TEST DRIVE MEME #6

[sailmods]

1. took a time-traveling ride

[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 aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!

[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. so many dragons lurking out in the fog

[the cabins closest to the laundry room door will notice first. the steady hums and thuds of the machines, muffled by walls, are growing louder and louder, until it almost sounds like someone is bashing them against the wall. soapy water leaks from under the closed door, drips from the sides.

until someone is dumb enough to open it.

it’s a flash flood of detergent, a wave of foam and hot water feet high spilling forth and bringing down and along anything caught in its path. you’d think it would be a quick burst, that once whatever had built up in the room was released, the torrent would subside. but, it doesn’t. and a river of half-washed socks overtakes the hallways.]

3. I need protection from the things in my head

[The Infinite Tommy Bahama, everyone’s favorite destination for laid-back island sophistication, is a bit of an odd duck on the Promenade. and not just because it’s seemingly shoved between two extant locales, or because it’s a clothing store among bars and restaurants. for some reason, the unseen spirits that attend the other bars and shops, doing the routine duties necessary to keep such places running, seem to avoid this one, and it shows. clothes that are taken off the racks are not put back on again, leaving increasingly large piles of floral print and polyester blends in every aisle.

and that is where he is born.

there’s just so many piles. and they all look pretty much the same, each as tacky as the one next to it. it would be hard to notice that one has moved while your back was turned to it. difficult to realize that a singular pile has started stalking you through the stacks and racks. until it’s too late to turn back, until you’ve lost sight of the entrance, and the piles of discarded slacks and blazers seem to conglomerate into one massive beast, which rises from the polished wood floors and throws its weight upon its hapless victim.

the bahamanal strikes.]

Comments

Bash St. Expedit - Demigod OC (Scion TTRPG, Dupe CRAU) - OTA

[midnightroads]

(ooc: Bash has an ability to look at someone and gauge their well-being, if they're alive--and to tell if they're not alive. This will totally be opt-in with full permissions when I'm in game, but if you feed me relevant information about illness, injury, ailments, health in your tags, I'm going to assume you're okay with Bash seeing it.)

1. Were you there to watch the earth be scorched? [Arrival]
This is not Bash's first rodeo, but two is a very small number of rodeos at which someone should be expected to be comfortable with interdimensional kidnapping. Still, warily, he ventures out of his cabin after reading the welcome letter, a lanky man in a black tank top and jeans, his hair loose and fluffy around his shoulders. There's a tattoo of a crow on each shoulder. The one on the left is holding a cross in its beak that reads HODIE, while the one on the right has a banner that reads CRAS.

He doesn't exactly like the red light, green light way the ship indicates the right direction, though he seems resigned to it, fighting a lot less than some newcomers do. Still, the look on his face when he reaches the muster drill is dark, bitter like coffee without any cream in it.

After the show, he runs his fingers repeatedly over the white disc of bone on his lei as he retreats to some shadowy corner, almost seeming like he's looking for a place to hide.


2. Did you stand beside the spectral torch? [Laundry]
Bash arrived with one set of clothes, and has yet to find the Tommy Bahama, so he's wearing a bathrobe and carrying his tank top, jeans and skivvies with him (yes, that's a black silk pair of manties with lace, don't worry about why) on the way to the laundry room. When he's the poor hapless fool to open the door, he's immediately frosted in foam and thrown off his feet, barely managing to hand on to his clothing as he's swept up in the wave and, well, bashed against the wall of the hallway.

Sputtering, half-drowned, he can be found trying to wade and doggy paddle his way anywhere. It's kind of pathetic, someone please give the new guy a rescue.


3. Know the leaves of sorrow turned their face [Sand Dollars]
Bash is sitting alone with a LORGE cup of coffee off to one side, but in his hands is a deck of tarot cards he's idly shuffling. The cards are black ink on white cardstock, but occasionally as the cards catch the light, colors gleam like oil-slick iridescence off the surface of them.

He notices someone watching him after a minute and lifts his chin. "Just gonna stand there and watch, or are you coming over to say hi?"

If the person he's talking to is an adult, there's a clear undertone of muted flirtation, simple to ignore or to indulge, depending on preference.


4. Scattered on the ashes of disgrace [Wildcard]
darkersolstice or darkersolstice#9463 to plot!

gaap | umineko no naku koro ni

[seductive]

a. this is how to be a heartbreaker

deck one

[ Well, this is quite the greeting. Normally when the person who's summoned her at least has the decency to greet her properly. It's not boring to be called on like this every once in awhile. The drill concludes and Gaap gives a little shake of her head before she starts along the deck, her red dress fluttering and stiletto heels clacking against the wood with each step that she takes.

It's a boat, so the most likely candidate for her arrival would be the captain. Had it been a mistake? Her specialty is locked rooms and other fun little disappearing acts. She offers up ideas of her own for lack of anything better to do, ]

It could be fun to turn this place into the next Bermuda Triangle, or maybe to take this ship out of it...? What do you think, care for another trip into the unknown?

[ She's speaking to whoever has the misfortune of being close to her. ]

b. boys, they like a little danger

infinite tommy bahama

[ Sometimes you're just minding your own business picking through clothes on the racks and things go wrong. Gaap can be found going through them, mumbling not this one and not that either and other such little comments, decidedly ignoring the pine of clothes crawling around like some kind of tacky looking snake, until it's rising up the ground behind her and preparing itself to strike. The demon lets out a sigh, finally turning around with her hands on her hips, her posture relaxed and an unconcerned smile on her face. ]

Don't know better than to interrupt a lady while she's busy?

[ It strikes, and she skillfully dodges before raising her leg to strike it with her queen bee kick. It does the job in getting it far enough away for her to bounce back, disappearing into the black hole that appears on the floor before reappearing some distance away. She's a great demon, so it's only natural that something like this would stand no match for her, but... ]

Sorry, I don't have time to play with you today. I'm getting ready to meet someone... Now, as big as this place is, the 666 line must be somewhere...

[ With a snap of her fingers another inky black hole appears, this time beneath the clothes creature, dropping it off somewhere else entirely. Hopefully not near someone else, on them, or anywhere else that it doesn't belong. ]

c. we'll get him falling for a stranger, a player

anywhere

[ This place is boring! It's unbearably boring, so much so that she thinks that she could just die from it right now, but Gaap knows how to make her own fun. The humans are so cute, and the supernatural creatures aren't too bad either, she thinks the best part of being here is being able to play with them. So she decides it's about time to live up to her name.

So, she decides to start playing little pranks by making objects disappear. That item you set down? The keys that fell out of your pocket? They're gone now, disappearing without warning the second your eyes are off them. One might think they'd truly been erased from the earth, or at least misplaced, if not for the blond woman standing juuust within eyeshot and holding it in her hand, waving it a little bit in front of her.

It's just a little prank, she doesn't have any intention of keeping it. ]

d. singing i lo-lo-love you

anywhere

[ Choose your own adventure! Gaap can be found out and about playing pranks, pulling disappearing acts, clothes shopping, and so much more! ]

Sand Dollars

[theweakhavepurpose]

Pratt has what can best be described as a 7-11 Big Gulp sized coffee, the kind where he should probably hold it with two hands. So already they are kindred spirits. However, Pratt is also putting a trick-or-treat bag amount of sugar and toppings into his because he runs off sugar, caffeine, nicotine and carbs.

Nodding to the cards, "What are those?"

[midnightroads]

"Tarot cards, man. They're a divini...divator...they're a tool to read into the future of a situation. Or sometimes the stuff you're not seeing in the past or present."

He sets the deck down on the table, eyeing Pratt with the cautious look of someone who has been kidnapped to an evil magic cruise ship.

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Oh! Ouija board stuff. But like.. the future not the past." He has no idea what he's talking about.

Finishing up turning his coffee into a horrific sugary concoction (it's literally grainy at this point) he turns his full attention to the newcomer, looking like he hasn't slept in months, emaciated, with a noticeable scar across his jaw and another over his many times broken nose.

"Do they still work here? With everything being all magic and stuff?" He thinks about that for two seconds, "Or does that make it better?"

[midnightroads]

"Fuckin' hate ouija boards, man. Those things are really bad if you're not looking to pull any two-bit poultergeist in town without caring who they are and how much they remember how to people at you. Ugh. And most folks using them don't know how to cleanse them and release spirits that mighta got anchored to them. Pissed me off, having to deal with that shit. Every year, first week of November was just cleaning up everyone else's goddamned messes."

Okay, rant over, this guy hadn't actually asked for that at all. He sips his coffee, and lets out a sigh.

"I, uh. Dunno how they work here yet."

[theweakhavepurpose]

Holy shit. Holy shit this is FANTASTIC. He looks absolutely delighted right now because, "I fucking knew Darcy was lying."

Why is he believing this random stranger over someone he actually knows? Because he needs the confirmation bias of Ouija boards being real and also to go rub it in that he was right.

"Wait okay, back up. They get stuck to the board? That's... fucking lame for them. And for the people using it I guess too." He'd think that's why he was here too, having died, maybe he's tied to a board in the Captain's bedroom or something. But only him and Clara seem to have that in common so far. "You some sort of paranormal investigator?"

Amaterasu || Okami

[i_ink_therefore_i_ammy]

took a time traveling ride

Amaterasu, Origin Of All That Is Good, Mother of the Thirteen Brush Gods, Savior of Nippon, Goddess of the Sun, and most importantly, Good-est of Dogs, yawns in a distinctly doggy fashion as she awakens in an unfamiliar place. The last thing she remembers... Walking alongside Waka into the Celestial Plain. Her land, safe at last, Yami dealt with...

Well. With any luck, this is not some new demon's trick to put Nippon in danger. Ammy believes in a healthy, hopeful attitude and many naps, so the very first thing she does is lay back down. If there is to be chaos and fighting, it will come to her. Or it won't.

Several minutes later she perks her ears up, confused. Something's missing... Issun. Every time she's been thrown from her rest Issun's been there, pushing her onwards... or simply getting on her nerves. Is he around here, or is he missing she free of him?

Reading the paper has her less concerned. Clearly, he has made his way out already and left her behind, possibly searching for something, or someone to draw. Still, she's already up, so why not explore? Perhaps dig some holes. ... Maybe digging holes on a boat is a bad idea.

So there's a really big fluffy white dog in the hallway, or maybe a goddess, who happens to also be a fluffy white dog, if you have some faith.

[midnightroads]

"Eeeeh. Kinda, I guess. At one point. It was a while ago."

Bash's face is very expressive, and the way he grimaces as he tries to figure out how to explain his everything is...fluent.

"I don't know what I am, now."

Arthur Lester | Malevolent | Injuries Georg, who gets hurt 100 times a day,

[theotherright]

Unfortunately, this shadowy corner is already hiding someone. That someone is a gaunt man in a soggy yellow robe that screams 'cultist' and says at a normal volume 'fell in a body of water'.

Arthur only made it as far onto the deck as he absolutely had to, staying close to the wall for a sense of direction as much as for anything else. He can hear the crowded people, and they could be anybody, with any intentions -- and moving out onto the deck proper without an anchor point feels a bit too much like jumping off a cliff into empty air. He's so exposed.

(He still got given a lei, though. Nobody escapes the lei.)

His eyesight hasn't returned to him, and nor has his seeing-eye demon. He's trying not to panic about it.

"John, you asshole," he says very tensely, very under his breath. He hasn't distinguished Bash's footsteps from the general sounds of the crowd. "If you're waiting for a dramatic moment to speak up, now's as good a time as any."

And his left hand flexes over and over, unused to being under his control.

The status of his health is, in a word, hilarious. He woke up from a month-long coma the night before last and he hasn't stopped since. He has scars and cuts and bruises. He had to burn a parasite tadpole out of his arm, like, twenty minutes ago. A leech frog bit his stomach. A policeman punched him. He's had a terrible day.

I keep intending to start this podcast...

[midnightroads]

"Cousin, you look like shit." Look, he feels like he can get away with pointing this out, in this case, because all of that's pretty egregious and also because this dude probably needs to stop and take a breather before he collapses, like now.

He doesn't crowd in, though, keeping a polite distance. His accent is New Orleans, and the scents of coffee and tobacco linger in the air around him, as much as part of his divine mantle as, well, omnipresent scents in his life.

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Oookay." He won't pry, he doesn't need to know that badly and this dude is going on an entire face journey right now. Probably shouldn't interrupt.

"I'll drink to that. Shitty solidarity of not knowing who or what we are." Though he sounds almost cheerful, or well, as cheerful as his raspy voice can get. He raises his coffee in a mock salute.

"I'm Deputy Pratt."

[midnightroads]

Clearly, that's a toast, so Bash lifts his cup as well, smiling crookedly. "I'm Bash. Uh, pretty newly arrived here. I'm sure that's pretty obvious."

It's an even smaller community than Duplicity, he can already tell that.

"What does everyone here do all day?"

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Well, not much honestly. There's food that never runs out at the buffet, there's an arcade, a pretty baller pool except it's a cruise ship so it should have a fucking waterslide and it doesn't. And a movie screen that doesn't work. But uh..." He's trying to think of things that people who aren't him do. Because he pretty much eats and plays in the arcade most of the day.

"Oh there's a library, and a smoking bar, uh... there's some shops but they're pretty lame."

3

[be_seeing_you]

He'd paused just inside the door on his way in for a cup of tea suddenly wary of a new face. Another new arrival? Just as interesting are those cards that gleam eerily in the light. He's been staring longer than intended. That much is clear when this new man raises his voice about it.

"I don't mean to be rude. You're new here, aren't you?" He either doesn't notice the flirt or pretends not to. His response is cordial, but there's no reciprocated warmth in it.

[midnightroads]

All things considered, that may seem like a dull boring answer, but it's not 'government-enforced orgies, he's not going to complain.

"Lame or not, a place to get some new clothes might be nice. I only got the threads I arrived with."

[midnightroads]

"Absolutely am." He nods, toeing the chair across from himself out a few inches in invitation, his smile coming easily. "Why you askin'?"

There's a playfulness to being able to just...you know. Be coy and playful with no pressure for it to go anywhere. He feels a little like a kid who ran track and is just now getting to skip for a while on the soft sand of a tropical beach.

Or something.

Please do, I cannot recommend it enough! (I'll keep any plot details vague in my tags then lol)

[theotherright]

Polite distance or not, Arthur still jumps, and he turns his head quickly to locate the man. It would be easier with guidance, but he's adaptable. This wouldn't be the first time he's gotten around without John's help.

Right. He was sort of expecting, sort of dreading having someone here approach him. It's not playing out quite like before, but the beats are similar enough that Arthur's expression quickly sours.

"Do I. Well, I wouldn't worry too much about it, I probably just cut myself shaving."

His own accent is clearly English, tempered at the edges by several years living in Massachusetts.

[midnightroads]

There's a warm snort of laughter, non-verbally calling bullshit on that comment.

"Right, and I'm fuckin' Aphrodite herself. C'mon, do you think you'll get away with that for long? Here, if you lemme touch your hand, I might be able to help you keep from crashing a little longer, until you find a safe place for it. But man, you been through it."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"How much are you into looking like the newspaper picture accompanying "Florida Man Caught Embezzling from Alligator Purse Factory" because hot damn do we have a store for that. Everything is floral and khaki and like... fake tropical." He rolls his eyes. "Because cruise ship I guess. Thematic."

[midnightroads]

"Does any of it come in black?"

The goth needs to maintain his reputation, after all!

2. Did you stand beside the spectral torch?

[i_ink_therefore_i_ammy]

So much water, flowing down the halls. It takes Amaterasu back, to a time of adventure and mischief. She strides across it, all shining white and flowing fur to those who can see her true form, and cheerful doggy smile to those who can't.

To Bash, a demigod himself, her true form is almost certainly revealed, and she barks curiously at him. "Hmm?" It's not translated into many words, because, well, she doesn't expect him to understand her speaking in the first place. So few do, mortal or otherwise, she's become used to communicating in simple noises.

But she tilts her head just so, an unspoken offer of assistance from a goddess who can walk on water to a demigod who clearly can't.

[midnightroads]

Bash has met gods firsthand before, but this is not a typical circumstance. He stares for a moment while the waters lap at his bathrobe, soaking it through easily.

"I...look, Lady, I don't think there's a polite way to ask this. But, uh...fuck. Can I ride you to somewhere dry? Or something?"

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Literally almost nothing." he spent hours in there trying to find stuff in deputy green and just you know.. regular jeans.

"Maybe some polo shirts. Situation is kinda dire clothes wise if you don't wanna look like a golf course retiree."

[theotherright]

Ahaha, no. If someone in this -- world? -- is directly asking him to do something, that's his first clue to do the opposite.

The hand that isn't touching the wall withdraws into his robe, and Arthur smiles thinly.

"Oh really? What, have you been watching it? Reading about it, maybe? I'm not a fucking idiot. Fool me twice, shame on me."