No Place Like Home: The Return

[voidtreckermods]

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NO PLACE LIKE HOME: THE RETURN

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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

[longforgottenpromise]

He didn't resist the notebook and pen being taken. He had no ideas to write anyways, it was empty, painfully so.

He kept his eyes on Lan Jingyi, stubbornness giving way little by little. Taiki could be stubborn when he needed to be, his will was such that he had stared down a Toutetsu for a whole day.

But he never found it easy when it was himself he was fighting for and so his eyes dropped, staring at his hands.

[jingyeets]

Once Taiki's eyes dropped, Jingyi reached out, presenting his open palms for Taiki.

"Come on," he said, voice softened in volume, though not much else. "Let it drain. If you don't want anyone else to know, they don't have to."

[longforgottenpromise]

It's not so much that he doesn't want anyone to know. He has cried before. Often. This feels beyond this, he truly believes if he starts to cry he won't stop, he will drown in tears and perhaps drown Jingyi with him.

But Jingyi is insistent and Jingyi is his friend. He trusts him. He reached out, taking his hands and then fell fowards onto his chest, taking deep breaths.

"I don't want to believe it, even though I saw it with my own eyes." He whispers.

[jingyeets]

A soft grunt, more to note the impact than any weight behind it. Taiki is weirdly light, but fully physically present regardless of the contrast. Not that Jingyi rocks back even a little on his heels. His tail twitches, and he sighs, only letting go of Taiki's hands because with him resting against his chest, it's easier to shift into a loose, but present, hug.

He can offer the circle of his arms, if nothing else, and the willingness to listen, and so: he nods, hums acknowledgement.

"Horrible shit's hard to accept."

And he, a master of words.

[longforgottenpromise]

The arms around him are welcome and he breathes softly into Jingyi's chest feeling, if not safe, at least encircled, protected by his arms.

It was hard to accept. Hard to fathom that his king was dead, his friends were dead, people he didn't even know but who were allies of Lord Gyousou were dead. Because of him.

"I can't..." He shook his head. "I have to keep going." Because he had been left with no other choice. "But..."

There was too much.

[jingyeets]

"I'm not saying stop moving. I'm saying, let yourself grieve. Allow yourself to cry. It won't help right now, but it will, as we keep going."

Awkward in phrasing, he felt, but as true as what he was trying to say, while he slowly patted at Taiki's back, having recalled doing so before for Sizhui, having recalled such being done for him when he was younger, when his losses had been immediate and consuming. It was a vague memory, nothing so terribly concrete as recalling what Taiki must now, what Jingyi had seen in that courtyard, but one doesn't forget realising the horror of war has utterly destroyed all safety and illusion of such. When there is no longer a mother or a father or any familiarity in people who are yours, your bastions of safety, and you are as the rest around you, reliant on each other and the elders who guide the whole of your people in everything they do.

And you hide, hide and stay quiet, until your hidden leader says, the war is over, the war is won. Until he says, we will now rebuild. Until he says, come home, and all the small ones toddle closer on tired, blistered feet, and brick by brick, courtyard by courtyard, sapling by saplings, Gusu Lan becomes safe again.

[longforgottenpromise]

He nodded, his face still hidden. He isn't fighting any more. He's too tired to fight Lan Jingyi on this, even his stubbornness can only last so long when faced with the unyielding practicality of Lan Jingyi.

"He called me Kouri." He said quietly, a half mumble into his chest. "Derived from my earth name, it's the word for the mountains of the dead. He said it was so ominous it would bring good luck."

But it hadn't. Indeed he had brought about calamity and grief.

[jingyeets]

"The dead bear honouring. Luck is you surviving and remembering, I think. For all who've been harmed by what people like Asen do."

He could do this part at least, being the metaphorical rock as long as needed.

"What do you think?"

[longforgottenpromise]

"You are probably right." He's been right about most things so far, Taiki is tired, not up to arguing even if he had thought Jingyi was wrong.

"It doesn't feel lucky though." Surviving. More something he had to endure, to help his kingdom.