(open.) while now i'm free

[abhorrently]

Who: Fever and open!
What: First month on the ship, and she's getting adjusted.
When: September.
Where: Everywhere - a few specific locations for some prompts.
Warnings: Marked in specific threads if they happen.
Notes: Will match tag-in format.

they let anyone in - infirmary.

There's a new face in the infirmary, but not slinking in with something that needs repair. Rather, Fever's taking stock of the inventory, looking at what's familiar and unfamiliar alike, reading boxes and labels to understand what they're for. She moves purposefully, before she's collecting items to put together in a group - not a lot, but a pattern emerges. One set of bandages, one of different ointments, something to splint a broken joint - all necessary components for a first aid kit, along with the violently red potion she has on the counter.

Though on a different day, she's cleared a little section for herself, and is cautiously using some equipment with a few empty bottles. Heating water, and crushing something unknown into it, the scent of brewing plant matter beginning to rise. Might as well refine what materials she can, while she's here.

you need hobbies - playback.

The arcade is loud, bright, but it offers amusements if she's patient enough to learn, and Fever sees the potential if she just keeps trying. Her despair over some of the games just not making sense is apparent - the Pacman should be able to face his foes always, not just at certain intervals, and it's beginning to frustrate her deeply before she stalks away to try and find something better.

But later, she's found her niche, almost serene as she carries on playing one of the light gun games. Her score keeps going up, but she barely seems to see it - only what comes to the next target, when to reload and where to fire next, at vital points that make the virtual foes fall. Peaceful as one can be while hearing fake zombies attacking and dying in explosions of pixelated gore. And all that said, there is a gun for player two there.

"let there be something green" - flowers.

Of course, the new plantlife is something to investigate. It shouldn't be growing from walls, from the floor, which is enough to tell her that she needs to be a bit careful. But looking for the effects and being around them, they're not destroying her with their aura - yet. Yet is always the key word, and that's good enough for Fever to make the unwise decision of taking blooms for herself. Plucked, placed in her satchel, she's hoping it'll ward off the worst effects.

Except of course, when it can't. And given that there's quite a few types around, it means that those who venture too close might be also at risk to falling victim to whatever plant she's clipped and currently dealing with. At the least, the magic should be a sufficient icebreaker. Or you can stop her from picking up one with truly hideous side effects.

[ooc: open to any and all flower effects except for baby's breath and titan arum. mix and match with me!]

insomnia club is always open - around.

Even on this ship, her sleep is no better than it has ever been. Never a truly sustained night, only some uneasy truce with her mind and her body to lie down and attempt rest. It never lasts for as long as it should, and when her nightmares inevitably wake her, sometimes staying in the cabin is suffocating. So Fever goes out, heedless of the hour, walking softly in the cabin halls and seeing where her feet take her.

Maybe she lays in a chair by the pool, trying to find new rest there and failing, or maybe she's sprawled out in the lounge by the atrium, having just taken a tumble from trying to fit all of herself on a chair. Or she's posted up in Bobby B's, but drinking isn't the name of the game. Instead, this is one of the few areas she can idle in with a mote of fire in her hands and not get sprayed down for it. Rolling the magic around between her palms like someone else would a stress ball, lost in consideration, her guard's relaxed for a moment.

wildcard.

[have a different idea for something to happen? come at me, my arms are open. basic info and permissions here, as well as Fever's opt out.]

Comments

"let there be something green" - flowers.

[moonlesstides]

Let us lay our scene. There is, you see, a fish girl, leaning on a rusted harpoon; her hands are folded over the butt, her chin on her hands, and her body just floating several inches in the air. She is very intently staring at a patch of foxglove near the base of your friend and mine, Mayor Quincy, whose statue has seen...

...Better days. The gouges and chips in it may, to the expert eye, possibly match the harpoon.

The fish's expression is intensely contemplative. She stares at the foxglove through narrowed eyes. But Fever's presence has not gone unnoticed.

~Mortal thing. Is there a boon I might grant that is worth risking your life? I am attempting to study these blooms and determine if their malice is towards myself or all life without especial hatred.~

[abhorrently]

"Depends on the level to which I'm risking my life."

The woman who looks as though for lack of a better term she's been fished from the currents, her request isn't as strange as it might seem to someone used to being accosted for deeds or sniffing them out around every corner.

"What seems to be the problem?"

[moonlesstides]

~I smelled these beautiful flowers and woke up three days later having been informed that I died. This far no one else has agreed to see if they also die, but I would like to know. To be hated by a flower specifically...I cannot imagine what I could have done but if only I die I surely owe them an apology for an unwitting wrong.~

[abhorrently]

"It might not just be you, you know. Those flowers...I've seen them before, and herbalists use them. Used wrongly, it can be a poison as much as a medicine."

It helps that she has the smart headband on at the moment. But at the same time, she's not moving closer to those.

"Flowers can't hate you specifically. They don't have brains to do that, no matter what druids will tell you. They hate everyone or no-one."

Playback

[serialskiller]

Player Two has arrived. Tall, broad, built for violence and dressed in a dinosaur hoodie. It doesn't say anything to the new arrival, just picks up the second gun and begins its own rain of terror on zombie-kind.

[abhorrently]

Perfect, because there's a rhythm that she doesn't want to interrupt here. The story is nonsensical, but the gameplay is a means to its own end. Some people meditate, others think about ranged combat. Since beginning to think of it as just a way to send magic missiles into the false enemies, it flowed naturally from there. Instinctive.

Finally, the last being explodes into false pieces, and the ending plays out - Sophie Richards becoming a zombie, after all was said and done. The ranks then show, three symbols for the score, and Fever moves the gun carefully.

F &

Looking to her silent, zombie slaying companion, she inclines her head as a cue. Go on. Put in your initial.

[serialskiller]

SEC

"Again?"

It still hasn't looked at her, at least not directly. Her reflection in the screen is easy to digitally enhance.

[abhorrently]

S she adds into her score screen, making a cheery little combo score, before submitting it.

"Why not? If we work together, we could save her this time."

She definitely got the bad ending earlier. But practice makes perfect, and with two people, there's less potential for error.

infirmary

[theotherright]

Another passenger comes into view: human-looking, dark-haired and unhealthily thin, pushing a cane that's almost as long as he is tall. He's dressed in the closest thing to a suit that Tommy Bahamas would offer him; it hangs limply off his bones.

He's examining bottles of medicine the way a wizard might go through books: his fingertips brushing from one to the next without ever leaving a surface, his journey down the shelf methodical. Each bottle's label gets a brush of his thumb before being returned, apparently inadequate, to its spot. He's being very careful with them.

The smell of plants isn't unusual, but it does get his notice, in an 'ah fuck, not again' sort of way. And that pulls his attention away from his search and towards the clinking of equipment, or the bubbling of a suspension, and he goes quite still and slightly turns his head to listen.

Even if you can't be seen, some crimes make noise. Crouch to avoid being heard!

[abhorrently]

"Something I can help you with?"

The voice, she knows, is apt to be startling no matter how gently she tries to break the silence. She's been watching him since he came into the corner of her vision, but waiting to see what happened before she told him she was there. He's searching for something - the cane, his hand movements, they tell her something. That he looks utterly wretched, like a forgotten prisoner, is another matter entirely.

[theotherright]

And he does startle, nearly fumbling the current bottle, catching it just in time. He turns, but not all the way, not to look at her.

It's proving. difficult. to start feeling particularly safe again.

"Oh--" Arthur says, embarrassed by his own tension, pushing onwards through both, "I- I'm sorry, no, thank you."

He turns back to the shelf, finds it with the knuckles of his bottle-holding hand, and then turns to her again.

"Yes. Actually. I- I don't know if you would help me look for something. I was advised to find... multi vitamins?"

The phrase sits awkwardly on his tongue, one he's heard but not been fully introduced to yet.

[abhorrently]

That confirms the idea she was having. Subtly, she puts more weight on her feet, so he'll hear the sound of her footsteps clearly as she approaches.

"Of course I can do that. What are the multi vitamins supposed to do?"

She says it as if they're as strange to her as they are to him - they are, but she's getting familiar with things around here, and she's moving to get the bottle that looks easiest to understand.

Insomnia

[knotawolf]

She may be padding lightly, but this guy is announcing his presence for a fifty yard radius by the thwak thwak thwak sound of obnoxiously orange flip flops smacking against his heels.

It would be hard to miss him anyway, all six foot one of his large frame glowing green whenever he's even slightly in shadow. He doesn't seem to notice her at first, chewing on his palm as he walks. He pulls out a yellow puffball of a flower from his hand and spits it to the side, giving a grumbly growl of annoyance.

[abhorrently]

Well, that's weird. Observing him from where she's half splayed on the floor, the green is certainly unnatural, but she couldn't place where it comes from. His plight is enough to make her pause, remaining at her awkward angle, speaking before moving to actually reconfigure things.

"Bad taste in your mouth?"

It's only a guess.

[knotawolf]

Sometimes you just gotta be on the floor, he gets it and doesn't even think that's weird. He gnaws on his finger again, not trying to chomp too hard, but clearly chewing at something.

"Flowers keep growing. Am not made of dirt!" He yells that last part as his hand as if he can reason it into submission. Unfortunately for him, he's made of sand and the wattle that is growing out of his arm doesn't seem to care. He gives a high pitched whine as another flower springs up out of his wrist. It doesn't exactly hurt but he doesn't like it. He needs this body. "Did not eat seeds."

[abhorrently]

"Come here for a second - how long has this been going on?"

She twists herself right side up, getting to her feet and squinting at the plants growing out of him. That's not something conventional, even as far as she's seen.

playback

[ss_buttcrack]

"Want some backup?" Crichton asks, coming up alongside her and gesturing at that second gun on the game. If the strange pulse pistol strapped to his thigh is any indication, he knows what he's doing with a gun.

"New here? Don't think I've seen you around."

[abhorrently]

"It'd be well appreciated."

Finally taking down the larger enemy she's up against, she doesn't lower the gun yet, but her eyes flick over the newcomer to take the measure of him. The weapon at his side is noted, similar enough to the plastic one she has to wield, but she still couldn't tell you how such a thing might work other than sheer magic.

"And you haven't. It's only been a bit over a tenday since I arrived here, by my own count. I'm still new blood."

[ss_buttcrack]

"Sure thing." He grabs the second gun and starts going to town on those pixelated hoard zombies flooding behind the dead boss. He's a good shot.

"I never know if I should say welcome aboard or sorry to newcomers. Either way, it's nice to meet you. I'm Commander John Crichton--not military though, just to head that question off."

Infirmary

[stalksthedarkness]

As per the usual, Kolchak was looking for some painkillers for his bum knee. Not that he needed them, of course! But, you know, it helped with walking.

And yet again, he runs into an odd sight in the area.

"Say, what do you got going on here?"

[abhorrently]

The stranger's voice reaches her, and she half turns in its direction, a beaker with something golden yellow in it carefully held in her hand.

"Components, right now. They'll become proper potions after that. Need something?"

[stalksthedarkness]

"I'm sorry, did you say, potions? Like magic potions?"

He's looking over that yellow concoction in her hand. It's kind of hard not to with that color. Just what kinds of things was she mixing up here? And is it even safe to be in here now?

Insomnia Club

[ablativeholopleather]

Wayne likes to wander. The ship has seen his passing time and again in the months that he's been here, at all hours of day and night. He's not the only one either, as stress and anxiety or general bad habits keep some of them from their beds at night.

Up on a deck in the open air, Wayne emerges into the cool evening, briefly fidgeting and changing the shape of his being from his normal clay-like form with its horns and flat toned skin, to something decidedly more humanoid with dirty blond hair and pale skin, though the only skin visible is that of his face and neck as the rest of him is clad in a leather jacket and jeans suggested to him by one of the others, making him look every bit the part of the loner greaser type. The effect is probably barely diminished when he settles himself into a lounge chair with his legs crossed and a peculiarly angular guitar propped up where he can fidget with it in that quiet, flat way that comes with an electric guitar with no amp hooked up. He's just spitballing after all, and doesn't want to be annoying this late at night.

[abhorrently]

She's lying on one of the chairs, but she can't seem to get comfortable, because the dreams keep pricking at her, calling, morphing. The ceaseless red fog, drowning her, calling to her, filling her lungs and eyes and everything, the red wasteland-

She wakes, and there's someone else there. And he's playing, and whatever he's going with, it's a better melody than what she's been having scratching at the inside of her mind. So she doesn't interject, not until it seems like he's reached a break in whatever he's going with.

"I've never heard music like that before."

That's when she sits up, and stops feigning rest.

[ablativeholopleather]

While he'd been playing quietly enough for her to remain undisturbed, there's nothing really to be done about her nightmares. She awakens and hears him, and he just lifts a hand in a quiet greeting then goes back to it, piecing together a progression that, if he can pair it with other sounds, would have a bouncy sort of jubilance to it.

"I hear that a lot," he replies easily. "Sorry it doesn't sound great right now, amp's still in my ship."