Skulduggery Pleasant (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
light_mischief) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2022-06-25 12:26 am
light_mischief) wrote in come_sailaway2022-06-25 12:26 am
[open] automated vacation message
Who: Skulduggery Pleasant and...??? You. Definitely you. Really you, right?
What: After his canon-jump and the confirmation that like, technically he is both real and unreal, Skulduggery has decided he is mentally checking out for the week. Yep, definitely an appropriate coping mechanism that will not backfire continuously and spectacularly.
When: After the camping trip through the last week of June!
Where: Tommy Bahama, Karaoke, the pool, also far away from it all
Warnings: Auditory & visual hallucinations, probably talk of extensive torture, eldritch madness, and general trauma. Some violence is possible/probable.
Notes: See this post for an idea of how Skulduggery might be different post-canon jump! New CR will be more likely to see a balanced, "regular" Skulduggery (since his hallucinations are strictly people he knows), while his current CR might notice him avoiding direct communication until he can prove you're really there. He might also try to throw things at you. You know, it's fine.
(I'll match tagging style!)
[locked to Darcy] I know what I think doesn't matter anymore, but I'd say his mind is gone
[It takes Skulduggery approximately an hour after his conversation with the captain before he starts to have a complete and total meltdown about it. Not that he would classify it as such; no, this is just... a period of adjustment to new facts. He tries his best to write it all down before he forgets, but the more he thinks about it the less sense it makes and --
It takes him almost a full day to get some sort of grip on himself, and in that time he comes up with what may be the stupidest plan he's ever had. Well, the stupidest plan he's ever had thus far. If reality is burning him out, then he simply must not engage with it any more than strictly necessary. That, he figures, is as close to a vacation as one can get aboard this godforsaken ship, and that's just what he needs.
That means: no theorizing, plotting or hypothesizing about current or future affairs; no concerted efforts to solve any problems; no worrying about the captain's plans or personhood or name or anything; and most importantly, no taking things too seriously.
But to do it all, he unfortunately must break the last rule almost immediately. There is an unfortunate side-effect to his sudden temporal upheaval that must be dealt with, first.
The gauntlets haven't changed since he last laid eyes on them, but he has. There's a distant singing sensation in the base of his skull now when he touches them, like a finger along the rim of a champagne glass. He wraps them tight in a towel. Doesn't help. Stuffs the towel in a bag. Still doesn't help. Just being in the room with them is enough to feel it. Throwing them overboard isn't an option; he can't guarantee who will find them. The only choice he has, as far as he can see, is to find someone he trusts to hide them for him. Somewhere he'll never be able to go, or never think to look.
Skulduggery takes the bag, wraps it in yet another towel, and avoids the mirror on his way out. No need to look at himself to recognize the guilt already brewing at putting this burden on somebody else. Maybe it wouldn't sting as much if he were handing them over to Jade, or Palamedes -- but the former would put the pieces together too quickly, and the latter would likely wind up hurting himself. Darcy, he surmises, has no necromancy in her background, and therefore is unlikely to draw even the slightest energy from the cold, dead metal.
She's going to ask a lot of questions, and he'll have to lie to her face about most of it, but at least he can trust her to help. He just has to hope that she's actually in her cabin when he comes knocking.]
1. [tommy bahama] There was a reason why I came here (but I guess now it doesn't matter)
[There is a six-foot-four skeleton in a full suit somewhere inside the Tommy Bahama. You can't see him from the front of the shop, but if you walk the rows long enough -- maybe fifteen, thirty minutes down the aisle -- you're bound to come across Skulduggery. He seems to be browsing the shirts at first glance, but his movements are a bit... Stilted. He doesn't react to any of the patterns or the quiet muzak or the fake lime scent pumped into the store. Truthfully, he isn't even aware of how far into the store he's gotten. He'd been mostly trying to outpace the obnoxious Valkyrie hallucination following him, laughing at the ugly shirts he's pretending to look at. She's the only other voice in the shop, which makes her the one thing ruining this place from being truly peaceful. The silence, the solitude... if he could destroy the speakers, it would be perfect.
"Oh my God," Valkyrie says, "You are totally pathetic. Do you really think a sunhat is going to fix all of this?"
Yes, actually. Skulduggery does think a sunhat will fix things. For one thing, he can throw them at the bothersome figment. For another, he's now left a trail of various hats and pieces of clothing as a trail for him to follow back to the front. (Or, perhaps, for other people to find him...)]
2. [chatterbox] There is a certain kind of feeling that you get, when you're totally helpless
[Karaoke seems to be limited to a single hour every night, but Skulduggery doesn't want to wait for nine PM. He doesn't have time to sit around waiting for things to happen. He needs to be throwing himself into this vacation of his full force, and no semi-sentient teleprompter is going to stand in the way of his good time, damn it.
Skulduggery sits on top of the karaoke machine itself, having the monitor pulled up right in front of him for easy access. He sits in silence a lot for somebody who's supposedly trying to sing, flipping through the catalog seemingly at random. In the audience, he only has to worry about China, who smiles and hums What is Life Without a Wife. She only stops when he uses the ship's translator to translate some of the now-dead language he'd learned. Mostly, that just leaves him shouting things like "Help, help," and "The pain is everlasting," into a silent room. But that's okay. It's fine. Now he knows what those words meant when they were being shouted at him by survivors of a now-dead alien race. The more you know!
When he does sing, he throws his chest into it, so to speak, and for what it's worth, it does seem that he's having a good time. Every time the machine tries to rattle like it might return to its closet, Skulduggery reaches down and punches the side to get it to stop. The truth is, Skulduggery is holding the damned thing hostage. And he knows it. Which is why he will occasionally hit it extra hard and mention,] I will set you ablaze, you know.
[It seems to do the trick.]
3. [the pool] I had a good, good, good, good reason (but I guess now you couldn't care)
[The only one of Gordon Edgley's books that Skulduggery can find is The Vanishing Knight, which is a fun story about teleporters and based loosely on Skulduggery's knowledge of the Grotesquery. Now that he's gotten a little more real-world experience with both matters, he's decided to settle in by the pool and do a little post-humous editing. This issue's got some simple grammatical mistakes, and Gordon always tended toward rambling sentences; on top of that, he certainly took some artistic liberties with the way things were handled.
Interestingly enough, despite being a normally chatty friend, Gordon is a quiet sort of figment beside him, just there to listen and silently chuckle at Skulduggery's asides. He thinks maybe he's just worried he won't be able to get Gordon's voice quite right. That's fine, though; Gordon's a nice, comfortable presence to have lingering around. He doesn't complain, not even as Skulduggery gets lost in rambling asides that are half-spoken and half-thought. This might as well be the closest to self-care Skulduggerys gotten in either a week or a year, depending on which angle you come at it.
He's wearing his suit, but of course, the hat has been replaced by a Tommy Bahama sunhat. Valkyrie has not bothered him once since he put it on, and so as far as he's concerned, this is his new look.]
[wildcard] I got pressure bearing down on me
(Have something in mind? Message me or just throw something up and see what happens!)
What: After his canon-jump and the confirmation that like, technically he is both real and unreal, Skulduggery has decided he is mentally checking out for the week. Yep, definitely an appropriate coping mechanism that will not backfire continuously and spectacularly.
When: After the camping trip through the last week of June!
Where: Tommy Bahama, Karaoke, the pool, also far away from it all
Warnings: Auditory & visual hallucinations, probably talk of extensive torture, eldritch madness, and general trauma. Some violence is possible/probable.
Notes: See this post for an idea of how Skulduggery might be different post-canon jump! New CR will be more likely to see a balanced, "regular" Skulduggery (since his hallucinations are strictly people he knows), while his current CR might notice him avoiding direct communication until he can prove you're really there. He might also try to throw things at you. You know, it's fine.
(I'll match tagging style!)
[locked to Darcy] I know what I think doesn't matter anymore, but I'd say his mind is gone
[It takes Skulduggery approximately an hour after his conversation with the captain before he starts to have a complete and total meltdown about it. Not that he would classify it as such; no, this is just... a period of adjustment to new facts. He tries his best to write it all down before he forgets, but the more he thinks about it the less sense it makes and --
It takes him almost a full day to get some sort of grip on himself, and in that time he comes up with what may be the stupidest plan he's ever had. Well, the stupidest plan he's ever had thus far. If reality is burning him out, then he simply must not engage with it any more than strictly necessary. That, he figures, is as close to a vacation as one can get aboard this godforsaken ship, and that's just what he needs.
That means: no theorizing, plotting or hypothesizing about current or future affairs; no concerted efforts to solve any problems; no worrying about the captain's plans or personhood or name or anything; and most importantly, no taking things too seriously.
But to do it all, he unfortunately must break the last rule almost immediately. There is an unfortunate side-effect to his sudden temporal upheaval that must be dealt with, first.
The gauntlets haven't changed since he last laid eyes on them, but he has. There's a distant singing sensation in the base of his skull now when he touches them, like a finger along the rim of a champagne glass. He wraps them tight in a towel. Doesn't help. Stuffs the towel in a bag. Still doesn't help. Just being in the room with them is enough to feel it. Throwing them overboard isn't an option; he can't guarantee who will find them. The only choice he has, as far as he can see, is to find someone he trusts to hide them for him. Somewhere he'll never be able to go, or never think to look.
Skulduggery takes the bag, wraps it in yet another towel, and avoids the mirror on his way out. No need to look at himself to recognize the guilt already brewing at putting this burden on somebody else. Maybe it wouldn't sting as much if he were handing them over to Jade, or Palamedes -- but the former would put the pieces together too quickly, and the latter would likely wind up hurting himself. Darcy, he surmises, has no necromancy in her background, and therefore is unlikely to draw even the slightest energy from the cold, dead metal.
She's going to ask a lot of questions, and he'll have to lie to her face about most of it, but at least he can trust her to help. He just has to hope that she's actually in her cabin when he comes knocking.]
1. [tommy bahama] There was a reason why I came here (but I guess now it doesn't matter)
[There is a six-foot-four skeleton in a full suit somewhere inside the Tommy Bahama. You can't see him from the front of the shop, but if you walk the rows long enough -- maybe fifteen, thirty minutes down the aisle -- you're bound to come across Skulduggery. He seems to be browsing the shirts at first glance, but his movements are a bit... Stilted. He doesn't react to any of the patterns or the quiet muzak or the fake lime scent pumped into the store. Truthfully, he isn't even aware of how far into the store he's gotten. He'd been mostly trying to outpace the obnoxious Valkyrie hallucination following him, laughing at the ugly shirts he's pretending to look at. She's the only other voice in the shop, which makes her the one thing ruining this place from being truly peaceful. The silence, the solitude... if he could destroy the speakers, it would be perfect.
"Oh my God," Valkyrie says, "You are totally pathetic. Do you really think a sunhat is going to fix all of this?"
Yes, actually. Skulduggery does think a sunhat will fix things. For one thing, he can throw them at the bothersome figment. For another, he's now left a trail of various hats and pieces of clothing as a trail for him to follow back to the front. (Or, perhaps, for other people to find him...)]
2. [chatterbox] There is a certain kind of feeling that you get, when you're totally helpless
[Karaoke seems to be limited to a single hour every night, but Skulduggery doesn't want to wait for nine PM. He doesn't have time to sit around waiting for things to happen. He needs to be throwing himself into this vacation of his full force, and no semi-sentient teleprompter is going to stand in the way of his good time, damn it.
Skulduggery sits on top of the karaoke machine itself, having the monitor pulled up right in front of him for easy access. He sits in silence a lot for somebody who's supposedly trying to sing, flipping through the catalog seemingly at random. In the audience, he only has to worry about China, who smiles and hums What is Life Without a Wife. She only stops when he uses the ship's translator to translate some of the now-dead language he'd learned. Mostly, that just leaves him shouting things like "Help, help," and "The pain is everlasting," into a silent room. But that's okay. It's fine. Now he knows what those words meant when they were being shouted at him by survivors of a now-dead alien race. The more you know!
When he does sing, he throws his chest into it, so to speak, and for what it's worth, it does seem that he's having a good time. Every time the machine tries to rattle like it might return to its closet, Skulduggery reaches down and punches the side to get it to stop. The truth is, Skulduggery is holding the damned thing hostage. And he knows it. Which is why he will occasionally hit it extra hard and mention,] I will set you ablaze, you know.
[It seems to do the trick.]
3. [the pool] I had a good, good, good, good reason (but I guess now you couldn't care)
[The only one of Gordon Edgley's books that Skulduggery can find is The Vanishing Knight, which is a fun story about teleporters and based loosely on Skulduggery's knowledge of the Grotesquery. Now that he's gotten a little more real-world experience with both matters, he's decided to settle in by the pool and do a little post-humous editing. This issue's got some simple grammatical mistakes, and Gordon always tended toward rambling sentences; on top of that, he certainly took some artistic liberties with the way things were handled.
Interestingly enough, despite being a normally chatty friend, Gordon is a quiet sort of figment beside him, just there to listen and silently chuckle at Skulduggery's asides. He thinks maybe he's just worried he won't be able to get Gordon's voice quite right. That's fine, though; Gordon's a nice, comfortable presence to have lingering around. He doesn't complain, not even as Skulduggery gets lost in rambling asides that are half-spoken and half-thought. This might as well be the closest to self-care Skulduggerys gotten in either a week or a year, depending on which angle you come at it.
He's wearing his suit, but of course, the hat has been replaced by a Tommy Bahama sunhat. Valkyrie has not bothered him once since he put it on, and so as far as he's concerned, this is his new look.]
[wildcard] I got pressure bearing down on me
(Have something in mind? Message me or just throw something up and see what happens!)
no subject
(Don't worry, Darlington, he also forgot about Stede for a minute, there. And Ava... And pretty much everyone.)
"Aaaah." Yes. Okay. Darlington. Monster in the basement, punching bags. A passenger he knows, who is... holding a hat. As long as he keeps that in hand, everything is good. "Yes. I was looking for something more... vacation-y." He indicates the one currently on his head, which is more-or-less a very basic trilby Not the best, but he's working on it! "Something that screams, 'Don't bother me, I'm not really here.'"
no subject
It just seems strange, even in as strange a place as this. When Skulduggery manages to reply with something concrete if rambling, there's something odd about it too, but it's also dismissive enough that it could be nothing more than a bit of sarcasm. For now, Darlington lets out a short, polite laugh, looking from the hat in his hands to the one on Skulduggery's head. "If you believe Friday, everything onboard is meant to be vacation-y," he says, though he looks over the nearby shelves in case there's something that better fits the brief. "Though if you don't want to be bothered, maybe something with a larger brim. Easier to hide behind."
no subject
He considers what Darlington says with maybe a little more seriousness than the suggestion warrants. "Yes, you're probably right. I need something that I can tip down in front of my face when someone comes to ask me questions. I'm expecting it any minute now, truthfully, so the sooner I find something, the better."
If not one of the people he texted a long, rambling diatribe to, then most certainly an annoying feral teenager, or one of the many captains he's currently meddling in the affairs of. There's no shortage of people who will likely insist on ruining his desperately-needed break from reality, unfortunately.
no subject
"The captain gives out answers so sparingly, it barely justifies mention," he says, swapping the flamingo cap for a rust-colored terrycloth bucket hat he finds on one of the shelves, holding it out for Skulduggery to consider. "To us or Friday."
He pauses, looking at him, trying to ascertain a change he's not even sure is really there. "Expecting it from who?"
no subject
He switches hats out without a second thought. He doesn't really care which hat he wears, in the end -- it really just matters that he's trying them on for size. He gives it a shot, pushing the brim over his eye sockets, but it just doesn't quite feel right. "Oh, you know," he drawls, as if Darlington could possibly know who he's avoiding. "People. Some specific ones, but also the whole... general populace, I suppose." He flips the brim up, his head tilting very slightly. "Have you ever seen the movie Highlander?"
no subject
Hide in the Tommy Bahama was the insane remainder of that sentence, words Darlington had never yet had occasion to say and fervently hoped he never would again. It's forgotten when Skulduggery tilts his head and looks at him, the empty eye sockets of his skull briefly more unnerving than he expected them to be. The question doesn't help, nor does it explain anything, and Darlington splutters out the first response that comes to the fore.
"What?"
no subject
"I don't know. If I remember correctly, which I might not, our Earths were contemporary. I haven't seen the movie, I thought it sounded stupid and never bothered. Foolish me, I know." Said sarcastically. Silly him for not realizing he'd need to know a single throw-away concept from a 1980s movie to save his soul!
"If you haven't, I won't blame you. But I thought I ought to ask anyway."
no subject
He pauses, looking a little more intently at Skulduggery. "I haven't seen it, but can I ask what Highlander has to do with needing a hat and a break from the rest of us?"
no subject
"If I knew, I wouldn't have to ask." Well, that isn't strictly true, is it? He tosses his current attempt at a hat aside, aiming for the periphery that Valkyrie is likely to pop out from. "It's the reference the captain used to try and explain something that happened to me. I kicked him until he explained it without using pop culture, but still. Curiosity, cats, etcetera. Pity we both have decent taste in movies..."
no subject
He's not sure. Not yet. But it doesn't look good.
That something had happened to Skulduggery, however, is the more concerning part. "Good for you, getting some licks in," he says, though the frown still doesn't leave his face. "But if he's done something to you...should it be undone? Can it?"
no subject
"I doubt he even felt them," he says. "They only connected because he wanted them to." And he should really be avoiding this conversation; that was the entire point of the vacation, after all. To not talk about the Captain or the Eterna or the timelines or --
"He technically didn't do anything. It's his ignorance that did all. And he's right. Whatever the price is to undo it, I won't pay it." Darlington, he thinks he remembers, was eaten by a monster. Right? That's good. He assumes if someone is already dead, there can't be any more timeline to go back to for them. "It probably won't happen to you. You're probably fine." Probably.