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 Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2024 8:44 pm
Quote: Engine 21 (12) : Once, Destiny City had a functioning train station. Over the years the tracks took their damage, and the cost to repair couldn’t be justified. So the city let it, and the station, fall into ruin. Of course there have been rumors that the train station was a hot spot for ghouls, stuck in perpetual transit. Lost souls with no place to go. It’s not uncommon for trespassers to come out of the station claiming they saw some frightful apparition wearing outfits right out of the mid 1900s. Sometimes, they even hear the whistle of a train, or the clattering of the track as a phantom train rolls in. Engine 21 was the last train to depart from the station, allegedly, and derailed on the way to the mountains. There were no survivors, but the legend differs in how many souls were lost. Some say, if you stand on the platform at 3:33AM you can hear their screams forever cemented in an endless loop, reliving their deaths nightly. It’s not uncommon for people to say that the railroad crossings will mysteriously light up and lower despite no oncoming trains, and some have even said they’ve seen a phantom train speeding through the night. Maybe it’s just a ghost story, but maybe you’ve seen something, too.
But no, there he was, following a rumor. A rumor of a haunted train. Like that wasn't totally just as dangerous. But at this point? Cleeia was sort of pissed. he was tired of running into these bizarre, inexplicable things. This magical....bullshit that refused to conform to The Rules, As Understood By Cleeia.
So fine. He was here. Standing at the old station, arms crossed, looking fiercely unhappy with everything happening to him.
Also, it was cold. Fortunately, being a Senshi made him not feel it as much, but....it was cold and he was cranky about that. Just, generally.
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Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 1:42 pm
Despite the way the incident a couple weeks ago with Kaifeng and his Wonder filled with skeletons made her feel, Bélénos loved creepy stuff. Just not... real stuff. When the skeletons were fake for Halloween and the blood was all chocolate sauce for the movies, that was fine! Fun! Good times!! The skeletons embedded all over the walls in Kaifeng's weird Wonder home were not fun and good times. Ghosts weren't real, of course, so heading off to see the creepy ghost trains wasn't a big deal. Mostly it was an exercise in fun, maybe try to guess if it was just people's minds playing tricks on them or people playing tricks on minds, and if it was the latter, to guess how it was being done. Running into someone else here was unexpected. The Order aura made her skittish, a little, but she knew a few people and hoped she was going to run into one of the open-minded people so she could gush about weird ghost s**t with them. "Hello," she called out in a friendly tone. "Uh, fellow... ghost... hunter?" She cringed at herself. Wow. Yeah, that sounded totally like something a normal person would say. Blech.
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Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 1:49 pm
The Dark Mirror, Cleeia decided, was probably not a threat. Generally, they hadn't seemed all that buddy buddy with the Negaverse, so while they had that odd Chaos aura, and it did make him feel a little tense, it didn't make him want to fight-or-flight the way the Negaverse did.
So he hung out, still watching the empty train station, frowning at it like he could stare and get it to reveal its secrets. If there was someone else here, all the better; they could compare observations. So, when a voice called to him, he turned, and it took him a moment to place the itch of familiarity, but--
"Oh, hey! Belenos, right? You got attacked by that gargoyle thing? Nice to see you're okay!" This was definitely someone he could trust to not attack him, because it would be shitty to do that after he and Thalassa had helped her. "Come to see about the ghost train rumors, too?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 2:23 pm
Belenos brightened when she recognized the voice and then the person as she actually got within range of her sight—aw, hell, she probably needed a new prescription with her glasses. She should have recognized him sooner than she had by hearing his voice. Ah, well, things to try to remind herself of once she got home tonight. "Yeah! And you're, uh, Cleeia, that's it!" she chirped, striding over to him with a large grin on her face. "Hehe, no little chunk of rock could keep me down for long. And yeah! I love ghost s**t. What do you think? Is there someone out here making spooky noises with practical effects or what?" She bounced on the balls of her feet as she talked a mile a minute, not slowing down, the excitement of meeting up with a friend on pure happy little accident filling her with an energy that was tough to expel.
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Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 7:35 pm
It was hard to feel the spooky atmosphere with someone literally bouncing next to him, and honestly, Cleeia was glad for that. He was pretty sure he'd started freaking himself out, thinking too much about all the weird, spooky encounters he'd had, but with someone else here?
It felt way better.
"I haven't seen anything yet," he said, "and I've run into some other weird magic stuff the past couple weeks, so I thought maybe it was that. But, you know, magic has rules, right? It works in certain ways, and doesn't just...happen? So I want to see what I can, and if it's someone screwing around, that's....you know, that's better."
Than an actual ghost train, which obviously was not real and did not exist.
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 1:12 pm
Bélénos nodded enthusiastically as Cleeia talked, absolutely thrilled to be here with another person. It made everything so much easier. Sure, she would have had fun by herself, but she did always run the risk of her brain getting ahead of her and freaking her out. Sometimes the deep recesses of the lizard brain would overtake the logic part of her brain and tell her the ghosts were in fact going to get her, and she needed to run. "Yeah, seems Halloween is good for weird stuff happening a lot," she said with a small laugh. "Which is why I think this one is actually just a weird prank. Some of it is totally weird magical crap, some of it just has to be weirdos. Like, statistically speaking."
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 1:21 pm
Cleeia nodded, thoughtfully. That made sense. It couldn't all actually be real, some of it had to just be...what every other ghost story was. People screwing around, or weird phenomena, and then add a touch of exaggeration and the human instinct towards storytelling and also what was formally referred to as "bullshit", and you got....a ghost train. Apparently.
"Right, yeah, that makes sense." Honestly, it felt nice to have something to be rational about. "And something like this...it's pretty simple in theory, right? Some mirror tricks and a sound system? So....yeah."
Maybe tyhey'd catch the prankster. Or maybe the prankster would see two fancy weirdos and be too scared to pull anything, given all the stories of costumed activities in the city.
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 1:36 pm
"Hehe, exactly! A good sound system, and someone who can do a horror movie scream. Not to brag, but I am personally excellent at those. I've worked hard on getting those high pitches!" she said, very much bragging with a soft giggle. "Anyway... Seems like they're not out tonight, or they can hear us and they're pissy they can't scare us. Hah! Let's blow this popsicle stand." She blew a raspberry into the mist to show those pranksters exactly what she thought of them.
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