middleofsomewhere | No Place Like Home: The Return

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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.

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You guys don't need Tidus to turn around and pretend he isn't here? Okay, well, he can not do that. This, however, isn't really awkward to Tidus; watching the two of them, the gestures and show of friendship that are familiar across different worlds, places, even with their nuances of culture and personalities.

He feels sorry that they're going to have to part, but glad as well that Jingyi got to see friends and family, for as annoying of a return as it must have been. Chucked out and off the train as he was, probably predicting from then that this wouldn't end well.

(Not being in your body is a pretty big clue.)

So he's smiling, small as it is, to be witness to a pair, and this he can feel more comfortable to, to be allowed a peek into their lives - Jingyi's life, his comforts of a good friend.

He won't even change his look, make any conscious note or observation to Jingyi's closed eyes, as he opens them.

"I can if you want me to! What do you think?" Cheery, far more than how he arrived, the few seconds after it, and he directs the question momentarily to Sizhui. He waves a fist close to his shoulder, as if direction to some path back. "You wanna fly back? Then you can hold me."

As if this is a far better alternative than carrying.

Jingyi looks back to Sizhui, lips curving into a grin that's decidedly self-amused and mischevious.

"You heard him," he says, "He said he wants me to hold him."

That said, he sweeps in close to try and lift Tidus up and over his shoulder, until if he succeeds, he'd be generously carting Tidus... over his shoulder. With Tidus granted the full view of Jingyi's back and the not-quite-base of his tail and its light blue furred mane, along with having his hair swooshed by Jingyi's tailtip, in all its fluffy glory.

"To the void we go! Or we go," he says, and there's a deep fondness and some light regret, but more directed purpose. He loves his world, his clan, his important people, though he wouldn't describe it that way. It's the strength of affection and regard and protectiveness that flows through him, even as he knows, feels through and through, his duty is not yet to be back here.

"No!!!!!!!"

Tidus doesn't have time for the realisation, the sinking foreboding to come and sink into him before he's swept up off his feet - all that's washing him up is Jingyi.

And with it comes his helpless yells, along with the waving of his arms. If he's going to get stolen away like a helpless damsel, he's going to be as noisy as he likes about it!!

"You're supposed to change! Argh-- I'll pull your tail! C'mere!" Is that Tidus trying to thwap the base of a tail that tip knocking at him? Yes. Fluff and all!! "Just you wait, Jingyi!"

But there's no need to wait, the fog that's been surrounding at some distance around Jingyi here, with them, in his grab of Tidus. A way opens forward, aided by Wei Wuxian's connection to Tidus to keep open a path, and now Tidus has Jingyi to hold onto. ... mentally. Emotions flooding each way, Tidus's fluster (or more annoyance, that Jingyi grabbed him first) a strange mixture with Jingyi's conviction, his certain purpose.

Walk the path that your choice leads you to, Jingyi - carrying your bounty, if you will, along the way.

"I didn't feel like getting naked for you."

Smacked tail, at whatever section, landed Tidus with the tufted tip thwacking back, at at his arms rather than his head. A low simmer of annoyance trending toward frustration brushes up and melds with Tidus's, albeit from different causes; the awareness of what he's leaving by active choice this time, tied in with what wasn't a choice about any of this at all.

Fierce missing, but not yearning. A sense of loss and sorrow in separation, and that certainty that keeps him moving forward, hearing and feeling everything that would tug him home, would tell him to give up, and shunting it aside. Conviction carries, whatever else the muddle of strong, roiling emotion Tidus is unfortunately witness to entails.

The images and chaos are a strange mix of his recollections from Diagad, not because they should be, but because it's what this chaos reminds him of. Glimpses of his life is entangled within it, this chaotic river of rainbow shifting light and current, only speaking this time in voices he recognises. Eventually, in ones Tidus will recognise beyond those present on train: hearing his own voice, hearing Inigo's, hearing the people of the train itself, and Jingyi's response: a snort, and the incredibly strong sensation of are you fucking serious, chaos, I will fight you, and I'll win.

The connective line, Jingyi to Tidus to Wei Wuxian, acts as a guiding enough light as Jingyi nonchalantly keeps carrying his friend, in this spiritual endeavour, since that's all they're technically operating with.

Tidus isn't unwilling to bat at a tail in the most childish way, but right now he'll put a pause to this battle, wait for a better time that isn't manoeuvring a space without surfaces, without a true road. He doesn't want them to get lost or overwhelmed by more than they need to, when the void - or anchoring - opens them up to that.

There's Jingyi's emotions, his memories, and then there's remembering and sensing Wuxian waiting for them on the other side; his presence a tug and a direction for where they need to go and be.

But there's a feeling inspired by Jingyi's conviction, his resilience and bite a knowledge passed on to aid it: of the train and its silence for days, the attempts to speak to it, the anger and frustration (and the pain) of the last few days - and the complaining they have to do. A way to figure out how to make it listen.

(And underneath all that, that nothing like this will happen again - not to Jingyi. Not nearly losing them that way, screwing up and thinking the train might try and leave them behind.)

Jingyi's fur bristles, too aware this is an aspect new to him from the last time he hauled countless people across the Void, its chaos, to safety; but the difference is one where he's not sure if it might be their tethering or not, and there's nothing to be done about it. Beyond that one moment of displeased realisation, the resolve buckles down: Tidus, and the man further along this link, those are not people doing this deliberately. Not people using this to creep into his mind, or memory, or body, and make of him a puppet to their will.

A brief flash of memory, a stomach souring sickness and the soul-shattered understanding of a child that the concept of a safe world was smashed beyond recognition, and Tidus might see it, Wei Wuxian might as well: smoke and fire, a compound, a courtyard on fire, people in red robes with blades flecked with red blood and then the dragon overhead, dark and streaming the smell of burnt wood and flesh, slamming down and through a wall and building, thrashing like an animal. Gold eyes that find his, and the memory is gone then, along with any flash of anything but a sense of wrong so bone deep it lingers after, Jingyi clucking his tongue in disapproval at himself, walking forward.

'Forward,' as it were.

Barely a blink of an eye, for that, and his fur settles, if Tidus is watching given his particular viewpoint, his response to TIdus's sharing, the back and forth this kind of intermingling generates, perpetuates, a shared anger, a shared frustration. A sense of overwhelming power thrown at the train, and the hollowness that followed its utter lack of impact, the sense of one he cares for at his back, and that caring burns bright and warm and fierce and spills over, around Tidus, the concept of it. An emotion that bridges the sense of who it'd been, blue haired and frustrated as they are, Inigo and Tidus linked by the same sort of intensity of feeling.

And as sensible, in ending turn, the conviction that no, it will not happen again. To teach, to reach, to make an impact, they will not let it happen again.

Scary times, scary places, scary people, and in a way they are all those things too, even as the chaos around them sings and calls and screams in ways Jingyi might find familiar in childhood nightmares. He only walks faster, stops using his eyes and trusts just in his sense of the line of connection, because his eyes won't make sense of the lack of definition around him, but his internal sense of who he is, who Tidus is in relation, who at the end of this their anchor is, he can follow that as far as he must.

The memory, or its impact, burrows itself into Tidus's own mind as a temporary company; not his experience, but at this moment it might as well be, its reasons and its consequence, the sickness that's Jingyi's, his.

He can't bury or dig it up, fling it out; he doesn't have that skill. He can only attempt to ignore it, or to let it settle and chew on it, continue despite its presence. Sparking in turn a memory not unlike it, but also far from the same. Manipulation. That's where the two come together, meet, and the thoughts are more vague, fearful, haunting: Chaos as the entity lingers as its reason, a smoky darkness where vague colours drift in and out, and faces of friends, loved ones, the gut-wrenching recollection of blade piercing Inigo--

Tidus pushes that down, deep deep deep. Wuxian, Jingyi, those are the people he has to think about, the way to the train. A way back, a way to right what's wrong, a way to keep surviving. Missing his lack of walking, but by now also not trusting to be able to find any solid surface even if Jingyi were to put him down -- don't risk it.

But the sight of Wuxian should hopefully be coming more into the view, where he is by the train, their return to whatever the space can be called. Safety, for everything damaging and risky about the voidcraft. But it is what it is, for the time being.

It's like sparring, only the strike of images and emotions and memories spark tangents, ones that aren't defined by what Tidus is sharing (involuntary, Jingyi is only somewhat better with navigating from years of cultivation training, but Tidus is within those structures and barriers, commingled), but that spark off them: Inigo, sparring; Inigo, crying; Tidus and Inigo laughing; the sound of water falling, crashing down in darkness with countless stars spanning overhead. A sense of these all being true things, in whatever over maelstrom it's been emotionally, and an echo of Inigo's voice, something said on platform,

We're basically halfway to ending up like the people who disappeared, right? ... maybe the tether snapping will happen first if it does manage to leave. Then we'd just.. be gone.

With the flat refusal for that to be true for any of them, and that equally certain need that Tidus/Inigo/those without homes need soil to root in, that Inigo/Taiki/those with heartbreaking realities need to be fought alongside, that all of them matter, and oh.

Recognition, of Wei Wuxian, and there they are, stepping out of whatever space wasn't space so much as intention, as a concept given form for their senses, to this Voidtrecker Express, who had so rudely (feel this keenly, down the whole goddamn line) thrown them out, cast them out, exiled them, and for nothing.

Setting Tidus down is more of unslinging him from over a shoulder so that his feet can find floor, even as Jingyi is limed by golden light, disappearing, to have his own rendezvous with the luggage carriage.

(How is this different, he will ask, for being spiritually resurrected?)

(How is this different from having been at least halfway dead? Ah, but the luggage carriage, and not inside the trunks... for now. Perhaps. Perhaps.)

Isn't that a scary reminder, a thought, a memory that stirs up emotions and dismissals that come from the recollection too. Then we'd just be...gone. But no, never; it's not a truth or outcome that Tidus wants to acknowledge just yet. That there isn't a way to save anyone, that there's nothing they can do. We don't know that, and there's too many people gone before them for Tidus to give up without trying.

What is trying, what is having the capabilities to do anything - Tidus doesn't know, but his emotions and reactions need no ground to thrive.

Though, his body does. A good thing that their path between spaces allows Jingyi the time to deposit Tidus, before he disappears. A state he would be more in a fuss about, if travelling the void wasn't a constant job to think about anything but the void, pressing over you, draining you through its exposure. So even as he sees Jingyi leave, a process that he's at least used to, to not have more than the smallest flutter in his gut to see, he sits without care for how he must look - or have looked - to Wuxian currently.

"Jingyi would want us to keep going."

Someone will find him in luggage, and Jingyi's health is the last that needs to be worried over. But they're still not done, are they? And that last thought, of people disappearing, losing people - Tidus considers standing, but brings out instead a small incense pot, working to bring a small flame from magic he's not very good at, but should be plenty to get the trail inside burning. A means of recovering some, just so they can keep going, no stop - do what they have to.

While he has that nagging, a gnawing worry in his head of losing anyone. It might be guilt too, Tidus knowing too well what it's like to disappear on others - and he regrets it, wishes there was another way, wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Wei Wuxian's eyes flicking to Tidus's face, but he nods, already certain to continue, no more the kind to stop once those he cares for most are safe (and at this point, they are not anyway, but it is not regarding their care only that he goes on, it never has been). They will bring as many as they can back, will do what they must, and he smiles with a grim determination set in his dark eyes.

"I don't think either of us are inclined to stop, regardless of what anyone else wants."

Tidus has his support in this, and thus, onward they go, with Wei Wuxian accepting that sense of worry, that potential guilt, that nagging. Two people who have disappeared on those who love them, not fully voluntarily. Two people who had fallen and no longer been part of the world once so vibrant before them.

None of the Trainlings, as he thought of them, would be left to that, not if they could help it. So they help.

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No Place Like Home: The Return

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