sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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.]

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( ooc: no problem! i've done that too at times orz )

You don't need special abilities to throw them if I could see someone doing it with their hands or... feet or mouth. [ or whatever body parts can be used to balance and fling plates but... ]

Yes, me too. [ relieved visible that he's not the only one here stuck. ] I really, really need to get off this boat.

[ which... of course, he does, because this man has no brain cells and 0 fear. he reaches out with his hand to try and grasp at one of the vectors - his fingers go clean through but he notes the temperature change. ]

Huh. I can't touch them but you could make them touch ...me? [ how does that even work? he makes another grab at one of them, nothing hostile just curious.

well, it's not like he's never seen abilities that are weird in others before so. it's fine. plus, they're on a boat which is weirder than everything else ever. ]

Wait, you're also new here?

Her loose hand, the one which had just been holding the cocktail glass, drifts upward and fists emptily at her throat. To some eyes, it might look like she's clutching at a set of invisible pearls. (To other, more knowledgeable eyes: it is perhaps like she's kneejerk reaching for a little bag of bones which isn't there anymore.)

The sound of his voice shivers down into the soles of her feet, settling over her like a warm blanket. He's the only person who calls her Cam, and certainly the only person who says it with such comfortable familiarity; such graceful ease; such unthinking intimacy. She's been waiting to hear that voice again for eight long, painful, wrenching, empty months.

Ergo: She might be imagining things.

Camilla doesn't exactly go for her knives, but she does re-settle her weight on her heels, ready to spring into action (to— embrace him? attack him, if it's all a trick? both?). She watches Palamedes with the sharp-eyed intensity of tricking to pick loose where the details might be wrong or missing: revealing him to be a ghost, or a revenant, or a hallucination, because this ship hasn't been normal so far.

"Is it really you?" she asks.

Exactly. [Doesn't elaborate further, but beams like someone with a secret to tell. He has a Theory, obviously, and he's dying to share it.]

[rueful] I'm not sure where I'd go even if I could get off. As far as I can tell, I am a very, very long way from where I was before. [In time, space, dimension, state of alive-ness. It's...complicated]

[What a pity he didn't quite hit the maximum annoyance threshold...! Oh well, maybe it'll be for the better in the long run somehow, even if at the moment Jade's heart would be utterly unbroken at the thought of successfully escaping having to actually explain anything after all. Rita's extremely visible anger is good enough compensation for now, at least, and Jade nods gravely in the face of her threat even as his expression betrays no concern whatsoever about it.]

Not to worry! These sorts of things are no funny matter, after all. [(As if he hasn't been bullying her for the sheer Amusement of it for the last minute or so already....) He's actually straightening now, though, right hand slipping from a coat pocket to raise level and palm-up as he hums thoughtfully. What to actually demonstrate, here...?] Hm, although--being in a library, it'd probably be quite poor taste to set anything accidentally aflame, even if it might encourage them to stock more useful books next time...no matter! Something very small, then.

[An arte so lightweight he could use it even with every fon slot in his body almost completely sealed! Less of a hazard, but also--more importantly--conserving the majority of his energy for anything that might actually demand far more aggressive measures, should such a thing appear on this ship after all.

With no actual further word or gesture from himself, energy crackles and leaps from his right wrist (more notably from down the entire length of his right arm, actually, if Rita's paying enough attention to catch it), gathering in Jade's palm and flaring out. The time it takes to resolve from light and sound to a solid object is a mere second, maybe less; as its weight properly materializes, Jade lets the butt of his spear plant upon the floor and props the upper half up against a shoulder. Not proper armed posture, normally, but there's an emphasis on ensuring the point of the spear isn't being leveled in Rita's direction, in the same sort of way that his other hand stays in its pocket: a posture as nonaggressive as possible! Because he would like to avoid being blasted regardless, if only to mitigate the Big Hassle that being blasted would probably be!]

Technical details are fine. He knows what that means. So he nods. "And they are a danger to others," he surmises, given that having them there constituted an apocalypse level threat.

SecUnit feels way too much like Asset. So: "Rin. I'll use that, if it's. All right with you." A pause. "What's a serial."

There's been some kind of mistake... ]

Peter was quick to notice the letter by his bed and quicker to notice that this is not his apartment. He has a lot of questions because he sure doesn't remember signing onto go on a cruise. He's pretty sure he wouldn't want to go on one even if he'd had the choice because he gets seasick! Sometimes.

He makes his way to deck one and makes several attempts to ask about where he is and why is he here but the woman (Gal Friday) doesn't seem to listen as she places the lei over his head. "But I really didn't-oh, thank you-didn't want to go on a cruise." Somehow, he gets stuck listening to the safety briefing and once he's proven he knows how a life vest works he's sent on his way, now even more questions brewing in his head.

"...Well that was weird." He mutters to himself as he tried to find a familiar face. Is Aunt May here somewhere or did they even ask her if she wanted a force vacation on a luxury liner cruise? She'd probably enjoy it.

Guest Starring in this horror movie...

Okay, Peter's decided he doesn't like the boat at all. His sense have been on edge the whole time, his stomach feels constantly upset on account of all the vertigo, no Aunt May, and now there are ghosts. Which explains why his senses are all upset.

"Dude!" He ducks just in time to avoid a chair aimed at his head. It wasn't likely to kill him but he'd still rather avoid the headache. "I'd get out if I could but I can't." He tells the ghosts, not that they seem to care in the least.

[ tetcho waits, he's curious sensing the promise of more to be shared here but years of dealing with his partner back home who insults tetcho before explaining holds him back from asking.

oh. he deflates a little. ] I hoped there was a way off. So, it is better for you to stay on this boat until you figure out how to get back that very long long long long way? [ which, ok he didn't need to say it four times but... ]

1. Strange Chateau

There was no comfort to wake up in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar right arm. The last thing Cobb remembered was bleeding out on the hot sands of the only street in Freetown. That blue son of a bitch had outdrawn him and with the limited medical resources of the town Cobb knew his chances of survival were fifty-fifty at best.

Now, he'd opened his eyes to a clean room, a comfy bed and a little white card. It was not his little house in Freetown. It wasn't Tatooine at all given the lack of dry air and intense heat. He also wasn't sure he was himself. His right arm was not his own flesh and blood but metal and wires.

He read the note because the room itself didn't seem to have any answers. How the kriff had he ended up on a star cruiser with a new arm? Who had brought him here? Why? What was the point?

The little card told him to go to deck one and while Cobb could be an ornery bastard deck one seemed like the only place to get answers. So, he started walking, swaying slightly with the movement of the ship, life vest clutched tightly in his hand.

2. Messing With My Mind

After realizing, terrifyingly, that he was not on a star cruiser but a boat Cobb kept to the center of the ship, away from the edges and the endless expanse of water beyond. That Gal Friday hadn't seemed concerned when he protested he couldn't swim. She'd cheerily recommended he go to the pool for swimming lessons, like it was no big thing. He also noticed the way she spoke made it seem like an order more than a suggestion.

He wasn't compelled to follow those anymore so he'd gone towards the middle of the ship where he'd found what seemed like an elegant bar. Cobb got himself a drink and sat down in a chair to try and figure this whole thing out.

After one drink, Cobb hadn't come up with a good solution for getting off this ship or a way to find answers. So, he got up, went back to the bar and got himself another drink.

While he waited he leaned on the bar, a little lost in his own head.

3. Lots of Mystery

It took him a bit of time to get sea legs - dank farrick he was still on the open ocean - and started to explore the ship a bit. Cobb still wasn't comfortable walking along the outer deck near the ocean but he did risk checking out the pool more towards the middle of the deck.

Yup. It was a pool.

To Cobb, it seemed like a waste. So much water just for swimming in. Not even bathing. Just swim around and waste the damn stuff. It smelled chemically too which made it seem like even more of a waste. Could've keep it clean and pure for drinking instead.

He was contemplating dipping a toe in out of curiosity when he heard a sharp scrape sound behind him. He turned fast and saw a chair scooting across the deck towards him. It leapt up suddenly and flew right towards his face.

Instinctively, Cobb raised his arm to block. His right arm. His dominant arm. The chair shattered and splintered against the metal which was a bit of a blessing. Had it still been flesh and blood he would've been seriously hurt. Instead he was able to shake it off and quickly look around.

"What the stars..." he muttered, trying to see if any more furniture was flying towards him.

"In the flesh." It's an absolutely stupid joke, but all at once Palamedes wants nothing more than to see Camilla suppress a smile or roll her eyes. Now that he has allowed himself to inspect her, he can see the weariness in every muscle of her body. The tension running down her spine doesn't indicate an eagerness for action, as it may have once, but instead a pent-up fear and readiness to flee. He wants to run to her, to embrace her, to ask what happened and assure her no harm will come to her ever again.

Instead, he just tips his head to the side, watching her gently. "Come sit? There's tea."

Well, Cobb's not the only one here who needs a drink. Here approaches a man in what might be the cleanest, whitest clothes Cobb has ever seen, clearly not touched by desert dust ever.

"Still bringing new faces aboard, I see. Welcome to the circus." There's both bitterness and amusement behind the words as Johnny gives him a slow elevator look.

[honestly, an expectant pause is all Palamedes needs to launch into his theorizing] My current standing hypothesis is that they’re revenants—ghosts, or spirits, if you like—who have been drawn here for some purpose, and perhaps even trapped, much as we have been. And unlike us, they have been given menial duties: as servers, cleaners, and the like. No wonder some of them have gotten rebellious. One would expect a certain amount of deterioration of self from a revenant trapped on this side of the River for an extended period of time, which would also explain their erratic behavior.

Oh, I’m still inclined to search for a way off—even if not for myself, for others who might find more luck than II in the world beyond this boat.[smiles in a way he hopes is encouraging] It’s only that I may require a different method. How does one travel from one non-location to another non-location, after all?

There's always a touch of suspicion when he meets anyone that clean and shiny. No one but the wealthy are that clean on Tatooine. Usually, they're assholes. Cobb shouldn't be so quick to judge in this strange new place. Everything is shiny and clean.

"Much obliged," he said with a small nod of his head towards the man. "Cobb Vanth."

He decides not to use his usual title in this place. He's got no authority here. No power. He's as stuck as the rest of them. Even this clean looking gentleman who is assessing him.

Cobb's not as clean. He has a new shirt because his favorite red one had a bullet hole in it. Still has his red bandana around his neck and his patched together pants. There's still a hint of sand clinging to boots. He's not of the higher class. Clearly.

"A serial is a long running show, usually a drama. They can be downloaded by satellite feed to watch. Watching them is easier than dealing with humans in person." While still managing to let it learn and understand how humans even function, socially.

"Find me a projector or display surface and an aux cord, and I'd be glad to show you. There's no wireless communications aboard this ship; no electronic signals at all. Which is the strangest thing about the whole thing to me--we don't even seem to have sonar or radar systems, as far as I can tell. No surveillance cameras."

Which, on top of not having satellite feeds to download new serials from, paints a very odd picture.

"Johnny Summer. I'd offer to buy you a drink, but the gesture's rather meaningless here." His smile comes easily, and if he is judging Cobb for that outfit, it isn't obvious right away.

He sidles up to the bar, ordering a cocktail of some kind.

Palamedes nods, pleased. "I'll see what I can hunt down. I have to admit, I'm as curious to see how your mechanism works as I am to watch the serials."

With a hmm, he takes off his glasses, fiddling with them thoughtfully. "I wonder if there is, in fact, somewhere on this ship where one could send or receive a signal--the bridge, for instance, which is mysteriously impossible to visit. But I take your point. It's a purposeful choice, isn't it? And why? To ensure we have no contact with the outside world?"

Pal finds that reasoning frightfully plausible--and it's familiar, too. "This ship reminds me a little bit of the place I was before I was brought here." A beat. "It's not a good thing."

[Alas, Jade didn't quite bully her enough to get out of explaining. His talk of setting things on fire certainly gets her mind going--between that and artes, it sure sounds like he's talking about either magic or strike artes--but she's closely focused on his actual demonstration.

And--

She's never seen an arte quite like this one. There's no formula, so it can't be magic, but strike artes don't just...manifest a weapon out of a limb.

Nearly all traces of annoyance vanish as she leans forward with interest, glancing between the spear and Jade. Nearly--it still didn't explain a thing about fonons.]

How did you--you're not just forming aer into a transient shape; that's a real weapon! But how did it just appear like that? And what does that have to do with fonons? This isn't like any magic I've seen before...

Edited (grammar fail whoops) 2022-03-13 19:51 (UTC)

[Her dismissal doesn't discourage him in the least. If anything, it gets him even more hyped. He fusses all around her as she reads, righting upended furniture and clearing the floor at her feet.]

Of course!! [He leaps to attention in front of her the moment she finishes her sentence.] But you were hoping to relax, right? For the sake of your beauty rest, I'll gladly sacrifice my body and more! So please, feel free to lower your guard in confidence.

"More of a kidnapping or imprisonment than a vacation. Some have even speculated that they're dead and this is an afterlife. I find that unlikely."

This unit is reasonably sure it doesn't have a soul.

[She can see all his movement from the corners of her eyes, and it's very distracting - and strange. Lucy's more used to people cowering away from her, or looking at her with disgust, not adoration or a willingness to be at her beck and call.

Her eyes flick up to Sanji again.]

You must have hit your head really hard. Look at me, I have horns.

[She points a finger towards one of the white protrusions sticking out from her pink hair. Back where she was from, her horns alone were enough to make people see her as unattractive. Surely now that she confirmed they weren't hair accessories he'd do the same.

Right?]

[Twirly shit? Twirly shit?! This bastard!

The pointless rage boiling in his belly is familiar indeed, and so is the way he immediately abandons his wit when he can't let go of a stupid marimo insult. He shoves his glaring face into Zoro's personal space and snarls.]

You say something, shithead?!

At the mention of the afterlife, Palamedes brightens and grows excited. “No, no, not the afterlife. Certainly not. But a space that exists outside or between both life and afterlife? A bubble of space where space should not exist? That sounds quite possible indeed. The one thing I’m struggling with is that a person—or group of people—would have to construct and maintain the entire illusion of the ship, which would be quite an undertaking.”

“I could barely hold together the idea of a single room, and even that should have been impossible.” This last part he tosses off casually: yes, I did create my very own tiny dimension, it was pretty cool.

Cobb was about to be neighborly and order for the man but Summer was faster and did it himself. He'd have to find another opportunity to be polite. This sort of situation required friends or at least allies.

His glass of whiskey comes first. Cobb picks it up and turns his back to the bartender to look out over the lounge. People watching has become his pastime of choice on this ship, trying to get familiar with the faces even if he hasn't gone out of his way to be friendly.

"You been here long?" he asks as he sips his whiskey.

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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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Peter Parker | MCU

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Cobb Vanth | Star Wars | Beware Book of Boba Fett Spoilers/Speculation

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Messing with my Mind

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