- Joined
- Jul 28, 2018
- Posts
- 163
- Essence
- €29,438
- Coin
- ₡49,700
- Tokens
- 35
- World
- Dante's Comet
- Profile
- Click Here
- Faction
- None yet!
Chugga chugga, chugga chugga, chugga chugga, chugga chugga…
CHOO CHOO!
The Shining Time Railroad ripped through the Nos’talgian countryside. At the head of the pack of train cars, a cobalt blue engine adorned with a silver face on the front smiled his way down the tracks, whistling a merry tune and heralding the locomotive’s arrival into the Toon Town station.
Toon Town’s particular stop on the Shining Time’s journey happened to be the origin point of the little engine that could. Every morning, the little blue train car -- affectionately referred to as ‘Thomas’ by those in the know -- woke up and greeted the day with his concrete cheeks before launching off on yet another lap around the quirky little planet. Mickey Mouse, leaning against a yellow wood-paneled wall of the train station watching the train arrive, figured the ‘little engine that could’ must’ve gotten tired of the sights by now. Sure, the mouse king himself still stood in awe of things like the delectable spectacle of Sweetzerland or the ever-changing landscape of the Imagen Nation, but after a while, the luster had to wear off, right?
The zippers on his new, less colorful attire -- a long black robe with a hood that his ears tucked nicely into -- clinked together as he pushed off the wall and approached the slowly stopping locomotive. He pulled a gloved hand out of his pocket and inspected the ticket he’d purchased. Bordered by a similar blue and featuring the smiling face of Thomas the Tank Engine himself, it read ‘All Aboard the Shining Time Railroad, car number 5, noon o’clock!’ Absorbing that information, the little mouse glanced up and spotted the fifth car, beginning his approach.
From car number four, the Proto Man tilted his sunglasses down and winked to his diminutive best friend. Mickey smirked in response, throwing up a gloved hand to signal receipt of the android boy’s signal and continued moving towards the fifth. They’d gone over the signals a thousand times last night, staying up way too late hanging out with PLUTA in the Spaceboat Willie’s bridge: a wink meant the target was, indeed, on the train, and a blink meant no dice.
A quick glance past Blues proved the wink correct. The same glasses-sporting, quite svelte Inkling from the cafe, a pair of lavender limbs hanging from the top of her head, sat nervously in the seat opposite the preteen machine, poring over a notebook of some sort. From Mickey’s vantage point, he couldn’t make out anything in it, but he could see plain as day the top of the Omega symbol painted on the back of her dress as she hunched over the little book.
He stepped onto car number five and slid into one of the seats near the front. The little Inkling - Argyle, maybe? Had that been her name? - glanced nervously back and forth over her shoulders, her neat-lookin’ tentacle limbs swaying to and fro.
So she’s suspicious, the mouse nodded, with a chuckle. Her burgeoning paranoia was probably wise, but nonetheless, now was not the time for him or Blues to jump. They’d lie in wait until the train had gotten far enough away from Toon Town… and near enough to the epicenter of Nos’talgia’s darkness, that strange, shadowy place the locals called the Uncanny Valley.
If this Darkseid fella had staked his claim anywhere on this peaceful, happy little planet, Mickey knew that would be it. And this Argyle lady… with any luck, she’d lead them right to it.
For now, though, he simply reached into one of the many pockets on the inside lining of this floor-length coat and pulled out a Ziploc bag of coriander, sticking a gloved hand inside and pulling out some leaves for a little snack. Not the most common snack, and he’d much rather have a whole block of cheese to just nibble away at, but a high-stakes train interrogation required a healthy mouse. The fiber, iron, magnesium, and all that would probably do him much good.
“All aboard!” someone from the front -- perhaps Thomas himself, for all Mickey knew -- shouted, followed almost immediately by the deafening sound of a train horn and the quintessential scraping of the locomotive’s wheels and axles rubbing together as it prepared to set off, once again, into the great, vibrant countryside of this weirdo planet.
Mickey narrowed his eyes. Shiznit was about to get real.
***
The Great Train Interrogation hadn’t been thought up overnight. Just the afternoon before.
Mickey Mouse and Proto Man sat at a small, circular, wrought-iron table, situated outside a cute, French-themed café, in almost complete silence. Since the incident with the wall, the mouse king had found himself completely lost in thought, poring over every detail of the vision as many times as he could manage; eventually, there didn’t seem to be anything Blues could do besides let the little mouse’s noggin work it out.
The preteen machine’s patience wasn’t likely to run out soon. Mickey, on the other hand, had less robotic implements on his side to curb his frustrated impulses, and besides that, little Squee was positively infuriating him bouncing around this way and that across the café’s patio.
“Ughhhhh,” he groaned, throwing his head forward and slamming it not-so-gently against the table. The whipped cream on top of his creamy iced coffee jiggled a little bit at the impact; the mouse’s best friend leaned over and placed a hand on the keyblade master’s shoulder.
“Y’okay, Mick?” the cyborg asked, concern visible on his face even with his huge sunglasses covering half of them.
Mickey looked up at the boy weakly. “It was just so freakin’ vague,” he whined, the frown on his face growing larger and deeper by the second. “Blah blah blah omega symbol. Blah blah blah Darkseid.”
“Darkseid?” the Proto Man quirked up. Mickey blinked a little bit, and then realized he hadn’t voiced that word aloud yet.
Darkseid.
The word had started to sorta just seep into his consciousness in the hours after the incident at the wall, big and scary and altogether quite mysterious. He didn’t know who this Darkseid fella was, or what he looked like, or what the heck he even wanted. Yet, the more he let the details of the vision settle, and the more the feelings it invoked seeped into his very emotional fiber, the more he knew the importance of that word. The more he knew that word wasn’t even just a word: it was a name.
There wasn’t all that much to go off of, admittedly. Whoever the maker of this world was -- or, to use the locals’ word, the ‘Arbiter’ -- they had been decidedly skimpy on the details, and since they hadn’t decided to bless his best friend with this same knowledge, he’d been left altogether on his own to try and figure out what the heck they meant, what was going on, and what exactly the threat was.
Thus far, all the clues he’d gotten were as follows: the name Darkseid, that weirdo Omega symbol, and the cold, spine-tingling feeling he’d felt inside the great white void as the inky blackness had begun to suck it all up around him.
Like he said: not much to go off of.
“Mick,” Blues tapped him on the arm, pointing slyly past him. “Didn’t you say you drew an Omega symbol in your vision? Was it like that one?”
Mickey Mouse whipped around, and that was the first time he laid eyes on Argyle the lavender-limbed Inkling. She walked briskly down the main street of Toon Town, almost blending in with the colorful, cartoonish buildings as she did so were it not for her starkly black dress and the big, blue Omega symbol emblazoned sloppily on the back. The mouse king watched carefully as she occasionally glanced up nervously from the book she was reading, slowly disappearing down the street. He scowled a bit; she was a bit too far from them now for him to catch up to her without being noticed, but maybe…
“Squee,” he muttered, “wanna do some spy work?”
***
Squee’s espionage mission had been quite the success. Though Blues was astounded Mickey could understand the little orange fuzz ball’s strange and, to him, non-existant noises -- and though Mickey himself couldn’t really explain it -- the tiny creature had managed to follow Argyle back to the inn where she’d holed herself up for a few days, and absorb some vital info. She was hopping a train the next day at precisely noon o’clock, heading to some sort of gathering just past the wall, in the shallowest reaches of the Uncanny Valley, with some other Inklings to discuss something called ‘the Unmaking.’
The mouse king had found that term altogether foreboding and quite urgent sounding, so he and Blues had resolved to join the inky creatures at their little gathering and immediately popped over to the train station to secure themselves tickets. To lower suspicion, they’d gotten spots on different cars, and by some stroke of luck, the Proto Man had managed to get a seat on the same car as their Inkling friend.
The Shining Time Railroad locomotive chugged out of Toon Town, sailing towards the edge of the Uncanny Valley with abandon. Mickey never really understood how big ol’ trains like these weren’t altogether slow and ponderous; he’d always sorta assumed size had a lot to do with something’s speed, but Thomas and his compatriots made their way into the less-colonized areas of Nos’talgia with ease and agility.
No stop existed to let passengers off into the Uncanny Valley -- for the most part, it seemed, locals and tourists alike were loath to venture into the darker swaths of the planet -- so Mickey watched the Inkling girl carefully as they continued their journey. How was she planning on getting past the wall, then? Someone with the mouse’s own acrobatic prowess might be adept at climbing it, but just from his brief observations of Argyle, she didn’t seem to have any sort of skills in that area. Nevertheless, she certainly seemed to be well on her way to this evening rendezvous with her inky comrades, and the mouse knew he had no other leads. This girl was, as of yet, their only link to whoever ‘Darkseid’ was and whatever the ‘Unmaking’ was.
Answers had to be gotten. He didn’t know why he felt this way, but something told him their time was running out, so he went to slide out of his seat when suddenly he noticed Argyle emerging from her own, as well.
…and she was holding a pretty honkin’ water gun-like contraption, complete with an orange tank filled with what looked like lavender ink. She leveled the Splattershot at an as-of-yet unaware Blues. Mickey couldn’t make words of warning leave his mouth fast enough, so all he could do was watch as lavender, inky goop exploded from the weapon’s barrel and completely covered his best friend.
Goshdangit!
CHOO CHOO!
The Shining Time Railroad ripped through the Nos’talgian countryside. At the head of the pack of train cars, a cobalt blue engine adorned with a silver face on the front smiled his way down the tracks, whistling a merry tune and heralding the locomotive’s arrival into the Toon Town station.
Toon Town’s particular stop on the Shining Time’s journey happened to be the origin point of the little engine that could. Every morning, the little blue train car -- affectionately referred to as ‘Thomas’ by those in the know -- woke up and greeted the day with his concrete cheeks before launching off on yet another lap around the quirky little planet. Mickey Mouse, leaning against a yellow wood-paneled wall of the train station watching the train arrive, figured the ‘little engine that could’ must’ve gotten tired of the sights by now. Sure, the mouse king himself still stood in awe of things like the delectable spectacle of Sweetzerland or the ever-changing landscape of the Imagen Nation, but after a while, the luster had to wear off, right?
The zippers on his new, less colorful attire -- a long black robe with a hood that his ears tucked nicely into -- clinked together as he pushed off the wall and approached the slowly stopping locomotive. He pulled a gloved hand out of his pocket and inspected the ticket he’d purchased. Bordered by a similar blue and featuring the smiling face of Thomas the Tank Engine himself, it read ‘All Aboard the Shining Time Railroad, car number 5, noon o’clock!’ Absorbing that information, the little mouse glanced up and spotted the fifth car, beginning his approach.
From car number four, the Proto Man tilted his sunglasses down and winked to his diminutive best friend. Mickey smirked in response, throwing up a gloved hand to signal receipt of the android boy’s signal and continued moving towards the fifth. They’d gone over the signals a thousand times last night, staying up way too late hanging out with PLUTA in the Spaceboat Willie’s bridge: a wink meant the target was, indeed, on the train, and a blink meant no dice.
A quick glance past Blues proved the wink correct. The same glasses-sporting, quite svelte Inkling from the cafe, a pair of lavender limbs hanging from the top of her head, sat nervously in the seat opposite the preteen machine, poring over a notebook of some sort. From Mickey’s vantage point, he couldn’t make out anything in it, but he could see plain as day the top of the Omega symbol painted on the back of her dress as she hunched over the little book.
He stepped onto car number five and slid into one of the seats near the front. The little Inkling - Argyle, maybe? Had that been her name? - glanced nervously back and forth over her shoulders, her neat-lookin’ tentacle limbs swaying to and fro.
So she’s suspicious, the mouse nodded, with a chuckle. Her burgeoning paranoia was probably wise, but nonetheless, now was not the time for him or Blues to jump. They’d lie in wait until the train had gotten far enough away from Toon Town… and near enough to the epicenter of Nos’talgia’s darkness, that strange, shadowy place the locals called the Uncanny Valley.
If this Darkseid fella had staked his claim anywhere on this peaceful, happy little planet, Mickey knew that would be it. And this Argyle lady… with any luck, she’d lead them right to it.
For now, though, he simply reached into one of the many pockets on the inside lining of this floor-length coat and pulled out a Ziploc bag of coriander, sticking a gloved hand inside and pulling out some leaves for a little snack. Not the most common snack, and he’d much rather have a whole block of cheese to just nibble away at, but a high-stakes train interrogation required a healthy mouse. The fiber, iron, magnesium, and all that would probably do him much good.
“All aboard!” someone from the front -- perhaps Thomas himself, for all Mickey knew -- shouted, followed almost immediately by the deafening sound of a train horn and the quintessential scraping of the locomotive’s wheels and axles rubbing together as it prepared to set off, once again, into the great, vibrant countryside of this weirdo planet.
Mickey narrowed his eyes. Shiznit was about to get real.
***
The Great Train Interrogation hadn’t been thought up overnight. Just the afternoon before.
Mickey Mouse and Proto Man sat at a small, circular, wrought-iron table, situated outside a cute, French-themed café, in almost complete silence. Since the incident with the wall, the mouse king had found himself completely lost in thought, poring over every detail of the vision as many times as he could manage; eventually, there didn’t seem to be anything Blues could do besides let the little mouse’s noggin work it out.
The preteen machine’s patience wasn’t likely to run out soon. Mickey, on the other hand, had less robotic implements on his side to curb his frustrated impulses, and besides that, little Squee was positively infuriating him bouncing around this way and that across the café’s patio.
“Ughhhhh,” he groaned, throwing his head forward and slamming it not-so-gently against the table. The whipped cream on top of his creamy iced coffee jiggled a little bit at the impact; the mouse’s best friend leaned over and placed a hand on the keyblade master’s shoulder.
“Y’okay, Mick?” the cyborg asked, concern visible on his face even with his huge sunglasses covering half of them.
Mickey looked up at the boy weakly. “It was just so freakin’ vague,” he whined, the frown on his face growing larger and deeper by the second. “Blah blah blah omega symbol. Blah blah blah Darkseid.”
“Darkseid?” the Proto Man quirked up. Mickey blinked a little bit, and then realized he hadn’t voiced that word aloud yet.
Darkseid.
The word had started to sorta just seep into his consciousness in the hours after the incident at the wall, big and scary and altogether quite mysterious. He didn’t know who this Darkseid fella was, or what he looked like, or what the heck he even wanted. Yet, the more he let the details of the vision settle, and the more the feelings it invoked seeped into his very emotional fiber, the more he knew the importance of that word. The more he knew that word wasn’t even just a word: it was a name.
There wasn’t all that much to go off of, admittedly. Whoever the maker of this world was -- or, to use the locals’ word, the ‘Arbiter’ -- they had been decidedly skimpy on the details, and since they hadn’t decided to bless his best friend with this same knowledge, he’d been left altogether on his own to try and figure out what the heck they meant, what was going on, and what exactly the threat was.
Thus far, all the clues he’d gotten were as follows: the name Darkseid, that weirdo Omega symbol, and the cold, spine-tingling feeling he’d felt inside the great white void as the inky blackness had begun to suck it all up around him.
Like he said: not much to go off of.
“Mick,” Blues tapped him on the arm, pointing slyly past him. “Didn’t you say you drew an Omega symbol in your vision? Was it like that one?”
Mickey Mouse whipped around, and that was the first time he laid eyes on Argyle the lavender-limbed Inkling. She walked briskly down the main street of Toon Town, almost blending in with the colorful, cartoonish buildings as she did so were it not for her starkly black dress and the big, blue Omega symbol emblazoned sloppily on the back. The mouse king watched carefully as she occasionally glanced up nervously from the book she was reading, slowly disappearing down the street. He scowled a bit; she was a bit too far from them now for him to catch up to her without being noticed, but maybe…
“Squee,” he muttered, “wanna do some spy work?”
***
Squee’s espionage mission had been quite the success. Though Blues was astounded Mickey could understand the little orange fuzz ball’s strange and, to him, non-existant noises -- and though Mickey himself couldn’t really explain it -- the tiny creature had managed to follow Argyle back to the inn where she’d holed herself up for a few days, and absorb some vital info. She was hopping a train the next day at precisely noon o’clock, heading to some sort of gathering just past the wall, in the shallowest reaches of the Uncanny Valley, with some other Inklings to discuss something called ‘the Unmaking.’
The mouse king had found that term altogether foreboding and quite urgent sounding, so he and Blues had resolved to join the inky creatures at their little gathering and immediately popped over to the train station to secure themselves tickets. To lower suspicion, they’d gotten spots on different cars, and by some stroke of luck, the Proto Man had managed to get a seat on the same car as their Inkling friend.
The Shining Time Railroad locomotive chugged out of Toon Town, sailing towards the edge of the Uncanny Valley with abandon. Mickey never really understood how big ol’ trains like these weren’t altogether slow and ponderous; he’d always sorta assumed size had a lot to do with something’s speed, but Thomas and his compatriots made their way into the less-colonized areas of Nos’talgia with ease and agility.
No stop existed to let passengers off into the Uncanny Valley -- for the most part, it seemed, locals and tourists alike were loath to venture into the darker swaths of the planet -- so Mickey watched the Inkling girl carefully as they continued their journey. How was she planning on getting past the wall, then? Someone with the mouse’s own acrobatic prowess might be adept at climbing it, but just from his brief observations of Argyle, she didn’t seem to have any sort of skills in that area. Nevertheless, she certainly seemed to be well on her way to this evening rendezvous with her inky comrades, and the mouse knew he had no other leads. This girl was, as of yet, their only link to whoever ‘Darkseid’ was and whatever the ‘Unmaking’ was.
Answers had to be gotten. He didn’t know why he felt this way, but something told him their time was running out, so he went to slide out of his seat when suddenly he noticed Argyle emerging from her own, as well.
…and she was holding a pretty honkin’ water gun-like contraption, complete with an orange tank filled with what looked like lavender ink. She leveled the Splattershot at an as-of-yet unaware Blues. Mickey couldn’t make words of warning leave his mouth fast enough, so all he could do was watch as lavender, inky goop exploded from the weapon’s barrel and completely covered his best friend.
Goshdangit!