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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.]
Vrana | D&D OC
There's a crow here.
Just a normal-looking black crow.
It listened attentively throughout the drill. Now it's standing on a life jacket, looking confused as to what it's supposed to do with it. The lei is around its neck technically, but most of it is on the ground. The crow also appears to be wearing a necklace and a tiny backpack.
Totally normal, right?
3. complex mementos
People who have seen these claw machines before may notice that now there's a second small creature inside it. But this one is actually alive.
Vrana was curious about the stuff in here - the iguana in particular. So she just... crawled inside. Easy peasy. Now she's nudging at stuff with her beak and claws, hopping around inside.
3
"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.
rude!!
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.]
VERY rude
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! ]
no subject
She probably could've gotten some distance on him and avoided that, but Vance isn't the only one with wisdom dump stat. One of those swats hits, and knocks her off course. Fucking OW!
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. She does not need to get into a fight with this human. They could just talk, right? If he knows she's like, a person and not just a random magical crow?
[ Wisdom save 1, FUCKING LMAO, rip. ]
Actually fuck that. She really, really does. Who needs self-control??
So she's gonna cast Blindness on this dude! LET'S FUCKING GO, HAIRY!
[ That's a constitution save 16, if you'd like to roll and see if he suddenly turns blind for a minute. ]
no subject
Everything goes dark, and although he still keeps swinging his arms around he's got no idea where she is.
If he were a little bit wiser, he'd stop and listen for the sound of flapping, or any sort of movement. Unfortunately, he's not, so he just yells (making it harder on himself to work out where she is) and charges in some random direction.
Which inevitably ends in him smacking up against the claw machine and falling flat on his ass. That hurts, too, and he still can't see a damn thing. "What'd you do to me, you fucking pigeon?" he says, rubbing his eyes with both hands as if that's going to restore his eyesight any quicker.
His ability to identify types of birds is also severely lacking. Maybe if he wouldn't have skipped so much school...
no subject
She could hurt him some more. Could probably kill him, if she wanted to. But it feels kind of pointless.
He doesn't even look like he has any good loot.It's sort of pathetic, watching him flail around, maybe she'll just leave him be..."Pidgeon?!"
He'll hear the voice in his mind, vaguely feminine, and currently a bit shrill with outrage.
His vision will only be gone for a minute, though by the time he can see again, she'll have landed up in the rafters. She will, however, also be invisible. So good luck finding her now. (Ugh, wasting her spell slots on this idiot...)
no subject
"That's what I said. You got a problem?" he says, looking around the room for any signs of movement as his vision clears, "Come on. Hiding's for cowards."
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You know what's annoying? (For him, that is.) Telepathic communication isn't directional at all. The voice is just coming from everywhere and provides no hint as to where she's actually hanging out.
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"Who're you calling idiot, bird brain?" he says, "I wasn't the one playing around in the claw machine."
no subject
She is definitely not in the wrong here. He attacked her!
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Some people would have the good sense to assume that a living bird was not a prize. Vance was not some people, though in his defense, there are some pretty bizarre prizes in there.
If you can fit in there, it is a good way to cheat and get the prize you want, he has to admit. He cranes his neck to look at the jumble of prizes again.
"Get me the gun and I'll call truce."
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"Fat fucking chance," she answers. "Why should I want truce when I know I can kick your ass?"
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Not so subtle revealings
As he’s trying to puzzle how to get out of the current situation he’s in and how to get out of it, he notices the crow. Immediately he makes a beeline for the crow, jostling several other people and ignoring their looks before crouching in front of the crow. “Can you understand everything that woman just said?”
He had always thought crows were incredibly intelligent creatures so really, understanding human language wouldn’t have been a stretch in his mind.
no subject
"Uh. Yeah?" she answers. The 'obviously' is implied. The voice is vaguely feminine, and it's appearing telepathically directly into the Doctor's mind - but he should be pretty used to that kind of thing.
"Was really boring though," she adds.
no subject
Any on looker of course will just see him staring very intently and excitedly at the crow.
“It was, wasn’t it? Not really enough information about what to do in the face of a giant squid attack. That would have livened it up.”
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"Uh, yeah, for sure," she agrees dubiously. Critiquing the drill isn't really top priority right now. "Hey, do you know what's up with this place?"
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It’s hard for the Doctor to put it into words. It’s just a feeling in his bones; wherever this universe was felt oddly disconnected compared to the other worlds he had travelled to.
“What was the last thing you remember? Before getting here that is?”
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"I dunno, I was just reading a book," she answers, and she doesn't exactly have shoulders to shrug, but there's the mental equivalent. "I just figured I'd been sucked into a pocket dimension or another plane or something. I mean, I'm not sure which plane, like I was thinking Mechanus at first, but maybe it's just a portion of the Astral Sea..."
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“So we can rule out death for you.” He on the other hand…well they can talk about that later. “The book wasn’t magical, was it? There was a library on Ixonal Seven that was solely used for transportation purposes.”
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"Of course the book was magical, I was in the library of Azhira, all the valuable books are enchanted with anti-theft abjuration and transmutation spells," she answers, ruffling her feathers. "But not that kind of magical."
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“Well I just had to check since not all books are magical.” The sass is probably exaggerated by the Scottish accent but he looks amused nonetheless. “What about a teleportation device or some kind of atom scrambler. Did you have one of those on you when you were zipped here?”
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"Dunno what an atom scrambler is, my dude, so probably not," she answers. As much as she doesn't like being made to sit here an answer questions, they are mostly sensible questions that help trying to figure out why they're here. "And teleportation items are expensive, so nah. Closest I have to anything like that is this bag." She taps her beak at the tiny backpack. "It's bigger on the inside," she supplies helpfully.
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“They’re not so expensive if you have the parts and know how to make it yourself. The stability of it is another question but -,” Ah the magic phrase. His eyes lit up again and his hands inched towards the tiny backpack. He didn’t ask, at least not verbally, but there was definitely a feeling there of wanting to get a closer look that he was sure she might get. “Bigger on the inside you say? How big? Could someone else fit into it? Could you? Maybe someone slipped something like that inside of it without you knowing.”
1
[The samurai looks like he wants to slice his own lei to shreds, but first things first:]
Hello. [He bows to the freaking raven. Everyone else he's going to want to decapitate, forget ALL manners. But a raven? Gets a formal super respectful bow. Clearly he likes birds more than humans.]
[He doesn't introduce himself though, manners only go so far. And Haguro goes to hopping up to his hair when he bows, not liking the sudden change in height, when he's already having a pretty awful morning being somewhere inside and without trees.]
Where are you from, lost soul? I take it you're not a seabird, anymore than Haguro. [That'd be the hawk. Yeah, he introduced the hawk before himself.]