middleofsomewhere | Event: 12 of Beetroot

Event: 12 of Beetroot

It's been a couple of weeks since they had evacuated Osiga. In that time, many of voidtreckers were busy with a project to try and solve some of the many mysteries that surround the train they travel on. By the eight day of Rabbit they've exhausted all avenues, and whilst they have learned quite a bit, there are still some clear gaps.

Just as that investigation comes to a natural end, passengers are woken up by an announcement.

"Attention voidtreckers and passengers of the voidtrecker express. We are travelling to system #2554098133741. I have sent word to the ministry who have arranged recuperation packs for you. You have had a difficult mission and you deserve a rest.

But it is not just for rest. Last time we visited the system voidtreckers shared memories. Though it is understood that many of you did not enjoy the experience it is notable that certain voidtreckers saw memories of this voidcraft. They were memories that this craft had not accessed. It led to more pathways opening up in the operation of this craft.

I have done some research on the system and I believe we can trigger the caves of memory. This voidcraft understands this might be difficult for the voidtreckers and passengers of the voidtrecker express and it is hoped that only those of you who consent to this experiment will take part.

Regardless this should be a time for relaxation also and the dressing room is open for your convenience. We will arrive in the morning.

The dressing carriage is indeed opened for those who go and look. It's filled with swimming costumes, beach ware, summery clothes and sun hats. There's even a cupboard of buckets, spades, rock pooling gear and picnic blankets.

There are also team coloured tents for those who want to go and sleep under the stars for a night or two, though the train is remaining on the island for those for who camping is their idea of hell.

12 OF BEETROOT

RABBIT 9-12 ~ MEMORY CAVES: BONDING ~ MEMORY MAZE: SEARCH FOR THE TRAIN'S MEMORIES
ASK QUESTIONS ~ LOCATION INFORMATION ~ MEMORY CAVES ~ MEMORY MASTER POST

JEMA'GRETHY ISLAND: RELAXATION

The next day the train announces their arrival and they burst out of the void. For those near a window their first view of the island will be of crystal blue sea and white sand. It really does look like a paradise. The train circles down before landing on a grassy ridge, overlooking a beautiful beach of white sand and the ocean beyond. It is warm, but not too hot, a cool ocean breeze cutting through the heat making it pleasant. Behind them is a grassy plain, changing to forest in the distance. There is the sound of birdsong in the purple sky. To the west the land is more craggy, the silhouette of a fortress in the distance.

In a word, it is idyllic. A sense of peace permeates the island.

The place has no people, but it is clearly maintained. The eastern beaches have racks of shallow boats, both canoes and one- or two-person sailing dinghies. There is also a small building in which scuba gear is stored, along with several waterproofed manuals and instructional literature.

There are no living quarters, but there are sheltered sections with basic toilet facilities marked as camping grounds in five different sections of the island - by the hot springs, within the ruined fortress, beside the harbour, on the eastern beaches, and on the northern face of the mountain.

The recuperation packs are found at the closest toilet facilities to where the train lands. They are simple things, small gift baskets with a couple of fragrant soaps, fancier hair products and skin cream infused with herbs to encourage rest and sleep.

There are some sweet fruit biscuits and a cheesy bread. The packs aren't named but there are some suitable for the younger passengers with tiny plush and colouring books. Quite a few designed for teens with a more engaging activity book and components for making a fancy mocktail with a cute stirrer. Adult packs have a small bottle of alcohol- there's a mixture between the packs and what looks like a stone. When placed next to the skin it will either warm up or cool down depending on what is needed.

Exploring, the passengers will find beautiful beaches, ragged cliffs to walk and caves to explore. Where it is more craggy the beaches are made of pebbles, perfect for rock pooling.

A little more worrying is the volcano-like structure in the north. But even a quick glance will show it is not a typical volcano. There is no smoke and the liquid slowly running down it in rivulets is pink and blue.

Ruins of ancient houses are scattered across the island, but the main settlement is built into a rocky section in the north-west that has been secured with ropes and stairways cut into the cliffs, perfect for scrambles and hikes.

To the west are the hot springs. They have both outdoor and indoor areas; the indoor areas being wooden loghouse saunas, changing rooms and storage sheds, whilst the outdoor areas are a tiered series of pools spilling down the side of the mountain and shaded by brightly flowering trees. The waters are hot, mineral-rich and soothing.

MEMORY CAVES: BONDING

Shortly before arriving they will receive some information on their SCA. It will explain how those who once lived on this island went about making life bonds. Both people would bathe in the hot springs and then dress simply, barefoot and walk to one of seven rocks on the island. Their maps will pin point these, which is good because there's no real indication of what makes these rocks different to any other on the island.

Here they must offer their wish to know the other deeper and share food and drink. They can then go about their day. Sometime in the hours after they will receive their first memory, seen through their partners eyes.

However it seems that in envoking the ritual they have woken something on the island. Even those who did not take part or chose to bond to someone find themselves seeing a glimpse of another life.

On the second day they see another memory, through the eyes of their pair. When they come out of it they find themselves in a cave with their partner, chosen or not. The same happens on the third day, except for this final memory both pairs see both memories, watching from the sidelines as it plays out. They find themselves in the cave once more and this time, for many there is only one exit, to leave through together.

Please go here to play out the bonding process!

MEMORY MAZE: TRAIN'S MEMORIES

On the third day the train sends another message to their SCA.

"Activating the caves that share memories has been successful. I know this is a lot to ask of the voidtreckers, but any who wish to assist in discovering what it is that I have forgotten, the path is open now.

Those who wish to may go to the sacred rocks. Please be warned, I do not know how voidtreckers will fare. Please only go of your own free will."

Their SCA's once again show the rocks on their maps and when they get there, this time they are faintly glowing. It doesn't take much. One touch and their minds are drawn away from their bodies, into a labyrinth of caves. For anyone who comes across these people on the island, they look like they are in a deep trance, breathing, safe but far away in their mind.

The labyrinth is made of cool, dark rock. The walls have a glow coming from crystals in-bedded in them, allowing everyone to see as they move through.

At first there's no more to this labyrinth, or so it seems. But then they turn a corner, and they are no longer in cavern as it just was. They may be in their childhood bedroom, or in the middle of a battle they once fought. Perhaps they are not in their own memory, but someone else's. Scenes move rapidly and often merge, one persons into another, mixing to make strange scenes.

These visions don't attempt to ensnare them like some illusions, and those with protection from illusions and such techniques, will be able to find their way forward through the cave, and away from this triggered scenario.

Time barely has meaning. Indeed, when they finally emerge from the caves only a few minutes will have passed. But in that time they will have seen much, and eventually they may stumble across a fragment of memory that belongs not to a voidtrecker, but to the Voidtrecker Express itself.

OOC NOTES

OOC Post ~ Questions
~ You can either write memories in your tags or if they are longer/require a lot of content warnings you might want to write them in this post and link to them. Just start a top level with your character name to keep things organised!

~ For those taking part in the memory share bonding the cave post is here. Characters arrive in the cave after the second and third memory but it is obviously up to you if you play out the conversations after each or both! For those who do decide that their characters will bond- the cave after the third memory will only have one exit for them to leave together.

~ For those who signed up for train memories you will receive the snippet that your character sees- use these in tags as you will. There will be a conclusion post on the 24th which will put all of those memories together!

Art Credits: Header: Tropical Jewel by Steven Power, Thumbnail image 3.

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Snow is falling all around them. They are in a yard, thick snow falling through the sky. The yard isn't empty. There is a child, a Japanese child in short pajamas and bare feet, standing shivering in the snow. His breath came out in white clouds as he shivered, looking in the direction of the house.

A house where there were voices coming from inside. Two women, one sounding elderly. "What a stubborn child." She had a thick accent when she spoke. "He could at least cry a little. Even a little bit would let people know that he feels bad."

"Mother, you don't have to be so harsh." The younger woman sounded unsure.

"It's because you dote on him so much that he's become so stubborn."

"But..."

"Today's young parents only know how to please their children. It's better if the children receive some strict discipline."

"But mother, what if he gets a cold..."

"He won't get a cold from a little bit of snow. —You listen to me."

"He's been there an hour..."

Seto freezes...but not from the cold around him. This scene is too familiar. Taiki grew up...like him? Really?

Discipline like that...no. It's something else. The echoes of memory shiver in the air, growing louder...and soon there's another small boy in a sweater-vest and formal school clothes. The snow from Taiki's memory remains, and the wind picks up.

"I'll answer the questions perfectly this time! I've learned from my mistakes, let me see him!" the smaller Seto pleads to a stony-faced man in red. The adult scoffs, taking a puff from a cigar.

"I decide when you're sufficiently punished!" he snarled, blowing the smoke directly in the boy's face. Seto coughed and sputtered. "An hour ought to jog your memory. And if you're too cold---just say one more word, and I'll keep you warm."

He thrust the end of the cigar toward Seto's hand, a clear promise of a threat---but didn't yet burn him. He waited for a flinch, chucked...and stomped off. "Your test is in an hour. Don't move until then."

How was he supposed to study like this? He wasn't. Seto could only improve out of desperation---the hatred already burned in his eyes, hotter than any cigar.

---

And the older Seto stumbled forward blindly, waving away smoke. "...Taiki?"

"Seto..." He had recognised him in the memory, little Kaiba didn't look so much different. His heart ached. It was one thing to see the scene from his own life but to see that Kaiba had gone through such things. He moved closer to him, to reach out for his hand.

After all he knows how his own story ends and he knows why... That had never been his proper place and so he could only ever make that family sad.

He cleared the smoke away from his face as he moved towards Seto. He looked sadly at the small boy, the hate in his eyes, a distinct difference to the other little boy who had appeared once more, looking sad, shifting his feet.

Then he turned, looking surprised, as if he had felt something. Behind him was a store house against a wall and in the thin crack of space between them there was an arm. A porcelin white arm. The boy tilted his head and the arm beckoned. The boy looked confused, frightened but he shifted his feet, clearly in pain from the cold and then walked over. The hand grabbed his and he was pulled, into whiteness.

Taiki looked at Kaiba. "It was warm, the air by that storehouse. You had no such escape..."

Seto allows Taiki to come closer. He's not quite the caged animal he was then anymore, he has a rational mind...mostly. And Taiki is someone who can understand him. Can see him. It's such a strange feeling.

"I don't always remember what's real anymore," he admits. "I was an entirely different person. But you...did you ever get to safety?"

"So was I..." Quite literally as the boy they are seeing doesn't really look like Taiki at all. Rather the shell he wore in Hourai, the shell of a Taika.

He nodded. "Yes." The memory is still continuing, the boy walked through a bright white light and then the sky appeared, a blue sky, a bright sun. It's not night time anymore, not snowing but from the look on the boys face, no real time has passed. The boy looks different now, now he looks like a smaller version of Taiki. His hair gone from brown to the steel black and is longer, coming down past his chin. He seems smaller in general, his features changed. He is stood on a hillside next to a large white tree. It is not tall but it is broad, with branches hanging down around it. The surroundings are beautiful, mountains in the distance, beautiful flowers, a large green rock.

A group of women stood nearby dressed very traditionally, hair pinned elaborately. But stranger than all of that was the person with the porcelain white hand that he was still holding onto.

"Taiki." She cooed, reaching out to cup his face in her hands. "Taiki." Her eyes filled with tears.

Taiki stepped closer to her, eyes filled with worry. ""Did something happen that hurt you?"

She shook her head. The other women were talking now. "Taiki? So is he Taiki?"

"This is very rare." One of the women had approached him.

"Who are you?" Taiki asked politely.

The woman kneeled in front of him to be closer to his eye level. "I am Gyokuyou. I have probably not seen hair like yours for hundreds of years."

The woman raised her hand and ran her fingers through his hair. "You are a kokki, a black kirin! This really is very rare."

"Is that weird?" Taiki asked, looking around at the half-woman, half-beast beside him holding his hand who shook her head silently.

"Of course it's not weird. This is a very good thing!" said the woman standing in front of him. "Since you were born in another world, you were probably already given a name. However, here we will call you Taiki."

"Taiki? Why is that?"

"Because this is the rule."

"What is this place? I was just standing in the yard." He sounded confused, but not panicked or frightened.

"This is Mt. Hou. This is where you stay."

"I...don't think I understand."

"You will understand in the days to come."

The memory faded and Taiki, the grown Taiki, looked at Kaiba. "I was gone for a year before... I ended up back where I had started, not remembering that year I was spirited away. Things got worse after that but... I never belonged with that family, or on that world so it wasn't surprising they didn't know how to handle me. I really was very difficult."

But Kaiba... "You didn't have... Did you manage to leave him?"

His father?

"You made it out. But that wasn't an excuse to treat you that way."

Seto watched quietly. How confusing that must have been...for memories to be missing like that. To not quite belong. How he managed to pull himself together and be their reliable ally...well, he managed to endure. That was what everyone had to do in the end.

The question hit, then, and smoke began to fill the space once more. "I wouldn't exactly use those words..."

---

When the memory version of Kaiba reappeared, dressed in a white school uniform, he was taller, his face sharper, and his eyes nearly black. Much closer in appearance to the Kaiba that Taiki knew, shadowed by a smaller boy with messy black hair. The child's face was just as frozen with anger.

A number of older men filed into the boardroom behind him. At last, the confrontation with the 'father' behind the desk. Kaiba cleared his throat and spoke the words he'd been waiting so long to say, heavily dropping a suitcase on the desk between them.

"You tasked me with doubling this money in a year. I've done far more. I've acquired a majority stake in the board. From today, Kaiba Corporation is mine."

"Impossible!" the man sputtered.

"Not for me," Kaiba sneered, clearly enjoying this. "You didn't think your board would protect you, did you? Trust no one---who taught me that? Oh, I remember. You."

The former CEO took in the faces of the traitors. He shook with rage---and when that got him nowhere, he stood, a bizarre sense of calm etched into his face.

"Then it's time I teach you one final lesson, traitor. You're only as good as the power you wield. To lose it is to die. Hahaha!"

And as Gozaburo Kaiba was escorted from his former office, he cackled maniacally. The memory of Kaiba strode forward and took the CEO's chair with a cold expression.

"And now that uselessness is gone. Let's talk business."

---

As for the current Seto...he watched with a clenched fist.

"...The next day, I received notice that he'd died in a heart attack. Then he turned up a year later, having faked it to plot his revenge. Coward."

Deep breath. "I didn't realize it at the time, but I'd become him. It took some undoing."

Was it not? Perhaps. Perhaps Kaiba would be right if Taiki hadn't been so cursed, if he had not brought so much suffering to those around him. But it's always hard to speak of such things and on top of that, the memory has shifted again.

Back to Kaiba, the green of Mount Hou becoming an office. Kaiba. Older. Harder. Relishing in humiliating his father, cackling maniacally.

Nothing like the Kaiba now in front of him. He turned to him as he spoke.

"You became what you had to. To survive. It's good that you could heal, unlearn that."

"...it wasn't easy," Kaiba admitted, soft. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm still that person."

It's so easy to remember that mindset. So easy to slip back into it. He closed his eyes to catch his breath.

"If I'm any better, it's because I've met better influences."

He looked at Taiki and nodded...still unsure, but. No. He's sure.

"I think... As long as you know you don't wish to be, you won't be." Because he knew who he wanted to be, knew what he wanted to not be.

"Who is the younger boy?"

Seto's heart drops. He steps a little closer and pulls his card-shaped locket out from under his coat. Cracks it open---inside is a picture of the same boy, much happier.

(And a much more recent picture of Seto and Yugi wearing onesies at a train party sits across from it).

"That's my brother, Mokuba. I've looked after him since our parents died. Everything I did was for him...but I took it too far. I gave him material comfort, but that wasn't what he needed from me. Turns out emotional availability's important."

He leans in to see the picture, pictures. Both were sweet and he smiled softly. His brother. Mokuba.

He nodded sadly. He can understand that, a lot. Both Kaiba's wish to provide and a childs wish for more than material comfort.

"Your parents died? Who was that man?" If not his father.

"Gozaburo Kaiba. Head of Kaiba Corporation. It was an arms dealing company under his control, and it was incredibly profitable. He came to our orphanage after we'd been there a while, and...I made a bet and trapped him into adopting us."

He stops to take a little breath. "I didn't see another choice. Where I'm from, orphaned children are considered broken. Damaged goods. Very few are willing to adopt, and no one will adopt two children at once. I knew he could afford to, if I could get some leverage---but I didn't fully understand the choice I was making."

He rolls his shoulders back then, forcing himself to relax. "When I get back...I want to do something more for other orphans like us. I already give them free admission to my park, but I can give scholarships. Support. Put pressure on the public to open their minds."

An arms dealer, a weapon maker. Adopting two children who had no other choice. A big brother protecting the younger. Not fully understanding the choice, of being under the control of a powerful and oppressive man.

His arm moved, to go around Kaiba further, almost a half hug, timid, ready to pull away if Kaiba didn't like it.

"That's a noble goal. It's good that you want to help more people." He smiled sadly. "It is hard to change peoples hearts, but I don't believe it is impossible."

Kaiba presses closer, allowing the comfort. It's...nice to let his guard down and trust someone again, it's been a while. And Taiki is gentle and kind...and someone he wants to let further into his life. He raises a hesitant arm to return the gesture.

"It's worth trying to improve things. In a way, that's what we were brought here to do. We're making a difference, however small."

He smiles sadly as that hug is returned, knowing it isn't easy for Kaiba. It makes the hug sweeter, precious.

"Yes. We make a difference here." As terrible as it was that they were dragged from their own worlds to do so.

"You're a good person, Kaiba. I'm glad I met you."

Because some people needed to hear it. It was important.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Event: 12 of Beetroot

gonna just blend both?

That works yeah (cw: child abuse)

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