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

[lordoftheozarks]

"What?" he hisses in surprise as the shadows rise up and slither onto him. He tries to rip his arms out of their grip but they hold him fast in place.

"You will regret this."

[crushed_pearls]

Hey Erik, what do you see with your vampire eyes? Is it, perhaps, an extremely salacious pinup of Max on the wall, dressed only in his new apron and caught by the camera seemingly in the act of lifting it?

It's right here, on the door to the stairwell, just outside of it. Max is posing in the kitchen, in the photo; that can't be sanitary.

[glassaxolotl]

“No, it does not,” Dedue frowns.

“...You are correct,” he adds after a moment. “That is why I specify a ‘safe’ return. Many on the ship seek a method of returning to our own worlds that would not harm ourselves or reality. It is something I believe to be possible. But we are not there yet.”

[lordoftheozarks]

His eyes narrow. He takes one very small step toward her. "And what exactly do you think you know about my kind?"

[lordoftheozarks]

A frustrated snarl contorts his face as he's shoved against the wall. An unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling slithers into his chest: fear. No one has been able to manhandle him this way in centuries. He's glaring at that knife drawing nearer.

"What would you know about fashion? GET OFF OF ME!"

[lordoftheozarks]

Yes, this does seem to be the prevailing reaction whenever he tells anyone this. Not that he should care what anyone thinks of things that are not their business, but so far that's done nothing to dissuade anyone from butting in.

One thin eyebrow lifts skeptically when she tells him her full name. Daughter of wolves, is it?

"Well, Ylva, I would be very much obliged if you could at least give me Max's cabin number so that I may contact him. I have been his caretaker for seven years and I am anxious to see for myself that he is safe and well."

[midnightroads]

Bash reaches out with the tip of his machete to lift Erik's chin, looking him in the eyes quietly.

"Beg." The word is heavy with threat, the tendrils of darkness tightening painfully.

YESS I LOVE HER she's so fun to play, who's the other survivor!!

[handgun]

The air between them is charged, and her grip on the handle of the flare gun tightens as she waits for a reaction. Several seconds pass before Martha tentatively removes her index finger from the trigger, wrapping it around the handle before the gun lowers, the muzzle pointed down and to the side. Her posture eases slowly after, enough to signify that she's controlled enough to avoid drawing first blood.

"This isn't the game, so you won't gain anything from drawing blood," she says slowly, for and about both of them. It wasn't anything personal between them but two people trying to win, and here she's a different person - a new Martha, a new story, and it makes it easier to set aside any hard feelings. Then, almost as an afterthought, "And neither will I."

Still... She eyes the puddles warily, the frown on her face not quite fading, and she needs to be sure -

"So you don't plan on hurting anyone here?"

[lordoftheozarks]

His lips curl away to reveal his long teeth. He defiantly resists lifting his chin to that sword, and just as defiantly curling his hands into fists to resist showing any pain at the tightening of those bonds. But he does look this Demingod right back in the eyes.

"No."

[midnightroads]

"Then die."

The machete comes away, and then swings at the vampire's neck, sharp as the sob one tries to stifle when crying alone in bed at night.

[pineapplesalmon]

Wow, that's a very specific sub-genre of isekai, even. César can think of at least two animes about that.

"The magic will definitely come in handy. I've managed to somehow pick up a bit myself, but more parlor tricks. Over ten thousand, you say?" That's a thousand more than over nine thousand; César's eyebrows are raised. "That's... incredible and alarming in equal measure."

PATRICIA BUT I AM VERY BAD AT HER ALSO SORRY IF THIS IS RUDE BUT ARE YOU THINKING OF APPING??

[moonlesstides]

A fair question. Grace's earlier conversation with the poet, and her shameful flight from it, plays on repeat in her mind. Some part of her wants to correct that impression, lunge, attack, but...no. No, even if no one else here knows the rules of the Manor, she and the gunslinger know them, don't they? It is the height of insult and cowardice to choose violence after declaring for peace.

No. Grace is not so lowly as that. Her harpoon comes back, and she catches it without looking; a reflex, a habit. As familiar to Grace as the back of her own hand.

New, though, is the way a voice bubbles up in Martha's mind, as if from a great depth; it arrives without ever quite crossing the Coordinator's ears. ~This place has given me the power that the poet knows, to speak and be heard. I am not the silent thing of the Manor any longer, and the rules of this place are not mine to enforce. I, truly, had no idea you were here, gunslinger. And I apologize.~

Grace bows, from where she's floating, and waits. This is a first from her. Not even Helena got an apology after they began their association.

[guildmastermind]

"Surely more outside our server, but I'm guessing the most were there. The new expansion was a midnight release, after all."

Shiroe's aware of the same anime (though he found Sword Art Online kind of obnoxious). Unfortunately, it's different when it happens to you.

[moonlesstides]

Grace's thoughtful noise quickly becomes a more familiar sound, the building, huffy rage that Helena has heard in ten thousand games any time Grace is thwarted or injured. The phantom water flows away from Helena; Grace has gotten up suddenly, furious.

Afraid.

Her voice streams in a bubbling shower of outrage: ~Whatever I wish? Or whatever you wish? You can't cage me with your words, poet, and I - you - I will not be made into some pet, some curiosity, to be stared at and fawned over. Not again, not ever! Do you hear me? Not ever!~

The harpoon whistles through the air, heading away. Grace is after it in a flash.

Not with a gun to her head could she tell you what she's running from.

cw: gore/decapitation

[lordoftheozarks]

The sting of that blade forces a final sharp breath from Erik as his head slides backward right off his shoulders in a spray of crimson. It rolls to one side and comes to a rest, but it isn't quite silent. There's a very quiet "Fuck" uttered from the floor.

The now headless body will fall limp in the grip of those shadows, but soon enough the blood will stop flowing from the wound, and the wound itself will start to close over.

CW: more gore/violence

[midnightroads]

"Really, asshole?" Bash's exasperation is audible. "Fine, chunky salsa rule it is."

The machete is given back over into the shadows, traded for a vantablack sledgehammer, which Bash swings hard into the skull of the severed head.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Bash has swallowed so much anger and hatred, so much bitter black bile, that this is an exercise in catharsis. Like a rage room, but all of his everything is focused on one head, and reducing it to a very fine red pulp.

[lordoftheozarks]

Erik's gaze snaps to Nobunaga. Someone who knows Max. Maybe he will finally fucking get someone to tell him where his Pet is...

Sigh. Never mind. It's just more threats of violence. Silly him. What was he expecting?

"Oh, please do enlighten me," he says dryly, rolling his eyes nearly into the back of his skull.

Resented for existing. That's nothing new. The feeling is mutual, and that goes for every asshole aboard this hellship. Simply having to listen to them drone on and on is torture enough. Just shoot him.

"I am not a sadist, whatever else I may be. I cannot fathom what Max has told you to make you think that."

[lordoftheozarks]

Like something out of a cartoon, Erik speeds by that poster, only to abruptly turn around and come to a stop in front of it.

"What the fuck?" he snarls, taking in the image of his pet in only his apron (a not unfamiliar sight in his household). That should be for his eyes only. Who would dare post such a thing? Never mind. He thinks he knows.

He immediately reaches out to attempt to rip the damn thing down.

[crushed_pearls]

The picture moves.

Specifically, the photo of Max lifts the apron and deploys a flamethrower from where his cock rightfully belongs; it extrudes from the surface of the photo and opens fire (heh) at point blank range.

cw: burning alive

[lordoftheozarks]

"WHAT?" He pulls his hand back like he's just been burned, which, funny story...

He's too shocked to even react, so he goes up in flames with an angered cry. The skin burns right off of him in painful waves, and his screaming doesn't stop until the fire finally cooks his eyeballs out of his skull leading, mercifully, to his death at last. What's left of him falls to the ground in a smoking heap.

***

And three more days go by. This time, his eyes shoot open and he sits straight up in bed with a scowl. Rinse and repeat with that fucking note, and the door which he truly does rip off the hinges this time. He's taking it with him as a shield. He's going to bash that bitch's brains open with it when he finds her. His movements this time are slow and deliberate. Hunting. As if he's not still being forced to walk in only one direction.

[pineapplesalmon]

A long silence from César and then he buries his face in his hands. "... My brain's first thought was 'wow, I bet that affected the critics' scores'...."

Rest In Absolutely No Peace Gary Gygax You Mother Fucker

[crushed_pearls]

(Damn, the door is unexpected.)

Shhhh, we gotta see if he notices.

So here's the thing Erik. You're being hunted by a shapeshifting ambush predator and she is, at long last, putting those skills to good use here. Maybe you're looking for a seeming new addition to the environment. Maybe you're expecting Erin to be waiting in her usual form before releasing some new horror. After all, if she detects you she can get ahead of your needful path, which, in fairness, is exactly what she's done.

By turning into a nearly-perfect copy of the corridor, sucked up against the walls with detailed copies of all the doors and side hallways, rich facsimiles that are only visible as two-dimensional representations once you get close enough, which is to say, inside Erin's hallway body.

"Mornin' leech," the hallway says in Erin's voice, before long spikes of silver spring forth from every surface.

[dupli_arms]

"And I'm assuming that letting the other passengers continue with that assumption is keeping the peace," he surmises. He knows plenty of people that would fight this situation every step of the way, even before they got all of the necessary information.

He turns back to Dedue, head at a subtle tilt as he assesses the man once more, in light of the new information. "Do you trust the people here?"

[lightconductor]

"Mmm, I doubt it. Perhaps a very small one."

Watson straightens. "I think we can safely let it heal on its own. I suppose serious injury from a... from a crab with a knife," he sounds annoyed, because that's almost insulting, "was fairly unlikely."

:D

[lordoftheozarks]

You could say he's a little bit jumpy these days thanks to the wake-up calls he's been getting lately, so the sudden voice from nowhere has him immediately on edge, especially considering he cannot even smell the person it's coming from. At least this voice sounds different but that means nothing yet.

"How rude of me," he says sarcastically. "Perhaps if you showed yourself I would be more inclined to move for you."