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

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".. you got me a tea party?"

Alice sounds confused as she echoes the words back at the other girl. At first because it's strange in the light of the conversation they had only right before embarking on the mission - but then Alice realises the other must have arranged that much earlier, just like the girl is saying. Before the girl even vanishes off the face of the train for a while.

She pauses, mostly because her brain is trying to process all of it, and then adds: "Why?"

Was she.. worried about her?

Alice honestly isn't sure, especially with the way the girl had stormed off before when Alice showed signs of the thing the girl must have been worried about in the first place. It's hard to tell what's going on inside of the girl's head.

"Because Tidus did be saying it might be cheering you up."

She shrugged, glaring up at her. "But I do no even be knowing if it will be working so I do no be..."

Urgh. This is stupid. She hugged her knees.

"You do no even be needing to be eating it. Cake can no even be fixing feelings as broken as yours."

So what was even the point. Alice probably hated her anyways, she had said she was like those stupid people from her home.

She sure is witnessing this girl going through an entire slew of emotions right in front of her ~~salad~~ face right now, isn't she. Alice frowns she tries to process all of it. As she tries to consider what she's seeing and hearing here, no matter how difficult it is in her current state.

".. no. I want to have a tea party with you."

It's the first thing she says when she speaks up again. The words come out slowly, but she means it. Alice's voice sounds surprisingly calm. In fact, it's almost faintly gentle at its edges.

"I appreciate you doing that for me, after all." Because she had been worried. Why else would she have spoken about it with that one guy they had worked together with during a mission? She must have been confused about what to do for Alice, especially since she's mentioning those 'broken feelings' now. ".. And.. I am sorry."

This.. is said more awkwardly.

But Alice knows it has to be said anyway, no matter how awkward she feels addressing it so directly.

"I must have confused you. You must not have encountered someone like me before."

She wanted to? Even though she thought she was just as bad as the imbeciles who had put her in the hospital jail?

She will wanted to have a tea party with her? The apology got more of a nose wrinkle. She doesn't understand Alice at all and that is stupid because she likes Alice. She thinks Alice is cool and she doesn't like that she can't figure her out right now.

"I have no been meeting anyone like you before." She was still hugging her legs. "And... I do be being sorry too. I did no be meaning... to be treating you like you do be being helpless. You do no be being helpless."

Just broken. Which was a problem she still had no idea how to fix.

"..."

It's the apology that surprises her a little. Sure, Alice did just apologize as well, and some people might only call it natural for the other party to also apologize in a situation like this, but Alice is just unused to it enough to be surprised by it happening so easily all the same.

It's why her eyes widen slightly before she looks away, seeming to have to gather her thoughts for a moment before she can speak again.

"Thank you. I knew you were just trying to help me." Alice may assume bad intentions from a lot of people, but not from the girl in front of her here. "But sometimes things happen that.. make me feel like I am back at my worst moments again."

She folds her hands together, speaking carefully. Trying to explain mental health to a kid that has no concept of it is a lot, after all, and even more so when there's not enough experience with it in Alice's world either to put into proper words easily.

"You know how sometimes people's bodies can get broken. You can break a limb, or have something worse happen. Something that doesn't just go away by itself." Alice makes sure to not say it too slowly. This is something the girl understands, surely, so there's no need to really explain that part. "But sometimes, when really bad things happen to people.. their minds can also break. In ways that don't just go away."

Edited 2022-05-04 21:32 (UTC)

Alice didn't seem mad at her anymore. She wasn't throwing things or snapping at her. So she relaxed ever so little, listening as Alice spoke. At least she knew. She knew she was trying to help. But somehow she had made it worse.

Which was stupid. How was she supposed to know? She nodded, she had guessed that. Alice's mind was broken. Her feelings were broken and it was just like when a bone broke. Something that needed help to fix.

"But there do no be being splints for minds. So do there no be being any way to be fixing it?"

After all, broken bones could mend. But could broken minds?

She seems to think for a moment, but then shakes her head. No, there was no way to cure this sort of thing, Alice thinks. If there was, then surely one of the cruel treatments they subjected her to in the asylum must have worked. But none of them did. They only caused her more agony in the process.

"I am fairly sure at this point that it will always just be there." Always a part of her. A part of her that she never asked for, and that often just seems to complicate matters for her. Such a joy. "There are times when it is not quite as bad though, and other times when it gets a lot worse. When we got the information about the state of our bodies back home, and the realisation that it means I no longer have a body outside of this train.. That was the thing that made it a lot worse again."

Hence why she's been acting so off for a month or two by now. Just that one realisation gave her so much rage and despair that it tipped her straight into falling back into the worst caverns of her own mind.

So less like a broken bone and more like a missing limb. Something you could adapt to, work around but something that never went away, unfix-able and sometimes more a problem than other times.

"That did be making your brain be breaking more?" She asked with a wrinkle of her nose. "Yes you did be getting worse from then."

She hasn't been like she was before since they learned that. It's very stupid. "Do you want to be leaving this train so much?"

Her head dips into a nod. Fairly quickly, too, like Alice didn't have to consider it for too long.

"Of course." Why wouldn't she want to go home? Sure, she wouldn't go back to London. She'd just go back and escape off into her own Wonderland forever, now no one was able to stop her from doing so any longer.

"Who would want to stay on this train forever..?"

She shrugged with a scowl. "I do no be knowing. Some people might be being."

Perhaps. Would she? She has no idea but she doesn't particularly want to go home either. It's confusing.

"You did just be seeming like you did no even be liking it back in London."

"I am not going back to London."

Her tone sounds somewhat insistent as she voices those words. It's somehow as if Alice is convinced that those words will become reality as long as she says them often enough. As long as she believes hard enough in it.

"The moment I returned home, I was planning on going back to my Wonderland, and leaving London behind, this time forever." She wouldn't allow anyone to drag her back out of her own reality again. Alice has already decided that the real world is very much not worth it. "But even that much would be impossible without even having a body."

She tilted her head. "What do be being your Wonderland?"

Alice was from London, was Wonderland another country? Was it better than London?

But she would need a body, that would be a problem...

It's a good question. What is her Wonderland? Whenever she tried to describe it to other people when she was younger, nobody had believed her about it. Not even her parents, nor her sister. Everyone had thought she was just making something up.

"It is a world that is connected to the world I was born in."

That feels like the most simply way to explain it, especially in terms of their experience with this train and its world travelling.

"One day when I was very young, I climbed into a rabbit hole and found myself there instead of in my own world. It is so much better than London in every single way possible."

A world connected to her own? Down a rabbit hole. That's weird. But honestly. They live on a train travelling between worlds. What is weird anyways?

"Do it be having a lot of rabbits then? If you can be getting to it through a rabbit hole?"

Better than London was good. But from what she knows of London that didn't take much.

"I've only met one," she replies.

Something about Alice seems to relax a little. Not fully, but.. she does seem a little bit less on edge while talking about this. Despite the hard times she's had in that place, the memories she has of Wonderland are generally good ones, as opposed to the many bad ones she has of London.

And maybe they feel even more fond now she hasn't been there for so long.

"And a hare. But I suppose I can't quite count him, since it's not exactly the same. I think you would get very frustrated by the people there though, since they love to make very little sense."

Only one? And a hare? That was basically a rabbit right? She's a city kid, animals are animals and hares don't really live in deserts.

"Probably. But I did be coming to the conclusion that people do be being stupid in every world. I did no never be seeing one where people did no be being frustrating."

And she's been to a lot of worlds now.

Oh, Alice won't deny that the girl is very much right on that one. No matter Alice's mood or no matter how much she's seen of all the worlds out there by now, she's pretty sure that idiocy is just an universal thing. It exists all across the board, and in way too huge quantities.

But she still thinks that there's a very special brand of it in Wonderland. Though that's the one she's grown used to, so.. it's not as bothersome to her anymore as it might be to someone totally new to it.

Alice's thoughts start to drift a little though, thinking further about idiocy, about people they've met, about..

...

"What do you think about the Ministry?"

About the people some of the people here on the train insist could help them, even though Alice isn't so sure about that.

"The ministry?" She wrinkled her nose. "I do no be being sure. They do be being stupid too and if they do be wanting people on their side they should no be using those inspectors."

Who could influence their feelings and make them do things they didn't truly want to do. "But they do no seem to actually want to be doing us harm."

And they had been useful, especially in evacuating Osiga. It would have gone a lot worse if they hadn't believed them.

"It is the latter I am worried about," she says.

Because the girl is right. It does seem like the Ministry has tried to help them so far, in its.. own unique way, that didn't always seem quite right. Alice sure didn't like the fake mission they sent them on! Being locked up in rooms for hours on end isn't exactly an ideal way Alice would like to spend a mission when she is claustrophobic to begin with.

But Alice has enough experience with people or even organisations that pretend to be benevolent, only to turn out the exact opposite.

"Some people seem to suggest that they are the only ones who could help us in our situations, but I am not even sure we can trust them."

"No. We can no be trusting anyone."

It's always the way. Trust was a tricky thing and there wasn't much trust in their relationship with the ministry. "But we can no really be trusting the train either and when you do be begging you can no be being picky."

She sighed. "We do no be knowing enough to be doing this alone. So we do be needing to be working with them. But we do be being needing to be being careful."

That's the exact problem, isn't it? They're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And said rock also happens to be perfectly capable of destroying their bodies and their worlds in its ignorance. Which is. You know. Also great.

"That is the irksome part of all of this. How am I supposed to ask the Ministry about whether or not something could be done about the train having gotten my body killed if we can't trust them either? We are the victims, yet there is no one on our side."

.. Alice sighs, and then adds with a tone that has experienced so much already: "Just like always in life, I suppose."

After all, she has only ever seen victims being kicked down into the dirt further, rather than actually being helped. Maybe this entire situation is fitting in that light.

"Yes. We can no be trusting nobody." No one reached out and helped people like them. Not when they had so little to give in return.

Just like in life, so it was in this weird place too. She sighed. "That do be being why we will be needing to be fixing it outselves."

But did they know how to do that? It was very difficult.

"If only fixing it ourselves was so easy."

Because it's not. They both know it. They were thrown into a situation they knew nothing about, and given basically no tools at all to work with. Sure, circumstances on the train used to be even worse, and they also used to have less information to work with, but..

Even after all this time, it still doesn't feel like enough.

"I do not know about any way to resurrect a body. I would not even know where to start. Or if such a thing is possible at all." Especially when it's her own body. Can you resurrect your own body by yourself?

"I do no be knowing either... But someone might be knowing. There do be being many magic users here on this train and they do be doing some very weird things."

And so one of them might know. It was hard though. She sighed. "Even if they did be making you a robot body or something."

Because that was a thing. A weird thing.

Alice knows that beggars can't be choosers.. and yet she still can't help but frown when the girl says that. Especially considering the sort of human-robot experimentation she had seen back home..

"I am not too sure how to feel about that."

But probably not good. Probably not good is the direction she is leaning in right now.

"I would prefer to remain as myself, if at all possible." So maybe there can just be some magical resurrection? Maybe someone can turn back time?

Who knows. But Alice refuses to give in to the unfairness of forever having to deal with dumb consequences because of something the train did to her, rather than her doing anything to herself. At least in the latter case she could blame herself.

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knifewithnoname - 2022-05-31 03:41 (UTC) - Expand

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Crashing Down: Conclusion

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cw: mental health talk

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