John

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Posted. DIdn't do much in combat because it's too late and Leila can't really do much at this point anyway.

Probably didn't carry it out well but basically. Hints here and there that Leila having feels might be that bit dangerous since things can easily go both ways from here on out.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Tanned skin, white poofy hair, and a pair of green eyes obscured Leila’s view of the sky.

“You’re that girl from the SSF.”

SSF. The...Star Fisher?

Halfway between awake and having passed out, it took Leila a blink for a better look, and a while of thinking to finally piece it all together.

Numair Wasan. She recalled the man’s name, but that was all she remembered at the moment. By the moment she was going to say something, however, the man had already turned away; and her decision to extend her hand towards Numair was not realized until a couple of tries at overcoming the aching in her shoulders, by the time of which the man had already left.

Leila forced the whole left side of her torso off the ground, and then realized that simply sitting up was impossible without something to grab onto when she carried those injuries, so she grit and ushered all her strength into turning herself around so that she faces the ground with all four limbs supporting her body. Picking back up a piece of wooded debris from the ground, she used it this time not as a weapon but a walking stick, burying it into the ground and holding firmly onto it with both hands, loosening her grip only long after she made sure that her wobbling legs had at least regained the capability to support her own weight.

She tried standing straight, with the aid of the piece of wood now in her left hand, only to have both hands smack back onto the staff so that she didn’t topple over. A fine spray of red droplets was expelled from her throat as she started coughing again, whole body virtually curling onto the piece of wood for support as her already battered body carried out its all so annoying reflexive responses that contributed just about nothing to the situation except an additional risk of any injuries in the chest worsening. An irritated growl escaped, following the ceasing of the coughing.

She squinted and raised her head, looking into the direction of the sounds of yelling, collisions, and rumbling earth. A fair amount of dust had been propelled into the air, leaving only silhouettes of figures to be identified for whatever was going on. Numair was back. Along with the lot of hooded humans they met earlier. What did all that mean? She, once again, found herself without a clue. Leila sighed.

As of now there wasn’t much she could do except for standing aside and watching. Her sight drifted away and she felt a tinge of hope - too early to speak of relief - when she saw, at the edge of her sight, Harper’s chest still rising and falling slowly in the distance. However, a series of screams and cries snapped her attention back to the scene of the battle. She determined the screams of agony to be from the witch, and she could only hope this was a sign that the creature would soon be defeated - at the hand of the Lost Souls, by Numair and the hooded figures, or through some incomprehensible form of divine intervention that Nowhere nonsense allows for - she didn’t care, as long as all this would end...

A few shockwaves expanded from the centre of combat, blowing away the dust. Leila was surprised that her body managed to withstand them, even it was just the weakened impact from the distance away. Now she could see clearly Ace, Lesley, Inadi, and a half-naked Jasper emerging at various places across the scene, while the witch seemed to not be moving much anymore. Hopefully, soon the witch, the culprit of all this madness, all this suffering they were going through, would be gone -

- wait, not right.

“W-wait, there are - hic - things - hic - ” Leila voiced out, and the pressing pain on her lungs and the uncontrollable throbbing of the muscles in her abdomen reminded her that wasn’t the best of ideas. There are things that I need to ask was what she was trying to say, but the last part came out as nothing but a chain of coughing and sputtering.

She breathed in and out deeply, despite the pain, possibly out of anger; yet she made an effort to suppress that, trying not to think in the directions that led down the wrong paths and reminding herself of other things - raising her head and forcing a bitter smile onto her face.

The idea of a picnic sure sounded nice...

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Fox of Spades said
Four is becoming really evil xD

Gotta become evil to compensate for Leila gradually becoming less heartless.

Fox of Spades said And guys this chapter is coming to an end so let's discuss the next one :)! As you guys know, we'll be RPing parts of the timeskip. The question is, what do you wanna have the hoomans do? Anything goes! What happens during the break is pretty much up to you guyys. We'll RP the break for a week or two then begin chapter 5Sorry if there are typos, I'm currently on phone.

It's actually reasonable to expect them to spend most of the timeskip recovering from injuries.

We've spoken of the Ace birthday party and the drunken storytelling, so there's that.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Orpheus said “You’re that girl from the SSF,” He knelt down beside Leila and observed her expression. Did she die with her eyes open? … Ah. Nope; the young lady blinked. He bit his lip, relieved, and then realized that the glazed look in those irises meant that Leila was looking at something. Numair turned his head and saw… Oh, that guy’s probably dead.

Excuse me this isn't supposed to be funny.

But it is. Send help.

Also, meh, skype is down for me.

idk what Leila is to do for this cycle, so the post might be delayed a bit.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Orpheus said
...Everyone seems to want him dead, so it's canon...

ALL THE GUILT BOTH IC AND OOC

Man, things really aren't going to turn out alright for the humans when the survivors get their chance to rest. All the PTSD.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

But I'm smiling so hard. Aki you precious.

Fox of Spades said Wow, what has Nowhere done to these cuties ;A; //shot

Stabbed them with shrapnel, tossed them around into walls, broke their bones and their spirits - Obviously.

I still find it hard to imagine Leila as any sort of a fighter ahaha I thought the deranged math professor we came up with in the chat was the consensus for a future Leila but man this is amazing too.

Looking forward to that post in the afternoon!

"Also answers"

As some of you may have already heard through the chat group.

Leila's life before the train was...rather uneventful, really. There was that time of drama when the genius thing started being noticeable and the family having a hard time dealing with it, but that was when she was like, six, seven years old?

She lived in that complex ever since. Her parents were the kind of people who were so busy their schedules are laid out by the second (and without exception, by someone other than themselves because they have better things to be doing than arranging schedules) so she didn't really get to meet them much. Her parents considered her to be mad more than anything else, so one could probably say her living complex was more like a self-built asylum since they decided it would've damaged the reputation of the family and its business if they sent her to an actual one? But yeah, I suppose you are free to pull the "princess in a tower" symbolism here.

A little batch of people monitor her living - mostly so that she didn't randomly get lost or die somewhere by accident. Most of them are just sent there as a temporary station, except a few, like old man James some of you might remember from further back in the IC on the old guild, who are assigned to the living complex permanently, and Leila actually got to know a few of them over time. Might as well say they're her family in a way, and the complex is more like a self-constructed host family instead. Less tragic than the idea of just being locked up I guess?

All that from her actual perspective was much less dramatic than it'd sound because she honestly didn't care back then and was just happy to have her tea and her books. And she also considered a supply of food and a place to rest without needing to fight for it to be really great. She didn't really mind the restricted environment because there was already enough in the Library to keep her engaged for a lifetime, so yeah.

Then there was the train and it messed everything up.

Her family probably thinks she's dead by now, even though the news would likely only get to her parents officially some time later after they discover her missing because it takes time to relay news through the hierarchy of something as large as her family. They'll naturally be outraged and some people will likely loose their jobs, and then a funeral will be held so that no-one accuses them of being entirely heartless, although that'd be done probably as low-profile as possible. The parent's aren't entirely heartless anyways and will take some time getting over it but granted their character it'll probably take much shorter than you'd expect from people who just lost one of their children.

Not sure if Leila would regret boarding the train - she actually got to see a world much different to what she's seen so far, and she's enjoying that. Truth be told the amazement will be similar if she simply just got thrown out into the human world since she's way detached, but then the suspicion that it's not the human world also makes her inner misanthropist feel that bit better (hah). The constant threat of death she'll have to deal with, I suppose?

Yeah Leila's backstory is underdeveloped and unrealistic to the max ahah.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Might as well. since everybody else's dancing.

...except the ones who are dead. HA-HA.

Alright. That wasn't funny. At all.

Meanwhile, yay for first post from Toby -

Thundercat said ...how hard could beating up an old hag be?

-Oh no you didn't

but yeah. Posted. A tad long, pretty devoid of plot-related content (to be honest, I have no idea what's gonna happen next, so.)

Did give a detailed retelling of the terrifying stuff the witch was pulling though. Witch be scary.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

"Permission..."

Shivers crawled down Leila's spine as she heard the ringing voice from behind her, a whisper in volume, but somehow even more intimidating than anything else she heard - the witch's breath tickled behind her neck.

"...but we aren't like you, and we can't be anything else..."

Leila swung around, only to have the witch place a hand on her left shoulder, and the charred wooden plank she was holding clattered to the ground as her hand hung limp at the side. She felt like all strength leave her body, an effect spreading from the point where the ice-old palm touched her - even though it didn't, the chilliness crept straight through her clothing - and where the nails and fingers dug into her flesh as the grip tightened by the moment.

She crumbled onto her knees. The witch's grip persisted as her empty eyes looked now downwards, emotionless, but the expression of the pale, sunken face was one that was a mix of pity, sorrow, and - most prominently - outright anger. It was a look that would strike fear into even the most courageous of beholders, and the witch was staring straight into her eyes.

She tried to utter something, yet only a painful choking sound came out of the mouth opened wide. Tears streamed down her face as the pain spread through her body - the accumulated injuries, the cut on her shoulder, her ribs, or just another kind of sinister, inexplicable magic of Nowhere's night that was causing the screeching in her head. Her mind went blank.

"...No one wants to be hated-- to be like US!"

What words followed Leila couldn't hear clearly. And then she felt it: the ground. The ground beneath her knees was giving way as the witch pressed downwards. In little time her ankles were already entirely submerged in the damp, chilly soil.

Leila gaped and tried to break free, but the witch pressed harder - all her struggling didn't budge the clasping claws one bit, but only accelerating her sinking. She felt the earth clutching tightly around her legs pulled beneath. It felt like she wasn't just sinking into the ground by the force of gravity - the earth itself was pulling her into it. She felt grains of soil clawing onto her skin, pulling her downwards at every point of contact.

"You think you children will be able to best me? Even with your petty amulets..."

The witch drew her fingertips out of her shoulder, pushing Leila away as she left her there, and turned her wrath on the others in the group. Leila bent forward, arms too weak to break the fall as her forehead touched the ground. She desperately tried to push herself back upright to alleviate the compression in the chest. She succeeded in doing so only to see the witch standing in front, facing away from her and waving her hands in the air as invisible forces pulsed through the air, knocking back anyone that came this way.

"Time is up!"

The witch's voice echoed in the distanced, coupled by an unsettling series of yells and screams, which gradually faded out. The voice was Leon's.

"Wha-"

Leila clawed on the ground in a panic. It persisted in pulling, the surface now reaching the bottom of her ribcage. Her fingers sunk through the cold sand like it was fluid, with nothing for her to hold onto, and then she would have to draw her arms out from the soil that was again starting to engulf her hands - an act that pushed herself even deeper.

Did Leon just -

Her struggling became weaker - almost pathetic - as her strength was exhausted and there was nothing left she could do but to allow the rolling cascade of particles to keep dragging her downwards, deeper. She found herself sobbing incoherently as she felt the breath being squeezed out of her lungs.

All but her head and shoulders were above the surface now, and she was still sinking. Through her sight blurred by blood and tears she could make out the figures that were her fellow Lost Souls. Is...is everyone else okay? She couldn't bring herself to actually look for Leon. Then she saw someone running this way - until the witch materialized behind him. Leila saw the silhouette of the witch grabbing the man by the collar, and raising her spare hand…

Haku. It wasn’t clear if she was actually trying to utter the name, or just a painful hiccup - or an attempt at the first that ended up the latter.

”...NO! I REFUSE...”

Leila drowned out the voice of the rest of Hakuren’s final pleads with her own screams.

Was this it, then? How this ends? Her voice broke as she ran out of breath. With each exhale the jaws of the earth closed tighter and made the next inhale more impossible. Even a cough couldn't be ushered at the moment, and the sounds she made were reduced to a series of inaudible whimpers.

She heard Harper’s growls, and then those, as well, faded. She felt dizzy, probably both from the lack of air and the unbearable pain.

The last thing she saw was the sky - a burning blood-red with clouds like claws spreading throughout. Then she closed her eyes and the ground swallowed her, shivering fingertips being the last part of her body that touched the open air.

Then there was darkness.

There was no panting from panic, as the dense soil pushed tightly around her body, threatening to crush her ribcage. Her mouth gaped in vain to draw in air, only to have grains of sand flood into her throat. There was no shivering, the earth didn't allow even that. With every whimper of remaining breath in her lungs exhaled, the dirt caved in further. The pounding in her ears, the voice of the fight going on above, the hope for light that'd seep through from the surface, all her thoughts - they faded out. The embrace of the deeper earth was warm, less biting to the touch, but no less aggressive. In her closed eyes, Leila almost believed she saw fireworks - the ones set off on that midnight of the 31st of December...

And then, silence.

* * * *

”I-I can still fight. I will help them.”

-huh?

Leila eyes would've shot open if it weren't for the sand pressing down on her eyelids.

In the dampened silence of the underground, submerged in the spell-induced quicksand, Leila’s mind started spinning again as she heard the muffled voice.

A distance away, Leila felt something soft brush against the tip of her fingers.

In confusion, she tried twitching her fingers. The next thing was what felt like a whole palm crashing into hers, fingers wrapping tightly around it, and then it jerked upwards.

She would've been screaming if she wasn't buried. The weight of the sand on her arms and shoulders refused to give way as her hand was pulled upwards with great force, and it was as if her arm was used as a rope in some sort of cruel tug-of-war competition, being torn apart. She almost wanted to beg for whoever was pulling to stop - not like she could, and not like they could hear her anyway.

Leila accepted that she would have to go through with this, and ushered the little strength she had left into securing the grip.

She felt the sand start to give way, grains of it rolling off the edge of her skin as her arm continued to be pulled. A few moments later, another palm slapped into the side of her arm - now exposed in the air, and joined the effort.

”You’re - not - dying with them!”

She heard these words clearly, through unobscured ears; although her mind wasn’t clear enough yet to process it. Dying with...who? Who died? Who’s still alive? What’s happening? Where am I…Her eyelids flickered in instinctive attempts to expel any grains of sand still stuck between her lashes. The world was spinning. And soon even the fingers she held together so dearly around Ace’s hand loosened.

Her fingers clutched together again when the red-haired human wrapped her arms around Leila’s shoulders, and yanked hard - a distressed gasp escaped her mouth. Leila found herself being capable of breathing again, and she gaped in as much air as possible even though each breath felt like being rammed into the wall by the mushroom monster back at the caves all over again. Despite that - Leila started coughing. Her whole ribcage felt like it was falling apart as she did, but she continued, sputtering every last grain of sand out of her throat in a mixture of saliva and blood and tears.

Ace - as Leila was now able to identify her through the edge of her sight - secured her grip onto her arms.

The yank that finally pulled Leila’s feet clear of the fluid soil also knocked her out.

* * * *

Leila didn’t know how long it took for her to fully regain consciousness.

She reacted fast enough not to have put to action any instinctive attempts to stand up from her collapse, sparing herself from more pain - something she surely didn’t need now. The dull throbbing senses of discomfort were persistent throughout her body.

Instead, she just blinked and watched.

Ace was not in sight. Neither was Riley.

"Please don't die, please, please, please..."

Lazily, Leila turned her head to a side to see the scene, rotated ninety degrees from a normal perspective, the scene of Lesley, kneeled on the ground, shoulders throbbing, and with Harper in his embrace, the boy without any signs of life.

Who was still there? What’s left? Who was left?

Why was she there?

Too many questions. Leila thought of closing her eyes and resting, but dared not do so. She hadn’t gotten a chance to thank Ace yet...

“Gah...”

...The sky was the same burning blood-red.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Understood.

Was asking because I'd be away...again. 11 August, until the 24th - will be travelling out of the country. Three or four rounds would be nice I guess, Leila could always be out by the end of this fight and cut back in during the rest, I suppose?

Also "may either hinder or help" sounds way too ominous.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Laughs, you all take the things I say in the OOC way too seriously.

For real though, it's probably parts of both? Like she's genuinely upset about the witch breaking her conception of physics, but what contributed most to the anger and eventual break was probably her companions being in harm?

Ship approved, tho

How many cycles do we have left until people are allowed to start passing out?