sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #2

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!tdm

TEST DRIVE MEME #2

1. this hotel room got a lot of stuff

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome aboard! We're so glad to have you!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.

after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]

2. and a touch-tone phone

[chatterbox isn't exactly the most popular venue onboard. it probably has something to do with the distinct lack of open liquor bottles. so, nothing personal. except it seems that it's decided to take it that way, suddenly.

anyone enjoying the other amenities of deck five will feel the distinct sensation of being watched while they do so. the kind of feeling a prey animal gets while being stalked on the grasslands. something may slither by their foot, or past their elbow while they rest it on the bar, but nothing appears to be there when they look.

until there is.

a black electrical cord originating from somewhere will, first, wrap around their ankle, tugging in a very clear "follow" instruction. should this instruction be ignored, a second cord will wrap around their other ankle, and, once again, tug. should this clear final warning be ignored... well, now they're being dragged down the promenade, and that's really their own fault, isn't it. don't struggle. struggling means more cords show up. and none of them seem terribly aware that most species need to expand their lungs to live.

their final destination, no matter the journey, is chatterbox's main stage, where the karaoke machine awaits. the cords place a microphone in their hand; the mic's cords bind it tightly to their hand.

they don't have to pick a song. there isn't an actual gun to their head, in any literal sense. it's just, those cords really don't seem that interested in letting go until they do.

and if you were heading to chatterbox anyway? welcome to the weirdest goddamn karaoke night you've ever seen.]

3. and a bucket of ice (cw: cannibalism mention)

[no longer will scoops be bound by the shackles of only having 31 flavors. for this month, and this month only, a sign that very much looks like Friday hand-wrote it announces, they will have 32!

what is that mysterious 32nd flavor? it depends, really: the letters on the display case seem to shift and change with each new pair of eyes that fall upon them, with the contents changing along with it. someone from the capital wasteland might find some Nuka-Cola ™ branded ice cream. twilight town residents will be thrilled to find sea salt on the menu. and a frankly concerning amount of people bring out a flavor that only describes itself as "long pig." it's a weird off-white color. don't think about it too hard.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Not hell, I've been. Hell doesn't have karaoke. And we're not dead, either."

Well, the underworld, but the joke stands. She appreciates the... humour he seems to be taking this in, which was markedly better than the amount of swearing she did on her first day. She takes the hand firmly.

"Darcy. You always invite people to drink like you're making a business deal?"

She asks, teasing.

"Not that I drink or anything. You'll have to get shitfaced for me."

"Don't worry, I'll be getting shitfaced enough for several people," Lucius tells her and starts walking. He hasn't the faintest where he's going apart from somewhere away from the wires and karaoke. He casually wraps an arm around his new friend Darcy and drags her along as he starts looking for the nearest repository of so much...just so much booze.

"In my defense, I'm usually quite fun," Lucius proclaims. "In about three drinks, you'll meet the fun...not as traumatized version of me."

He glances sidelong at Darcy and looks a little unsure and also manic--he's screaming on the inside.

"Where are we going?"

She laughs again, carefully removing herself from under his arm and offering him an elbow instead. Leave room for Jesus, Lucius.

"Hey- I thought you were leading the way, ehn? Lemme see..."

She squints, trying to orient herself on the ship.

"I think Rischie is nearby. Do you like clubs?"

"If it'll get me a drink?"

He's never been fond of fighting but, frankly, he's too addled to argue. If she wants him to club someone named Rischie so they can steal their booze, he's in.

"What do we do with the body after?" He hums. "Actually: I don't care, that's a problem for drunk me."

"Body?"

...

She gives him another look over, putting together the ignorance about certain bits of slang with the questionable fashion sense.

"Ah fuck- you're probably just also really old like Stede. No- club like a... party place. Loud music and alcohol."

The LOOK of abject horror and disgust that comment earns her is extremely dramatic and absolute. The betrayal he feels is beyond words--just--is she an actual demon? He thought they were friends? Did he kick her puppy en route?

Lucius isn't wearing pearls but he does clutch at his cravat as he recoils.

"ExCuSe Me!?"

Wait--hidden in that egregious insult to his person was a tidbit of actual knowledge.

"Stede as in: Bonnet? The...Gentleman Pirate?"

It's so dramatic that Darcy fails to read it as genuine, assuming it's a joking exaggeration. She laughs again, leaning against the wall of the hallway, her arms around her middle.

"Fuck- I meant you're from the past, ehn? You don't look that old."

She shrugged at his question with one shoulder, "is that what he calls himself? Stede Bonnet, fancy pants, keeps making moon-eyes at Blackbeard, that Stede."

"That's just his face," Lucius corrects, all drama drained out of him. He's being laughed at by a teenager in Hell and also his boss is here. And his boss's co...boss.

He really needs that drink.

"Come on, let's go mug that guy with a club or whatever, keep walking," he gestures forward with a vague shooing motion. "I need at least three fingers of rum for this conversation."

"What, always?" She doesn't really believe him, but if Lucius knows him from before, then he's probably right.

The pimply-psychopomp ferries her cargo from the hallway safely into the club. The hypnotic technicolour lights are always on, as is the thumping music, and, most importantly, the alcohol is always available. She gestures for him to retrieve it himself, to save them both a visit from Gal Friday, and sits herself at a table, tapping along to the thumpy music.

Lucius leaves his new mean teenager friend at the table and promptly hops the bar to rustle around through the bottles. His back absolutely disapproves of all the nimble barhopping, but it can quit bitching because liquor is the absolute priority here. He doesn't know what half of these are so he grabs two big bottles, heavy ones, and makes his way back to the table.

Did he grab a handle of vodka and a huge bottle of off brand Midori? Yes. Does he twist off the cap on said melon liquer, take a swig, sputter, and then decide to just finish it or pass out trying? Also yes.

His next drink is a bit deeper than he ought to take in front of a teenager...or a bartender, for that matter, but once he's a good few chugs in he feels like he can face this absolute bat shit shift in reality.

"Okay--" said hoarsely, he gestures very vaguely with big motions with his free, non Midori holding hand. "Yes that's his face, it just gets...extra mooney around Blackbeard."

Darcy tries to tell him "I think you're meant to mix th-" when he sits down with the bottles, but he chugs them anyway, and with an expression halfway between being impressed and horrified for the state of his liver, she gestures that she's washing her hands of the situation.

"Alright, anything else I should know about him? I haven't been on the crew for long, and he's kind of hard to read."

"Oh...oh sweetie," Lucius says before he can catch himself. He takes another long swig of the green liquer and sets the bottle aside. The folds his hands in front of him and waits, just a tic, for the 20% alcohol by volume to start kicking in.

"Repeat that for me, please. You're on the crew?" It's not said with any sort of derision. She's certainly not the youngest person he's ever seen press-ganged but, this, Stede Bonnet is, oh dear.

Nope, he still needs another swig and he sighs as he takes one.

Now who's being mean? She gives him a reproachful look for the 'sweetie' and hunches forward, folding her arms on the table.

"Yeah, there was a sign up and everything. I'm in it for the sword fighting, mostly."

Lucius gives her an apologetic sort of grimace and slides the midori between them. He drums his fingers on it and considers her tough, reproachful face. She could kick his ass but, really, so could a properly motivated seagull. He sighs.

"Of course you are," he agrees and clucks his tongue. He's being careful, conversational even. This is possibly the least judgmental and bitchy he's been so far. "And you've met many pirates before joining the crew?"

"I've read about them. There's not really any pirates running around back home. Are you getting at something? Is Stede like, the most shit pirate to step on a ship or something?"

Which would make his involvement with Blackbeard weird; Blackbeard was amazing enough that he persisted through history, whereas she'd never heard of Stede back home.

"Your words, not mine," Lucius confirms quickly and with a sidelong look at the door. Why was the door a vast open expanse of wall? Who designs bars that are easy to sneak in and out of?

"Now...don't get me wrong. I'm loyal to the Captain," he says and makes a sort of wishy-washy gesture with his free hand. The other hand is occupied with fingering the neck of the Midori bottle anxiously. "It's just...Piracy is really a career path for the desperate and the insane. Captain Bonnet is...an anomaly."

He can feel the alcohol kicking in the longer he stares at her. Since his capacity for delicacy is about to go out the window anyway he decides to help it along.

"He's fucking weird," Lucius just comes out with it.

"You saved me from the wires so, it's only fair to warn you. He's a terrible pirate, just godawful. He's a perfectly fine fellow, very nice in a silly...bumbling uncle kind of way. He's trustworthy, loyal, very friendly, and kind. He does his best to please everyone and is extremely understanding. None of these things are qualities you want in a pirate, especially in a pirate Captain."

It's... obvious. She thought it herself- the dude seemed fit to run a Christian youth camp, not a pirate ship. But it still deflates something in her. The pretty words about freedom and adventure become just words again, like a raft splintering back into planks of wood.

"Yeah," she says, notably more muted and dour than she had been, "I thought he was kind of a marshmallow when I saw him. I figured it was weird too."

As if she'd ever admit she was childish enough to go along with it. She was a dead girl on a ship full of people waiting around to die, in various states of denial about it. It wouldn't matter if Stede had been the best pirate captain in the world. There could be no freedom here. Only the responsibility she had to them all to work this out and fix things. It was a silly digression to begin with.

"I'm going to get myself a juice," she said, standing up from the table, wishing that it didn't sound as childish as it did, and she wasn't so young as she was.

Lucius watches her go, sulking off to the bar, and feels terrible about it. He could wait for her to come back but, for some reason, he decides to take his melon liquer and follow. While she's fetching a juice, he props himself against the customer side and tries to give her an apologetic smile.

"Listen, I'm sorry," he starts and it is sincere even if he doesn't sound entirely...unsarcastic. "I didn't mean to ruin the...mystique...but Captain Bonnet is not a normal situation. It's worth it to...know what you're getting in to when you join a really bizarre crew.

"If you are in it for the swordplay, God knows we could use you," he adds and leans on the bar, propping his chin on his fist and his elbow on a tap. "But it's...riskier than just being a normal pirate--fuck am I saying? Wait no, that's accurate.

"In two months he's been run through by two separate blokes and boarded by two different navies. He burned a French aristocrat's barge down after inciting a riot, played at being a ghost ship to mess with Swedish merchants, and pretended to be a lighthouse to escape the Spanish and that somehow worked??? He also ran us aground, lost two hostages, was captured by islanders, and killed an English naval officer in like...the span of a day."

Is he still talking or just thinking?

"What I'm saying is: it is a lot. Even for me. I was a pirate before I met him, yeah? And then there's the whole Blackbeard thing--and now we're in...not Hell--it's so much."

Darcy set about taking an orange juice from the glass under the bar; except they were the tiny useless bottles that probably only existed to be mixed into an individual drink, so she huffed and took a couple, mentally doing the math about her diet in her head before giving up and deciding to just write off dinner.

Lucius doesn't have the storytelling ability of Stede. And the proximity to him telling her that Stede was the pirate equivalent of a golden retriever who couldn't pirate a movie makes the references to stories she's never heard fall even flatter. Whether it's lying to save her feelings or the truth delivered in an unconvincing way, it matters little. Darcy has entered the pit, and she doesn't intend on getting out of it soon.

"You don't need to make me feel better. You said he was a shit captain. So either you're lying now, or you were lying then."

"Wow, rude," Lucius declares. "Which part are you most pissed at, then?"

He pushes himself back upright and sloshes his bottle idly as he gestures back at the table. Neither of them are sitting there but that's not the point. This is...not an ideal time to disagree with her, given the absolute boatload of liquor trickling into his veins, but he already did his good deed, thank you very much.

Warning teenagers away from lives of piracy puts him firmly in the 'good guy' position, regardless of how meanly said teenager deals with it.

"The lack of nuance inherent in criminal enterprise which limits what traits are viable for survival? Or just me for pointing them out?" Lucius asks.

"OoooOoooor," he singsongs, holding that syllable long enough to sit fully upright. "Is it the fact that you wanted to be an actual real life pirate and do swordy murdering when you're not bold enough to drink trash liquor when nobody's looking? Is that the one thats got you all mopey?"

The real answer is, as always, she's mad at herself, this time for buying into it. But that's an insight far beyond her grasp, and she happens to have a snivelling asshole within arm's reach that is currently much more convenient to be mad at.

"ThE lAcK oF nUaNcE-" she repeats in a mocking tone, "fuck you. Don't talk down to me, I knew he wasn't going to be a very good captain, I'm mad at you because you tried to walk it back and tell me 'ohhh he's actually cool, he's been stabbed, he pretended to be a lighthouse, ohh I actually said he was the worst pirate ever just because he's so weird and it's so dangerous'."

She leans over the bar, her dark eyes glassy as a shark.

"If I touch that bottle, that faceless bitch is going to appear over my fucking shoulder to tell me off. I can drink back home. I just don't. You don't know anything about me. And it's bold fucking words coming from a man who was scared of a karaoke machine."

Lucius leans forward and just peers at her. Oh yes, she's livid, and has a quality sort of 'no, mate, I'm actually going to stab you this time' look about her, but she's also got orange juice so...eeeeh. His face scrunches up and then goes slack with confusion. It's not fair, frankly, that he doesn't get to have a point where he's exactly the right amount of drunk.

Going from not drunk enough to talk about this to far too drunk to talk about this is just unlucky.

"I'm sorry, which...part of 'the Captain is going to get us all murdered by assorted navies and summarily hung' sounded like an endorsement?"

He blinks and takes a deep breath through his nose.

"Was it the descriptions of him being a lunatic? Is that the...cool and appealing part?" He gestures with his free hand, honestly baffled. The waspish argument has been entirely forgotten in the wake of this realization.

"Oh god, your from the weird, flashy light future right? Is Stede Bonnet's madness cool? That can't--please tell me that mad people aren't a selling point here? God--lie to me, please, if that's the case. I can't process being in Hell with my boss and also having him be cool now."

The disagreement here is occurring from a couple of different sources. Firstly, Darcy's a girl who's never had to worry about the source of her next meal. Secondly, it'd been a couple of centuries since any pirates of note had been active due to a number of reasons, and Darcy was all caught up in what they'd been made into, not what they were. Emblems of freedom, romantic figures who lived dangerously and died wonderfully. Which lead into the third; a distinct difference in opinion about martyrs and dying for the beliefs of someone you're following. If Stede was worth following, if there was substance to his words, then Lucius should've been willing to die for them. She'd died for her own Krewe back home, after all,. Her face flushes to a more healthy shade at the idea that madness would be fashionable at the future, and she hisses-

"Of course not," the death of her meagre social life back home after her involuntary internment was evidence enough of that.

"Just- fuck you, okay? Fuck you, fuck Stede, fuck all of this pirate bullshit. What kind of idiot stays with a Captain if he thinks he's going to get killed for dumb reasons? It's all dumb. I dont even like pirates."

Yeah, take THAT Lucius, pirates are uncool now.

He has never wanted to pat someone's hand and call them sweetie more than right this moment. Fortunately, he now lacks the coordination for that, and can't quite recall the word sweetie. He plunks back in his seat, Midori in hand, and nods sagely as she disavows all of piracy as being uncool.

"Good--that's the spirit," he lifts the bottle in salute and sways back on the stool. "What were we--oh yes, Pirates are idiots and don't take shit from anybody. Good talk."

Nevermind that the person she's currently taking shit from his him. It's possible he'd understand her utterly different material conditions if he were both sober, and realized she's contemporary with the technology here. It's unlikely, of course, but possible. As is, he feels both like he's done a good turn for an ailing vagrant and like he's had a pissy spat with a friend.

Both are true, somewhat.

"This green stuff is--" Lucius points at the bottle blearily. "--much stronger than I expected."

Maybe this dude really is an idiot. Or, more probably, the dude is just very drunk. Probably both. She huffed, upset her barb didn't seem to stick. She should really storm out and leave him to the consequences of his own actions. Really, he'd been a dick to her. But God knows she'd feel like a piece of shit if she didn't take care of him despite her revulsion. Some duties become reflexive, even somewhere else for someone else.

She uses one of her orange juice bottles as a buffer to nudge the midori away from him, and gets him a glass of water that she dunks in front of him, trying to muster any sort of authority.

"Because it's meant to be mixed. Drink this before your fucking liver fails and I need to drag your sorry ass to the morgue."

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