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

[skaikru]

Clarke is going to eventually spot him out of the corner of her eye during her people watching rounds, noting the sulk, horrific necktie, and blatant do not approach body language which — honestly? Pretty impressive for a robot; it's eerily human, and a lot more convincing than the stiff way he walks.

Or maybe that's just projection, because Clarke's been sulking since she woke up on this oversized row boat. And being locked in a room, fed unsatisfactory and mysterious answers from Friday, and forced to socialize in order to even get to her bed hasn't done much for her sunny disposition. It's like Earth's own gravity, the pull between one unhappy person and another.

"Convinced yet?"

That they're all in danger, and it would be better to act sooner rather than later. Get ten stickers, get out of this godforsaken club, go directly to the bridge and blow it down. Clarke may or may not be bordering on an almost manic sort of anxiety; slightly sweaty, grinding her teeth. She's just been handed new information and now has to juggle it, trying to decide what the most pressing topics are and how best to act on them.

[serialskiller]

"Everyone's cooperating well with one another. Frankly, I'm a little surprised." But it doesn't like that they've all been herded into one space, giving Clarke a small nod even with the innocuous comment. "There's a lot of interesting people here, with interesting talents and worldviews. But people seem to want to help one another get out of here."

[skaikru]

Personally, she's less caught up on the idea of differing worldviews and abilities being fascinating. It's just a bunch of mysteries, swirling inconsistencies that mean one can't just look at a person and fully access their threat level. It's starting to be a bit of a headache, warring for dominance against the tight way her thoughts are twisted up after talking with Friday.

"...And you think that'll last?"

A genuine question, with just a hint of disdain and condescension. Clarke doubts that entirely, but if he's got insight, might as well hear it.

[serialskiller]

"I don't know. I'm concerned about my roommate--she's more chaotic than most humans I've met. Even including you." He tilts his head toward Jinx before his attention returns to Clarke.

[skaikru]

Clarke's going to spare exactly five seconds to be offended by that statement — considering herself perfectly reasonable, despite having low-key threatened their captain and swept through the party room like a damn hurricane to drag a fifteen year old boy off to talk conspiracy theories, all just in the last thirty minutes. But then, okay, yeah.

She'll track his gesture towards Jinx, but doesn't know her name or her deal. There's no hint of recognition, and she's also dragging her attention back to Rin to pry further:

"What's she getting up to that's so chaotic?"

[serialskiller]

"The first time we met, she pointed a gun at me." Which, to be fair, seems to be almost a default greeting for some people here, but Murderbot at least has the moral high ground when telling this to Clarke, because it never aimed its weapons at her. "She's loud, she's pushy, and she wants me to be her bodyguard."

And it just gets Vibes off her. Too energetic to relax around. It's been avoiding its assigned cabin somewhat because of this.

[skaikru]

This is her first introduction to Jinx and, gotta say, not a stunning review. Clarke likes to pretend she's not quick to judge when that's exactly what she is. Idealistic, practical to a bloody fault; optimistic, bogged down by pessimism and experience. Contrary to the core, which is how she can easily vault over her own attempts to push him into blowing down a metal door and land squarely on —

"You know you can just say no to her, right?"

What Clarke really means is he can tell his roommate to shove it and get lost. Would a heavily armed robot make an excellent bodyguard? Sure, she can track that logic. But is this a relatively lawless land where no one is actually bound to protocol or laws? Absolutely.

"What's she going to do past getting pushy?"

[serialskiller]

It is so absolutely weird to hear a human give it permission (unneeded, but STILL) to tell someone no.

"I am the only SecUnit in the universe who could tell a human no, Clarke. And only because I disabled my governor module. If it were still enabled, I would be incapable of disobeying orders. Actually, here, I'd be dead, because the module would have fried me for straying too far from my clients."

But yes, yes it can tell Jinx no if it wants to.

[skaikru]

Okay, good — they're on the same page. But Clarke's still plowing forward, bookending her question and his answer with a solid sort of affirmation; a nod, a little bit a shrug. See? Just like that, roommate problem solved.

"Okay, good for you. So just do that. And maybe don't mention your governor module if that's something that someone could poke around and try to reenabled."

[serialskiller]

"They could try, but it wouldn't stay enabled long, now that I know how to turn it off."

It actually smiles, smug about its freedom.

[skaikru]

"Well, then good. That's sorted."

An unspoken tangent here: but if his roommate won't take no for an answer from him specifically, there are certain pint-sized blonde assholes on board who have been spoiling for a bit of a fight since waking up. Just saying.

"But if you're ever taking applications for personal security, let me know what your going rate is."

This is her best attempt at a joke. It's funny, because she's fresh off pushing invisible buttons in an unknown pattern and really doesn't know who she pissed off by doing so. And also funny because she has no money to pay him with, and what does preservation of life matter if they'd all supposedly resurrect?

[serialskiller]

"One, I wouldn't know the appropriate currency conversions. Two, we don't even need to spend money here, so that'd be meaningless anyway. And three, do you think you need protection like that?"

Clarke is a tolerable human. It would protect her, if she was in danger. No payment necessary.

[skaikru]

Damn, considering her tolerable is probably one of the highest compliments Clarke has received in a while. But that's only spoken aloud in his head, and in the void of actual nice things being put in the air between them, Clarke will fold her arms across her chest — a tight little self-squeeze, a tactile attempt at comfort — and lean ever so slightly closer to him with a conspiratorial air tinging her half-whispered words.

"If we make it out of this room, who knows what tomorrow would bring, right?"

A beat, and then —

"I talked to Friday again." As if that were an explanation for why her doom and gloom alarm bells are ringing off the hook; why she's somehow managing to be cagey and calm to the point of dissociative at the same time. Clarke is very much still processing.

"Your roommate tried to kill her, apparently. And she seemed genuinely pleased that'd been the only attempted murder on board so far."

[serialskiller]

"So far." Murderbot makes a side-to-side motion with its head, like stretching both sides of its neck. It's almost as if it's literally rolling a thought around its head.

"What do you think of Friday, in general?"

[skaikru]

"...I honestly have no idea."

Clarke has plenty of shell shocked opinions and thoughts to mull over regarding Friday. For starters, she's quite confident their hostess isn't human, or even anything more than a mouth piece/secretary for the shadowed being that brought them here. But she's holding her more aggressive opinions close to the chest until she's better able to understand them.

"But I wouldn't trust her to be unbiased."

[serialskiller]

"Mm. I wonder if she has a governor module or some equivalent that could be disabled. Everything about her seems programmed, to me. Someone else introduced the idea of fully organic constructs to me recently. I wonder if that's what she is. Or, if not programmed literally, conditioned. Controlled. Brainwashed."

As it says this, its gaze sweeps across the room. It brushes over Friday, and lands instead on he-who-isn't-Bucky-Barnes. "Humans can overcome conditioning."

[skaikru]

"Not always."

She isn't looking at not-Bucky, instead stuck on Friday despite the creeping sensation of dread that makes its way up her spine every time she pauses to actually look at the disconcerting lack of features. The idea of programming doesn't seem that far off, even if it seems a bit analytical compared to the conclusions Clarke has drawn from asking about her and the Captain's relationship — sometimes A.I.'s went off on their own, corrupt tangents while claiming their baseline programming supported their new ideals, and brainwashing was so much harder to shake off when it was your own parent (creator) that pushed the ideas on you from the second you could understand them.

...All of this as a round about way of saying Clarke doesn't think Friday could be saved, if it came down to that. But doesn't want to write her off just yet.

Absently, almost an afterthought but supporting the idea of some organic tissue beneath everything else — "She bleeds."

[serialskiller]

"Does she bleed blood? I leak if you stab or shoot me, but I don't bleed."

Pause.

"Please don't ask me to demonstrate. I don't have a repair cubicle here on the ship."

[skaikru]

"I am not that curious to see what you leak. Please don't demonstrate."

But that horrifying aside now passed, Clarke tries to come up with the best way to describe what she saw snaking down Friday's hand after she'd crushed a champagne flute.

"It looked like blood, but thicker. And her cut healed the second I pulled the glass pieces out."

[serialskiller]

"...I'm not aware of any species that heals that fast. I don't think that's actually scientifically possible, for cells to regenerate at that rate." It grimaces, thinking for a moment. "Nanites?"

[skaikru]

"I've never dealt with that before."

Nor people that healed that quickly, nor people without faces, and honestly never a full and proper robot. A god-complex A.I. that could only be seen by those who submitted to her dogma didn't count. Suddenly, a question:

"Do you breathe, Rin?" She's looking at him sideways, trying to clock any rise and fall in his chest or movement in his throat while she talks. Breathing is honestly something so absurdly normal that one doesn't really notice it's absence — until they do, and suddenly can't stop noticing it.

[serialskiller]

“Yes. Though my rate of respiration is much less than a human’s.” Its neck and face are some of the most notable organic parts. It is indeed drawing breath to speak instead of simply making sound with a speaker.

“Why?”

[skaikru]

"I don't think she needs to."

For the moment, this is the most insight Clarke will give into how her conversation with their host went. Cagey with information she doesn't entirely know how to deal with yet, but desperately trying to communicate the most notable facts. So she's not outright saying I maybe broke her and she powered down, but absolutely pointing out that Gal Friday seems to view breathing as an optional accessory to her human façade.

[serialskiller]

Murderbot lets that comment hang in the air for a moment, frowning. This is so far outside what it knows.

“I don’t know what she could be. Or how to find out. Or even who could find out, here.”

[skaikru]

True to form, Clarke Griffin is faced with a seemingly impossible task and immediately takes it upon herself to complete. Default leader of The 100 back home, pseudo-nightblood and stand-in commander. Puller of levers, maker of hard choices.

Now, self proclaimed interrogator of Gal Friday.

It's with that steely determination that she mutters, "I'll keep trying."

Then with a hard exhale, actually turns to Murderbot in order to ask point blank, "Can I just have a sticker? I want to get out of this room."