[SPOOKY TRAIN HONK]

[maskormods]

There is a mysterious quality to the air tonight...perhaps due in part to the reprieve from the zombies and strange monsters rampaging about? Indeed, the space you've wandered into seems to exude a kind of serenity that's been lacking of late...it's as soothing as it is suspicious, and it only gets stranger from there.

Whatever you were up to, wherever you were going...it doesn't really seem to matter much the moment you spot them — someone you never expected to see here, even in this weird world. Maybe they're a long-lost family member, lover, or cherished friend...someone you cared for deeply, someone who made you who you are today, someone whose absence leaves a hole in your heart to this day. There they are...and there they go.

No matter how fast you give chase (yes, even you most speedy of speedsters), they seem to be just barely out of reach, even though they seem to be walking a natural pace! And soon, they'll lead you to the platform of a train...



ARRIVAL
It might not sink in right away, but this quaintly-crafted locomotive is very unlike the subways and trains of the city you've been living in. Neither are its passengers — all of them somewhat transparent, somewhat glowing...and all of them quite content to be there, eager to greet and welcome you along for the ride.

While you search for the specter of your loved one, you will definitely encounter others who were charmed into climbing aboard as well; perhaps that'll be enough to shake you out of the stupor? Or maybe it'll take a bit more time to realize something's really amiss. No worries — there's nothing but time here; you'll find clocks have stopped, even if the Network is still accessible. Who knows how long it's been since you boarded, and when?

The train passes along to each of the cities in its own time at its own pace — even phasing through other vehicles in its path. As it collects its new passengers, there's a chance to finally, finally sit down and speak to that special lost loved one again! How many people can say they have that chance?!

ASCENT
When all the cities have been touched, finishing with that spooky city of Jeopardy (where more than a few spectral passengers are picked up, as well!), the train closes its doors and begins to accelerate. Faster, faster...then up...and up...to the stars! You have a plain view from any window to see the colors of the sky shift, the atmosphere part, and the blanket of stars overtake the view, leaving the Earth behind. It's quite beautiful...but also, perhaps, bad? You live down there, after all! Maybe it's time to call for help, or find a way off this mystery train...

ADIEU
Whether you've found a way into the escape pods or gotten the passenger cars decoupled from the engine, it means farewell to this ghostly train on its destination to the unknown. Or, maybe...you've just had enough of that life down below, and just want to stay with the one you've missed so much. It's not your place to decide, however, but at least...at least you'll finally be able to give a goodbye (or another one).

Those who don't escape will find their eyes fluttering open, as if waking from deep sleep, standing before the platform they'd boarded. And in their heart? The last few parting words with the ghosts of loved ones from another realm...

What a strange gift.

Details and questions here!

Comments

[numberthree]

She hadn't looked, had she. Always be aware of your surroundings, their father had droned over and over and over again. Until they could have listed off exits and hiding spots with a single glance across a room, without entirely realizing they were. But she hadn't, had she. She hadn't looked. She didn't know where the doors were, or how many spaces the seats and closed closets offered as cover, and she certaintly hadn't looked at the windows.

Which made her tear her eyes that way, even as she knew it would hit with the force of a fist in her teeth.

Knocking her metaphorically backwards as the sky outside the windows was not the sky in the citiy it'd been when she chased her daughter's laughing shadow on to this train. There were stars beginning to appear and in a velvety black as bright blue and white fled them, and even if Allison couldn't quite convince her body to shove the lie (Claire - Not Claire - Claire - Not Not Not Claire) from her, she asked,

Is there anything I can do to help?

On the way to ripping her chest right back out of her heart again.

A thought that in anyone else might have been despair, but Allison, Three, never gave to despair when it was so so much easier to hand rage the reigns. That this place had used her daughter against her again. A second time. And even worse in this one. Breathing life into her from that frozen visage. It didn't make her want to cry and quail. It made her want to rip throats out.

[iminthebook]

"Gather everyone close, if you can. Get their attention and get them close, and ready to run. If I open the portal, they will need to book it. We only have until we get to the moon, if this train goes that far."

Harry looks up at her, then, worry and a need to hurry in his eyes. "The nanites fail at the far side of the moon. If we're not ready by then... everyone here," and his eyes slide right to the ghosts near the living, "everyone still alive here, they all die. And with the nanites failing past the moon... they might not come back."

On his chest, his silver pentacle is beginning to glow, as he drew on its power, a source of energy to sustain him, to push his efforts higher. He will drain it in the doing, but he has no choice, he knows.

He bends down once more to continue drawing on the floor, silver ink spreading lines that glow, runes that shine in blue light, as he chants under his breath. He trusts Allison and knows she can do just about anything. But will this task, this situation tear her apart like it is doing him? He is sure of it, really. But he has no choice, and he is pretty sure she doesn't either.

All he knows is time is ticking and his heart feels like it did long ago in a temple as he watched friends come close to dying, and instead chose to kill another, in the name of hope, in the name of loss, in the name of love.

[numberthree]

Allison listens, trying to switch tracks, breathing slow as she takes in what he's saying and the steps it will require. The details she wasn't even sure she knew before this moment. The nanites had worked on the moon so long ago at her Swear-In, but now she knew they were doing it at the edge of where it all stopped working, too. (Which made that base and the organization involved with it right on the edge of it all, too, didn't it.) Thoughts for later. Things to tell Luther. But later.

When now was looking around the room, at the others there, thinking about his words.

About asking the girl who had no words, and none of their names, or the ability to make a sound to get their attention.

Except there's nothing doing for it, and she knows it even as his instructions are still spinning out. She can't do the magic, so he can't be doing the rest either. Which means she has to. Figure it out. Find a way. Do whatever it takes, to save as many of the people with them as possible. Allison looked down at the little girl in her arms, so perfectly a duplicate of her daughter. Every expression, every shift. But not her. She knew it deep in the dark of her bones, where she knew that getting Claire back like this would be too easy and she didn't deserve easy. She deserved this; and worse.

Not her, but the closest she'd come in nearly a year. Allison let her thumb brush the skin beside the girl's eye and, then, she closed her eyes, clenching them tight and thought fiercely words that would never find her lips, even if she had the voice to speak them. I love you. More than the sun, more than moon. More than Luther. Or myself. More than every single award I've ever earned piled together. I'm going to get back to you. To save you. The real you. I will. Or I'll die trying. I promise.

Then, Allison opened her eyes, wet now, unable to be stopped, and even as Claire's little face was bewildered, which was turning to outright fear as Allison stood up, untangling those small, same familiar arms from her, she started moving. She might not have words, but Allison had never feared getting her hands dirty and she started for the closest group of people hugging and crying and laughign together, tossing back to Harry through the Network.

Do it.

She'd do whatever she had to. Even if it was grabbing a person and physically forcing them to see what was happening out the windows of the train.

[iminthebook]

Harry is pushing and spinning his magic out now, pushing as much of himself into this as he can. His skin itself is glowing a light blue now, as he runes he is laying out are spreading, turning into a circle that pulses outward from the point where he started.

he trusts her to work, to get the people ready, to move, he trusts her because he has no choice and because he just does, because she is Allison and he has been enough around her to be confident in her.

And hopeful.

As he concentrates and speaks, he stands, and a spiral of light starts forming before him, a slowly building gate, a teleportation spot that when opened fully can bring people back to a place Harry knows well, the Porter station in Heropa.

"Getting it ready." His fear is palpable, not for himself, but for the others, for his daughter, for Allison. For everyone that he could fail if he fucks up.

[numberthree]

Allison did her best. Started rousing people, most of whom had a vague, polite curiosity what was going on when she interrupted their reunions huddles but who were at the best not all that pleased with what she was there to do. To show them, as the train kept careening into the starry void of space and the light blue was burned away completely from the windows, taking the atmosphere with it. She jerked and moved and pushed people toward where Harry was

(trying not to look for, look back to, Claire, even as part of her chest and the back of her mind pleaded for it

one more look, one more smile, even a terrified whimper, even she ground her teeth and pushed on, pushed through).

warnings for mentions of blood

[iminthebook]

[ And then the portal is open, and he is holding it for everyone, holding it, and opening it wider than he ever has before, wider than he should be able to, even as he shouts. ]

Everyone, get through now!

[ The porter station is visible on the other side, and sunlight on open concrete and grass, and Harry smells it as he kneels at the side of the circle, hands planted there on the ring that surrounds the portal, not looking up, not wanting anyone to see the blood coming out of his eyes and nose, not wanting them to know the cost.

He feels the energy leaving him as people pass through, and as some ghosts try, only to vanish in mid-transit, and he grits his teeth, and feels his heart pounding, and his chest tightening. The portal shakes, but it holds, gods damn it. It holds, as he doesn't quite scream, as blood starts trickling from his eyes, and he reaches into every small space of himself, every low place, for everything he can. ]

I'm sorry, [ he says, to Maggie, to Claire, to Allison, to no one. Words murmured and quiet and hurting but there. ]

[numberthree]

Allison is none too gentle with getting the stragglers and the uncertain forced through the opening. They don't get a choice between dying and being saved today. That's not something she's got room for in this moment. Not something she was trained to ever stop for. The Umbrella Academy did not lay down and die for anything, and it did everything it could to make sure everyone possible was saved. When it's just down to them, Allison turned back to Harry on the ground

(trying her hardest not to look to Claire, even as her gaze flicked there,
the girl in a nest of ghosts that looked less and less congenial, less and less real,
the more everyone was taken from them, the more than their plot to steal everyone was broken;

even as her heart continued to pound, to thunder, to demand, another second, another choice)

and held out a hand rough and fast and precise.

"Your turn now. Everyone else is through."

The blood dripping on the floor below him, which could only be coming from one source, didn't halt or pause her. Allison Hargreeves -- or more aptly, Three -- had been helping pick up at least on of her brothers soaked in blood from head to foot since before she'd even become a teenager. It was a detail, but it wasn't 'a horror' worth pausing for while they were still on this train and safety was only a few steps away

lemme know if this is okay.

[iminthebook]

[ He held and he held and he held, and he felt himself shuddering, but the spell held and those people got through.. Somehow, suddenly, Allison was talking to him, and at first he didn't understand. But he looked up and saw only ghosts around them... including their daughters. He shuddered as he forced himself up, and laid his hand in Allison's stumbling as he came to his feet. ]

Together.

[ He drug his gaze across those of the girls and felt his resolve flicker, but then he nodded, and he stepped away, one step, then another, alongside Allison. He had tears on his face, along with the blood, and he was staggering, as he could only think of how, this time by choice, he was leaving his daughter behind. It tore at him, and shook him, and he felt himself rage at this. Again, he was making this choice, and again he had no other, and he felt like a failure doing it.

And then, with a flare of light, they were in sunlight, and he staggered to his knees. His power flared, and then the portal was simply gone. ]

[numberthree]

[ The flood of sunlight everywhere was overwhelmingly nauseating. If it wasn't for the two decades of training, Allison thinks she would have lost everything in her stomach then and there. But it stayed put, sour bile alone crawling its way up her throat as her eyes scanned the area for the train car interior with its windows full of endless midnight stars (for Claire, Claire, Claire a high pitched manic whisper od her thoughts stabbed), but it was a city again.

Allison reached up to wipe at her face, the space under her chest turning a hard and hollow ache that gnashed its teeth, taking grief and alchemizing it into quickly boiling rage. Again, she was glad she didn't have to speak. Knew her voice would have betrayed her. The same with anything that required her to unlock her jaw as she watched, disjointedly as those who'd been pushed through and came through first were blinking into awareness, confused, emotions beginning to splinter as they truly realized what had been done to them. ]

[iminthebook]

[ Harry shifted, sitting down now, and watched the people adjusting and reacting and rejoicing, and crying and mourning, some of them, to being back home. As for Harry? He felt... numb. Drained of life and energy and emotion.

With shaking hands, he reached into his pocket and pulled out some handkerchiefs and started wiping his face off. He probably should have gone to a hospital, but right now he could not be bothered to move. He just wiped, and scrubbed, and stared off into a distance.

All he saw, as he stared, were the faces of his daughter, and now of Claire, too, as he left them behind. It filled his vision, and he scrubbed his face harder as he clamped his jaws, his teeth grinding slightly, and feeling a failure, for all that they had saved these people.

He didn't even notice as he wiped his face that some of what he was wiping was tears. It was that kind of a day. Hell, it was that kind of a week.

Finally, he managed to look up, blinking away tears, or blood, or whatever it was, and spotting Allison. He did not ask her how she was, or if she was okay, because that was dumb. He wasn't sure what to ask, but one question popped into his head and he blinked before just asking it, still feeling shocked and utterly blank. ]

Do you drink, like, alcohol?

[numberthree]

[ Allison looked back to find Harry sitting on the ground, his expression one of smeared blood and what was probably tears, processing the words he'd said like they came down a tunnel. Not like the lightning fast call and response demand of training to one of five specific voices, and especially the first, which directed them when even direction and focus was gone. Trained beyond all others to answer and follow.

She focused on him for a long moment. On Harry. On the question. On the repurcussion, requirement, requisite under it. ]

Yes.




But no.

[ But she wasn't Klaus. Her first reaction wasn't to pour herself into a drink. That would happen eventually. But it wasn't her first reaction or even her fifth, and the last thing she wanted to do, that the thought of alone made her want to out walk her skin, was have to say something about why. About how. Who. ]

Are you going to be okay after doing all of that? You don't need to see a medic or anything?

[iminthebook]

[ He blinked at her words. ]

Yes, but no? Now I am very confused. [ His mind was skittering around ideas, pulling things together. He felt odd, and weird, and tired, very tired, and sad, and he fought clear of the vision of those eyes, the pair of them, in two small faces, staring as he glanced back while stepping through the teleportation. ]

I just had the weirdest random idea. Mac had once told me the secret to making his dark ale and as I was sitting here, I thought, suddenly, maybe I could make it here... if I could ever make the time. And it felt like... something I would want to share.

[ He paused, shifting a little. ]

With a friend.

[ Maybe that was odd, that he considered her that, but he did. He was maybe a little out of it right now. Her question took a minute to reach him, and he slowly blinked. ]

I think I should probably go to a hospital. I may be in shock.

[ He felt like the world was whirling around a little and his hands felt a little numb.

He reached in his pocket to pull out his phone, fumbling for it, dropping it. He got it in his hands again and hit a number on his dial.

He welcomed the whirly-brain, frankly, anything not to think about what had just happened right now. ]

[numberthree]

Yes, I appreciate a good drink.

But, no, if you were offering, I don't want one right now. Later would probably be fine.

[ The first part was a lie, but it's a paltry one by far next to some of the ones she's told. She does want a drink, but she wants some other things far more. She can feel the rage and despair in her veins. She can feel the need to tear into something, so she doesn't just fall to her knees and start sobbing, which is not an option. Three rarely exhibited a need for comfort for any assumed weaknesses.

But Claire. It was Claire.

Who was maybe more than the sum of all of her. ]

I'll get an ambulance.

[ It's easy enough to send an alert through the Network. She's worked out a lot of things she can do faster when she's contacting people without even a phone. Direct information. Location data and pausing only for the numbers of people there who, also, might need help from them. Vague details for that moment. ]

Fin?

[iminthebook]

Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound that way. Getting a little loopy.

Thanks, Allison.

[ And it was perhaps merciful that he passed out before the ambulance got there and they hauled him away, that he could not think as he was manhandled and sent off to the hospital for that.

Where he would wake up, sometime later, and find himself waking up crying. A single name on his mind.

Maggie.

It would be a long time before his nightmares do not contain that last look again. ]