dream_station | Dream Station TDM

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Dream Station TDM

You dozed off. Or passed out. Or perhaps you were experiencing a more... permanent 'sleep'. Whatever the case, your eyes were shut and now they're not as you awaken sitting on a train. Around you, others in similar situations. At your feet sits luggage. It has a name tag on it with your name. Inside are some of your clothes and small personal belongings.

Out the window you see that the train is rolling into a sration. Cherry blossoms line the track leading up to it. A beautiful, scenic town lay beyond those gates.

Welcome to Dream Station.

Home Sweet Home:

As the train rumbles into the station and stops you step out onto a platform. A perfectly normal looking station, all things considered. There are people waiting. Guides here to help the latest batch of residents. People who live in this world. Either due to being born here or having been brought here sometime before and agreeing to help newcomers.

The guides explain to you the situation you are in. You otherworlders are common here in the city of Dream. Your guide reassures you that it's fine. They have accommodation for newcomers. And you are brought to the Sleep Tight Apartments. While outside it looks a little small, it's actually quite expansive inside. Must be magic of some kind.

Your apartment will be a one bedroom with a kitchen, living area and bathroom. But don't worry. There will be ways to expand later.

For now you are given a cellphone with an app installed on it for the local social media, Sleepr. As well as a Nightmare Tracker that will alert you when Nightmares crop up. And finally a little banking app where you will find you already have an account that has a decent amount of money for you to spend for the month. Don't worry about rent or bills. That's all covered in return for you helping with those Nightmares.

If you refuse to help... well. Best find your own accommodation and a job, friend. They can't help anyone unwilling to help in return.

There's a lot of new faces so maybe you should get to know your neighbors or get a walk around your new neighborhood.

This Is A Beach Episode:

The Dream Beach is open for business! Come lay out a towel and get some sun. Or go splash in the waves! Seashells are a plenty and there are designated fishing spots. Just don't swim too far out.

Hungry? Thirsty? The boardwalk has plenty of delicious options from icecream to fries to ice cold lemonade.

For those seeking something fun to do, there are paddle and pedal boats available for rent. And some diving to see the beautiful coral reefs. As well as a boat that will take you on a little trip out to an island resort!

The Resort:

I mean, you're basically all on vacation from your regular lives already in the wonderful world of Dream! That said, who doesn't love to spend a little time with their feet up in a nice resort?

Come out and stay in an ocean front room with complimentary continental breakfast and free room service. There are lots of little souvenir shops to check out, run by some bipedal frogs? They don't accept money here. But they'll glady trade their wares for any seashells collected on the beach. Lots of fun tropical themed goodies and swim gear galore!

For the adventurous sort, there is plenty to explore including a forest with hiking trails and a supposedly haunted cave. Legend says some tourists got lost in there and never came back out. They were looking for a treasure apparently. But... maybe don't follow their example and get lost in there?

The Nightmare Fuel:

So remember you were told about Nightmares? Seems they're cropping up throughout the city. Some are taking the form of shadowy crabs about four feet tall that are stealing from people and carrying them off in their little crabby claws. Give them a beat down or just trick them into dropping their stolen goods.

Others look like reverse mermaids. Fishy heads atop human legs. These ones are causing problems for the local restaurants and shops by slipping on in and stinking up the place. You can fight them if you want, but they'll be just as easily dispersed by herding them to the beach where they will return to the waters. They don't seem very threatening, just confused.

However while those two aren't very dangerous, there are some very aggressive bipedal seacreatures with the heads of crocodiles and some very sharp claws that have taken to lurking around the island out in the woods. These ones won't leave peacefully. You'll have to fight them or run away from them. Watch out they don't catch you. Those teeth and claws aren't just for show!

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Flavor One - Vanilla and Chocolate

This Nita has been here for quite some time - you won't meet her on the train, but instead working in the (or a) local bookshop, ready to help you find whatever you need. Or out in the gardens, or even helping care for the trees those cherry blossoms come from.

When it comes to the Nightmares, she's quite resigned to their presence - but if you stand up to (or help) the odd or violent creatures, she will be quick to lend a hand.

She's a helpful sort, with kindness in her heart - but there's a sadness as well, one she doesn't seem to really even acknowledge as there anymore. Might not be fair to ask too much...

Flavor Two - Neapolitan

Prelude - On the Train

Nita? Wherever we are, we've arrived.
/Mmm - Voidtrecker? Where are we?/

Only the second voice is audible, as the wizard who'd been asleep in one of the seats stirs, wondering why her head feels so fuzzy.

Mentally, she reaches out for the train - only to find it completely unfamiliar to her. Sitting straight up, her heart rising in her throat, a blush begins to color her cheeks.

She doesn't speak out loud again, and she may be a little slow to respond to any even-more-confused fellow passengers.

Arrival

It's not every day Nita finds herself a gawking tourist, but it's also been quite a long few months since she last pulled into a station that wasn't a liminal space in the void, or a world in deadly danger, so there's definitely that going for this place.

It's not long before she's standing next to the trees, drinking in the at once too-real and homesickness-inducing feel of a home.

Maybe it's because the last world she'd visited hadn't actually had normal trees.

Settling In

The apartments are one of the few things that help anchor her - a space bigger on the inside than out? Not needing to pay in money, so long as you're willing to help people? It is, in several ways besides, like home, and wizardry - though being a Voidtrekker had come close quite a bit of the time in and of itself.

So she acquires some toiletries, some groceries, and a yoga mat, all in short order, and starts building a routine.

Seeing where she's needed, drinking in the sights, the skies (especially at night), and any books she can get her hands on. Typical Nita things.

Nightmares? If You Insist.

This, too, Nita takes to with very little question - stopping the gremlin-y crabs in the street (and sometimes lecturing them), escorting lost mers back to the sea, and forcing the more violent creatures to back off from the innocent city-dwellers.

She could use a hand now and then, sure, but the work itself she doesn't mind.

No, she doesn't mind at all.

Edited 2023-05-18 00:49 (UTC)

1) Home Sweet Home

Katsuki has experienced weirder things than waking up on a mystery train, pulling into a strange station. He's more than a little annoyed by the guide's explanation. But for now he just assumes this is more bullshit related to the spirit gates and all that.

The tiny one bedroom apartment is a far cry from his house back in Kaisou. But he doesn't need much space for just him, so it'll do. He leaves his suitcases that he doesn't remember packing so he can step out to go shopping. He's going to need groceries.

2) This Is A Beach Episode

The ocean. Of course the big attraction here is the beach. He's avoiding the water, but he can be found checking out the boardwalk food. Sticking to further up the beach when he's on it. Catch him sprawled out under an umbrella chilling or eating some fries. But you won't catch him near the water at all. Nope.

3) The Nightmare Fuel

Okay, fighting. This he can do. Those shadowy crabs are getting blasted back whence they came with Katsuki's explosions. Feel free to join him in fighting. Or maybe you had something stolen by a crab and he just got it back for you?

(((ooc: I'm playing him crau from Kaisou. He is a reincarnated AU version. However he does have his canon memories. So he'll know his castmates in a kind of distant way. He's older than his canon counterpart by a few years. Making him a little more mature. But he's still a cranky tsun boy.)))

This place surely isn't Moomin Valley. It's a lot busier and louder. So Snufkin was just trying to get some peaceful fishing done in one of the fishing spots when the crab creatures started popping up and stealing things.

This falls under things that are not his business. Having not met any crabs in person before he just assumes that's what crabs do. They haven't tried to take his fishing pole yet so it's not affecting him. And he leaves it at that.

He's watching this stranger lecture them and take things back though. Maybe that's their job. To lecture the crabs and heard them around and reclaim the taken items.

"About how often do they go around taking things?" He asks, assuming her knowledgeable about the whole affair. He sure hopes not terribly often...

Nita shrugs, once the crab has made its escape and the goods it had seized subsequently returned.

"It's my first week here; for all I know it's crabs one month, and canines the next. Or they're stealing this week and the next it'll be something else entirely..."

Not reassuring, she knows, but it doesn't do her any more good to be dishonest about this.

"They seem to come after everyone all the same, rather than just focusing on those who are new, if that helps."

"Thanks."

Alfredo looked perhaps a little young for the book Katsuki had just retrieved - it being by Voltaire made its appeal somewhat niche in a place like this - but he was just as grateful to have it back as any other Dream citizen the other boy had helped.

"Usually I have to use traps to get them to let things go; I can't go against them strength-to-strength."

And he preferred not to, really. But that was why having all sorts in Dream was important, he felt.

He'd never anticipated coming to a place like Dream - but then, many things in his life had taken him entirely by surprise, and to him it seemed far better than the alternative.

Who wanted to be bored all the time, after all?

The Station

He makes sure to keep an eye out for any other former Voidtreckers; despite both being black trains, there are more than enough dissimilarities to tell them apart.

But between himself and the more-native guides, hopefully they can set any residual confusion straight.

The Resort

Webmind is unable to enjoy many of the amenities, alas, but he does take the opportunity for beachcombing. If the staff like having shells, then they shall receive them!

As is usual for mister-without-guile, though, he also goes exploring, curious as to how far the caves go. Perhaps this time he might need a guide?

The Network

But, most surprising of all, he can exist within the Network here. Sure, he can't just stay in it full-time, not if he wants to still travel, much less go home, but the novelty-slash-familiarity is enough to please him immensely.

As far as everyone else is concerned, however, he feels it is best to leave a message:

Hello, citizens of Dream! I am Webmind, and while I am not emergent from your network, I appreciate its existence very much. If there is any way you would like me to help maintain it, please give me a shout! All current and future privacy filters will be respected - and if you did not know they existed, you do now! ;) No offense is meant, and no harm is intended. Looking forward to my own stay, and getting to know you all better. All best, ~Webmind

Getting on that boat to come out to the island was a mistake in Katsuki's opinion. He hated every moment of the journey. But now he's here and he's been trying to collect seashells without getting too close to the water.

There are things he saw in the shops that maybe friends back home would like. Not that he even knows if he could bring them back... but it gives him something to do. At least until he figures out there are things in the woods to fight.

Unfortunately the best place to find shells is the water's edge so he can be found darting down as the waves go out to grab a shell before darting back up as they come back in. Cursing loudly if the waves catch his feet.

He hates this.

"Why the hell does it have to be seashells? These frogs live on an island. You'd think they'd be up to their ears in seashells!"

Katsuki eyes the book and then the boy reaching for it. But he hands it over regardless.

"So you've been here a while then." A citizen? Or someone like him who got dropped here just... before now?

Webmind is not that far away from where Katsuki's making his attempts. His own progress is somewhat slower, the sand making him more cautious than the water.

"You can live near something every day and still like seeing new individual units. I know of many people who are like that with cats," Webmind offers, in a somewhat deep voice that does not quite match his current more robotic appearance.

The orange hoodie and pants also detracts from how he sounds, but in a slightly different way.

"A few years," he confirms.

"There doesn't seem to be any restrictions about who can end up here, or how long they can stay before leaving."

He holds the book tight to his side, not wanting to drop it and damage it that way.

"Those crabs don't seem to have arrived in the same way, though. No one really has an answer for why."

They, and creatures like them, were just a fact of life here. And increasingly so, lately...

"But if you arrived on the train, that's normal."

I. Arrival

A young-looking man with hair so gray it's almost blue sits on the lawn outside the Sleep Tight apartments, leaning back on one hand and staring at the sky with an expression of worry. "Any time now, Ted," he mutters.

Anyone passing by gets a wan sort of smile and a little wave with his free hand. "Are you new, too?"

II. Beach

If he's stuck here, he might as well explore a little. He walks up and down the beach, picking up the occasional seashell, but mostly he's on the boardwalk, poking his nose into various shops curiously.

He stops at every food stand and cafe for a snack, and offers half to anyone walking by. "Try this, it's very good," he says.

III. Nightmares

Jack is useless in a fight. (Unless it's the full moon, anyway. Which it isn't now.) He warned the people who checked him in, but they didn't seem to care. So he does his best.

"Shoo," he tells one of the fish-heads, making flapping motions with his hands. "Run along. Come on, please don't try to fight...."

He manages to chase a few off, but another couple wind up chasing him down the boardwalk. Come help please?

I. Dream Beach

A large chunk of the sand of the beach is taken up by a large, black, scaled creature, at least fifty feet long with what would probably be an even wider wingspan. The unfamiliar might even call him a dragon, albeit one with a whole lot more spines and long feather-like frills around his head and wings. When he lifts his head at someone's approach, it's clear his body is more human-like than animal-like, with a short neck and a blunt face, but the spines around his head and neck raise like a bird's feathered crest with interest.

He politely shifts one massive wing out of the way with a friendly (?) nod.

II. The Boardwalk

The black scaled dragon is long gone, and instead a very tall, rail-thin old man with strange, bare feet and one cloudy eye strolls the boardwalk with curiosity. "What's that?" he asks a passer-by, or perhaps a shopper, pointing to some trinket or another, or a foodstuff. "Never seen anything like it."

III. Nightmare Fuel

Now this is more like it. Stone lets the children handle the fish-heads, focusing first on the shadow crabs, smacking them mercilessly and completely without fear until they drop whatever they stole and scuttle away.

Then it's to the woods, stalking through the trees in search of crocodile-heads. He lets several corner him, or think they've cornered him, then smiles a smile full of sharp teeth and melds up into his winged form to simply pick them up and fly them away back to the sea.

Of course, that winds up with his hands kind of clawed up, so one might find him later sitting on the sand licking at cuts on his hands with a too-long tongue.

Katsuki looks up at that voice, a little confused to see a... robot? Huh. Okay. Not the weirdest thing he's seen. But on a beach? That seems like a poor choice. What with the sand and water.

"...I know a couple of people like that, yeah." Cat lovers, he means. "But they don't trade goods for pictures of cats. It's a weird currency system for a beach resort."

He got distracted though and the water laps his feet, making him jump and shoot the waves a glare like they just personally insulted him.

"You having any luck with it? Collecting?"

"Years??" That sounds like an actual nightmare. "Just up and dropped into a completely different world for years? Is that common too around here?"

Jack might not be expecting a possibly-fourteen-year-old to come to his aid, but the first sign he gets of said help is a bean-sack bursting apart in the middle of the two fish-headed people behind him.

"Back away from him, please," Alfredo adds, a surprisingly cold look in his eyes, as the smoke floats up and obscures their view. He's behind the group, not ahead, and judging by the distance involved he has fairly good aim.

"I've got more where that came from."

Whether he intends to use more might be hard to discern.

"I've met some who were born here," he says, not that that helps.

Some of them were even his peers in schooling, which he figures he should not add.

"Some... don't have a world to go back to, from what I've learned talking to them."

Or necessarily a life, though at least he knew there was something beyond for whenever he went back. As much as he missed his family, he'd learned not to be in such a hurry about reuniting.

"Though - what do you mean, 'too'?"

There were two possibilities, neither exactly encouraging.

It's a robot also wearing what appears to be a watch.

Not that it shows anything like the time at the moment, but there's nothing to block anyone's view of the thing.

"I suppose it's some kind of fortune that we can recognize what's developed in this place as a barter system at all."

He shrugs, at the same time settling down carefully and gliding his hands through the sand. He is wearing gloves, but they're quite transparent, with it only easier to tell when the sun reflects off of them.

"I've found thirty-one so far, though that's total from over the past three days. I don't work at this continuously, for obvious reasons."

The smile on Webmind's computer-screen face shifts from 'smile' to 'moderate concern'.

"How have you been faring? Though I presume you haven't been at this resort for three days."

Not with that reaction to water.

"Your guess is as good as mine," comes V's response.

They think it's a sweet, but it could just as easily be some kind of squeeze-toy or decoration.

And while V isn't wired to eat most foodstuffs as organics think of them, they did finagle a way to taste and smell... not that that's helping them decide if it's worth risking in this particular instance.

"Though I've overheard someone else call it a cupcake."

Naturally, the title of the vendor booth uses a different name, to add to the confusion.

"It was like that where I'm from too. At least... in the city I was living in the last year. People got dropped there from other worlds. Issekais, people called 'em."

Now he's the one being dropped into another world. Great.

"...don't let that catch on here as a name."

"I've been here a few hours."

It took some time to gather the courage to get on the boat. But he's glancing in his bucket now, eying his shell collection.

"Dunno. About a dozen? Maybe? I'd rather be punching something. That's more my speed. But that won't get me stuff from the shops."

He's a little miffed that punching the monsters terrorizing people didn't count for something, honestly. But he'll keep fighting them when he sees them causing trouble.

Webmind gestures down the beach.

"Perhaps punching something from a tree might yield an alternative?"

After his experiences voidtrecking, far be it from him to say there's just one way to crack this egg! Meaning his question is quite sincere.

... For that matter, he can't put it down as impossible that some seashells have ended up in the trees.

"Issekais?"

It's not a term he's heard before, but he does have this to offer:

"Maybe other cultures have different words for it."

'Dreamers' described more people who lived in the city Dream itself. He could try looking it up in the library.

"How would you describe that city, compared to this one? More industrial, more mountainous, that kind of thing."

Katsuki squints at him, unaware he's being sincere.

"Very funny." Dryly said. "Could also just punch you and take yours."

He wouldn't. He's all hot air. He's nicer than he likes to let on.

Once Pepa calmed down about the whole uprooted from her life again and separated from her family again she realized she was going to have to pick herself up and venture out.

Who knows? Maybe her family or some other familiar face will be here in this strange city too?

One of the first places she checks out is a book shop. Reading material. That'll keep her occupied once she turns in for the evening...

She's perusing when she reaches for a book at the same time as another.

"Oh. No, please. You take it." She insists. "I already have so many." She gestures with her basket full of books. Maybe she went overboard?

"Ahhh. So you're new here too then. That makes sense, I suppose. There were a lot of people on that thing that I woke up on." The train, he means. But he has no idea what to call it. He's never seen one before. There are a great many things here he's never seen before.

"I suppose it does help to know, yes. They haven't bothered me yet. But who can say. I've never met a crab before. I just assumed they were like that."

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Page 1 of 7

Dream Station TDM

Nita Callahan | Young Wizards - Two Options of Character, One Account Edition!

Prelude - On the Train

Arrival

Settling In

Nightmares? If You Insist.

Katsuki Bakugou | My Hero Academia | CRAU

Nightmares? If you insist.

Re: Nightmares? If you insist.

The Nightmare Fuel

Webmind | The WWW Trilogy | VT CRAU

The Resort

no subject

Re: The Resort

no subject

Jack Russell | Werewolf By Night | OTA

Stone of Indigo Cloud | Books of the Raksura | OTA

Re: The Resort

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Nightmares

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Re: The Resort

The Boardwalk

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Re: The Resort

Re: The Resort

no subject

Re: The Resort

Settling In

no subject