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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"I too was expecting significantly more murder, and less t-shirts with forest graphics." And he also wants more murder. Why isn't he tearing through the forest with a machine gun right now? Why must he suffer?

"That's how I feel about the entire outdoors." He sighs, "But as much as I'd like to stay indoors I've been told to embrace the full camp experience."

He is monotone as can be.

Darcy snorts.

"I was kind of hoping to be fighting for my life against a lake monster about now. Something with like, fifty arms and teeth. I miss getting to fight things."

And then a noise of pained agreement.

"If you want, you can hide out in Cancer cabin. I think everyone else is off doing other things, and if anyone gives you shit for 'not embracing the experience' I can blow my whistle at them until they shut up."

"I hadn't considered a lake monster, but this does seem right for masked serial killers. Though as far as I know none have perished." Though, he hadn't been keeping track. Maybe half the camp is gone and he hasn't even noticed.

"Does that actually work? Blowing a whistle at someone I mean."

"Oh probably not. But it'll annoy the shit out of them. And anyone who's that big into the 'spirit' of the camp will have to respect my authority as a counselor."

Strong is the neck that bears the weight of the whistle.

"It's kind of great, I don't know what I would've done if I'd had to listen to some fucker the whole time I'm here. Probably stolen their whistle."

"My counselor is Fio, and I'm not sure anyone will take the whistle away from her. She seems to be enjoying it." For a child she's taking her duties very seriously. He's never seen someone so small shuffle paperwork with such authority.

"So is this a normal occurrence in your world? Not camping specifically, but this... situation? With counselors and various activities?"

He's aware of camping, and he's aware of cabins and of counselors. But he's never heard of the combination of them being a real thing outside of movies.

"Oh shit, if Fio's your counselor I can't do anything to overrule her authority. She's adorable."

Darcy hadn't noticed her whistle while they were making bracelets, but she also hadn't exactly been looking.

"I have literally no fucking idea. I've never been camping before and I'm pretty sure this is all an American thing."

"I do get the sense that if she wanted to take over, most people would allow it. Fortunately she seems to not be letting the power corrupt her." Though she might make him go on a scavenger hunt, which will test the limits of his patience following a human around.

"Ah, that explains why it's terrible."

"Honestly I kind of want to see what she'd do if power corrupted her. Kids are wild, they come up with weird shit."

If Fio ever crowns herself god-empress, Darcy's first in line to be Captain of her guard.

The comment gets a genuine laugh out of her, "Right? It's fucking terrible. Literally only in America would every step of this be able to happen."

"Do they? I've not interacted with many." Actually only Fio, Emma, and Claudia and they couldn't be more different from each other.

"Leave it to them to take living in the dirt and make it a purposeful adventure and then somehow make it even worse with rules and frivolous traditions. And that is before I remark on the outfits."

"Constantly. One time I had a kid interrupt a fencing lesson to tell me that the class were cows. Because they 'weren't dignified enough to be horses, but they were better than pigs'. I could not work out what the fuck she meant."

Children.

"Ugh- I mean it's bad enough that people want to go fuck around in the woods, but I already nearly got dragged into a fucking sing-along. Don't even get me fucking started on the outfits. They're twee and tacky and horrible. If we ever work out how to defeat the Captain, I'm forcing him to wear shorts these short for a week at sword-point. See how he fucking likes it."

He spends a few cycles also trying to figure out what that could possibly mean, "It may not mean anything, but it does have a certain poetry to it. In a surrealist way."

To him there's nothing dignified about horses, all animals are slightly gross to him, but pigs are definitely the dirtiest in his mind. So while he's not sure about cows, pigs are the lowest. Maybe the kid was onto something.

"Perfect. Force him to sing, wear these terrible outfits, and everyone on the ship gets a turn at being his counselor."

Darcy has no time for poetry or surrealism, and so cannot comment on it.

But she can snort at the idea of forcing the Captain to sing.

"Oh God, please. He wouldn't survive an hour of Stede being his counselor. He'd start crying blood by the third minute. I don't think I could even come up with anything worse than that. Other than maybe seeing how long I could blow a whistle in his ear. He doesn't have lungs, but maybe he has eardrums."

"If the substance inside his head is viscous then certain high pitched noises could disrupt it. Perhaps cause painful reverberations." That might be interesting, he'd never considered sound as a form of torture before, but it wouldn't be a bad idea.

"Has he even spoken to the Gentleman Pirate yet? I can't envision that going well at all."

"Skulduggery didn't say it was viscous, though- fuck, could you imagine? Planting the seeds of his own destruction," she rattles the whistle to indicate to it.

"He must have, the Captain was at a pirate meet and greet that Stede put on and he didn't get chased out. Don't know how it would have gone, though. Apparently not too badly."

She's presuming that inviting the Captain along was a cunning strategy to get him out in the open, and that Stede also actually knows who the Captain is. It's not a great assumption, and one born of loyalty more than an accurate gauge of Stede's ability.

"That seems like something someone overly confident would do, so we can't rule it out. He probably gave us the means to kill him on day one and we just don't know it." A pause as he thinks about what he just said, too bad he tossed his lei overboard.

"How has the pirating gone? I heard there were plans to mutiny?"

"We... haven't done a lot of pirating," she admits, "and if there was any plan for mutiny beyond 'hug the Captain until we die', I haven't heard it yet."

She gives him a look like 'as if I'm going to do that'.

"It's honestly mostly a social club for now. I don't know, maybe when we come up with a better plan we'll start mobilizing."

Though Darcy isn't exactly holding her breath. She likes and respects her Captains, but she can't help but feel like she's been benched. Sure, there's not a lot of stabbing that needs to be done at present, but surely they could find some other use for her.

"For the record, I do not want to participate in the 'hug the Captain until we die' plan." Not that he'd been invited, but he wants that to be known in advance.

"I see. Well at least it's something to do between these excursions. It can be rather monotonous on the ship, but that could be because I don't sleep."

"You don't have to," she corrects, "it's probably just going to be the crew. And even then, probably just Stede. I don't think anyone's that dumb or suicidal."

"It's not just you either," she adds, "even with sleeping and eating it gets... boring really fucking quickly. It's like, 'oh wow, what will I do today, work out or walk around for a bit or try and read some boring shit'. Every day. The ship fucking sucks."

"I'm sure he has an outfit selected for the occasion." Said disdainfully even though Max would fully have a special outfit if he was going to try and kill the Captain.

"I have walked every hallway on the ship approximately a hundred times or more. Though perhaps that guarantees that we go on these excursions since we're too bored to remain on the ship. If this is being broadcast like the last one I'm sure those who remained are wishing they had come rather than being forced to watch us wander around and go hiking."

"Can't die horribly if you don't look good," she lightly defends him with. Look, she's tried to stab the Captain in a suit before. It did make her feel slightly better than if she'd tried to stab him in a hoodie. Probably.

"I would definitely kill myself if I had to watch hiking with sound effects, yeah. I should actually find something to teach you fencing with, at least that would eat up some time. And you don't get muscle strain, so you could probably practice for longer than even I can."

Aesthetic is 9/10ths of the process. That's always been his assumption and hasn't been wrong yet.

"I hope when he revives his clothes are fixed from whatever happens when the Captain tears him apart through the fabric of reality." Max isn't sure if clothes get fixed on death, his had been fine when he died both times, other than being covered in rubble from getting hit by whatever it was Ebalon threw at him. Tiny meteors he assumes.

"Well, we have these." He picks up one of the arrows from her quiver. It's long and slender, though not very bendy, he's pretty sure fencing blades are bendable. "I'd say the forest has sticks, but it's not a living forest."

She watches Max steal an arrow, then suggest using that to fence with, and Darcy snorts.

"Yeah sure, I want to lose my eye and get a lung punctured, let's do it."

Darcy deadpans and steals the arrow back, twirling it between her fingers.

"Look, the number one way that fencers die is if their opponent's sword breaks. Debris moving at the speeds we move at can slice through kevlar. I know you probably don't give a fuck, but I'd rather not die right now, I've got a date that would be disappointed if I bled out before the dance."

"It wouldn't be boring would it?" He traffics in illegal arms, they don't have swords, he's never even had guns with bayonets on them. Something he's going to rectify if he gets back to his world.

"Dying would get us both back on the ship wouldn't it?" As if he hadn't been contemplating offing himself the entire time he's been here. "Very well, what do you suggest? You're the expert."

"I suggest," she returned the arrow to her quiver and boops him on the forehead, right in the middle of the array of lights on his forehead, "you learn some patience. I'll get another sword eventually, or someone will show up with one I can borrow, and then I'll teach you. There's subtleties to using a sword that using other things can't teach you. And it's not like either of us are going anywhere, ehn? There's plenty of time."

He takes a step back because how dare but he doesn't do anything else. If he was up to his normal tricks he'd probably smack her hand away, but right now he just lets it happen.

"Usually I have a lot more patience than I do here. There's not as much to occupy my time." He huffs, because that's something valuable to someone who generally bides his time waiting to strike. "Very well. I suppose if you're going to teach me something we should do it properly. And with something sharp and pointy."

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JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

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