sail_ooc | 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

ONE.
Trevor most definitely did not choose to be here, and he resents the whole ordeal more than a little on principle alone. He wakes in a bed that isn't his own, which isn't that much of a problem, except for the fact that once he's out of the room his feet feel compelled to move on their own. He fights the impulse every inch of the way, a deep scowl etched into his face as he tries to dig in to go the other way, because compulsions to move in a particular direction have seldom ended well, in his experience.

All the same, he ends up on the deck with everyone else in the end, glowering at everyone who looks his way. The lei is tolerated exactly until it's around his neck and the greeter's back is turned, after which it's quickly pulled off, examined, and discarded with disgust.

"Where can a man get a drink in this place?" he asks nobody in particular as he moves around and among the other passengers; if this is where he's got to be right now, he absolutely is going to need a heck of a lot more ale.

TWO.
The extended greeting-slash-lecture is exceedingly boring. He resists exactly as long as he feels he can get away with before begrudgingly doing what he's told, but once he's free he makes a beeline for the food and drink, helping himself to both. His sword and whip are gone, along with the rest of his weapons, and his cloak's been abandoned to the cabin he started in because it's clearly too warm here for that, so he moves mutinously among the others with his glass, eyeing everything suspiciously, like he's surrounded in a world of magic he's feeling increasingly uneasy in.

Hey, where he's from running water is a luxury.

But the pool is certainly enticing, and he knows he could damn well use a bath, so eventually he strips down to his underthings and jumps in, then settles at the edge, sipping his beer. The blood and muck will come off just as easily if he just soaks, right?

THREE.
Ghosts, Trevor understands. They're less numerous than the undead, of course, but common enough, so when things start moving and invisible people start whispering and shouting he mostly just rolls his eyes, shoving things back where they came from when they start moving too close to him.

"Oi, what's got you in such a tiff? I didn't ask to be here either, so lay off already. You're lucky I don't have my things or else you'd really have something to whinge about."

"Jeez, fella, you get on board a swanky ship, immediately get leid, and all you can do is complain."

Beetlejuice had decided that gravity was for chumps, and was floating in a deck chair while sipping a mai tai.

"Haven't gotten laid yet since I got here," he grumbles, clearly missing the other meaning.

He takes a more than healthy gulp from his glass, watching the strange man over the rim, one eyebrow quicker.

"Neat trick you've got there." Not the strangest thing he's seen, which is honestly a miracle for once.

It was a shame his wordplay was missed, but, he was willing to overlook it for the sake of a compliment.

"Thanks! I'm dead." Beetlejuice beamed from his floating seat. "I'm a demon."

It's an interesting predicament that he's found himself in, but Vanitas wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouse-- or however that saying goes. He wanders the pool deck with a carefree gait, snooping about the ship to get an idea of how or why he'd ended up here. There are a lot of interesting sights to see and things to investigate, but it's a man stripping down to enter the pool that catches his eye.

He stalks over towards the edge of the pool, leaning over to look down at Trevor with bright, curious blue eyes. He lets out a low whistle, as if impressed by the man's gal to treat a public swimming pool like it's a bathtub.

"You know..." he trails off, eyeing the grime that is beginning to turn the water around him murky, "You're usually supposed to wash off before getting into the pool. Is that blood?" He sounds about as delighted by that possibility as he is surprised by it.

He tilts his head up with a dry kind of curiosity to regard the other man, deliberately raising his glass to take a gulp of beer before answering. He refuses to feel embarrassed, honestly he left embarrassment behind a long time ago. What's shame?

"What's the point? Isn't it here to get you clean? Why bother cleaning up first?"

Kicking off his shoes, he drops down to sit next to the other man, only dipping his feet into the water. For a complete stranger, his chosen spot is pretty close to invading Trevor's space.

"No no no," he says with a frantic wave of his hand, then gestures out towards the other brave people in the water. "Pools are for recreation! For fun. If you muddy the water with all your blood and other mysterious substances, you'll ruin it for everyone else."

"Is that how you speak to the spirits of the dead?"

Comes a cool, French-accented voice. There's a black dress and a big black straw hat to go with it, and beneath the hat: a woman. Average height, slim build, 1000% a vampire.

"Your manners are appalling."

She doesn't sound truly condemning, or at least--she doesn't sound surprised.

He turns from the ghosts, fully expecting somebody garden-variety with a twist. Inconvenient, mostly because most ghosts he's met are a pain in the ass, but he's all set to indulge her a little.

...at least, until he actually sees her. Bone-deep ingrained ancestral instinct screams at him. Undead. Fucking great. He reaches for weapons that aren't there then scowls instead as he regards her.

"So I've been told. Is there a problem?"

In the face of that surly expression, Giselle's eyebrows arch.

"You tell me. You're the one shadowboxing with people who aren't here."

She takes a step closer: elegant, precise. Deliberately provocative, but what can she say? She enjoys provoking men now and again.

"I don't know, but if you find out please tell me." Tetcho, sword and uniformed image spoiled by the lei he is still wearing joins Trevor. The feathers are still making his nose itch and he may be a moment or two from another sneeze. He's not someone who drinks in dire situations (and this seems to be a rather dire situation for the most part, being stuck on a ship unwillingly like this).

"Do you know who brought us here?" Because he really, really has a mission to get back to. End of the world and all.

Lucy didn't believe in the ghost stories at first, until she started hearing the voices more and more. Hell, if this place could put her body back together in one piece and keep everyone from leaving, then why not throw ghosts into the mix too?

Not that she feels intimidated. If anything, she also feels more annoyed than scared.

"Your things? You an exorcist or something?" she asks with a bored tone of voice. She happened to be near enough to hear him. Moments before she spoke up, she also managed to stop a picture frame of a jumping dolphin that had been hurled at her, using one of her strange hands to grab it midair.

[ooc: Not sure how familiar you are with Elfen Lied, but just in case... In canon, Lucy and Nyuu's strange hands (called vectors) can't be seen by normal humans. My general rule is pretty easy: If characters have special abilities, or are psychic, they can see the vectors. If you're unsure feel free to ask me.]

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

Trevor Belmont | Castlevania | ota

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3 (Lucy)