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

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy snorts and covers her mouth with her hand, because on the one hand it's pretty funny but on the other she probably shouldn't be laughing at people's dead mum jokes.

"Have you ever asked her?" she jokes back behind her hand before managing to wrangle her face back to a neutral expression.

"Well, because if you're new then I've got a bunch of answers to the questions you probably have pre-loaded- 'm part of the unofficial welcoming committee. If you're not new then I'm gonna have to ask where you got the sunglasses from. They look sick."

What's more classically cool than a sick pair of sunglasses? Nothing.

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"At least twice a week." She grins, turning what is possibly the most sadsack depressing and pathetic period of her life into a funny little quip. Darcy wasn't around to see Gideon sitting in her mother's alcove asking her questions, or telling her about her day, or saying 'I love you' to the stripped bones that had borne her to the surface of the Ninth. Darcy gets to see Cool Gideon, who has never cried once in her life over some stupid bones. "But the answer's always the same, because nothing gets under her skin."

Gideon leans in, pun delivered with a smug grin, and she lets her glasses slide down the bridge of her nose. She flashes her golden eyes at Darcy to make her swoon. "Brought 'em with me from the other side. Unearthed them myself."

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy laughs at the pun despite herself- Undine really was a terrible influence.

And while it's not a direct swoon, Darcy would absolutely be lying if she wasn't charmed by what is objectively a Johnny Bravo-ass move. She's young and most things still work on her. The dead girl flushes just a little.

"Damn, no luck ehn? Guess I'll just keep crying into my sick leather jacket with nothing to complete the look. A tragedy. Still- I'm sure I would've seen you before now, you're kind of... distinctive."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Everyone really wants to know when Gideon got on this ship, which is just more reason to keep not answering. Plus, she's being mysterious and cool and there is nothing that undercuts all of that like admitting it's your first day. She's Ninth, and if she's learned anything the last few weeks of her miserable and short life, it's that saying as little as possible makes you look cooler. Asking questions just got her rumbled by the very person she should have most hidden herself from.

"You'll just have to keep those eyeballs peeled for someone else coming through with a pair of shades to trade." She pops hers back up. "I've been laying low since I arrived. There's a lot of land to get the lay of, if you know what I mean."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Really?" Not disbelieving, more curious than anything, "this place always feels way too fucking small to me. Like you can't really go anywhere without running into people. Unless-"

Darcy activates the Cold Wind Caul and walks sideways up the nearest shelf, Fred Astaire style. She'a bsolutely showing off.

"You get creative about where you go."

C'mon, please think she's cool.

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Darcy is showing off but also she's being so cool and even Gideon is not immune to the charms of other cool girls. She grins and he head tips to watch her climb up the shelves doing something she'd only expect the wildest of necros to manage.

"More creative than me. I've never been one for walking up verticals for more than a step or two." And even then, Gideon's only just mastered the art of not falling on her face while doing it in the last few years. If she could walk up places like Darcy, she'd be unstoppable. "Don't expect me to follow you up there, but I'll catch you when you land."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Oh you think you can?" Darcy asks impishly, carefully maneuvering herself to stick in place entirely upside down by one foot.

"How do I know your arms aren't just ornamental, ehn? Be a bitch of a fall if you couldn't catch me."

Is this flirting? It feels like flirting. Is she doing this right?

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Not only is Darcy doing it right, but she has just bought herself a ticket to the gun show. Gideon pretends to consider the question, a smirk on her face.

"Oh, these arms?" And she shakes them out, bringing them up in a lovely swoop and then down firmly into a flex, letting Darcy see all of Gideon's well-earned muscles as they bulge. "You think these arms can't catch you? Guess there's only one way to find that one out."

Yes, Gideon is inviting a girl to fall dashingly into her arms and yes, Gideon is prepared to catch her because this is the very moment she has spent her whole life training for, ignoring the bits spend training to join the Cohort which really, same goal.

[saltwaterlungs]

Oh wow. Darcy knows exactly how much work goes into arms like that, considering the gunshow under her jacket. Darcy's always quietly admired girls more feminine than herself, but her longest crush was on one of her fencing teammates. Muscle is just... good. It reflects someone dedicated, and she likes that. She likes all of this. Normally she wouldn't be about to literally throw herself into someone's arms, and she kind of can't believe she's about to, but... hey, people keep being on her about working out what she wants. So fuck it. It's not like it's going to go anywhere. She's allowed to have fun for once. Maybe.

Hope you're ready Gideon, because Darcy pushes off the shelf and drops.

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

If there's one thing Gideon was made before, besides fighting and ass jokes, it's catching girls in her big beefy arms, a thing that she has only had the opportunity to do a depressingly scant amount of time. So it's nothing more than pure delicious fulfillment as Darcy drops and Gideon easily catches her.

She's more solid than she looked at first glance, and Gideon curls Darcy closer to her chest to make sure she doesn't fuck it up at the finish line. Which also has the other advantage of getting to hold a cute girl close to her.

"Told you, I'm a pro at catching hot girls."

[saltwaterlungs]

Here's the thing.

Darcy is much like a dog with a car in that she has no plans for what happens when she gets hold of it. She follows impulses and often it lands her in trouble. Reality hits her solid as Gideon's arms when she lands in them, and she becomes very. Very. Aware that she's in the embrace of someone very cute.

Someone who thinks Darcy's hot.

The noise Darcy makes is comparable to the last whimper of a soul leaving the body, and her deathly pallor flushes into the pinkest she's been in a long, long time.

"Fuck."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Gideon grins down at Darcy and, as a very special treat, gives her a little dip before hitting her with a comment meant to keep that flush up on Darcy's face. "Here in front of the skeletons? Only if you insist, my sweet."

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy makes another choked noise. Darcy.exe has encountered an error, please restart. She has no scripts or protocols for what's happening right now. She doesn't even know if she's panicking or enjoying herself. Attraction is meant to cause a feeling like existential terror right?

She's too Catholic for this.

"Maybe after- buy me- ehn- dinner first."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Dinner's tricky for Gideon. She's going to spend most of it trying not to show how blown away she is by the idea of food having a texture other than 'grainy' and a taste other than 'chemical'. But the alternative is trying to bone in front of the bones and that's the very opposite of a fantasy.

So she just scoops Darcy back up and with a boldness Gideon undeservedly feels, she settles her on Gideon's shoulder "Dinner and a show-" A flex of her other arm. "-and we'll see where the night takes us."

[saltwaterlungs]

This is an assassination attempt.

There is no other explanation for this.

Darcy gets hefted over Gideon's shoulder and experiences emotions she previously thought were poetic exaggerations.

"I have legs, I can walk," she protests, strangled, trying to work out how to get herself a little more upright on Gideon's shoulder without having to put her hands on her. Christ, what if someone sees her like this?

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"Sure, but do you really want me to set you down?" She teases right back, walking Darcy away from the display of plex bones and vaguely towards where the exit might be.

Gideon's sincere flirtations have involved one moderate success with a complete liar and what might have been a wedding vow to her long-time greatest enemy so she's honestly not entirely sure where to go from here but by god is she going to fake her way through this. "It's not every day I get to sweep a girl off her feet."

[saltwaterlungs]

Does she?

...

"I'll get back to you on that," Darcy mumbles, hands going to her face go cover her ever deepening blush.

"Usually I'm the one doing the sweeping."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"I'll let you have a turn later, if you think you can lift me." Gideon teases. She is killing it at flirting right now. Turns out it's a lot easier to do it when the person you're flirting with isn't some horrible treacherous snake.

She gets them out of the store and after just a slight moment to orient herself, she takes Darcy still over her shoulder down the halls and vaguely towards her room. "And you'll have to tell me what we all do for R&R around here, when we're not staring at the plex skeletons."

[saltwaterlungs]

"I don't just think I can," she huffs, "and you're not going to have such a smart mouth when you're the one being carried," protesting helps a little, even if she still isn't removing her hands from her face.

"Fuck all. There's books if you're a nerd, or some people have movies which are fine the first couple of times. Mostly I just train and eat and sleep. Oh- and there's an arcade."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"Sorry to tell you this my sweet, but this mouth of mine is smart aaallll the time." Gideon spins around in the hall, just to send Darcy in a circle as well. "And very talented to boot."

What the fuck is an arcade? Gideon will find out eventually. "Train, eat, sleep? The more things change, the more they don't fucking change in any way that matters. At least tell me some of the books are dirty ones, because if I have to see another necromantic dusty tomb of the wisdom of ancients, I'll pluck my eyes out and eat them."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Oh- Jesus-" Darcy scrambles to clutch at Gideon's shoulders when she gets spun around, which does not help her mortification at all. Fucking pet names and everything. Christ.

"Only because you're always using it," she attempts to adjust herself to feel more secure up there but- honestly it's a lost cause. This is just torture. ... half torture, half something else.

"I wouldn't know, I don't read that shit. But if there isn't, I'm watching you do that. Maybe selling tickets."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

"If you didn't tell tickets to the show of a lifetime, I'd be slighted! I'd think you didn't truly care about watching me blind myself and pop my peepers in my teethers." Teethers? Keep moving, that's the key to being smooth. Don't show a wit of weakness Gideon darling or you're going to be cursing yourself out soon as this one realizes that you're bluffing.

She pauses at a branch, trying to remember which way to go. This is as bad as Canaan House. Gideon takes a wild guess and leads them down the path that turns out to be headed for the various rooms and she's deeply glad for it because getting lost might be understandable but it certainly wouldn't be cool. "But if you're far too cool for reading, then you'll have to show me the arcade instead."

[saltwaterlungs]

Too late, Gideon.

"Teethers?" she questions, "Really?"

Not a bad thing, however, the moment of dorkiness does a lot to re-stabilize her, as opposed to moments prior when she'd assumed Gideon was some sort of goth butch demon sent from hell specifically to torment her.

"I can do that, so long as you don't mind getting your ass kicked in whatever game you pick. Like I said, there's not a lot else to do here, so I'm pretty good at most of them."

[wedobonesmotherfucker]

Fuck, she got caught on that one. She shrugs, Darcy going up and down on Gideon's broad shoulders, and Gideon just leans into it instead of backpeddling. "Never heard of them my sweet? You must be from a very backwater planet. Everyone hip and cool calls them teethers."

"If there's one thing I'm the best at, it's getting my ass kicked. I'm a champion of hard knocks and harder box-es." Wow another fucking winner out of Gideon Nav. But they're here, or at least she's pretty sure this is the room she came out of not too long ago. Gideon boots the door open and strolls on in.

Hopefully whoever her roommate is won't mind Gideon rolling up with a hot muscly girl on her shoulders.

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy's formulating a response that is an attempt at charming when the door opens, and over Gideon's shoulders she spots her saint statues and her bag and-

A knife gets pulled from her pocket, held to Gideon's neck. No pressure yet, just making it very clear she means business.

"You want to explain to me how you just broke into my room?"