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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"See, this is why we do the drill," she tells the other two. They better be paying attention to this demonstration.

"H-hey!" He's not the type to just piss himself and cry, thank you very much! He might not know what to do when confronted by a bear but he would do something heroic if the situation called for it. He's plenty capable of being heroically stupid!

"W-w-wait! I don't want mud up my bum. Could we just talk about it?!" he exclaims exasperatedly. Because in case there's a bear attack, negotiating a truce is definitely the first action to take, right?

"Oh my days! Ava! Not helping," he hisses at her before scurrying over to try and untangle Ginko from Sharky. "Are you two lads alright?! Oh bless, I think you hit your nose. The tears and blurry vision are perfectly normal, not to worry!" Steven tries to fret over them both, lending his hands to sit them up. "Did you land weird? Have you fractured anything?"

He's definitely not capable of fending anyone off from wild animals or masked serial killers, but at least he seems pleasant enough and has decent bedside manner?

With a grunt, Ginko shoves at the asshole who tackled him, trying to shove him off. His nose feels... tender, and he really hopes it isn't bleeding, but he's 85% sure it isn't actually broken.

"Get off."

Assuming he's successful in untangling himself, he will spend a moment touching his nose but... unfortunately, he's had more than a little experience with getting beat up, so he knows how to shake off a hit pretty well.

"...thanks." That last one is addressed to Steven, who is at least trying to help. "I think I'm okay."

What!!! He was just doing what the camp counselor told him to do! It's not his fault she's a manic pixie dream girl who wants him to maul people!

He's just fine extracting himself from this situation, as wrestling is kind of a post-apocalyptic pastime for him and his cousin. It's probably better that somebody else took the hit, honestly; in hindsight, Sharky's pretty sure he could kill Steven with a bodyslam. Well, okay, maybe not kill, but like, seriously injure.

"Aw, my bad, man," he groans. It's mostly his bad because he gave himself a headache. "But uuhhhhh, nice save?"

Well, two out of the five campers are injured now! Even if it's mostly their egos and pride.

She's pretty sure this is building camaraderie and everyone is more bonded because of it, and she looks rather unconcerned about any of the injuries because they can walk it off. "So now that everyone's gotten that out of their systems," Ava picks her clipboard back up, flips through a few of the pages to see if there's anything useful.

"I'd like to encourage everyone to write about their experiences at camp. Like... a journal. And if you can't write," because look she's not going to assume anything. "Then you can illustrate your entries instead. Just a little passage about each day, anything new or fun you do. And at the end we can put it all together and have a book for our memories." Yes she just stole this out of the Baby-Sitters' Club book.

Steven is honestly a little bit scared of Sharky but he's glad they're both alright. He will help them to their feet just to be sure they haven't dislocated or broken anything. And then he nods once he's satisfied.

"I can be your scribe. If you want to narrate," Steven offers. He doesn't think it's a bad idea. But he can appreciate that some people might want to keep their detailing of their day to day experiences private. And if he finds out that anyone in this cabin is illiterate he will make it his personal mission to bring books and teach writing once they're back on the ship.

They are going back, aren't they? He doesn't like all this. Attire and infighting already.

"I can write." And draw, a little. This seems kind of ridiculous to him, but he'll keep that to himself because writing down his activities costs him nothing but some mild annoyance, and it might make everyone else happy.

He'll let Steven help him to his feet, checking himself over a little as he gets up. Everything seems in working order, so he goes to scoop up his backpack again; even if everything else is making him feel completely out of his comfort zone, at least this small weight against his back is familiar, grounding.

"If there was nothing else, I'm going to go exploring before dark." Which will get him away from these weird, weird people for a few hours.

"Nothing else," Ava confirms, ripping a few pages out of a notebook to offer Ginko so he can detail whatever adventurous encounters may happen during his exploring. "Are you going to take a buddy with? Just in case. You can scope out whatever group activities everyone else is doing so we can avoid that." Because it's obvious they're a rather dysfunctional group and nobody wants to be here anyway.

She glances at Steven, shaking her head at his offer. She doesn't need a scribe, she can write well enough on her own. But she tears off a few more sheets for him as well. "If you need help, scream really loudly." She's the most concerned about him, he seems far too nervous to function honestly.

He wrinkles his nose and grabs the papers from her, just short of snatching rudely, because he's generally incapable of being intentionally rude.

"Yeah alright," he mutters. There's a bit of sarcasm there but hopefully she won't pick up on it. He sighs and finds a corner to set his things down, then he stuffs his crumpled paper into a hole in his bag he makes in between the open zips.

"I can go with you if you like," he offers to Ginko. Although Sharky might be more menacing. And Flynn could be secretly a deadly cold war sleeper agent murder ninja kung fu master spy or something.

No, she absolutely picks up on it. The wrinkle of his nose, the way he grabs the papers from her hands and then stuffs them in the bag, the sarcastic muttering.

But she doesn't say anything, because she's used to people not liking her and thinks they're all better off for it. And she's still holding a grudge from the library from the way Steven openly looked down on her reading material and research methods. Comments like how she must not read, how he was calling her love in a way that was probably meant to be charming but absolutely came off as condescending in context, still itch under her skin whenever she sees him.

And now it's clear that Steven doesn't care for her unfortunate position of leadership either, and will take off with Ginko who must think the same. Good, she thinks, maybe that means less time they'll be here and bothering her.

Ava pulls the sheet off one of the mattresses, tucking it up to hang from the bunk above to create somewhat of a privacy curtain for herself. And starts unpacking her bag to figure out what's even in it. Unlike so many others, she didn't bring a single weapon.

He accepts some paper from her, a lot more politely than Steven did. "Sure," he replies. Steven would have been his first choice, anyway. Not that he intends to stick with his 'buddy' for long, anyway.

"Come on," to Steven. "Let's get our bearings, yeah?" And spy on everyone else, apparently.

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..."

"I don't know about cockroaches, but I haven't seen a single fly yet. Trust me, roughing it in the woods, you usually see a lot more flies than this." As nice as it is not dealing with bugs, it's honestly starting to be a little eerie. Not seeing random insects is almost as weird as not seeing any mushi.

"Mud's just part of the charm." He gives Steven a grin at that, tugging at his shirt where a large patch of mud is indeed adorning the cloth. Now that he's not actively trying to fend off a feral human, the whole situation is kind of funny, really.

"Innit a wee bit weird? The no-fly situation." Steven was planning on collecting some local flora and fauna, just some leaves sandwiched in his book, and taking them back to the ship with him in case he or someone else can identify where they are. He wasn't too worried about dying at the camp but everyone else looked so traumatised and freaked out, he too felt like he'd be out of place if he wasn't on edge about everything.

"Oh dear." He struggles to stifle a bit of a laugh at the situation. "I brought a spare shirt if you want. Or maybe we can wash that out in a river or something." He's not sure what they'll come across.

"It's definitely more than a little weird. Bugs should be everywhere, trying to take a bite out of us; and then there's the birds. I haven't heard a single one making a racket since we got here. Even if most of them were spooked off by us showing up, there should be some somewhere, or flying around even if they're not singing."

The more he thinks about it, the creepier it gets. No animals at all speaks to a predator somewhere in the area... which isn't a comforting thought at all.

He shrugs. "It's fine. I think I have other clothes in this travel pack, and besides--I've been covered in worse."

Steven clutches onto his upper arms nervously as if he can save them from any hungry bug. If anyone, bugs or otherwise, wanted to bite chunks out of him, let's be honest - he wouldn't be able to fend them off.

"I guess that's strange too..." He's a city boy. The only birds he sees are pigeons and magpies and sparrows, and they're not too noisy, so he didn't notice that straightaway.

"These shorts are an abomination," he mutters. He has to do a bit of a waddle while he walks, afraid they'll ride up too high. "I'm so indecent. Hope I can get rid of them... once everyone else does." He doesn't want to be accused of 'ruining the fun' or whatever hazing ritual this is supposed to be.

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JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

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sorry I was out all day 🥺

/pats you

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