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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1. The Steam that Rises from the Water
What scares Johnny Summer the most is not being on a ship--an impressively large ship, decked out in a manner he could hardly imagine, bigger than any cruiseliner on the ocean in 1907 (his native time). It's that he's away from his building--his home and business alike. Anywhere that isn't the Margrave Building is foreign territory these days; the city center would be as panic-inducing as this situation, in some ways.

But Johnny is a man of poise, if nothing else. He arrived in a dinner suit with a white summer jacket, and even found a tin of hair pomade in his pocket (along with the other items that should be). Even before he left his room, he'd paused to slick back his hair, adjust his jacket and try to find his dignity. By the time he arrives at the muster drill, he's managed to almost seem more curious than scared witless.

It's an act. He's curious what acts other people will have, to cover their fear and bewilderment.

2. Tells Me You Are Satan's Daughter
A. Tauva
It took only two confrontations with Gal Friday for Johnny to realize that the local smoking restrictions were inescapable. So, he's retreated to Tauva, where he can get away with lighting up one of the thin black cigarettes he's brought with him and think.

As he notices a stranger approaching, his eyebrows both lift, his lips curl, and he holds out his cigarette case in an invitation. "No offense to whoever's running the humidor, but I'm not sure I trust the local cigars."

B. Pool Bar
The first time he hears the sound of the blender at the pool bar, Johnny is first confused, then intrigued. Such things simply don't exist in his time; he's over 40 years before the invention of the pina colada.

So the sound that comes out of him at the first sip of one (served in a festive pineapple with paper umbrella garnish, of course) is one of delight and surprise. "Well, will wonders never cease. I'm going to need to figure out how to make these, when I get back to my place. They're sure to be a hit."

3. If I Am the Devil's Son
Unfortunately for Johnny, he's in the Stellar dining room, eating a plate of duck a l'orange when the poultrygeist...erm, poltergeist activity begins. The unused place settings begin to dance along the edge of the table, before the forks and knives begin throwing themselves at the hapless diners.

With a yelp, Johnny throws himself out of his chair, trying to take cover under the table. But it too seems to be starting to float.

"What is this madness?!"

X. Then into the Darkness We Should Run
[Wildcards always welcome. Plurk

darkersolstice or Discord darkersolstice#9463 if you want to plot a thing!]

So where does a troubled (but working on it, and making great progress, according to his case file!) young man go when he's plucked out of the familiar stability of the recovery center he's been at for, oh, the past six months, and dropped on some mystery cruise out in the middle of the wide, vast ocean?

He goes out looking for a distraction. A safe, sober distraction (the pool), that also just so happens to be on the edge of temptation, because the bar is, like, right there and he can see it, and if he had a drink, he wouldn't be breaking any rules, because the rules of Harmony Grove definitely don't apply out here and--

Jeff starts humming a song to stop that line of thought dead in its tracks. He takes a mental step back and looks at the situation-- well, less the situation, and more his actions that led him from his cabin to the poolside bar. Did he really come out here to swim? He doesn't even have a fucking swimsuit. He's wearing sweatpants and ratty denim jacket he arrived in, didn't even make the slightest effort to try and find more swim-appropriate clothes. And then he went, oh no, can't swim! but hey, look, there's a bar! and now here he is, standing at the bar, which seems to be manned by nothing but the faintest impression of maybe-something. Always good, after the ordeal he's still recovering from with this "Invisible Friend".

(Possession. He doesn't recommend it.)

It's like he's doing everything he can to trigger a bender. But, Jeff recognizes this familiar pattern for what it is, and hey, that's good, that's progress. Now he can break the pattern and oh, there's another guy here. How long's he been here? Fuck, he's dapper. He's the kind of guy that the word "dapper" was made to describe. And Mr. Dapper Man has a festive, refreshing pina colada.

"I'll take a virgin!" he suddenly declares. A beat, then, "I mean, um, virgin... pina colada, not like a virgin person."

"Not a drinker?" The question is casual, as Johnny takes a sip of his colada. "I always have fun with cats like you at my club. Figuring out what I could make that would still be exciting enough to be worth coming out for, I mean."

So there's totally no judgment here. Though he never did apply the same principle to the Blue Horseshoe Pub. The laborers and servants there for the evening weren't going to Be Seen like the hoity-toity folk in the Margravine Club. Their purpose was usually to get shitfaced.

It's the poise more than the outfit that make him stand out. The kindest word to describe the crowd milling about the deck would be 'eclectic' - Natasha's own red-and-black body armor barely stands out, much less the sort of clothing a normal human being would actually choose to wear for an extended period of time. It's a little old-fashioned, maybe, but what's a bit of anachronism on what she's already taken to privately calling the cruise ship of the damned?

No, it's the demeanor that's interesting. No outward panic, no belligerence, no attempts to overcompensate by pretending this is exactly where he's meant to be - just an air of curiosity she might actually accept as genuine if she was a little more trusting and a little less unnerved by the entire situation herself.

She inclines her head in a nod of greeting when she catches his eye, and offers a brief, wry smile that mingles an edge of sympathy with acknowledgment of just how absurd everything in the last 15 or so minutes has been.

Johnny's own lips quirk in a small smirk, and he makes a casual approach. As entirely aware of people as Natasha is, she might note that the left side of his jacket hangs a little heavier than the right, in a way that might indicate he's armed. But nothing about him has a manner that indicates he's military or otherwise trained to violence.

"I would ask what a dame like you is doing in a place like this, but I doubt you've got any more answers than I do."

She notes the asymmetry, and doesn't dismiss it - mistaking lack of apparent training for lack of threat is a decidedly rookie move - but appends a note to her mental file. It's always good to know where the weapons likely are well before things turn violent. (Her own pistol is holstered at her hip. Her current attire comes with precious few hiding places, and only a fool would leave a gun laying in her cabin where anyone could come across it while snooping.)

And things will turn violent, she's almost certain of it. Not now, necessarily, but a herd of strangers, all confined in a relatively small space, unsure of how they arrived or why they've been contained?

Someone is going to do something stupid eventually.

"You mean you didn't wish for a vacation where a strange, horned statue could hear it?" she asks. "Damn. There goes that theory. What is the last thing you remember before waking up, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Going to bed, strangely enough. It had been a pretty eventful night, though. A costumed thug invading my building. The return of a man we'd thought was dead."

He might have wished for a vacation, sometime around when he'd had to shoot the frankensteined Lord Hawthorne, but that was well beside the point.

It's subtle, but her shoulders lift a hair, and something in her expression sharpens, just a little, like something he's said has more meaning to her than just a litany of strange events. There isn't anything hostile there, just...interest.

"Well, at least one of us might have had a good night's sleep." A heartbeat's pause. "Only the one living dead man?"

Johnny Summer | Lavender Jack | OTA

2B (or not 2B HA I'M FUNNY) also blanket cw: addiction/recovery/institutions/hallucinations

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2a, cw eye trauma

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