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

It amounts to keeping the woman whole in his mind, to keep her clear in it. The figure of her, the collection of memories he has; a few handfuls, but he grasps onto them, keeping them threaded together, seeing as well from her point of view while reminding himself of where he is.

Tidus thinks about Clef - sitting in the library upon his rock, teaching him calmly, almost comically so, Tidus's own state flustered or confused by his tasks - and about his son too, Link. A guy he barely knows, but this place where they all are, he wonders - are they okay? Is their world okay?

There's so many tragic worlds, and Tidus can't help but worry what Leia will see. Is this world, wherever they are, a good place? While acknowledging too, that there's nowhere ever really perfect.

(And feeling sad either way, to be taking them away from living like a family--wanting people to have the opportunities he didn't, himself. There's so many things one thinks, feels, without realising it.)

Tidus' wondering reached Leia, and he'd receive some brief flashes. A tall man with wild curly hair and a ridiculously long scarf, laughing and surrounded by flowers. Working on a datapad while talking with another woman, one with an edge to her voice that spoke of a distain for fools, but kindness in her eyes. Images of a singing frog mixed equally with those of a thin man who sported a sadistic grin. A battle on a beach, against an entity with a shrieking female voice reminiscent of breaking glass. A sense of peace as fireworks lit the evening sky.

"Nautilus," she said, condensing it all down, "was a complicated place. And a complicated entity. But good in the end."

And speaking of which... A moment later she was stepping out onto a cobblestone street, somewhere in the Northern District. She took only a moment to take a deep breath of the slightly damp air- fog was beginning to creep in, the real kind, not the sort that characterized a void platform- before she looked around. "Clef?", she called out. "Spark? Are either of you around? It's Leia."

Spark had been so desperate for familiar friendly voice. For someone, anyone...

Hearing Leia, Spark turned and dashed towards her. Leia had come back! She could help him figure out how to get to Paris. Or home. He'd talk her into it, somehow. Probably. Maybe.

At least he could get her to Bend up some fish. He's starving.

But ahead of him came a wash of images, hints, voices from his world.

The voices at first were hard to make out, overlapping. But thn Spark's voice, sounding weak. Attenuated. "B-boss... Thank god you've... finally... come... back... S...So... very... h...hungry...."

"Spark," a male voice, one they would soon become well acquainted with from these flashes, "I've been gone three hours."

"Well it feels like you've been gone for three months."

Shuffling, indistinct voices, before the same two voices came again like a wave against the beach.

"It's been a long day. I'm gonna cook some dinner. Let's see now... I'll marinade a steak"

"Or some fish."

"I've got some leftover potatoes."

"Fish and chips."

"And some carrots."

"Well that goes well with Fish.... What?"

More indistinct noises, then the voices picked up again.

"And so we chased off the bad guys, and the Dryad was healed."

"Wow, boss! What a great story! You saved the day!"

"Thank you, Spark."

"The epilogue is a bit sad though."

"What do you mean?"

"You have to go back to work tomorrow."

"Oh. Right."

"Leia?" Spark's more current voice. Closer, stronger. "Where are you?"

Well, that was one voice they were hearing; even Tidus, with his distance. He keeps quiet, decides to let Leia focus on finding the one calling her (Spark?), and tries to not get dragged into the memories floating around via the fog of the void.

He's got to be their guide to getting back, after all. He can't get distracted now.

"Spark!", Leia called back, her own voice stronger as she pushed through the fog. Well there was one, anyway. "This way, follow my voice!"

And even as Spark headed her way she headed his. Pushing forward through fog and images and voices. A towering figure in black armor. A cheerful young woman with brightly colored hair and clothes. Being huddled in a doorway looking out at a forest that had become a battlefield, blaster fire ringing everywhere, and acutely conscious of the fact that they were running out of time.

And then suddenly she was stepping out of the fog into... well a bit more fog, but it was the ordinary sort of fog. Cobblestones beneath her feet and Big Ben towering over her. Nautilus. "Spark?"

A jail cell. Two guys arguing on one side of the bars. Spark, a woman with pointed projecting teeth, and a man who looks like he really needed a shave and a week's worth of sleep were on the "not in jail" side of the bars, trying not to listen in on the argument on the other side.

"He said it wasn't him?" the woman said, over the argument - which seemed to be about how stupid one of them looked holding a cat hostage, how the other betrayed that one, saving said cat, to save the one yelling at him. Because in jail someone called Urban Eddie couldn't get to them. about freedom, and earning respect vs taking it. "Of course it was!" the woman continued. "That was the worst disguise I had ever seen!"

"Yeah!" Spark said, putting his front paws on the man's shoulder to get him to listen. "And besides, I saw his face under the mask! I'm a star witness!"

"Sorry, Spark," the man said, turning to face him, "but the testimony of talking animals isn't legally admissible. It's too easily tampered with."

"What?!" Spark protested. "That's absurd! My word is as good as..." he trailed off staring as the man pulled out a fish as long as Spark was.

"Change your story, and I'll give you this," the man said, holding up the fish.

Spark couldn't take his eyes off of it. "I saw nothing, Bumper ****s. Gimmie fish."

"Leia?!" Spark called. "Leia? Where are you?"

No Place Like Home: The Return

roaming - for a clef (and co) rescue?

Re: roaming - for a clef (and co) rescue?

Re: roaming - for a clef (and co) rescue?

no subject

no subject

no subject