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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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As for the blood, "No no. I used to be a Doctor too. A bad one," he winces, but he lost so many patients and his sarcastic little license to kill wound up all too true and nearly broke him. "It's ethically sourced. Which means you make sure it comes the healthiest of volunteers, or even patients who need it drawn, because they produce too much, and you pay them adequately for time and service. We're not in the dark ages anymore. That's why I have to find out where it's coming from here. It tastes better if you have chemistry with someone, but I said it's a secret, and it is. I don't drink from anyone or else they'd know."
As for no superhero teams: "Completely reasonable. But we won't be a team. And I'm no hero. Just a pair of boxers using our eyes, and ears, and fists to get us out of trouble, wouldn't you say?"
"Goth?" Is Arthur goth? "I could sparkle." If he gets glitter. Or fairies. Not the fucking fairies. Stop it with the fairies. -- mini shoulder Theo growls at him. "The more I hear about movies, the more dreadful it sounds." Holmes, dwarf porn, cannibalistic babysitters.
One of these things is not like the others."Aren't there ever real work done? Showing off sports, and the natural world, exploring the oceans' depths, or inspiring people to action?"no subject
There's a beat. "Maybe you shouldn't tell people that. Cause you'll never be able to impress anyone like that." Duh. That just sounds...weird. "So you like...do blood draws and keep it for yourself? What if someone needs blood cause they lost blood? Like...not vampires." Not that she's ever had experience with that. But this is all sounding weird. "It's a secret? So why are you telling me? I could tell everyone."
Molly looks unimpressed and unconvinced. "Yeah...but that still sounds similar enough."
She's glad that she doesn't need to know about dwarf porn because that would truly be suffering. "I don't really watch sports a lot, but I play soccer! Only I have to be really careful at school cause they can't know I have superpowers. And so I have to not kick too hard. Also cause it's cheating, which is bad. Like Discovery? They do those deep ocean things and like the uhh...other things with animals. We don't watch a lot of that either. It's hard to like...get cable without people noticing because like...we're hiding...somewhere I won't tell you about." From the Pride and the Avengers and the X-Men...but somehow the X-Men can still find them. The worst. Unless Kitty Pride came!
"I dunno about aspiring to action? Is that like those sad commercials with the really sad songs that tell you to donate to pets while really sad, hurt animals are shown? Those are the saddest." Nico won't let them donate, but sometimes Karolina lets them visit one of the cat cafes or donate to the shelters.
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"I don't want to impress people! That's why I quit it." It's worse when they think he's competent, okay okay.
"Well, we mostly pay people for any excess blood draws. You can't keep blood infinitely, you know." Actually in his time period, you can barely keep it all, because the means to separate plasma by type doesn't exist yet.
As for Molly telling everyone, he rolls his eyes. "You're a kid. Even if you do tattle on me, I can call you fanciful and ridiculous and paranoid. See? What teamwork? More like mutual beneficiary temporary partnership."
But as to sports, he gets it. "I'll bet. I have the same problem as a vampire sometimes. Except I don't mind cheating. Don't be like me, not that you have any inclination, rightly so."
Discovery? Okay.
And he doesn't ask about the hiding location, since his revealing the vampire thing just means he's not worried about her tattling on him. Additionally if she's in hiding, obviously.
He just TILTS HIS HEAD about the sad commercials. "What's a commercial? But that just sounds like manipulation. I don't mean emotional extortion for money, I mean--" he closes the blue eyes thinking! "Like Moby Dick started America's movement against whaling. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about." Damn it. What's a bigger -- "Uncle Tom's Cabin inspired people in America to fight against the evils of slavery?" Is this any more helpful? He can't help it, he's 100 years behind her! "Marco Polo inspired Italians to travel the world and that's why Christopher Columbus found the Americas??" Yes, working backwards, that will help. Finally he just shrugs. "I can't help that all my examples are ancient. I'm old." Literally the only reason he started telling stories to children in the first place. "Maybe Discovery is like that? I can't say. But it's like, if instead of punching or throwing bad guys through walls, you used stories to make people want to hold them accountable and stop them."
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"Okaaaaay?" Why is he like that, though? Don't doctors like to be doctors? Don't they want to heal people and stuff?
"Hm." She doesn't really know that much. "Don't you guys have fridges and stuff?" Cause she hasn't quite figured out the time.
Don't ask her the year she's in either cause I don't knowThere's a sort of sour expression on her face at that. "You sound just like every other adult I know. Always discrediting us cause we're kids and acting like you have all the power."
She crosses her arms over her chest, looking generally unimpressed. "You shouldn't cheat just cause you can. Except at video games. It's not fun if you always win all the time just cause you're cheating."
"Um. Like a short video on the TV between TV shows?" Or sports games if you do watch them. "Moby who?" She just stares at the rest of it. Like yes she's in middle school, but she doesn't know about any of this stuff. Except Gert's continued assertions that Columbus is a fraud and a terrible person. Also her complaints about school in general. There's a long stare once he gets to the end. "Stories don't keep people from being bank robbers or trying to kill other people. Sometimes even the police can't keep people from doing those things. So we do. If we have to. Also, you can't make Wolverine feel any way except for like Wolverine does."
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"What the blazes is a fridge? We don't even have electricity or telephones or cars yet." He misses cars. "It's all horse drawn carriage. Or the soldiers just ride directly on horses." Jean and Napoleon he means. "And I was never a jockey. I loved racing cars, but I'm a few decades behind that time." Totally not confusing.
"I'm not discounting you at all. I'm relying on other adults' foolishness and ignorance. Don't try to blackmail me then, see? Easy solution."
Arthur grins ferally. "I always win, and it's great fun. What's video games? Like cards or board games? All right, what's vi-dee-oh? Or Tee-vee?" Whooooosh. "Moby Dick. It's a book by Herman Melville. About whaling. Everyone kept asking my opinion on it as both an author and having been a Doctor on a whaling expedition."
He tilts his head. "You can't absolutely change individuals. You can inspire police to learn forensics and real chains of evidence rather than resorting to bigotry or the kind of suspicion that caused the Reign of Terror in France." This is worse than trying to talk to Dazai and Sebastian and Comte's newest guest. "Before Edgar Allen Poe," more specifically Sherlock Holmes, "Police didn't really think to look at evidence and clues, they completely missed the mystery in front of their faces. Like if someone just saw a hole in the ship walls and blamed you for it just because you're strong. That's not right, is it? So I write stories teaching people to investigate and prove the true perpetrator. Like if it's obviously machine sliced, that's to your favor. Or if there's ink left nearby, you can track down the source to a a giant squid." Unlikely, but that's his point. "You can't stop bank robbers, but you can stop people from accusing any random person they don't like and teach them to use fingerprints, and trace evidence to track down the real robber." He's very strong about this. "Wolverine might still be a pain, but you, or another author, could use stories to show why what he's doing is wrong, and teach everyone else not to do that, and therefore, prevent him from getting away with it."
Okay he starts walking to get coffee. It's his lifeblood. Literally. And he looks around at the drinks. "I haven't the foggiest what 'bubble tea' is, but would you like some?" My treat, well luckily, there's no money, but whatever. He'll help her get it.
"Let's say I was to make a story about all of this. I'd makes it about a detective," damn it Holmes, "Investigating what nefarious motivations are behind this ship and I'd write an escape in mind so that anyone who read it, would know how to think about their own escape. Or if it was a story about Wolverine, I'd write the public yelling at him for not listening to the whole story, for just deciding he wants to pester a young woman who very much does not want him to. Public pressure is stronger force than a hurricane. It's the only thing that can make me change what I was doing."
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She frowns at that. "Wooooah. That's so weird." Cause she's so used to things like video games and Chase drives the van. "It's a big box that keeps things cold!"
"I don't think so. Doc Justice said the same kind of things before he tried to kill Karolina."
Molly shrugs. "Nah. I don't wanna. No. It's...hard to explain." She sighs. "It can be a lot of different things, but you play them on the TV or on a handheld console. Only we don't have a lot of money for those." She sighs again. "It's an electronic device that you can watch movies or like shows on. "A book about whaling?" She doesn't want to read it now.
"Yeah, but the police are corrupt and you can't actually count on them." A beat. "Wolverine is one of the X-Men. He's not like Piledriver and Thunderball. Or the other guys." Ummmm. "I'm not an author. I don't write books. I'm in middle school."
She looks at him in confusion. "Bubble tea is this drink with these bubbles in it. They can be chewy ones or just the fruity kind. I dunno how to make it, though." She peeks around to see if anyone's there. No one seems to be. "Is there someone here to make the drinks?"
There's a slow blink as she listens to him. "What?"
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"An icebox. I'm familiar with that. We can't let the blood get too chilled though, or it'll get rancid when it thaws." Then again, it wasn't like they were too constrained by the time period, Saint-Germaine got Arthur's royalties to him via the portal, so he probably did the same with blood and storing it?
"Moving pictures? You don't have to go to a theater?" How?
"Right, it's a bit gruesome, you needn't read it. You're probably more of a Jane Austen fan, right?" No. Arthur, you're still thinking 19th century. "Or... I have no idea. What do you like best?"
"What's middle school?" Well, age, right. "I started telling stories when I was only a child to all my siblings. And it was the only way I didn't get more bullied in school. You could start. You could write stories about corrupt police and how to spot and outsmart them." Which Holmes DID, actually.
"Okay, remembering that I'm severely outdated, what's the XMen? Oh! Milk tea! I know this. I'll make, it's fine." He might kind of, not really, remember it, but it didn't look hard, and Arthur isn't like Jean and in danger of blowing the kitchen or anything.
"What what? Oh. Public pressure?" He makes an annoyed sound. "I ended a series I was bored of and hated. There was a lot of outcry. I tried to get the readers to move on, and they refused. They tried to have an annual mourning and funeral services for a fictional character." He just rubs his face, puts the glasses on, and focuses on the bubble tea. Before even his own coffee. He's just still such a knight, he even forgot to pretend to be an asshole. "Devastatingly embarrassing. Eventually I wrote it again. I like the money." A lie, he likes the attention. Well, he likes the money too, but there's not enough money in the world to make up for it.
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There's a slight squint of confusion. "But it's not a freezer. It just keeps things cool!" This is more complicated. Victor or Chase would probably explain this better.
"No. I mean, you could go to the theater, but we don't really go that often. Just sometimes!"
She shrugs. "I dunno. I just read whatever I have to for school mostly." She's good at school, but she doesn't have too many actual books. But she does like the Nancy Drew books. Those are fun!
"Well, there's Elementary school, which is from Kindergarten to fifth grade. Then middle school, which is six through eighth grade. I'll get to high school eventually, but I'm only thirteen." Which is actually pretty old cause she was eleven two years ago when they became the Runaways. Lots has happened since then, so it's felt like a really long time.
"They're a crime fighting team. Everyone's a mutant. But there's not as many after they started dying out. Which sucks." A beat. "I don't mean mutant in a bad way. It's just their genes are mutated and it gives them powers! So they call themselves mutants." She's one, too, but she's not going to tell him that. "I had to live with them for a while, but then I ran away."
She listens to him quietly for a moment. "Um. So tell them to shut up and do something else. They can't make you. It's like they teach at the schools. Say No to Drugs. Or...well...in this case, peer pressure."
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Freezer. Icebox. Fridge. "I'll take your word for it. We just keep the Rouge and blanc in the wine cellar. Cool in summer, not frozen in winter. Standard for Paris."
Numbers. Kindergarten. Americans. Got it. Maybe. "Did school have any good books? Do they have educational... movies? Or tee-vee shows?" He rubs his chin in thought. "I was a terrible student, but we only had the elementaries. Absolute basics. Very boring. And it was more like they wanted an excuse to punish people." He hated it. Still does. "I used to think," her drink is ready, and he pours it into a clear cup with a straw. It looks soupy... but whatever, is it supposed to be??? If it's bad she can try again and learn from his mistakes. So he sets about on his own coffee. "If I wrote stories well enough, people might learn how to do things better. Better than school did anyway." He glances up at her, blue eyes behind the glasses. "I still do."
A huff, "People really fear that? Mutations? But it's so useful! And no one chooses it. Usually mutations are lethal. It'd be nice to have some healing humanity finally. Blimey, I daresay I would have done anything in my youth to be as strong as you. I tried to be a bodybuilder. Cricket, goalkeeper, boxing, everything. I only became a Doctor because I was already trying to maximize health." Lies. He wanted to help people, but anyway, he did also become a bodybuilder for that reason. So strike and reverse it.
"I thought America was finally moving past its rubbish dark ages drama. One step forward, two steps back I suppose."
As for peer pressure, Arthur laughs! "I did! For 8 years! I said, 'Go away. Read something else. Anything else!' Eventually I started thinking, 'if I've lost my touch, I'll bring him back, and then they'll see it was a terrible idea and they'll regret asking for it, and leave me alone and finally move on.' They loved him more than ever. So I gave up. I still don't like him. He sucks all the oxygen out of the room." He's everything Arthur isn't and doesn't want to be. "He's a useful vehicle though. If I want people to remember police and politicians are corrupt, I have him uncover and expose them. He was a drug addict too you know. I thought," the most freaking evil eye gleam, "'Aha! Now people will really understand he's just a lazy strung-out tosser who only investigates crime, because he doesn't like manual labour!' Instead they thought he was sympathetic and that it must be so hard to be intelligent and skeptical in a world that prizes neither." Arthur scowls slightly. "Nothing I did with him ever worked the way I expected. That's on me, of course, but it still chafes."
Mmmmm coffee. He blows on his cup to cool it down, the smell already soothing his cranky anti-Holmes temper.
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"Oh." They don't have a wine cellar. At least she doesn't think they do. They don't have a ton of electricity in general, but enough to get by.
"Um. Not really on the movies and TV shows. We do most of the reading for English class. We read some poetry and like...books like The Giver and stuff? I dunno." It doesn't really matter, does it? She looks at the drink for a moment, not really sure if she should drink that. It looks...uhhh...why does it look like that? Maybe she'll just get mountain dew from somewhere. Still, just to be nice, she takes a sip and resists the urge to make a face. "Hm."
Right. About school? "School's fine. I like going! I have friends and people like me and I get to learn stuff!" So that's goo, right?
"Yeah. They tried to kill them over it. And they look down on them. Even when they save the world and stuff." She shrugs. "Well, you couldn't have. Plus, all powers come with a weakness. It's the rule." Not her rule, but a general rule. Like how she just falls asleep if she exerts too much energy. That's what coffee and mountain dew are for!
Molly just stares at the rant about his character. "Maybe you shouldn't write such annoying people if you're gonna hate them so much." There's a small sigh. "But it's gotta suck to be hated just cause you exist, too. Sometimes you don't even have a choice in existing...and people hate you for it." Sometimes your grandma is a somewhat evil scientist that clones your mom and now she's being held hostage (as far as Molly's concerned) by the Avengers.
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A squint! "What's the Giver? Is it any good? Same with the poetry." He liked Poe. And that was it. Most poetry was Shakespearian and he hated it.
As she tries her milk tea and makes a face, Arthur worries instantly! "Ah, no good? Want some of my coffee? Or... I think there might be hot chocolate around here."
Clearly surprised, "Really? You like school? Do your best then. It must have changed since my time. What do you like about it?"
"Kill him?" Arthur looks pretty horrified. "I guess that's true, about weaknesses, even vampires have weaknesses, even if it's not the ones Bram Stoker conceptualized. He wrote the book Dracula." Since odds were against her reading that.
"I don't write annoying characters. I write funny characters, but everyone loves him most. And I wanted to write other things. History, serious journalism. I wrote a piece on the injustices in the Congo. Or on Indian travesties and prejudice. But all anyone ever knew about me was him. And they would write letters to me addressed to him. I don't hate him for existing, I hate him for being everything I'm not and never want to be. I wanted him to teach people to be more observant, and it worked, but they still like him more than me." He realizes he's being too serious and so casts it off with a giant smile. "Ah well~! It's nice how much of a gold mine he is!"
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"Um. It's okay? It's about this society that is trying to be perfect? And to do that, they don't let people remember all the bad, difficult stuff. The temperature and the weather are always the same and like...nothing bad happens. Except that they...um...they um...kill babies that they think are flawed and old people that they think are too old to be useful." She looks down at that. "So the Giver um...The main character is assigned as the new Giver and he holds all the memories of humanity...and so...well, I think you should read it, maybe. I don't want to spoil it. But it's like a book about morals and ethics in society at large?"
She's already slipping behind the counter to look for the hot chocolate, finding the things easily enough. It's not as easy as the swiss miss hot chocolate packets that Chase gets them, but it'll do.
"Well, people do try to kill him a lot. Once someone kidnapped us and tried to kill me because of my parents, but Wolverine saved me. It was right after I threw him through the ceiling cause I was upset. But he...didn't get mad at me. He just saved me and hugged me when I cried. He's not really that bad, but sometimes he's just...UGH! Annoying." A beat. "There's not as many Mutants left in the world, but there's still some."
Molly shrugs, holding up her hands in surrender. "You're the one that sounded annoyed with him, not me."
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"Sounds ghastly," the Giver. "But you liked it? Is it a movie too?" Since everything else is, apparently.
"Sounds like you and Logan have a complicated relationship." British understatement. "Why aren't there many mutants left? There used to be a lot? Was it like the Giver, and they just euthanized anyone who was different?" Sounds awful.
A small grin over his coffee. "Oh and I am. But I'm the only one in the world who is. The general public loves him. And that's what annoys me. And I tried to write characters people could love even more, but it didn't work."
Luckily she's working on the hot chocolate. That's probably for the best.
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She shrugs. "It was okay! It was just a book I had to read for school. I guess to teach us whatever the moral point of the story was? I don't know??" If there is, she hasn't seen it.
"Yeah. When I was a kid, I wanted to marry him, but then I met him and he...is not someone I'd marry." Which is fine. "Oh. Um. It was M-Day? Scarlet Witch cast a spell. No More Mutants. Um. But because the Runaways were in hiding and most of us weren't known, I guess I escaped being depowered."
Molly isn't going to pretend to understand. If you don't like something, why keep doing it? It seems dumb. "Well, I don't think I'd keep writing something I wasn't happy with because people got upset about it. People are upset about things all the time."
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Arthur makes a face. "Now I'm suffering," he teases right back. M-Day, mutants, Scarlet Witch, hiding. Okay.
"You're underestimating public pressure." Also because, "I wasn't hiding back then. It was impossible to escape. I started off as a Doctor, so I had to establish community ties and trust, and that's a big part of who paid my bills as a writer. Everywhere I went, someone would complain about it. And the writers they sent kept coming. I did stop for 8 years. That's what, over 60% of your life time? It was a long time. And it didn't die down."
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Oh right. Arthur probably.
Wow. What a disappointing life.
"Well, you should be." Cause that's the mature response.
"Mmmm. No. Cause you know how many people have tried to force me to join the X-Men? A lot. And I never do. And then there's the people that tried to force me to live with other people and that didn't work either. And theeeen like the Gibborim tried to force us AT LEAST TWICE to kill people to feed them with and we didn't do that either. Also our parents probably were gonna force us to let them kill our friends so that whatever parents and kids survived would have the world and give it over to the Gibborim. But we exploded them instead." There's a sort of sad look here because Molly, despite nearly being killed, does still miss our parents.
"Lots of people try to make us do a lot of things." A beat. "It's the people that take advantage of what we want to do that are better at it than the others."
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"At least you changed your mind, that's some condolence." He stuck his tongue out at her. The most mature!
Blue eyes just widen. That's a lot. Even by Arthur's standards of dying children and murder mysteries, war, and the dark side of humanity.
"Is the Gibborim some sort of cult? Or monster? I guess... I like writing. I like making people happier than I could as a Doctor. So everyone just--" took advantage of that? Too real. "What is it you want? Other than not to be an XMen or have adults tell you what to do or when to do it or try to feed you to Gibborim or get you to manipulate others and feed them as sacrifices?"
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Molly gives him a somewhat annoyed look before shrugging. "I don't really wanna date boys or marry them. I just wanna have friends and fight bad guys! Oh! And hang with Doombot!" And Gib, but she doesn't wanna talk about Gib to a stranger. He won't understand.
"Yeah. They're supposed to inherit Earth and feast on all the souls of the humans for the rest of eternity." There's a shrug here. "They kinda suck. They're like multiple monsters? But then we killed the parents and their kids woke up and came after us." Laaaame. "Um. Not to be hunted and killed most of the time. I just wanna have a normal life. But like...I also like fighting bad guys and helping people." This gets a long sigh. And some of Doombots potatoes.
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What the blazes?
"It's a card game?" He loves card games. "Like p--" a card game for children. So NOT poker, pinochle, pontoon, baccarat, "heaaarts?" He asks slowly, not really covering for himself, but sure. "But you collect them too?" Like books. Art. Or how Le Comte collects literal artists going the extra mile in rich person things. Okay, but not books, she said she only had the ones they read in school. "Like... butterflies?" No wait, girls don't do that. "Or you're an American so... marbles or--" wasn't there cards the boys collected from candy? "Baseball cards?" Maybe? That sounds wrong, but he's not an American child.
"You can be friends with boys without marrying them. I am. Friends with women too. Not married." Anymore. "Is Doombot a superhero or villain?" Does it matter?
"That does sound rather unpleasant." Severe understatement. "I don't think a normal life is in the poke-a-mon cards for you." Hello, fellow children, how do you do? Is he doing this right-o? "But helping people so you're no longer hunted might be." He can't help the sympathetic expression. Even whaling and hunting seals, you wind up feeling very sympathetic to anyone hunted, whatever the circumstance.