come_sailaway | [Open] Arrival + Event Catch-All

Entry tags:

[Open] Arrival + Event Catch-All

Who: Number 6 & OPEN
What: First few openers repeated from the TDM + New event prompts ALL TRUTH BECAUSE HE WILL HATE IT (All the TDM prompts except for the first one can be truth flavored, too)
Where: Locations stated in the prompt
When: The first one on the 11th, the rest throughout the month of July
Warnings: He's very upset and might be shouty

Over His dead body [7/11]
Waking up in an unfamiliar place is nothing new to him at this point. Not that it makes him any less boiling with rage over it. And that note only makes the steam rise higher over his head. So, they're doing cruises now? How novel. And using days of the week for names instead of numbers, too. What won't The Village try? He obstinately ignores the suggestion to bring his life vest with him. But the order to go to their mandatory drill is less easy to ignore. When did they gain the ability to paralyze him if he won't go where they say?

He can be found in the halls, not very far from the cabin he woke in (113), frozen in place with his hands balled into fists at his sides absolutely seething with rage. His entire body trembles with the force of it. He knows what he has to do to get unstuck. He'd experimented with taking a few steps forward and back. But will he go where he is directed? No. Never. He'd rather go red-faced in this hallway waiting for their unseen will to control him to run out than take one more step. Even if it takes hours.

Don't Look Down - Elevator prompt from the TDM
After, presumably, someone convinced him to finally just go do the god-forsaken drill, he thought the worst was over. How naive of him. He steps onto the glass elevator and reaches to hit the button. But nothing happens. He tries again. Still nothing. No movement. Turning to the person beside him, whom he has failed to acknowledge up until this point, he asks, "Does this happen often?"

There won't be time for a reply before the elevator quite suddenly lurches up one floor, and then drops. His stomach rises into his throat and he desperately puts his hands out to grip the side, fingers squeaking on the slippery glass, as they careen down, down, down!

Then stop.

He's thrown from his feet, landing hard on his side with a grunt. But rather than worry after himself, he's turning to catch sight of his unwitting partner on this fun-house ride, asking urgently, "Are you all right?"

Since When Did the Food Fight Back? - Mikabo prompt from the TDM
"What in blazes?" he exclaims as a knife goes soaring past him, followed quickly by a roll of sushi and the whole plate too.

He turns in shock to see the conveyor belt, seemingly with a mind of its own, winding up for another throw.

"Who is running this place?"

The truth will set you free?
Well, how was he supposed to know not to drink the water? Who would be stupid enough to poison the finite water supply on a cruise ship? After splashing some on his face in the morning to wash and shave himself, and then using it to brush his teeth like any decent hygienic person, he goes about his day none-the-wiser to the sudden change that's taken place.

His newly formed routine is to prowl the ship deck first thing in the morning (and last thing at night), scowling while he checks the waves and sky for any hint of a clue about where they could be. He checks the life boats, too, as if paranoid they might vanish without warning. It's unfortunate for him that it's been raining so much, only compounding the problematic effects of the water.

Once he's done his lap around the deck, he will work his way down level by level. He's memorizing the lay of thing, taking note of cabin numbers and all the many and varied amenities. It's almost staggering how many venues there are, and all of them host technology he'd never even dreamed of.

For instance, the arcade full of flashy computer games has him mesmerized. He stands in front of a cabinet, hand on the joystick while utterly transfixed. He doesn't make it past the opening stage of the game, but he keeps trying, getting visibly more upset each time the death screen animation plays. Until, finally, he shouts suddenly, "what's this all about?!"

He's keeping that angry-old-man-shouts-at-technology vibe with him through the rest of his explorations. Nothing on this ship makes any sense. The music is different. The decorations are all unfamiliar. If he believed in such things, he'd think he got abducted by aliens. Maybe he shouldn't rule it out.

To add insult to injury, his assigned dining time of "6:66 PM" feels like a particularly stinging slap in the face. Surely that was done on purpose to mock him. And so, when he sits down at his assigned seat, he is looking incredibly sour. He would shout at their servers, if he could see them. Instead, he has no recourse but to sit there, elbows on the table like a petulant child, seething quietly while the meal is served. And to quench that rage, he drinks more water, of course. Looks like mealtime chatter might be about to get a lot more interesting, or rage inducing. Probably that last one.

Good thing he doesn't have a roommate.
Speaking of rage, Number 6 is in one now. An hour after a conversation with someone, he somehow sobers-up and realizes that what he actually said doesn't match what he thought he said. AT ALL. And he is livid.

A chair goes flying into the hallway, crashing against the wall opposite Room 113. A glass goes soaring out after, smashing in rainfall of shattered shards.

If anyone is brave enough to stick their head through the open door after all that, they will find him in the process of attempting to upend his bunk. And there will be pieces of his furniture and personal effect thrown all around the room. It looks like a hurricane came through.

If he catches sight of any onlookers he will shout, "What do you want!" His piercing blue eyes narrowed down to slits as he locks his gaze on them. Taking one step more might feel like stepping on your own grave. Enter at your own risk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Socked footsteps are quiet but but necessarily careful. Clarke may do her best to avoid the scattered fragments of glass throughout the room but still inevitably catches a piece in her heel and hisses slightly. Still not the worst hurt from the last twenty four hours, and thus goes unaddressed until she makes it to the couch and can pull that foot up across a thigh to pick at. Most of the time she's sliding through his room though is spent with attention firmly rooted on Number 6 — that zoo keeper sizing a new species right back up, unsure if it's a carnivore.

"Thanks for the invitation." Dry, uninterested sarcasm right back. The sliver of glass is easy to extract with just the tips of her fingernails, barely even bloodied. But if he looks closely before she's flicking it off into the rest of the general destruction, he'd see something more akin to pitch black ink smearing the remnants of a cup.

Not that she disapproves of wrecking absolutely everything in sight, especially in the current recently-almost-murdered funk Clarke wears like a shroud, but she still has to gesture at the room as a whole and ask: "Bad day?"

He watches with growing alarm when she takes the glass from her foot with such indifference, not even seeming to react to it. The dark nature of her blood is added to his list of concerns, too. What the blazes is wrong with this woman? He's never seen such casual disregard for one's own safety.

"You could say that." He's still peering at her with eyes narrowed, but there is something akin to respect peeking through in his expression.

"I get the feeling yours has been worse."

More like a bad four months, but —

"It's not a competition." Clarke gives a half hearted, half bodied shrug; making a conscious effort to keep as much of her right side as stationary as possible. Respect is an odd thing to attempt to establish between two people in relatively low places, but if Number 6 is easily impressed with stubborn pain tolerance levels and a detrimental lack of self preservation, he ain't seen nothing yet.

She may be looking around with a rather flat affect. But the chaos is cathartic. Who hasn't woken up here and just wanted to punch the mirror in the small adjoining bathroom once or twice (or daily)?

"I haven't seen you around before, and by my last tally this room was empty, so... Is all this just a healthy response to being kidnapped?"

"No, it certainly isn't."

Since he's now apparently taking guests, he picks his way over to the wall across from her and leans against it with his arms folded. He would sit if his chair was not currently in pieces in the hall.

"Among other things, yes. You don't seem to disapprove. If you aren't here to tell me off, then what do you want?"

By now, she's familiar with the baseline of the curse. Heard directly from a water dwelling eldritch horror what the trigger was and has more or less gone on a dehydration strike, caving rather often but in this moment entirely unaffected. So Clarke hems and haws for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of a full truth given entirely of her own volition. She'd really rather not talk about Deputy Pratt, but. It feels important to let the newbies know exactly what sort of hell scape they've woken up on.

"Another relatively new guy stabbed me last night. When I heard crashing, I wanted to make sure you weren't hurting someone."

Pure and simple. And as the only things being hurt are inanimate objects, yeah, she doesn't disapprove. Doubts it'll make him feel any better in the long run, but everyone needed an outlet — everyone with a head on their shoulders who wasn't just blithely accepting their circumstances without questioning anything too closely.

That had really been the main reason she'd ventured down the hall. Pain and fatigue expected but unpleasant developments that'd led to Clarke inviting herself in.

"...I'll go in a minute, if you want. Or if you feel like doing something a little more productive than trashing a space that'll fix itself the second you leave, I'm happy to answer questions."

"I could tell you were injured by the way you held yourself, but that does sound serious. Are you sure you shouldn't be in the infirmary?" There's true concern in his tone. Stranger or not, he doesn't like to see someone put in harm's way. Knowing this, he's to going to hurry her from his room the way he might have.

"I do have questions, but I worry about putting undue strain on you."

Aw, someone who cares. In classic willful teenager fueled by a megaton of rage and a concerning disregard for death fashion, Clarke sets her mouth in a thin line and shakes her head dismissively.

"I'm fine."

Not much in the infirmary that she has stolen and secreted away in her room anyways. Luck had been on her side as much as it's ever present in a knife fight, and she at least knows no internal organs were punctured.

"Just existing on this ship is stressful as hell already, and — short of also trying to kill me — I don't think you could make it any worse. So what do you want to know?"

"If you say so," Number 6 says, eyeing her like a parent who can see right through the teenage bullshit but is out of patience to push back on it. She's not his responsibility.

"Barring any extenuating circumstances, I am not going to try and kill you." It probably doesn't need saying, but he's saying it anyway.

"My most burning question first. Does anyone on this ship know why we have been gathered here? I can't seem to find anything that connects all of us definitively."

Oh, so they're starting with an easy one.

"The Captain brings us here to this little... pocket of a universe, I guess, in order to use our pain and suffering to fuel the very ship we're living on. Don't ask me why it's dressed up like a pleasurable experience when it's really just a floating slaughterhouse, I just imagine he thought it'd be funny. There's no real connection between us all. Some of us come from the same worlds, some are family members, sometimes absolute strangers. Friday says we all seem 'to come from scary places', but that's more of a majority rules sort of thing; there's people here who at least seem like they've never faced a day of hardship in their lives."

Belatedly, Clarke notices the tiny cut from the glass in her heel has started to bleed too-dark blood again, and fusses with the sleeve of her long sleeved black shirt in order to pat at it. But she still talks at length, that special sort of numb shock still persisting hours past her most recent near-death experience.

"My take away is that a lot of it's random. Like he's sticking his hand in a bowl of lots and just drawing whenever he feels like. A vampire here, a god there, a human back here again, an eldritch horror over there... For as powerful as he is, he's sloppy and lazy about it."

"So, essentially, you think this thing that calls itself a captain is some sort of parasite feeding off our collective misery?" It's clear in the cuttingly dry way he repeats this back that he's more than a little skeptical.

He can't just stand there and watch her dab at the dark blood oozing from her heel, so he yanks a folded white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and holds it out for her.

"Have you got anything in the way of proof?"

Skepticism, another healthy trait. Slot it right alongside that destructive but ultimately harmless anger that left the room in a state to cut feet, and Clarke's ultimately had worse first impressions here. Number 6 offers out a handkerchief to use as a compress and she hesitates a moment to take it, giving him a rather narrow look as if to imply you know that'll stain, right? But ultimately drags the linen from his fingers, and continues.

"His own word, and that of the only person who's ever escaped. And the way things work around here lends to the hypothesis, especially the resurrection of the dead."

Dab dab dab, then a careful drag of her eyes back to his face.

"...There's a point were disbelief stops being a coping mechanism, and just starts to hold you back." Complacency is the death of progress, and stubborn idiocy was dangerously unhelpful.

With the hand not holding the cloth, he waves off her unspoken concerns. It's only a simple cotton cloth, nothing sentimental to him. He's used it to dab many a blood stain before.

"Someone has escaped?" That has his full attention. So far, no one has indicated that escape is even remotely possible. "How?"

He meets her gaze unflinching, his mouth still set in a stubborn line. "Your warning has been noted."

Clarke waits until he levels her with that stonefaced acknowledgement — if anything, that's what she'd wish to impart on newcomers here. That despite all the fancy dressings and amenities, this entire ship was still best viewed as a battlefield. For survival, for their own independence, for sanity and whatever shreds of life could be snagged from the fingers of the repetitive cycle of death and resurrection. Noted is good enough, if not committed to their very bones, and she gives a fractional nod in response before continuing.

"Her name is Pirate Jenny." And if Clarke was being completely honest, escaped is a generous term. The storm goddess in human form still seemed as shackled to the Serena Eterna as the rest of them. "And she played five games of chance against the Captain, and only won once. Blackjack, specifically."

Not that Clarke can know it just from looking, but he's already treated every day like walking into a battle. The war is all around him and always has been. The real ruse is his constantly pretending he's fine despite that.

"And her boon for winning was to be set free from this ship?" he leans in a little closer without realizing it. That sounds too good to be true. There must be a catch. "If the Captain can control everything, then is there such thing as random chance?"

That's a whole mood right there, 6. They're going to get along fine, so long as he doesn't mind her own rather cracked veneer of I'm fine style composure.

"Who's to say, really? He likes games, plenty of those require some sort of chance to be played honestly, and I doubt he wanted to let Jenny go."

...or did he? Clarke gives a mild shake of her head, that is a rabbit hole to dig into later.

"Can control doesn't mean he does. He's not controlling the individual people here so far as I can tell, doesn't care enough to. We're usually just left to our own devices until he wants something from us, so if we were to flip a coin right now I don't think he'd mess with it. And he's not infallible. He makes mistakes, like this stupid truth or lie thing we're dealing with now."

Number 6 makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. Absolute control, he imagines, would be exhausting to maintain. So, yes, he can believe that in most instances there still exists enough freedom for a random penny toss to be just that. And enough free will that he's allowed to toss his room this way. Still, he hasn't forgotten how he was forced to attend drill. That introduction was instructive in multiple ways.

"If we are here in some capacity to be his personal play things, then allowing luck to exist might be a way to keep it entertaining." A bleak way to look at things, but it tracks with everything else he's seen so far.

"It is both encouraging and concerning that he can be fallible. It presents us with a chance to best him, but it makes things far more dangerous. And that's before we get to the other passengers themselves."

He leans back against the wall again and lapses into a ponderous silence. No, he doesn't like it at all. This business with being forced to tell the truth, without even knowing it, stands to do a lot of harm to him personally. Perhaps it already has.

It still smacks like a personal insult, to be reduced to just a thing to a higher being. She's spoken to the Captain a grand total of three times now, and still gnashes her teeth over:

You're fuel for my research. Nothing — more. I never sat down and talked to a can of gasoline to tell it how it was going to burn. — Can cans of gasoline talk back in your world.

No one likes being reduced to a living, breathing, suffering toy. One may burn themselves out for their own purposes, but the second that choice is taken away it breeds discontent and stokes rebellion. Tragically, their attempts to lash back just haven't found any purchase yet. Maybe never will, or maybe it was just a matter of time — but knowing they were not the first set of passengers to endure years of bending to the Captain's whims isn't an encouraging statistic. Also knowing how hands off the maybe-man-turned-almost-god seemed comfortable to be, confident they'd destroy themselves with only mild intervention... It rubs salt in the wound, but hurt in a relatively familiar way. Of course they would, that's what people just did.

Even as Number 6 falls into thoughtful silence and Clarke continues to dab at her heel with his handkerchief, she continues to talk. Specifically about the passenger makeup.

"We're just like any other small community in forced proximity. There's those angling for leadership and trying to enforce order, there's those lobbying for peace, there's the ones who keep to themselves by default and the ones actively trying to hide. There's innocent civilians, useless liabilities, children, anarchists and soldiers. Doctors and musicians, scientists and hippies, scholars and imposters.

"And psychopaths who pose a threat to everyone here. Plenty of them. Enough that it's at least a point of concern, and more and more people showing up every few weeks."

Even if Number 6 isn't looking at her, Clarke's very readily looking him square in the face. Then dipping her gaze to the chaos of the room, a reminder of why she was here; had heard wanton destruction and immediately thought danger, with enough of a panic response to run (hobble) headlong into it while nursing a fresh stab wound and fresher army-style triage burns.

"Do you know what type you're going to be?"

While she lists off the many various iterations of passengers, he is indeed looking at her, calculating in his mind where each person he's met so far might sit. She'll see his mind working behind sharp blue eyes. And, there's is a hint of embarrassment, too, when she looks around his room at the destruction he's wrought. His temper used to be more contained. But he refuses to make excuses for himself in her earshot.

"I'm not helpless. I'm not what you would call a civilian. I'm also not a present danger to anything that isn't a table lamp or other piece of furniture. Where do you suppose that puts me?"

"Hm." It's a short and thoughtful sound, originating from the back of Clarke's throat as she looks him over, eventually moving to lock gazes; sharp blue eyes meet sharp blue eyes, as if one could parse the most important and telling details about a person by the ways their irises flecked or pupils contracted. Man, wouldn't that be nice and easy?

And hm indeed. Were any of the options really good ones? Please believe she locks the qualifier of present when it comes to whatever danger the man may pose to the masses, but right now doesn't push it.

"Guess I'd prefer doctors —" As close as Clarke gets to humor is at her own expense, that cauterized stab wound to her flank still radiates pain with every heartbeat. Dry sarcasm rolls off her tongue, mask of fierce judgement giving way to a hint of teenage sass. "— but am willing to accept if you're just a musician."

He fully expects her to take meaning from his use of the word "present," because he cannot rule out the possibility of this place forcing him to become dangerous. Suppose he's drugged again, for instance. Under the right (or wrong) circumstances, he could be a threat, and he would rather someone stop him by any means if that happens.

"Bad luck. I only know first aid and a smattering of field medicine. I'm no surgeon. I've a little talent for the piano but I'm no musician either."

Luck be a lady, he's standing opposite someone who's lately taken it as her own personal mission to put down resident threats — with varying levels of success, the good (and violent) intentions are there though. But they're not peeling back those conversational layers yet.

Clarke's pulling a face, a silent expression to communicate: pity, we could have used more of both. But it's brief, moving right along to another round of guesses.

"Scholarly hermit, then? Or solider?"

Her look manages to elicit a smile from him, despite himself. It is a shame he couldn't be another musician. Even he agrees.

"You're getting warmer. I was a soldier once." And if he ever gets out of captivity, perhaps he will choose to become a scholarly hermit. That sounds appealing.

"It's a trick question, I'm afraid. I recently resigned from my previous role."

Were she in better spirits and health, that smile might have been returned. Maybe even reaching her eyes. But for now, her world revolves around the sentiment that everything sucks, and in true teenage fashion all she has to offer him is a one-shouldered shrug.

"I don't think our pasts count for much here, past whatever importance we put on them. So — if this is retirement, what do you want to be here? I'm making a list."

Has been since day one, honestly. It's (admittedly almost like a hit list, but not so official) an ever evolving list, with each new arrival. But with most, she doesn't get the opportunity to sit down with and cut through the meat of the issue like this.

"I want to be free."

His frustration is palpable, which might suggest it has more to do with just being trapped on this ship. It's only the tip of this iceberg, really. He's been fighting to get free for possibly a year. (He isn't entirely sure how long it's been without an accurate way to keep time.)

"I mean no one here, save for our dear captain, any harm but I do not wish to get deeply involved with them either. I do not plan to stay long enough for that. I will not be content to live out my retirement in captivity."

(Boy, if you like freedom, she has a god to sell you, Number 6...)

Clarke absorbs his answer, seemingly visibly tallying the weight behind his sentiment with a slight incline of her head from left to right. But ultimately it's deemed perfect, respectable. And I was a solider once is immediately translated into he could be one again.

"So you'll fight with us? Those intent on killing the Captain, and hopefully returning to our own timelines?" It's strategic omission, leaving out that she personally believes they're going to have to kill the wannabe god governing their lives, die alongside him as this reality collapses, and just be content knowing nothing like this will ever befall another person. Whatever endgame people hope for here, it doesn't matter so long as killing the Captain is the agreed upon first choice. The end result would sort itself regardless of the passengers wants and needs.

"You know freedom doesn't come without a great deal of suffering. You ready for that?"

[Open] Arrival + Event Catch-All

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