middleofsomewhere | No Place Like Home: The Return

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Koumyou? Sanzo? "He did be dying..." She had seen it. With her eyes. She sounds confused, lost.

Sanzo was alive? The train had worked enough to bring him back? She stared at their hand, as if unsure what to even do with it. They were going to take her back? How? They had mentioned anchoring. She has so many questions but also who knows how much time they have.

She took their hand.

dɐɹɐsɐɯƃɐʇǝ qopɥᴉ sʌɐɥɐ ƃɐʇǝ ƃɐʇǝ
𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐩.
qnʇʇǝɹɔnd.

Hello, thought-bleed!

𝐈 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫.
˙ɹǝʇʇǝq ʇoɓ Iᴉ ƃoʇ qǝʇʇǝɹ.
amgate bodhi svaha gate gate paragate

And morbid jokes.

"He's okay," Soldat promises, not quite wincing at the echo that isn't one of their own familiar voices, but their smile is a bit lop-sided. "You hear that? That's him, waiting to help lead us back to the train." They step back, keeping her hand, to draw her gently with them.

There's a clamouring inside her head but through it all... Sanzo. That's his voice. It makes no sense except it does because it's the train and since when does the train do anything logically.

She blinked at Soldat and nodded, taking their hand. "How..."

She doesn't even understand enough to ask a full question.

Koumyou goes silent, except for the mantra repeating over and over to keep him grounded. As soon as the pair start moving, the priest starts to spiritually tug them in the right direction.

The void swirls around her, her world fades away. Voices, Kant's gruff commands, Taiwin scoffing at her, a tumbling of warm sea air, dust and honey fall around them as she is pulled from that place, her heart all twisted.

In many ways it was worse, to have come back. To know that she had been cast aside. To know that there was no real place for her any more. She tried to think instead of what she was travelling towards. If that truly was Sanzo's voice.

The train had brought him back, despite his death on his world far away, despite all the weirdness. The train had revived him. Maybe she didn't hate it completely...

She let the voices and faces in the void wash around her, echoes from a life that wasn't hers anymore. No one needed her to be the nameless trainee assassin anymore. But there were people who needed Buttercup the void warrior. So that life? It was gone now.

She pushed through, to Sanzo. She didn't even think once she saw him, just stumbled through the fog and practically threw herself into his arms. She's mad at him for dying, but that can wait.

It all can wait.

And Koumyou, still seated in full lotus on the ground, catches her without hesitation. No one else is using him as their stationary anchor right now, so he can let his focus slip, smiling tiredly at the kid in his lap.

"There you are."

He was here. All of him. Alive, well. Sat in a meditative pose. Looking tired but alive.

"Yes I do be being here." She stared up at him. Her being here was not surprising. Him being here was.

"You..."

'You...' died. Are alive. He knows that's the shocking bit.

But, he's Koumyou Sanzo, so he's going to downplay it at least at first. His smile goes a little wry, and then he offers a shrug of one bony shoulder. "I got better."

"Yes. You did." She wrinkled her nose. "I did be knowing you would be."

It's a lie. She hadn't thought she would ever see him again. But if he is downplaying this then so is she. If he wants to act as if his death was nothing at all, as if he hadn't died to keep her and Devero safe...

She sighed.

That sigh's pretty telling, kiddo. "Well, I didn't know, but I'm glad all the same. Between our messed up tethers, and it being the Muten sutra... either could have been permanent."

But it wasn't, and that makes it easier to talk about.

He didn't know. So he had thought it would be forever.

It makes her angrier. But that anger has no place to go. It wasn't his fault and he had killed that other priest in the end.

"Did you be seeing him yet?"

Him being Devero. Of course.

"I haven't," Koumyou says quietly, "I'm going to go roaming for him next, but I knew I'd be one of the more useful people as a stationary first."

Hell, he's even physically tethered himself to the train with those bands of Seiten wrapped around it, behind him.

"...I didn't want to go," he feels he needs to say, "dying was the second to last thing I wanted in that fight."

She nodded. it was important for him to be found. To be brought back and if he saw Sanzo, well then he would be much more likely to not fight returning.

Not that it had seemed he wanted to be on his world anyways.

She looked up into Sanzo's eyes and nodded. "I do be knowing. You did no be wanting to be leaving us."

Koumyou meets her eyes, and nods. "Good."

He gives her a squeeze, then nudges her out of his lap so that he can stand up, the Seiten still wrapped around the train like it could take off without them. "Go ahead and get on board, I'll go haul Dev back. Everyone's going to be pretty tired when it's all over, if it's anything like last time."

She scrambles up the moment he nudges her and nodded at him. "Yes. I will be seeing you both soon."

It's a promise. They better return soon.

She will make sure to look after them both, if they are tired.

No Place Like Home: The Return

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