sail_ooc | 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

Darcy nearly slips from the bump, but continues her endeavor with dogged tenacity, slowly but surely making her way through all of the pins, until the lock clicks open. She smiles, relieved she could make it work, and spins the shackle before handing it back to her.

"I didn't think it'd be that easy. It's just... delicate. Are all locks like this?"

"That one's a pin cylinder, it's one of the most common types of lock, especially on padlocks. Other kinds require a different technique, but if it's got a key and you've got enough time any lock can be picked." she glares at the door that'd been giving her trouble for a moment "Any functional lock can be picked"

"Yeah, welcome aboard," she droned, folding her arms once again.

"Shit doesn't always work. It's a fucking weird place."

Darcy shifted her positioning a little, "I'm Darcy. Someone give you the run-down already?"

"Parker" she leaned back against the wall and folded her arms as well, mirroring Darcy "There was a mandatory safety briefing, but nothing else"

She gestured broadly around them.

"Welcome to the ship. Nobody dies properly and you can't leave. The Captain is probably evil."

"Evil?"

Parker's already sorting through what information she has, it'll be harder without Hardison and Eliot, but if Nate can find a client in prison why can't she find one in a weird hostage cruise? And hey, it might help her get out too

"I'm on my own right now - but my team and I, we help people who have nowhere else to go. If you can tell me as much as you can, I might be able to help"

There's... something comforting about meeting someone else who helps the people who are beyond all help. She sincerely doubts this lady means ghosts, but hey, an act of mercy is an act of mercy.

"Sure, but you'll want to sit down for it. I mean, really sit down, there's some weird shit going on here."

"Okay" she nods, "Is there a cafe or something here we could go to?"

It doesn't really bother her where she hears it, and she finds the 'you'll want to sit down' thing a bit weird if she's honest, but it's not really about her and it's usually easier for the client to tell their full story when they're somewhere comfortable, so cafes and bars work well. First order of business once she's heard Darcy's story should be to find a permanent base of operations, so she has somewhere to talk to clients properly.

There's probably a lot more options if Parker were talking to another adult, but as it stands Darcy takes her to Sand Dollars. It's quiet, and the ghosts serve them the tiny madeleines, which are nowhere near as nice as the ones back home.

Darcy gestures to the floating plates.

"So, first of all, that's ghosts."

Parker wants to say 'ghosts aren't real' or 'you should call Ghostbusters' but she's pretty sure both of those fall under the category of Things Sophie Would Advise Against, so she bites her tongue and tries to find something useful to say instead

"Huh, that is weird. I got dragged down a hallway by some rogue audio cables earlier, they must be controlled by the same thing."

Darcy knows a look of incredulity when she sees one, even if Parker doesn't say anything.

"I know, it's weird. I didn't think magic or ghosts or anything was real before I got here," she lies, "but here it's real, and that's just something everyone has to get used to. I know a guy who's a walking skeleton. Just bones. But you're probably right. If something's moving on its own, it's probably ghosts."

Magic is real, ghosts are real, there's a walking skeleton... Cool! She tries not to let her brain wander off thinking about how much more Stuff she could steal if she could do magic and keep her focus on the conversation at hand

"You said we can't leave, I'm guessing that also means we can't contact anyone on the outside?"

"Nope. No signal. The closest we have is these," Darcy pulled out the comms device, waggling it to indicate to it, "which you should have too. We can only contact other people on the ship."

Yeah that didn't surprise her, the earbuds were generally more reliable than phones, so if hers didn't work then it made sense nothing else did either. Still there had been some miniscule hope, but best not to dwell on it. She can have her panic attack about it later, when there's not a kid in front of her

"Tell me about the captain," she says instead, moving on to something that seems a little more solid "You said you think they're evil?"

In the face of everything else it's becoming clear that the 'evil' in question might be a little more on the lines of an evil sorcerer from a fairytale than something she's really equiped to deal with. But hey, maybe she'll get lucky and it'll turn out to be a corrupt politician using the cruise ship to smuggle blood diamonds or something

"We think he's a necromancer harnessing our pain and suffering for only God knows what. Probably to make himself more powerful, probably just for fun."

That's about the gist of it, as far as she'd discussed with Skulduggery.

Well someone using pain and suffering to gain power wasn't exactly outside her wheelhouse, it just usually wasn't literal.

"I probably can't help with a necromancer," she says flatly "but I'll see what I can do."

She doesn't like that she can't really help, not least because it means she's stuck here too. She try her best certainly, but there's no guarantee, especially without Hardison and Eliot with her.

"In the meantime, if you know of any millionaires who need taking down a peg, that I can help with"

TEST DRIVE MEME #2

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