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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.]
no subject
Wait. Ody?
Arching a brow the tired looking teen looked between the very yellow heteromorph and the...crab...a couple times before looking back at Wayne.
"Ody? What is this someone's pet or something?" Shifting his grip the young hero-in-training maneuvered to grab the knife portion of the crab to keep it from stabbing him as he made to unwind the capture scarf from around the poor crustacean. Of course he got pinched a couple times for his troubles, than god for his hero costume's gloves.
no subject
Wayne moves to assist in the removal of crustacean from capture cloth, getting a light stabbing for his trouble, though that doesn't really seem to faze him as he flicks the thing's back-end to get it scuttling away again. He stands as he wipes the haemolymph off his arm, then tucks his hands into his pockets.
"You're new though, huh? Welcome to the Serena Eterna. You eaten yet?"
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"Yes to the first and...no to the second." He sighs, stomach seeming to decide this was the perfect time to make it's hunger known. Of course, he had been fine until now.
"Guess it's been a while...not to mention before I got here."
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"Buffet's this way." He waits to be followed, before adding, "Name's Wayne, by the way. You ever need help, I'm over in 144." Which, upon his offering that information, would be added into the boy's phone automatically. It's just a function of how they communicate here.
no subject
"Ah, I'm Shinsou." He nodded a bit before continuing. "So you've been here a while? Can you tell me what's going on?"
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"As for what's going on, the general gist of it is that our dear Captain," and he puts a little bit of stink on the title, "decided he would peel copies of us off our respective realities so that he could populate what amounts to a pleasure cruise. Either he was lonely, or didn't know what else to do with himself, and he toys with this reality like a child with a collection of dolls. The resulting conflicts of emotions end up fueling the ship as a whole. It keeps the lights on."
Not the most charitable assessment of the situation, he knows, but after the last few weeks, he thinks he's earned some time to be bitter.
"Treat it like a pleasure cruise, you'll be better off. It's not all bad."
He thumbs the elevator button when they reach it, his glove absorbing the shock in the process, and steps inside to hit the button that would take them down to Windjammer's buffet table.
no subject
"Okay so...copies of ourselves? So I'm not...I'm not the original me?" Great...just one more thing to add to his mounting panic attack later tonight.
Wonderful.
He just follows into the elevator and stares up at the elevator's ceiling for a long moment.
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Wayne watches him for a moment, then reaches to rest the back of his hand against Shinsou's arm, a gentle attempt to break him out of that spiral before it can really get going. "Hey, look at it this way: there's still a you that's back there in your world doing his thing, and you get to have a vacation."
The doors slide open again to let them out onto the lower deck, where he'll be leading the way toward the buffet and its ridiculous spread. He's got designs on a platter of small sandwiches.
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"Right, if I'm just a copy then the real me is taking care of things. That means that the plan isn't messed up because I'm not there. Because I'm there...and here. And I'm going to try not to think about how weird that is."
He again follows Wayne, seeming to relax even more when he actually sees the food laid out.
no subject
"Exactly. The world isn't going to end just because you're here. This place is experiential in nature, dude. You'll be fine." Maybe. Remained to be seen, especially if he ended up running into some of the others his age. They've got a collection of rowdy teens about.
Wayne gives him a cursory warning to avoid the meat on the red plates, explaining under his breath that it was specifically for their cannibal population but don't question that too hard because some people were really sensitive about it, then sets about trying to find the ingredients to put himself together a kebab. "Here, try the chicken."
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"So...people like that...they aren't frowned on? Like..." He shifts a bit as he gets food. "There are people in my world with...powers...that are considered villainous and something like that would be seriously against the law. People like that would probably be...put on some watch lists or something? Probably worse. But here...they're okay?" He's curious, it's different than what he's faced but it's still something that he's thought about.
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"What about you? What's your take?" It almost feels like a good way to gauge peoples reactions to things, maybe he can figure out who won't freak out over his powers.
no subject