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TEST DRIVE MEME #5
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.]
Klaus Hargreeves | The Umbrella Academy
It’s not the first time he’s woken up in a strange bed or somewhere that he’s not really sure of. He’s lying if he says he didn’t stay in the bed for a little while longer than that, slowly drifting back to sleep before he jolts awake. “Where’s Luther,” he asks the empty room. He remembers following after Luther. There’s no signs of a hangover or some drug-induced anything. In fact, he’s pretty sure he’s sober. It’s a trying thought. Also the lack of powers. He remembers that, too.
He pulls himself out of bed, still in the clothes he was wearing when Allison pushed that weird button after selling them out to dad and almost killing them. He runs his fingers through his hair before trying to find a way out. Only the door doesn’t open. “Did we get kidnapped?” It’s the most logical thought. But he’s been drugged before. He’s pretty sure he’d have noticed. Unless there’s a new thing that exists now?
Frowning, he looks around the room for something to pry open the door. Nothing works. It’s about fifteen minutes…maybe twenty before he turns around in the room to look for something. He spots the paper folded up and tilts his head. “A kidnapping note? Weird, but okay.”
Things aren’t that much more clear once he’s read it. Apparently he has been kidnapped? To a cruise ship? This feels like Reginald Hargreeves. Practically his signature. There’s a moment of pause. Gal Friday. Is that the old man’s new name for Grace? He hopes she’s not the flamethrower version of her. Cause that was a pain.
Once he gets out of the door, he finds his way (after a lot of stops because why can’t he just go where he wants?).
Faceless.
This lady is faceless. So much for a winning smile, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. He’s not sure she’s not the flamethrower, murdering type of possible robot women. He shrugs it off and just accepts the lei. What else is new, really? Things are always weird. He’s sure it’s just some weird Reggie thing. He would do something so unsettling as take someone’s face away. Creepy ass bastard that he is.
Once the drill is over (did he pay attention? No. He’s paid attention to none of it), Klaus sits down for a moment, trying to soak everything in and take a breather. Once that gets boring, he gets up and starts wandering.
“Hey. I’m new here. Do you know where the bar is? Daddy needs a drink.”
2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
This place does not get any less weird. Klaus has been trying to look at himself in the mirrors this whole time, but none of them are working. Not even the TV. This feels like the weirdest, most fucked up version of rehab. Also he’s pretty sure this is akin to the Hotel Obsidian. The longer he’s here, the more he needs to drink. In fact, he’s probably had a few too many drinks at this point.
He squints at the closest television screen, noting the strange reflections that seem…well…not right. Something is wrong. Like ghosts. Only he’s not supposed to be able to see those anymore and before he could drink and do drugs to block them out. Maybe he needs to do drugs now. He can’t make out what they’re saying, but his feet choose this time to trip over each other and he falls forward, hand going weirdly through the screen of the television. He’s about to apologize to whoever is in the room when the sensation in his arm starts going weird and it feels like he’s being dragged into the TV.
He swears before pulling back sharply, which sets him off kilter again and he lands on his ass, staring at the strangely white color of his arm. “What the fuck, man?”
3. complex mementos
After all the other fucked up shit, Klaus is ready for something normal. Not that this place is normal. No. In fact, it’s not really something he ever experienced as a kid. Normal kid things weren’t really a big part of growing up. Sure, they snuck out for donuts and coffee and he would get alcohol and drugs, but this place? This is new. He looks around, trying to figure out why there are kids on this cruise ship. He guesses they have parents here. Who is he to understand shit? Maybe Reggie wanted new kids. Again.
He notices the claw machine and hums thoughtfully as he sees the prizes. There’s not anything he particularly wants, but it seems like something fun? Maybe he can steal some shit out of it and then charge some dumb bastards money for the stuff.
At least that’s his idea once he tries ten times and gets nothing. So he sticks his arm in through the little flap at the bottom and tries to grab stuff. Only the sleeve of his shirt gets caught on something and he can’t get it back out without squirming out of his shirt.
a)He spots someone, maybe walking past the door or inside. “Hey. Can you help me with this?” He gestures to his arm stuck. What’re they gonna do? Arrest him? He’s already kidnapped.
b)He squirms out of his shirt, which is mostly a lot of letting his arms go limp as he moves around on the ground like a little worm before he gets out of his shirt. Once he’s up, he starts fighting with the machine until he finally gets his shirt back and falls over on the floor…again, smiling up at whoever happens to walk by. “Hey. Is it me or are these floors slippery?”
4. Wildcard
Anything is free game. He probably is trying to steal drugs from the infirmary or get up to a bunch of nonsense. I’m open to any and all ideas you have!
i
That's the prevailing thought swimming to the forefront of Five's mind as consciousness creeps in. Because the bed beneath him is luxuriously plush and the sunshine trickling through the window lacks the orange tinge of the end of the world, and as he'd left Hotel Oblivion things had... been looking grim. End Of The World 3: It's The Whole Universe This Time, monsters dropping through the ceiling with arm severing intent, thinking that was going to be the worst sensation before stumbling onto a star pattern inlaid on the floor and feeling every particle of his being ripped from his bones...
— oh hey, his hand is back. Jacket and shirt sleeve still cut and frayed where the Guardian's blade had cut, but upon experimentally flexing his fingers, Five finds each digit perfectly functional. Well working enough to pick up the note on his bedside table and scan the information lovingly jotted down by one Gal Friday.
"Huh." No really, how badly had they fucked up this time?
The muster drill doesn't do much to shine a light on the specifics. Five ultimately stands through the whole thing, hands in his pocket and unpleasantly reminded of corporate orientations at the Temps Commission; begrudgingly processing, and ruthlessly staring down anyone who so much as looks at him sideways. And afterwards they're released to their own devices. It pretty immediately occurs that he needed to locate his family, or whatever remained of them. Maybe they'd been beaten squarely by the kugelblitz, but they'd been together in the end; he hadn't blinked away, there was just as much a reason for the others to have been seemingly kidnapped across space and time, and stuck into another pocket dimension as there was for him.
And it's a theory that is proven almost comically quickly because, oh, he'd recognize that whiny drawl anywhere. Klaus — a sibling he at least doesn't want to punch. (It's on sight, Allison, on sight.) — is predictably, being Klaus. And after he's waved off by some stranger with priorities other than playing tour guide, Five is just there. At his elbow, a halfstep behind, and unimpressed.
"Never thought you'd need help finding a bar."
But you know what? A drink sounds like a sensational idea — Five may not be in a full-scale vacation mode yet, this doesn't feel like a retirement opportunity. But he's existentially tired in the way three apocalypses within a month will make a man; physically whole, mentally worn to the bone. For now this is the laziest reconnaissance he can manage, hands in the pockets of a vaguely battle-mussed black suit, and breezing past Klaus with the intent to make this ship cough up a decent vintage whiskey.
"Come on."
no subject
When he says come on, Klaus doesn't question it. He's very ready for both a drink and to have Five to follow around. "You're suit's a lot messier than I saw it last, little man. Did you get in a fight already?" He assumes it's this and not that they're not from the same time. He's not sure how much time has passed, but if anyone could get in a fight, it'd be Five. "Did Diego fight you for real? Lila?" The possibilities are very likely. He'd say Luther, but he was following after the big guy while looking for his wife.
no subject
In for one rude awakening then, since the likes of John's, The Drunken Sailor, and Topy have done remarkably little to prevent cabin fever and all out slaughter on board the Serena Eterna. And a second in the form of: Five doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. No idea what's going on here, nor how remarkably wrong his immediate assumptions are. But it's only been the better part of an hour. Barring any sudden and instantaneous paradox side effects that would somehow melt this reality down to atoms as well, he'll eventually figure it out.
As for his suit — it is kinda sad, isn't it? They're drawing level with the glass elevator on the atrium, and Five's pulling his hand from his pocket to shake the frayed sleeve experimentally before pressing the call button.
"When would I have found time to fight someone? No, this is all Guardian." Diego's good, Lila's steadily inclining from average to alright, but if Klaus thinks there are enough brain cells between the two of them to pull off roughing him up this severely? ...well, it wouldn't be wrong, just terribly insulting to say out loud.
"Ugly bastard cut off half my arm. Still not entirely sure how I got it back..."
But! Whiskey first, existential crisis later.
no subject
"Wait...you're...that was like..." He looks at Five's arm and then at his sleeve. Klaus is both confused by that and yet...he guesses it makes sense. It doesn't make sense and Klaus is mentally hurting himself doing the mental gymnastics. "I mean, I know you got your arm back after Allison pushed that weird button and we turned up in the garden, but Allison wasn't there. Luther was, though! So that was nice."
He frowns as he stands there, waiting. "Wow. This is weird. I usually don't know more than everyone else." Everyone else being the only other person from home that's here.
no subject
"What garden??" Five asks, with all the scoffing contempt of one who's accustomed to knowing the most in any given room he walks into. But Klaus mentions Allison hitting a button, Luther returning to a seemingly tangible plane of the living, and Five's attitude takes a nosedive. He isn't fond of being the last to know important details about the future — rigorously chases them — and stationed outside the elevator door on this strange cruise ship that doesn't bear a single mark of the reality they'd just come from, it seems Klaus has the leg up on timelines. It rankles. Unpleasantly.
And the look he gives his brother is absolutely withering, an interrogation held entirely in the irises of their eyes. They're still inevitably on their way to a drink but for now, a sidebar.
I missed something, Five acknowledges. Like a battle plan with a glaring flaw that's just been pointed out, and he's taking a pointed step into Klaus' personal space to hiss.
"Tell me everything."
no subject
"The stars fueled some sort of machine thing and it was sucking all the energy and particles according to the old bastard. It was draining us. We could have died, honestly. We probably almost did. But then Allison killed Dad and pushed this red button?" He's still confused about that. "And then we woke up in the garden where the Hotel should have been, but it wasn't." He squinted briefly. "Luther walked out of a door and joined us. Lila, Diego, you, me, Viktor, and dick Ben were there. Sloane and Allison are missing. None of us have powers. Annnnnnd I was going after Luther because he went to go looking for Sloane."
And that's it. He's pretty sure that's it.
3.a.
She glances around, hoping to find somebody else more willing to handle this. Which there isn't. And she'd feel a bit too guilty to walk away. He looks far too pathetic there.
Ava approaches, peering into the machine. "What's possibly in here that made you so desperate?"
no subject
He looks up at it from his vantage point, which is not very useful to him in this moment. "Well, I don't know. There seemed like some cool things that you could potentially sell for money for things like alcohol and drugs probably. Waffles, too." Again he shrugs.
"Only now I'm kind of stuck."
no subject
"Oh, you're new new here, aren't you? There's no money here. And all the alcohol and waffles are free. Probably drugs too, if you know who to ask."
She presses the play button, and gives a delighted little 'ah' as the claw starts moving.
no subject
No money. That was a weird concept. Useful, though. Cause he hasn’t figured out how to pay for shit here. Except he’s still stuck and now she’s just playing the claw game?
He guesses this is exactly what Lila would do. Probably Five, too. He sighs before trying to squirm around to get free from his shirt. “They didn’t mention that in the kidnapping letter or anywhere,” he mutters as he catches himself on the metal corner again.
no subject
Ava's rather distracted as she aims her claw for one of the stuffed toys. The metal prongs close around its head and lifts the toy up a couple inches, before it slips right back out and into the pile again. Ava sighs.
"Dumb thing is rigged," she grumbles, hands one her hips as she glances down at Klaus again. She can see why he got himself stuck there. "So they're giving out a ransom note now, huh? What's it say?"
no subject
"Last time he killed Luther and me. Well, left me to die, I guess." He waves it off with his free hand because he's also of the mind to make things seem like less of a big deal than they really are. "But that's what you get when a man who hates kids buys so many."
He stills for a moment as she asks about the note. "Oh right. Hold on." He squirms again, this time to get the paper out of the pocket on the side closest to the arm stuck in the machine. He fishes it out after a while and hands it over. "Guess it's not really a ransom note. Just a...whatever this is."
no subject
But every single sentence this man says just throws Ava for another loop. Buys? Who buys children? Then again, SHIELD probably handed over the orphanage some hush money when they took her away. "No wonder you're needing drugs," Ava almost sounds sympathetic.
She's too busy with the claw machine still to take the note, a dismissive wave of her hand as she tries again for the stuffed toy. "Does it say anything about how your energy is being siphoned away to power all this and that soon enough we'll all be lifeless husks?" she asks instead, managing to drop the small stuffed fish into the hole after a few more attempts, right along with Klaus's stuck arm. "Oh yay."
no subject
"That's..." He frowns. "It was the ghosts, really. Well, not here. There's not any and I apparently don't have my abilities anyway, so..." He shrugs. It's fine.
He groans at the mention of having his energy siphoned away. "Not that again. I just finished having my energy siphoned and it was the worst. Now I don't have my powers or any of my tattoos weirdly." He's brought back to the present by the feeling of something hitting his arm and looks over. "What even is that?"
no subject
"Is that why you were bought? For your abilities?" and now she does manage to sound sympathetic enough, even as she drops a bag of what she hopes are candies into the prize hole as well. It took her a few tries, but she looks rather pleased.
She's not sure how any of that would get rid of tattoos, of all things. "A fish, I think. What were you trying for? The dead lizard?"
no subject
He sighs as another thing is dropped on him. “Yes. We were all bought for our abilities. Dad made us think Viktor didn’t have any for a long time. Made Allison rumor him to forget he even had powers. But what else is new?”
His nose scrunches up and he continues struggling for a moment before trying to squirm out of his shirt again. “Why would I want a dead lizard?”
no subject
"... Good, fuck the moon," Ava proclaims because that's a whole thing around here, shaking the machine a bit to get a prize that fell short of the hole to topple over the edge. She's not above cheating. Have another plushie, Klaus, as she hums along in acknowledgment to him airing out the dirty laundry of his apparently very dysfunctional family.
"I don't know. You seem the type. Dead and lizardy." She wiggles the handle and picks up the barrel of a gun, with little luck as it slips right out of the handle. She tries again.
no subject
"I mean, we all died after," he says, remembering what Five said. "I wonder if Luther ever did fuck the moon. He lived there long enough." He snorts at the idea of it.
"Wow. Are you really going to call me a lizard like that?" He's not sure what his animal preference even is. He has the tiger tattoo - well, probably not anymore - but he's pretty sure he's not really a tiger. "I'm...more like a sexy trash possum if anything. They play dead a lot and are immune to snake venom and shit." But his attention is caught by the gun. "Shit. Is that thing loaded? Who puts a gun in something like this?"
no subject
And she makes MORE of a face about the comment about somebody... literally fucking the moon. "Hate that, don't ever say that again." It overrides the thought of how neat it might be to visit the moon. In theory. She's sure it's rather boring after the initial novelty wears off. Not worth it for that long of a trip.
"What is a possum, if not a furry lizard?" Ava claims teasingly. "Oh. You know, it might be loaded," Ava comments as she tries for it again. "As skinny and apparently powerless as you are, you could probably use some prote- shit," the gun drops again, this time from much higher, and it indeed goes off and shatters one of the sides of the machine.
Ava... stares, openly startled at what just occurred even though she honestly should have expected that. She glances down at Klaus again, who is now covered in shards of glass. "Oops."
no subject
Klaus laughs at that. "What? You don't like the idea of the moon having lovers?" He's not sure he believes that humans wouldn't fuck the moon. It's pretty human. There's people who claim to be in love with statues and everything. Why not the moon?
He rolls his eyes as she comments about how powerless he is and that a possum is a furry lizard. That sounds wrong. And then the gun goes off and he jumps, letting out a surprised yelp, which is even worse as the glass falls on his arm.
"What the fuck?" He shifts, finally wiggling out of his shirt and slowly getting up. "I'm not Five. I don't need to be a one-armed weirdo." Not that that wasn't healed by now. He leans over to grab his shirt and then grabs one of the stuffed things, shaking the glass off before shoving it in his pants. "And this is for trying to shoot my arm off."
no subject
"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."
WILDCARD BAYBEE: here to cause problems on purpose
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?
:o not the probleeemmmsss
He does spot what appears to be a waffle sitting on a plate as he walks and he's excited for a moment because it's like the ship was listening to him. Only once he tries to touch it, it's gone. "This place sucks," he says quietly. Like a stupid mirage.
He sighs and looks around for one of the places with the fancy umbrella drinks. Five would have enjoyed the shirts, the drinks, the idea of a vacation. He hopes that Luther finds Sloane. He notices the bird, but he doesn't think about it because he's sure it's just a bird on a weird cruise ship that isn't just making waffles form in front of him as he walks. Not ones he can keep anyway.