JUNE EVENT: CAMP

[sailmods]

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!

Comments

[myagic]

There's the briefest moment of oh no that flashes through Rita's mind too, when Pal leaps up, but it vanishes just as quickly. He doesn't get in her line of fire, the skeleton is no longer moving--and thoroughly reduced to pieces--and the cabin, well...

It's fine. It's just one hole in the wall! She's about to say as much to Pal, but then she realizes...he's not lecturing her about blasting the wall open.

"What do you mean, we?" She scowls, narrowing her eyes--and then it clicks. And then she's doing more screeching. "You mean you're the one responsible?! What the hell are you--I thought your necromancy wasn't like--actual necromancy!" She thought Pal was alright-!

[hellonspectacles]

“Obviously I’m the one responsible.” Palamedes winces as the girls yells, and takes off his glasses to clean off the dust that has collected on them. He isn’t even going to touch the I thought you didn’t do actual necromancy thing, which is honestly a little bit insulting. To echo what he had once told Jade Curtiss, just because he doesn’t resurrect five corpses before breakfast every morning doesn’t make him less of a necromancer thankyouverymuch.

He returns his glasses to his face and goes to inspect the hole in the wall. “It is—was—a skeleton construct. Perfectly harmless, and capable of undertaking only a limited set of tasks. Meanwhile, your thermal explosion could have set the whole cabin on fire.”

[myagic]

"What the hell's harmless about a moving skeleton?!" Yeah, sorry, her volume isn't decreasing anytime soon. She's still standing in the doorway, because what if there are more skeletons and who-knows-what-else lurking in the cabin--and glowering at him as he goes on like this is totally normal and she's the one being crazy. Hey, she blew holes in the walls of her own house and it was never a problem!

She jabs her index finger in his direction. "Yuuki told me didn't actually do--this! I thought you just read information from objects!"

[hellonspectacles]

"What exactly did you expect it to do to you? Go rogue and beat you with a dustpan?" He runs his finger along the inside of the hole in the wall, and it comes away smutty with ash. They'll need to do something about this before evening, but that isn't his primary problem at the moment.

His primary problem is convincing Rita that he isn't some wacky sorcerer just because he can make skeletons walk around.

"Well, I do other things too." He turns back around. "Psychometry's just my specialty. What do you use as the catalyst for the thermal reaction, by the way? The concentration of heat in that fireball was really quite remarkable."

[myagic]

"I--I didn't expect anything! That's kind of the whole point with skeletons! They not supposed to do anything!" With the undead threat apparently neutralized--for now--Rita's quickly funneling her terror into anger instead (although, okay, fear might still be lurking underneath). Pal acting so calmly just makes her more irritated over the whole situation.

"It's aer," she snaps back (although "aer" is pronounced identically to "air", so that likely explains very little), "and don't think you can just change the subject!"

[hellonspectacles]

"And yet you were certain it posed a threat," Palamedes observes tartly. It's true that, besides the hole in the way, no lasting damage has been done. The skeleton wasn't a person or anything like that; it wasn't even living. But it's the principle of the matter. You don't get to go around blowing up other people's constructs for no good reason!

Yeah, no, he is definitely going to keep trying to change the subject. If Rita is going to blow up his skeleton, the least she can do is explain how she did it. "Do you mean oxygen? I suppose some source of pure oxygen could create that kind of conflagration. But I'd be curious to know how you control it."

[myagic]

"Well, they sure as hell can't be good for anything!" she snaps back immediately, though that edge of fear makes its way into her voice much more clearly. She still isn't moving from the doorway.

However, confusion crosses her face at his question, and she automatically responds, "no, not that kind of air, obviously--oh, wait...that's right." Rita momentarily deflates; this wasn't a problem in her own world, but that's not the case here, thanks to this weird language they all speak now. And she is enough of a nerd that she can't really hold back from explaining. "I don't mean air as in the air we breathe, but a force from my world called aer. It powers my magic. In the fireball's case, I use aer that has fire-element properties."

[hellonspectacles]

“Well, this skeleton was good for sweeping floors,” Palamedes mutters. As though to prove this point, he starts to go poking around in the cabin’s storage closet, hoping to find another broom to, at the very least, clean up the bone ash and sawdust piled on the floor where the skeleton once stood.

Despite his irritation, Pal is still fascinated by other people’s powers. “Ah, I see.” He nods thoughtfully. “Fascinating. Never heard of it, I’m afraid, but I suppose I should expect that. No one here has heard of thanergy or thalergy, either.”

[myagic]

Rita's still perfectly fine staying in the doorway, watching him try to clean up. Hey, the mess is totally his fault, in her opinion!

"Apparently it's unique to my world," she says flatly, since she's now used to people not knowing what it is. "The same's probably the case for your creepy 'thanergy', too." Normally she'd be just as interested in other forms of magic...just not the kind that involves making undead--which reminds her... "You haven't made any other sketchy stuff in here, have you?"

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes lets creepy thanergy go because really, Rita, that just sounds silly.

He finds a cobwebby broom in the back of the closet and shakes it off as best he can before he starts to sweep. “I promise I have made no other sketchy stuff.”

[myagic]

Anything involving skeletons automatically becomes creepy; that's just science. Somehow.

"Hmph," she grunts, not entirely sure if she believes him, before continuing much more loudly, "and there better not be any more sketchy stuff for the rest of this trip! You got that?"

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes rolls his eyes. "What if I swear to keep all constructs outside the cabin?"

They might still be useful! And Pal isn't about to make a promise he doesn't plan to keep.

[myagic]

"And just have them wandering around?!" she screeches again, horror at the very idea written all over her face. "How about not making them at all?"

[hellonspectacles]

"Of course not. I was going to bring them with me to collect samples," Palamedes answers with a truly dramatic roll of his eyes. "That way, I can collect more flora from the forest in less time, and maybe get around to figuring out how to Captain managed to create a second pocket universe."

See? Useful! Yet somehow, he doubts Rita will be swayed.

[myagic]

And Pal's right, because she's quick to argue right back, "In other words, wandering around."

Look, she knows that Natsuno collects samples for him! The skeletons are totally unnecessary. "I can't believe this," she grumbles, bringing her palm to her forehead. "We've been sharing a cabin, and it turns out you've been a total creep this whole time..."

[hellonspectacles]

"Well, they say disappointment is a part of life," says Palamedes as he busily sweeps the muddy mixture of dust, ash, and wood shavings out the door.

Then he rubs a hand across his face and sighs. As unreasonable (yeah unreasonable!) as Rita's being, Pal also doesn't want to upset her unnecessarily. Especially not over constructs, which aren't even his thing.

"All right. No more skeletons. Deal?"

[myagic]

Whether or not they're his specialty, it's what Rita's going to primarily associate with Pal from now on: creepy skeleton-raising guy.

Still, at least he seems to finally be seeing some reason! "That's more like it," she says, even as she fixes Pal with yet another glare and points at him. "If I see a single walking skeleton besides that Skulduggery guy, you are so dead!"

[hellonspectacles]

“Right,” says Pal, sounding, frankly, more like a teacher who is tired of dealing with an annoying student than anyone who is concerned about the consequences of his actions.

That said, Palamedes doesn’t believe in going back on his word. As long as no emergencies arise, he’ll lay off on the skeleton construction so let’s just ignore the inconsistency of him making a skeleton in a later thread, whoops.

He doesn’t much feel like sticking around, and so now that he’s done sweeping, Pal goes to pick up his knapsack from beside his bunk. “Just—find a way to fix that, will you?” he says with a wave at the hole in the wall. And then he goes in search of a more productive use of his time.