Character Express

Tamara Peterson hefted her bag over her shoulder as she worked her way through the train station. She wondered why everything here seemed so dated; had she traveled through time as well as space? She absently glanced at her satphone again. Still no service. That shouldn't happen; VRC had service just about everywhere, and definitely in a city like this.

She glanced around the station, but Tamara couldn't see him. He was definitely here, somewhere, though; she had tracked him to this station and figured out the tickets he had bought, and he was getting on this train.

As she walked through the train, looking for a compartment, she noticed that someone had written Care to chat? Please come inside. on the inside of their door in mist. Tamara paused. On the one hand, she had a job to do. On the other, it was going to be a loooooong trip; she had plenty of time. She pushed open the door and pushed her bag into the overhead rack. "Tamara Peterson," she said to the man inside. "And you are...?"

A woman walked into the train near the front. Her nationality was hard to place, but it would be easy to mistake her for a native Russian, especially given her fluency when talking to the conductor. She seemed horribly under-dressed, given her casual attire, lack of coat, or even shoes. She walked around the front of the train, her bare feet tracking water on the floor.

She looked around the tables and at the compartments, and saw a table at the very front of the train with four people: A man wearing some kind of suit and a gray fedora, a young woman in a black dress, a man dressed in a dark brown trench-coat, and a woman in more causal attire with a wide-brimmed hat, covering most of her face, and exuding some sort of odd unrealness.

The woman walked up to them and said, "Hi there!"

"I'm sorry ma'am, but this table only seats four." said the man with the fedora.

"But -"

"You're going to have to move on." he said sternly.

She walked away disappointed, and checked the cars down the train, until she saw up ahead a compartment where someone else was entering, with some mist on the doors.

She walked up to this spot, hoping for a more friendly reception, and said, "Hi there!"

edited 20th Dec '11 12:00:11 PM by Sonzai

Ahh... his first visitor. Funny, Noah didn't actually expect that to work. But hey, at least now he can remain lazy and still converse with someone... and it was a quite attractive woman too.

"Hi, I'm Noah. Noah Shepard, if you require a last name, but technically, I don't actually have one. But that's not exactly important right now, I have three questions. Firstly, where is this train headed? Second, why are you personally on this train, and Lastly, what date is it?"

Oh, crap. Why does he want to learn all this, right now?

"Um, hang on," said Tamara, "let me remember..." She snapped her fingers absently. "Uh... dang, sometimes I hate Russian names... I think it's... Yaroslav? Or something like that. That's the next major stop, anyway, if I recall correctly. I'm on this train because of business. I have someone to meet. And the date..." Her mind raced wildly. What had the date been when she got on? "November 2011 or so. I can't remember exactly, I never was good with dates, and I've been... going on long distance travel a lot recently, which really screws up timekeeping."

Hopefully, that would dissuade him from investigating further. Tamara wasn't sure was his interests were with everything, but she didn't want to reveal what she was just yet.

edited 20th Dec '11 12:16:40 PM by TeraChimera

Donovan had calmed down significantly after his much needed screaming of the most versatile obscenity in the english language. He got up from his compartment and walked a bit, whistling a tune as he noticed, Care to chat? Please come inside. written on the door and a couple inside the room. He shrugged as he opened the door and looked inside, "Greetings, mind if I join you guys?"

November 2011? Sounds about right. What with the amount of times recently he's found himself in some cross-dimensional area, he couldn't be too careful. And they were heading to somewhere in Russia? He couldn't remember even arriving there.

"Business usually means something secretive. And something secretive always concerns me. So, what is this business you're talking about?"

Ah, another visitor had arrived now. Two visitors in fact. His window message seemed to be gaining popularity.

"Sure, come along and join us. I'm Noah, and this is Tamara Peterson. You two are...?"

"Hi! I'm Hvpvdqia." said the woman to Noah, Tamara, and Donovan. Yes, it's supposed to be unpronounceable.

"Um ... Nice to meet you two!" she said, "Are you heading through Siberia as well?"

edited 20th Dec '11 12:51:15 PM by Sonzai

"Donovan, Donovan Underwood if you think surnames are important, Don if you know me better, and Donny if you want me to murder you brutally, but I'm half joking with the last part." He nodded his head toward Noah, Tamara and Hvpvdqia while taking a seat. He tried to think of the proper way to answer what exactly he was doing here, "I'm here on business myself."

edited 20th Dec '11 1:05:34 PM by draconiansuperior

"Human resources," said Tamara to Noah. "A much larger company is interested in buying mine out, and we have very different business practices. I'm meeting up with someone from their HR department to see if we can work something out that'll work for people from both companies. Quite frankly, though, I'm worried that our possible buyers might a bit too domineering, so I really hope the deal ends up dead in the water." Yeesh, talk about double meanings.

Turning to the woman with the crazy name, she said, "That's a mouthful. Mind if I just call you Kia?"

"Sure - that sounds fine!" Hvpvdqia said to Tamara, taking a seat as well. "Are you two discussing business? Is there a lot of that around here?"

The man passed by without so much as a downward glance, walking on through the cars in the direction of the engine compartment. Scrawled on a slip of paper was Owl's car and cabin number, given to him by his partner before he left.

She watched a shape pass the door through the window.

She counted to thirty.

Then she touched the door again, and the gold-bronze receded, leaving the door wood again, save the handle itself. She pushed the door open as quietly as as she could, and then she walked down the car towards the compartment the first man had entered.

The blond man looked up from his flexible, as if noticing something. He set the device down and his head turned towards the door. Speaking clearly so his voice would project outside the cabin, he said, “Come in. I know you’re out there.” Folding his arms, he set his legs down and turned his body to the door.

She stopped. Someone inside had invited her in.

She weighed her options. She could walk away, though that would be unproductive. Or she could go in.

She opened the door.

The blond man gestured to a seat opposite him. “Go ahead. Feel free to sit down. I don’t recommend you stay for long though. One of my bodyguards will be back in a short time, I suggest you leave before he returns. Aquila’s a good man- they both are, but they can be rather overprotective.” He absentmindedly checked his nails while he waited for a response.

She cocked her head. The man before her was... the only adjective she could really find was "pretty," and that didn't seem quite fitting.

She took a seat. "I'm not particularly worried about them. Though you aren't really... what I expected." She folded her hands on the table and fixed him with a curious, if not quite focused, look. To the casual observer, she was politely looking at his eyes. More attention would reveal that it was more as though she was looking through him.

"May I ask your name?" She said, without moving her gaze.

Magic. Yes. He'd known there was something wrong about this place. He fancied he could feel its corruption right now, sending shivers down his spine. More notes jotted down, though one peering over his shoulder at his laptop would be hard pressed to sort out what they meant, for they were encoded in a format equal parts shorthand and cryptography.

A lanky black man with cornrows and thin silver spectacles, wearing a beaten denim jacket, and with "DRUG FREE" tattooed across his knuckles, entered the train. "Fuck me," Isaac muttered. "Maybe I should just catch the next one?" The he groaned, and said, "dammit, I'm getting spoiled, ain't I?" He took a seat in the general vicinity of Tamara and Noah, slouching visibly and looking around the train car.

edited 20th Dec '11 4:31:13 PM by KillerClowns

Face-to-face, she could now clearly see the man for the first time. He was quite pale, with neatly coiffed blond hair, a thin face and sharp, blue eyes. He returned the stare for several moments, saying nothing, as if he were sizing her up. Seconds later he finally replied, speaking in a slight British accent, “Alastair. What is yours?”

"Christine." She said, smiling. It wasn't a particularly mirthful smile.

She looked over to the window for a moment, and then back at him. "What can you tell me about this place?"

Noah turned his head to the woman with the impossible name. Figuring that Tamara had the right idea, he made a note to himself to refer to her a Kia from here on out.

"I wouldn't really know, I'm not from here," he answered her, "though frankly, in my experience, 'Business' usually means you're looking for someone, hiding from someone, attempting to kill someone, smuggling something... or you work in human resources, of course."

Alastair's eyes narrowed. "I could tell you a great deal, about this train and a great many other things, Christine. But I won't. Why should I? Information is power, and certain information, in the right hands can topple governments." He sat forward, his elbows on the tabletop, fingers pressed together. His vision did not waiver. He sill seemed to be trying to take her apart with his gaze.

edited 20th Dec '11 4:27:22 PM by Gault

Isaac couldn't resist, hoping he had at least a decent guess from the context. To Noah, he said, "you missed drug deals, though I s'pose that falls under smuggling." With a smug grin, he added, "of course, anyone buying drugs in the former Soviet Union is really just lending evolution a helping hand."

edited 20th Dec '11 4:30:47 PM by KillerClowns

Christine's expression changed, to something not unlike irritation. However, it was too impersonal to be called such. She did not move her gaze, however.

"Why shouldn't you tell me? Unless you think I could use such simplistic information against you." She also leaned forward, her expression and gaze unchanging. "But for you to think that would require you to be afraid of me. I see no reason why you'd be afraid of me after less than five minutes of interaction."

The corner of her mouth upturned in the slightest of smiles.

"I thought business was like trading things and making things and that kind of stuff." Hvpvdqia said, "But I wouldn't know too much. It's not what I do."

Then, in apparent response to Isaac, she said, "I don't do evolution either. There sure is a lot of interesting activity here, isn't there?"

Sarcastically, Isaac said, "'trading things and making things and that kind of stuff'. Shit, you a regular Adam Smith, ain't you?" He shook his head, then added, "and as for interesting activity — I just got here. I miss anyone earning themselves a Darwin Award, or giving it a good go at least?"

edited 20th Dec '11 4:41:26 PM by KillerClowns