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TEST DRIVE MEME #8
1. but times have changed for sailors these days
[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. tried to amend my carnivorous habit
[the space inside John's where the piano normally sits is mysteriously vacant today. as a matter of fact, the entire piano bar is silent, without so much as a muzak-inspired interpretation of Uptown Girl to hum along to.
the piano itself seems to have disappeared... for the most part. unlucky, unsuspecting passengers who enter the cabin hallway, step out onto the lower decks, or find themselves in one of the other narrow corridors of the ship, may find themselves suddenly facing down a silent, unmoving grand piano. it takes up too much space to squeeze by comfortably...
and then, the cover lifts, exposing what looks to be... teeth?
yeah. yeah, those are its teeth. and it's coming right for you.]
3. that American creation on which I feed
[it had been a difficult October for bahamanuel, the bahamanal. its territory had changed utterly, becoming alien and strange. new predators were encroaching on its hunting grounds. its position in the natural order is under threat. and so, nature finds a way.
the old timers know to be wary of large piles of clothes, but even they won’t think to look twice at the tiny lumps of garish kids’ swimsuits and sundresses - until they feel something latch onto their leg, and then several more things, and anywhere from ten to twenty balled up clothes piles try to take down their prey.
the young must learn how to hunt, after all.]
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He's gotten used to the bahanamal stalking him in the Tommy Bahama, which is how he recognizes the same thing is happening now. He's being tailed. And judging from the missing horns... he can bet who by.
The second he opens the doors to go in, he bolts forward, then hangs a sharp right towards the arcade.
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Oh well. It's not like she has anything better to do.
Nepeta slinks through the doors nearly thirty seconds after Eridan, enough time for him to think he's gotten away, and makes her way to the right. Where could he be now?
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Oh, good, the elevator on the other side of Playback. Surely if he stabs the down arrow button a billion times rapid-fire, it'll show up before Nepeta does???
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... The trouble is that she doesn't want to pounce on him in a friendly affectionate way, but she doesn't want to pounce on him in a rending-limb-from-limb-and-flesh-from-bone way either.
Hrmmmm.
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He can feel eyes glued to his back, the anticipatory thrum of prey-vs-predator tension in the air, a faint sense of unease as yet another person from his life shows up unannounced, just in time to completely fuck his shit up...
The elevator doors open. Here's his chance to escape! Surely there's no way this plan could backfire!
1/2
-- no, wait --
2/2
Nepeta makes eye contact with Eridan and then sniffs, nose in the air like she's just been offered a completely inadequate foodstuff of some kind, and pointedly averts her face.
She stalks past him, tail swishing, and turns back onto the promenade without a word.
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"Hey!" he shouts, immediately storming out of the elevator he'd been so desperate for seconds before. "Wwhat the fuck, Nep! Howw goddamn fuckin' rude do you gotta be to chase after a guy just to taunt him!" Because he knows that sure wasn't a blackish flirtation!!! (Unless................? .......No, probably not.)
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(The idea that this might come across as a blackish flirtation hasn't crossed her mind.)
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(The spade-shaped part of his collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system is side-eyeing this whole thing with a great deal of Suspicion. Fool him once, shame on you. Fool him twice? ...Shame on you still, but like, he'll know better for that third time.)
"So that's howw you wwanna play it?! Then wwhy didn't you leavve me alone wwhen I wwas tryin' to showw respect and growwth and maturity!?" (These are funny words for "anxiety" and "panic" and "unaddressed guilt," aren't they?)
He is absolutely just following her now.
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... hesitates.
Comes to a stop, in fact, with her back still to him; her tail lashes again twice, and then goes still.
"Trying to show respect how?"
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"You knoww... respectin' wwhat I assume is your decision to fuckin' hate me, givven --" wait how much does Nepeta know... "Evverything." FLAWLESS SAVE. "An' clearly that's howw you feel about me, since you just vviolently dismissed me --"
Oh, and that reminds him, "Wwhich you should be doubly impressed by me ovver! I didn't call you out on your flirtation back there at all, wwhich is usually the first thing I wwould do, if I wwasn't undergoin' strenuous and frankly unappreciated efforts to better myself!"
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... Somehow she's facing him now?
"And for your infurmation I don't hate you I'm just mad at you! For being cr33py and mean and making everybody uncomfurtable when there were more impurrtant things going on!"
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...Ugh, fine, alright, he'll lay off that angle
for now."Wwell, it wwas impressivve before that!" Because that's the argument that needs to be made here, right? "But fine, okay, if you're gonna be so fuckin' tactless about shit, maybe I'm creepy and mean as a defense against people treatin' me like absolute garbage!" Since that's all people ever do, obviously. "Maybe I needed someone to take some goddamn platonic mercy on me wwhen I wwas at my lowwest!"
His lowest being after his former moirail left him in the dirt for some ugly yellow-blooded bastard. But, since he's maturing and shit, he isn't gonna mention that!
"It doesn't matter, anywway, since my plan turned out to be a total wwaste of fuckin' time. Future Karkat told me so. Or, uh..." Wait. "Present Karkat from the future. God, fuck those memos. Turned the wwhole timeline into a parade of assholes."
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"What plan?"
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He visibly resists smacking himself in the face.
"You knoww. The plan I kept talkin' about. Like. All the time. Honestly, Nep, it's kinda offensivve that you didn't evven bother to listen to me long enough to hear my ideas for howw to get us outta our prevvious mess."
Pretending to be outraged that she doesn't remember the plan he only vaguely outlined to people is obviously the right way to handle this.
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"Wwell, the wwhole thing turned out to be a complete wwaste of time, not evven wworth the oxygen required to talk about it. Not that it should surprise anyone, since most evveryfin I try to do goes belly up. Fuck bein' the Prince of Hope, I'm the Prince of Bad Ideas." Because he destroys them. Look, it makes sense to him!
Also, damn, puns are contagious.
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The words are sulky; the tone's a little distracted. There's a sense of dread and alarm around Equius's name in her mind, after saying it out loud, and she doesn't understand it.
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"Wwhatevver?" How can she be distracted, he is literally the most important person here... Oh. Oh, she's probably, like, wondering what's going on and stuff, right? And like. Maybe she... doesn't know Karkat's here, so she doesn't know there's someone else to talk to yet?
"...Wwell, uh. Anywway, you probably listened to that no-faced broad tell you howw to not drowwn an' stuff but there's a lot of shit she leavves out of that muster drill. Like, all the murderin' that happens, or the ghosts that wwanna kill us, and stuff like that. Doesn't evven givve you a map of the ship, either. You gotta figure evverythin' out on your owwn."
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She looks back up at him, a little guardedly. "Would you tell me what you've figured out already? And I can tell you if I find out anything else?"
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"...Wwell, uh. Yeah. Sure." Okay, buddy. You made yourself sound like Mr. Know-It-All. How are you going to proceed now that someone is actually asking you for information?
"Basically, wwe're doomed copies of ourselvves wwho got sucked into this trawwler's engine at some point, noww wwe're stuck here wwhile the non-doomed vversions of us continue doin' wwhatevver wwe're supposed to be doin'. Most evverybody here's from some shitty vvariant'a Earth, none of 'em know wwhat SGRUB is. It's crazy how technologically superior wwe are to them, honestly."
FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH he doesn't sound like he's gloating. He's more surprised than anything. Like, nobody has a captchalogue outside of them? What's up with that??
"...Uh, anywway, there's some Captain or wwhatevver who makes people kill each other so he can generate energy to keep the ship engines wworkin'. And evverythin' is operated by the ghosts of passengers wwho didn't survvivve? I dunno. They started possessin' people and I basically stayed in my room all month to avvoid it."
Yeah. That's why he was in his room all month. Pragmatism. 🙄
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"They're not still purrsessing people, are they?"
... It's a fair guess, considering that Eridan isn't still in his room.
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"So ... what about the mrowdering then?"
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