John

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Weh.

I'm still really frustrated I don't get to play out the interaction things.

Probably gonna have her go talk a bit at least at the party before she gets NPCd away though.

Just thinking: if Martini was injured and had to recover too, who did the outfits?

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Busy. Still gonna get a post up.

Man, two weeks...I gonna miss you folks.

also, congrats on the 500 everyone, and late welcome back, MUG!

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

The style on the epilogue banner and the title for the interlude. Not okay.

All the people mistaking lesley's gender tho

but yeah hope you were fine during the blackout, ugh.

Gonna read the new posts now and perhaps still come up with a post or two before I leave. yeh.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Epilogue unacceptable.

Bye.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Fight ended earlier than I expected and now I live in great fear of missing the timeskip entirely ;-;

Again, I'll be away for like 2 weeks starting August 13th and there'll only be one week of summer left upon my return.Hhhhh...

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

@Fox's snippets: feels. Not okay.

@Whatever that was I thought it was just some kind of archive and then I took a closer look at the words and I died.

@Mental health & Relations: Great to see all that information. I believe Fox is she kept exhaustin her magic like dis dat biiiiatch would end up fadin away as Nobodies whoz ass used up all they magic was did, like even before tha battle could be won. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch.b b satisfied about all the information as well.
she kept exhaustin her magic like dis dat biiiiatch would end up fadin away as Nobodies whoz ass used up all they magic was did, like even before tha battle could be won. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch.
@Nowhere Heaven: snappity snap snap.

@Timeskip ideas: I...honestly don't think a camping trip would bring up the best of memories. Cabin. Woods. Lake. Siren. Welp.

Also amusement park sounds potentially deadly. The beach sounds all sticky and all but that actually makes it more interesting somehow?

Public events doesn't sound like that bad of an idea though - the "getting drunk and telling stories" thing prompted in the skype chat was interesting and I'd certainly love to see how that'll play out, but with all the additional info on the OOC there's a risk of repetition? Idk. But yeah there's no legal drinking age in Nowhere ahaha?

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Posted! A short one.

In response to Ace's gravitational pulls: Newton's third law of motion pledges to differ.

And the bandwagon:

"feels or the lack thereof"

Harper:
Just...a very nice person? He's younger than Leila is by one year, but he's probably become the only person Leila came to see as a peer. He just gives off an aura that makes Leila feel it's okay to not put up any facade when interacting with him and having someone to open up to may prove valuable later when she breaks (even when Harper is not okay with talking with her because he'll be in his own depression pit).

Depending on what happens to Harper later on, Leila will probably either grow a bit fond of Harper's personality (friendship!) or turn him into some kind of role model-ish figure and end up building up a distance between them.

Ace:
Despite her being all optimism and fighting hard and all Leila doesn't really know Ace well. For now she's just grateful because Ace saved her life. But then just like very much everything else in the witch fight, doing that probably took its toll on Ace as well and Leila knew that, so whether the life-saving incident would spark interaction or just worsen that guilt complex she's starting to develop is yet to be seen.

Inadi:
Leila doesn't really like Inadi. Not sure exactly why - probably partly the same mindset on her end as everyone else being uncomfortable with how Haku acted. He's been a really tough fighter - she saw that back at the caves and with the witch, but that combined with him not showing much emotion (at least not perceived to) probably also caused the impression that he's prone to violence, and that's reinforced at the cabin when he speared the guides and all. Then he lacks that 'interesting mind' part that was why Leila was pretty blind to Haku's other potential personality flaws.

This might change, though, since those are really just initial impressions.

Lesley:
Just. The pink hair. Gorgeous.

That aside though, Leila's a bit...intimidated by Lesley? 6 feet 4 and long pink hair isn't really the most approachable image you find of a person.

But then again, him being a rainbow mage is just awesome and fascinating to an extreme.

Jasper:
Interesting thing: Leila probably thinks Jasper the most "ordinary person" out of the entire group, even though some things she does Leila cannot comprehend. Not as much affinity there in comparison, but yeah. She's interesting, to say at least.

Riley:
A bit like Harper? Just...very friendly and it probably feels really secure being around her. Riley being hyped over things and the whole "dragon tamer" thing probably will make Leila a bit uncomfortable though - which means she'll feel safe staying with Riley but she's gonna be very insecure when Riley's around along with other people? It complicated.

Guides:
Major aesthetic crushes. Songbird especially. Leila has an odd concept of "pretty", so whether that's a good thing remains to be seen. There's also that persistent intrigue because they're beings from another world? Although Leila probably will have growing emotions towards the guides after what they've done for the humans.

Others:
The dead ones - she didn't really get to know all those people up until the events of Sol, so no especially strong feelings towards Emily and Eric's deaths. Vincent, not really, either, since the only interaction between them was Leila crashing into him on the catbus and that wasn't exactly pleasant.

The one person she interacted the most with was Haku, in that some of his remarks sparked Leila's interest in his mind. His personality that got on the nerves of so many others didn't really bother Leila that much, instead she seeked identification with him through shared perception of certain things about the world. But of course, Haku's dead now. Leila's mostly just...confused over it.

Not that Leila doesn't feel grief over people dying, it's just that her lamenting is more of "I don't want that happening to me as well" and less of being genuinely sorry. Haku and Avian's death were otherwise significant in the sense that she perceived them as the strong ones, so it's harder to imagine them dead, having believed they'll be okay on their own all this while. Bonus "valuable research subject lost" points to Haku as well.

Also regarding Harper and Songbird and everyone else's injuries: for the people she cares for she actually develops a strong sense of empathy towards those she got to know. And as much as she's scared of dying she doesn't like to think of people dying - so she'll make efforts to help if given the chance and capability, but it could be ultimately still be mapped onto a selfish intention.

Yehp, Leila a terrible person.

Leila doesn't know what to make of the newcomers yet, so impressions are to be made.

---

The part on mental health:

Feels are happening and she has no idea how to deal with them. Not good. This fight might as well have just pushed her over the despair event horizon, but not just quite yet. At one point she was willing to kill the witch and only didn't do so because she wasn't capable of doing so, and when she realizes what it means to want to kill something that badly in retrospect it'll make her start doubting a lot of things.

The rest time after the fight though, she'll probably just...try very hard to think things through. Certain parts are sure to require "enlightenment" from the other Lost Souls because many events deal with things she isn't familiar with, so that's to be looked forward to. Whether she'll accept that she can't figure it out or just break down because that fact depends on the circumstsances. In general though, it's likely that she'll put back on the attitude back at the start of the journey, when she had nothing to care about but her own mind - re-embracing that attitude is probably going to be used as a way to prevent further damage because she didn't care about what's going to happen to other people if she stays okay. Well we all know you can't exactly "un-feel" things so the best she could do this time around is pretend she doesn't care. Having a hard time persuading herself about things is probably an unavoidable scenario. This can go that bit bittersweet or simply full out traumatic, again, depending on the circumstances.

But yeah. The whole "developing feels" thing might go either way and we'll just to wait to see what happens.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

"It's time we leave, I guess we'll see you guys around, you should join us for tea sometime."

Tea?

Leila’s eyes widened in joy - or rather, something that came as close to joy as possible when there are broken ribs and a gash in the back of the shoulder - upon the mentioning of tea. The people at home prepared excellent beverages of that kind. Dear, did she miss tea…

...smoke bomb.

As if her respiratory system wasn’t going through enough trouble already.

Inhaling the irritating gas, Leila didn’t even cough anymore - the sounds she made were now just suppressed, sharp whimpers coming through a compressed airway - and it was the same sound with her breathing in or out.

”Combat stance!”

One of the humans that joined them, a young boy with fluffy blond hair, shouted gleefully. And, as if on the cue of the over-excited battle cry, the wood that she relied on for support slipped and Leila crumpled onto the ground.

* * * *

The pain in the shoulder when it hit the ground didn’t fade even after a while. In fact, nothing faded - pain and fatigue tend to just stay where they were, it seemed; Leila thought as she lay face-up on the ground. She pondered upon other things, too.

So the heart was a...rock, of sorts. One dark in colour and obviously carved - patterns encompassing the gem’s surface that could only have been a creation of a practitioner of art and not of nature alone. She wondered how that was possible.

She wondered how that was supposed to be reasonable, only to remind herself that it most certainly wasn’t. This was Nowhere, after all.

A few people were around the place. The battered batch of Lost Souls - what’s left of the Lost Souls. It unsettles Leila thinking that and it was even more uncomfortable suppressing the urge to look around for trees and stone statues. She checked - Harper was still breathing, although shallowly. Lesley is resting. Ace was still speaking, although Leila heard her voice slowly fade away - either it really did, or Leila was too tired to stay focused herself and had tuned out. She couldn’t tell.

Two new humans. The jolly boy earlier, and an older lad with a goatee and the kind of cap and hairstyle only artists would have. Ah, artists - Leila smiled weakly as she wondered if he actually was one. Those people tend to be interesting. Where did they come from? She didn’t see any form of transport nearby anytime recently, and it didn’t look like they trekked through the forest like them. Maybe she just wasn’t paying attention, she figured - everything of her memory of the last thirty minutes seemed to have intertwined into a giant ball of thread except impossible to unravel.

Of course, because the notion “thirty minutes” didn’t work as it was expected to. Not here.

There was a third member in the group of strangers. Leila took her as a human at first but she soon revealed herself to be a soldier from Aven, like…the thought of Avian being dead broke her chain of thought once again.

She laid back and just looked at the sky.

It surely wouldn’t hurt to look at the sky a little.

"Hold your heads up high. We still have things to collect. You all still have people to see." Ace.

Leila knew - quite surprisingly that, although this thought didn’t come forth until much later - that those words were intended to sound encouraging; but she couldn’t help but interpret that into something that much more bitter.

There was still work to do.

Leila tried starting to speak - her breathing was less of a struggle now and much more regular, but it didn’t stop her from starting the sentence by hacking up some more of nothing, out of her dry, sore throat.

“...We should - hch - ...have... - hch - ...the tea first.”

...if possible.

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And in their darkest hour the hooded figures flipping took their fourth item away and disappeared. How cruel.

And they didn't invite them to the picnic.

The witch has a rock for a heart? Disappointing. Searching for a USB owned by a clock in a world with no computers and no concept of time...this gun be confusing.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Ran is such perfection.

Totally looking forward to their reaction at all the gore. Ahahahah.