Where the hell is my pipe?!

[Stephan Donnel]

The white, blank canvas of the Nexus spread out infinitely in all directions. Well. It wasn't exactly blank. Not really. You could see quite the number of people (and other things) going on between several points in the distance.
Are those gates? Why in the blazing fire would you put a gate out in the open with nothing around it?
Voice rang out like the thumping piston and full of annoyed resignation.
There was no answer. In the middle of great white nothingness, under a towering structure of brass cogwheels and flowing water, there was no one to listen in. At least no one who the man could see.

The man. Who the hell is he anyway? He is sitting on the slowly disappearing into whitish nothing pavement beneath the Fountain. Currently, he is rather distraught, lost, simply trying to collect himself. One moment he is chasing pirates around in-between the Reefs of Tzar in the Southern Reaches and the next he is floating in the darkness, and now he is here.
The fuck.

He is clutching the only thing besides clothes and hat that he has with him, his sword. He could try to find respite in a trusty metallic ally by his flank, he could try and do something else, but now all the could think of was...
This thing will break soon if start using it...
He just muttered to himself. He probably was doing it for at least an hour now. His clothes were soaked in water vapours and errant splashes from the fountain behind him by now.

If someone were to step closer and look him in the eyes they would see that his left one, concealed behind a misty monocle, was glowing faint, slowly diminishing red. You could almost use it as an indicator of how accustomed he was to the situation.
Damn it, I need my pipe. And it is left in my cabin. Blazes...

[Stephan Donnel]

After some couple of hours, which seemed to drag on like days a now-soaked figure rose up from the side of the Fountain of Infinity. The old man looked back on it, but it was nothing like what he seen when he first glanced upon it. Besides the fact that it was still spilling water everywhere. In the beginning it looked like that statue to mechanists in the middle of Londo back home. Now, it was more akin to several featureless beings holding bottles and vases and whatever that was supposed to be. Probably a hose. Underneath the paving has long since disappeared, being replaced by featureless blank space. Despite sitting on it through the whole ordeal man had only now noticed that. The reddish light that had only a few minutes ago completely dimmed from his left eye seemed to flare up again for just a moment.

Well, blazing damnation. This place seems bent on driving me mad. I guess no reason staying here. Not like i will find the way back. Or a pipe will appear out of thin air. Sigh. I will miss it.

Even thou there wasn't much water coming in each individual drop, or much of it at all, Stephan had spent enough time under the fountain to be completely soaked through. Dripping a little on the featureless floor underneath his feet he looked around with far more determination in his eyes than was there for the most of the previous hours spent looking at whatever "traffic" that passed around from one gate to another. Now, he didn't see much, no scratch that, he didn't see ANY magic ever, or even anything supernatural, but this stuff here? People coming to and from nothingness? Unnatural creatures walking around like just another deckhand? And was that a ghost just stepping out of the fountain?

Either me, or this place is crazy. Hey, Stephan, are you crazy? There was no reply. That is settled then. I will have to deal with all of this just like with any other crazy in my life. Calmly.

With that the man in the soaked uniform turned around, and walked in broad, determined steps to the closest gate. Well. Closest is the relative term really. Distance didn't seem usual here, and while he could swear we just had to cross a couple hundred meters to that it took him several hours.Underestimating the distance he had to stop halfway to catch his breath for a moment.

Damn, just when I walked that much last time? A burst of steam escaped from a vent on his back. Running around sure gets harder when you lay back some too much.

After a solid 2 hours of walking, extended by a couple of breaks, the captain arrived to a Gate. Well... that was a strong word really. The decrepit, worn out archway could barely qualify as a gate, with all the cracks and the occasional stream of sand falling down. But what was within this archway (that would really look in it's place somewhere in the middle of forgotten ruins in the desert) was far more interesting that the corroded outside. What looked like a shimmering veil spread out across the whole passageway and on the other side a landscape, too blurred to make anything out, glistered under the sun.

Here goes nothing... Spoke the old officer with a slight tinge of nervousness in his voice.

He stepped forward, extending his left, metal, arm and pushing through to the other side of the Gate.