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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.]
A VERY normal reaction....
That is the kind of filth that the monks read. Though Viking... It's another new word. He feels like he's been going through a drought for the last fifteen years, and suddenly there's more than a monsoon or typhoon of new words and tantalizing ideas and things to soak up like a sponge. Like he was dying and --
Damn it. That's probably the secret (?) desire that got him here!
Nobunaga makes an irritated growl, and debates his options to get the reader's attention. He'd pray they're not actually a monk, if he believed in gods. Ironically. Purely because, he really hates monks, and even non-Buddhist, non-Confucius, literally any religion he might want to kick overboard.
Still, he is a little reluctant to touch others, not because he has respect for others, much less their personal space, but because once you do that sort of thing, you're allowing others to do the same, and he doesn't want to be touched.
"What's a Viking, and why are they performing kama sutra acts of carnal passion? I swear you'd best not be a holy man, or I'm not sure I'll contain my urges to make an example of you."
This probably isn't going to work for not getting ignored either, but at least if he takes it KIND OF(???) slowly and gradual escalation steps, then maybe it's not so bad...
Yeah, he doesn't have the bloody patience for that!
So he just withdraws the katana and holds it just below the man's ear, close enough if he sneezed, he'd be in trouble.
Nobunaga thinks irritably that Luis Frois would frown and tell Nobunaga that's a bad way to get foreigners coming to Japan... but they're not in Japan. As long as he gets the man's attention he'll put it away. He doesn't really want to cause bloodshed over something so ridiculously stupid.
"Books. Where did you get it? Are there more?"
Re: A VERY normal reaction....
"What in the world do you Oh my god!!" He acts on instinct, throwing the book at the man's face even as he flings himself off the deck chair on the other side, landing with a thump.
"What the hell are you playing at?!" he tries to struggle to his feet but one of his buttons gets caught somehow under the rim of the chair. "I'll have you know I am a master swordsman! And no one you want to trifle with!"
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"Actual masters don't tell anyone their skills, they don't need to." Or in Kenshin's case, just stab everything that moves as a way of saying hello.
But he waits for the man to calm back down... maybe. If he ever will.
Slowly, as if speaking to an absolute idiot: "Are there more books on this ship?" It's kind of said with an intimidating aura like if there aren't, he might steal the one. He won't, because it looks annoying, and it almost certainly won't have anything he wants. Besides, he'll let the idiot go back to reading once Oda gets what he wants: directions, and that's the point. To give him incentive for Oda not to take his book. Point him at others, and then you'll be free.
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"I don't see why I should tell you anything. Had you asked and said please I might have considered it, but considering you didn't, you can kindly fuck off and find out yourself."
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"Ugh, you are a religious tutor type, aren't you?"
Is it because he's in a bad mood, or just the last time anyone reprimanded him on his manners was right after he threw the incense at his father's ashes at the funeral? When he was still a child, but the start of his declaration of war on the world.
Still, the reader looked somewhat European, so he probably wasn't Buddhist. That was something at least.
"Take notice: I'm the Demon King of the 6th Heaven." No wait, why is he bothering? This is going to get further from what he wants.
He wants directions to books. Why is that so hard?
Oh, and to definitely not ever be polite. Fuck that. If he was using the word right. He suspects he's not. Why would masturbation have a separate term and what did sexual acts have to do with -- Well, monks are really repressed and dodgy like that.
"There is no one in any realm more arrogant than me." Did that need stating? Yes. Not because it wasn't really fucking obvious. (Is he getting the hang of the word NOW?) But as proof that he wouldn't be using manners.
On the other hand.... he really wants to know what a Viking is, and whether this idiot fop is actually a monk, or another fish out of water.
Oh, and books. Directions to books.
And Nobunaga kind of really wants to slice off the other man's ears, but that's so unnecessary, what is going to do, make a collection of ears on a lei -- Actually that sounds great, but-- No no, hardly helpful.
AHAH!
The red eyes gleam with pure devilish delight. "If you don't give me directions, I shall get wine all over your nice white clothes." He's... disturbingly smug about this idea. Like not blood, just... wine?
Part of him thinks he should start over. Was manners really worth the trouble he was bringing upon himself?
Actually, yes? Because if he gives in now, it starts a bad precedent, and he'd rather deal with duels with every single person on the ship than put up with one single idiot demanding manners from him. Demon King.
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"No."
He doesn't want to go find the books on his own, he wants to probably murder this person in cold blood, but barring that, he'll suffice for annoying the hell out of him.
"What's your background? Why go to such lengths over manners?" Maybe for the same reason as Oda himself, but Oda would have... literally told anyone asking for books where to find them. So the man has no place to be lecturing him.
"Would you really risk your ears over this?" Stubbornness? Oda kind of... really wants to see if the sword skills are that good. He's met friends over trying to kill them, what's one more? Of course it might not work, and he'd rather not kill someone over something this stupid, and while Oda can hold back, he doesn't have a fantastic read on the skills of the others to ensure he won't accidentally hurt himself or something more idiotic.
"Draw." Your blade, he means, and withdraws his own, despite having JUST sheathed it!
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"I'm a pirate captain, by trade, and I have a crew of ready persons who are all very talented in their own fields. And most of them know how to keep their sword in their sheath. If you're so concerned about me noticing the length of it, I do, and it's very long and sharp. Well done."
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That explained a lot, actually.
Exasperated, Nobunaga just re-sheathes. AGAIN. Though he is actually amused by the overcompensating insinuation. Nice. He actually hasn't heard that one, listen it's the 1500s and no one wastes time on banter in Japan. And also... no one would waste banter on Oda Nobuanga. He might have to use that line on Kenshin sometime to see if he can get a couple of laughs.
"Why didn't you just SAY SO?" That he was a pirate. Pirates are... of course they give no damns. "Oh, you're a literate pirate? Well done." No, he means that genuinely. Most Japanese pirates... aren't. And the ones who accidentally wash up on Oda's shores, definitely aren't.
And then there's a REALLY long beat. "How the hell did they kidnap you? From a ship?"
The same way they kidnapped Nobunaga, obviously. Why would pirates magically be immune, just because it's on sea, and they're used to the sea? Okay, Oda will admit, that was a stupid question. "Stupid question, better one: is this really the North Atlantic ocean?"
Look you can give him the location to books... or suffer a million, billion, trillion, infinite questions.
"Do you even know what the North Atlantic ocean is like? Do you know what this ocean is? What's a Viking? And why are they being repulsive?" a gesture to the cover. Not that sex is gross, just lewd covers to books instead of general wood carvings or other works of art is well, repulsive to him. Because it reminds him of the kama sutra and other monk-stuff.
The only problem with Stede letting it known he was a pirate captain is....
This is how Nobunaga treats pirates. Like AskJeeves in the early 2000s. "Hey hey, how far have you traveled?"
He's like... an absolute child.