tables, he just kind of strolls along slowly. "Now, ideally, we'd have enough time together for me to rip your little wires out and garrote you with them bit by bit. I really am that angry with you, you know? Normally..."

He lets that hang for a second.

"...Normally, I'm very pragmatic about it when I kill someone. Which has been a lot more than eight times. And other than how angry I've grown with you over the last six, seven? months of coaxing Devero back up out of the pit you buried him in, you're not even going to be very memorable."

One tendril of glowing paper darts under the table, searching blindly for his target. He could bend or crouch down and look, but this is more fun for the little time he's got.

"Just another way you're terribly underwhelming, at the end of the day. I really did expect more, something more like Ukoku perhaps, but you're just a shitty old lady who thinks she's important."

Every single thing Koumyou says makes Valdana's blood run progressively colder in her veins. She's made her share of enemies in pursuit of her work, she's crossed some powerful people who could have caused her serious harm-- but not even her angriest or most violent enemy has ever threatened to garrote her bit by bit. Never has she heard anyone discuss the pragmatism of murder with such calm equanimity who wasn't an actor giving a performance.

On this soft world, swaddled and insulated by a generous government, Valdana has never before had to fear for her life. Her position, yes, the resources she has access to, sure, but her life? Never.

Biting the insides of her cheeks in an attempt to keep herself quiet, she continues to make for the exit. If she can get to the door, she can just trigger an alarm and then bolt out of here. Let someone who's qualified for it deal with this deranged lunatic and maybe!Devero in the hangar.

The plan gives her something to hold onto, and determination quickens her shuffle forward--

Until something sinuous and glowing dips into the space in front of her. She recoils away from it reflexively, rattling the table when she tries unthinkingly to stand and bangs into the underside of it. With a shout, she crumples back to her hands and knees.

"Not only am I going to end you physically," Koumyou lets her know cheerfully, even as he comes to a pause the side of that table, "but I'm going to end your reputation, too. And if Techstead crumples because of one person turning out to be a big, cancerous tumor, then as far as I'm concerned, it wasn't built right to begin with."

More tendrils of the sutra snake under the table, looking for a limb to grab and pull.

"I'd say we have a good ten more minutes before my little EMP starts to wear off. But you're starting to bore me, so I think we're about to wrap up, here."

She covers her mouth with both hands as more of those... feelers reach under, staring in horror at the stranger so very, very close to her. She tries huddling into the smallest shape she can, but one of the glowing things is sweeping right for her.

Just before it touches her, she breaks, trying to swat it aside and shoot out from under the table in the same frantic motion.

"You know," Koumyou lets her get partially out before his hand shoots down, like a striking snake, and grabs her by her hair to haul her up. His voice remains conversational, cheerful.

"Not only has Devero lived through much scarier shit than you're contending with right now, but he did it all while protecting other people. And even while keeping a cool enough head to organize others."

Just going to haul back on that hair once he's got her to her feet, making her lean back hard, "So, explain to me how you're so much better than him?"

Valdana can't help but scream when he seizes her by the hair and hauls her up, the same way she's done so many times to Devero. Tears streak her face and her eyes are wide and shocky as they meet Koumyou's.

It's his tone of voice that's the scariest, she realizes dimly as she claws at his hand in her hair with both of his. He could be talking to her about the week's upcoming menu in the c-kitchen, he's so casual. It's terrifying.

She's able to remain on her feet when he bends her backwards so effortlessly, but barely. "I-- I--" she gasps, her mind racing to find a way to talk herself out of this. She can talk herself out of anything, can't she?

Well, he's fixated on Devero. Start there. "He was-- trained--" she forces out, fighting for each word. "Guard-- dangerous. Made him dangerous!"

"Hardly," Koumyou chuckles, "you think he's dangerous? What about the sinkhole someone opened under him and everyone around him with a bomb, when he was out doing work for your culture's people?"

If anything, the priest's grip on her hair tightens, twisting a little.

"Devero had the spine to look that danger in the face, and rescue everyone around him, consequences be damned. And when he was busted out of the Guard for breaking the rules in order to do that, you swept in and burrowed your way into those fresh mental wounds like the disgusting infection you are. Just admit it, the cameras are all off. It's just you and me."

"How do you-- know that?" she manages. "The cameras-- how?"

"Because I know what an EMP is. Thanks for the baton, by the way. It's a lot easier to throw lightning around when there's a source I can feed and channel it through! I've done that with Dev's batons too, without blowing them up. Real useful."

The demons on Erda hadn't thought so, but fuck 'em.

"It's still going, too, inside all the wiring in here? I'm still feeding it. Probably fry half the shit in here before I let up. Other than Babysitter, of course, because it's search and rescue. Real durable! Real good at protecting the guy inside, and at telling him the current's unsafe to exit yet. Although if it's not even connected to the system anymore, then all the better. Less cutting for me."

Koumyou's still so very cheerful about it all.

"Speaking of cutting."

Oh boy, oh good. Koumyou hands her hair off to a curling tendril of the sutra, which hauls up on it hard enough to make her go onto her toes.

She just stares at him, as he starts talking about unbelievable things, as the tendril of whatever this is takes her from him and lofts her even higher in the air. She grabs at it, feet scrabbling as she tries to make herself as tall as possible and relieve the searing pressure in her scalp, but her eyes are fixed on him the whole time.

"What--" It's a barely a squeak. She swallows and forces the words out. "what are you?"

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