TEST DRIVE MEME #5

[sailmods]

1. not subtle revealings

[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! I'm very glad to have you aboard!

[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. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling

[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.

then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.

in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]

3. complex mementos

[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]

Comments

1/2 new soldier confusion 🤝 old soldier distress solidarity...!

[fonomena]

[As they both know, of course, Jade isn't normally much for physical contact himself--automatic reaction prevailing over normal preferences, so to speak. ...But hands on shoulders really do lend to a sense of grounding, don't they? Confirmation. Tear, too, is real and warm and here....

Not some figment of his imagination, or some kind of gauche illusion of the captain's, or some person he's mistaking for someone else. She speaks and responds, in a way distinctly hers, asking entirely fitting questions and firmly cementing her identity beyond a doubt; a familiarity from home he hadn't even realized he so sorely missed. (Has been trying, for some time, to keep buried and set aside...) But, promptly and overwhelmingly overpowering the gladness...is an icy plunge of something, sharp and painful, that immediately floods the chest. Knowing exactly what her presence here means for her.

For exactly one second, with all his heart, Jade wants nothing more than to head directly to the bridge and destroy the captain with his own two hands. Right here and right now, consequences be damned.


But he can't, of course. Nobody can, not here. No, in the end, all that can be done is...]

2/2 also that's fair tbh, colonel sanders is the only true colonel in our hearts after all??

[fonomena]

[Outwardly it's a slight but distinct pause, following Tear's questions, in which the surprise on Jade's face gives way to something...else. 'Indecipherable', some might describe it. 'Blank', others might say. Rather unusual for Jade and his usual penchant for a cheerily casual facade, either way, in any circumstance but the most extenuating. They are trusted allies by now, yes--perhaps even friends, awkward as it might be for either of them to directly admit it--and so Tear is bound to notice it. Which Jade is distinctly aware of too, even as he has to take a moment to mentally reach inside his own head and set the veritable firestorm of thoughts and feelings arresting it firmly aside. No, right now...she's going to want information, he knows. She's already asking questions that are rather difficult to answer, in more than one sense. Are you alright fully sinks in, and a small breath of a sigh pushes out--before, like a difficult switch finally getting properly flipped, a very slight and wry sort of smile settles into place on Jade's features. (And ideally nobody's ever going to know just how titanic the effort of putting it on actually is, in this moment--)]

...That is the real question, now isn't it? [Which question is he talking about, you ask? He sure...isn't specifying, very helpfully! (All of them, honestly, it's all of them.....) In a fashion that...tries to be casual, but just ends up being oddly gentle and delayed, Jade's removing his hands from Tear's shoulders and taking a step back. Adjusting his glasses, before his glance flickers over her person, in search of any kind of change or injury, but...there seems to be none. Indeed, if anything, she looks exactly the same as she had that day a few weeks ago--no, a few months ago now, isn't it?--when they had all finally parted ways to their own individual duties, in the aftermath of Eldrant...

The awful icy feeling briefly feels as if it wants to well up in his throat, too. Jade continues to very aggressively ignore it, going on to scan the empty corridor behind her instead before affixing proper eye contact upon her at length. Yes, truly as composed as can be, nothing wrong here--]

I could be asking you the same thing, about now. Was it you who screamed, just a moment ago? Either that, or there's somebody else in distress not very far from here...

[makemeasong]

[ ooc: continued here! ]

[sixthdeadliest]

César.

[Even though he keeps his face neutral, Six knows that name. It's a common enough Hispanic name, of course, so it wasn't likely that it was the older Salazar brother. Still...]

A friend of yours?

[firewalled]

[Rich raises an eyebrow, but... maybe the guy's just making conversation. Even if he clearly didn't want to make small talk before this...]

Yeah. He's my roommate. I didn't know him before I came here, but he helped me out when I got stuck here. He's like, late twenties, I think? He's a roboticist, but he doesn't talk about work that much. Not surprised, sounds like this Providence joint fuckin' sucked.

[sixthdeadliest]

[That sounded like Dr. Salazar, all right. Still...]

A roboticist. Any particular specialties?

[configuration_birdwatcher]

They've been taken somewhere outside of time. And just them, alone among their friends and colleagues, not Ganymede and not Tracer or Winston, who have past experience solving similar problems and might have a better idea how to get back.

They tilt their head at a quizzical angle and look back over at her when she chooses that particular phrasing to describe her disorientation, the oddness of it sticking out enough to interrupt their mounting panic at the thought of being trapped outside the spacetime continuum on a ship full of humans without their friend to snap them out of it if their combat protocols reactivate.

// "Systems"?

[firewalled]

Uh, I think he said nanotechnology? All I've seen from him is some anti-gravity stuff he said he used for his lab.

...Why are you asking so much about him?

the unsubtle option

[skaikru]

( as if blood soaked youths are a particular anomaly here...

sure, during the "off season" between being asked to sufferbleeddie at the whims of their captor, it was a bit less commonplace. enough so that through the smear of horrible tommy bahama florals and athleisure, blood and gore still command the line of eyesight and leads to outright staring from the masses. and where repulsions might drive others to give him a wide berth, it's every ounce of nosy commander and over-caring former healer candidate that has clarke griffin putting down whatever horribly written novel she's snagged from the library lately, and gravitating towards the gore-covered newcomer like a moon circles a planet.

...before colliding into it, to continue the metaphor. what actually happens is there's suddenly a 5'5" blonde girl stepping directly in vance's path as he departs from the muster station. )

— yeah, that doesn't matter anymore.

( spoken like someone well convinced she died before waking up tucked into down covers and a pillow top mattress, and riddled in radiation burns. but beyond what may or may not have been clarke's last breath on earth, there are plenty of former dearly departed here, commanded back to the realm of the living. she's unbothered by the tail end of his sentiment, having something of a habit of collecting dead children (friendly) (not creepyily, i promise). after the immediate dismissal, appraising eyes give him a full scale once over. head to toe, lingering on every bloody smear. )

...Is all this yours?

[pinballer]

[ He stops, brow furrowed in confusion. It's been so long since anyone could actually see him he's not quite sure how to react at first. All this? he thinks, All what? before he looks down and remembers that it's not normal for a kid to be walking around covered in blood. He's gotten so used to it. ]

Of course not. Some of it's his.

[ ...But most of it is Vance's own. Sure, he got in a couple lucky scratches and even a bite here and there, but he was overpowered in the end. ]

Are you dead, too? [ Maybe everyone's dead here. Maybe the afterlife is some tacky cruise ship. ]

[businessorlibation]

In the same condition he'd arrived to the ship in--the injuries that killed him were gone, but old war injuries from before were still there. So normal by his own standards.

[He's good to discuss this; he wouldn't have brought it up if it were a problem.]

[decohere]

"Well... no," Ava considers the few times she's interacted with Friday at all. She's friendly enough, even if Ava is overall wary of her purpose and how she might use the information she gathers about the passengers. But she certainly has more consideration for Friday than Skulduggery does, but he has a thing about faceless beings. Maybe she's more of a mom figure for people that aren't her.

"I think I'm a bit too old for... momming," Ava shrugs. "And I only know one mom. Janet. And she was stuck in the quantum realm for... well, about as long as I've been alive." She knows Maeve too of course, robotic moms seem to be a thing.

He's quite lucky the whole commotion of the gun going off distracts her from telling him off for continuing on about the moon when she had told him to stop. Or maybe that was the warning shot.

"What the fuck," she repeats right back, watching him shove the poor stuffed fish right down his pants. "No, ew," he can keep it. She reaches in for a little stuffed ghost instead, shoving it right down her shirt in retaliation.

"Fine, I'll get you out of there. But I hope you learned your lesson."

[sixthdeadliest]

Because I'm familiar with a scientist who has a similar name.

[Not a lie. Just not the whole truth.]

[firewalled]

Oh, really? And what do you think of this scientist with the same name?

[Rich folds his arms, glaring a bit at the man now. He can't say for sure, but Six doesn't seem too happy about the idea of someone he knows being on the ship.]

[sixthdeadliest]

Why would it matter to you? It might not even be the same man.

[Keeping his face nice and neutral.]

[prodigalmess]

Yeah. Dr. John Watson. Does... that name sound familiar to you?

[ He's aware of the Sherlock connection, one that Malcolm himself didn't make at first. After all, John Watson is a common name. 'Sherlock', however, is not. ]

[firewalled]

It might not be. But if it is, I want to make sure he's safe. No matter who decides they've got beef with him.

[Rich is... decidedly less neutral, still glaring at the man, but at least he hasn't really threatened anything.]

[sixthdeadliest]

[It's doubtful this kid could do much to him if he tried. Still, Rex didn't look like much at first glance either.]

Not the best idea to pick a fight with everyone you come across.

[firewalled]

I'm not picking a fight! I'm telling you to stay away from my roommate. Only way it'd be picking a fight would be if you were deciding not to take my advice.

[He's still shifting back and forth on his feet, though, as if looking for an opportunity to deck the guy.]

[sixthdeadliest]

A threat is picking a fight. Do yourself a favor and walk away.

[And Six is going to take his own advice and start walking, intending to leave. This conversation is going nowhere though, apparently, César is here. Wonderful.]

[firewalled]

Do yourself a favour and get off his ass, you prick!

[Rich is, naturally, marching after him with the intent to catch up to him. This jerk might be talking about the same César. If that's the case, then he can't just let the guy leave without promising his safety.]

[formersurgeon]

John Watson. That's a weird coincidence. I'm Joan Watson. Not a doctor anymore, though.

This is going well. :D;;;

[sixthdeadliest]

[Six comes to a stop. He doesn't face the kid.]

Do yourself a favor, kid: Let it go and walk away.

[Every muscle is like a coiled spring on a hair trigger. He doesn't know what this kid is capable of, so he's on high alert in case of attack. And if the kid is very, very unlucky, he'll meet the fate the faceless woman barely dodged.]

welp. rip rich I guess!

[firewalled]

[The kid does not let it go. He doesn't stop coming towards Six either. His hands are curled into fists, like that's going to do absolutely anything against a guy with crazy future laser weapons, but he's blinded by anger and protectiveness.]

No! Promise me you'll stay away from him! That's all you've got to do, so why won't you?

[He gets close enough then for a strike, and after pausing to see if Six will finally answer... he takes a swing.]

LOL At least this is an important lesson of not to mess with guys in green suits? XD;;;

[sixthdeadliest]

[And that fast, those coiled springs release.]

[Six slips past the fist flying in his direction, bringing his free hand up to slam the heel of his palm directly into the kid's chin with enough force to slam his lower jaw into his upper one. Then he grips the kid by the throat, forcing him into the closest wall.]

[And that magna blade that he's had in hand the whole time? It comes to a stop mere millimeters away from the kid's right eye. (It took every bit of willpower he possessed not to let the blade slice through.)]

Don't. Do. That.