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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Heaven forbid he break her fragile mind; he is most definitely not gonna get into the finer points of his yiffery right now. And you know what, yeah, he definitely has low standards and a generous opinion of other people, but that doesn't mean it's any less true! At least to him, anyway.

"I mean, it's a thing to practice in places with, y'know, less people -- look, the roads in Montana are basically empty all the time, and technically when I'm in my car, I'm on my own property --"

He's definitely had this argument before. Fuck, he definitely had this argument with Pratt, didn't he? "Nevermind, it's like, whatever. Besides the point. The point being, ewwwww! You're gonna date a cop?"

He thought you were cool, man.

Okay she's not sure that counts as in public if it's secluded. Sounds far less daring than the idea of getting it on in front of a bunch of strangers. (Or people you know, that's even worse.)

"He's not technically a cop," Ava defends both her own tastes, and Malcolm's honor. "He actually got fired from the FBI for punching a sheriff." See? Totally acceptable dating material. "And I once punched an FBI agent through the heart and stole back an entire shrunken building. So it's like we were made for each other." Something like that.

"Oh, that's solid, then." And then he laughs because, hahaha, fuck, he didn't even mean to make a joke about her punching a guy through the heart! "I guess I can't complain, one of my buddies back home was a cop before the Collapse. Uh... and another one showed up, like, right before we left, and he's... technically still a deputy? I mean, the timeline's all..." Wibbly-wobbly, he makes a hand gesture to indicate, "But you get me. Sounds like you guys got a lot in common!"

Exactly like that, he totally buys it and doesn't question her reasoning.

Edited 2022-06-22 23:46 (UTC)

"Timelines are nonsense," Ava comments in agreement, because she has a lot of thoughts about the contradictory way everyone from her own world comes from rather differing points. "What caused the collapse?" She always appreciates a good society crumbling under the weight of its own sins story.

"Also he's really cute. In a... clean cut way that I never realized I was into." Being a bit of a I-woke-up-this-way type herself.

Sharky rolls his eyes. "Oh, fuckin', you know... nuclear armageddon, the usual. We, uh, had a cult in our town that was convinced the world was gonna end, and they called it the Collapse. So we all just sorta took to callin' it that." Kind of playing into the cult's hands, in the end, but hey. The cult isn't the one that made it through the Collapse to begin with!

"I think it was one of those, 'everyone shot first' sorta things. Nobody knows who started it, just how it ended."

Not the most exciting or fun story, but hey! If she asks, he'll answer!

"Of course. Just build bigger and better weapons to destroy yourselves with. Did you live in an underground bunker? I always wanted one of those." He doesn't sound overly distraught about the whole thing, so she's not going to trip over a bunch of condolences.

Sharky shrugs and sighs. "Yeahhhh, pretty much, right? But yeah, I lived in a bunker for a while. With, uhhh, my cousin, his mom and dad, and his mom's boyfriend." Soooo, you can imagine how that went. "We ran outta food and booze around three years in, though, so we went back topside. It was... you know, it was." Another shrug. Boy, this would be a good time to have a beer...

"Anyway, like, nowadays my area is like, super lush and full of game for people to hunt, and the land's really fertile so our farms are all super nice. Well, they were until the Highwaymen showed up -- uhhh, raiders?" She probably knows that word, right? Not everyone does, but she seems like a modern lady.

"AND the boyfriend." She wonders if he lost anyone he cared about, but isn't quite up to poking more about it. That's both so many and so few people to bunk with, given the circumstances. For three years.

"Raiders, huh," Ava supposes after the end of things, of course the survivors would be those willing to do anything to continue to do so. It's why she's so uncertain about making it here. She wasn't lying when she told Jenny she doubted she had what it takes, to make it through to the end.

"So you like it better, here?"

"Yeah, AND the boyfriend." He laughs, because even though he fucking hated that dude, he turned out to not be so bad in the end. Hopefully, he and Addie are happy wherever they are -- so long as they didn't die after trying to fly out to Cuba. "Long story, but his dad was a real fuckin' dick."

She knows the word enough that he doesn't think to explain it, just sorta nodding along, even when she asks him a question. "Uh, yeah, pretty much. Even before the Collapse, my life... kinda fuckin' sucked. It was hella boring and full of stupid drama and," he really doesn't want to get into it, "Well, here, I got free food, free alcohol, clean sheets... No real interpersonal conflicts or like, you know... evil crazy cults." Hahaha. "It's pretty chill, TBH."

Edited 2022-06-25 00:57 (UTC)

"Heard a lot of dads can be that way. Not mine, though. He was great. And... Guess that could get boring after awhile. You seem the sort that knows how to make his own entertainment, though," Ava gestures to the fire.

"This guy from my world, said he showed up after getting shot by some crazy cultist. What sort of culting did they do?" Ava asks, curious.

Sharky is not about to get into the daddy issues conversation. Nobody needs to know when a 54-year-old man has problems with his father.

"The usual, like, pseudo-Christian Jonestown shit where the guy in charge is some creep who acts as if God talks to him. He was convinced that there was gonna be this big Collapse of like, the world, right? So he and his brothers brought all their crazy Peggies to Montana, where they preached about the Collapse and, like, baptized people and shit."

He grabs some random bits to toss into the flame, "Uhh, they were like, really fucked up though. It was all cannibalism and methamphetamines with those motherfuckers."

Is it really worse than anything else?

"Hm," Ava comments, because it does sound like rather typical extremist nuttery and nothing all that outright insane in the grand scheme of things. Up until the cannibalism. "They ate people? Before or after the Collapse?"

Sharky throws up a hand, "Fucking before! Which is like, the fucking worst part! It was this whole, uh... thing." Shit, he hopes Pratt's doing okay. He should've like, forced an extra sign-up or something. Keep an eye on that guy. "Like they thought it would make people tough enough to handle the Collapse. But instead it just, you know. Made less people survive in general."

Bummer.

"It was mostly a, 'don't ask just eat' sorta thing, I think. Although most people probably knew what they were chowin' down on."

Ava makes a disgusted expression. Ew. "Well they weren't exactly wrong, but I think every whacko including myself has been predicting the end times since the beginning of time, so can't give them too much credit."

She searches for something else to toss into the fire.

"So how'd they handle the aftermath? Chowing away? Are humans even a particularly abundant resource to thrive off of? Doesn't seem particularly sustainable."

"Yeah, that's what I keep saying." Everyone and their fucking moms had a doomsday bunker where he came from; one of them was bound to be right. It just sucked that it was this particular nutjob.

If he's gonna talk about Peggies, they're both gonna need something to burn, so he grabs a open bag of sugar and sets it between them for easy handful-grabbing. Watch that baby flare up while he talks about cultists!

"I mean, theoretically," most anything can be turned into livestock, but boy is that not a lesson he wants to impart on anyone! So he charged right on through to, "They had this whole plan that involved converting people to their fucked up religion, then those people would live in these huge bunkers they called 'Gates.' But we thought they were just crazy, so the cops rolled through and shut the bunkers down. When the Collapse came, most of the Peggies died, 'cos their bunkers were fucked, same as ours. The ones that didn't eat it through the nuclear winter set up a hippy commune in the woods, actin' all self-righteous and burning 'Old World' shit because ~that's what got us in the mess in the first place~ or whatever."

Sure, but humans have far too long a gestation period and require far more resource input than you're going to get out of one singular baby for eating purposes. And the turn around time for a baby growing up to be an adult capable of reproducing makes this whole livestock thing a bad plan. Better stick with chickens, she thinks.

Ava tosses a few handfuls of sugar into the fire.

"I don't know, burning shit is a bit cathartic," Ava comments, "but probably a silly thing to do when your world is running on limited resources. You're really ruining my dream of being a doomsday prepper, you know."

It's called veal, Ava.

"That's how I feel about it. Like, go ahead and burn the old Grisham novels and shit, nobody needs that. And if you don't wanna listen to fuckin' classic rock now, that's cool, but don't bring my ass into it." Ugh, "Religious extremists are always like that, though. They always like, gotta get up into your business. Before Joseph, I was constantly gettin' these fuckin LDS motherfuckers comin' round my place, tryin' to, y'know, convert me to their weird polyamorous cult thing, but they were real dicks about drinking and smoking so I told 'em to fuck off."

They probably got murdered by the Peggies, but hey. He's not going to give a shit about missionaries. "Sorry, uhh, it turns out that being a doomsday prepper is kinda fuckin' boring and also depressing. But at least you're not the only one -- pretty much every try-hard survivalist back home got the same rude wake-up call when they had to live years in their shitty home-made bunkers."

"Communes out in the woods should be leaving everyone else alone. I lived in the woods for five years, never caused any problems." She caused plenty of problems. "Religion is weird. You know that the captain is trying to become a god? Maybe this ship is his polyamorous cult."

Ava sighs out her disappointment. "I think it's more fun thinking about society crumbling, more than anything. Never been much a fan. But what comes after doesn't seem all that great either."

"Hahaha, fuck, man, good luck to him," because that sounds fucking awful. That kind of like, responsibility and like, effort???? Fuuuck that. Being a regular person is plenty hard enough as it is.

"I bet you just gotta go, like, a couple hundred years into the future, and then it's better. Or maybe it's worse. I dunno, most of the games I played were more focused on the hordes of mutants to fight than, like, the socio-political ramifications of mass nuclear warfare."

He'd like to think people are better, somehow, but... "Y'know, people kinda suck, sooo chances are good we'll fuck it up all over again. But what else are you supposed to do? Give up? Fuck that."

Yeah, Ava would like to not be a person at all at times. And sometimes that's all she wants. Annoying. She sure as hell wouldn't want to be a god.

"Hey, maybe those mutants are just wanting a decent future for themselves too," she jokes. "But this is probably as good of a place as it gets, for me. Not that many people. No laws. No broken economic system to suffer. Nobody treats me any lesser for what I am. Endless crab legs. But people do suck, and I'm sure the first opportunity to ruin this all, a few selfish assholes will. Make that decision for the rest of us and destroy the only good we have."

"If that happens, we just gotta do what we did in Montana." He grins, chucking more sugar into the fire before pumping his fist. "Round up the gang and beat the shit outta anyone who tries to take our home."

Not that he, like, thinks of the ship as home or anything. But he isn't going home, soooo, transitive property, this is home now. Right? Right.

She laughs, wondering if and when it'll eventually come to that.

Because yes, it's her home. It's where her friends are. And she doesn't want to allow a few angry passengers to destroy everything just because they don't like the guy in charge.

"If the Captain dies, the magical barriers will fall. And all of everything here will cease to be."

"Then I guess that dude doesn't have to worry about me kicking his ass, huh?" Because, like, it would suck to be the guy who literally killed all of these people. That would be literally the worst thing ever. He would probably fucking kill himself if that happened, except he'd also be dead, which would also suck.

"There are always assholes out there tryin' to ruin good things for other people, but so far most everyone I've talked to either just wants to go home or like, doesn't care that they're here to begin with. That's good, right? Means mosta us all want somethin' similar."

"Mostly, but all it takes is a couple of egotistical hero types that like to punch before they think of the consequences. Luckily the Captain doesn't seem so easily taken down, so..." Ava shrugs.

"At least with somebody like you around, things are less boring," she nudges him lightly.

Sharky, unfortunately, knows all about that Leroy Jenkins bullshit. He sometimes wonders if that's exactly what Rook wound up doing. Just rushing in, guns blazing, without thinking it through...

"That's my job, I guess. Makin' things less boring. Or lightin' shit on fire. That is also definitely my thing."

Because fire never disappoints. It just outperforms your expectations!

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JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

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