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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"Mm," he says, giving a small shake of his head for the rhetorical question. Seeing in water doesn't sound like a problem for himself, but dragons swam like they flew, and he could swim strongly in human form as well. Concepts of pressure shifts in deep waters aren't ones he can properly match, he who can fly high enough the air stops being credible for breathing, and cold would steal heat before it births itself in exertion.

He believes him, then, and takes what Tidus says without comment, because Tidus knows, where Jingyi does not. What he can comment on, with a softened snort, is simpler.

"The sun sets over the mountains for me. Even if I'm out on the coast, and I've never had the leisure to watch a sunset there. Sunrise would be over water. Haven't seen that either," he adds, where lakes and rivers aren't the same, and he's a mountain boy, born and raised, even when he'd lived in caves and encampments before it was safe to return to Gusu in his childhood. "But I know both over the mountains. It's beautiful, too... no one would have photographs of it. They don't exist in my world."

Not like this, the gloss page he's trailing a finger against, and it's unsettling in a way that has nothing to do with this world of oceanic diving, or Tidus's dream world or the world beyond it; it's the uncertainty that came with each asking after systems, with not knowing yet, with the we will try to get you access to knowing those numbers themselves.

He doesn't want to think on those things, far outside of his own hands.

"You can get pictures?"

Sun sets over mountains sound nice too, a scenery Tidus wouldn't mind viewing in person or through imagery if he couldn't. Not as nice as a sea for him, mountains too high and reminding him of chill next to the comforting wash of water. But he knows - at least adjacently - of Sizhui being from a mountain, Wangji (one of them) too, so it makes sense that's what Jingyi is more accustomed to, too - in a different world.

"Yeah!" Tidus's answer is easy, perky. "People take pictures of everything. You might be able to get pictures of your world too." He looks at Jingyi than at the book at that, though a gaze that drifts as he thinks about another few books. "There's these photobooks where people go around void not-active worlds? Inactive void worlds," he corrects dismissively. Whatever. Mouth garbage.

"I've got a few - even one of Spira. They might not have any where you live," he makes sure to clarify, to explain. "--But places around the world, it will. They're nice. Or you can get photobooks of other stuff."

There's a patent absurdity in that spoken truth that tugs at the corners of his lips, unwittingly and without his thoughtful consent.

"There are people who sneak around worlds that don't know there are countless universes out there, making pictures. They're spying on scenery."

Cataloguing, appreciating beauty, and perhaps missing everything he loves about his home and the ways it has regrown over the years, but it's funny, this thought that people could have been there, or are there now, making books to showcase how beautiful someone else's home is. Travelers, just passing through, not having to be connected to anything other than the moments of beauty they seek to illustrate for others.

"To share with a, what's the word... share with a universe, but not even the people of those worlds. It's funny, right?" Homesick making as a concept, but he's not sure if it's better or worse, seeing familiar landscapes, or ones that could almost be familiar. Not seeing the place he really wishes to see, or the faces, and the familiarity of horns and tails and people who all know how to be around each other without countless, necessary explanations.

"Funny as thinking about how big everything in your world was, then you find out about all the rest." It's not an answer that comes snappy, takes a few seconds to consider. Remembering how daunting and overwhelming everything in Spira was, and it wasn't even a drop.

But then- "Funny too when they know when there's places in trouble, but you've got some worlds suffering for hundreds of years, but nothing told them to check it out?" The void is large, those travelling it are few, but who cares when Tidus wants to complain. Doing so, but willing to concede, "The book I got was before everything went to trash, but... man." Man. He eyes the book Jingyi holds, but his thoughts aren't on those images, but instead:

"How would people in your world react to a bunch of magazines with photos in them?"

There's a joking quality. What if?

Jingyi snorts, having listened to Tidus's words, leaning toward him because he does need the support right now, without having the easy language to ask for it.

"Depends on who you showed. A miracle. A horrible enchanting curse. Something to study and try to replicate, or something to try and sell as an exotic good. That's just within the realms I know, if you cross the sea to the island chain there, they might find a way to turn magazines and photographs into assassination tools, you never know."

He taps his finger against the page he's turned to, depicting someone swimming down, the light above them fading into darker blues that don't quite get to blacks by the bottom of the frame. There's a sense of depth and drama to the shot, to the power behind the one diving down, to the loneliness and immensity of what they're doing, and a danger one doesn't need to be intimately familiar with to still understand.

"Inigo's world doesn't have a void vessel waiting to solve it's problems. You didn't have one either. So many worlds are set on destroying themselves, but the problems we get called to fix, they're still simple, aren't they? When you talk about them, or Inigo does, or any of my seniors, or Sizhui, that's how it feels. Yes, those worlds are in distress, and people will die, but people die all the time, worlds are in distress all the time. We effect any of it. How insane is that? How ridiculous?"

How egotistical, he also thinks, but he knows better than to assume he knows best. If that's a saving or damning grace of his, he hasn't quite figured out.

Edited 2021-11-02 03:50 (UTC)

His eyes go where Jingyi taps at, but his mind is on the words from his mouth, and he's led to wonder. What made those problems different from the rest of theirs? Why couldn't they spend some time helping one world in dire straits, compared to the week they usually spent helping others?

"Well..." But also: what made them be able to change anything at all? "A lot of the time, it's because..."

But his answer is slow, thoughts jumping from one mission to another for one singular pattern. He starts again. "I think it's always been because we know how to fight, or didn't get up in whatever mess affected people. Like the sali - some of their people got affected by that storm, right? We had another mission where a bunch of people who used magic caught a magic cold. Nion, we saved that place by flipping a few switches - computer switches-" which is hopefully easier on his not-technology inclined friend, "--to put up shields to stop giant rocks from destroying the world. Erda - that place was infected too. That's when that Chaos guy messed with everyone's brains."

So, really, a lot of their missions are...

"We're the people who show up to turn the tides when the people there can't." He pauses, happy to finish there, until he frowns.

"But I don't see why we can't go to where Inigo is and help his people take down the dragon ruining everything there. What's the difference?"

It's one dragon. How hard could it be?

"Some of us were affected too, with the sali stuff, weren't we? At least we were weaker there because the natural energy fought against our energies. We were foreign enough the storm wasn't gonna hit the same way, I guess, but I didn't think we were entirely uh... is resistant even the word. I have no idea, so much of that was a headache," says the guy who'd been carting people around as the noblest steed one could ask for, and also talking to sali when he was not the one who'd volunteer for diplomacy duty. He could be polite, but he was not, strictly speaking, diplomatic.

But he's listening, because this is part of why he asked: Tidus has been here, facing more of these distressed worlds, and Jingyi's only seen the two. Seen more than two places, sure, but the Monastery and Aquafir weren't in distress.

"We might be able to," he says, frowning, "But only at the last of it. Turning the tides, you call it? It's gotta be in places where there's a... a... crux, some key point where if we add our weight, we might tip things into surviving. If we balance wrong, it still comes undone. Or it's bigger than we are, and we're struggling just to make sure we don't lose everything. Diagad felt like that."

He's not happy with any of the logic, with any of the things that don't add up, with, also, this false sense of outside saviours that they've been made into. Sure, his job back home was to be that person, to work with a group of people to face down the dark when the locals no longer could, or never could to begin with. It still felt different.

"I still want to fight that stupid dragon anyway." Said with a depth of disdain in stupid dragon, like he's uttered some sort of incredible insult. A pox of scale fleas and mange upon you, evil dragon god.

There's more details he can add, that the floating islands and their issue with energies wasn't a new circumstance, but. But he's now dragged them into talk of what they could be facing but aren't, and his hands raise in level with his chest, visual indignation to join his words. Tidus has opinions about big evil dragons (and other such nuisances).

"Why can't we go fight it, or deal with other problems people on the train were dealing with? You know about Taiki's problem? I swear, we could go and do something about that easy with all of us working together! And then there's some of the other worlds... I don't get it, you know?"

Exasperation drips off his tongue, deepened by a sigh.

"If there's one thing the train likes, it's sending us to places to save. So why not let us help the worlds some of us came from?" Ugh. "People don't complain enough."

And also, the train is stupid.

He snorts, tail thumping in emphasis with Tidus's conclusion.

"No, they don't. Though I guess there's the whole... ugh, so those written things, the things people experienced or whatever, those memories?" He speaks vaguely, not wanting to give too much of it up, not when he's racking his mind thinking back to what he's read out of the library, the word passed along through the group of them familiar with each other enough to rely on bonds from other worlds across which they reached in imperfect mirrors of each other. "The uh... can't be the same place twice in time or something. Kick the train into taking people back, and dropping them off the once, and solving things that way, but you know it won't agree until it gets what it wants."

His sharp exhalation as he turns the page, then turns it again, not wanting to read the actual article, just wanting to gloss his eyes over photographs for now. He'll be bored enough to read before too long, when the appeal of exercise in place and trying out the oddity of the sonic shower wears off.

"It's cruel and stupid and I don't think it knows anything much about what the hell it's doing either, and it's too much of a coward to own up to that to us."

Scathing commentary.

It's not the first time he's heard about not going back, but it doesn't stick to him, is another one of those annoying parts about the train and void and everything that doesn't make sense. Listens in on the mutual indignation, his own interest in even casually viewing the magazine gone as he balances an elbow on his leg, props from there his chin on top of a fist. Eyes staring out at the walls he's gotten used to, opposite from where they sit.

"We're stuck with it, whatever happens." Whatever happens here, with the Ministry - he feels sure about that much. "The train'll run, the Ministry'll do who-knows-what..."

He could end it there, taking in a breath and then letting it go, a stubborn resignation.

"Just hope whatever happens next happens quick. Playing the waiting game sucks."

Even if it happens to involve helping out other people, other worlds - it's draining, not knowing the direction of your own story.

"Is that an actual thing," he says, grumbles, because this is beyond their hands, this is dealing with moving pieces that don't particularly care what the ants beneath their feet are doing, only aware enough that there are ants, going about their lives, "Do people actually play waiting games where you're from."

He doesn't think so, but the sideways look he slants to Tidus invites the joke, knowing it's a frustration across the whole. Waiting without having answers or timeframes or anything workable, relying on patience already frayed for most of them, it feels bad. Feels like something reaching into his stomach and prodding a few tiny holes so he suffers from the slow sepsis that invites, being eaten alive from the inside out, only he knows that's dramatic, that the only thing looking towards killing him is, in fact, on missions so far.

"Might as well tell those guys to tell their future committee about taking action, because all my experience with stuff like this? Is it takes too much time. Happening quick is when something forces a hand. I don't know that we can with the train... and we have even less leverage with the Ministry. I don't know that I can wish for something bad enough to stir things forward fast... not another Chaos situation, or worse."

Do I look like I'd play it? would be his response, dry but not annoyed, not for anything other than the act. Sitting without control or actions that can be taken, and Jingyi reminds him of the place they always end up in, in being captives. Never being able to move themselves, retaliate, disturb anything. They'll go back to being in the train after this, and it'll be the train that decides everything.

The decisions they do get to make inconsequential to the larger picture. What did a spa carriage matter to their circumstances?

"It'll be a planet going missing that does it - somewhere they care about." What else will light a fire under anyone into action? But the thought, as unhappily spoken as it is, does stir some consideration in Tidus; leaning back in his chair, with a lean in Jingyi's direction.

"Enrara disappeared, but no one remembers it. Diagad was gonna be a void active planet, but no one forgot about it... and then there was the planet we went to. What's the connection...?"

Was there one? Because it didn't seem like it to Tidus.

He leans as well, less thought and more lifetime of reaction, growing up surrounded by peers and often packed in with them. Support by proximity, when stuck facing the same realities, whatever their personal thoughts on them. More so when they were in accord.

"Which one, the false one Chaos made? Or that... system or whatever where the train ran as soon as it left void?"

Not an entirely related or unrelated thought in that moment, but also trying to puzzle through.

"The Voidtrecker Express is remembered, but like a legend. These guys were all freaked out because they could pick up on Chaos, but had no idea what it was. But Chaos registered, right? Like throwing a rock into a still pond, Chaos's ripples were seen all over. The Voidtrecker Express's ripples were smaller stones, but spread out over a bunch of places. Maybe when you've made enough ripples, or a big enough one, the void doesn't let you be written entirely away."

He made a small sound of frustration, feeling he doesn't have enough information to pretend he can guess in any sensible way. But something being loud? Being louder, and heard at a greater distance? Sure. Why not?

He couldn't dismiss the legend, but there's a moment when he holds his tongue, his mouth, a desire to glance at the door that had led him into this room, but-

Tidus leans, elbows resting on his legs, voice more private between the two of them.

"So that's the thing, right? The Voidtrecker got remembered like legends... but you know about the Captain we met? A few of us anyway - she was from the world. But everyone - no one remembered her, forgot her like the world was. Diagad wasn't forgotten though - those inspectors knew about it. And, yeah - then there's the mission that Inigo was on where the train ran."

So that's three worlds. One remember, one forgotten - but what about that previous mission?

"If that mission planet's number is remembered or means anything, that means there's something different about the train's system, doesn't it?"

He leans, letting his voice be more of a murmur, knowing that carries less well and is still equally pointless when technology and technique mean anyone wanting to listen can simply hear. Even when none of them had their powers, such as they were. It wasn't two way. The sheer artificiality of it was another bother, but he couldn't blame that one on the inspector whatevers.

People were dangerous enough when they simply existed. Taking things down to be less dangerous... for them, and maybe for collateral damage? Sure. Fine.

Frustrating, but not what's on his mind.

"I'd think so, but I admit I don't know what causes the difference. Amount of energy? Biggest ripples thrown through the void? That other Captain, what were her missions like? Did she have a big crew? Is it numbers, a numbers thing? 'Cause Chaos was in several other worlds first, right?"

The Voidtrecker was all over the place too, even after. But what, if anything, was the link?

"I just want access to whatever system numbers are supposed to be in the Ministry." He frowns, because no, that doesn't resolve their own numbers — but at this point, it would give him something to compare against. Or any of them? He can't say he even knows, were the Ministry's records that comprehensive?

"...try looking up a directory?" If Jingyi's interested in the numbers, then what else has access to numbers? It comes after a moment of thought, wondering if they would be freely available, or available to the public. But if they were able to look up about planets and locations by their system numbers...

"You can get lists like that in collections. Dunno if anything would exist for void numbers, but if people move around to different planets - you might find something looking up something like that?"

That or searching for travel magazines, and getting numbers at random.

"I'd need our system numbers first to make that really useful," he says, grumbling about it. Then he could ask for as many directories as possible, as many listings, as many things akin enough to the Void Ministry's system registry to try and track down their homes as, well, known.

Though new systems, he knows, are also out there. In a way, couldn't they be from unknown systems too? Sure, but he doubted that it was the case for all of them, just as it wouldn't make sense for none of them to come from known, Void-inactive worlds.

Or maybe it did. How vast, how immeasurable, were the systems of the Void?

"Whatever. Nothing I can do about that right now, I guess."

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[M15] ENEMY: UNKNOWN - THE INTERVIEW

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