middleofsomewhere | Crashing Down: Conclusion

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Crashing Down: Conclusion

Time ticks down, five hours turn to three hours, turns to one hour, turns to mere minutes. All the while the Voidtreckers rush to tether people to void craft. All efforts are now on reaching the furthest communities.

The effort is monumental, an evacuation that was improvised at every stage and yet was successful. The planet quietens as its citizens vanish off into the void, villages emptying, creatures gone too.

By the final half hour they can be pretty confident that on Osiga at least the only people left are those who have chosen, for whatever reason, to do so. Even now it might not be too late to save them, the right word in the right ear could change everything.

Minutes tick down, and the question becomes: Do the voidtreckers evacuate, or do they stick around to try and convince that last person? Do they save lives by force? Leave them to their chosen fate?

Whatever their choices, time is rapidly running out.

CRASHING DOWN: CONCLUSION

HOUR ZERO

As their timers count down into the last two minutes, their SCA's begin to flash amber. Danger is approaching.

Some of the remaining citizens hunker down, awaiting what comes. Others gather, weapons in hand to face this foe they have been told to flee from.

Danger is indeed approaching. In their peripheral vision they will see a darkening of the sky as strange shapes begin to fill it; too weird to be clouds, nothing that can be accurately described. For those inside, even those with Anan in a space station, they will sense this shadowing. Almost as if shapes are crowding in on reality itself. An extremely unnerving experience. The shapes fill the sky, fill the system, and their SCA's flash red.

It is time to go.

It might be they try and fight, just to see if they can. It might be that they scramble to tether the last couple of people, people who have just rapidly changed their mind about staying here. The train lets them. Anyone who doesn't evacuate themselves will be allowed to stay until the last possible second, as their countdowns click down from 00:01. Then their world glows gold as the train yanks them back, landing in the luggage carriage with barely time to draw breath as the train lurches into the void violently.

For the first time, anyone looking out the window as the train enters the kaleidoscope of the void will see other void craft. Trains, ships, planes, weird orbs. Just for a few moments these craft fill the space, and then they move, the train as well, bringing colour back to the void once more.

OOC NOTES

OOC Post ~ Questions ~ Shenanigans ~ Tasks Check-In & Rewards

This post can be used for any last minute rescues as well as their return to the train and any reactions and debriefing that characters need!

If your character wasn't wearing their SCA during the very last second, please notify us of their death over here.

Art Credit: Header

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"No it won't," he said gently. "Nothing we can do will. All we can do is try to keep it from happening again, my boy," he said, softly.

“I think about them a lot. My friends who died. Fighting Ganondorf.”

His voice dropped to a whisper.

He nodded. "I know..." he said softly.

And he did. How many good people died trying to rescue the princess? People who wouldn't let him save them, who wouldn't listen? He had been sure they'd lose Ferio too, for a while.

He understood.

"But, in the other timeline, the one I was sent back to they're okay. There should be a way for them to be okay too, it's not...."

Link sighed. "It's selfish of me. But, I want to fix it."

"That is not at all selfish, my boy. And we all want to fix it. I wish we could."

"I'm not the only hero here. That's why it's a selfish thought. I know that I'm not the only one feeling this way, and it's...weird."

He floundered for a good way to explain his feelings.

"You can all have the same feeling without it being selfish, my boy."

"No, you don't understand, it's not...I'm still so used to having it be all on me. I can't get away from that in my mind. It's..."

It was the result of having a ten year old child tasked with saving the world, put in a body strong enough to do so. And the result of that same child at age eleven tasked with the same mission in another world in a body that was not.

In Nautilus there had been others to fight by his side, but, they had never failed.

"This is a failure. And I don't know how to fix it. I need to fix it. We need to fix it. It's my fault---I mean...I know it's not, but, it feels like it is, I wasn't strong enough to fix this, it should have been fixed---"

"We were warned going in that it would be impossible to save everyone. That we were here to do the best that we can. Every single life we saved has value, my boy. That doesn't mean those we failed to save don't, or didn't," he clarified, "But it does mean that it was better that we were here than we weren't. We did the absolute best that we could. We saved so many more people than would have survived without us. That... That is what we need to focus on. That and learning from this so we can do better next time. Because there will always be a next time, always be another crisis somewhere. And if I have learned nothing else about you, my boy, I have learned that you will always fling yourself, head first, at any crisis where you think you can help."

"See? Even you think we could have done better."

Link's fingers dug into his own scalp and he winced. "If we could do better next time, that means we could have done better this time."

He caught Link's hands and held them, firmly. "No, it means we can do better based on what we learn from this time."

"That means we didn't do enough this time," he argued. "There has to be a way to fix this to reset this to make it better."

"Enough is very like perfect. It is a goal we can never reach, but one that we should always strive towards."

“You don’t understand, it’s…” Link sighed.

"Talk to me," he said, gently.

"You can't just...move on from a loss like this. Those people who lost everything, not just belongings, the ground, the sky, the plants, other people, animals---it's all gone. And we'll do better next time means absolutely nothing."

Link took a deep breath, trying to explain the absolute turmoil he felt.

"What good am I if I can't help save them from that? They're all forever scarred."

"Forever scarred, but alive. Because you were here. They still have lives, and they can build new homes, new lives. They'd never be the same as what they would have had if the World Eaters had not arrived at all, of course. But they'd have no chance to rebuild, no life at all, had we not arrived first."

"There should have been a way....for me to stop it."

Although he knew he needed to be less harsh on himself, that he needed to be glad for the little victories, Link was still reeling.

"Link... on this train, just among the people we know of... You with all of your victories and abilities. Zelda. Me. Leia. If the Train didn't think that between us we could do anything... then either it knows the threat better than we do... or we really could do nothing more than what we did. In the first case, all we can do is learn and teach the Train what skills we have to offer. In the second case, we can work to improve ourselves, to try and have things be different next time. But even using your Ocrina to change time... without more knowledge, without a solid plan... We couldn't do things any differently."

"I never have the luxury of a plan. I'm just told to do it."

He ran a hand through his bangs. "That's the thing with the ability to change time, you do it over and over until you get it right."

You might not want to ask him how many times he had to reset Termina.

"We do not have that ability here," he said softly. "But we do generally have a chance to plan. Here, at least."

"I didn't have it in Hyrule. Termina I did. The same three days."

Link trailed off and sighed.

He tightened his hug, wishing he could fix this. And not just for his sake.

"I just don't know what I'm here for if I can't fix things..."

Edited 2022-04-29 12:14 (UTC)

"For all the people that we saved. For all the people we will save."

Crashing Down: Conclusion

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