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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The key is, obviously, not wanting to hurt the kid. Skulduggery will err on the side of Ava's compassion and assume that was the case.

"Back in my day, everyone camped outdoors. It's character building." He's old. Also, it was war. Also, it was the 1600s. Still!!! "They'll be fine."

"Oh in that case I'm certain that he will do everything in his power to avoid you because you made four grown men sleep outside during this camping excursion predicated on sleeping outside." His eyeroll is tangible, it can probably be felt all the way at the lake.

"You are not as awful as you think you are."

"That's very hurtful, Max. I'm on the wanted list in several countries for high profile assassinations and espionage. Well not by name, that'd be very sloppy work of me. But he catches killers, so there's that whole conflict of interests. And just because..."

Ava sighs, doesn't realize she's faded enough to give Max nothing to hold onto but continues along with the foot pattern. "Okay fine there are those Battle Royale murders, it's not like my hands are entirely clean, but everyone seems to dismiss those as being forced. But it's part of my nature, isn't it. The only thing that's really prevented me from it is a careful balance of would it accomplish anything that's worth the risk and consequence? Because I rather not play my cards too early. Because I don't have enough of a plan to justify it. Because right now it's a waste of time and energy. Not because I'm... you know, morally opposed. I don't think that's how most healthy people decide. Not that I think there's a healthy soul upon the damned ship anyway."

She pouts. "Can we spin again?"

Skulduggery doesn't want to be the guy who points out the obvious, but... oh, who are we kidding. Skulduggery loves to point out the obvious, especially when he can make it seem like he came up with it himself.

"You're not the only person aboard whose opposition to murder is solely pragmatic. And I doubt Malcolm is going to hold a few non-permanent, necessary deaths against you."

But this is really Max's purview. He is, after all, more morally ambivalent than Skulduggery is. He can handle the pep talk.

"For starters it would be helpful if you were here in order to spin." Since he's looking at a flickery mist right now and is kind of holding his arms in the proper position of where she should be.

"I'm not sure anyone would admit to being so rational with their murders, that's how you give away your plans and cause suspicions. So you don't actually know that others aren't doing the same and preforming cost based analysis on who they should kill. Though I can assure you that there are people on the ship I would kill in an instant if there weren't going to be repercussions."

Mostly to himself because as much as he fights with Ebalon he's pretty sure he can't actually beat him. The others he wants to kill would just make other people pout at him and he'd rather not deal with their feelings.

"Don't worry, I'm sure he'll think up some clever double entrendres about catching a criminal."

"Oh, sorry about that." Ava becomes very aware of herself all at once, grasping at Max's hands in order to pull her scattered molecules back together.

"You two make it painfully difficult to be hard on myself, you know. Should have left it at nevermind." But she's smiling, because they're very sweet.

"Anyway, he said there's no one else like me. And I imagine he knows all sorts of twisted freaks." She likes being unique!

"We're difficult people in general." Which is undoubtedly why Ava likes them, right? "And you have nothing to worry about. Take it from a skeleton detective and a pragmatically homicidal Omnic."

You know, the two people most qualified to cheer her up.

"Good of you to get that out of your system now. After all, guilty feet have no rhythm."

And yes, when they do indeed spin in corporeal unity, Skulduggery will grace them with an imitated saxophone solo just for them.

Ava chose to be friends with them, she has only herself to blame. "We both are used to getting what we want and are very stubborn, so we would never have accepted 'Nevermind' for long."

Ah good, she's back to being tangible which makes dancing significantly easier when your partner is actually there and it's not Max kind of estimating where she should be.

"You see? 'No one like you' is a very good start. Though I'm sure he's not comparing you to serial killers. Or I hope not anyway." She may be a villain but serial killers are a whole different thing. People who enjoy killing for fun, not as a means to an end. Which in his mind is far more noble, the murders he's committed were justified because he was mildly inconvenienced.

But that's not what he's thinking about now because it is most definitely sax solo time. Now that she's gotten the hang of this, the spins and dips and footwork will be second nature. Especially with such good musical accompaniment.

"Then just know I'd do the same for you," she threatens!

But yes she chose them. It's nice to have people that put up with her, make her feel like a bit less of a disaster. She has no regrets at all.

Until that guilty feet line. Awful. Brilliant. She tries to add a bit more flourish to her spin to properly enjoy the efforts of Skulduggery's sax solo, extending an arm, kicking up her leg, and overestimating her balance to crash right back into Max.

Amazing. Flawless. Skulduggery immediately laughs, and he laughs hard. It isn't at Ava, obviously!! He's just a huge fan of slapstick comedy and that is a classic sort of bit.

At least he got to do the solo, though. That was vitally important!

Luckily, being made of metal and rather heavy, Max doesn't go crashing to the ground as well. Which is unfortunate for Skulduggery because the clanking sound he would have made would go delightfully with the laughter and the previous sax solo. Alas alas.

He does make a whumph noise and stumble back though. But he also catches her before she goes sliding to the ground or anything.

"I believe you have the enthusiasm part of this down well now."

Now had this been Malcolm she could do this intentionally to get closer to him. So this is just practice for that elite flirting strategy.

It's probably a testament to how far she's grown comfortable in her friendship with these two that being laughed at doesn't immediately put her in a defensive, humiliated mood and that she's able to laugh it off along with Skulduggery. She clings to Max for a brief moment until she's regained confidence in her balance, then brushes herself off.

"So now we have to figure out a way to cancel the dance. Or you can go bury me out in the woods."

It's the noise Max makes that really gets him, to be honest. But of course he's not completely incapable of speech while trying to maintain his giggles:

"We could burn the mess hall down? But then the other children will be so disappointed..."

"Well you could run out into the woods to hide, and then he may go looking for you and that's precisely when a masked killer will spring out of a cabin we've all somehow missed and try to murder him. So it's probably best you just go to the dance. For Malcolm's safety."

He smooths out his clothes, instinctively going to fix the tie that isn't there. Sigh.

"It will be fine. We have every confidence in you."

With wingmen like this how can you go wrong?

FOR MALCOLM'S SAFETY. How is she even supposed to argue with that.

Ava throws up her hands in defeat. "I guess!"

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JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

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