sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #7

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She brings her weight against Erin's shoulder and, as asked, does her best not to put any more of her against Erin than she has to. Gideon thinks briefly about putting her sword away and decides that's a mess she can't deal with right now, so she just uses it as a second support and lets the future deal with the mess ahead.

"Take me away, sweetlips." Gideon commands and does her best to help Erin navigate back towards the room Gideon had left this morning. And, in a marvellous turn of events, she does it while staying upright and without throwing up anymore on the ground, herself or Erin.

"Y'know," Erin muses on the way, "I've been this hot for just shy of thirty years. You might have to bring your A game once the shock of having a swole lass looking to bounce coins off my ass wears off, complimenting my beauty won't cut it long. It get you anywhere at home?"

"Oh let me paint you a picture of home. Of us few hundred left on the Ninth, exactly three of us were below the age of 35. There was me, immaculate of course, Harrowhawk my necromancer who looks mostly like a drowned weasel and liked to stare at me like she was dissecting me in her mind, and Ortus who was lumpy and sad and spent most of his time with his mother hovering over his shoulder. Of the rest, not one of the great-aunts was below the age of sixty-something and most were closer to a hundred, only distinguished from the skeletons tilling the fields by their thick black veils and the skin that might as well have been vacsealed to those bones." A pause, and with remembrance, Gideon adds- "Excitement mostly involved the various faithful having a heart attack in the pews the one time we got a letter from the Emperor."

She gives Erin an grin. "So if you thought I deserves a medal before, then cover my chest with fancy and call me Rear Admiral, for I've been fighting for my life since the very moment I realized how hot women were."

Erin takes this all in with the distant horror of someone who used to be this horny and only now barely isn't. The noise of sympathy out of her throat is strangled but surely that's the weight.

Surely.

Suuuuurely.

"Well. Shit, Gideon, good news bad news I guess. Good news is more than just me to flirt with here and bad news is you're entering this game with it stuck on hard mode so...good luck and happy hunting I fuckin' guess. How'd you even -" she cuts herself off. "Actually I'm not gonna ask, there's no answer you can give me that's funnier than making me imagine."

"Oh my sweet, I promise you, the real answer is as hilarious as it is brilliant, and it starts with one of Ninth's few pilgrims forgetting a certain magazine in their chambers, which fell into my hands when I was sent to help tidy up." It had been a punishment duty for some reason or another, back when Crux still though Gideon could be made into a nun. The reasons had faded but what remained was the glorious memory of Gideon reaching under the bed to see if something had been left behind, and finding her very first filthy magazine.

She sticks her sword into the ground to take some of her weight off of Erin for a moment, loudly boasting to her and anyone in earshot. "I owe my everything to a well worn copy of 'Bone-a-fied Babes'."

Erin's palm slams against the wall...

...So she doesn't fall over laughing. Erin has to throw her other arm firmly around Gideon while that takes her the fuck out, scything down her self-control instantly. It's a beautiful, musical laugh, yes, but it's also utterly out of control.

One could say that Gideon.

Has corpsed Erin.

TEST DRIVE MEME #7

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