TEST DRIVE MEME #7

[sailmods]

1. before she hung up, she said she was a skeleton

[there is no note in your cabin. no forces stall your legs if you decide to walk anywhere but the atrium. in fact, for the first time in hundreds of years, newly arrived passengers on the Serena Eterna are waking up with absolutely no guidance. nothing but your fellow passengers in the halls - or maybe in your bed.

perhaps you end up in the atrium eventually anyway. it is where guest services is, and where Gal Friday… actually hasn’t been in a few days. until today. and she is visibly frazzled, her hair uncoiffed, her suit rumpled, something a bit like a bruise blossoming down from her hairline and over her smooth features. more papers than ever cover her desk, and when she turns to face you, her voice is as cheerful as ever, but audibly strained.]

Welcome aboard the Serene Eterna! [a pause] You know how to work a life vest, right? Everyone knows that! You don’t need me to teach you that!

[a light bulb burns out behind her head.]

… I’ll get right on that!

[freedom includes the freedom to not know what the fuck is happening. maybe you should reflect on that.]

2. grandma went and can't stop screaming

[it’s something about the lighting fixtures, this month. has the Bellona always had a massive chandelier? maybe. who knows. don’t ask questions. either way, in the stillness of the night, or day, or late afternoon, there is a noise like a cord being cut, and the chandelier plunges into the audience below.

it hits nothing, of course. no one is ever in the theater. and that, perhaps, is what the trouble is.

so, the chandelier starts to… travel, one could say. it starts to hang in various rooms: the dining halls, the bars, the clubs… sometimes, if you’re out on the pool deck and suddenly realized you’re under a shadow, you can glance up and see it suspended 20 feet above your head, securely fastened to nothing in particular and yet remaining perfectly in place.

until it isn’t. until it falls, crystal shattering on whatever surface it lands on: floor, table, person… and, wherever the chandelier goes, a lilting childish voice follows it, singing without any obvious source.]

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies… ashes, ashes, we all…

3. jeff bezos murdered the infinite tommy bahama

[the lights of the Infinite Tommy Bahama go out three days into October.

barely an hour after its closure, the lights go on again, and a new banner is unfurled.



physically, it is the same store. you can even see the old signs hidden behind the new ones. however, long gone are the tropical prints and khaki dress shorts. now, one can purchase any number of officially licensed or legally distinct Halloween costumes, decorations, and various other haunted accoutrements, leading back as far as the eye can see, and then farther still. is that a Gal Friday mask? spooky! well, at least you’ll be good and ready for the Halloween party at the end of the month, which is absolutely just a normal party and in no way whatsoever anything even remotely resembling a trick. there are only treats at The Infinite Spirit Halloween!

note: bahamanuel is still here! somewhere! it kinda looks like dan bongino.]

Comments

Gideon Nav | Gideon the Ninth | OTA

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

1. Wake Up

Gideon Nav wakes up alone in a strange room, which is especially weird since in all her time listening to the ancient crones of the Ninth drone on about death, and all her time reading books about scorching hot necromancers in the Cohort, nobody mentioned that the afterlife was like… this.

She spends a long time lying in bed, occasionally touching the places in her chest that should be holes before she sits up. Her things are all here - her sword, her shoes, and most vitally, her dirty magazines. The sunglasses are still on her face and she touches those too, tracing along the frames.

So. Dead then. At least it didn’t happen on the Ninth. Her bones won’t be subject to an eternity of cleaning Crux’s bedpans. For a brief moment, she entertains the idea that Harrow will turn her into half a dozen curios to wear as she goes about her eternity, and that some handsome cohort soldier will look at a bit of Gideon turned into a broach and ask, and Harrow will touch it and look wistfully into the distance.

Then, because Gideon is Gideon, she imagines Harrow’s face puckering and remarking that Gideon would have preferred that her femur became a dildo instead. Which she would have, but Harrow’s already got too much stuffed up her ass, so there’s nowhere for Gideon to fit.

She sighs, rolls over, drags herself out of the strange bed and the strange room. Sword on back, glasses on face, pornography hidden: Gideon is ready to figure out what exactly this afterlife is.

The only trouble with wearing sunglasses indoors is that she steps out of the room she’s woken up in and promptly slams into some poor bastard just trying to pass by. “Shit- didn’t see you.”


2. Got the Spirit

Gideon has been enjoying this otherwise corpse-free afterlife when she looks to the right and finds a store full of bones. She’s never going to escape these things, is she? It’s been delightfully absent of shambling skeleton servants so far but of course it couldn’t last-

Wait. What? Something’s very off here. She leans forward, popping her head inside. There’s skeletons alright, but they’re not real bone at all. She scrapes a nail along the side of the skull, finding nothing but plex in it. And it’s not even made right. Gideon’s no necromancer but she’s spent her life among bones, suffocated by those dry shins and withered pelvises, and so she knows the way they look. The jaws aren't right at all, and everything’s connected in the wrong places.

“What the fuck.” Gideon says, mostly to herself, though now that she’s said it out loud, it’s an invitation to anyone standing near her to step in and clarify what exactly she finds so wrong about the decorations.


3. Bar None

Gideon is absolutely lost and baffled. This place reminds her of Canaan House, except there’s still life here instead of moldering ruins and dead bodies. There’s also the sea around them, though strangely the rock they’re on shifts and moves this time, which makes Gideon wonder how long it’ll be before they all tip into the sea and drown. Can they even drown? She really doesn’t want to find out.

On the other hand, she does find the greatest of all possible treasures while exploring the many strange rooms, and that’s bottles and bottles of alcohol. As someone who’s only ever had the most disgusting fermented fungus twice a year during the geretric nun’s various worship days, Gideon promptly tries a shot of everything, choking each glass down no matter how nasty they taste or how badly they burn her throat and tongue.

Which means that by the time someone stumbles across her, she’s well and truly soused, lounging in one of the padded booths and surrounded by a dozen bottles as she mixes her own concoctions like a demented alchemist attempting to turn lead into pure liquid gold.

4. Wildcard

There is a giant woman with a skull painted on her face and a two-handed sword wandering around the ship. Approach at your own risk.

1!

[not_the_last]

The woman she's run into is tiny, barely over five feet tall, and she's been knocked back a pace or two by the collision.

"I'm sorry," she says, recovering, "I wasn't looking where I was ... going."

The pause comes as she registers the appearance of the person she's collided with, and recovers from that startlement almost as smoothly.

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"Oh, yeah, that's- it's fine, I came out in a rush. Just getting the hang of this." This? What, her feet? Life? Smooth, Gideon. She leans in the doorway and looks down at the tiny woman. She doesn't look like a necromancer so hey, points to this place so far. "Sooooooo... been here long?"

[not_the_last]

"Not very long," she says. "A little over a month, I think. And you?"

(She definitely doesn't look like a necromancer. For one thing, she's wearing a rapier and dagger.)

3

[businessorlibation]

Johnny spends several minutes watching Gideon, before he brings a jigger, a cocktail shaker, a glass of ice and a coupe glass over to her table. And he proceeds to build a very proper and precise bees knees, which he then slides across the tabletop toward her.

This is how you make friends, right? Right.

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Gideon blinks blurrily at the man who sets up across from her, his hands moving like a magicians as he produces his own concoction. Unlike Gideon's attempts, this one isn't muddy or yet another shade of brown. She looks at it for a good while before reaching out to take it. It's pretty, like the way the sun was when it was covered enough by clouds that Gideon could look at it without scorching her eyes out.

"Bottoms up!" She says with a grin and tips it into her mouth-

And promptly spits the first mouthful over the table as the expected burning is replaced with a sudden, shocking sour taste. She clamps her mouth shut, and when she takes her next sip, Gideon chokes down the rest. The flavour is so powerful and unlike anything she's had before, and maybe she'll decide it's good later but for now, she feels like she's drinking a battery.

[businessorlibation]

"Rrright, so that's not to your taste. How about a little more input. What flavors do you enjoy?"

The man himself is small, pale and dark-haired and his eyes gleam with odd golden eyeshine like a wolf's in the dimly-lit bar. His voice is warm and playful, with an accent that probably holds no meaning to her. Her universe (as far as I know) lacks a Europe.

3. Bar None

[crushed_pearls]

It's time for Erin's nightly Go To The Bars And Pray Someone With Eyes Can Pour. She's still trying out new looks (the cargo pants are back, now with a leather skirt and her habitual belt of Pouches & Knives plus the sword across the small of her back), but when she realizes someone new is in here Erin sorely wishes for the armor back.

(We have a force field now.)

It's called an Aura you - not the point!

Still, her gunpowder haze crackles in curiosity, and she approaches with that heavy tread of hers. From the smell of thing someone's hitting the bottles real goddamn hard. Make a polite introduction?

Nnnnoooo, no, not that, urgent question first.

"...Hey, new fish, I gotta ask for like, your health; is this a suicide attempt, non-human physiology, or your first time with booze?"

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Gideon sits up as she's approached by- wait another cavalier? Or not, because as she gets close, Gideon sees that the woman's got her own eye protection and it's the kind you don't see through. But she's carrying knives and Gideon knows better than to think those are ever just decorative when strapped to someone's hip.

She steadies herself with a hand on the table, turning on the charm and giving the women her most winning smile as she lies through her teeth. "Just celebrating my life with all my closest, dearest friends. Pull up a seat, I'll make one of my great-aunts move over."

[crushed_pearls]

(Mmhm, pull the other one.)

Erin drags a chair to the other side of the table and takes the invitation to sit, leaning forward so she doesn't have her saber pressing into the small of her back. Her elbows go right onto the table as she laces her fingers together as if praying for strength.

Which in fairness.

Not far off?

"Came lookin' for some of that myself," she admits. "I can't read the labels so I generally bother someone about it instead of playing booze roulette. Name's Erin..." quick, is the usual manners register gonna work? Fuck it, we ball: "Ms...?"

2!

[neverleave]

Natsuno is rather disappointed by the Tommy Bahama's transformation. He likes tropical prints and cargo shorts, thank you very much. Still, he ventures inside to see if there's anything worthwhile there, maybe some horror movie t-shirts...

He browses through scary clown masks (he should spook Clarke with one, she'll lose her shit) when he hears Gideon judging the skeletons. Weird, considering she's wearing skull makeup. Must be a new arrival.

"Did you show up dressed like this, or are you already in a Halloween costume?"

It's... probably a serious question. Hard to tell, since this scrawny sixteen year old doesn't usually bother to emote.

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"What?" Gideon glances over at the guy and then she looks down at herself. Right, she's still dressed in Ninth fashion. Gideon pinches the bottom of her shirt and gives a casual shrug, refusing to admit for even a second that she doesn't know what Halloween is - "It's easy to clean."

Her hand shifts to her hip as her eyes look the stranger up and down. "What's your excuse?"

[neverleave]

He seems to consider the answer. Black clothes are better for concealing blood and gore, which is rather useful on the Serena Eterna. The skull makeup, on the other hand, doesn't look easy to clean or to put on.

What's his excuse, though? Natsuno shrugs, indifferent. When you room with Jade Curtiss for eight months, you learn to ignore most jabs about your fashion sense, taste in books or knife hoarding habits.

"I like having pockets." He needs to carry all these knives (as well as gun, lighter and bottle of aerosol) somewhere, after all, which is why he's sporting cargo pants and a fisherman's vest over his t-shirt.

The neon print, though, is truly inexcusable.

2

[saltwaterlungs]

Sword lady. Big sword lady. Skull face paint. Cool sunglasses. This person is about to become Darcy's new best friend whether she likes it or not.

Darcy's patrol of the Spirit Halloween is immediately put on hold the second Darcy sees Gideon, and she trots over trying to not look in awe of the sheer goth vibes she's putting off. Her wrist rests on her rapier in a way that's casual and totally not drawing attention to the fact that Darcy also has a sword.

"It's a plastic skeleton. Why is your face painted like a skull?"

Important questions first.

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

The answer is that her face is painted like a skull because she got her ass dragged off the Ninth to the First as part of a long con that required her to use a rapier instead of a broadsword, fake a decade of cavalier training she never got and dress like a goddamned nun. This is all lame and Gideon is highly aware of this, especially since there's another teenager within arm's length of her and that teen looks like she should be on the Ninth instead of Gideon.

"Because skulls are cool." Gideon answers instead, tipping her head to the side. "Why don't you paint your face?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Because my best friend is a skeleton and I don't know if it'd be offensive."

She says, as if she doesn't currently have a pair of skeleton-themed gloves on and a leather jacket with skulls on it.

"Darcy," she states with an up-nod like a cool kid, "you new?"

2! Welcome to being haunted by Palamedes Sextus, Gideon!!

[hellonspectacles]

“Do you think the Lyctors got the idea for the creature in the Transference/Winnowing trial from a store like this, or did they merely share its disregard for anatomical veracity?”

Palamedes is standing beside Gideon in the garish store, and he is beaming. He had recognized her from the back, and from all the way across the promenade. Not that doing so is particularly difficult, given her height, and her shock of red hair, and her black vestal robes, and her giant fuck-off sword. His heart had caught in his throat. He’d barely trusted his instincts until he had gotten close enough to see the sunglasses and the facepaint.

Pal has made his share of friends here—dear friends, friends he would trust with his life. But Emperor above, it is good to see a familiar face after all these months.

“Hullo, Ninth. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Gideon's head whips around, nearly knocking the sunglasses off her face as she hears - and then sees - a ghost. Her mouth falls open and for a moment, the sound cuts out as her heartbeat drowns out everything else.

She's known she's dead, she's known it since she woke up here, but there's knowing and there's knowing and staring at Palamedes - alive, well, notably intact and not a thanergy explosion - she finally knows for certain that she is completely gone for good.

It says how affected Gideon is that she doesn't even go for a stupid nickname, just shouting- "Palamedes!" and scooping the smaller necromancer up in a great big bear hug and whipping him around like she's about to hammer-throw him into a rack of masks. She doesn't of course - not her new-old pal Pal, who just gets set down after another of those bone-crushing squeezes. "Finally, somebody who makes sense here! I feel like I'm losing my mind looking at everything. Not a bone in sight but flimsy and plex and real paper everywhere!"

[hellonspectacles]

At some point the two of them are going to have to have a conversation about life and death on the Serena Eterna, and the strange fact that the line between the two is shaky at best.

But for now Palamedes is being wrapped in a bear hug the likes of which he has never seen, particularly because they don’t really do bear hugs on the Sixth. He yelps in a rather undignified way, but that’s just a symptom of his surprise, and he is still smiling when Gideon sets him down. Dizzy, but smiling.

“Never fear, there are plenty of bones if you know where to look.” He clasps his hands together. “There’s a lot to catch you up on, Nav. How long have you been here? Have you tried ice cream yet?”

Ice cream seems like a good accompaniment to the general Serena Eterna rundown.

1

[skaikru]

You ever see a cheerleader get absolutely and unabashedly bodied by a linebacker? This moment is not dissimilar. Clarke had just been walking along down the corridor lined with cabin doors, fully immersed and entrenched in her own thoughts. All of which likely ranged from full blown morbid in regards to their entire situation to mildly peeved about the continual mess throughout the ship that serves as the ghosts formal statement of strike. At some point the people here would have to come together and either agree to stop shooting holes in walls, busting doors off their hinges, defacing property, breaking dishware, throwing chairs, blasting fireballs, and willfully bashing up the fake potted plants — or they're going to have to at least agree to clean up after themselves.

Then a door slots open immediately to her right. A white, and red and black all over freight train of a person slams into her abruptly. And while Clarke doesn't go sprawling, she does stumble back and instinctively reach up a hand to massage at the shoulder that'd taken the brunt of the impact. The look she levels Gideon with is reproachful, tinged with bitter; then wary, when the first thing she truly focuses on is that two handed sword strapped to the human bowling ball's back. Then on to some strange mix of pissy and pouting and a flicker of confusion once looking up at the other girl's face — struck suddenly with a niggling thought about that face paint that hasn't quite hit home yet. Like hearing retellings of fairytales but suddenly confronted face to face with how the main knight actually wore their armor. ...huh.

"...Don't worry about it," Clarke says after a beat, clipped but calm. Drops her hand from her arm and even goes so far to give a casual half-shrug; no harm no foul. "Just be a little more careful? There's kids around, and a lot of people around here are pretty on edge."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

There's a moment when the girl Gideon nearly ran over gives her a look that goes straight through her like ice, where Gideon is back looking at a much different girl with a similar look on her face. She tenses up, ready to go through her sword the moment she summons up half a dozen skeletons to gangbang Gideon into submission.

But she isn't Harrow because she backs down instead of going for Gideon's throat, and she doesn't open up with some withering insult about Gideon's intelligence. Gideon also backs down a little, and doesn't lay a hand on the girl or boot her through a wall.

"Of course there are kids around." She mutters to herself. Maybe all 200 of her ex-playmates. Loud and actually directed at the girl, Gideon adds- "I'll keep an eye out. Is there a map around here?"

[skaikru]

Clarke watches Gideon's mouth move in a quiet aside to herself, words formed that don't seem entirely kind but that she can't quite hear. Mostly she just really can't get over this facepaint — it borders on the creepy distortion of human features intermingled with a morbid sense of anonymity. We all look the same when we die meets a mask is a mask meets I fucking hate clowns and this is not dissimilar. But still it utterly fascinates...

"...none that are commercially produced. Are you new?"

1

[takethatnature]

"Oof!" Gideon's bumped into a small man with big hair, about five and a half feet not including his spiky curls. He stumbles back a step, then brushes himself off.

"I've had worse." Not even from stuff that was attacking him; he feels a bit like he just got a slap on the back from Wolfgang. Although carrying a sword on her back in the hallways is more Wigfrid's style. "Be more careful next time?"

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"Yeah, sure. I'll keep more of an eye out." She looks at the little guy - and he truly is a little guy. Gideon is hit with the urge to squat, just a little, just because it would be funny. "Where are you heading off to?"

Maybe she can suss out what this place is exactly from this guy.

2

[myagic]

It's not just Natsuno--enter scrawny sixteen-year-old fashion disaster number two, wearing a combination of eye-searing tropical and animal prints. And yet, in her opinion, the Tommy Bahama's selection still falls on the boring side. Where are the striped tights and knee-high boots?

...Oh, the Tommy Bahama is...different. Rita peers at it from the promenade, not actually going inside; she eyes the skulls and bones in the windows and thinks oh no, no way in hell am I falling for that and going in there-

Except she jumps when there's a skeleton moving around just inside the shop, or...is it? Actually, someone...dressed up like a skeleton, which is...less startling but weird. So Rita does the normal thing: she approaches cautiously, still standing with a hand on her hip just outside the store doors, points at Gideon, and demands, "What the hell are you?!" Oh, and she's, like, 4'11". Very intimidating.