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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.]
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"Ehe... I suppose I'd be more surprised if it did. I'll do my best to answer what I can, though. I haven't been here for very long, and there's a lot that I still don't know as well." Wait, shouldn't he say something comforting to the newcomers...? "But that's only because it's a little hard to investigate when people go around dying and arguing with each other and such."
Nailed it.
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Crabb idly nods along for a moment before snapping to her senses and spluttering a bit, gesturing vaguely but animatedly. "Wait a second, dying? People have died? You're just gonna put out there all casual like?"
Alongside arguing, as if they're on the same level, no less! Arguing she'd honestly be more surprised if a bunch of seemingly kidnapped people didn't end up getting into a few spats, but dying?
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“Don’t worry! They came back!” Is that a thing not to worry about? That’s probably a thing to worry about. “They woke up in the morgue all better!”
… Maybe he’s not helping.
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Going by the fresh flash of alarm, maybe not entirely helping. “They came— people don’t just come back, now you’ve gotta be—”
She cuts herself off though, something catching up to her. People shouldn’t just come back to life, no, but what she really hates about this is it’s not even the first time she’s heard something like this in the last few hours. The last time was just before waking up here.
“—alright, say they come back, they’re fine? Totally themselves?”
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“…As far as I’m aware?” Admittedly, he hasn’t exactly asked. “I don’t personally intend to find out, and you shouldn’t, either.”
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There's some relief, at least, to even a conditionally affirmative answer on that one; if people at least come back as themselves that's... something, she guesses. Talk about a bar that's basically in the ground.
"Alright. That's... something." She shakes her head. "Nah, not gonna be in any rush to figure it out first hand. Last thing I need's to know what dying's like. Last thing anyone needs."
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He sighs, taking a quick look around the corridor, as if the Captain himself is going to pop up and say something like "Yeah, shit's fucked!"
"I'm Mizuki, by the by. It's... you know. Nice meeting you. Even if the circumstances aren't great."
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"Getting that feeling, yeah. Whole thing feels damned sinister."
And you know, knowing people have died certainly sets the mood! Who needs vibes when you've got cold hard facts like that.
"Not exactly ideal, yeah. Same to you, anyway. And thanks for the heads-up." You know. About the dying thing. Not that she's sure you can really call the way it got dropped a deliberate heads-up, but still, it's served the same purpose. "Name's Crabb. Honoria Crabb."
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Pep talk!
"Oh! Miss Crabb, you don't happen to like crab, too, do you? Because you'd be in luck. The buffet has endless crab legs here."
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Endlessly reassuring, Mizuki. To her credit this time Crabb barely blinks at the continued concerning information, and anyway she doesn't get to dwell on the idea of the place's captain being sadistic before Mizuki goes on.
Part of her wants to laugh, part of her wants to groan. You know that's actually a new one, not had that obvious connection drawn often. "Can't say I've ever eaten much of my namesake, no, but I guess I'll find out. Endless? Really?"
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"Yeah, I've eaten a ton of it. The rest of the buffet will rotate out different foods, but there's always crab legs no matter how much you grab!" This is obviously a very important detail of the ship that she needs to know. "Not that I want to go presenting this place like it's actually a vacation or anything, because it certainly isn't, but it's good to have some nice things. Morale would be really low otherwise."
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"Right. Infinite crab legs, real silver lining." Okay, that's a bit too dry a comment to be totally polite, probably. She sighs. "Guess it's a good idea to count your blessings same time as you take your lumps."
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"Right. Deciding things are hopeless does no good." Even if it feels pretty hopeless right now from where she's standing, but she's only just got here and has almost no information to go off. You always feel a little hopeless at the start of something, when you don't know anything. "Should probably not take it for granted this place deigns to feed us at all."