*Yeppa, here we are, moving fast at mach 5. Shit goes down indeed. Thus, here we are. Enjoy and let me know what you think. Peace out and Deus Vult*
The Express still lingered in Penacony, and yet they were all on board, gathered together in the parlor, sitting round with Mark's phone placed on the coffee table before them. The light-green device waited, feeling the weight of their gazes linger on it. Judgement was about to fall, and it could do nothing but await the cruel fate. The white cube simply stood there, silent, any motion having long since ceased from it. They didn't know of those moments—almost no one knew except the Stellaron Hunters, who had kept an eye over the Express.
"We shouldn't do this," said Himeko, clinging to the rational voice in her mind. Mark was in a predicament they hadn't seen before, captured within a cube that they couldn't understand.
"I know we shouldn't; that's the rational choice; however... what about the information it might hide? We've all wondered about his origins, what turned him into the man we're working with," added Welt, fixing his glasses up his nose. March felt her fingers ache to just reach out for the phone and type in the password that she had caught sight of a few times—Mark didn't shy from hiding it.
"That is the situation, and yet there's a moral duty here that we're about to break. It's secrets at the price of his privacy. What if there's actually nothing there and we're simply on a wild chase? We might do this for naught then have to face consequences."
Dan Heng's words were calm and thought out, yet even he felt the powerful allure of a possible explanation.
"The only thing he's told me at some point is that he had been an Observer once, or something along those lines. I'm yet to understand what he meant."
Black Swan tried to find something, anything, in her own mind, looking through the memories she's gathered across many years. Some mentions came up about such people, but nothing that could be tied to the present era, to his knowledge that went beyond normal, to actually understanding the depths of people around him.
"I'm afraid the only course of action that would reveal the actual truth is to hopefully find information in his phone or to have him confess by his own volition."
Stelle sighed, rubbing her chin in thought for a moment. She gave up, simply resting on the couch, lounging while grumbling.
"I'm so annoyed by this mess. March, just open it."
All eyes dashed to the phone as March picked it up with trembling hands. It's like the damn phone was a bomb, waiting to explode at the smallest wrong move. Her pink-blue eyes darted left and right, awaiting confirmation from others. Himeko's lips pursed, her palms glued together as sweat began forming on them, the tension palpable. Welt has his fingers laced together as his elbows rested right above his knees.
"Should we do this?" asked Himeko once more, feeling conflicted to her core. The situation between her and Mark was already delicate, and one wrong move might make it crumble fully.
"No risk, no gain."
Black Swan's words were short, but they cut to the heart of the matter. March took a deep breath as she finally typed in the password, her thumb gliding over the numbers 6 and 9 a few times.
"Is that his password?" asked Stelle, scratching the side of her head as she sat up on the couch, feeling the soft material mold under her weight.
"What a... Mark thing," sighed out Himeko, somehow not surprised. Black Swan simply chuckled, her soft gloves sliding over her lips as she looked over to the cube in the room.
"What a dirty-minded individual. He sure has a lot of interesting sides to him."
Dan Heng's eyes were glued to the screen as he sat by March's side, looking over her shoulder at the phone. Everyone was squished together to get a better look at the screen. The wallpaper was a black and white image of two unknown characters, one with short black hair and another with longer strands hidden that cascaded beneath a crown of thorns.
"That's a strange image. What does it even mean?" asked March, narrowing her eyes at it.
No one said a thing about it after simply looking around at the apps present. None of them made sense for any of them, since the OS was something different from what they knew. Herta made sure to add a new version and some upgrades to his device, and yet the older part of it was preserved in the way it was back in his home world.
"Well, the interface seems similar, but the applications it has sure are different. How about we check them one by one?"
And thus they followed Himeko's suggestion, accessing each and every one of them. Some needed internet access, despite him being connected to the Astral Express' network. That was the first strange thing about it. The usual apps were nothing out of the ordinary besides their foreign appearance.
"Let's see what else he has. I believe the photos should be the last thing we check, right? That's where the most information might come in from, but first we should look at what we have available just in case some security measures might kick in later."
Welt's advice was good, so they simply went along with their exploration. No one made a noise; they all just listened to each noise that came from his phone. The notes app had a single entry that was blocked by a password, while the others were just meaningless words thrown in there. Of course, the phone's password didn't work.
"I guess he locked up the neat stuff," puffed out Stelle, a bit annoyed.
Next, with March being March, she checked the games on his phone. All was nice and normal, some weird game called 'Minecraft' that they checked, with cubes and more things no one could figure out quickly, but then came the strange part. Two faces for two different games, one a girl with dark hair and a blue ribbon, looking to the side, and the other one partially glitching out, but they could make out the image decently.
"Is that... ME?!" cried out March, eyes glued to the screen. She didn't know when her finger tapped the icon, opening it in a blitz. They were all watching with big eyes, gazes fixed on the tiny screen, drinking the sight. A weird name, 'Hoyoverse', followed by the game's presumed logo, a wide title saying 'Honkai Star Rail' and a representation of a train. Their hearts stopped when the image of a train, one eerily similar to the Astral Express, appeared on the screen. It was floating in space, with a large planet in the background. The rest was hidden as the 'No Internet' warning appeared, prompting them to restart.
Silence, eerie, and heavy, unlike ever before, settled in, with a weird feeling of paranoia following. Their eyes looked out the Express windows, staring with uncertainty to catch a glimpse of whoever might be watching, if anyone was doing so.
"Now that went from 0 to 100 really quick," said Stelle, her voice a little shaky as she tried to humor the situation. The one worried most was March, who kept staring at the tiny image of her face.
"Just what is that? Is it a game with the Express? Did someone in the universe make such a thing? Are we somehow being watched?" she cried out as she put the phone down, putting both arms around her head as if to hide away from the world. She clung on to Stelle, who tried to comfort the poor girl.
Welt reached out and picked up the phone, fueled by the desire for knowledge to look through it more and more, to fully comprehend what's going on. Black Swan floated around, looking intrigued—almost too much.
"Let's keep looking," he said, his voice composed despite the strange discovery. Himeko stood by his side, stealing a glance over to the cube, watching it silently rest on the floor before her eyes returned to the phone. His gallery was the last place to check.
"Should we actually open it? What if we find... you know... things we shouldn't see?" she asked, her cheeks slightly flushed at the idea.
Welt's finger paused as it hovered over the icon, waiting as the gears turned in his mind.
"We should assume this risk," he said, then faked a cough as he opened it. Folders with various images stood out, but the one that was the most glitched out was called 'Honkai,' and inside, images of a drawn, red-haired woman were gathered, together with those of a purple-haired one. Their faces dropped, while Black Swan looked like she was having a field day.
"That... that has to be me... and that is most probably Acheron... but when, and how?"
Himeko was speechless, but Welt kept looking around for more, nearly choking when the image of his past popped in, with him wearing an idol outfit, being all pampered. That sealed the deal. He quickly switched to another picture, this one a meme with the crew, each one saying imaginary, then a specific Path, while Himeko's only said Imaginary and had a skull emoji after it.
"Just what is all this?" asked Dan Heng, and Stelle came to look while March still clung to her side, as if a little scared.
Himeko's cheeks were flushed red, thousands of ideas swarming her mind, be they normal thoughts, worried thoughts, or perhaps the kind of thoughts she shouldn't have with him using those images in the wrong manners.
"Welt... what was that image with you?" she asked, trying to shift her focus. He was dumbfounded, understanding that some of the images he held there depicted real moments, and yet the question of 'how' remained.
"It is nothing important," he spat out, but Stelle snatched the phone and found it. She was grinning from ear to ear while everyone stared at it, and Welt was close to simply destroying the phone.
"Mister Yang, I didn't know you liked crossdressing. Maybe it's you we should take shopping, not Mark," chuckled March, teasing the old man.
Still, Stelle had to check the rest of the phone. All of the images were laid bare before their eyes, from random memes with cats to images of other characters, to photos of people, and him as well. They checked them, only to realize that he seemed very... normal. What else did they expect?
"He did say he wound up in this situation without his knowledge," said Himeko, her voice soft and somewhat composed. "I guess his life before was normal, filled with the mundane."
They kept looking, finding images of him posing, laughing, being with friends, making funny faces, photos of him and his family, where he was smiling so earnestly. It was a far cry from the Mark they knew, who seemed to force some emotions from time to time, who kept focusing on getting stronger, on fighting, and on clinging to his sanity. Their faces dropped slightly, and even Black Swan said nothing, despite keeping track of all the memories she could extract from those images.
"I can feel the joy in all of them," she whispered, gaining everyone's attention. "He was happy, so happy that I can't describe it. It was just a pure sense of contentment, filled with lingering moments of worry, just like the life of a normal person. The things I felt in him when I tried to check during our dance were nothing but pain and a strong sense of duty that nearly swallowed him whole. It was brief, but I felt it."
Silence as they just looked along, searching the photos. Graduation ceremony after high school, again a photo of him together with his family, the dark robe covering him slightly. Beautiful memories that made them all remain silent. Unlike most of them, he was the only one to have a normal life before being thrown into chaos. March has no memories; Dan Heng's past is a mess, while Himeko and Welt have their own lives that went in specific directions. Stelle herself had no idea of who she was before, but Mark... Mark had known all of it and lost it all in the blink of an eye.
"That's... not fair..." whispered March, wiping her eyes. "It's not fair that he just... lost all of it. Why...?"
Of course, the answer was foreign to him too. Thus, they just looked at the pictures in silence, watching all of it. Images of them as characters drawn on paper appeared too, but they didn't matter that much anymore despite the eerie feeling they carried. Thus, the photos simply moved until they were done.
With a trembling hand, Stelle put the phone back down on the table, and everyone could swear that the cube behind them was making a soft sad noise. Still, it stopped as their gazes moved over to it.
"Just... this is some heavy stuff," sighed Stelle, trying to calm down. No one said a thing until Welt broke the silence.
"Whatever happens, we have to discuss this with Mark. Perhaps the time will come when he's freed from that weird substance."
Yet, days went by, and he was still inside, even as the Luofu sent an invitation to the Astral Express. While Himeko and Welt were on their way to deal with the Leviathan fossils, the cube was left on the Luofu, where Bailu and Lingsha were trying to check up on him. Thus, the disasters began unfolding without Mark to meddle with them. Inside the cube, he knew, he felt, and most importantly... he was done.