sail_ooc | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Otherwise the timelines would get fucky, wouldn't it?" A very scientific term. "For example. There's a man here from my world from a point several years before me, yet I know he goes on to wreck an airport in Germany with his super friends. It was all over the news. Obviously he can't go do that now, not this version of him anyway. It's the only logical conclusion."

And she does have other evidence, but that's the easiest to illustrate her point. "But if you're going to have an existential crisis over it, warn me so I can disappear."

“Super friends?” Erik questions. He’s had his existential crises. If he decided to have one here, no place on the ship would be safe, but he’s past that in his life. “What do you mean by super friends?”

"The Avengers," Ava knows only a few people here have heard of them. She's envious of those other worlds. "Earth's mightiest heroes. Beefed up frisbee-throwing super soldier, a flying tin can billionaire, the angry green lab accident... Thor," little sigh. Those arms. "The Black Widow, some dude with a bow and arrow..." why are there so many of them, she hasn't even made it all the way through the roster. "Dragged my friend Scott along. Dumbass."

“Are any of them mutants or are they just… ambitious?” Erik asks.

Ava pauses, that's certainly not a term she's heard. "I believe the legal terminology is enhanced individuals. That's how they write it in the Sokovian Accords. Bit of a controversial piece of legislation."

“Enhanced. They were given their abilities by artificial means?” Erik guesses.

"Specially developed serums, gamma radiation, human experimentation, whatever the fuck Hank does to mind control ants." It's not that she's incapable of understanding it, she simply doesn't want to.

"Most of them by some conscious choice. Not all of us were so... ambitious."

“Mind control… ants,” Erik echoes. “That’s… different.”

"Gets real tiny like an ant too. Makes it hard to hit." She knows from experience.

"The Wasp is worse. Flies around and zaps you. So what's your... special talent?"

Erik huffs a laugh and then looks at her from under his brow.

"What makes you think I have one?" he asks.

There's plenty of clues that Ava has strung together between his line of questioning, his reactions and lack of to her own.

But she doesn't plan on giving away her full line of logic. Because part of it is also a bluff. And also it becomes harder to get info out of people once they realize you're a spy. Best to play down her strategy.

"Oh! Statistics, mostly. Unless you're here as fodder like the rest of the normies. No offense," she holds up her hands, flickering in and out like a faulty hologram. "But also when I mentioned being here for our powers, you didn't... deny having any. You kinda missed your 'what why me?' moment. But if you don't, oof, good luck."

He doesn’t buy that for a second.

But in a good way.

“I can manipulate metal,” he tells her. A beat. “I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I can manipulate magnetic fields,” he concedes.

Ava just smiles innocently. She likes to figure out these types, their potential as a threat. To her, to the ship.

"Ah, well we're surrounded by quite a lot of it," Ava points out the obvious, curious if there's any limitations on his abilities. Naturally, or enforced by the Captain's control.

"Does that make you a mutant? You look normal enough." But she knows enough about genetics to know mutations are rarely so obvious as tentacles or an extra head.

“I do, don’t I? And yet? I’m so much better than ‘normal’,” Erik explains. “The next stage of human evolution, some say.”

Like him, for example. He says it.

"Oh, humanity is a bit of a stagnant drag," Ava agrees. Her best friends are a magical skeleton and a robot. So. That's about where she is on that subject.

"Spent most of my life wishing to be normal, begging to be fixed."

“Did they persecute you?” Erik asks with interest.

"That's such a simple way to put it," Ava laughs, short and bitter. "They kidnapped me, isolated and experimented on me. Pulled my strings along like their stupid little puppet."

“I’ve seen a lot of that,” Erik says darkly. “Why kill what you can harness and use?”

"I was far too young and naive to see the obvious. That they never intended to let me go. But. Then they got outed as being infiltrated by Hydra Nazis, so," Ava just... rubs at her brow. "Good opportunity to escape in the chaos. Not that I was all that free then, either."

“It was Nazis that experimented on me,” Erik admits. “I’m not familiar with the hydra division, but I was also a child at the time. In the camps.”

There's a very distinct shift in Ava's demeanor, a softening of her expression. "As different as every world is, it's always the same. That pervasive evil of man."

"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."

"Still," Ava gives a small shake of her head. She might have agreed, not that long ago. "You're not going to make it far here. Alone."

TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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