it's my party and I'll cry if I want to

[palfriday]

Who: Gal Friday + YOU
What: Icebreaker party
When: 3/13, evening
Where: Rischie
Warnings: TBA

[the morning announcements alter daily now, by the second week of the month. one week until the party. four days until the party. the party is tomorrow.]

The new cruiser get-together will start at 9PM tonight at Rischie! Remember: The dress code is cruise elegant! Hm? [there is a sound like a crackle and pop of static.] The Captain says he won't be attending, but he'll be paying extra special attention to everybody who does!

[if that's a sufficient enough bribe.

"but we don't have cruise elegant clothing," you cry. but you do! have you not checked the top drawer in your room's dresser, where at most two perfectly suited formal outfits are located? you have? but they weren't there before today? don't ask questions. just get ready for the party.

the house lights in the club are at full brightness, giving everything the sort of uneasy liminal feeling a room gets when used for something opposite its intended purpose. booths line the walls, and small tables and chairs sit between them and the dance floor, which is empty except for one table, holding a series of "HELLO, MY NAME IS..." nametags and sheets of glittery stickers. Friday is there, of course, standing by the table. she's even dressed up! and if your character hasn't corrected her previously, their name tag will have their true name. there are also a few buffet tables with refreshments on them, and trays bearing canapes and flutes of champagne float by. (deftly avoiding minors! excluding Jinx, but only if Venti is within close proximity. welcome to parenthood, barbatos!)

once everyone is settled in, Friday will clear her throat (??) to get everyone's attention and explain the rules of the night. it's an altered version of twenty questions: every person in the room must answer ten questions about themselves, asked by their fellow passengers, collecting stars for every answer considered acceptable. when they have 10 stars, they're allowed to leave!

oh, yeah, the door to the club shut about five minutes ago. it doesn't seem very eager to open back up again.

time to break some ice! breaking ice and cruises always go well together, after all.]

Comments

Another II

[prodigalmess]

Malcolm can respect that the other man wants to get the hell out of here. The only reason he's being so 'social' is under the pretense of getting to question his fellow party attendees. He's learned a lot of information so far.

The man who approaches looks formidable, with his mass of dark hair, the hoodie over his suit and ripped off nametag. Malcolm himself looks sharp though his nametag has also been corrected. His last name has been completely crossed out with marker and 'Bright' has been written underneath it.

He seems to want a random question, so Malcolm throws one at him. "Favorite song?"

[worthallthis]

Thankfully, this one he can answer! He knows exactly one (1) song that he likes, so that must qualify as his favorite. So he looks maybe vaguely relieved when he says, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

[prodigalmess]

That answer is both surprisingly quick and just plain surprising. It's not what he was expecting to hear from such a gruff looking man.

"Are you a 'Wizard of Oz' fan?" Malcolm asks. He can count that as another question if he wants to.

[worthallthis]

"It's the only story I remember," he admits with a tiny, slightly-awkward shrug. "But I did like the song."

[prodigalmess]

"Hmm." That's an odd answer. The only story he remembers is 'The Wizard of Oz'? Is he having some kind of memory loss?

"Did you see it in a theater?" Malcolm asks. Call it a hunch.

[worthallthis]

Not too much of a hunch, if you recognize that his suit (sans the hoodie, anyway) is something that would've been fashionable about the time the movie first came out. "I think so." He's still not entirely sure if he actually saw it three times, or if his stupid faulty brain is mashing multiple films together somehow. "I only know pieces of it. They're all good pieces, though."

[prodigalmess]

It's hard to see the suit with the hoodie on top of it, but Malcolm is still gleaning enough information from him, even if his memory seems faulty.

"Do you know what year it was before you came here?" he asks. Maybe he's suffering from some kind of amnesia following his arrival here. Malcolm hasn't run into anyone else with that symptom though.

[worthallthis]

"Yes. Two-thousand fourteen." Which is definitely not a year The Wizard of Oz was in theaters.

He can guess where this is going, after various previous conversations, and says, a little wearily, "I have four days of memories from before I came to this ship. I don't know what happened to me or what I did before that." He has certain impressions, of course, certain things he knows without knowing why. But most of them have nothing to do with movie theaters and what he saw in them.

[prodigalmess]

Definitely not, unless it was a rerelease. Malcolm furrows his brow, trying to reconcile the discrepancy.

"Four total?" Malcolm asks. "You remember seeing 'The Wizard of Oz' in a movie theater, but you also remember that it was 2014. I'm pretty sure that movie came out in 1939."

Time, it seems, is messed up for this man.

[worthallthis]

Very messed up. "I know." He shrugs one shoulder, the right one, helplessly. "I know I've been around. A long time. Seen handlers age." While he didn't. He's still trying to reconcile that. "But I don't know why or how. Or how long."

[prodigalmess]

[ ooc: Bucky's hand is metal right? Is it covered up? ]

He narrows his eyes, considering that. The man could be lying. Everyone here could be lying. If Malcolm continues down that path of paranoia, then maybe all of this is some kind of hallucination or fever dream of his? As difficult as it is, he has to choose to believe that at least some of this is reality.

"You don't remember anything," Malcolm states. "So you don't know what happened to you at all? What's the last thing you remember, circa 1939?"

[worthallthis]

((whole left arm is metal! the arm is covered by sleeves, but the hand is free :) ))

He shakes his head, mouth a firm line. "Nothing. I. Know some things. Without knowing how I know them. I have all my skills. I don't remember anything personal." Which is a little bit of a lie. He has a couple broken flashes of skinny Steve, and the couple images of Wizard of Oz in the theater, but he doesn't know what the time frame for them is.

[prodigalmess]

"There are a variety of things that can cause amnesia," Malcolm replies, going into his psychology training. "Yours sounds like retrograde, which usually means..."

He stops talking when his gaze turns down to Bucky's hands, on of which is completely normal and the other of which seems to be made of metal.

"Is that.. a glove?"

[worthallthis]

He knows exactly where his-- amnesia? Amnesia. His lack of memory comes from. He certainly doesn't need anyone to explain it.

So the change in subject is welcome. He looks down, then holds up his metal hand, curling the fingers for Malcolm's benefit with a whirring of gears. "It's my hand. It goes up to my shoulder."

[prodigalmess]

Trauma. It usually means trauma. Malcolm's been dealing with a sort of amnesia lately concerning a woman that his father killed, or at least Malcolm thought he killed her. A lot of revelations came out before he arrived on this boat, and he's still not sure where all the pieces of that fit together.

"You.. have a robotic arm?" A seemingly obvious question since Malcolm can hear gears whirring inside of it. It's unexpected though. He doesn't know what to make of this man.

His eyes go to his torn name tag. "Do you have a name that you go by?"

[worthallthis]

Being locked into a chair that blasted electricity into your face counts as trauma, absolutely.

Along with everything else he mostly doesn't remember. Yay.

"Yes," he answers the first question, "and no," he answers the second, and lets Malcolm see while a couple plates in the arm lift on their own, showing the wires underneath for him. "I was usually called the Asset. Sometimes the Soldier."

[prodigalmess]

"Is that what you want to be called?" Malcolm asks. Bucky's nametag looks self-edited, but he might notice that Malcolm's is edited as well. He believes in the idea that if one name doesn't suit you, you're allowed to call yourself something else.

[worthallthis]

"No." He pokes at the stupid nametag, actual name torn off and remaining sticker now decorated with several gold stars from answering questions. "But I don't have anything else I want to be called, either." A pause. "Soldier is better than Asset. But they both came from HYDRA so they're both pretty bad."

[prodigalmess]

"HYDRA?" Malcolm asks, unfamiliar with the organization. "I'll call you whatever you'd like me to, so we'll go with Soldier, I guess." It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but Malcolm will get used to it.

"What do you think of this ship?" he asks.

[worthallthis]

"Secret group in the government. Kind of in the government. Maybe in a lot of governments." He shakes his head shortly, sharply. "They're not here." He's pretty sure if HYDRA was here they would have tried to reclaim him by now. He doesn't feel safe, exactly, but he also doesn't feel threatened by that in particular. "The ship is. Fine. Big. Fancy."

He looks around the room they're in now, as if making his point. It's way too fancy for him, really. But he supposes it's better than the hiding in condemned buildings he'd been doing before.

[prodigalmess]

He'd ask how Soldier knows that HYDRA isn't here, but he seems pretty confident about it. But maybe they're behind all of this? As someone who used to work for a federal agency, Malcolm's pretty aware that there are shady goings-on in every government.

"The accommodations are nice," Malcolm agrees. "It makes me wonder if they're trying to lull us into a false sense of security."