TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[sailmods]

1. now it's fun to wake up in a strange chateau

[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! We're so glad to have you!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.]

2. messing with my mind was fun at the time

[freshly lei'd, your legs are forced to lead out onto the deck and towards your muster station. the same woman is there, carrying a clipboard. this time, she introduces herself as Gal Friday, the cruise director, before immediately going into the muster drill spiel. it is very boring, and you are not allowed to move, except when you are required to show you know how to put your life vest on. you could try to not do this, but Friday will move to stand in front of you very closely and just. look in your direction until such a time that you decide to do it. and I'm sure your fellow passengers want you to just get on with it, too.

but, once it ends? she reiterates her desire to welcome you aboard. and, then, you're free.

well, free to move about the ship at your own leisure, of course. which is a kind of free, and probably the best one you can hope for. you could try to escape, maybe, if you have the means to; Friday certainly won't be one to stop you. that's what the barrier is for, after all.

but, wouldn't you much rather have fun?

the buffet is full. the pool is open. the casino jingles and chimes.

welcome aboard.]

3. lots of mystery in the history of the devils I knew

[you were never alone.

a few days have passed since you first arrived on the Serena Eterna. perhaps you've made yourself a little routine, and settled in a bit. or maybe you haven't done that at all. either way, you're here, and it looks like somebody is pretty pissed off about it.

it starts small. sometimes nearby plates skid off tables, or a pool chair upends while you're walking next to it. and sometimes that chair is aimed right at your head. objects are moving with quickly increasing frequency, and a wide variety of styles: some are dropped, or pushed, and others and others are tossed, but a few of the items are thrown, with great force and odd accuracy. if Friday is around during the lighter moments, she simply titters and cleans up whatever mess is made. if a pot of soup sails off the buffet line and nearly drenches you in boiling minestrone, she simply walks away.

and then there's the voices. hundreds, maybe thousands, calling out. not all are intelligible English, but you seem to understand them anyway. some sound scared, or angry. some are screams, others whispers. some sound entirely strange, while others are achingly familiar. and they're all saying the same exact thing:

Get Out.]

Comments

[skaikru]

( familiar with neural implants and actually born in space. and sorta-died trying to send a group of her friends back out of the atmosphere to save them from a nuclear deathwave. she's not even batting an eye, though immediately curious how he got to space and what he was doing there. )

I'm alive.

( obviously. begrudgingly. tbd if anything else about this scenario is alright yet, but it's nice of him to ask. )

Make it to the other side of the ship yet?

3

[intermingled]

[ Spock had heard it, unsure if it had just been due to his telepathic powers or not, but her questions confirms that he is not alone and he nods. Something is sending a message out to them, then.

A warning or a trick? Spock intends to locate the source so that he may ascertain that. ]

Yes, I heard--

[ He cuts himself off, looking down at her as she holds up the sausage. His blank mask slips and his brows knit together. ]

I'm a vegetarian.

[vexish]

Oh.

[oh wow, that's pretty rude of her. but waste not, want not. harley shrugs and pops the little pig in a blanket into her mouth.]

I think I saw something that looks like falafel back thattaway.

[She points over her shoulder, back toward a plate that is most definitely now on the floor.]

But you don't look particularly big on eatin' things off the floor so I guess this means tough cookies for you, mister.

[skaikru]

( she's actually the least funny person maybe in existence, but thanks for believing in her john. it means... very little in the moment, not when put up against the fact that, yanno. they're on a boat in the middle of nowhere, against their will. clarke also couldn't care much if alcoholic disaster was his default or not: maybe flirting with the definition of liability, being naked and vomiting. but he's standing, he's talking. and there's a sort of instant conspiratorial nature between kidnap victims that undermines any kneejerk judgements of character flaws.

tl;dr: she doesn't care, but still thinks they should find him some pants. )

It's Clarke. ( clarke, who's busy casting around for any sort of clothing rack nearby. she sees lifebuoy's attached to the side railing and, a little further down, some deckchairs with complimentary towels folded neatly at the foot of the mesh recliners. perfect. ) And I'll get you a towel.

( serious, down to business, unwilling to be deterred now that she's chosen to help. she'll be down the walkway and back with two towels in a matter of moments. )

[businessorlibation]

"I've been smoking since I was fourteen, and it's never caused me any trouble." Of course, he's also from before cigarettes were conclusively linked to lung cancer, so.

[intermingled]

It is not my first choice to eat off of the ground, but I would not go hungry to avoid it.

[ He stands with his hands behind his back, but after a moment of consideration, he offers her a hand to help her up. Humans think very little of a gesture of touching hands and he's spent enough time around humans to be used to it, even if it's still a little strange. ]

Finding the source of that voice may be a more prudent use of my time.

buffet

[businessorlibation]

It could be worse. I wonder about it, though--I haven't seen a chef yet, or where the kitchen is. And I'm also curious how they source their ingredients out here.

[Johnny's doing a certain amount of mental math over the buffet even as he fills his plate. Back home, he ran a champagne lounge that served dinner; he knows something about what kind of work and money is going into the meals.]

[businessorlibation]

A man who everyone thought had been killed. Not that he didn't look positively grey when we saw him, but he was definitely moving around and hitting things--people, really. So he wasn't a ghost.

[vexish]

[It's with a waving gesture that Harley pulls a face that says she has no real idea what the whole coup was actually about.]

My attention kinda drifted when we were told the details.

[Which is probably exactly why she wound up in the trouble she did. But that doesn't matter now. She got herself out of it, and the mission's over. All she has to worry about is putting on enough sunscreen to relax out on deck. That's assuming they ever find their way out of this hallway.]

Speakin' of details -

[She stops walking long enough to glance back the way they came.]

Does this hallway seem like it goes on forever, or is it just me?

[shootybangbangs]

No. I'm

[ uh ]

Seeing ghosts.

There's some kind of activity going on at a stage area. There's music and the sound of applause, but I don't see anyone here. I'm going to see if the instruments are rigged up somehow.

[shootybangbangs]

So just to confirm, he was fully alive while he was hitting these people? You could talk to him?

[ This was a very important point! Also, dude sounded like a piece of work. ]

[skaikru]

( red flags. all of that is red flags. )

I don't think you should touch anything.

[shootybangbangs]

Too late. I touched it.

[ what was impulse control ]

The music's stopped.

[skaikru]

( rip her blood pressure. )

That's not ominous at all. But nothing's exploded?

[shootybangbangs]

Nope. Looks like the show's over.

Everything just stopped all of a sudden. I'm not finding any mechanisms for moving objects around here, either. If this is someone's idea of a joke, they're going pretty far to pull it off.

[ Hmm. Hmm. ]

I'm going to move on. I can hear the sound of water, anyway.

[worthallthis]

[After a moment of being eyed uncertainly, the snow globe gets put gently back on its shelf.]

I don't need to leave things on the ground to look at them. I'm fine following you.

[Also, he's not really sure what Gin is actually doing with the things he's handling. It doesn't look like much of anything.]

[worthallthis]

He considers this a moment. Thinks about feeling himself moving smaller limbs to show someone how to throw a punch. Thinks about the feeling of satisfaction of it. Thinks about knowing someone might stay alive because of him, instead of dying because of him.

And he nods. "Okay. After dark. There will be enough light on the deck." But it won't feel quite as exposed, anyway, he thinks, if he can't see the open air across the ocean for miles and miles.

[nbrio]

For those? Oh, no. It's b-b-been a while since I've gotten behind a bar. I want t-t-to make sure I've still got it.

[He takes a little sip of his concoction and promptly coughs up some fire.]

Ack! Okay. Not phosphorous. Let's try that again.

[worthallthis]

He can't actually remember a time when he was calm. He can fake it pretty well, but everything in his too-short memory is full of fear and fury, worry and stress. Even his sleep.

But he's not going to kill anyone. He's not. He doesn't do that anymore.

And maybe HYDRA's here, maybe they're not. But he can't go around scaring civilians, that's not right either. He takes a shuddering breath and gets the moment of more obvious terror under control. Constantine is being very patient with him, that's a kindness. "Take the stairs," he answers at last. The moving metal box is not a thing he can do, but if there's stairs, he can do that. He's done stairs many times since the helicarrier, and they've been fine.

2;

[kishidope]

[There is no waiter. There is, however, a tall blond man in a stylish suit and gloves who gently pinches the glass Zoro is waving wildly about. He smiles. A smile that does not match the angry twitching of his one visible brow. He then promptly kicks the chair out from under Zoro's gluttonous ass.

Timber, ya marimo bastard.]

Yeah, almost as empty as your shitty moss brain.

[vexish]

[Ooooh, a gentleman. Her hand reaches right up to grip hold of his, and she jumps right up to her feet.]

Yeah, all right. You don't gotta twist my arm, I'll do the prudent thing too.

[She's not exactly here on Squad business, but since she's gotten in the habit of doing a good deed every now and then, she can step up and give this guy an assist.]

Oh hey! Maybe it's one of those psychic kinda things.

[businessorlibation]

He wasn't much for talking. Though I gather he wasn't before his death, either.

[It's complicated. He may have been frankensteined back to life--not that Johnny has that term on hand.]

[conjobs]

[Clarke's still going to be 'love', but at least he'll have another name to cycle through. He manages a few more steps further down the corridor, as though it'd be less cold, but he doesn't stray off the path when she finds him again, towels in hand.]

Alright Clarke. [He gives her an appreciative grunt as he takes one of the towels and shakes it out, leans forward a bit so he can wrap the towel around his waist without the lifevest in the way. It's not exactly a shirt or pants, but it's much better than strutting around naked save for the jacket.]

I'm John. Constantine. [He'd shake her hand, but. He figures maybe she'd want to wait for the formalities until after he's cleaned up a bit, put on some proper clothes.]

Did you have one hell of a night too?

[skaikru]

You should absolutely move on, and maybe not touch anything else.

We're on a boat. Surrounded by water. Or are you hearing something else?

[conjobs]

It's a cruiseship love. Long hallways are par for the course. [Not that he's spent that much time cruising around - well, not in the traditional sense inside a big ship, anyway - but he gambles too much to be unfamiliar with a few of these floating money pits.]

Let's just take the first way out and see where it goes, eh? [Yes he would happily strut around naked throughout the entire ship until they find their bearings - or something to wear to make himself decent first. The only people that's going to bother is everyone who has to look at him like this.]

You know most people who stage or join coups know what they're fighting for. [She's a bit of a quirky lass, but he's not going to question it.] I'm sure they appreciate you taking a stand.