sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #10

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TEST DRIVE MEME #10

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.]

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"Two nickels," Erin says with a sigh. She slides the knife to him for the cork on the wine. "If you count returning to Earth I'm on three, but I'm not in a big hurry to count that. My sympathies man. Shit sucks."

"I haven't made it back to Earth." There's a pause, as he fiddles with the bottle. "I wasn't really trying to, if I'm completely honest. I was more concerned with the work of ensuring we could live in that reality. Community building, making sure the most vulnerable among us were safe. Negotiations with the People of the Land."

He takes a deep breath, as the cork is popped out, and glasses are poured.

"I was one of tens of thousands of players pulled into the world of the MMORPG Elder Tale with the release of the Noosphere Pioneers update. I found myself inhabiting my character, the Level 90 Enchanter-Scribe Shiroe. I have lived within the world of Theldesia for over six months."

"...The infinite fuck?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, honestly, on the exact mechanics of it. I'm lucky, there were a good few of my friendslist also on for the new expansion. I've since built a guild and gotten involved in the politics of my base city, making sure the crafting guilds and the combat guilds and everyone else are cooperating."

What, Erin, didn't you ever watch Sword Art Online?

Her anime education began and ended at Sailor Moon reruns in hotels, fucker.

"...You are gonna have a fun time with the ship politics. We could use a big picture kinda guy without...baggage." Erin takes her glass and gives it a sip; not her favorite, but she'll take it. "If you're from Earth and got sucked into a videogame then...I'm gonna guess that's not your birth body. Which. My condolences or congratulations, as appropriate."

You know, says the lass with the huge fucking wings.

Of course Watson is in Bobby B's. It's a typical hangout for him, after all, as one of the few places on the ship where he can enjoy a cigarette. It's a haunt that has its typical crowd, though, and while a new face is never more than mildly surprising, it somehow feels a little more unexpected, here.

He will not allow himself to dwell upon the name the man called himself, though. He won't. He can't. Not yet. One thing at a time.

"I can't believe that bloody crab has a knife," Watson mutters. "Of all the ridiculous things -- shall I look at your leg? I'm a doctor."

"It's...close enough. The face is the same. The glasses, the hair. I made my avatar taller than myself, though. For my first few days in the world, I felt like I had to learn to walk again. It was harder for a friend of mine, Akatsuki. She got caught in an avatar that was the wrong gender altogether. Luckily, I had a potion to fix it for her."

He shakes his head, remembering the screams Akatsuki let out as she was transformed.

"Anyway, someone else mentioned the ship politics. Cliques who don't all mingle? Distrust being a big thing?"

Erin makes a Face, and it's not the wine. "That might be a bit fucking harsh. Like, yeah, we've all got our closer friends and our alliances but even a cruise ship is only so big. You can't avoid each other forever." This calls for a deeper drink to steady herself, and a bit of the cigar. The garlic flavor goes surprisingly well with the wine, note to self. "But the big dividing line is pretty stark and simple. One side we've got folks who don't want to go home, or whose fate in a new reality would be lethally uncertain - who are, in fact, only alive because they're here. On the other side there's folks who, not wrongly, find our captivity fucking intolerable, and would like to end it and/or punish our captor. I tend to be in the first camp, but I've got loved ones all along the spectrum."

“Mm. Tell me more about this captor of ours? I haven’t heard anything about what they’re like, yet.” In fact, that a single being is responsible for all this is still news to him.

Erin gestures Upwardly with the glass. "He's up on the bridge, 's the Captain. I haven't had a lot of dealings with the man, he very understandably does not like me much and doesn't want me around him. Fair enough. But he's..." she bobs her head, side to side. "The rules he sets, he is also bound by. The terms on the table, he will follow. The systems he's designed here feed on our passions to fuel the ship, and often he'll extract that through cruelty and horror, so, brace for that shit, but...he's not some lofty god decreeing our suffering. He's running from something, and I really don't wanna find out what."

Shiroe pushes up his glasses as he hears Erin speak, and inexplicably, she can see the sinister flash of light off the lenses of the glasses. A tiny, tiny smile forms on his lips, but he works to keep it out of his voice.

“Good to know. The ship is currently fueled by our emotions, then…that’s an interesting choice. Has anyone discussed alternate forms of fuel with him?”

"You're asking the wrong girl, but I sincerely believe he's investigated those by now. Not saying it's not possible, but...be ready to hear 'I thought of that already' in varying degrees of rudeness." There's that Face again. "Not that I'm attached to regularly going through horrors but I'm still making out good in comparison to home, so."

i. arrival
[ The faceless lady, that he can deal with. It's everything else that's a problem.

First: he has no idea how he got here or where the fuck this is. It's some other weird crazy stupid dimensional crap, yeah, but in order to get out, he needs to know where he is, and he'd rather not be any more steps removed from reality than he is, okay?

Second: Gail is gone, and that's freaking him out more than anything else is. Even more than the fact that there are actually people with faces here.

Alex stuffs the lei in the pocket of his slacks and starts scouring the entire ship, up and down. ]

Gail? Gail! ... Hello?

[ Nobody mind the kid sloppily dressed in what's probably supposed to be a prom tux from the 80s hauling a backpack around. Or the long, thin lance of cast-iron piping with a vicious snarl of bolts at the top, which he's using to help him walk around his light limp. ]

ii. food
[ Okay, so everything is bad forever except, for the first time in almost a year, there's real food. Not just randomly generated sandwiches filched from high schoolers' lunch boxes. Food. Cooked food. Real food!

And for free!

Alex stacks his plate. Not too high, because he can't shake the creeping feeling that he's gonna get surprise billed for everything at the end of whatever this is and ruin his whole life, but nobody can blame him if he's relieved to see an entire basin full of fried rice after subsisting almost entirely off of mediocre sandwiches and various households' leftovers for the past year. ]

Oh my God, [ he mumbles to himself, scratching his chin. ] There's so much... does this rotate? Man, I don't even care. Shit, are those crab legs?

iii. theater
[ Okay. Everything is bad forever except for the food, and except for the instruments.

Alex discovers Bellona Theater. And if there's a theater, there must be instruments.

He figures he's totally not supposed to be here, but he's done some poking around and found no evidence of anything ongoing, so... he can probably use some of the stuff here, right? Come on, it's not like he's just some yahoo walking in. He knows how to take care of this stuff. He's not gonna break anything.

There, in the store-room. Yes. Yes. Oh, God. It's professional-grade, isn't it? Everything here is professional-grade. It's beautiful.

Alex pulls in a chair and takes a seat. He sets down his things. He rosins the bow. His heart pounds as he feels the way the bow sits on the strings as he tunes, and then he picks a piece he's memorized that he doesn't have to stress too much about, and plays.

He's going to be here for a while. Though he's quite a ways off from the general public, nestled in the theater's backstage, he isn't exactly keeping quiet either; letting the violin resonate just as much as the piece demands of him. ]

iv. wildcard
(( ooc: hit me for anything else! ))

Edited 2023-05-24 05:43 (UTC)

When the song fades there emanates, from a middle row, sincere and measured clapping. There sits Erin, smiling like a fool, moved by the music and moreso by the artist.

(Another youngblood, though.)

Yeah, well...fucking get used to it, head voice.

She won't startle the kid by speaking. Let's see how he handles applause first.

“…your home being Earth, or the place you were taken?” He’s recognizing the face, but isn’t yet sure what subjects are safe ones to change to.

Alex startles, then flushes with embarrassment. He got so caught up in getting used to a decent instrument that he didn't even hear her coming. This, uh, weird woman with a blindfold and... are those pointy ears??

"Oh, um... thanks. Thank you, ma'am. Sorry, were you... are you using this?"

"Nah. Not to completely destroy my dignity immediately but my instrument is the hurdy-gurdy back there."

A gangly dweeb of a kid tentatively approaches Maya. He looks eager, if something of a mess, between his rumpled and disheveled remains of a prom tux that he wears, and the long, thin iron pipe that he's using... as a walking staff.

"Um--hello, ma'am. You're looking for food, right? I found a buffet down that way. I can give you directions, or, um, if you want I can lead you there?"

"For these purposes, 'yes'." She sighs over her glass. "My Earth is linked to a couple other places. Just..." Air quotes, "'next' to it is the Hedge, the place behind mirrors and under hills, through arches in trees and behind every door. Beyond that are the nightmare lands where the conventionally human become people like me, at the hands of unrelenting, inhuman evil. To make it back to Earth is to fight that war forever, and I'm. So tired."

She drains the glass and goes to refill it.

"I'm human, with terms and conditions. My people call ourselves the Lost, but the more rude name humans tend to hit on is Changelings. It's. Wrong. We're not the replacements, we're the originals."

It says a million things about him that he immediately lights up. Which is impressive, given how excited he was to finally get his hands on a violin that isn't from a shitty high school storage closet.

"You play a hurdy-gurdy?"

“Ah. Wayne mentioned you collectively by that name. He said I ought to meet you and yours. Ask you about how the cannibals on the ship get their meat, if I’m concerned.”

It seems a lot less relevant now.

“But, uh. What’s going on with you sounds like a very different situation from mine. I’m perfectly fine, and have been my entire time away from Earth.” He’s lying, but mostly to himself.

"In public, even." Erin's grin is huge. "If you keep that iron a goodly distance away from me I can bust it out if y'like? I don't need any accidents that I might have to explain to my loved ones."

"Mmm. Wayne needs to learn the finer points of our relationship to privacy. I can be seen like this. The others...not so much."

(...This is, in fact, a fucking wizard.)

And the others will get warnings about that once we're done here!

"But don't bullshit a bullshitter. MMOs aren't free, which means you had a job or a family that'd pay for it, which means you had human connections, at least some of which weren't playing the game, and now those connections are further away than ever." The wine bottle gets set back down, heavily. "To say nothing of the friends in the game that aren't here, now, and like, not to put you on fucking blast or anything, it's just...I get the feeling. And I'm real tired of people being 'fine' too."

Enchanter, not wizard. Get it right, head voice.

He finishes his glass. Pours another and drinks about half of that before speaking.

“I had more friends in the game when it was a game than in real life. My family exists, sure, but they never understood me. I am going to miss everyone, but there’s problems to solve here. Work to be done. I can’t just wallow in my feelings. I need to be useful to the community that already exists here. Getting sad won’t help anyone.”

Stopping and feeling his feelings would lead to a breakdown that’s been building for months. Here, he has no real support, no one he trusts. He needs to establish his role in the community quickly, and falling apart can’t be part of that.

'Small chitinous creatures with knives, no. Strange things, yes.' She gives him a sympathetic look. 'The explanation is usually that our captor has a twisted imagination.' It's not much of an explanation, but it's far better than the it's magic semantic stop-sign of a response she was given as a new arrival.

She knows he's new, of course. Tayrey's been here half a year, all the old faces are familiar. She's guessing he's another Earther, from the way he addressed her - and from sheer probability, at this point. People have sometimes surprised her, though. Popping the cigar in one of her pockets, she gets down from the table with a swing of her legs, and steps towards him.

I'm Tayrey. Lieutenant Tayrey.' She's unconcerned about levels of formality; she's been here too long for that, but accuracy is another matter. 'Peace and prosperity to you.' She sticks out a hand to shake his, wearing a politely expectant expression.

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TEST DRIVE MEME #10

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recollection

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Alexander Hua | OC

iii. theater

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Damn OCs and their one liners

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