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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He laughs. "I am certainly overselling your charm and humor. No doubt about that." Of course, there is doubt, and he does think he was the exact right amount of sincere, but he can all but see the embarrassed steam coming off her.

He's idly picking the bark off his newfound branch as they walk, checking it to see if it's real wood. It seems real, on its surface, but there's something that doesn't quite sit right about it.

"I suppose I should have known Undine had questionable tastes, what with all the puns." Teehee. He pokes her gently in the shoulder with the branch in return.

That's more like it, the dig feels as relieving as pressing on a bruise, and she's maybe too glad that he doesn't actually think she's that charming or funny.

She swats gently at the branch, but looks it over for a bit, squinting for herself. Kinda just looks like a branch to her.

"Oh god, don't tell me she likes puns, I can't believe I finally find a girl to put up with me and she's going to make puns at me."

This is probably unsurprising, considering everything about Darcy. It's like she's catnip for dorks.

It looks like a branch, but he's not so sure about that. He hasn't seen any greenery aboard the ship -- surely, if the captain was capable of creating something this lush and expansive, he'd want to add some more flora to show off his abilities?

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she has an arsenal of bone-related jokes to throw at me on any given day." He considers the branch for a moment. "But if you like her, I suppose I can let it slide."

He's going to light this branch on fire. He just hasn't decided if he's going to tell Darcy about it first.

"Good. I'll go full protective girlfriend if you don't let her tell her puns."

The mental image of that is adorable. Her girlfriend, relentlessly bombarding Skulduggery with bone jokes. God she adores this girl already. Darcy makes a mental note to kiss Undine's cheek when she sees her next.

"It's weird, ehn? All the plants on the ship are fake. Do you think these ones have roots?"

The whole thing is adorable, and Skulduggery intends to tell Ava all about it once he sees her next. And there will be much teasing and prying later on; he's already looking forward to the time he walks by and catches them on a date at the coffee shop.

"I would imagine they have approximate facsimiles, but I wonder if they go very deep?" He's half-tempted to bring a tree down just to see, but the day is young. They have plenty of time to tear the forest apart by the root system.

He drags one finger along the broken end as if sparking a match, sparking the friction and engulfing the end in fire. It burns clean -- no smoke, and more importantly, no smell. Even the way it crackles and pops sounds right but seems somehow wrong.

"That's weird," she notes of the branch, watching the fire closely. A lot of houses in Lyon still had fireplaces, and burning wood isn't a smell that's subtle or hard to detect. She holds a hand out under it to try and catch any falling ash, but her hand is clean after a minute or so.

"It's like... whoever made this only kind of knew what wood is like. Like he only heard of it and never saw it himself."

"Which is strange, given how real most of the ship tends to feel." Skulduggery lets the fire burn for a minute more before snuffing it out. The black charred end, when scraped with his finger, smudges off a bit like powdered paint. "It looks like he's still got a bit of a way to go before he's able to create life."

Which is good. Very good. Godhood doesn't seem very attainable when you can't create any life.

"Ship's a pretty... controlled space, though. All the materials are man-made, they stay exactly the same."

Darcy traces wide, sweeping arcs around the forest, trying to match growth to growth, to see if there were any repeating patterns.

"We haven't seen any animals, either, no birds. I wonder if he's been doing this for less time than we thought. Or if the Captain is just like, really bad at this."

"What I mean is that it seems like he has more intimate knowledge of ships than forests." Which isn't really helpful, at least not yet. He'll sit on that one for a while and see if anything comes of it.

Of course, he's going to go with the obvious, "The captain is bad at this," because he's a petty bastard. But, unfortunately, he's also an avid fan of wild and impossible magic, which this forest most certainly is. "Life, however, isn't as simple to recreate as steel or stone. This realistic facsimile is..." Sigh. "Impressive."

"Just don't actually tell the Captain that. He seems like the sort of asshole to gloat about it."

Sore winners; the worst kind of asshole. Not that Darcy would know anything about that. Darcy levies a kick at one of the rocks, just to see what it does. Rocks are presumably easy to model, and it just sort of... rolls, like a rock.

"Hiking fucking sucks. Why do people like, sign up to do this shit back home?"

"God, no. I'm never complimenting that man aloud if I can help it." Although technically he just did. Whatever, it's not like the captain's here to eavesdrop. And since he can't read minds, Skulduggery is free to admire the occasional tree for looking almost-but-not-quite like an elm.

"They want to commune with nature, maybe?" He tosses his branch aside. "I wouldn't know, I don't hike." He's travelled hundreds of miles on horseback and foot, but not one foot before now had ever been to hike.

"I still don't hike," he clarifies. "If anything, we're exploring. I refuse to play into any more of this charade than necessary."

She was going to address any other part of what he said before he started arguing semantics, at which point she gave him a pointed look.

"We're out in the woods, going in a straight line. This is hiking. This is literally exactly what hiking is. Exploring would be if we were, like, spreading out and stopping or something."

It says a lot about the situation that, instead of launching into a lecture about the importance of words, and how they are exploring, because none of this area has been seen by either of them yet, and even if they could call any of this hiking...

Instead of that, he says, "It's bad enough I'm stuck in these asinine clothes. At least let me have the illusion of noncompliance."

Wow, not even some light bickering, things must be bad. She makes a small 'hmm' in agreement, letting him have his illusion.

"The clothes fucking suck. I can just feel people staring at me, like I don't already know what I look like. It's super objectifying. Definitely not the kind of clothes you want to explore in."

Her t-shirt for today features St Francis tending to some bunnies and deer, the print on it faded and worn, as if the shirt was older than she was.

This is by far the worst thing that's happened to him since he got sucked into a portal full of evil gods.

"The fact that nobody was spared the indignity is the only reason I haven't walked directly into the lake." That and he would rather not spend a week at the bottom of yet another body of water. "Do you at least recognize your shirt? I've never so much as glanced in the direction of athleticwear in my life, personally."

"There's still time. I could come visit you. From the shore, anyway, the pope could ask me to go in that lake and I still wouldn't."

She snorts at the question, "absolutely not. It's tacky as fuck. This may be surprising, but I actually care about my clothes too, ehn? I wear streetwear, not... this shit."

A wiggly hand motion, "when I'm not stuck on an evil boat with one change of clothes, anyway. I'd kill for an actually decent store aboard. The suit I got was the only good part of that party."

"You should be careful what you wish for. Maximilien requested access to new clothing and we wound up with the Tommy Bahama." Although, it could be that Max wasn't specific enough to get exactly what he wanted. Or maybe everything has to be on theme. That does limit things somewhat dramatically...

"It does make me wonder where he gets it all. Maybe there's an... interdimensional lost and found somewhere on the ship that he takes things from. Like our new clothes, or the weapons in Battle Royale. Or he makes it all from scratch." Which would be far more humiliating.

"Oh sure, I'll be specific, if the Captain ever ends up listening to me of all people."

Darcy scoffs at the idea.

"It wouldn't surprise me if he made it all himself. Like- the food, for instance. It's too perfect. You can't get meat or vegetables like the ones that end up in the food. If he even uses actual ingredients, instead of just... Making the finished dishes. Or the forest. He could probably just... steal a forest from somewhere, if he can steal us and our shit. But he doesn't. I think the Captain's a control freak. Or at least the kind of asshole who thinks he can do everything himself."

Skulduggery laughs in a mildly ungentlemanly manner at that comment. "Oh, I don't doubt that. Obsessive and arrogant are certainly defining features of his." But he's also lazy, which is why Skulduggery still bets at least some of the clothing is second-hand. The forest, at least, makes perfect sense to him -- if he was practicing to become a god, he would want to start with trees and plants, too.

"I don't eat, so I'm never around the buffet or dining hall... Have you ever seen the food being prepared?"

"Nope. Just floats out. Or is sort of in the trays, if it's the buffet. I've never seen the food actually change in there. I couldn't find any way into any kitchen when I went looking. It's just... another part of the ship that he's too lazy to put detail into, and too controlling to leave to chance. You know the ship doesn't have plumbing, either? I tried to see if my water-teleport would let me go through pipes, and nearly got stuck in the tap."

She kicks another rock. Fuck that rock in particular.

"There's a kitchen here though, for some reason. I'm planning on testing it out, seeing if you can actually make food in it. I miss cooking."

Okay, what? "That doesn't even make sense. Where does the water come from, in that case? Are there sigils on the inside of the tap to draw water from elsewhere on the ship, maybe?"

Nope, getting sidetracked. Skulduggery reaches for another branch, gets tired of the charade, and ignores the next few trees entirely out of spite. "I didn't know you cooked," he comments idly. "Not surprising, since I don't eat, but still."

"Right? It's such fucking bullshit. No sigils, no like, reservoir, it's just water that appears out of nowhere."

Lazy bastard not properly filling out his cruise ship.

"Assume I usually do a lot of shit that I can't because I don't have the equipment here. I was the one who cooked in my family. Who cooks in my family."

Present tense. The Captain's still not going to get her to act like her life back home is a 'was' and 'did'.

"Do you miss eating?"

Edited (sexy genius disease (clarified wording)) 2022-06-13 10:43 (UTC)

The tense change is noticed and appreciated; no reason to let the man get her down. "That's right, most people have wide and varied interests. I keep forgetting." Of course, he's making fun of himself as much as he is teasing her.

"It's been so long since I had to eat that I don't even know what I'm missing out on." He thinks about it for a moment, then says, "I don't even remember what the last thing I ate was. Probably something rationed."

"If you're going to forget with anyone, it's probably safest to do it with me. I forget I have other interests. It's like my head is a conveyor belt of swords and punching things until something else falls on it."

Gently teasing herself in turn. It's not like her life hadn't mostly consisted of that prior to being abducted.

"That sounds like hell," she wrinkles her face up, "mum always said French rations were the best in the world, but that they still weren't like... good. And yours were probably way before smokeless fuel and shit got invented. Or- your fire doesn't give off smoke, I guess you could've just heated them like that."

Now she's the one getting bogged down in specifics. She goes silent for a moment afterwards, until the pressing emptiness of a birdless forest compels her to speak again.

"Sometimes I wish I was like... properly dead or alive one way or another. Like, either I don't have to do any of that shit, or I get to be warm and have a regular heartbeat again. I'd probably miss eating, but I wouldn't miss having to eat. It's all just exhausting some days."

Like most semantics, it really doesn't matter if they used their own fire or lit campfires; the food was the same. He doesn't remember the meal, but he knows what they were all eating. Meat, potatoes, milk and bread. Not exactly interesting or flavorful.

"At least it's something to fill the time with," Skulduggery says. It's a lukewarm attempt to find a silver-lining; he understands her sentiment, even if their manner of semi-death is different. "Not much of an upside, but... at least you aren't limited for date night?"

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