come_sailaway | JUNE EVENT: CAMP

JUNE EVENT: CAMP

early on June 10th, Friday's morning announcements end with a request for everyone going on the latest excursion to meet her in the atrium. she seems in noticeably better spirits than she had been last time, and she leads them cheerfully to the tender. once they are all aboard, and the door is securely shut, the interior fills with gas, and, perhaps, their last thought before they slip into unconsciousness is "oh shit, not again."

passengers wake up on a rickety old school bus, driving down a dirt road surrounded by woods. what is it that they notice first? that, no matter what they were wearing before, they are now wearing a camp t-shirt and legitimately horrifyingly short shorts? the overstuffed backpack between their knees? the words "take one down and pass it around" dying on their lips? the fact that Friday is absolutely driving the bus?

or, maybe the fact that it's already slowing down, pulling up in front of a massive wooden sign, saying:

CAMP AION

when they get out of the bus, Friday is the one to divide them up into their cabin groups, and she is the one to give the counselors their very official-looking clipboards and whistles. she explains that they are in charge, and that she will be back to pick them up in a week, and... very little else. she responds to nothing outside of whatever is on her unseen little script, and she gets back on the bus shortly after, leaving them there.

welcome to camp. let's make some summer memories!

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Steven nods a few times and gives Ava a wide berth before toddling along after Ginko. He's not necessarily glad for the excuse or the distraction but he does seem a little relieved to stray further and further away from the cabin, taking in a deep breath as he looks around and surveys their surroundings.

For all intents and purposes nothing really looks out of the ordinary, but everything everyone has said about needing to be on guard has stressed him out and put him on high alert. He looks over his shoulder as if he's checking if he's still within earshot of the cabin. When he's not, he turns to Ginko and just rambles.

"You know what's really weird? I had a romanticised idea of this in my head and it's more like that than like. Cockroaches and flies and worms and mud and damp clothes..."

Well, it’s not as if I expected you to be immediately good at a game you just started playing! [ Though dying so soon is honestly kind of impressive. Even sonn my e of the other teens just introduced to it haven’t been this bad!!

He doesn’t voice this out loud. ]

You can try again!! Remember to try and not run into the ghosts, though~.

"Ahhhh, Captain America." He doesn't know anything about anyone, but Ava has definitely mentioned that name to him before. From the way he repeats it now, it's clear he thinks the name is absolutely stupid. (Of course there's a Captain America, he'd said, and he still stands by it. Silly heroic patriotism at its... finest?)

He doesn't interrupt otherwise. The fact that his reality has magic after all is a fun surprise, and the sorcerer's name even sounds par for the course in Skulduggery's own reality. Interesting. He'd love to know more about the magical system in Steven's universe (HAH), but it's clearly not Steven (or Ava's) expertise. That's fine. Maybe he'll get lucky, and Stephen-with-a-PH will show up to help out.

It's the end bit that gets him, for obvious reasons. Steven says "turned people to dust" and Skulduggery immediately conjures up the memory of the Scepter of the Ancients, a tool that'd been used for that exact purpose. He approaches his next question with more tact than he normally would, simply for the fact that he's seen that happen first-hand.

"I'm sorry to hear that. If you don't mind me asking, how did it happen?" The out is there, of course, if Steven's anxiety proves to be too much; he can always go to Ava with any extra questions he has.

[There’s a clear moment of hesitation, as if he’s debating on whether or not to actually go ahead with the request. After a bit of quiet deliberation, he hums softly, gaze still fixed upwards as if pointedly avoiding eye contact.]

Are you familiar with the constellations Grus Nivis and Rubeum Scutum? It’s been a… I’d like to look on them for a moment, if it’s not too much trouble.

"I don't expect-- anything good waiting for me, in the afterlife. The after-afterlife. Wherever we're going. I haven't done anything worth anything. But I... I mean. I would like to have options like we have on the ship. Than have baked beans on toast and instant noodles everyday for the rest of eternity." Steven wrinkles his nose as he ventures into the kitchen, a little hesitant in case there's angry staff waiting to jump on them or kick them out.

There's nobody else there though so his tense shoulders relax a bit and he wanders on in, hooking a finger into a cupboard door and pulling it open slowly to peer inside.

"I could just have a whole can of beetroot I guess..." he muses as he pulls one out to inspect it. He doesn't have a particular craving but it was the first thing his eyes caught. "Doesn't need to be cooked or warmed up."

[Wow, it's not like she'd get up in the middle of the night just for marshmallows!! ...She knows they're in the mess hall, anyway, not over here. Which she might hit up...later... Don't worry about it!! Anyway, he launches into such an outrageous joke that she couldn't possibly take seriously, rolling her eyes with a little scoff and otherwise ignoring that comment entirely. More importantly, Jade's right about this whole situation being nothing like they expected.]

Maybe he's just waiting until we drop our guard.

[There has to be something more in store, after all. Though if nobody's found anything out of the ordinary yet, grumbling about it here won't really get them anywhere, either.

As for...camping, well...]

I've had to camp on the road, but this sure isn't camping. It seems more like some knight training getaway. Why do we all have to get up at the crack of dawn?

[It’s less than even a few seconds after he feels the squeeze that he’s moving to pull her back up past the surface and out of the water once more. His palm stays on her back to hold her steady until she can find her proper footing, the soft blue glow at his hip slowly fading away into darkness, leaving them once again illuminated by only the pure white of the moonlight.]

Was that alright? Did it help? [There’s a genuine hint of concern carried in the inquiry.]

[ She looks to Ayato quietly for just a moment, then back to the sky as she considers where they might lie in the sky she's made. After some consideration, she starts to trace her finger around, making new lights appear. ] Snow Crane... [ She mutters, mostly to herself as she circles around it as she finishes and moves to the other. ] Red Shield... [ … ]

I miss them, too.

Don't sound so disappointed.

(However, now that she brought up the last day, there was something special about it. Ekko cleared his throat a moment, she seemed really close now as she was peaking at the drawing.)

Speaking of the last day. There's apparently a dance, you plan on going to it?

"Alright. Guess that would make sense."

It wasn't like Ekko had dealt with non-humans before, but it was the first time he'd heard of a sea-jelly or someone having to sleep in the water. He wondered if Mizuki just used the tub back on the ship.

"I already took a look around, not too many ways in. And with a little wire, I can hook up an alarm system to the radio so if anyone tries coming in. Not that I'm worried about anyone coming after me, what about you anyone we should keep an eye out for?"

He had no idea that she could do that so when he hears her voice outside next to him his eyes widen and when he turns to see her he freaks out. He shrieks and falls back on his butt, might have lost his left bollock in the process as his shorts ride up even higher, scrambling backwards away from her.

He definitely had something he wanted to ask like why the sign and what's wrong and why she's barricaded herself in and what can he do to help but all that well-meant concern had flown straight out the window.

"Wh-- wha-- you died while we were out for breakfast?!" Steven wails.

(jinx puckers up her lips while examining his sketch but that becomes a record scratch halt for her when he pops that question on her. she has heard about it, sure, and when she did -- immediately threw that out of her mind.

sitting up right and scoots away from the his notebook, she grins to him sheepishly but still trying to keep that bouncy energy going.)

Uh, I dunno! Maybe, maybe not? The last time I went to somethin' like that diiiidn't go so well for me. Eh heh heh... — What, are you?

"Yes," Ava replies somberly, which is quite a feat trying not to giggle while Steven scrambles back. Especially since he needs to pick those shorts out of his crack.

"I died."

"Okay," Steven says after taking a deep breath and blowing out a long sigh. He's looking more or less composed now but his eyes are still swollen and his face still looks a little red.

"I thought I'd be sleeping on a piece of tarp in a mouldy old tent. This is-- this is alright, yeah?" At least he'll get to die on a proper mattress. He wants a bottom bunk because he's clumsy and worried about stepping on someone or pulling the whole bunk bed over. And if something tries to attack him he can bolt out straight to the door instead of swinging his leg around looking for the ladder step.

"Will you teach me how to start a fire? With sticks."

[Indeed...RIP Natsuno for getting the mashed-potato s'more...

And Rita certainly is in full mage mode here, nodding at him even as the parallels make her thoughts race. Is it just the one spell they have in common? Even if it is, having nearly identical structures and effects... It'd be too convenient to call it a coincidence. Aer and fonons are fundamentally different forces, and yet they behave--and can be applied--so similarly...

Well, they'll have more spells to compare. Even as his confirmation that fonons really are visible when dense enough, just like aer, raises yet another similarity...]

I'm surprised your artes alone are enough to leave such a dense field for this long. Aer dissipates almost immediately after completion of a spell.

[To his question, she shakes her head.]

No. I can see them, but you said yourself that I don't have fon slots. But...what you just said, about further utilization... What can you do with a Field of Fonons?

1. Gemini Cabin [closed to cabinmates]

Ruby, if unchallenged, eventually claims one of the top bunks because it's familiar—that's where she always sleeps if there's bunk beds, or in the case of Beacon even when there wasn't (oh, the simple days of building structurally unstable bunk beds from what they had lying around the room...). Sat on the edge with her legs swinging over it, Crescent Rose sat beside her in its folded down rifle form, she's tugging a bit at her shorts as if she can make them grow.

"You know I wear a combat skort these days that's not much longer than this but at least I have tights with that. Now I super understand why Yang started wearing proper pants..."

2. All around the camp

It's when Ruby steps outside Gemini Cabin again that she starts to realise she might be a little bit more on edge about being out here, surrounded by wilderness, than she thought. See, back on Remnant, if you're out in the wilderness you have to be on constant alert for Grimm; there's a good reason why there's barely any settlements outside of the capitals, and Ruby has travelled enough of her world on foot to both be more experienced at handling it, but also more wary by default.

Add into that the being gassed, waking up in new clothes, and all the other freaky things about being here in the first place, and you have one hyperalert huntress.

The only thing she can think to do about that is to at least get a sense of the place. Explore everything she can. Figure out if there's anything insidious hiding around the camp. You could encounter this slightly anxious, curious teenager anywhere!

3. Nighttime

Despite all attempts, though, Ruby does not fall asleep that night. Try as she might she just can't shut down the instinct that this camp is not secure from attack, even if she's found no evidence of anything capable of doing the attacking besides, well, other campers. So, she sneaks out of the cabin, Crescent Rose on her back, and Petal Bursts up to the roof to take up a lookout position, using the sight on Crescent Rose's rifle mode to get a better view.

When even that makes her too restless, she gets up to wander around the camp and circle the perimeter. She'll regret it in the morning, probably need a lie in if she sleeps at all, but she'd rather be tired than scared, you know?

Maybe, maybe not, you'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try.

(Besides all that girl-friendy stuff, the lovey-dovey pet names, and cute matching outfits, all of that wasn't exactly Ekko's idea of fun or a relationship either. He would be fine with each of them just being themselves, the best versions of who they are together. Granted they were likely going to caught plenty of trouble, and things would get pretty colorful as tags went up everywhere. But they complemented and completed each other well.)

All we have to do is live in the moment, we don't even have to call it that if we don't want to. We can just be together and have fun. Tinker with it and see what works; because we're not like everyone else. You're not like anyone else I've ever known.

1. Rope Course

By the third day, Ruby is at least finally convinced there's not going to be any monsters running out of the forest, and has decided it's okay to try and enjoy some more of the camp activities. The first place she goes is the ropes course, and if she notices the lack of safety equipment, she doesn't seem all that bothered by it—in fact, she doesn't show a huge amount of caution on the equipment at all. She's actually pretty damn good at it, she's good good balance, good flexibility, and is used to doing all sorts of crazy acrobatics as part of her fighting style, so for the most part, it might be quite impressive.

Until she does slip, just a single misplaced foot sending her tumbling head first and— oh wait, suddenly the teenage girl isn't a teenage girl anymore, she's a red streak spitting out rose petals, at least until the streak reaches the floor and turns back into Ruby.

"Hoo, boy, that was a close one. I'm not even sure my aura would break from that height but— better safe than sorry?"

2. Archery Range

Ruby has never done archery before. She's a crack shot with her rifle, but as it turns out, the aim part doesn't translate when you don't have the technique down. Teaching herself, her shots keep going wide, or if they do hit they're at the very edges of the target. Ruby huffs a few times, keeps adjusting her grip and stance, and she does get better, but after another shot goes wide she lowers the bow and takes a deep breath.

"Alright, Ruby Rose, you have figured out tougher things than a little bow and arrow," she says, not at all aware there's anyone to overhear her talking to herself, "keep at it, you'll get it."

Yes, she gives herself pep talks. Let her live, sometimes they help.

Fire Ring

a. "You know, I've never done this before," Ruby says as she's toasting a marshmallow over the fire. "Camping... it's not really a 'fun hobby' kinda thing in Remnant; unless you're a trained huntsman, going outside safe settlements is just a recipe for disaster. You only camp if you have no other choice and you know you can handle yourself, and you deeefinitely only have fires long enough to keep warm. If you push it, the Grimm will find you. I can't even imagine a world where this is viable all the time, heh."

She says it all casual-like, despite the implications; most of her world is inhospitable to human and faunus occupation because of the Grimm, villages pop up and die off all the time, long trips by foot are possible but not recommended unless you're a trained fighter. That's normal, for her. It really is hard to imagine a world that's less inherently hostile.

b. Something Ruby has technically experienced before, though, if in a rather more serious context, is campfire stories. Her world is full of fairy tales that these days, she has to wonder how many of them are secretly real, but one way or another, she's happy to offer: "Um, I know a few stories? Fairy tales, mostly. Or legends. Some of them are kinda scary, but some of them actually have happy endings?"

Homesick

Nightmares don't come as often as they used to, but Ruby is never surprised when they do—she's seen a lot of things that are nightmare worthy, after all, and at least if her unconscious mind is handling it, she doesn't freak out over any of it day-to-day. Tonight, it's her oldest and most familiar: Pyrrha's voice, her final moments, Ruby's own scream of her name.

She jolts up, doesn't scream, and with a deep breath she leaves the cabin to sit down on the steps outside.

It's funny; spending a few days here at the camp, rather than the ship, is the first thing to really start to make her so homesick that it hurts. She wants her sister. She wants Penny. She wants Weiss, Blake, all the members of team— ORNJ, JNOR, whatever they were calling themselves now. She wants her friends. She wants to go home.

But she can't. So she just sits there, Scroll in hand, staring at contacts marked as offline, at frozen aura readings stuck on the last levels they picked up, and at old photos.

If anyone comes by, she hastily closes her scroll and sits up. "Uh. Hi. Don't mind me, just... getting some fresh air."

Ruby doesn't even get hit. Ruby nearly gets hit, and then startles because whoa suddenly things being thrown at her face, and instinctively activates Petal Burst to zip out of the the trees, out of the immediate target zone. She narrowly avoids landing in the water, herself, popping back into existence right on the shoreline and as soon as she does, she's groaning at how stupidly jumpy she's been since getting to the camp.

Because as soon as she can see Undine, it's clear enough she's just another one of the group, and that she's only throwing water. No threat here.

"Oh, wow, I am— apparently just so easily startled right now, sorry!"

Ruby doesn't last long in her bed before she finds herself out patrolling, too. Half of it is habit, really. You don't shake a lifetime of instincts built around reading the wilderness as dangerous and full of Grimm overnight, and hoo boy, after spending as long as she did travelling Anima on foot, that instinct is more ingrained than ever.

The odds of Grimm being a problem here are astronomically low, but she's hoping anything that might attack is as susceptible to bullets and a giant scythe as anything else.

In the end, the last thing she's expecting is actually another person out here doing the same thing. She doesn't really have a read on everyone here yet, not enough to make assumptions, and so when she sees movement? She jumps, hopping back with an involuntary little, "Whoa!" and reaches back instinctively for Crescent Rose on her waist.

Ruby... may have been staring more than is entirely polite. Not intentionally, mind you, just— she's awkward at the best of times, let alone surrounded by a bunch of new people, in a new place, having been gassed not long ago, and okay so maybe the mechanical parts immediately make her think of one of her best friends who she misses very dearly already.

(Penny doesn't have the same kind of exposed mechanics, but she has some, now—mostly in the style of her knee joints and jets, plus the inlaid lights and power symbols, but still.)

When Murderbot physically turns away she practically jumps to stop herself staring, though, as if she's suddenly become aware she's doing it (because she really just has), and laughs awkwardly, "Didn't really sign up for this gig, huh?"

[ Ruby might jump just a little out of her skin at Jinx barging in but it's fine, she doesn't quite instinctively go for Crescent Rose so she thinks she's at an acceptable level of jumpy for having just been, you know, gassed and dumped here. ]

Oh, well, uh, fine by me! I don't really mind which bed I get. I mean, I usually take a top bunk when I can, but I'm really not that fussy.

[ Socially awkward? Socially awkward. God help her sometimes it feels like her first day at Beacon all over again. ]

[He exhales softly through his nostrils, a noise that’s not quite a chuckle but one that carries a note of fondness all the same.]

It’s… Strange.

[His eyes flit between the Heron and the Shield, then back again. His younger sister and his loyal retainer, both of which such a staple in his life that he doesn’t know how to feel whole without them. He’s silent as he considers his words for a moment, then voices as much to Lumine.]

It’s been a decade since I inherited the title of Yashiro Commissioner. Even in the beginning, when it felt as if all of Inazuma was against me, I don’t recall feeling lonely. How could I? Even in the ashes of a burned reputation, I still had them both at my side.

I feel it now, however. [He turns his head then, to look over at her with an expression something close to weary. Tired.] And you’ve felt it longer still. When we return… [When. Not if.] I promise you all the power I have at my disposal to help you find him again, Lumine.

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Page 38 of 178

JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

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ooh a fun theme song for the thread yes~

Ruby Rose, Day 1

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Ruby Rose, Day 3, rope course/archery

Ruby Rose, Day 4, fire ring

Ruby Rose, Day 6, outside Gemini cabin

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forest

JRuby........

ii. gemini cabin

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