John

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Inadi's image is almost 100% accurate to how I imagined his real-life version but then Jasper's image left me all confused about how her face is supposed to look (Jasper's face gets meaner as she becomes more badass in Nowhere? idk)

Also, sadly reporting that I will be missing this cycle to take care of some work ;-; hope I can join you again soon.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

....alright, I guess?

I'm writing up a post, but the end of this week is going pretty frantic so it might not be until the end of the weekend that I post it.

I'm all for Leila joining the paintball group later though.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

fox nO

Fox you'll probably like Leila's way of thinking though

And posted! It's kind of rushed and fragmented because that's the combined output of several very short lapses of writing within this frantic weekend.

It's also why everything's all philosophical and poetic in some parts and lighthearted in other parts but it doesn't acknowledge at all the hilarious tone that has been happening to Ran's posts

Hhh, second reaction post in a row I need to start emptying out time on the schedule to devote to thinking about this. Sorry about now.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

”It’s so...so...amazing.”

Leila listened to Harper and the Nobody talk about Nowhere and Home.

“Insufficient.” The world slipped through her lips as her sight remain locked on something far away through the window. Only later did she turn to look at Harper and utter the entire sentence:

“Language is not enough.” She said as she bit her lip, “Words are not enough. I can’t… ...can’t possibly explain-” she paused a bit to select the appropriate term, only to change her mind: “-the human realm. Home.”

Home.

During her stay in Nowhere this thought seemed to have only ever been attacking her more and more frequently. The memory of her room, the library, her old bed and blankets. The morning tea, the few people around her. The thoughts stir up a series of uncomfortable connotations she never was sure how to deal with. She once considered to force herself to stop thinking about it for a while, but the same topic kept being brought up. And then, every time she remembered, she would be grateful she still did. She supposed that it was worth it, then.

She realized her expression blurring out into a unfocused gaze, and quickly replaced it with a rather awkward smile towards Harper and the captain.

Uh?

Leila then stumbled a few steps backwards upon feeling something cold bump into her leg. The robot’s feet swiveled about aimlessly, failing to touch the group; its arms flailing and beeping sounds continuously being produced in protest.

“Eeeeh!” She let out a delighted gasp and stepped backwards so that she didn’t get into the way of the flailing legs. That robot is so cute, she thought to herself. Here, let me help you up...uh….umph.

She let go of the robot and stood back up, ruffling her hair in frustration. The robot was made of metal after all and was much heavier than she expected it to be. She could but smile bitterly, shooting a pleading glare towards the Nobody, hoping that he would take the cue and help the poor robot beeping helplessly on the ground.

Leila narrowly escaped being kocked over by the backpack when she reacted and caught it, stumbling slightly in the process.

"Wait...what? We're jumping?"

"It sounds like the human realm is worth fighting for, good luck."

“Your world, too.” She responded, unsure how much of it was only out of politeness. “It’s a great place.”

She still wasn’t sure about how to properly do the compliment thing, so she was looking away from the Nobody’s eyes and at the backpack as she spoke. She flipped it around and observed a few tags and lines and rings to pull on, much like one would find back home on a…

...parachute?

We’re what?

* * * * *

That feeling you get when you’re looking down from a height, that urge to jump - that’s one thing. Actually carrying a parachute and stepping out into the air is another all by its own.

Okay, here it goes. Leila felt a bit silly saying that to herself, but she decided she needed it. The winds high up were strong and on the deck she found herself struggling just to keep her eyes open, but as long as she could see the ground below she knew she would need to get something to distract herself from figuring out how fast she’s going to hit the ground if the parachute didn’t open.

Three,

She breathed deeply, taking a step forward. It wasn’t as bad as she imagine.

Two,

She saw Ace approaching her from behind at the edge of her sight, and that diverted her attention from her counting a bit.

...eighty-one metres per second.

ugh.

"Come on Leila! We can jump together!"

“No wait don’t - “

Yet Ace already took her hand and ran forwards, forcing her to push herself in the direction that would avoid her feet being caught onto the railings - into the air.

The wind was tickling at first, although it grew swiftly until it almost hurt being hit by it in the face as she accelerated into the fall. She laughed as the untidied collar of her shirt flapped against her neck, and her voice was stretched by and then dissipated into the winds. She saw Ace gleefully flippin in circles in the air, her seeming to be yelling something as well, although Leila couldn’t hear it. She felt like yelling too as she fell. Sing, almost - she remembered a couple of songs with lyrics about flying - but then again, of course, she didn’t sing. She ended up continuing to produce laughter and giggles as she felt the air flow across her skin.

She would have been too absorbed to remember opening her chute if it wasn’t for her noticing Ace suddenly shooting upwards. Leila expended a couple of seconds fiddling around before getting a firm grasp on the right line and pulling it hard.

The abrupt jerk from the straps of the backpack were nearly choking, but it soon eased into a smooth, controlled float downwards. The view was excellent from up there, and Leila took her time taking it in. She saw Ace some distance away, above, in her own fall dampened by the parachute. Below them was the land, the marvelous buildings and towers, and the sun glared from behind the silhouette that was the distant skyline of the City of Cogs and Gears.

“Your world too, Nowhere.” She whispered to herself in the air, as if again in reply to the Nobody's notion about the human realm. “your world too.”

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Working on a post to get up before the day ends.

While you are waiting: have a...probably older, more post-nowhere look Leila?

image

After the facecast no mental images are going to be the same. Harper is now Percy Jackson and Riley is forever headcanon'd to secretly head a rock band?

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Not at all! Feel free to write that.

I was going to have Leila hesitate before eventually deciding to jump but well...it wouldn't be a bad thing if someone helped her a bit with the decision.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

LAUGHS WAS THE JUMPING OFF THiNG ALWAYS PLANNED OR DID SOMEONE ACCIDENTALLY PROVOKE YOU TO DO THAT THIS TIME aGAIN

welcome back Fox! Let's get the train back up running *says so while digging through like 6.02 * 10 ^ 23 pending tasks to complete* ok

I might not manage to get a post up until the end of the weekend ;-; I'll alarm you if the cycle goes faster than that and I won't make it. Thanks.

EDIT: Read IC. Little robot adorable. Riley and Harper too adorable to handle. What if the chute won't open. Keeps reading Japhet as someone mispronouncing Jasper.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Just checking in, wandering about, and worrying immensely about the status of Fox's computer.

PC please be ok

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Good luck with your computer Fox ;-;

I was about to decide that I would skip this cycle, but then decided this opportunity was not to be missed. The post was written up in haste and I hadn't the time to think everything through, so I apologize for any incoherence in the post. Not much interaction as I would’ve hoped, but I tried my best to throw in some relevant information for you folks to work on.

And now I go to sleep.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

44th sleep cycle.

The girl dabbed at the page with the short fountain pen in hand, and series of letters accumulated from the trail of the tip.

In the time at the castle, she learnt many things. There was a time when she couldn’t remember what it felt like to have time to rest. And time to think, too. She had both during her stay and she was determined to make good use of it.

It took a while to adjust to it, both mind and body. What was left of wounds mended themselves gradually, and there was no way to tell when exactly the pain went away entirely. It probably never did; though it probably didn’t matter anyway.

She learnt to keep track of time in terms of what she called sleep cycles - every time she wakes up is the start of a new one. Indeed, it wasn’t reliable, and had little to do with the actual flow of time. Yet she decided that it fitted, in that time in Nowhere didn’t behave exactly as expected, and the cycles at least served so that she’d have a guideline in regard to the order of events.

The notebook she wrote on was not large, just small enough to hold in one hand. The pages were more papyrus than the printing paper she found in books, the binding was string, and the cover was a darker shade of blue than the one she looked for. But it came close enough.

She wasn’t sure how much of what she remembered of Hakuren was still reliable, and she could forever only guess what was that he used to write in his notes. These words, though, were her own.

The longer you stay, the more you forget, she was told. She was depending on the ink to fade slower than her memory would.

...On course to collect next item on list. At harbour. Will soon be headed for City of Cogs & Gears via propelled buoyant aircraft.

“Coming.”

She ended the sentence and pulled her sight away from the pages and answered, tucking the notebook and pen into her shirt pocket as she trotted towards the boarding gate and joined her friends.The giant, metal-structure balloon of the ariship was visible hovering in the distance, the rotors attached to the bottom rotating idly.

* * * * *

Leila would probably have preferred being on the deck slightly over staying in the cabin, if not for that there were windows all around the space and, most importantly, the transparent opening that took up much of the centre of the floor, which allowed her an excellent view of what was directly beneath as well.

Besides, there was that insuppressible urge to take the jump when she was at the edge of anywhere high enough in the air.

"Hey Leila, take a look at that."

She stood up from the leather-coated bench and joined Harper at the window, and cast her sights through the glass upon the gigantic structures that composed the City of Cogs and Gears. The window was wide enough for both of them.

Below, mechanical support beams steadily moved, carrying the buildings atop of them like a waiter’s hand did dinner plates. Transport in the city seemed to take all forms, from wheeled to tracked to legged, and hoards of those machines clung at every angle onto the structure of the city. That the City of Cog and Gears was a grand sight wasn’t a fact that was rarely referred to, but the intricacy and integrity of the entire infrastructure was only possible to appreciate when met with her own eyes. It felt less like a city, more like an enormous, organic creature sitting upon the land, sustaining the lives of those who resided on it. Gasps of wonder were never something that the atmosphere in the airship lacked.

Leila then glanced over her shoulder briefly to see the mechanic tinkering desperately with a malfunctioning robot, whose limbs flailed as much as the Nobody’s grasp would allow, as steam puffed out irregularly from its ears and mouth and openings in its joints. Back when she first arrive on the ship it took her about five minutes of observation from a distance to realize that it appeared to be self-aware and what she felt in the subsequent moments was as close as possible to what she imagined people meant when they said their hearts melted. That feeling was clearly not mutual, however, as when Leila failed to resist the urge to run over and touch the robot, its heart happened to melt as well with the heart here being the machine’s circuit work.

And even after the most sincere of apologies she could have uttered and the Nobody repeatedly responding that she needed not worry about it and politely assuring that it was not her fault, Leila couldn’t help but feel that bit of guilt whenever she laid eyes on the two of them. The Nobody now spoke of a hovering village where great inventors resided, and Leila decided she was determined to at least see that place too if she had the chance.

A city of machines, a village in the air. They had compared this trip to a vacation and almost everything Leila felt agreed with that notion. She turned to smile at Harper, who commented on it being a nice change of pace - it was, indeed. There was rest at the castle, but also there were memories and she found that troubling every now and then. What she needed was actually more a chance of scene than a change of pace, and this seemed to be that. She pondered as she lay her gaze idly upon the contours of the buildings and structures below, and far away. A trip to somewhere far, far away...

Funny how the jagged outline at the horizon almost reminded her of home.

She then noticed the fearful expression that appeared on Harper’s face for a moment, but didn’t understand what it represented. She had been paying more attention to details on what people did and what they indicated, but there were still times like this. She sighed inwardly, but made her best effort to hide her frustration lest those who saw her felt the same.

Harper motioned for the others to come as well and went back to looking out the window. Leila did the same, brushing a few strands of hair out of her eyes as she watched the metal dinosaur walk out of sight.