No Place Like Home: The Return

[voidtreckermods]

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NO PLACE LIKE HOME: THE RETURN

---

a silence broken...

It's been a very difficult few days. Rocking and rolling into the void and out again. Watching their friends out of the window as they wander from world to world. Meanwhile those lost on worlds continue to wander unable to return to the train at all.

"All attempts at returning those who left have failed. This voidcraft cannot do it alone. It is lucky that unlike those that have left before them, I can still sense them.

But I cannot bring them back alone. This is perhaps too advanced for Voidtreckers, but you have done the improbable before. You say you wish to help. This is how you help."

Their SCA's light up with a message. Or rather, a series of instructions:

In the unlikely event a tether gets stranded on a liminal space platform or between their own world and the platform space, you should, in the first instance, contact the Void technicians who monitor their non-travelling self. However, in the case they cannot be reached or there is a mass displacement of tether, an anchoring procedure can be carried out.

Ideally, this will involve two fully tethered individuals to retrieve the lost tether. One should be a stationary anchor. They should be outside of their void craft, if possible, and in physical contact with it. The second should be a roaming anchor reaching to draw the tethers back. In situations of mass tether displacement the stationary anchor can hold mutiple roaming anchors but it is recommended to not exceed five. In this situation, it is recommended that anchors rotate between stationary and roaming.

To start an anchoring of this kind, those anchoring should activate their anchoring program. Those staying station should reach out to the tethers of those they plan to steady. This might cause some emotional upheaval, and they will need to stay steady, especially if connecting to more than one roaming tether. Roaming anchors then must hold the person they search for in their thoughts and move towards them. It is recommended that the lost tethers activate their emergency beacon to facilitate being found and returning but this is not a necessity.

Once the roaming anchor has found the lost tethers they must keep hold of them and guide them back towards their craft, the stationary tethers must draw them back, pulling them through.

There is an additional note at the end, in different font.

It is as Anan told you. Your minds should visualise it. Be strong Voidtreckers.

... a short-lived dream

The doors open and anyone who wishes to try this can leave onto the platform. It is empty, devoid of the figures they had seen before; and, beyond the fog, devoid of anything. But searching requires their SCAs, not a path, and as people get into teams, they can activate their anchors and begin.

For those who will roam, their minds become filled, visualising light, void, voices and chaos; their bodies feel less stable, like they might unravel if not careful. But for those who will stay, when they touch the Voidtrecker Express, they will feel more stable, grounded. The fog shifts, but the world moves around them without pulling them in.

Thinking of the person they wish to keep stable, a mental and emotional link will be established, and they will feel each other as the roaming anchor sets off to find their missing crew.

---

Outside the train...
For those that had left - either by choice or by strange happenings - they have found themselves back at their anchor point during Poi 26, regardless of where they were before. For those unfortunate enough not to have a world to return to, or those who were stuck between in the first place, they will find themselves alone, in a fog filled space where no matter how far they walk, nothing greets them.

All those in fog or back in their world receive the same message from their SCAs.

Hold fast. Press your evacuation button. Your friends come.

---

RETURNERS: FLEETING HAPPINESS

But it's likely before the message arrived, that something wrong has been noticed by those outside the void. More than the bizarre ability to travel between existences, an inability to move far from where they appear. Back at their anchor points, they may notice - in time - colours sometimes flash across the sky, streaking through clouds or making trails in a night sky. At first not much, something to be easily dismissed but it builds. People talk, wonder at what is happening.

For the colours aren't the only thing. Across worlds, in cities, kingdoms, villages, underworlds and space stations, people are dreaming. Bright colours, vivid dreams. Prophets spring from nowhere, people claim to know the future or to have seen the past. Some talk of places and worlds they could not have seen.

Perhaps at first it can be explained away, there are always such people. But more people talk, from urchin children to commanders, people dream and the colours dance.

ANCHORERS: A STEADY HAND

While the stationeries will feel grounded, they aren't blind to what's happening to their roamer. It's as if they're both linked, intimately, meshing together, and they will need to work to keep their feelings separate; hearing each other's thoughts, their feelings. Images of what the other thinks and memories shared between them.

And then there is the search for their teammates, amongst the multiple of realities. Existences move past the roamer, threatening to lose them in the mess, but they must persevere, keep their thoughts on the individual, their stationary anchor to help them. Until finally, they appear - in a world they perhaps know, don't, the kaleidoscope colours of the void faint above their heads.

Speak to each other, keep each other focused, certain, and find who you came to save.

BOTH: HOLDING ON

Searching for individuals, the anchorers will find themselves at a character's anchor point; if they haven't moved far from here or another world, it will be easy to locate them. Now is the time to convince them to come back, and then the eventual work of doing so.

It can be in agreement, or force. Taking a hold of the person, the anchorer can pull them into the mass of chaos. Just like when they helped the guests return to their worlds from the false Diagad, all parties become battered by images, voices. Voices like sirens; 'Just stay,' the voices encourage. 'Just let go and drift into the chaos. It will be easier.'

But they must be strong, move towards their anchor and towards the craft. The crossing doesn't take too long, perhaps ten minutes each way, and once they get to the craft the person they are rescuing glows gold and vanishes. The anchors will know instinctively that they are safe on the train.

And indeed, the rescued will find themselves within the luggage carriage - exhausted, but safe.

TRAIN: AN INEVITABLE RETURN

Exhaustion is something all parties will experience, once everyone is returned to the train and the adrenaline wears off. Those who anchored will be hit with a total exhaustion, leaving them unable to do much more than eat and sleep for a few days. Those rescued won't be as bad, but if they decide to join in with the efforts, they'll too face the soul-tiring experience that other anchorers are.

There's likely to be efforts, to help soothe people over this time. And as people return to their life on the train, they will see the marks of the last few days for those who stayed behind. Broken ceramics, books out of order in the library; the ICPs in the standard coach, storage, sports and games carriages broken, and some damage to furniture.

But for the scars brought on by this event, surely, they will heal - eventually.

OOC NOTES

OOC post. Ask questions here. New second part OOC post here.

First phase of the event took place during Poi 22 to 25; the second phase takes place during Poi 26 to 28 (20-25th February).

VISITING WORLDS: While during Poi 26, it will be possible to go back to wherever they were, or other spaces. However, they will have increasing difficulty doing this, and will feel themselves getting more lost if they try world hopping too much over the next 3 (void) days. It's like something is trying to pull them back, or pull them, but into nowhere.

SCAs: The SCA's comms will not be active at this time.

Comments

[schrodingersghost]

The Rescue:[Closed]
The longer he stayed in his world, the more worried Danny was getting. The warnings from the Ministry, the strange lights in the sky, the dreams...

But if there was one thing a Fenton was, it was stubborn and overprotective. And he was determined to stay in his world to the very last minute as he did everything he could to protect his town.

The Return: Luggage Carriage:
When Danny finally reappears in the luggage carriage, the exhaustion hits him hard. Not just from the return, but he'd spent every moment in his world pushing himself. It was only now that he realizes that it was possible that he'd overdone it. By a lot.

He blinks blearily and starts to make his way back to his room for a very long nap... and then he remembers his promise to check in with the healers.

Where was he supposed to go for that again?

[blitzcheer]

It's not possible, for Tidus to do everything he wants. Go in and get everyone, be there in person as much as he'd like. But it's fine; as long as they can get everyone, standing back by the Voidtrecker Express is still its own exhausting work: keeping the line back to the train present, but also aiding Lioriley in finding the guy they were searching for.

Danny.

He thinks about him, but for her, his image of the young man. A decent guy, ordinary-looking who you wouldn't think has the inability to pause once it comes down to business from how easy-going he seems otherwise. The different shades of the same figure he takes: the human, the ghost. Memories of them chatting, hanging out; a guy that Tidus trusts and respects in the way comrades do.

And there's the worry too, of the world that Lior will be heading into: a world of ghosts (which, in Tidus's mind, are taking on a rather unhuman form, because his inner brain is a sunday cartoon like that). That Danny will be throwing himself around in a fight in the worst possible scenario, he won't have anyone to help him, no one will be able to stick by his side.

...but there's the glimmer of a hope that the easy-going Danny is getting to be out, chilling, maybe going to school or hanging out with friends. Images accompany that, but they don't pretend to be of Danny's life - but of a different city, of what Tidus knows a simple life to be.

Hopefully, there's enough for Lioriley to grasp onto, to find Danny's tether and to go to him, and appear nearby to his person.

[invigorates]

They were days into the rescue missions, and while Lioriley had not gone out roaming as much as some others, she had done it enough by now to know what it felt like. Well. Sort of what it felt like. It was different every time — unsettling, strange, this fog filled with flashes of worlds she had never seen and likely never would again unless the train decided to stop there some time in the future. And who was the say any of it was real to begin with anyway? She certainly couldn't.

What was real was Danny, and Tidus. And her. She had never met the boy but Tidus' visions were...enough, to fathom a guess. The Lunari did her best to ignore the fleeting glimpses of strange lands, of those ghastly creatures that conjured images of her own world in her mind — inadvertently passed on to Tidus through their mental connection. Creatures of death, skeletal faces engulfed in swirls of pitch black, immaterial and yet still so terrifying. She snapped back quickly; focused. Danny. The young boy with the odd ability to change into...what? She could not quite put to words yet, and could not think too long about the details lest she lose them all entirely.

She saw him, she thought, finally after what felt like ages of moving through sludge. "Danny?" called out, dark eyes flickering along the twisted and intermingled landscapes in the fog. "You do not know me, but I have come from the train — we need to go back. It is not safe here."

[schrodingersghost]

Danny pauses, wavering slightly with exhaustion. It seemed like he'd been constantly on the move for days now, and it didn't see like it was going to slow down any time soon

"Of course its not safe here! This is Amity Park, and its in the middle of a ghost invasion." He pauses. "Invasions."

He staggers a little as he tries to focus.

"Wait? The train? What's happening? Is everyone okay?"

[blitzcheer]

Yup, that's Danny. Lioriley hasn't asked for a confirmation, but Tidus can hear the other guy talking. It's nothing tired, nothing of the sort, and Tidus doesn't let himself get too lost in focusing on the other guy, not to pay attention to Lioriley. To keep the way travelled opened, his presence lingering with her; a door open at her back, waiting for her.

'Doesn't he know about his body?' still comes through, a thought in Lioriley's own - that might also be heard by Danny. An acknowledgement following not even a second later: 'That wouldn't stop him.'

Why worry about something you can't do anything about when everything around you is going crazy, right.

[invigorates]

Confirmation was good to have regardless, on the very off chance that active boy yelling about ghosts wasn't the one she had seen in Tidus's mind.

"They will be." She said, sounding confident enough, brows furrowing when she heard the question echoing in her mind. 'Such is the way of heroes' came an unconscious reply. "It cannot move, and those like yourself that returned to their worlds are in need of aid. You need to come back, or you will be lost to the void."

[schrodingersghost]

Danny pauses.

"How big of a chance are we talking about here? Because my world here is still kind of a mess. So if its more of a maybe and everyone back there is okay, I should probably stay a little longer."

Apparently things really did fall apart without him there, which was not a realization that he liked to think about too hard. Because that way lay wonderings about his future that he had always made a point of avoiding.

[blitzcheer]

'We'll come help it, Danny - we'll tell the train come fix it!' There's a desperation, an attempt to actually speak to Danny that hadn't been done before, and it may come across not only in Lioriley's mind but in Danny's too - a voice, familiar. Thoughts too of the people that've disappeared over their time on the train, leaving through the gates, the turnstiles - lost.

'I don't know what's happening, but the train is losing you, and we don't know what happens -'

He pauses, just trying to find in his own thoughts what he wants to say; but realising in that moment too, it's probably not working. So he quiets, not meaning to fill Lioriley's head with his sudden emotions, an apology as he recedes and allows her room to think and speak.

[invigorates]

The intensity of Tidus' emotional response was enough to make Lioriley wince, like the shout had been done directly in her ear. 'You should not vow such things' a reprimand; soft as it was, because getting someone's hopes up now could likely even more emotional upheaval. Besides...he could not promise that. No one could.

Then, to Danny: "I am sorry for the state of your world, but there is a certainty that staying here will not be beneficial for anyone. Have you not seen it - the cracks, the distortions? We cannot remain. We must return to the train. Together."

A beat. "And if we linger much longer, I fear Tidus may try and bring you back himself." it was...kind of a joke? Tidus had made it sound like they were well acquainted.

[dnaofahalfa]

It.

Takes a little while before Razzy has the wherewithal to go looking for people.

But as soon as she does, there was one person she had to find first, searching the likely places for Danny. From the luggage carriage, to his room, and then maybe medic cars.

[schrodingersghost]

She'll find him coming out of his room. He was clearly worn out and desperately in need of more rest, but at least he wasn't a step away from falling asleep where he stood.

"Razzy? You okay?" And it only took him a few seconds to switch from half asleep to worried.

[dnaofahalfa]

Oh.

There he is.

And....she suddenly feels like...well, her actual age, honestly.

So she moves to him, not a rush, but direct and hugs him tight. "No. Need to feel solid again," she muttered into his chest.

[schrodingersghost]

Danny hugs her back with a general air of confusion. It takes him a moment to catch on, and then he frowns deeply as he figures it out.

His hug tightens.

"You are solid. At least as much as I am."

But he was going to try and buy some ectodejecto from the shop this month. Just in case.

[dnaofahalfa]

Perhaps not the worst idea, all things considered.

She takes a shuddering breath and leans into him. "Pretty solid for bags of goo part the time," she joked weakly.

[schrodingersghost]

"Hey, at least we're very cool bags of goo." He loosens the hug a little, but keeps his arms around her.

[dnaofahalfa]

Good on that because she isn't letting go herself.

She laughs weakly. "Literally, too," she said. "Maybe I could sleep in a block of ice. Really solid then."

[schrodingersghost]

"Just say the word and I'll make you an ice bed. I've been getting a lot better at ice shaping."

He was only mostly joking.

The Return (hope this is okay, if not that's fine!)

[goingthroughaphase]

When people started returning from the void, Kitty makes it a point to look around for people she knows. So when she catches sight of Danny, she releases a breath of relief and hurries over to him.

"Danny! I'm so glad to see you! Are you okay?"

If you don't mind him being a little loopy from exhaustion

[schrodingersghost]

He blinks at her a little blearily but grins.

"Kitty! Am I glad to see you! Well I mean it kind of sucks that the trip home didn't stick, but at least everyone's back and safe. Far as I know."

Not at all!

[goingthroughaphase]

She can't help a curious frown. He looked okay, but something still felt a bit...off.

"Yeah, from what I'm seeing the people coming back have been safe." Maybe not entirely okay, given having to be torn from their homes once again. And speaking of. "You sure you're all right?"

[schrodingersghost]

"Perfectly fine." His mood was, if anything, too cheerful. "I mean, I didn't really get everything done I needed to. But I think I helped at least."

He'd also barely slept or rested the entire time he was home, but no need to worry about that.

He sways slightly as he talks.

[goingthroughaphase]

The overly-cheerful attitude is exactly what makes her think everything was not fine, and she only feels more certain when he starts swaying. She reaches out to help steady him.

"That's...good. That you helped, I mean. But um...have you had a chance to get any sleep?"

[schrodingersghost]

"Sleep's for the week," he says solemnly. He was only mostly joking.

"Or at least its for the people who don't have a homeworld in the middle of a ghost invasion."

[goingthroughaphase]

She shakes her head a little. That's pretty much what she thought.

"So no," she says, more a statement than looking for any real confirmation. Because his answer is already telling. "Think you can manage some sleep now?"

[schrodingersghost]

"Eh, probably." He shrugs as he tries to conceal a yawn. "But I kind of promised some of the healers before this that I would start checking in after missions."

Instead of just sleeping it off, like he'd always done before. He'd gotten lectured A Lot when that reveal had come out.