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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.]
no subject
[ No bragging from Flynn, who mostly just listens to what Witcher has to tell him about aer and artes and accepts them as truth. He's no blastia expert, and most of the information on the Adephagos he learned was secondhand, scraps pulled from Yuri and the brief summary they'd given him as they headed into Baction.
He knows enough to know how troubling it is, though, and how much danger their world is really in. ]
It seems that Zaude was a blastia all along. A massive one, with an equally-massive and powerful core. Its purpose was to hold the Adephagos back and keep it locked away. Alexei thought it was a weapon he could use, and activated it.
...he was wrong.
[ And so was Flynn, he doesn't quite say, but there's a heaviness to his words all the same. He is entirely too aware of his own mistakes, knows very well that if not for his own blind obedience, Alexei might never have gotten that far, and perhaps Terca Lumireis wouldn't be on the verge of ruin. ]
no subject
[What the hell was the point of sacrificing all those Children of the Full Moon, then? And about Estelle supposedly causing calamity--the calamity was already there.]
Oh, those idiots... And how the hell could Alexei have been so stupid?! He went and screwed everything up, and now we have to clean up his stupid mess!
[Yeah, she's not quite done insulting Alexei, sorry Flynn. But she's probably got it out of her system...for now.]
Hey, you said the Adephagos was...in the sky or something, right? The record we saw in Myorzo showed this...giant creature, like, eating the whole planet, and it just...didn't seem like something of that scale could be real.
[And she knows ancient murals and reliefs aren't always meant to be taken literally, but if this one was accurate...]
no subject
Was, Flynn reminds himself, looking out at calm blue water and fluffy clouds scudding across the horizon, rather than at Rita. Her anger is justified and too-much all at once. Guilt and worry gnaw holes in the lining of his stomach. Flynn swallows. His voice is steady. It doesn't feel like it should be, but training will do that for you.
He clutches white-knuckled at the rail in front of them. ]
It is... beyond the scale of comprehension.
[ Big words from Flynn, who tackles massive structural problems every day. ]
Every day, the sky grows darker. Monsters and people alike are on-edge, and the monsters seem to be experiencing echoes of what they did in Zaphias. You can look up anywhere in the world and see it, turning the sky purple. We should be able to see it here.
no subject
And it's easy to understand why--if the Adephagos is truly that massive, surely no normal weapon or spell would work on it. Even the ancients--even after sacrificing the Children of the Full Moon--didn't actually defeat it despite their far more advanced technology.
When he says people are "on edge", she bets that's an understatement. That thing could destroy their entire world, can apparently be seen from anywhere, but then-]
But if that's the case, then--then we should be able to see it from here, shouldn't we?!
[She doesn't exactly intend to shout at him, but it's just that--as time goes by, everything seems to make even less sense.]
no subject
[ The words fall to the uncaring sea, sparkling in afternoon sunlight. The sky is clear. It will haunt him for days after this. ]
It makes no sense that the sky should look like it does, or that no one here remembers the sky being that way. Even Yuri doesn't remember, though given his fall, I suppose that makes sense. But you didn't fall. You were working on the problem.
no subject
Hey, what are you talking about? What do you mean, he fell? From where?!
no subject
From the top of Zaude.
[ A miracle, really, that he manages to keep his voice somewhat even, that he says the words at all even though his heart crowds thickly into his throat, thinking about it. ]
That's what we all assumed. Zaude's core fell on top of Alexei. It was massive, and in the chaos—Yuri was close to him—either he was crushed by the core or he.
[ Flynn has to swallow around the tightness of those words, try again. ]
He fell. He remembers falling.
no subject
[She stares at him, wide-eyed, automatically zeroing in on the lack of certainty on Flynn's part.]
You didn't know what happened to him? Was that the last thing you remember before all this?
[She's still furious at Yuri for apparently telling this to Flynn but not her (yeah, they're best friends or whatever, but still).]
no subject
My knights and I were being attacked by unusually-aggressive monsters in massive numbers in Hypionia. We were escorting guild refugees, and we ran aground and were attacked. Yuri has been gone for three weeks.
[ And that is the story, and he could leave it there but he rushes to fill in the gap a moment later, his lungs twisting up against the edges of his ribs. ]
I looked for him. As long as I possibly could, I took out the Imperial fleet as long as we could spare—but I never—the world is falling into chaos. The guilds are fractured and leaderless and with Alexei dead and a traitor on top of all of that—
[ He sucks in a shaking breath. Focus, Flynn. You can't unload all your problems onto Rita, not now. Not like this. He draws himself back in, pulls back all his fear and worry and stress, presses it down inside himself. ]
...it's been weeks with no word.
no subject
[Yuri, missing for weeks while their world is on the verge of being devoured by the Adephagos. Rita has quickly gone from deciding to dismiss the issue of the missing memories to being beyond frustrated all over again.]
So, if he hadn't shown up here-
[They'd have no idea if he was even alive. And even for as little as she's interacted with him, it's obvious that Flynn is nearly letting the guilt and responsibility crush him.
And, you know, that's kind of annoying.]
Hey!
[She snaps the single word loudly, jabbing him in the chest with her finger (ow, she shouldn't do that to someone covered in armour-)]
Don't go all gloomy now when he's obviously fine! I don't know how, but--he's one less thing you should be worrying about, don't you think?
no subject
[ The anger is not at all what Flynn was expecting, but like before, in the heat of Yormgen with Estelle's disappearance and Alexei's betrayal pressing him down into a leaden ball, it does the trick, smacks the guilt away until all he can do is stare down at this small, fierce girl with something like admiration.
She really has her priorities in order, doesn't she? ]
...of course. Forgive me. You're right; we need to be worrying about our situation now.
no subject
Yeah, now that we're technically missing too. But we can get un-lost as long as we're all still alive.
no subject
It's worth remembering. Flynn returns the grin, glad to have earned a smile in the first place. ]
We'd find a way even if we weren't, but I find myself quite glad that we are. Thank you, Rita.