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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[ when Kano comes across a funnier one

This one's fine, though, and most importantly, it's one she responds to. ]

Sounds like your camping trips have been pretty scary in the past! I dunno, I've never been. Did you get good cabinmates? 'cause, like, they're the ones who're gonna watch your back when you sleep.

[ Or stab you in the back when you sleep. Close quarters, either way. ]

( "good". what a subjective, unreliable term. )

I got two people I know.

( one's a tossup of ripping her arms off or ripping the arms off anyone who crosses her, and the other's a god who promised power at her beck and call but is equally likely to leave her at her worst moment, so. uh. )

And two more that I don't.

( a shrug goes here. it's not like she'd expected to sleep much anyway. )

What about you? Do you feel safe with your bunkmates?

Don't know 'em!

[ He doesn't know anybody here, having just woken up on the ship and signed his name away for the first opportunity to be back on dry land again, and nobody in their right mind would consider somebody they'd met only once or twice anything more than strangers.

So no, not at all. He's just going to have to hope they're not murderers. ]

( that's fair. the uncomfortable displacement of being a newbie here — another thing clarke takes for granted is having woken up in the first wave of passengers, she's had time to build relationships even when her better instincts insist it's useless at best. dangerous at worst. )

Know their names at least?

Um, hmm. Let's see...

[ He takes a moment to pretend to think, going over in his head when Friday first assigned them to their cabins— and how Sagittarius was one of the last ones and you know the feeling when everybody in class is being sorted into groups but your name hasn't been called yet and there's almost no more spots left and maybe they actually forgot about you and you don't have a group and

anyways, there's that anxiety, and also the fact that there's nobody around his age in his cabin. Whose idea was it to go camping, why did he do this ]

Zhongli is the boss, so I hope he can be somebody to rely on. Then there's Kujo— like in that movie with the dog! The last two listed are Rosalind and Ed... ward. [ Edward does not look like an Edward, meeting strangers is always weird. ]

( welp, her desire to be helpful dies before it even gets a real first breath. she'd hoped to give him the rundown on any potential dangers within his cabin, but doesn't know zhongli yet. has never seen the movie with a dog named kujo. couldn't even put a face to a rosalind, and edward...

oh wait, she knows an ed. )

Tall-ish guy, big greying beard, looks like he belongs in leather instead of bright red shorts? Might have mentioned a Stede Bonnet?

( can't read, but that's personal and thus not important. )

[ Kano's like 5'4", most people are tall-ish compared to him, but beards are pretty distinctive and matches make a pretty good bet. ]

That's the guy! We haven't really talked, but... what's a stede bonnet? I'm not, like, super into fashion.

He's a person, not a hat.

( an important clarification. and other than that, yay, some sort of mutual ground. )

Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard. Don't give him any broken glass bottles or touch Bonnet, and you'll probably be fine.

Oh.

[ Noted. Though that's not to say he isn't immediately and immensely curious what would happen if he were to do either of those things ]

Well, the boss is all about keeping our hands to ourselves, but just so I can make sure to keep all my fingers intact, what's the rundown on this Bonnet person so I know who not to touch?

( ugh, how to describe stede bonnet....... )

Friendly and optimistic. ( except when he can't look her in the eye and cries at people who aren't there. ) About the same age as Blackbeard, blonde, and... I don't know what the right word would be here, posh?

Once everyone's settled, they'll probably meet up. We're all part of a crew. You'll know him when you see him.

[ Old blond posh guy... okay, easy enough to imagine a stereotype for, and Kano nods as he updates his mental list of people to watch out for. Though— ]

"Crew," huh? That's a nice way of thinking about it.

[ Makes it seem as if they're all on the same side, working together towards a common goal. Real nice way of thinking about a situation he isn't so sure yet is the case, when people are apparently MURDERING EACH OTHER JUST BECAUSE ***SOMEONE*** SAID A COLLAR ***MIGHT*** EXPLODE wow he sure is glad he woke up here when he did ]

( look, someone said the collars might explode, and it didn't take more than a day or two for someone else to go ahead and test that theory as a prospective out from the horrors of murder island. the cameras hadn't focused extensively on sarge meddling with his own collar — after all, wasn't suicide tragically boring? — but it'd been shown once or twice on the re-runs.

kano really did wake up at a decent time, as descent as one could. he gets to experience the carrot first, and learn from longer stay residents what the stick is going to look like. )

It's a nice sentiment.

( if not, arguable, a horrible idea. stede bonnet had posted flyers around the ship advertising therapy (he didn't have any sort of qualifications to be giving), match making services (fucking laughable), and recruitment into a pirate crew (what???) and somehow when clarke had sought him out to read the riot act — what a horrible idea it is to encourage people to pursue interpersonal relationships when they'd probably later be asked to murder everyone they care about — she'd ended up joining the pirate crew.

a band of misfits, honestly. stuck together by contract, friendly but pretending like a talent show and flag designing contest was somehow going to stand between them and doom. clarke's still waiting to be taught how to stage a full scale mutiny. )

...you know the type of people who cling to their old world habits for comfort? It's more like that. "Pirates", but not the sort doing anything remotely pirate-y.

[ What sort of people are they that old world habits are pirate things? Treasure hunting and playing pretend is fun and all, but not so much the cannon fire and walking the plank and there's a crocodile involved somewhere, he thinks?

He gets it, though, the desperate cling to normalcy in the face of terror, the way he would always cover people's eyes and pretend everything is alright, because you can't be scared of what you don't know. Maybe the gravity of the situation just hasn't sunk in yet because there's nobody here with him— nobody he cares about and is terrified of losing, anyways.

He looks at Clarke and then away. Before that happens, he seriously needs to get out of here... ]

...here's hoping our motley crew can keep it together, then. I'll keep hanging out with the Captain, see if I can get any table scraps or something.

( she can speak from experience: waking up here alone is terrifying, disorienting, horrible and unpleasant. but the second someone you care about from home goes through the same experience, it somehow becomes a thousand times worse. guilt. for some reason it had been guilt that swarmed over her when bellamy blake showed up, as if some unspoken homesickness and the desire to see friends and family again was the reason he was now suffering right alongside her.

but before the meta can dive too deep into self loathing undertones, it's like someone took a record player and just threw it into the ocean. the biggest scratch-stop sounds in her head, and clarke's suddenly looking at kano with a mix of shock and horror.

it's school quickly enough, into something resigned but cautious. and she's taking a step towards him, crowding personal space as her voice drops into a whole new realm of seriousness.

keep? keep??? )

So you met him?

Uh—

[ Kano takes a step back, because he'd like to keep his personal space if at all possible, hands out of his pockets and defensively in front of him. ]

Yes? Yeah? I think so? He's got, like, a beard and mustache? We talked about skateboards and the intricacies of being alive— I don't think he knows how to ride a skateboard, actually, he never answered my question about that.

( on the one hand, get back here you coward. but on the other, clarke wants whatever he's managed to learn like a starving man wants bread and soup, so she respects those defensively splayed fingers. settles for nodding along with the description before — )

You... got him face to face and asked him about skateboarding?

( awe? shock? dismay? incredulity? roll a d20 for whichever is more obvious, it's a healthy mix. )

[ no, he's had more than enough experience with girls beating him up, lowering his hands after a beat but only to settle them protectively over his side. ]

And... toilet paper, and teeth? Like, if nobody told me he's orchestrating the deaths of all the captives on this ship, he seemed like a pretty swell guy?

[ The captain likes games, Kano likes games, he will dread every second of it but Kano bets he could get along ]

( she isn't going to beat him up!

...most likely, there is always at least a 13% chance of unpredictable violence whenever someone says anything positive about the captain. had he paid attention to a single thing she'd said? )

That's it?

( this is jealousy, manifested. and projected entirely inappropriately, sorry kano. are you kidding me? )

You could have found out something useful, and that's it?

[ "she isn't going to beat him up!" that's not what it sounds like!! ]

I mean, that's not all we talked about, but, y'know... him not being able to skateboard might end up being super important?

[ maybe? but okok, let him back up— both physically and mentally, trying to recall the details of his conversation with the captain in a more coherent manner ]

He said that if you go inside his room then you'll die, and that his weakness is games of any sort as long as it's something different each time, and that he doesn't believe in luck, and that he's doing some sort of research, and that if you want to talk to him then you just need to stand outside the door and he'll be there if he feels like it, and that he's called by multiple names!

[ but aren't all these things to be expected? the captain can't ride a skateboard, that's unexpected and therefore important, maybe ]

( clarke's hair had been grouped into ridiculous pigtails during her camp aesthetic redressing, and in this exact moment she wants nothing more than to throw down her clipboard and pull on both of them in exasperation. in what world, in what realm, in what pocket dimension is their salvation going to come down to a skateboarding competition.

no one cares if the captain can do an ollie or a kickflip.

somewhere in the back of her throat, there's a scream that's throttled and smoothed into a very displeased grumble, but. diplomacy. calmness. she's not going to get anywhere ripping holes in her fellow passengers, and there's actually at least one decent nugget of information there... )

He's temperamental on when he feels like it, though. ( because she showed up outside the bridge once, drunk off her ass, deck of cards in hand and ready to die or win by cheating at blackjack, and there'd been no answer. though that makes sense if — ) So it always has to be a new game? Are there any new games after however many decades he's been doing this?

Of course there is.

[ This is said with a surety his previous answers lacked, and that conviction helps him settle somewhat. ]

Have some faith in the human imagination, Clarke! And, y'know, sometimes it's a whole different game when you have different players— different rules, different goals, different strategies. He's always inviting new players into his games, after all, isn't he?

( is there a word for a scoff so powerful that it threatens to hurt her throat? or an eye roll so severe and exaggerated that it sparks an instant ocular headache? ...no? well, those are both happening here. )

He brings new people here all the time, yeah. He's not willing to sit down and actually play anything with all of them.

( the captain still won't open the door for her, every time she's pinned him down enough to chat has been when he shows his face in public. and, frustratingly, he never seems willing to engage with her. green's her new color. )

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JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

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cw: suicide ment

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr86deEKDUA

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