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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
"If it's any consolation, nobody will stop you from being normal here."
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Gwen tilts her head a bit to look at him out of the corner of her eye. "Except the excursions designed to kill us?"
She knows that's not a somebody, except maybe the guy in charge she guesses, but she did hear about some of the dangers from Darcy.
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"Equal opportunity death traps. Sign-up and you too can experience death alongside superhumans and civilians alike!" She laughs, quietly, shaking her head. "Hobie would call that one hell of a metaphor for... something."
"I can just see a lot of ways that a trip like that might show I'm not quite as normal as I look. I guess I either... stay away, or cross that bridge when I come to it."
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"Maybe I'm worried I won't be able to stay away." Every time a supervillain attacked somewhere, Spider-Woman was on the scene. No matter how likely it was that the cops would be there, that Captain Stacy would be there, hoping to arrest her even as she tried to save people. When people are in danger, sitting back has never been an option. Even if you might fail.
What does any Spider-Man do when faced with an impossible choice? They try to do both.
"How long have you been training at school?"
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Heroes are pretty similar between universes, it seems.
"It's been a little over a year since I started."
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Gwen makes a low, acknowledging sound, and pulls one knee up to her chest to rest her chin on. "I've been active about three years, now. But I wasn't born with my powers. I was bitten, by a radioactive spider. The adjustment period was a lot, let me tell you."
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The spider bite gets an 'eugh' sort of look. "That sounds extremely unpleasant. At least I had the luxury of getting accustomed to this shape automatically. Figuring out how to change its shape was a little harder though." He lifts one of the spare hands, closes it into a fist, then morphs it into an eye with the same colored iris as the ones in his head.
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"Activity's all I can count, but hey, twinsies. I think we're the same age." Her head tilts sideways where it's propped to watch the little display of his powers, real curiosity there now that she's paying more than surface-level attention to the shifts. Her villains all have their abilities and a lot of Spider-People have powers outside the norm, extra limbs included, but this kind of thing is new to her. "That does seem tricky... I had a hard enough time mastering being sticky only when I wanted to be. I ripped a cupboard door of its hinge; not being able to let go and super-strength was quite the combo."
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"Good for slapstick comedy, less so when you're panicking," he guesses. "It was kind of like that when I learned that they could stretch, not just morph. It was already strange enough figuring out what I could make without adding that to it."
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"I've met Darcy, so far. They gave me the whole... 'you've been interdimensionally copy-pasted, here's your survival guide!' talk. They seem cool."
She feels kind of bad for lying by omission, she always does, no matter who it's with, but... all her reasons for doing so are carved into the bones of her life by experience.
"Your powers sounds like they're very versatile, honestly."
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If he notices that what she tells him seems incomplete, he's not about to call her out for it. They all have things to hide whether they're trying to or not.
"I'd like to think so, at least. You need to be adaptable to go into search and rescue, or just recon. "What about yours, though? It seems incredibly useful, to he able to stick to wherever and get places by air."
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"I'm not always exactly elegant with my words, either, so that's the last thing I could ever hold against them." She already gave them a crisis over the whole skeleton thing, and that's not even touching on all the ways she knows she's snapped or said the wrong thing in the past.
It's been a rough few years.
"It's pretty useful, yeah. Stickyness, agility, strength, durability, spider-sense... I had to build my webshooters, but yeah, I can get just about anywhere, dodge just about anything, and fight in ways people don't expect. The real pain is when I run out of web-fluid. That's happened more times than I'm proud of."
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He's actually somewhat surprised that she doesn't produce the web herself, but then again, it seems like powers in her world work different than those in his. Support items are regularly used though, so he's not put off by the idea.
"You built them though? That's impressive. Our support course was the main supplier for equipment like that. Maybe in the time that you're here you can figure out how to stretch what you have. There are a lot of smart people here."
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"Built those, made my own suit... when you're a solo act, that's how it goes." Though the less said about her first costume before she made her proper suit, the better.
And as much as she's intending to try and keep the whole Spider-Woman thing quiet, that worry about simply not being able to hang back in a crisis still hangs over her, so... "Maybe, though, yeah. There's probably a way to be more efficient about it."
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He definitely understands about being a solo act, though. As much as he might take great pains to protect them all, there isn't often opportunities for them to work together in a well-coordinated way. There were only a few exceptions to that. Otherwise, either he was hustling people out of danger, or hanging back as the rear guard waiting for the time to move.
"I wish I could be more help though. The best I can offer is to be available if you need anything while we're here."
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"Hey, that's not nothing." And she appreciates it, even if it's been... hard, the last few years, to really ask anyone for anything. "I'm— glad someone around here at least gets some of this stuff."