First the silence, then his turn due to holding silent and listening. Yi and Er are telling him things that make sense, and things that don't, and all of them are ones they're making clear, if not unkindly, that they're out of his hands. Which this whole thing has been, in the sense of where he's physically placed and why he's not back home but instead on a Void traveling train or on a station in space dressed up as a test for them. It's still frustrating, but patently unfair things are part of life, so he doesn't lament that aspect.
But he is right, he thinks to himself. They dismissed everything before as rumours. Tales. Lies spun at firesides, if anyone who traveled the Void had much use still for firesides.
The Voidtrecker Express is different, and he doesn't know why, specifically. He's heard it was in legends, he's read those accounts of memories in the library, he's seen the recordings. Those three things didn't add up to the same thing, but he wonders, dourly, if having a proper report and investigation will be more than a footnote in the story being written even now. He has to hope it will. Yi and Er at least appear to be listening, and that's more than they might have done otherwise.
"I don't believe the Voidtrecker Express will willingly harm us beyond its whole abduction nonsense. No way it's otherwise acted has shown that. I've been abducted before, and you technically did it again right now. You feel the difference when someone doesn't care about you living or dying."
Usually one was also literally bound up and knew in his personal experience, but that was neither here nor there.
"If your seniors on this committee end up wanting there to be signed contracts, whatever, paperwork is paperwork. Ask us if we want to stay on or leave. Even if that's not a fair choice for everyone."
Too many conflicting truths for the people he knows, and he doesn't even know everyone. Over a hundred people, how could he?
"Though... okay, none of us came from our systems to board the train. With the way the Void works, can the train visit our systems right after we're taken away? Since we never, I don't know, we never had a time we were already there on the train." It's the avoidance of the conflict the original crew seemed to have, in his limited understanding. He holds up his hands, forming a rough sphere between the span of his fingers and his palms. "And the ones of us who aren't living still back home, can we secure their life away from the Voidtrecker Express?"
Silence to stretch for a moment. It's an awkward balance for him, as part of a clan who largely engages in laying spirits to rest, in ensuring the dead move on into reincarnation when they can, and that they simply cease causing harm if not. Tidus isn't that way; nothing about him is malevolent. Xue Yang is something else, but he can't be unbiased there, not learning what he has, and not knowing what he's already known. As for others, people dead in their worlds but alive here, isn't it the same conundrum? Should he wish for their rest? Should he wish for their second, unexpected lives to be supported until those wind down too, not on whim of a train or a tethering, but some other aspect of the larger universes?
His hands fall away from each other again, and he sighs. Even his tail dips down, brow furrowing.
"Look, treat the Voidtrecker Express as an ally and not an enemy, I think it'll work with you. If everyone I cared about was taken away from me all at once, I would do everything I could to find a way to get them back. Especially if the people around me tell me they never existed, that I shouldn't exist, and they're baffled that I do, and they want me to do what they say instead of listening to what I'm saying. If they offered to work with me, I'd consider it. You've got more resources than one train alone."
He doesn't like it, feels twisted about it in his stomach, but there are reasons he complains to the train near daily, broken up by missions alone. Jingyi doesn't skip out on telling people, trains or otherwise, exactly how he's feeling. As poor Yi and Er have been learning this whole interview.
"Which is why pretending I don't understand what can drive the train to be this kind of jackass would be lying. Pretending I'm happy about it would also be a lie. And I don't think I was on the train for whatever a Void storm thing is, by the way, that was before I got here? For whatever that's worth." Divorced from how he feels, there's a whole host of other concerns, which brings him back to the offer the two investigators had made.
"If Yi-qianbei and Er-qianbei can arrange for scanning the willing for our home system names or whatever, please. You have my gratitude." He cups his fingers around each other, offering them both a bow. "I want to know they're okay. If they're not..."
He pauses, shakes his head as he straightens.
"They'll be okay. Then we'll know what they're called. At least in terms of your numbers."
His brow furrows, and he holds up a hand, dark eyes fixing on the masks of the investigators once again. Something about numbers, and associations, and ways things can be read or marked.
"Wait, that system number or whatever it is. When a voidcraft is built, is there any signature of what system built it? Like an artist signing their work. Are they built in the systems they come from?"
no subject
But he is right, he thinks to himself. They dismissed everything before as rumours. Tales. Lies spun at firesides, if anyone who traveled the Void had much use still for firesides.
The Voidtrecker Express is different, and he doesn't know why, specifically. He's heard it was in legends, he's read those accounts of memories in the library, he's seen the recordings. Those three things didn't add up to the same thing, but he wonders, dourly, if having a proper report and investigation will be more than a footnote in the story being written even now. He has to hope it will. Yi and Er at least appear to be listening, and that's more than they might have done otherwise.
"I don't believe the Voidtrecker Express will willingly harm us beyond its whole abduction nonsense. No way it's otherwise acted has shown that. I've been abducted before, and you technically did it again right now. You feel the difference when someone doesn't care about you living or dying."
Usually one was also literally bound up and knew in his personal experience, but that was neither here nor there.
"If your seniors on this committee end up wanting there to be signed contracts, whatever, paperwork is paperwork. Ask us if we want to stay on or leave. Even if that's not a fair choice for everyone."
Too many conflicting truths for the people he knows, and he doesn't even know everyone. Over a hundred people, how could he?
"Though... okay, none of us came from our systems to board the train. With the way the Void works, can the train visit our systems right after we're taken away? Since we never, I don't know, we never had a time we were already there on the train." It's the avoidance of the conflict the original crew seemed to have, in his limited understanding. He holds up his hands, forming a rough sphere between the span of his fingers and his palms. "And the ones of us who aren't living still back home, can we secure their life away from the Voidtrecker Express?"
Silence to stretch for a moment. It's an awkward balance for him, as part of a clan who largely engages in laying spirits to rest, in ensuring the dead move on into reincarnation when they can, and that they simply cease causing harm if not. Tidus isn't that way; nothing about him is malevolent. Xue Yang is something else, but he can't be unbiased there, not learning what he has, and not knowing what he's already known. As for others, people dead in their worlds but alive here, isn't it the same conundrum? Should he wish for their rest? Should he wish for their second, unexpected lives to be supported until those wind down too, not on whim of a train or a tethering, but some other aspect of the larger universes?
His hands fall away from each other again, and he sighs. Even his tail dips down, brow furrowing.
"Look, treat the Voidtrecker Express as an ally and not an enemy, I think it'll work with you. If everyone I cared about was taken away from me all at once, I would do everything I could to find a way to get them back. Especially if the people around me tell me they never existed, that I shouldn't exist, and they're baffled that I do, and they want me to do what they say instead of listening to what I'm saying. If they offered to work with me, I'd consider it. You've got more resources than one train alone."
He doesn't like it, feels twisted about it in his stomach, but there are reasons he complains to the train near daily, broken up by missions alone. Jingyi doesn't skip out on telling people, trains or otherwise, exactly how he's feeling. As poor Yi and Er have been learning this whole interview.
"Which is why pretending I don't understand what can drive the train to be this kind of jackass would be lying. Pretending I'm happy about it would also be a lie. And I don't think I was on the train for whatever a Void storm thing is, by the way, that was before I got here? For whatever that's worth." Divorced from how he feels, there's a whole host of other concerns, which brings him back to the offer the two investigators had made.
"If Yi-qianbei and Er-qianbei can arrange for scanning the willing for our home system names or whatever, please. You have my gratitude." He cups his fingers around each other, offering them both a bow. "I want to know they're okay. If they're not..."
He pauses, shakes his head as he straightens.
"They'll be okay. Then we'll know what they're called. At least in terms of your numbers."
His brow furrows, and he holds up a hand, dark eyes fixing on the masks of the investigators once again. Something about numbers, and associations, and ways things can be read or marked.
"Wait, that system number or whatever it is. When a voidcraft is built, is there any signature of what system built it? Like an artist signing their work. Are they built in the systems they come from?"