John

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Sneaking on for a bit. Still kinda busy.

Would love to toss some questions @ the interview thing, if not that most of the questions I could think of for Ace/Brandy have been asked.

I am satisfied with the results.

Also, thanks for tagging Leila along on the IC while I'm away - I'm going to have so much to catch up on later, ugh.

But then, just because I'm not here in the OOC doesn't mean you folks should display that overwhelming supply of pretty images of food. Excessive amounts of pretty food is morally incorrect under any circumstances.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Will try to get a post up as soon as possible, although I'm sorry to report that "soon" is expected to be at least halfway into next week.

Schoolwork and project deadlines pile up a bit before exams and it's making it a bit hard to maintain a healthy pace of work. Coupled with a few happenings in my family I'm afraid I won't be able to keep up with the RP that well for a while.

Same, good luck to all you others who have exams too! Can't wait till they're over and we get to get back to messing around with fiction(?).

6 AM...Yesterday

Thanks very much for organizing the information.

Also, updated character sheet as specified (skill-stats relation).

6 AM...Yesterday

Dropping in on interest chat. Gained knowledge of this via skype conversations with GM and decided on attempting to join. Hello folks!

Intending to conjure sheets for both a Key and a Human character. Key sheet complete and pending revisions and working on human.

I look forward to working with you all.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

“Tch. Don’t wet your panties or anything. You’re safe. And you’re welcome.”

Leila was rather glad that she was safe, yet Vincent’s “you’re welcome” was uttered before Leila had time to thank him not to have crushed her or snapped her neck between his arm and chest.

The crash landing left the catbus lying horizontally, five pairs of feet squirming idly on the sloped surface they landed on. It growled weakly for a couple of times, perhaps out of hunger or pain. Leila almost felt sorry for the poor creature.

She gathered the strength to push herself upright and, hands and feet carefully choosing points of support to make up with the incoherence between the direction of gravity and the orientation of the collapsed catbus, made it to an exit which was once one of the windows. She carefully slid herself out through the opening, and off the side of the catbus and down to the ground, finding herself standing alongside many of the other humans and a couple of Nobodies that accompanied them on their trip, all recovering from the recent fall.

Quite curiously, the ground was...a bit bouncy. And sweetness. Sweetness was in the air. Leila looked around in amusement as the sugary flavour registered itself at the tip of her tongue. It wasn’t that noticeable back on the bus, beneath the scent of expired tuna, yet now a look at the scenery and it was now clear that they have arrived in a very different biome in Nowhere - a place where the ground was jelly, covered in a layer of fine, powdered sugar; rivers and puddles of water were viscosious fluids that were various kinds of syrup, and vegetation and flora bore the bright, splendid colour schemes of the sugary goods arrayed in candy shops.

Interesting, Leila thought as she dusted her skin and clothes of the powder and combed her partly tangled hair mostly free of sugary flakes, while she resisted the childish urge to start hopping up and down on the elastic substance that composed the ground.

She still couldn’t take her eyes off the surreal scenery around the place. Red-and-white striped branches and leaves extended off tree trunks in the shapes of spiralling, rainbow-coloured vines sprawled the space between other plants, twisting and turning in a fashion reminiscent of the chewy sour candy strips as their ends hung freely. The colours were so toxically vivid and saturated - this sight gave a whole new meaning to the term “eye-candy”. Leila wondered what sorts of creatures would populate an area like this.

What even was she thinking. Slimes, apparently.

* * * *

Why were they attacking the slimes? Leila couldn’t quite make out what was happening as she scurried around the scene that was now a frenzy of fire and ice and lightning and classic Latin spells and all that jazz. Leila maneuvered around the scene, cautious not to step on anything she isn’t supposed to and not to be hit by the icicles that also happen to be raining out from the sky and not to accidentally step on something she shouldn’t. There was this once she almost shoved her left foot right into a slime, and prevented it narrowly by stumbling a couple of steps backwards and almost falling over herself.

“Ah! I am so very sorry - ”

She immediately apologized - part of that “proper etiquette” her elders back at home stresses so often - hopefully the little jelly creature didn’t take that accident personally - and then she had to take another sudden jolt back because if she hadn’t the gelatinous jaws may have closed on her foot instead.

The question just changed from why were we attacking the slimes to why were the slimes attacking us, and Leila found herself hopping around the field evading the furious bouncy cubes at any cost, the dimly glowing green amulet swinging around dangling from her neck as she did so.. A few staggering steps later, she came to a halt besides Harper, who was trying to fend off the incoming slimes with the pipe he was holding. The combat came to a pause as all parties took a moment to assess the situation.

"Leila, let's keep the slimes away from them."

Allllright? But with….with what?

"Team?"

The boy then asked. Leila, however, did not have time to react at first because one of the slimes just decided to start charging towards the two of them.

What to do? Try to stop it. With what? Something. There was nothing in her hands. There had to be something. A candy-cane twig fragment some distance away. Too small to do any good. Too far away anyway. Jelly-dirt or sugar dust or something else from the ground. Bad idea. A shimmery, translucent thing a couple of steps away - one of the icicles from Haku earlier. That would work. That would work! But still too far - no, just close enough. Worth a try-

Leila wasn’t exactly sure what went through her mind, neither what exactly she did in accordance. Yet at the end of that half a second, she recalled her arm swung in a rather elegant curve that allowed a trajectory of the sharpened piece of ice into the direction of the threat - the slime now throbbing unhappily with the heavy icicle buried halfway into the centre of its front face. She was panting and she could feel the liquid draining away as the weight of the amulet decreased slightly.

Team?

She looked over her shoulder to Harper.

”Team.”

She replied in what was probably the faintest, most uncertain voice possible as she stepped back into a defensive stance she had no idea where she learnt from.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Posted! sorry for taking that long.

The number of times Leila falls over the course of the roleplay is too large to be reasonable.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

(whoah banner)

A cat.

Leila stood there and looked at the transportation the queen had assigned them, which was an enormous cat.. With a hollow body with windows. And ten legs. And hollow, glowing eyes that stared blankly forward.

How absolutely adorable.

Leila brought both of her hands up to cover the gasp of excitement that escaped her mouth, her eyes wide in amazement. What a beautiful creature! Or was it even a creature at all? What was its body structure like? How did this evolve? Everything about this cat was so exciting - she felt an urge to give it a giant hug - of course, there was no way Leila would be able to fully hug that monstrosity, but still - she almost wanted to keep it as a pet. How did this thing function? What was inside?

Before Leila even got to the thought of having her curiosity satisfied, she was dragged into the wide gaping mouth of the cat-bus-hybrid - which was supposed to serve as an entrance and exit, apparently. The one dragging her also grabbed Jasper with the other hand - she was one of the newly arrived humans, dressed in a windcoat and with short, straight hair that was coloured a vivid orange. She seemed to be one of the few people who shared Leila’s excitement about boarding the cat-bus (a group which, incidentally, excluded the white-haired, hooded Vincent). Moving quite incoherently along on the supporting surface that was the cat’s saliva-covered tongue, Leila’s feet weren’t doing much of propelling her along, but were merely keeping her from collapsing onto the ground as Riley towed her by the arm.

Its tongue, its teeth, the inside of the cat’s mouth - and the residue food that was sticking in various places and their terrible smell. The girl gleefully marvelled at every part of the insides of the catbus that met her sight, even for seconds. Such interesting structures - such a pity that she didn’t know nearly enough biology. She’ll most definitely need to research that - when she got back -

- oh.

And then the catbus took flight.

Leila did not even remember them arriving at what she supposed to be the passenger area for the bus- a quite spacious area, with large openings on the sides that were presumed to be windows, but without glass panels. That being said, Leila was lucky not to have fallen out of one of them, when the sudden acceleration swept her again off her feet. The fashion in which she crashed into one wall of the catbus, back first and rest of the body following, folding into an uncomfortable curled shape on the back of the seats with one leg having nowhere to go and sticking half into the aisle in the middle - that would not be considered as much of a result of a lucky incident.

The catbus moved forward in a cycle of much like that of a land-bound feline, except it moved in the air, ten legs repeating the same cycle that originally involved only four; and each tightening and extending of the spine were jolts in the archs of the unstable path of flight taken. Trying to remain standing in such a vehicle was like trying to remain standing when the direction of gravity changes randomly six times every second.

The seats lined the sides of the catbus and were cushions and coated in...fur? What kind of creature has the inside of a digestive system coated in fur? What else was the mouth supposed to lead to? Did it even have a digestive system?

It took some time for Leila’s efforts to regain a relatively normal position in her seat, and to look around and come to the conclusion that this majestic creature, like much of everything in Nowhere, was not to be made sense of by the rational mind.

A few of the other humans were sitting in nearby seats. Right besides her was Vincent, who was so determined not to take this ride at first. He was now clutching the back of the seats in front, apparently uncomfortable.

Everything still smelt like half-digested fish.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

A post shall be up this Thursday! Kind of a busy week, but I'll make certain the post happens this time.

The amount of horror in the OOC in the previous pages is on the verge of being that bit excessive. May I suggest textual warnings before the content and/or hiders on related image-type material? Sorry for spoiling the fun - please consider this as a favour asked of you by that one faint hearted late-night internet user. Thank you greatly ;-;

also did someone just post Ylvis' Jan Egeland. may I say that I greatly approve. That note at the end.

Personally on the topic of music, I'm exposing myself to excessive amounts of Keane, Fun. , and Johnny Cash.

Incoherent, I know.

I also greatly approve of Harper and Riley's interpretation of Lesley's appearance. Leila's current opinion of Lesley is that she likes the pink curly stuff.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

phew. Finally posted! Although I probably wrecked the writing quality. Bear with me on this one please because writing with a laptop keyboard on a wobbly train and a headache cause by the wobbling of said wobbly train....was kind of a challenge.

In clarification of the content of the post: one thing about Leila always was the ability to figure out some things and what to do in response, yet frequently failing to carry out the plan because of the restriction that is herself. She is familiar enough with trajectories and fluid dynamics, so the only thing between the usual Leila and the Archer character in the RPG chappy would be the physical strength and capability of actually posing herself - along with the bow and arrow or whatever else - with enough accuracy in the direction where she knew to aim for.

Haven't consulted the GM before this one, so it's kinda really a decision only on my side - so please, do tell me if anything doesn't go with how things are supposed to work, or if there are better ways for me to play this out. Thanks.

Meanwhile about the vote about game mechanics: I have experience dealing with open-ended posts, collabs, and both parties figuring it out together before writing up things, collabs or not. I've gotta say they all have their pros and cons and how well it works really depends on who you're working it with, under what circumstances. I suppose with a skype chat and a sufficiently rapidly updating OOC, working things out in advance might be favourable, yet timezones might prove a problem.

Laughs, I really don't know. I guess I'll just go with what the rest of you decide on...would that be alright?

Also, unrelated: upon more careful inspecting of the previous IC posts:

Headphones said The low temperature did not bother Hakuren at all.

I am so never going to unsee snow queen Hakuren. Good job, brain.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Orion and Big Dipper and the Andromeda Galaxy. And many, many other things. The scarce, selected few patterns out of the numerous ways to construct graphs from vertices that are the shining objects in the night sky, and their received interpretations, somehow decided from a pool of possibilities just as, or arguably more, numerous than the field of graphs itself.

The constellations stared downward from the sky, just as they did back at home. And Leila stared back - just like she did, back in the buildings, in the rooftop library where she could gaze outwards through the great panels of glass, downwards to see the city and upwards, the sky. Only now the glass was the windows of the palace, and the acrylic texture replaced by the elegantly carved patterns of frost; and Leila was no longer at home, and there were Sirens and Chaotic Stars and magic and dragons and Bunnies in soldier uniforms and there was a seemingly unlimited supply of sweets as well as life-threatening cenarios.

Her mind made up the dragon part. They haven’t really seen or heard of dragons around so far. Dragons weren't that bad of an idea either, were they?

The point, though, was probably that Leila didn’t really see the reason behind not liking this place that its inhabitants call Nowhere.

"It's a shame Nowhere is so frightening, yes? If it weren't for things like the chaotic star and being separated from home, I think I could actually, maybe, like it here."

Stars. Graphs. Concepts. Isomorphisms. Ideas populated Leila’s mind as she made no effort to track where the conversation went from that point on, or even if it continued. She neglected the hurrying messenger. She did not pay attention to what the Queen said. She did not notice the commotion caused by the arrival of a new group of companions in travel - as she took her time thinking about constellations and stories and imagination.

”...NOW!”

Until, at least, something happened that was loud enough to forcefully break her chains of thoughts.

Leila snapped out of her trance-like gaze and turned around to find chaos. The beautifully decorated wooden table that originally spanned the centre of the room was no more, the space it occupied replaced by pieces and shards of wood, with a pile of bread crumbs and cream and candy frost cascading down everywhere on the crumbled sheet of tablecloth, recognizable as the remains of the delicately crafted pastries. Those remains also existed elsewhere than on the destroyed table and the floor: namely, on the faces of two of her fellow humans.

She almost considered giggling.

Speaking of humans. There were new humans. The person who just recently smashed the table to pieces, in fact, was one of them. White hair, not overly tall, impressive physical strength. Facial expression implying a sense of glee inflicted by causing mischief. Among them were several other new faces - a girl with red hair in a windcoat. Another with curls in shades of bubblegum that contained more food colouring than would be considered healthy. A gentleman with glasses that bore a certain similarity in appearance to someone whose name escaped Leila’s mind at the moment.

Leila then returned her attention to the Queen and the messenger, and the box the Queen held Amulets. She remembered hearing something about them, spoken by the Queen or some other Nobody. Observations suggested that they are supposed to take a choice from one of those gem, and then...and then what?

The connections between cause and result has always been rather blurry in Nowhere.

Leila looked around. Hakuren was apparently having a lot of fun violating the second law of thermodynamics.

How absolutely intriguing.

What exactly were they supposed to do? Leila thought as she looked at the remaining few pieces of egg-shaped jewelry, still resting in the soft padding inside the intricately decorated box. How was the choice to be made? She felt a hint of that feeling of panic that arises every time a decision must be made under an insufficient supply of data. She could always just guess, or assume, or whatever else you call a decision procedure with a large portion of probabilistic component. There were as many possibilities here as with the constellations and the shepherds of the old ages, gazing into the sky. How does she decide what to do - or is the decision even hers to make - does the wizard chose the wand or the wand the wizard? The mechanisms were no more lucid. This bothered her a bit as she believed in reason. She probably shouldn't mind that as much, on second thought, since belief itself was something that was scarce in the content of reason to begin with.

Leila stretched her arm out and wrapped her fingers around the green amulet.

The emerald ovoid sat silently in her palm.. Decorations, in the colour of gold and taking the shape of vines and leaves, spanned the surface of the amulet in elegant, curved paths, much like how some real plants do the surface they reside on. Beneath the crystal surface, only barely visible, was the different diffraction index of a distinct material which, judging from the dull bumping sounds emitted by the item when it is moved, was some kind of liquid that nearly filled the inside of the gem.

Leila didn’t feel anything particularly spectacular - not like she expected to, anyways. The amulet was beautiful, though, she thought, as she carefully rolled it around in her hands. Her thoughts were just about to wander off again when another interruption emerged:

”I.....really......DON'T WANT TO GO!”

One of the humans cried. Leila jumped a bit in fright and the amulet rolled out of her grip was flung forward into the air. Assuming a downwards gravitational field around that on earth (which conformed to observations so far), and roughly gauging the initial velocity of the toss it was not hard to determine quickly precisely where and how the amulet would land: a number of steps forward from where she was standing, with an impact she was sure that was sufficient to smash it into pieces if it were made of ordinary material, and too fast it was impossible for anyone to-

flop.

Leila froze, not completely realizing what just happened, with the amulet safely clutched in her left hand against her chest,, and herself in the pose that was the ending off a perfect standard forward roll.

”...Eh?”