#ic threads

"Ya know, it's not every day you get a letter from another world asking for training. But! With the old fox's World Bridge spell, I guess anything is possible. So, are you the 'former karate kid' mentioned therein?"

Amber was in her hotel room at the makeshift desk, in the process of finishing up the presentation for the monthly report when a large door just… popped into existence, in the middle of the room. Okay, that was odd, was Kee-Kee on the nip again and doing some Dalí-style remodeling?

Before she could follow that train of thought any further, said new door swung open and an absolutely mahoosive guy stepped through. "Jėzau Marija!" she yelped as she shot up from her seat. Well, she was in precisely the wrong place to call onto either of these two, but old habits definitely died hard. The hare sinner’s orange eyes darted from the new arrival’s face to the definitely familiar-looking piece of paper.

 Hazel watched Simon run at the gravity plate again, taking another bite of the ration bar Grace had given her. They'd been stuck in the car for a while now, the only real clue they had to solving the car's bizarre puzzle was the various gravity hotspots that altered their orientation to the ground. Grace had gone off to try and find an alternate route for them to navigate to the door high above them, leaving Hazel to watch Simon pinball his way around the hotspots before falling back down in slow motion.

"Grace says if you ov- over-" She said to him, trying to sound out the word Grace had said earlier with little success. "She says if you get tired again, you'll hurt yourself!"

Simon paused for a moment to turn his attention to Hazel, eyebrows furrowing. He understood Grace meant well, but he felt as though she’d underestimated him a little bit. And thus, her warning might have had the opposite effect form what was intended.

“I know what she said, but I’d like to think I’ll be able to tell if I’ve overdone it to the point that it’s dangerous.” He brushed away a few loose strands of hair that had escaped from his ponytail and fallen into his face, studying the various hotspots for a moment.

“Besides, I think I can figure this out before it gets that bad. There must be something here I’m missing.”

Simon felt like he couldn’t breathe. A horrible weight pressed down on his chest, practically suffocating him. The fight he’d had with Grace had only amplified his already worsening mental state. A million thoughts were whirling through his mind, too many for him to even begin to process. But there was one thing he knew for certain: he couldn’t step up as leader like Grace had wanted. So instead, he ran away.

At first he wasn’t sure where he was even going. His only instinct was to get away, as quickly as possible. But finally he’d made the decision that he would go and see Samantha. As much as he didn’t like being around her, as much as he tried to tell himself he hated her... sometimes she was the only person left that he could turn to.

But before he could even get there, he heard footsteps racing up behind him. Freezing in place, he spun around to face them- and found that it was one of the Apex children. Surprise flashed through Simon’s eyes for a moment, and his frown deepened.

“... Shiloh, what are you doing here?” He tried to force some kind of composure into his voice, but he was clearly in shambles. His face was tear-streaked, and his breath and voice still shook. “Go back to the mall car, I’ll...”

@party-goddess

At first this seemed like pretty random comment to get while out on errands. Then she realised she'd left the hotel with the giant icebreaker sticker that said

Hello, my name is:

Amber

Ask me about:

Needlework

still stuck to her hoodie. Amazing. Next time, she'd have to try a "Kick me!" post-it note on the back. She turned to the person who had asked her about it.

"Well yes, you absolutely can crochet and knit clothes if you're patient, but I'd recommend starting with smaller projects first, like a headband or buttoned scarf."

Hang on a sec, why did that face look familiar? The server wasn't readily feeding her any articles, so maybe she was remembering an image from one of Laz' contributions for the other rings? Oooooooh!

Techno's burning glare at the passenger did not falter, and he felt some sick satisfaction at making it squirm beneath him. The human had caused much trouble for creatures like the pig-man and was the most likely reason his family never returned to their home.

"Took ya long enough," he answered gruffly. "What did ya in? Get bored of slaughterin' us an' destroyin' our homes? Figured out that violence isn't the universal language you thought it was?"

And, despite his rough tone and harsh words, Techno found himself genuinely curious. What was it that finally convinced its ruthless group that the denizens did not exist solely for their sake? After endless begging and pleading on behalf of the train's many creatures, which one broke the Apex's resolve?

Simon took a deep breath, forcefully pushing down his nervousness in hopes of appearing more confident. As much as he knew the majority of what had changed in him was a good thing, he didn’t like how it had amplified his anxious streak tenfold. It had always been there, of course. He was just far better at masking it when he was the second-in-command of the Apex, and not just another passenger wandering the train. 

“We didn’t just get bored. A lot happened, and it led us to realize that we were going about things the wrong way.” It was too long of a story to go over to some random denizen who happened to know who he was. It wasn’t just one thing that had made them change their minds, it was a whole sequence of events that lasted over several months.

He hoped that the denizen would just let him go, but unfortunately he was getting the notion that it wasn’t going to be that easy. He realized vaguely that there was likely a good reason for that. He’d done very little to prove that he was telling the truth, and nobody outside of the Apex was aware of his aversion to lying.

Simon was taking a break from walking, sitting alone in a fairly relaxed train car. The car was designed like a fairly normal tea shop on the surface. But instead of having people working in the shop, the workers themselves were all tea cups.

Oh, the things the train came up with.

Nonetheless, he was doing his best to ignore the denizens. He didn’t intend on staying for long, just enough time to rest his legs. He’d been walking nonstop for longer than maybe he should have. And he wasn’t even sure why. It wasn’t like he had a specific destination anymore.

Then, he heard the bell ring at one of the doors. Looking up sharply, he inadvertently made eye-contact with another passenger. His eyes widened, and he immediately looked away. He hadn’t interacted with another passenger since Grace had left, and he wasn’t even sure he’d know how to go about it anymore.

And yet, he needed to find someone to travel with eventually. Because he was all too aware that he didn’t do well by himself. Taking a deep breath, he looked back in her direction, eyebrows raising as he noticed the little tea cups frantically trying to take her order from the floor. (They were the size of normal tea cups, oddly enough.)

As Phil turned to look at him, Simon looked towards the ground. It wasn’t hard to tell that he was beginning to spiral again, in spite of his attempts to keep quiet about the unwanted thoughts that were becoming louder and louder in his head. He was painfully aware of his number increasing by a few digits relatively frequently, and while it hadn’t climbed nearly as high as it had once been, it was a bigger increase than he’d had in awhile.

“And neither of us know what to do about it.” He kicked lightly at the ground, and sighed. It was an assumption, based on Phil’s response, that they were both just as lost. While it was slightly relieving to learn he wasn’t the only one in that position, it really didn’t help him see any way out of it.

Simon genuinely wasn’t sure how much more he could take. His fallout with Grace weighed heavily on his heart, and convincing himself fully that he had done the right thing was proving to be more difficult than he thought it would be. Yet the one thing he had convinced himself of was that he couldn’t go back, and thus he continued on his trek towards the Apex.

Except, something had happened. The very first thing he had noticed was that it seemed to be taking longer to get to the Mall Car than he had expected it to. In fact, he was sure he had only been a few more cars away, but it felt as though he’d gone through more than just a few. And it bothered him, but at first he tried to ignore it, hoping that it was just his imagination.

It was not just his imagination.

When he finally broke down and decided to check his number tracker again, he found something highly disturbing. The group of numbers he had been tracking was gone. He double checked and triple checked, hoping that he was missing something. But he couldn’t find anything that resembled the Apex, either behind or ahead of him.

But what he did see was a pair of passengers, in the car immediately ahead of him. Not the entire Apex by any means, but given that he was so sure he had been close, there was a possibility they could have been from the Apex. And maybe they’d know what had happened to the rest of them.

So he pressed on, hoping that by doing so he would find answers. But unfortunately for him, when he finally did stumble across one of the passengers he had seen on the number tracker, it was one he didn’t recognize. Visibly frustrated, Simon shoved the number tracker back into his pocket, and almost walked away without saying anything at all.

But he seemed to think better of it, realizing that even though the other passenger wasn’t who he was looking for, there was a chance he knew what had happened to them. Turning back around, he sighed.