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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Devero lets his eyes close, as they so often do when Koumyou starts playing with his hair. But Koumyou's insistence makes him swallow uncertainly, and open them up again. He looks up at the priest sitting over him.

"Yeah," he says finally, softly, folding his hands across his belly. "I'm not... happy, about all of it. But I'm relieved."

That's hard for him to admit out loud, though, and he has to look away again.

Koumyou nods, and after another few strokes of fingers through hair, draws his hand back to fold with his other in his lap.

"You're not too horrified at what you've gotten engaged to, I hope?"

It's one thing to know Koumyou kills. It might be another to know he'd killed on Devero's own world, and someone he'd known.

"What?"

No, really, what? Devero's gaze snaps back to Koumyou, clearly baffled. It's his turn to shift, pushing himself upright so he can sit facing Koumyou in their narrow bed.

"Of course not," he says. "Why would that have changed?"

"Well, it's one thing to know I will kill another human without batting an eye," Koumyou explains, "and perhaps another to know I did it on your world. To someone you knew. On the other side of one locked door."

It's Koumyou's turn to glance away, then.

"I don't think you hate me or anything, but... I can't help but wonder if that's changed us at all."

Devero is so gentle, and sweet, and in so many ways -- compared to a Sanzo -- innocent, despite his military background.

"It only happened because I... I let it," Devero says heavily. "You wouldn't have had the opportunity to-- do anything to her if I hadn't brought you to my world, if I hadn't gone... fucking traipsing around town with you, if I had managed to actually get her to listen to me...!"

Devero's been doing a lot of thinking about what happened, probably unsurprisingly. And what he's concluded is that Valdana's murder at Koumyou's hands?

Was entirely his fault.

He lifts both hands to scrub his face harshly, then rake his messy hair back. "You've been clear with me for a very long time what would happen if you ever met her. The only thing that's changed is-- is now we know I'm the kind of person who'd-- who'd permit it."

"How is it your fault that she chased you down?" Koumyou asks gently, "That she wouldn't listen, when she did? I tried to talk her into leaving, too. I gave her every chance, even after I started to show her what I am."

So that this conversation wouldn't have needed to happen.

"She made her choices, and none of them were your doing. Not a single one. What do you think would have happened if you'd been stuck there, without me? Do you honestly think she would have listened to you, when she wouldn't even listen with own death hanging over her head?"

Koumyou gazes at him steadily.

"If you had a gun with you and you were attacked with lethal intent, and you shot the attacker, would it be your fault for having the gun?"

Edited 2022-05-27 01:40 (UTC)

"Not if I made every effort otherwise to defuse the situation," Devero says, returning the look just as steadily. "Not if I was without recourse."

But in this situation, was he?

He shakes his head and looks away again. "I don't know what I would have done if-- I had been stuck, without you," he says. "Tried to avoid her entirely. To run." Like he'd promised Koumyou.

A sigh. "We could have gotten out to Beepers without taking Babysitter. That-- that's where we went wrong-- where I went wrong."

"Oh, yes," Koumyou sighs, "we definitely should have gone into the woods on foot, with a tracker in your neck that she was clearly monitoring closely enough to still follow after my shielding. Away from all the cameras. Do you suppose she has anyone who can handle a sniper rifle? Take me out, and the prize is all hers."

Devero doesn't think like a predator. Koumyou does.

"Does 'every effort' include staying hidden in a house somewhere, where there is less chance of being attacked? Aren't you supposed to be able to walk around freely, as part of your society?"

"We could have taken a bike!" Devero snaps, and obviously, immediately regrets it. He winces and scrubs his face again, his hand traveling all the way over his head and to the back of his neck. He covers the spot where his emID transponder is implanted and grimaces.

"Us being there because of train bullshit isn't the same thing as me being back there..." He gestures, frustrated. "For real. We're talking about two seperate things at the same time."

"It isn't different at all, the train might have left you there. Either initially, or later on as the tether weakened. It might have stranded us both on our respective worlds, me to fade away and you to do the same but only spiritually."

Koumyou actually gets out of their bed, clambering past Devero to do it. He's not leaving, though, he just needs to pace the narrow strip of floor that runs alongside it. Like an angry tiger prowling a cage.

"So we're back to, does 'every effort' mean hiding away lest you be attacked? Perhaps every effort should mean wearing plain, concealing robes and shaving your head, while we're at it. Changing your face, lest you attract attention?"

He pauses, and fixes Devero with a flat look. "Should I have never returned to my world, just in case Ukoku showed up? Or is it his fault for being a horrible, possessive, stalker piece of shit who wouldn't take no for an answer?"

"No, it means--" he starts, heated, but Koumyou keeps talking and Devero listens. When Koumyou brings Ukoku's name into it, he winces and drops his gaze.

"That's different," he says. "Ukoku has-- had-- had a sutra. All Valdana has is Techstead!"

He has to stop and take a deep breath, inhaling deeply through the tightness that wants to build in his throat. "I wasn't strong enough to leave, before, but that was the first damn thing I did when I did think I might be stuck there. I left!"

"Leaving," Koumyou tells him, quieter, "running, is something I made you promise to do to buy time."

"She had resources, people, 'friends'. Unless you dug your tracker out of the back of your neck and went to live with the outsiders, it would have been an ongoing chase. She," Koumyou states with emphasis, "would have never accepted 'no'. She was incapable. No one but her was a person, to her."

Devero lifts his eyes, his brow furrowing. "...What do you mean?" he asks, quieting himself.

"I tried," Koumyou tells him with a sigh, finally sitting back down on the edge of their bed. "I tried to reason with her, to explain what she had done, why it was wrong. Why she was wrong."

He looks over at Devero, quieter now.

"She wasn't just ego, Devero, I was partially wrong on that. She wasn't willfully evil, she was incapable of empathy. Incapable of seeing anyone else as a person. Anyone. Incapable of love, no matter what you might have done, you would have never gotten that from her."

He has to look away, rage boiling under his skin again but not at Devero, no. Never at Devero.

"If she'd been caught before they gave her power, helped, she might have been okay."

Devero shifts a little as Koumyou returns to the bed, drawing up his legs to make room. He digests what his Sanzo says in pregnant silence, his expression drawn. When he finally does speak, it's only to say in a small voice, "She should have been caught. There are systems in place."

Systems that had failed, obviously. He still doesn't exactly want to think about it.

"But she wasn't," Koumyou says it for him. He lunges back to his feet, and back to his prowling. "And neither have any of her powerful 'friends'. The system your society rests upon..."

Realization blooms inside him like ink dropped into water.

"...I love you, but I hate your world."

He whirls on one heel to look at Devero.

"I hate it. The smug confidence that their system is perfect, that no one will slip through, the blindness to the fact that when enough people slip through, they take root and destroy the entire thing--"

He takes a deep breath.

"How many of her friends are involved in the systems in place? How far has the cancer spread, just in that one spot, while everyone is taught to believe that the utopia is real, and perfect? And it failed you, many times. It failed! But I bet your instinct is still to defend it, right? And it even failed that woman, she should have gotten help, not authority. But no one guards against what's inside their perimeter! They watch the outside and tell each other how perfect everything is behind them!"

He has to turn away again, and slam the bottom of a fist against the sturdiest part of the wall, hissing out, "People! Are never perfect! But your world -- they think they are! Like they've evolved past it all! Everything bad was Before, or comes from outside!"

His instinct is still to defend, mouth open to do just that and then just left hanging open, stunned by Koumyou's vehemence. The thud of fist against wall makes him jump and he finally clacks his mouth back closed.

He shifts uneasily on the bed, uncomfortable. How can he not be? His smug confidence about his world derives directly from his culture's smug confidence in its beneficent superiority, and has led him to make quite the ass oh himself on more than one occasion since boarding the train.

Drawing his knees up, Devero half-hides behind them and lets out just one humorless chuckle. "They're blind," he says. "Like I was, when I got here."

The lack of argument against even the assertion that the system had failed Devero multiple times, calms Koumyou down a little. He visibly collects himself, then returns to sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching to take up one of Devero's hands.

His are gentle, despite what's simmering inside him.

"You didn't argue," Koumyou says, "but I want you to know what I mean anyway. It failed you in some small way when you were pushed at the Guard. Then you embraced that role; the protector, someone who saves others... and then the system failed you in a huge way when you were so harshly penalized for protecting and saving others. It immediately failed you yet again when you were just... left to yourself after, left to steep in what had happened, left to rot."

He gives Devero's fingers a squeeze. "They left you staked in the sun, so of course you leaned into the first sign of shade. The first sip of water. A new hierarchy to fall into."

And it had failed when Valdana had gained power, when each of her vile friends had too, one failure after another, each easier than the last.

It had failed to watch those it had empowered. The systems had been hollowed out right in front of closed eyes, peaceful in the knowledge that all was well.

And so, it had also failed to rescue Devero from the very situation it had fed him to.

"You learned to see," Koumyou draws his hand to his lips to press a kiss to it. "I need you to know I don't blame you for what your people did to you. Not even a little."

He draws in a long breath, lets it out in a sigh, carefully calming himself down.

"I don't even blame the individuals, not really. This isn't just some small temple with locked gates and few dozen monks inside that tell each other they're safe from the outside dangers because they pray so much. It's a whole world like that. Maybe it started off better, but they were fools to assume it would stay that way on its own. Did they think only the honorable survived the plague, and that being honorable would pass along genetically through the generations? That humanity had been purified of greed, just because they stopped using money?"

Edited 2022-05-28 09:13 (UTC)

Devero stares at their linked hands as Koumyou speaks, his head bowed and his expression partially concealed behind his fringe. Only when the priest lifts one of his hands to kiss it does Devero look up, but his dark eyes flick away again quickly.

"Education," he says, and is surprised when it comes out in a hoarse croak. He shakes his head and swallows before trying again. "It's not honor, it's education. And availability of resources. How can someone be greedy when they've never wanted for anything in their life? When they know how destructive greed-- and all the other vices-- can be?"

There's a tight, slightly angry smile from Koumyou for a second, but he kisses the back of Devero's hand again. He's angry at the system Dev is from, the society that thinks the evils of humanity are a matter of education--

He is not mad at Devero himself, and is trying to make that clear.

"You can't teach people not to be people. Money and resources are a convenient vehicle for greed, but they aren't greed itself. Otherwise, every rich politician and emperor would lose all inclination for it once they became what they are. Many people want power, they want influence, the adoration and envy of their fellows."

A handsome pet that everyone else wants but you hold the leash to, even.

"My world is a corrupt hell full of slavery, and rape, and murder. Abuses of all sorts, perpetuated by humans, by youkai, by Gods..."

But.

"But I have to say... at least my world is honest about it. It makes it a lot easier to resist, I think. To push back. To fight."

Devero's world is fucked up in whole different ways from Koumyou's. But to the priest's mind? It's not really any better a place. It just has prettier lies.

Devero's fingers on Koumyou's tighten. "It's not like that!" he protests. "You don't understand!"

He withdraws his hands and now it's his turn to surge up off the bed, to pace the few narrow steps afforded him in their closet of a room. As his emotions swell, the space starts to feel chokingly enclosed, but he keeps his head ducked and his shoulders hunched and tries to force down the knot in his throat.

"What happened to me is-- is a point of infection, not a cancer," he says. "A weakness that needs to be treated, sure, but-- but Koumyou, you haven't been there, not really. You haven't been able to see the good that Gov does. I have! I was part of it for-- for years!

"People are people, I get that," he continues, raking his hands through his hair. "And yes, as a society we've gotten smug and complacent. You're right about that. Valdana should have been detected and helped before she could h-hurt anyone, but it's not-- fair-- it's not fair to paint all of Gov with this cynical brush just because of a few people exploiting the system!"

He hasn't been able to look Koumyou in the eye as he's said all this but he does now, and there's anguish on his face. He's always been such a good son of the World Government, after all.

Koumyou watches Devero pace, and nods slightly to himself. It's true, he only saw Techstead. "You could be right. I hope that you're right."

He really does.

"But I still doubt Techstead is the only sight of infection, even as low in population as your world is. Didn't she start Techstead? So, she started somewhere else. Her friends did, too."

It's not like people on Dev's world are locked in little isolated cells of culture like they sometimes are on Koumyou's world. Which in itself never ends well.

"And long before your system failed to rescue you from what was being done to you by Valdana, it failed you in every other way I listed, didn't it? I'm not saying your Gov has no merit, is completely wrong, and should be torn down to the studs."

Somehow, someone will need to wake them all up.

"But it's on its way there. Someone will need to do something, before the infection spreads too deep. Perhaps some reasonable outsiders? Surely, those must exist. It can't all be about hating technology?"

He genuinely doesn't know. With such a small world population, maybe that's all there is to the divide? Complacent Gov versus raging, violent luddites?

Edited 2022-05-30 02:26 (UTC)

The look that Devero gives Koumyou when he suggests bringing outsiders in to fix the problems with the World Government is venomous. It passes quickly, Devero turning his broad back to try and get control of his words before he speaks impulsively and says something he shouldn't.

"Whatever happened to me has already happened," he says finally. "It's in the past. If Gov-- failed me--" And it did, it did, he knows incontrovertibly now that it did. He groans and covers his face with his hands, then tries again.

"There's nothing we can do about it from here," he says finally. "And even if we were to end up back on my world tomorrow, there's not much I'd be able to do anyway." He turns again, expression withdrawn. "I'm not like you, Koumyou, I'm nobody back home. Just a cog in the machine. I don't know how much I could even do to-- to change things."

He spreads his hands helplessly, then turns to sit heavily back on the bunk beside the priest. "And as long as I'm here, they're on their own anyway."

Koumyou takes that look in stride. It seems the more agitated Devero's gotten on the topic, the easier it's been for Koumyou to calm down.

He leans gently to the side to bump shoulders with the big man once he's seated again.

"It took an outsider to show you."

A real outsider.

"At any rate, don't sell yourself so short, Dev-chan. You're not only from that world, anymore."

Devero resists the bump, but after a moment loops his arm around Koumyou's narrow shoulders and pulls the priest against his side. "No, I guess I'm not, am I?" he muses.

He looks down at Koumyou and finds a smile for his Sanzo. "Doesn't get more outside than from another universe, does it?"

No Place Like Home: The Return

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