TEST DRIVE MEME #10

[sailmods]

a. that's where we both belong

[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.]

b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea

[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.

they’ll learn.

sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.

sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.

that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]

c. think I'll go back to the Keys

[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?

except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.

in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]

Comments

3

[pineapplesalmon]

César is getting himself a cup of coffee. He catches Shiroe out of the corner of his eye and sees the apprehension. Although he keeps a watchful eye, he gives Shiro a chance to work through his apprehension himself. It's when the man finally comes back with a smile to get more food that César addresses him.

"New here? I'm César Salazar."

[lordoftheozarks]

A grim smile settles across his features, just as cold as hers. Ah. So that is how it is.

"You would like to see me burn, wouldn't you? You aren't the first. You won't be the last. I don't particularly care about you or your quarrel. Stand aside now, girl."

[neverleave]

[Voyager's answer explains nothing, and Heliosphere is so out of place it catches Natsuno off guard. Yet the kid speaks it like he knows its exact meaning and context, not like he just learned a fancy word and likes how it sounds. Maybe he's obsessed with space? Some kids have have a spacey phase l...]

I had an accident. [That's all he has to say about the Sun El incident. Yes, it burned like hell. No, he will not elaborate on what kind of accident.] My body heals fast, so I managed to get over it.

[That's all he'll say about it, because the kid says a word more surprising than 'heliosphere.'  Servant, spoken with more gravity and context - like the Dioscuri? He loosens the grip on Voyager's tunic, looking at him intently.]

I'm not a Servant. Are you a heroic spirit?

[midnightroads]

"I am the Demigod of Midnight Roads, Patron Saint of the Lonely Street, and Saturday's Son. I am the kindest end and the comfort of the night. And you fall within my purview, as one who does not live."

Bash does not seem to be taking joy in any of this. His expression is cool and closed off, as he regards the vampire in front of him.

"I am your doom, Lord Osborne."

[lordoftheozarks]

"Unusual how?"

What a delightfully open and honest girl. His expression warms as he steps to her side. If he must, then he must. They can walk and talk.

"It does ease my mind to know that, thank you. I would appreciate the company."

[not_the_last]

Cassandra doesn't move.

"There's this about being a lord," she says, lightly, reflectively; "it loses much of its meaning out of context. One is only a lord by ties to the land and by the will of its people. And by grace of the gods, if one cares for such things. Your land and your people are not here, Osborne, and you will not see them again."

She clasps her hands, settling them against her belt. Her face is utterly calm.

"So I'd advise you to grow accustomed to not issuing orders."

cw: gore

[lordoftheozarks]

Knives whizz past him. He's able to dodge the first few, but this hallway isn't exactly built for tight maneuvers. All he feels is the split second moment of impact, far harder than it should be, and then nothing.

What Erin will see is a sudden explosion of feathers followed by the bloody bits of a no-longer-bird corpse raining gore down in the hallway. Some of the pieces are bigger than others. None of them are moving.

[Clean up on aisle whatever]

Three days later (although, Erik isn't aware of that yet) he wakes promptly at six a.m. back in a cabin bed. The crumpled note is still there on the ground. And the compulsion to read it, apparently, still works because yet again the door will not open until he does. And just as before, he cannot travel anywhere but to the drill. With a long-suffering sigh, he starts walking. Fine. Fine. Get it over with. And in the meantime he is left to ponder what exactly happened. How did he go from being attacked to back in bed? What fresh hell is this?

[astrogator]

She leads him down the corridor, slowly. Ari has her own ideas on why this is done to the new arrivals. None of them are good. Likely it has to do with creating a sense of helplessness, of inevitability. Which makes it her job to counter that.

'You'll hear plenty of people tell you the situation's hopeless. It isn't. It's worse than anything I've seen, I won't pretend otherwise, but our captor wanting us to believe there's no way out doesn't make it true.

It's her own capacity to endure long enough that she doubts, sometimes. Not the possibility of escape. Yet she's evading his question. There are very good reasons for doing so, primarily that he seems like a perfectly rational man and she doesn't want him to take her for completely insane. How to put it, then?

'It was unusual when I arrived because our captor and Friday weren't bothering with their standard procedures. Letting the place fall to ruin instead. Better, in some ways.' Not in others. But there, look, she didn't have to say the word ghost once. Well done, Tayrey.

[redlightgreenlight]

"I think you will find that Max no longer has, or needs, a master."

Valdis keeps the pleasant smile, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. Max is in danger as long as Erik is here, but killing him won't make him stay dead. Plus, Max would be upset.

"Nor does he want one."

She still hasn't gotten up. Erik is out of his depth here. This is, essentially, her domain. Well, as much as it can be. At the very least she has the advantage, and he is no threat.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's not staying to clean up, but she doesn't need this causing problems for Siffleur or Gil, so she does at least do them the courtesy of chucking the corpse into the sea.

She's expecting Erik back the next day, and that does not happen, but maybe the leech is just hiding out. Her vigilance is rewarded when she catches him leaving his cabin again from her hiding place Standing In The Corner While The Size Of A US Quarter, and races off for the intercept. Having already been attacked once, she figures Erik isn't likely to go for the elevator; confined space, limited ability to run, absolute nightmare if he's worried about being killed again.

Which is how she catches him on the stairs. Erin tips him a salute from a landing two floors up before she swells in size and turns into a woodchipper that takes up the entire width of the stairs, which goes barreling down the stairs at him with an almighty cry of, "UNO REVERSE YOU CANNIBAL LEECH!"

[guildmastermind]

"Yeah, I'm new."

Shiroe gives César a thoughtful look, and then gently pushes out a chair at his table with his foot. Clear invitation, but possible to ignore if César isn't up to company today.

"I'm Shiroe."

[pineapplesalmon]

César will of course sit down, sliding out the chair and sliding it back in while minimizing the noise. It's only polite.

"I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this place. I've also got maps I drew out." César smiles. "We're a small community, and we look out for each other."

[guildmastermind]

Shiroe snickers. "I'm sorry, I think in the jargon of games. You can always stop me and remind me to use plain speech."

[decrypter]

"I can hear you, Miss Grace. As surely as if we were dreaming. You're speaking to me."

Her voice has a note of wonder, still reeling from the two hit combo of a hunter appearing and it being someone she doesn't have to run away from.

"The question becomes, can others hear you the same, but it does us no harm to try."

[dupli_arms]

"...military, right?" It takes him a moment to reach that conclusion, but thinking about it, it would make sense. "These are secondhand."

[guildmastermind]

"Are we wholly certain it was an accident? That this wasn't an intentional attack from a low-level monster?"

He stares at the crab as the countdown continues before it's released.

[guildmastermind]

"That's not what most people have been saying. I've heard that the ship is fractured into cliques, and while people talk to one another, there's a bit of a schism between those who feel our captor deserves punishment and those who place higher value on their existence here."

His eyebrows both raise as he considers César. Overly optimistic, or something else?

[crushed_pearls]

"Military, paramilitary, gangsters. No shade, mind you," Erin adds thoughtfully. "I've got pockets elsewhere these days but for decades I lived the cargo pants life for all my stuff. They're comfy as hell."

[crushed_pearls]

"I'll keep it in mind, but all other things being equal I'd rather learn. People put up with my quirks." Wine will help. Erin takes a nice sip of hers. "Which, speaking of, anything I should dodge? I host social events sometimes so like, if you've got a diet requirement or an allergy or, I dunno, the body you're in can't be in the presence of Mountain Dew or something...?"

[lordoftheozarks]

"What? Do you think it your duty to escort me to the afterlife, Demigod? I regret to inform you I have arranged to extend my stay already."

[guildmastermind]

"I suppose I need to figure out how to be part of someone's 'our own', in order to have any support here."

That's more of a daunting proposition than he wants to admit. Shut-in gamers aren't always good at making friends.

[guildmastermind]

"Nothing like that, no. Though I'm not really big on social events? I'm a shut-in gamer type, we're not the best at making friends, you know." There's a degree of self-mockery of the protective sort. Like if he makes the joke first, maybe it won't hurt when others say the same things about him, behind or before his back.

[lordoftheozarks]

"Unlike you, I was neither born into this title nor handed it by royals. It goes with me wherever I am. As for people?" He spreads his arms wide. "I see no white stones here."

[midnightroads]

"Your contracts are moot here."

Bash hits the floor with the head of his machete, and tendrils, tentacles of darkness rise up from Erik's own shadow to tangle at his arms and legs with a strength that feels inevitable.

[not_the_last]

"Ah." Her cool smile curls higher at one corner. "I see. New money. That does seem to be the way of it with your kind. Of course you can carry your title with you; there's no real weight to it."