voidmissions | [M15] ENEMY: UNKNOWN

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[M15] ENEMY: UNKNOWN - THE INTERVIEW

On opening their eyes, Voidtreckers will feel a sense of disorientation, a dizziness to their vision and inside their head. Both clear quickly, letting them remember where they came from: in the midst of a mission, some unknown entity jumping them, and then —

They're here. Wherever here is.
They stand in an empty room. The lighting of the room stings their eyes after how dark the rest of the station has been. The walls, ceiling and floor are all bright white, tiles. There is no visible door, no windows.

After the disorientation comes fear. The hairs on the back of their neck stand up. For those with danger sense, these senses are going haywire, even though any other abilities are still not working. The feeling can be pushed down, it is similar to the air of expectation at the start of a horror film, the anticipation of fear rather than being in a truly dangerous situation. It might be that they have been on the train long enough to have felt it before.

Heavy footsteps sound, it is almost impossible to tell where they are coming from as the echo through the empty space. The feeling of dread grows until part of the far wall slides open with a mechanical hiss.

Filling the doorway are two huge figures, around seven foot tall and bulky. They are in large metal suits, almost like power armour, black with highlights of gold. They wear a mask that covers their whole face. It is impossible to see the figure inside at all. Their breathing comes through heavy and raspy and when they walk their footsteps are heavy. The door closes behind them and their presence makes the room feel smaller. One of them scans a green light over the voidtrecker.

"Do not be alarmed. Under sections ninety six of Inter-dimensional law and on behalf of the Void Ministry we have intercepted Voidcraft designation Voidtrecker Express as part of ongoing investigations. You have been taking part in a simulated excercise to gauge your skill and strength. No harm shall come to you or your crew, you are protected by inter dimensional law. You have been chosen for questioning and we ask that you comply. You have the right to refuse our interview but we have the right to hold you until our investigation is complete or one week in standard void time has passed, whichever is longest. Complying with us will ensure our investigation is more efficient."

The inspector talking pauses here, as if giving the voidtrecker time to take in that information.

"Do you accept our interview?"

ENEMY: UNKNOWN

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Wow, won't you look at that. For once Inigo doesn't have to be the one running around to hug people - no, instead he is getting hugged here. Without even having to ask for it. It's free real estate.

It doesn't even fully register with him yet, really. He only realises that Jingyi really is here with him until the other is already hugging him, meaning that Inigo is totally frozen up for a moment - all the way until he realises this really is happening, and he quickly wraps his own arms around the other in turn.

There's so much to ask here, but for a moment Inigo seems content with just an embrace, just clinging to the other for a moment.

"Are you alright, Jingyi?" It's probably half-muffled by the way Inigo is most likely talking into the other's robes while he's clinging to him, but ssh, it's fine, it's cool.

Inigo can probably hear paper crinkling when he hugs Jingyi in return, somewhere in the exact vicinity of Jingyi's chest. (Fifty pages worth of paperwork tucked in there, but it's fine, that's not a present concern. Robes are great for holding things even when unexpected.)

"I'm annoyed, concerned, frustrated, unhappy, and relieved you're okay and not dead or possessed, I don't know. You and all the rest who've been going missing." There was definitely a thing in the back of his mind worried on that account for not great reason, but it is there, like other unfounded fears that can crop up out of nowhere.

In other words, he was right enough, being that he can complain and his tail's down to minimal lashing, more a worried and low sort of curling from side to side at the tip of his tail, left, then right, then left again.

"How are you?" A pause. "How are you really."

Inigo isn't too sure if that answer is telling him much in this moment - especially since Inigo feels like Jingyi is all of those things pretty much all of the time, if not to a certain degree.

But he can realise that it's most likely amped up a whole lot more right now than it usually is, especially since the other only just got out of questioning like all the rest of them here. So he only squeezes his friend even a little tighter, as if to prove the fact that yes, Inigo really is here, and not just some sort of weird ghostly form.

"I'm okay," he mumbles, though it's hard to tell if that the answer he'd give to the initial question, or to the really part. It's always hard to tell with Inigo when he defaults to that answer in any given situation, regardless of his usual mood. "Just.. really sorry that I couldn't tell any of you where I had gone. I really wanted to."

Is this Inigo's fault? Not really, since he didn't have a choice in any of this, but if there's anything this guy is a champion at, it's turning everything into his personal responsibility.

"I watched you all this time." Because he was feeling so bad about how worried they seemed about him.

Some people are simply made out of many emotions, at all times, while none of them manage to be particularly guilt-feeling.

Jingyi's response to the squeeze is to interpret it as Inigo needing more contact, but rather than squeeze back (for once, it was probably safe for him to do without his self-taught limits), one arm squeezed, the other patted Inigo's upper back. There, there.

"Usually I'd say that's creepy and very spiritual of you," he says, lips twitching into a smile that he sighs after forming. "It's rude, you know? That you could see us, but none of us could talk across whatever warding they've put up. Taiki's worried out of his mind, and now I've disappeared on him too... we knew it wasn't violence, we couldn't find any blood."

Scant comfort, but for people who had their own reasons to suspect foul play, it was one kind of reassurance that wherever people were disappearing to, it wasn't done with carelessness to their persons.

"None of that's your fault. Take it from someone used to abductions," he says, voice turning dry rather than wry, "Before we ever ended up on a train."

"I know," he mumbles. Not necessarily about the details Jingyi tries to slightly pacify him with over here, even if they both know that it can't quite be enough. No, instead he knows that Taiki was worried sick about him. He only had to watch the other run all over the place to know that the kirin must have been looking for him - their friendship strong enough that Inigo doesn't have to feel like he's making himself more important than he really is with that assumption.

".. and I also figured that last part." Not really, this time, but maybe Inigo is trying to joke too to try and lighten the air a little. Though it's a weak attempt, both in tone and spirit. "Everyone wants to kidnap a handsome guy."

He exhales, as if trying to release some tension, and then releases his hold on Jingyi. If not just so they can sit down somewhere, rather than him keeping the other guy on his feet after that experience.

"What did they ask you..?"

"Ah, so that's the standing theory for why you were abducted too, huh?"

If it's meant to be a joke, he can run with it, since no criteria appears to exist. Or to explain everyone in this room as he glances around, after Inigo releases his hold and Jingyi does the same in turn, with a final pat to his upper back.

"I'm guessing whatever they asked you to start, at least." There really isn't much of anything to recommend itself in the room, so after a moment, he gestures toward the line of joined chairs with some available seats, glancing at the screens and then away again. It'll make him mad in a way he can't help, so he'll ignore it for now. "Name, age, system number. Then other stuff, all related to the train, or to Diagad, or... how much they didn't know, at all."

He continues to frown, unhappy and not radiating anything closer to settled after all of what he'd been talking about, because whoever Yi and Er are in the scheme of things, they're not the ones making decisions... beyond sharing what they learned in interviews with the ones making decisions.

Inigo does move over to sit down on the seats, half-turned towards Jingyi as he listens to the other speak, and as he considers his own memories and the ways they do or don't line up with Jingyi's own experience.

It makes him nod in the end. "That sounds about right." Compared to what they had asked him, compared to what they had asked Tidus. It seems like they just needed a variety of people to ask the same questions to, huh.

But the frown on Jingyi's face makes Inigo think of a little more.

".. I'm sure you told them all the downsides of our present situation too." Because Inigo can't imagine Jingyi of all people would pass up an opportunity to complain about something, let alone about the train. "I did that too, but it's.. hard to determine how much they care. They didn't really show any emotion, even though I really tried to express that it was an important matter to us."

"Masks." He lifts his shoulders in a shrug that jerks more than flows smoothly, his tail lashing along the floor, and then he stares down after it like he's offended at the fact his tail's on the floor.

"Not just the obvious ones, but voices masked, the room masked, their meaning masked. Which whatever, we don't know them, we know next to nothing about the Ministry. And I did tell them, I told them because I know you and Tidus and all these people who should be dead but aren't, and people who should be home and aren't, and how any of us should have been asked and weren't. Just like I can understand why they're doing this, or why the shitty train is doing what it does, and none of them are right about it."

He looks to Inigo, his tail going still and distress at least visible on his face. Jingyi doesn't try masking how he feels when there's no need to do so, and so what, if they're obviously still watched in here? The inspectors or anyone else here with them already know how he feels about this.

"I defended the train. Not for doing anything right, and not for being right, but because what the inspectors wanted to me sounded like justification for making a big, messy problem into a simple one, and it's not. Do you have any idea how much that grated? Telling these people who don't have answers for anything we're suffering through except that it's messed up, and now they're slightly more aware of it, they'll pass word along, whatever, if they don't see what the train is running after is real, they're not stopping anything. Because it'll fight them harder, it'll hold onto us harder, and they've got the resources to make sure we're fighting them every step of the way because they can't even say they know how to get us home. They barely know we're real. Plus we're illegal in like, every way, I bet, and someone's going to take personal offense to that, or use us against others, and not just the train, and I hate politics and bureaucracy so much, Inigo."

The complaining is unsurprising.

But there's more of it than usually, and then there's that visible emotion on his face. It makes Inigo's expression soften more and more, until the concern is so present and overwhelming that Inigo can't really do anything but lean forward, just so he can wrap his arms around Jingyi again.

Is a hug going to make this alright? Of course not. But it can't make things worse, and that's the logic Inigo is going by.

".. I'm sorry," he says, his voice so soft that it's a near whisper. Like it's meant for just the two of them. "I'm sure you worked really hard to get your point across. And to think on what to say."

Well, maybe not think, because when the Jingyi complain train leaves the station, it goes hard. But he did mention actually defending the train, which means Jingyi must have weighed a whole lot of different options in his head back there.

"But.. I'm not sure if it'll make you feel better, but I think I might actually have a bit of good news too. Some potentially good news, anyway."

He's gotten it all out in one long, near breathless complaint. He shouldn't be surprised, he thinks, when Inigo's there, hugging him even with them sitting in seats with arms dividing each from the next. He doesn't even fight it, or really return it, somewhat leaning in and letting Inigo do what he's far better at doing than Jingyi is at present. (Or in general, if he reflected on it; he was better at sleeping draped over people than this.)

It's nice, though. Grounding in a way he knows better than to expect in a whole two and a half months, or whatever he's at now, since he can't be bothered to wonder about it. His tail thumps against the ground, steadily now, timing itself to Inigo's heartbeat rather than his own, until it's his heartbeat too.

"Mm. What did you learn?"

"I had the system number of.. of someone who left on the platform."

There's a sudden weird hesitation mid-sentence, though Inigo does manage to continue after a moment. But even with that slightly awkward moment, he isn't letting go of Jingyi, still leaning against the other in the embrace.

Like Inigo is determined to hug Jingyi until he feels a little better. Even if that might mean he has to cling to the other forever.

"So I gave it to them. They said they would look into whether that person did show back up in their own world. Of course it's not a guarantee that they'll actually do it, but.. well, I trust them more than the train to actually look into it." If not just for the fact that the train hasn't seemed to look into it at all over the past year. "At least we could rest easier if we knew they just went home, rather than still being somewhere out there."

(Or. Well. Inigo could rest easier, for one.)

He almost asks, did they recognise the number, but offhand, he doesn't think anyone can. He could ask, did they look it up right then? Did they verify it was real to their database, or was it only real to the train?

There are things he could ask, but he's not cruel, really, and he's aware that it's his mental space making him aim down instead of toward better possibilities. So he lets himself be deadweight leaning into Inigo and says none of the viable, questioning, potentially hurtful things he could say. Doesn't even name his guess for who this is, since he doesn't have the guy's name anyway, or can't remember if he does. Just knows Inigo had watched his fiancee walk off, without looking back, and can guess if there were a series of people to ask after, that'd have to rate high on any list.

He could be wrong, though. He's used to that too.

"Did they work out how they were going to let you know?" A longer pause, and his own admission. "I asked if they could find a way for any of us to scan ourselves for our system numbers. They said they'd try, after we were all together again."

It feels like a tentative idea to offer, but it at least is... more positive than anything else that'd come to mind. Also possibly him repeating himself, but, it's more important to focus on the bright possibility of workable information than the severe lack of it they're all operating under.

Hey, that still was a good idea on Jingyi's part too - or so Inigo thinks, anyway. Those inspectors did seem to ask after their system numbers, after all, and maybe learning about those could help all of the people stuck on the train a little more too. At least then they'd have some information, and all information is welcome while they're practically swimming in this sea of ignorance.

So he nods a little as he considers the idea, but then speaks up again, not wanting to leave the other in the dark as to the other matter.

"I think they might have. I.. don't know if Tidus told you, but he's got a radio that can receive signals across the void." Inigo imagines Tidus must have told Jingyi - or it must have slipped his mind, since Inigo doesn't think the other has used it for much recently. (Or the concept of a radio was perhaps a little too hard to explain.

After all, Inigo still doesn't grasp it, other than that it somehow can play messages other people are sending. Who knows how.)

"I told those guys to ask him about it. It seems like our best shot, if they train ignores all of their messages."

Because it means they'd have to find their own way to catch those messages. And this was the only way he could possibly think of.

Jingyi made a noise meant to indicate he didn't know, unbothered by the fact. Radio was barely a concept he could say he had familiarity for, and that faint niggling is from Diagad, not anything back home. Jin Butterflies might work in a time-delayed way, one direction, that might feel similar enough he'd make some better connection, but the chance of him recalling those voice-carrying butterflies right now was abysmally low.

"Can they get a message through the train's arrays?"

A moment of hesitation, then a sigh. "Or whatever it is the train does when the train's been refusing to talk to them. Not like the ICPs have lit up with Investigators going, 'Hi, we're here to talk to you about Void Travel and how Legally You Are or Are Not Engaging with it.'"

So a void radio? Sounds like a better bet, as long as there wasn't an array that was preventing it from receiving whatever message was directed its way.

"Honestly, you'd have to ask him about the details of it.."

After all, it's not like Inigo is 100% sure of when and how Tidus might have used it. All he knows is what the other has told him - which means that all he can tell Jingyi is just secondhand regurgitated information.

But then again, maybe that helps in this situation. Because Inigo doesn't want to say too much right now either. Not when he isn't sure if they're still being listened to, and when he still isn't sure how he feels about bringing up Anan to the people here.

"I'm not sure if he's gotten messages while on the train, but he's for sure been able to receive them while being out on missions. So it feels to me like the only thing that can get around the train."

.. unless the train starts refusing to drop them off anywhere for a mission after this entire incident. Which is something Inigo rather would not think too hard about right now.

"Someone did after Diagad, right?" Avoiding Anan's name, because he doesn't feel he needs to say it, and the people listening don't need easier answers when they're keeping them in boxes and stacking the odds to figure out if strangers trapped in stressful situations would work together or, he had no idea, turn into depraved weirdos building microsocieties of extreme violence and suppression.

(Maybe not that. It seemed like a stretch all around.)

"Not to the radio, but the um. The train does listen, just not to these fools."

He flicked his fingers toward the wall that had been the door into their present room, not bothering to look toward it.

"Couldn't he ask to try and send something out their way? It'd leave it open, as long as these guys don't think only in rigid lines."

Inigo hums, seeming to think about it.

"Maybe, but.. we don't know how the train is going to act after this."

Unless it doesn't find out what happened here. Which is an option, since Inigo has no idea how the train tells what happened on a mission, and how it knows they were succesful.. maybe since the distress signal stops? Or maybe it does notice more about what they actually did?

"If it knows the real reason we were here.. Who's to say that it isn't going to get even more cagey? Maybe that's me being a little too cynical, but.." It's just so hard to trust the train when Inigo has been on it for as long as he has, without many real improvements. Without answers, despite him making it clear how much he was hurting for them. "I feel like the train won't just pass on any signal to us anymore."

"At some point, it either starts trusting us, or it starts expecting that every off-the-track world we're forced to stop at we're leaving every beacon we can, because it refuses to trust us." He sounds grim, his tail back to thumping with agitated regularity against the floor. "And we will. If I have to tell every world exactly who and what we are and what the hell's going on to us. If I wasn't fond of life and afraid of its control over our spirits, I'd stay behind until it killed me every time, but..."

He shuddered, full body. "No."

He doesn't care that they don't stay dead. For one, he has no death wish, and for another, the train's tether is already inexplicable. He doesn't want to hand his spirit right over to it and have to wonder if it'll stay intact, if he'll ever be able to reincarnate when he dies for a final time.

Right as Jingyi shudders, Inigo gets a very similar feeling in the pit of his stomach. Some sort of dread, or disgust, or worry, or a combination of all of them that threatens to make his stomach turn right here and now and the thought of a friend dying.

Even if it's just temporary death.

It's why, even though they already have a lot of physical contact going on, he still moves to try and grab a hold of Jingyi's hand anyway, squeezing it as if to confirm the other is still really here.

"Yes. Let's not do that." There's almost something pleading in Inigo's voice, despite Jingyi having rejected the idea himself. "Even if it somehow revives us, that still-- we don't know if it doesn't change people."

Inigo never asked anyone who died and came back, after all.

"And being in debt to the train just sounds like an awful idea in general."

Jingyi's fingers twitch, and he ends up returning the grip after a beat, tailtip shivering on the floor before he curls his tail over his feet, catlike.

"It changes people. Maybe not the train choosing to, or anything like that, but it changes people." Death. Dying. He isn't crass enough to say, ask Tidus, ask any of the people only alive here, ask Xue Yang, who he would never point a friend toward, not someone as unhinged as he is on a fundamental level, so broken.

Ask everyone in debt they didn't ask for, ask them. They're all alive now by sufferance of the train, and he swallows that thought down too, because in this one thing, he doesn't believe there is malice. The train is foreign and difficult to read and cruel in its silences, but he does not think it is malicious in the treatment of their lives. They're fed, watered, quartered; the train is a measured, accommodating overseer, if overseer it must be claimed. There's no true choice if the other answer is to never respond to the situations they're brought to face. If they could steel themselves to inaction, that's no choice worth making, anymore than be yanked around, week to week, month to month, by a force they can't extricate themselves from.

"No choosing to die for this." The train, he means, to prove a point, separate in his mind from what Tidus dares, from what Tidus wants, control over a fate the train has taken over for him. How a-Qing had been alive here, how Xue Yang persists in his plaguing of existence, the complications of each person here who had died but did not remain that way.

Choosing to die for other reasons, for other things, yes. But not for this. Not to test limits. Not when death is sacred, permanent, heavy, to both of them, for different and similar reasons. Not when Inigo had been watching his world die at the claws of something immensely powerful.

It's the same thing Inigo figures, even though he has absolutely no personal experience to back it up. Not even any perspective from someone else, considering he never did dare to ask Tidus too deeply about his condition, about his feelings about it - not wanting to cause anything awkward.

All Inigo has is his knowledge of how awful death is to those left behind, to those constantly surrounded by it. But even so - he can imagine death changes people. Inigo has been on death's door way too many times to count at this point, but it's the fact that he's always been pulled back into life rather than fully pushed into death that's kept him from changing that way as well, he thinks.

".. I'm glad you're a smart guy," he says, softly.

Smart about this, at least. About not wasting a life on a test.

"I mean.. I'd get so scared if I saw anything happen to you." It's a truth. Despite Inigo's babyfit he threw shortly before disappearing days ago, it's nothing he'd actually hold against the other now, all the experiences from the past few days totally having taken Inigo's mind off it.

Besides - Jingyi's his friend. That's just a fact.

"Even if I knew you'd come back." Because it'd still be awful. It would still be something no one should have to go through.

Jingyi had already dismissed the fit of pouting, halfway as it happened (frustrating as that might also be), because his sense of scale has always been larger, for all his complaints. It was why he could say, pay attention to why this is happening when the inspectors asked after the train, asked after his thoughts on it. Not because he wanted the train addressed before any of them. Not because he felt the train was more valid in the cruelty of its actions to any one of them, or to the inspectors, or whatever the Ministry might do.

Just that the mechanism that left the train running, that swallowed its system and, after, its crew, is larger than they are. He has to acknowledge that, even when it leaves him sick at heart.

"It's the same for me. I don't want my friends hurt, though that's going to happen, and I definitely don't want any of you dying, especially not again." Which was a different sort of complicated for him, but that's on him, as long as none of said friends are trying to possess him or others. "Fighting whatever I need to so you're okay, so my friends are okay, I won't hesitate. But I won't be trying to get killed either, right? Neither will you."

None of them, he thinks, none of them are that bend of seeking death. He's known people can be, knows the stories, warning signs, but that's not true here, not even when Tidus is flirting with nonexistence, so desperately creating his own boundaries and pushing past them for control over his own fate.

"Of course not," Inigo is quick to confirm.

Even if the reality might be a little more nuanced than that - but Jingyi's statement is still true. Inigo doesn't seek death. He isn't sure what to do with his life once his purpose has run out back home, sure, but that's different. It doesn't mean he wants to die, if he can help it.

Maybe if he had a good reason, if his death could save lives.. then sure, it's better for him to die than someone else, someone with an actual future of their own.

But dying meaninglessly, senselessly? Just to test something? That's not enough of a good reason.

".. are you saying you'd be sad too if I was the one dying?"

That's not really a honest question. If not just because that puppy-eyed look in Inigo's eyes looks like he's just begging for some validation here, more than looking for a serious answer to an actual serious situation that could actually happen. Maybe it's just nice to hear that you matter, especially when Inigo is so bad at generating that feeling on his own.

"Absolutely." It wasn't a real question, and it's pretty apparent, but Jingyi treats it like it is one. "I would be sad if you were dying, and even more so if you were dead. I'd probably yell at you when you came back if it was on train after hugging you."

After crying, more like it, but that wasn't worth mentioning, obvious enough in his opinion. Who wouldn't cry losing a friend? Maybe not in the moment, some battles and situations there wasn't time to process, to really feel, but after?

Noble sacrifice, or stupid mistake, both would feel unfair and unacceptable.

Even if Inigo was kind of fishing for that answer, it's nice to hear it all the same. Especially because sometimes it's hard for him to comprehend that people would feel worse without him there, especially if he had to go in such a way. But at least he can accept it in this moment, bask in the feeling of being welcomed. Appreciated.

It even makes him smile a little in that super genuine way on the spot, and he leans a bit more against Jingyi.

"Guess I really can't die then. I might just cry if you yell at me, after all!"

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jingyeets - 2021-11-08 08:39 (UTC) - Expand

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[M15] ENEMY: UNKNOWN - THE INTERVIEW

into the unknown

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