Private Isulus The 3:10 To Youmacon

[Madison Mortiere]

One ticket for the rabbit, as an apology for 1) shooting her in the boob during their spar, and 2) for not having a bottle of strong bourbon handy (as was her normal method of apologizing).

One ticket for the rabbit's bumbling meatsack puppy dog (who absolutely and hilariously whiffed an admission of love, mind) who just wouldn't stop trailing behind her.

One ticket for the very nice, very tall elf who saved her ass when she could have slapped a layer of ice around anyone else. A kindness quickly repaid; as the raven never liked being in debt.

Finally, one ticket for her. A promise, and a contract.

The four of them, battered, broken, bloodied, but somehow still alive, stood in a circle near the edge of the expedition camp. Madison gripped the four thick strips of paper tightly in her hands, and looked at each of them in turn. "Gonna' be honest with you all--this is my first time trying this. Soooooo, I have no fuckin' idea what's gonna' happen."

And then, she tore the edges away in one fell swoop.

It wasn't at all like she figured. There was no sundering of space and time, no eldritch beings or skeletal arms reaching through to pull them into a different realm. Their bodies weren't spaghettified; their flesh not torn from their meat and their meat torn from their bone and their bones ground to microscopic dust in order to be funneled to the near-afterlife. There were no screams--of the undead, of demonic fiends, of the travelers themselves.

Reality melted away as if their world was naught but wax; and all around them, a dessert landscape emerged. Wrong; but relaxingly so.

A pitch-black, starless sky above. Towering sandstone buttes rising in the distance, looming ageless shadows outlined in stark blues. The gentle snaking riverbeds, the fluorescent line of their waters barely a trickle. All around them. Scribbles of color, where drying bush grasped onto the cracked earth for dear life or the trunks of trees stood, leafless and lifeless, their limbs bleached onyx by the nonexistent sun.

And below their boots, the wooden platform of the stagecoach station.

It took Madison a moment to catch her breath, caught up as she was in the desolate, muted splendor of it all. "Well, here we are! We're all in one piece, right?" She glanced over at the others, giving them each a once-over. Strangely enough, she could see them perfectly. They weren't obscured by the lack of light; nor did they have any funky blue outlines. As cool as that would've been.

"The stagecoach should be here any minute. The driver told me I'll never have to wait long for a ride."

@Toko @Brutus Dahlgren @Magdalyn

 

[Toko]

.

.

Sleep had caught up to the rabbit shortly after the finale, her exhausted body no longer able to stay awake and conscious without some needed rest. It had been a few hours later that the Lepus had finally stirred besides the larger Felis as Toko rejoined the world of the living, before Madison had come over with her apolo-tickets for a free coach ride in what could be considered as an Underworld.

A few moments later the hare found herself standing in a spot Madison had mapped out, the familiar lion besides her along with a blue haired Elf that Toko hadn’t met before, while Toko watched the gunslinger at work. Suddenly reality as they knew it had melted away before them, giving up its space for the dark and blue tinted desolated landscape that adorned this new reality—the Lepus’ eyes blinking as they looked all around them in awe and wonder.

"Uwaaah, I’ve never seen a place like this before…"

Long ears twitched at the different sounds that could be found inside this new plane of existence, no longer plagued by the incessant ringing a certain Shanuke had created earlier in the dawn. A foot pressed down onto the wooden floor as if testing it, the surface creaking slightly from the pressure before Toko paused—no need to break it after all—upon validating it was indeed all real.

"This is really cool, Mads! How did you even get those tickets in the first place?"

@Madison Freebird @Brutus Dahlgren @Magdalyn

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

Brutus had a few reservations about the whole affair. They'd just risked life and limb to avoid a short dip into the underworld, and here they were using it as a glorified subway station more or less. He'd have raised more protest, but his happy go lucky Hare who had him by the heartstrings, Toko, had decided she was all in favor of the spooky subspace subway. Brutus, having just made several personal revelations, and being currently without his canon, reevaluated his position on spectral travel if it meant he could spend more time with Toko that involved a decreased chance of getting jumped by shrooms.

Also present was Magdalyn, who he hadn't seen since the debacle with another rabbit had introduced themselves to each other, her presence on this excursion put him significantly more at ease, with firepower like this if things went sideways he was sure they wouldn't have any issues.

He watched with a mix of mild concern and intrigue as Madison ripped the tickets and suddenly sent them all on one hell of a trip. Whatever was in those tickets he needed more of later, this was cool. All of his reservations with the plan melted with the folds of reality, and he found himself rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet slightly excitedly.

"I'm also curious how you managed to snag tickets like this, and how one might be able to acquire more in the future." He would peer past the woman into the darkness, if this was a stagecoach platform, surely a stagecoach was on it's way, no?

"Also, do we have any idea what to expect? Should we be worried about heckled about spirits of the damned or anything like that?

@Toko @Briarheart @Magdalyn

 

[Magdalyn]

"I feel like I'm in a video game."

As soon as the words passed her lips, the stupidity of them struck her. Deep crimson climbed her cheeks, and embarrassment crept into her voice as she amended, "I mean, a different game. An old-school one, like Tron or something." With one hand, she motioned to their surroundings. "The neon and everything, y'know? Very eighties."

Not that Mags had any idea what the eighties looked like, considering she was born much later. But she'd already made a big enough fool of herself, and elaborating further would just mean digging a deeper hole. So instead she hooked her thumbs in the little loopy things on her pants, and wished for the billionth time that her outfit had pockets.

Her gaze wandered away from her three companions, and she caught herself again gazing at the haunting landscape. The tell-tale signs of a desert were all present, but the bright outlines against the stark black gave everything a trippy Main Street Electrical Parade vibe. Wherever this place was, she'd never even heard a whisper of it during her time in Terrasphere. Maybe it was new with the updated second version? Or maybe it was really so exclusive that no one else had visited before? The thought brought about excitement and apprehension in equal measure.

"I appreciate your offering me a ticket," she stated suddenly, turning back to Madison. "You didn't have to, but you did, so thanks."

@Madison Freebird @Toko @Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Madison Mortiere]

Actually, Magdalyn was onto something. Madison gazed out across the near-afterlife once more, and she could see it--Tron, by the way of the game you play on Chrome when your internet is down.

"No," she said, quickly cutting off the woman with the blue hair. "Your ice shield kept some of those bugs from snacking on my skin. Probably saved my ass, if I'm being honest. So this is the least I could do."

Her arms, legs, neck, and torso still bore the marks of those bastard razorflies or whatever you wanted to call them. She managed to draw enough spirit energy that lingered over the dead and dying to heal the worst of them; menders at the camp took care of the rest. But their work was quick, for they still had the entire remainder of the expedition to tend to.

At least her suit was knitting itself back together real nice. The bloodstains were already so kind to have cleaned themselves up all nice!

Of course, Toko and Brutus were begging her for the details on how she acquired the tickets. "Why do you get to have cool things, and we caaaaaan't?!?!" As if one of them didn't have a big fuck-off canon that got all sorts of attention, and the other wasn't fast as butter on a hot skillet with fists that hit like pistons. Fucking protags--you give them a health potion, they demand all your magic items and burn down your store.

"That," she said, eyeing them both with equal measure and caution, "is a trade secret."

As for what to expect? "Well, this is my first time down here, so I honestly don't know. The being that will be carrying us around told me that there shouldn't be any trouble; the specters that guard this plane generally don't pay any mind to the Driver. They know what she's about."

Of course, the stagecoach wasn't something she could abuse whenever she wanted to pop on down to the pub after a hard day of lawmanning. The Driver had work to do; that they were able to split themselves among many different beings to do their own work of moving the freshly-departed to the afterlife and still spare one to haul her ass around was blessing enough and should not be taken advantage of.

In the distance, Madison spotted little neon-outlined clouds of dust being kicked up. Seconds later, the stagecoach appeared. Ten seconds after, it pulled up to the platform, rocking softly on its wheels. Draped entirely in shades of blue, it looked like it could simultaneously fit just the four of them, or forty. It was pulled not by horses, but by formless wisps of spirits in the shape of beasts of burden. And sitting in the driver's box, sticking with the theme by wearing a full prairie dress and a suitable wide-brimmed hat (despite there not really being any need for them to), sat the Driver.

"Miss Freebird," they greeted her with a tip of their hat.

"Carol," Madison responded in kind, minus the hat business.

Carol licked her teeth and surveyed the other four. "Well, y'all certainly ain't my normal clientele. You friends of the Ranger here? M'name's Carol." A hat tip for each of them. "Mind telling me who you are? And what brings you to my little station here in the lands between?"

@Toko @Brutus Dahlgren @Magdalyn

 

[Toko]

.

.

She had listened as the blue haired human had spoken, nodding softly in agreement to her statement. Toko hadn't played any of the Tron games, but even she could agree that the odd blue highlights of this plane certainly had that vibe... at least from the Google images the rabbit remembered seeing in the past.

"Eeeeh?"

There was a faint pout in the hare's lips as Madison claimed trade secrets regarding the origin knowledge of the tickets she had recently tore to bring them all here, but Toko was at least sensible enough to let the matter drop... her interest now caught upon learning that not even the gunslinger had been to this plane before this very moment.

"Specters, huh... I wonder if we'll get to see any~"

Almost as if on queue a sudden dust cloud could be seen in the distance, and moments later their ride had finally arrived as the quartet waited on the platform. Immediately the Lepus had moved closer to inspect the spirit wisps pulling the stagecoach (she actually managed to stick with the look but don't touch rule, too!), surprised by the vague beast of burden shape they seemed to retain. It wasn't until Carol addressed them all that the hare took her eyes off them, turning instead to regard Carol and her cute little prairie dress and wide-brimmed hat before giving a nod of affirmation to the Driver's question.

"Haaai, I'm Toko~" There was a pause as Toko considered something. "What's your usual clientele like, Carol-san?"

@Madison Freebird @Brutus Dahlgren @Magdalyn

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"I hope we don't run into any familiar faces. There's probably a lot of dead things down here pretty steamed we put em here, and there's probably plenty of friendly folk we lost along the way to haunt us too."

Brutus would take some exception to this Free woman keeping the secrets to spooky fast travel to herself, but like Gandalf she could keep those fucking secrets there were more pressing fish to fry. For example, the coach driver had approached them, embracing the power of southern greetings with a tipped hat and all. He would find himself giving her a light nod and a "Howdy" before listening to her question.

"The name is Brutus Dahlgren, a pleasure to meet you Ma'am. Miss Freebird has offered up a trip back home after a long journey, given the nature of the past couple of days I figured a trek through the underworld might do us some good." That last bit was clearly sarcasm, given their previous predicament, but it wasn't wrong. He was in no shape to go back through the shroom ambush path again, and there was no way he was going to let Toko risk anything like that either.

@Madison Freebird @Magdalyn @Toko

 

[Magdalyn]

Magdalyn blinked wide, dual-colored eyes at Brutus. "I-" she began slowly, "hadn't actually thought of that." The concept sent a chill racing up her spine. While Mags hadn't lost anyone she cared about within Terrasphere, the idea that her past enemies might resurface didn't sit well. "Imagine that giant rabbit showing up here again," she mused, then shook her head. "That's something I'd rather not fight again. Or even worse, that Broodmother we just killed." Mags fell silent, letting that horrifying notion linger like the neon dust in the air.

In typical Mags fashion, her first thought was for the horses when the stagecoach pulled into view. Her disappointment was nearly palpable when she found not living, breathing equines, but little clouds of spirit energy. I can't pet little clouds of spirit energy, she thought glumly, finally shifting to face the driver.

Were she and Madison friends? Not in the traditional sense, as they'd really just met. But the risk of being thrown out of the in-between was far to great for Mags to admit as much. "It's great to meet you, Carol," the blue-haired woman answered, genuine pleasure warming the words. "My name is Magdalyn." A pause, and then she gestured to the suit-clad Player beside her. "We fought together," was the best she could manage.

@Madison Freebird @Brutus Dahlgren @Toko