come_sailaway | [Open + closed to César] The Water Grows Cloudy

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[Open + closed to César] The Water Grows Cloudy

Who: Eleanor Lamb and YOU (and César)
What: Guess who just arrived and is curious as hell?
When: February 1st until the event
Where: Places, Cabin 107
Warnings: The horrors of Rapture, potentially mistaking an activity for a suicide attempt, probably body image issues

1. The Reef Goes Still [Closed to César, Cabin 107, February 1st]

It's quite late at night before Eleanor finds the cabin she's been assigned; between meeting Doctor Watson, pillaging clothes from the Infinite Tommy Bahama, and doing her level best to scrub her suit clean so that it is at least laughably sanitary as opposed to a walking plague repository (more cleaning is in its future), Eleanor's been up and about quite late. This...ship phone...device is fascinating, but the menus are easy enough to grasp, and finding the unlock function only takes any amount of time because her free hand is full of clothes and she's concentrating on keeping her helmet floating around her body and away from her new clothes.

Which means the only warning César gets that someone is walking in will be the door unlocking moments before it swings open, revealing an armored teenage girl who is, at least, not wearing the helmet, and is loaded down with Tommy Bahama's warmest and most concealing clothes selections.

Those needles sure are long and sharp, aren't they? And quite shiny, since she polished them to a gleam after realizing people here can get infections.

2. Feeding Frenzy [LA FROMAGERIE CATHERINE INFINIE]

Guess who has never seen cheese in her entire fucking life? It's the smell of the place that draws her in, and then the sights before her that arrest Eleanor's exploration of it. This is food, right? The growling of her stomach says it's food, and it - this is cheese, she recognizes some kinds from pictures and more from descriptions in books, but why is there so much of it? How is there so much of it?

She might need a mentor here. Find her at the entrance to the new cheese shop, starving amidst plenty in layers from Tommy Bahama that add up to something modest in gray and white. The outfit is about as coordinated as she can make it, given that Eleanor's main goal was to cover up her skin.

3. There's Something In The Water [Pool, Decks, The Sea]

Sometimes you just need time to yourself. Visitors to the Pool might spot Eleanor suited up at the bottom of the deep end, the green glow of her helmet visible through the water; catch her sitting at the bottom thinking about her feelings, or maybe swimming through the water with an oddly fluid grace, her long legs doing the duty of a mermaid's tail. Or maybe she's just pacing, making laps around the deep end, seemingly content to not go anywhere near the shallows. She'll come up if you wave to her.

Out on the Decks, though, you might catch Eleanor similarly suited up and preparing to explore the outside of the ship. You might catch her lowering the lifeboat (to use its rope as a method of climbing back up) or in the act of clambering over the railing to drop down - or shimmying up the rope as she returns.

Spend time in the sea yourself? Find Eleanor crawling along the outside of the hull, exploring the ship with a thorough patience, or you might spot her as she breaches back to the surface to clamber into the lifeboat. People out for a flight or leaning over the deck might see the light from her helmet when she's crawling along the higher reaches of the ship.

On one such occasion Eleanor comes back up burdened. She breaches the water, flopping one hand onto the lifeboat, and then the other comes up and slaps Ebalon's whole-ass corpse into the lifeboat.

4. Dolphins In The Wake [Playback]

Videogames continue to fascinate Eleanor and while part of her knows she should be asking people for information, the stress of arrival makes it hard to avoid the siren call of flashing lights, high scores, and fond memories. While she mostly plays shoot-em-ups like Galaga, you might also catch Eleanor trying out the claw machine (she proves distressingly good at it after a few tries), playing pinball, or staring dubiously at the DDR machine. In any event, she doesn't come to this particular activity armed or armored.

5. The Lightless Depths [Wildcard]

Got another idea? Go for it or hit me up on Discord!

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Imagine if your mother's cult had a really evangelical branch running through it, mythologizing whatever it takes to sway people into the belief of her Utopian mission. Imagine one of the figures that branch mythologized, someone who left enough evidence to be real, probably, though surely exaggerated. Imagine the paintings made by passionate artists trying to capture the moments of Rapture's history through this lens.

Imagine seeing those hands, once rendered lovingly in oils, now holding an open rind of brie instead of an EVE hypo as the man himself steps out from one of the aisles of this cramped cheese shop.

Of course, all there really is to go by are the tattoos and the scent of ADAM. Not that they ever painted the rest of Jack, but even if they had, the weather here favoured light clothes, and Jack has clearly been shopping at the only source of clothing on the ship (other than the cheesey tourist t-shirts in the gift shop). Slip-on shoes, patterned socks, cargo shorts, a camp shirt over a plain white tee, Jack could be mistaken for someone modern if he wasn't acting like a fucking cave man right now.

Anyway, if ADAM isn't something that can be smelled, then the fact that he's got his hand set to the Incinerate plasmid is still a giveaway, probably. There's no flames - he's mastered by now turning it on without igniting enough to alert Friday - just a literal handheld heater to get that fancy cheese warm and melty enough for him to scoop out with the little breadstick-things the place also sells.

Edited 2023-01-27 08:32 (UTC)

This was to be Eleanor's unguided return to the cheese shop, so she can do some self-learning after Tendi's thoughtful introduction to the world of cheese. She's thoughtfully provided herself with towels (rolled up under her arm) to be folded up and used as bibs for the runnier cheeses, and brought a small list with flavor notes written on it of the cheeses she's already tried.

All of this flees her mind immediately when she sees the tattoos on those wrists, alongside the crackling on Jack's palm, the fire that burns flesh away only for it to be renewed again. She doesn't drop the towels in shock, barely, but it's a long minute of watching the Son of Ryan eat cheese right off the rind before Eleanor's conscious mind is working again.

She peels through her memories, looking for a way to make an introduction, but no one preserved inside Eleanor knows how to greet a messiah, false or otherwise.

Eventually, Eleanor settles on floating another rind of brie towards Jack, slow and careful, force rippling around her outstretched arm and hand; the unmistakable quiver of the Telekinesis plasmid, complete with quaking flesh.

In a little moment he can feel proud of, he's caught movement out the corner of his eye and didn't immediately tense up! Great for him!

He's still aware of it though, and he finally looks away from the cheese label he's reading when it occurs to him that a seemingly endless cheese shop might have its own mascot like the Tommy Bahama.

There's a legitimate solid second there where he wonders if the floating brie is from a potential fromenagerie, before he remembers how many people on this ship can move things with their minds.

So he turns around more, until he's looking down the way at the person apparently floating it. The very tall person, someone he'd have to tilt his head up to look at with a face that looks like it'd get carded topside. Er, back home. Er, in America.

He gives her a nod and a smile, and says, "Neat trick! Nicer control than I have. Are you new here?"

Since Jack is pretty goddamn sure he'd remember a kid that tall.

Externally, Eleanor is staring in clear shock.

Internally, she is frantically hitting up Blood Google with variations on 'how to cope with the messiah just being some dude' and getting 404 messages from the hundreds of corpses that power it. What the fuck do you mean 'Neat trick! Nicer control than I have. Are you new here?', Mister Son of Ryan, Slayer of the Great Tyrant Called Ego, the Man With No Will? Eleanor had been prepared for this man to be mute or for him to speak like Father Wales on a tear and this response was so far from what she could have imagined that she's having to mentally calibrate.

She doesn't mean for what comes out of her mouth to be quite so dramatically sinister, but between the shock and the effort to get over the shock the middle ground lands somewhere around 'detective about to blackmail you'. "Yes sir, I am. Are you using the products of Fontaine Futuristics?"

Likewise, Jack is so shocked by the words she says, so blindsided by hearing a name that could only be from his world, that his face falls into a blank stare and he says with no thought at all, "What the fuck?"

It's better than instantly going on the attack, but just the name 'Fontaine' is sparking the itch to start swinging, like the man himself could show up any minute if he doesn't act soon. But for the moment, he's just shocked.

Steady, steady. Eleanor keeps her hands low, where Plasmids would only hit the floor. "The tattoos on your wrists. Sir...are you from Rapture? Are you - " she hesitates. Finds her courage. "Sir, are you the Son of Ryan?"

Information is whirling through Jack's head, fruitlessly trying to get sorted.

The tattoos are notable now, apparently. She's from Rapture, so name-dropping Ryan isn't a coincidence, but why the hell is she calling him 'Son of Ryan'? Was he stupid enough to be the last to know, or is this something else? Looking at her as someone who's spliced instead of just happening to be from the planet of the tall people, her height and powers are suspicious, yet she has no signs of splicing sickness, no lesions, no tumours, no - whatever the hell else happened to them. If she was around after him then either she was the last person in Rapture to try splicing, or she was connected enough to keep up with splicing away the unwanted mutations as they came. Why does she know what his tattoos mean? Why is she calling him Ryan's son?

She hasn't attacked him, he reminds himself. That's a big plus she has over anyone else associated with Fontaine, Ryan, and splicing. He tells himself that, so he can actually talk instead of shutting down.

It's tempting to say no, he isn't, what is she talking about. It would be a bald lie, and even if he was good at lying it wouldn't fly here. And she hasn't attacked him.

"Who's asking?" he answers instead. It's not much better; while sure, it'd tell him what side of the whole mess in Rapture she's on, he's truly just saying it to stall.

She curtsies, hand to God. It's the best gesture of respect she can think of. "My name is Eleanor Lamb, sir, and I owe the Son of Ryan my freedom. His overthrow of Andrew Ryan made my escape and that of the Little Sisters possible."

Is this hope or fear? Is this a man like any other, or the Man With No Will?

It's something about the curtsy. It's like he's seen it before, but mapped at the wrong scale. The same thing nags at him from her way of putting it, her escape grouped with the Little Sisters.

But again, there's the way he's being talked about. Not, 'Andrew Ryan's kid', but 'Son of Ryan'. 'Overthrow' is telling, though what exactly it's telling hasn't clicked to Jack yet, because it's just so off from how he would put it. Although, it's not wrong, technically, because he was, you could say, instrumental to the man's downfall, but something about the way she phrases it makes it sound a lot more voluntary than it was.

It's probably that, more than anything, behind why he's looking uncomfortable. At least it's normal, awkward conversation uncomfortable now, and not like he's on hold with his flight or fight instincts.

"... Okay." he says, just to get his mouth working. And then - because he's got the idea that it's possible here, but like meeting someone else from his world, he never thought it'd apply to him - "Are you... from the future?"

He'll start there, and wait for an answer before thinking about what that means back home.

"...If Doctor Watson is to be believed, quite possibly. The year of my escape was nineteen sixty-eight, sir. Many years after the Son of Ryan ended the Rapture Civil War with the deaths of Andrew Ryan and Fontaine." An apologetic smile, but Eleanor can't imagine he wouldn't want to know, so she continues. "If you are the man I think you are, your deeds became legend, but...Doctor Tenenbaum named you a friend of the Little Sisters, and a hero."

Watson - right, right, at some point he'll have to check if she knows there's people from even further ahead than either of them, but for now this answers his question. And, whoof, there's something to unpack there, that Rapture kept crawling along for at least another eight years, and that somehow whatever Jack did down there did enough to help someone else in the future? And - and, what's someone who left Rapture later than he did doing talking to Tenenbaum? Did she meet them at the surface, or...

Jack glances at the nearest shelf before leaning his palm against its edge. He breathes out heavily, trying to clear his mind, and then he just - he looks at the shelf again to find somewhere to put his handful of brie, which he ditches there so he can lift his now empty hand back into view.

"One, you don't have to call me sir." Jack says, counting it off on his fingers. "Two, I understand it's - well-meaning, but please don't call me the Son of Ryan again. That's - long story. You're right, but long story. Jack's fine. Three, on that note, I'm way too sober to talk about Rapture. I'll do it, but not here and not now, we can catch up on it later. Which, I'd - I'd kind of like to, probably, to know what the hell-"

Jack shakes his head to get himself off that track, because like he said he's not in the right place to think about the consequences of what he did in Rapture and what happened in his wake and why she knows Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters, and this girl he just met who thinks he's some kind of legend doesn't need him breaking into - some kind of rant in front of her.

"Like I said, another time. Uh. Four," one more finger down, "Nice to meet you, Eleanor, was it?"

He almost moves his hand out to shake but then remembers he was just warming cheese with it and something breached the rind enough to leave a shiny residue on his hand, so uh, maybe later for that, too.

"Indeed si - Jack." Using his actual name feels so alien that Eleanor stops speaking entirely for a moment. "My apologies for the sudden - it's rather like meeting Joan of Arc or John Henry for me. If it's any consolation I came looking to try cheese, it's all so new, si -"

There's a deep breath, and then Eleanor brightens up with a realization. "Any friend of my sisters is our family. Might I call you Uncle?"

Jack's eyebrow arches as she fights the honorifics, and the explanation is both sensible and really god damned weird, because it's impossible to imagine himself as that big of a deal. Especially when he's been on island time for the past four months and developed habits to match-

"Absolutely not." Jack says automatically.

Jack, as he was when he was taken onboard the ship, had accepted that he'd have some responsibility for the Little Sisters with the same weight of inevitability of accepting the other truths of his life, like how much of it was true at all. Which is to say, very distantly, very 'I'll handle that when it comes up directly'. Coming here gave him some time to breathe and figure out a little more about who he is without the mind control and the false memories (a fucking mess, as it turns out), but left the whole 'being responsible for kids' thing on pause, so. Sorry, Eleanor.

Once the reflex-trigger passes, however, some self-consciousness sinks in enough for Jack to clear his throat and try to soften the blow.

"Appreciated, again, but I'd rather just be Jack if it's all the same to you." He says, offering her an awkward smile so she at least knows there's no hard feelings. "Just Jack, nothing special."

Eleanor's face falls like a sad puppy. "We're all something special, Mister Jack, but I'll make an effort."

Surely something can salvage this moment - RIGHT THE CHEESE!

"Might I induce you to explain melting the cheese? It smells quite heavenly that way."

"Thank you." Jack says.

And almost repeats himself because, thank god, the cheese, something much easier to talk about.

"Oh! Sure-" and Jack picks the brie back up and puts his hand on low-level hotplate duty again. "So, this brie, it's called, it's pretty soft to start with, so if you make it gooey you can just dip in little crackers or whatever into it, scoop some out that way, so it's something of a spread or a dip or-"

Jack isn't a gourmand, and he's pretty much just sharing his original findings with Eleanor right now. But hey, it's not rocket science, brain surgery, or advanced genetic manipulation, so it's not like it has to be thorough!

Jack reaches into his shoulder bag and pulls out the little bag of tiny breadstick-like crackers and offers them out for Eleanor take a few.

"Here, you can try some if you want."

Eleanor gratefully takes the crackers and scoops one into the melting brie. The threads of cheese that connect it to the whole fascinate her until they break, and then she takes a bite.

Local deep sea creature is vitamin D deficient, can definitely be controlled by cheese, film at eleven.

After swallowing: "I've never seen such fine control of Incinerate. Is that from practice or did you perhaps acquire a premium issue of it? It's fascinating."

Oh good, talking shop, that's way easier than talking about the other stuff in Rapture.

"Practice." Jack says, letting himself sound proud for a moment before he lets Eleanor know: "Friday will douse any source of fire outside of the Casino's smoking area and Tauva."

His voice says he found this out the hard way, many times.

"How about you? My telekinesis still acts like an invisible slingshot, I haven't been able to move anything as smooth as you did."

"Yes I learned about the fire safety policies the hard way." Eleanor sounds faintly annoyed. "I - hrm. A proper explanation would unfortunately involve getting into Rapture after your exodus, but I suppose the short version is that the flaws of Telekinesis," how is she saying it like a brand name, "have always been the flaws of the human mind rather than the product - outside of the obvious and irreducible drawbacks, of course."

She takes a step back and pulls with her free hand. A great deal of cheese flies towards her and then enters a fast, loose orbit, forming a shield of fromage.

She takes little nibbles of her demonstration whenever it passes her lips.

~~Probably the same way Jack can say and think Incinerate! without the volume of an exclamation point~~

Jack nods in commiseration with the fire-safety, because yeah, also they're on a ship and if you can't dramatically smoke while looking out over the ocean on a ship then what's the fucking point-

Ahem, anyway - if he were anyone else, he might be bothered by Eleanor's implication of his mind's flaws or whatever, but he's too impressed with her display of power, even with the cheese nibbling.

Jack claps by gently smacking his palm against the back of his brie-hand, nodding in approval.

"Huh. So, more practice on my part then? Or is it a way of thinking?" Jack asks/speculates, though he tilts his head. "Then again, I don't think I've been able to grab as many things at once either, are you sure you don't have a more powerful version of it or something?"

"I...am not sure," Eleanor admits after a moment. "My father was able to demonstrate substantially similar capabilities but only my Sisters really hold things in reserve like this. It may be that I'm simply more compatible with it..."

Isn't that a thought. Eleanor does not care to be grateful to the thing nestled in her guts. She takes a bite of her passing cheese and chews it to think. "Of course, Father did purchase upgrades from the Gatherer's Gardens, and it's possible I too have had access to such refinements. It was quite a common Plasmid, my Sisters all used it. You've asked a fascinating question, Mister Jack."

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[Open + closed to César] The Water Grows Cloudy

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