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

[myagic]

How is it not?

[The wittiest of comebacks...before Rita completes her totally-not-petty revenge spell.]

Stalagmite!

[--And a pillar of rock violently erupts from the floor, smashing through the claw machine. The whole thing flies into the ceiling, before falling back to the floor on its side with a resounding crash, and the case shatters open, letting the assorted prizes spill across the floor.

Ah...now that felt great!]

[damnbird]

[Insight roll: 4]

The bait is absolutely taken.

Well, sort of. There is no caw this time. (No verbal components necessary for this spell.) But whoever's messing with him hasn't realised that he's onto them.

What Jack may suddenly notice is that among the items in the machine, there is now a shiny gold pocket watch, inlaid with rubies. Looks expensive! Was that there before?


[ooc: I don't know what Jack's intelligence/investigation bonus would be, it could be anywhere between -2 to +10. But it's probably not that high? Still, if you want to roll, he'll need a total of 16 to tell it's an illusion.]

[makemeasong]

[ The fact that he says her name makes her eyes widen and she can't say anything at all. She's staring right back at him and everything she thought she wanted to say, all the words she's tried to arrange into some kind of order, are all jumbled again.

Reaching out to hold onto the side of the claw machine, Clara swallows. ]

The original. In the flesh, so to speak.

[ She's trying to joke, but her voice comes out too quiet for it to be effective. ]

[twelfthsong]

Lucy may not have recognized him, but he did. How long had it been since he had last seen her? He had known of course what had happened - it would have been impossible not to. But so much had happened since then and admittedly, he hadn't thought about it since. He had regenerated two times over, three, if you counted what had just happened to him. Seeing her standing at the edge of the pool looking like she hadn't aged a day made all the memories from that day begin to resurface.

For the time being though he kept his face stoic. If she hadn't recognized him, then perhaps it was best not to say anything to the affirmative yet either. "New is relative. Depends on your definition. What gave it away?" he asked peering at her from over the edge of his now defunct sonic sunglasses.

3

[pinballer]

Well, he was going to go for the gun but the bird is obviously the top prize. She's moving around and everything, and the prize that's hardest to get always comes with the best bragging rights.

"Come on, hold still," he mutters to himself as he moves the claw around.

Once he's positioned it as best as he can he pushes the drop button, attempting to catch her in the claw.

[essentiallyharmless]

It's been a couple years since the version of her he last met, but honestly she probably looks younger in some ways. Healthier complexion, and less of that dead-eyed hopeless look to her. Of course, for all he knows, she might even be before that time, right?

"The lei," she answers, taking off her robe and sitting down on the edge of the pool, dangling her legs in the water. "I got one just like it when I showed up here."

[twelfthsong]

[The posture reminds him of many a solider and he raises an eyebrow but doesn't comment on it otherwise.]

Scarily accurate time keeping there. [It's a compliment, we promise.] But since we're here and since there isn't set dressing around how do you feel about helping me taking about this claw machine?

[He starts to move towards the claw machine, spotting the blue police box.] Actually let me try and win one more toy from the machine. No telling what it'll do if we pry it apart. [He moves back in front of the joystick but casts a glance over his shoulder.] Got a name, Frowny?

[twelfthsong]

[He wants to reach out and touch her to make sure she's telling the truth but instead he finds himself rooted to the spot. His eyes are large and wide making him look almost owl-like, not too far off from when they had first encountered each other with this face of his.]

How do I know that's the truth?

[His own question comes across a little hoarse. And it's not that he doesn't believe her, it's that he doesn't trust this place.] You...you were in a diner. [You were dead.]

[serialskiller]

I could have offered the time in another format, but I don't know if months here match up with months wherever you come from. Hours are reliable across polities, usually.

[You know how it is, when planets and moons don't move at the same rate, and corporations take advantage of this to create 20-year labor contracts that are just about lifelong for those doing the working, if they don't read the fine print.]

You can call me SecUnit or you can call me Rin.

[Neither, of course, is a name.]

[twelfthsong]

He glances down at the lei like he had forgotten about its presence up until that very moment. In fact, he definitely had forgotten about it until Lucy mentioned it again. "Like sees like then."

Clara may not have been here to help him with her social nicety cue cards, but he'd like to think that he had grown since then. A part of him would much rather lie here and brood but speaking to people - especially someone from his past - would help him along with figuring out the how and the why of being trapped on a large cruise ship. "You seem settled in. How long have you been here?"

rude!!

[damnbird]

[Dexterity save 10. Gonna say that's a fail.]

She doesn't notice the person or the claw, so focused on her own investigation. For all her smarts, she's not that observant. That is, she notices it just in time to realise she's about to get caught in it.

So now there's a bird wildly flapping around in the mechanical claw, squawking in a way that sounds very reminiscent to angry swearing.

And then there's a puff of silvery mist, and she's gone.

It won't be hard to notice where she went though, with the wild flapping happening above, as she reappears some 10 feet over the machine. WELP, that's that spell slot gone!

Fair's fair, though. She won't take that asshole move lying down! She swoops down and claws at him, although the claws don't seem to be what's really the danger here. Because as she does, electricity shoots out from her talons and zaps through him.

[Spell attack roll: 18. Hope you don't mind the slight godmoding when it's in the hands of the dice. It's only 4 damage, but it'll hurt.]

[essentiallyharmless]

"Just a few days," she answers, seemingly not too bothered by it. "But I've sort of gotten used to this stuff."

She definitely looks pretty chill about it. But then she hasn't really encountered anything particularly horrific here yet, even though it's been mentioned to her that it's not always fun cruise relaxation. (That said, she was pretty annoyed when she got here too.)

[twelfthsong]

Quite right. But then, it depends on the universe or planet you go to. Some of them don't even consider hours as a measurement of time. Time can be a soup on the best of days.

[His eyes are set firmly again on the claw machine and its blinking lights.]

SecUnit. Rin. Do you have a preference?

[serialskiller]

[It hesitates. It has spent a lot of time telling people it doesn't care which, and watching as people default to Rin because they don't want to call it by its designation, but...]

SecUnit. I prefer SecUnit. But you should know if you hear people talking about Rin, I'm who they mean.

How are you to be addressed?

[twelfthsong]

"Were you used to this kind of 'stuff' before?" He's trying to understand where in time she's come from. Have they met yet? Has she met the Master yet?

There's nothing he's ashamed of when it comes to telling people who he is, but it does tend to get a little more complicated when the person has a bit of a complex history with him.

WILDCARD BAYBEE: here to cause problems on purpose

[damnbird]

Klaus probably won't notice, but there's a bird picking his brain. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Mostly she's just bored and wants to have some fun. She spotted Klaus wandering along, and decided he'd probably make a fun target. So she cast 'detect thoughts', just to sort of graze along his surface thoughts, see what he's thinking about right now.

And then she follows that up with a minor illusion.

So as he's wandering along, he'll spot something really nice on the ground in front of him. Something he'd been thinking about, that he'd been craving.

Upon touch, it will of course disappear.

Will he notice the crow sitting up above, watching curiously?

[essentiallyharmless]

She raises a hand and waggles it a bit, in a gesture meaning 'kind of'.

"This is my third universe," she answers. "At least I think this is a different universe, though it's kind of hard to tell, since we're just on a boat in the middle of nowhere."

Plot twist, she actually likes the Doctor. Mostly.

[makemeasong]

Who else would I be?

She frowns just a little, her brow furrowing. This isn't what she expected; although he's hardly been eager hug, she expected something else, not distrust.

Doctor, it's me, it's Clara.

[prefers_magneto]

There have been many a mutant youth that's called him 'old man' for quite a few years now.

"How long have you been here?" he asks curiously, studying the boy.

[twelfthsong]

SecUnit it is then. No point calling you a name that you don't prefer.

[Him saying that just shows how far he's come; in the past he generally didn't care about people's feelings when he threw out nicknames. It still stands to be seen if 'Frowny' will stick. Maybe 'Sterny' might be better.

The claw whirs out and hovers over the blue police box.]

The Doctor. Or Doctor. Drop the 'The', it makes it very official sounding. Your name suggests you aren't human. Are you?

VERY rude

[pinballer]

"Yes!" he shouts when he catches the crow, pumping his fist in the air.

And then a few seconds later, she's gone in a puff of smoke. What? That's just not fair. He kicks the side of the claw machine, "Rigged piece of shit!"

His tantrum at the claw machine distracts him from the fact that the bird has re-appeared above him, and by the time he looks up to see her attack coming it's too late. He's anticipating the claws, but he's nor prepared for what feels like being hit with a taser. He yelps, falling to the ground as the electricity jolts through him. It hurts, which is, in his opinion, totally bogus. He's supposed to be dead, not getting electrocuted by disappearing taser-birds.

But he hasn't learned his lesson yet (wisdom is definitely Vance's dump stat) and gets back to his feet, swiping at her with both hands like he's trying to swat a mosquito.

[ ooc note: I submit to the will of the dice rolls for the rest of the thread! ]

[prefers_magneto]

"That's why taking our survival into our own hands is so important," he tells her. "We can't trust anyone else to look after us."

[prefers_magneto]

"So the usual for the humans, then," Erik remarks dryly. "You have drones that monitor the ship?" He frowns faintly, like he's thinking about something. "Is that what I can feel... moving?"

[prefers_magneto]

"I've battled would-be gods before. Perhaps he's decided to play with the wrong toy this time," Erik remarks mildly, like he's only commenting on the weather. "Have you been here long?"

[prefers_magneto]

"A vivid imagination," Erik echoes. "That's not it at all, is it? Are you concerned I'll judge you if you tell me the truth? Because I've seen some things," he assures. "And I'm nothing to you, so why do you even care what I think?"