Character Express

"A world quite different from this one, apparently." Ling said with a shrug. "But not for long, I say! That's my quest: unite this world, linguistically, culturally, politically, et cetera." he added, a little pride in his voice now, "Back home we only succeeded in doing the first, unfortunately."

Tomas typed eagerly as Ling spoke, until he reached the date, wherein he raised an eyebrow. "No, no," he said, more to himself, "eighteen eighty three? Impossible. Or... no, here impossible. Unreason's a funny thing." He examined Ling. "No. An innocent. Poor fellow. I should..."

Then he heard Ling's purpose in this world, and his expression suddenly grew very suspicious. "Or not." Okay, he thought, Ling could be a problem. But at least he's blathering openly, and not from this world. Maybe he'll catch something interesting...

edited 19th Dec '11 8:51:06 PM by KillerClowns

A man in a suit brushed casually, but somewhat conspicuously, past the train compartment that Tomas, Ling and Angelus were in. His clothes were far too sophisticated for what one would normally expect a passenger on the Trans-Siberian railway to be wearing, though it wasn't too out of the ordinary. Plenty of Russian new money had sprung up in the burgeoning private sector, making their fortunes off the software, electronics and petro-chemical markets. If this was the case, he was likely on his way across the vast country to oversee some sort of incoming deal in the thriving port city of Vladivostok. It and Moscow were the two major centers for business in the country. Perhaps he was on his way to a private cabin in a more discerning section of the train.

Only one thing put a hole in this theory.

The man wasn't Russian.

He paused, almost as if he was listening in for a moment, before bending down and tying a shoelace.

"Heh, you remind me of my friend Oou a little. He's a bit...eccentric." Ling said idly. "So, what brought you to Moscow?" Ling said to Angelus, not expecting much of an answer.

edited 19th Dec '11 9:06:23 PM by Aniventerie

"My wife is here, on her own business." Angelus sighs and rests his head on his hand. "I was half-hoping she'd come on the train with me, but—"

He stops himself from going melodramatic. "She's still busy."

She looked over as a man passed by her car.

Except he didn't pass. He stopped, and then he bent over.

She tilted her head in curiosity, and then stood up, moving towards the door.

She stopped herself, however, right as the door started to slide open. Her inquisitiveness had gotten the better of her, and now she was essentially out of options.

She held very still, and waited to see if the man had noticed the slight motion of the door. She couldn't decide whether she hoped he had or hoped he hadn't.

The man stopped, bent over as he was, and tilted his head very slightly. Seconds seemed to pass. Then he shrugged, and as if nothing had happened, he returned to trying to tie his shoelaces back up. He seemed to be paying very close attention to the cabin directly to his right, his hands really just going through the motions.

She counted to ten.

On the tenth, silent movement of her mouth, she purposefully closed the door with a click, and then turned and sat back down.

She smiled. This was amusing, in its own, rather morbid way.

The answer Marc got didn't mean anything to him, except that it did. Weird sudden second language.

"Oh, I was trying to get home. To Montafiore. I was in a place like this, London I think. Maybe the spirits have some other task before I can go home," then under his breath, "Dorian did warn me."

Tomas busily continued typing notes into his computer, paying little attention to the suited man fiddling with his shoelaces. He'd be worth checking out later, but best not to draw attention to himself by getting too nosy. Then he overheard Marc and looked up. "Spirits?" he said, suspiciously. "How... intriguing," he said, though it was clear "intriguing" was a euphemism for far harsher words. "What sort of 'spirits' are we talking?" He didn't sound very optimistic.

edited 19th Dec '11 9:48:54 PM by KillerClowns

The man in the suit turned his head sharply this time, before getting up and moving to the compartment behind the one he'd been kneeling next to. He slid it open, a grim and slightly irritated expression on his face. "Yes? Can I help you?"

His accent was plain, without a hint of native Russian in it. In fact, it wasn't easy to place just what the accent was.

She sat with an almost childishly innocent look on her face as the man opened the door to her compartment and asked what she wanted. He wore business clothing—though not quite like anything she'd seen before, it was close enough to what she was used to that she understood what it was—and didn't seem entirely pleased.

"Perhaps." She said, in a dismissive, uncaring tone that didn't quite match her demeanor or expression at all; and yet, it was much, much more representative of her actual attitude towards the situation. "Can you tell me where we are, and the time and date?"

Marc's face took a look of genuine surprise, "It was a mostly rhetorical. I doubt the Fate-Scorers care about me all that much." He waved his hand in a careless manner.

But now that he said that, he doubted it. Unless he really was cursed to never go home.

Angelus takes a deep breath. "This might seem like an odd question, but since I have a feeling that the present company— myself included— is not exactly ordinary... are you all human?"

Tomas considered just how much he was willing to tell Angelus. Finally, he said, "I am human. But why, pray tell, do you see fit to ask such a question? Unless..." he looked around the room, with the expression of a sheep seeing the silhouette of a wolf in every branch.

Good night. Try not to die, y'all.

edited 19th Dec '11 10:01:27 PM by KillerClowns

The man stood there, wedged partway through the door, for several moments, with a barely suppressed look of utter incredulity frozen on his face. That's when the woman got her first good look at him. He was dressed immaculately in a navy blue business suit with a maroon tie, had light brown slicked-back hair and a pale face. His brow was wide, his lips were a thin, serious line, and he had eyes that seemed to reach across the distance between them and pierce straight into her.

In fact, those eyes-

He blinked.

Speaking in a clipped manner, he replied.

"We're in Moscow, West Russia, at Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal. The date is October 22nd, 2023. It's currently 02:37 PM, +4:00 GMT. The train is scheduled to leave in twenty-three minutes."

He didn't seem to have needed to glance down at his watch to tell the time. Then the woman noticed something.

He didn't have one.

The man in the suit withdrew from the cabin, sliding the door closed resolutely. It clicked into place. He then turned and walked down the aisle, toward the back of the train.

She sat still for a moment, as he left, and processed what she'd been told, and different traits about him. The year was troubling. In fact, it was three-quarters of a century off, to the year. But she didn't remember what she'd been doing before she'd fallen asleep—or before she was incapacitated.

She sighed.

Standing up, she slid the door open with more force than was necessary, and looked down to both ends of the hallway. The man she'd just talked to was still walking, but he was impressively far already. She recalled his eyes; they were strange, much harder and much too forceful for their purposes, and trying far too hard to be intimidating. Or perhaps her measurement of him was off. She didn't care to find out.

She flatted her long skirt down, and felt the edge of it rustling against her ankles. She realized, in that moment, that she was probably going to look sorely out of place. It didn't really bother her, though. What these people thought of her was, for the moment, unimportant.

She briefly considered going the opposite direction of the man, and then dismissed the idea. Instead, she turned and began walking down the hall in the direction he'd gone; as she did this, she watched, so that she would see if he turned.

She wanted to know more, and he seemed like he was the type to know things. If not, she'd find out if he knew anyone who did know things.

She wondered how many cars the train had...

"Yeah, I'm human through and through." Marc shrugged, "I can't feel anything supernatural around. Though I'll admit I don't know a tenth of what my mentor does about breaking enchantments."

"Me? I'm perfectly human. Though perhaps people from our respective homes aren't entirely the same, either. From what I've seen, no-one around here even has a birthlang..." Ling said, one hand fiddling with a salt shaker absent-mindedly.

"Can't feel anything supernatural? Your senses are rather dull, I'm afraid." Angelus gives It a little mental nudge, but the god continues to slumber. Angelus can barely access It's powers in this world anyway, but at least It wasn't left behind.

Let's play "spot the euphemism!" Except I think it's a little too obvious.

"Nah, you're just magic touched, not supernatural. I mean that I can't hear any evidence of wandering spirits."

Marc looked around, his gaze pausing on the overhead lighting, "Though I would've thought I'd hear something from them, so maybe I'm just really out of practise."

The man in the navy blue suit quickly and surreptitiously made his way to the very back of the train. His destination was the final passenger car, just before the cargo section began. Several covered sections bearing heavy crates and other burdens trailed behind this car, leading down to the caboose. The inclusion of a caboose in this train was somewhat odd. Not many modern trains ran with one, though it wasn’t exactly unheard of. Sliding the door of the last passenger compartment open, he slipped inside.

The man with the briefcase had returned. He had left it in the cabin with the two others when he had left, ostensibly to “stretch his legs”. Never mind the fact that they had all just arrived and the train was yet to even depart.

“Had an interesting walk?” The other suited man, seated by the door, asked the first as he entered. “Oh yes, quite.” came the response, “I came across a very interesting little bird I think is worth looking into. It’s Owl.” The third man, the blond who had arrived in the compartment first, had been checking stocks on his flexible and pointedly ignoring the banter going on between the other two, but upon hearing the word ‘owl’, he put the device down and tuned to face the briefcase man, asking, “Are you certain it was him?”

“Yes. Positive. He’s here, on this train, as we speak. In fact, he was sitting with two others who looked a bit strange in that way. As always, he’s been taking notes.”

The blond man looked concerned, putting a finger lightly to his lips. A few silent moments passed before he answered, “Keep an eye on him. We can’t afford a mistake at this stage of the operation.” Briefcase man nodded, taking a seat opposite his friend and pulling the curtain back on his side of the door ever so slightly so as to peek outside. “I’ll do that. Or rather Corvine will, it’s his turn.”

The man sitting across from him chided, “You’re such a prima-donna.” This earned a pointed glare from the briefcase man. “You know the rules. It’s one at a time in alternating shifts.”

“At least tell me what he looks like, Aquila.”

“You know what he looks like! Unless you weren’t paying attention at the briefing-”

“Settle down, you two.” The third man intervened, folding the flexible and slipping it back into his suit pocket. “You both know why we’re here, now start acting like the professionals I know you both are. As per protocol, Corvine will go next.”

“Yes alpha.” They both replied in unison.

He continued. “Meanwhile, Aquila, I want you to check on the package. We’re still in the station, I want to make sure nobody’s interfered with it before we’ve left.” “But you-“ Corvine began to protest but the blond man held up a hand. “It’s only going to be a few minutes. I’m more that capable of taking care of myself for that long. Now, I suggest you both carry out your duties.”

Corvine got up and left without another word, as did his partner Aquila. The former headed back up the train while the latter pushed open the door and entered the cargo section. The blond man, their ‘alpha’, sighed and folded his arms, propping his feet up on the seat opposite him. He had the distinct feeling that this was going to be a very long ride.

edited 19th Dec '11 11:33:34 PM by Gault

She watched the man enter the last compartment before the end of the car.

She briefly considered following, but then reconsidered. It wasn't worth the probable hassle it would cause. Instead, she turned and knocked on the compartment next to her, and after receiving no answer, she entered. It was dark and empty, as she expected. She stood there in the doorway and took in the detail, transfixed for no apparent reason.

The man's words echoed in her mind. 2023. That was not right. It was very bad, in fact. But what was perhaps more troubling was that she was in Moscow.

Being a US Government employee—and worse yet, with her position in the military—in Moscow without authorization was... not good.

She started to turn, and saw another man exit the compartment the first man had entered. She made a split-second decision and rushed into the empty compartment, shutting the door behind her.

She put her finger to the door handle and the wood around it immediately began to turn a bronze-gold color, matching the handle itself and seemingly melting into it. After a moment, she removed her finger, and as she did smiled.

The door was now essentially impassable.

edited 20th Dec '11 1:34:42 PM by USAF713

Donovan looked rather irritated at the lack of answer, so he turned back toward his compartment, rather irritated in general from the situation that he was currently in.

He walked around the entire car from the back to the front, rather put-off by his current position. He returned to his compartment and closed the door to his room and made the loudest scream possible, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

Noah had come to a sudden realisation as he sat alone in his own compartment: just waiting on some other people to come along was a terrible idea. After all, why would anyone just immediately come to his compartment, and chat with they guy that they've likely assumed to be a tramp, considering his dusty long-coat and overall messy look. He was no stick and no carrot. If he wanted people to come to him, he needed to give them incentive. He used his breath to fog up the glass of his compartment, and wrote the message: Care to chat? Come on inside. That should do it, he thought to himself as he rested back into his chair.