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come_sailaway2022-08-12 01:46 am
sailmods) wrote in come_sailaway2022-08-12 01:46 am
Entry tags:
- !event,
- arcane: ekko,
- arcane: jinx,
- changeling the lost: giles,
- changeling the lost: oswald wuthridge,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- far cry 5: deputy pratt,
- far cry new dawn: sharky boshaw,
- fe3h: dimitri alexandre blaiddyd,
- groundhog day musical: phil connors,
- interview with the vampire: claudia,
- lavender jack: honoria crabb,
- lavender jack: johnny summer,
- mcu: ava starr,
- mcu: marc spector,
- mcu: steven grant,
- original: aiden copeland,
- original: lucas kovach,
- original: ylva wolfsdottir,
- overwatch: bastion e54,
- overwatch: maximilien,
- prodigal son: malcolm bright,
- rwby: ruby rose,
- sherlock holmes: john watson,
- skulduggery pleasant: skulduggery,
- tales of the abyss: jade curtiss,
- tales of vesperia: rita mordio,
- the 100: clarke griffin,
- the locked tomb: palamedes sextus,
- the umbrella academy: klaus hargreeves,
- westworld: maeve millay
AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT
[it begins with a PA announcement on the morning of the 12th, Friday’s voice coming through clear and cheerful.]
Any passengers that wish to debark to our latest port of call can exit the ship through the metal detectors on deck zero! Please be advised that all alcohol will be confiscated prior to your exit!
[and whoever heads down to the lowest deck will find that what she said was true: there is a metal detector set up there, with Friday manning it. after placing all metal objects (including weapons, and all your weapons) onto the tray, she gestures for the passenger to step through the metal detector.
they exit in an entirely different location. suffering from a splitting headache, and wearing an entirely different outfit than they had put on this morning, but unscathed. they even got their weapons back!
the interior of the diner is essentially your average jonathan rockets establishment. the narrow lane between booths and counter is manned by an entirely mute Friday clone, who cheerily takes orders and serves up food (cooked??? somewhere???) with an almost unnatural talent for roller blading. there is a jukebox in the corner that can be fed with quarters passengers will inexplicably find on their person. the available songs range from the 50s to the 80s, with a particularly wide selection of songs from the platters.
outside, the diner is a great chrome boxcar, circled by a small parking lot. a large neon sign proclaims it to be GIL’S; it buzzes and flickers on and off often. passengers who have regained vehicles will find these vehicles parked outside. there are also a handful of midcentury American cars; none of them seem to require keys, and the gas tank seems set at full.
past the parking lot is a seemingly endless expanse of desert sand and scrubland, bisecting by the empty highway that the diner abuts. a few miles down this highway, the road forks into a smaller one, which winds its way up a steep, ragged mountain until plateauing into another parking lot, with only a small, old wooden fence between the cars and the edge of the cliff.
should they wish to return to the ship, passengers can leave at any time the same way they entered: walking through a doorway that now claims to be a mop closet. passing through will leave them on deck zero, again with a splitting headache. it’s probably fine.]
Any passengers that wish to debark to our latest port of call can exit the ship through the metal detectors on deck zero! Please be advised that all alcohol will be confiscated prior to your exit!
[and whoever heads down to the lowest deck will find that what she said was true: there is a metal detector set up there, with Friday manning it. after placing all metal objects (including weapons, and all your weapons) onto the tray, she gestures for the passenger to step through the metal detector.
they exit in an entirely different location. suffering from a splitting headache, and wearing an entirely different outfit than they had put on this morning, but unscathed. they even got their weapons back!
the interior of the diner is essentially your average jonathan rockets establishment. the narrow lane between booths and counter is manned by an entirely mute Friday clone, who cheerily takes orders and serves up food (cooked??? somewhere???) with an almost unnatural talent for roller blading. there is a jukebox in the corner that can be fed with quarters passengers will inexplicably find on their person. the available songs range from the 50s to the 80s, with a particularly wide selection of songs from the platters.
outside, the diner is a great chrome boxcar, circled by a small parking lot. a large neon sign proclaims it to be GIL’S; it buzzes and flickers on and off often. passengers who have regained vehicles will find these vehicles parked outside. there are also a handful of midcentury American cars; none of them seem to require keys, and the gas tank seems set at full.
past the parking lot is a seemingly endless expanse of desert sand and scrubland, bisecting by the empty highway that the diner abuts. a few miles down this highway, the road forks into a smaller one, which winds its way up a steep, ragged mountain until plateauing into another parking lot, with only a small, old wooden fence between the cars and the edge of the cliff.
should they wish to return to the ship, passengers can leave at any time the same way they entered: walking through a doorway that now claims to be a mop closet. passing through will leave them on deck zero, again with a splitting headache. it’s probably fine.]
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"Oh, you look good," Ava compliments, while showing Skulduggery far more consideration by offering him a hand up. She takes a glance around, the jukebox grabbing her attention first, and then at the kitsch interior of the diner with eyebrows raising. Some people have nostalgia for old Americana, the good ole days. Ava isn't quite one of them. "Hah. Excellent. We'd all get kicked out of this place, if it were the real thing," she straightens out her skirts, checking and double checking and alas there's no poodle stitched into the fabric. Absolutely tragic.
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Thankfully, it's just a result of reality-hopping. Skulduggery doesn't know what he'd do if he lost his mind to the Deathbringer while Yakety Sax played in the background.
"Ughhh." Is all he actually says, clumsily taking Ava's offered hand and dragging himself to his feet. The feeling starts to subside and he finally gets to look around himself, first at the Americana diner and then at his own pink-checked windbreaker. God, he's even wearing loafers. This is the worst acknowledgment of the dad vibes he's been giving out.
"What is with him and Americana?" Ughhh. Can't they wind up in a rainy European village or something? God, the kitsch is going to kill him before the migraine does. That's assuming that the blinding sunlight reflecting off car hoods outside doesn't make the headache even worse...
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"I suppose I should saunter around like I own the place since I wouldn't be allowed in the real one."
Which isn't exactly true, he'd be allowed in the diner in Route 66 in his world's version of America. But that means he'd have to go to America, and that's a hard pass for him.
He's about to tell Ava that she looks very nice and quite swishy in that skirt but then he sees Skulduggery and well, "Are those loafers?"
From the tone he is miliseconds away from laughing in the skeletons face. Sorry buddy.
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"Maybe we're doing Pulp Fiction," she says hopefully, but no that seems entirely the wrong period for whatever is going on here. (Eras before you're born sometimes blend together.) Nothing else with diners immediately comes to mind though. What the premise is meant to be, what they're meant to do within it... she's at a loss.
But not as much as the loss of control over her outright snort at the loafers upon Skulduggery's feet, and Max's offense toward them. "Hang on, I'm going to get one of those milkshakes," she declares before flickering away, snatching one off the table from whoever instead of bothering to order one of her own.
She'll be back in a few seconds, behave yourselves until then?
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"Remember which one of us brought their guns along," he says, in a very playful and totally not serious manner. Yet. "Nice hat."
Yeah, more like dumb hat. Gottem.
Speaking of... he still has his guns, although they're now tucked unsafely away in his jacket pockets. Not ideal. "If weapons are allowed, fighting is probably expected. And yet..." Nothing seems to be happening. People are just enjoying the Jonathan Rockets.
"Well, this is..." Disappointing? Should he be disappointed that there's no firefight? Probably not. "...Weird." Yeah, that works.
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"Just because it hasn't exploded yet, doesn't mean that will continue. Maybe we'll all get very American weapons, like six-shooter revolvers. That could be fun." He might be mixing up 1850 with 1950 but those are both over a hundred years ago and anything that far back blends together.
Leaving the food to Ava he wanders over to one of the empty booths, peering at the garish decor on the walls, wondering why someone would ruin a record to glue it to the wall in the first place. How strange.
"I do believe duels happen at high noon? What time is it." He is going to use every ounce of knowledge he has about Cassidy Cole to his advantage right now. Clearly the guy who dresses like a cowboy in 2076 is a good barometer of Americans in general.
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"But maybe not a hundred miles off," she adds in, a glance back over at Skulduggery. "Took a peek outside the place, and it's all desert. Maybe it'll be giant Sandworms." Like Dune.
Camp was a bit of a let down after all that hype and high alert and not a single bear attack or mass murderer escaped from a nearby asylum. Doesn't stop her from trying to figure out how this place is designed to kill them.
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Ava's right and it's a good thing she corrects him, because otherwise, Skulduggery would've. Good thing he didn't get to dunk on Max twice in a row, not after the first one was obviously so scathing. "I could see him dropping some sort of Mongolian death worm out there," he says, nodding out the window where he can see some of the parking lot.
Nobody around them is bursting into violence, so the food probably isn't cursed and the vents aren't pumping toxins into the air. He keeps expecting something to happen, and being inside is feeling increasingly like a bad idea.
"Well, we might as well go get a look at what we're dealing with," he says, gesturing for the doors.
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Giving a disgruntled snort he turns with a glare, looking every bit like he regrets not bringing his rifle right now. His delicate pride is wounded being compared to someone who would arrest people like him. "I look like no such thing!"
With a huff he heads outside because he is done with Skulduggery right now, and he doesn't even get fun six-shooters? He hates this place already.
The outside of the diner is dead, dry and dusty, he groans as a gust of wind sends sandy soil across his shoes, and he's about to remark on that. He has a very well formulated snarky rejoinder to convey his annoyance with this whole place and also somehow insinuate that it's the skeleton's fault but then he freezes.
The parking lot has a strange assortment of cars in it, but there's also something behind there, something sleek and black and he can catch the reflection of the sun off a fender. He makes a surprised trilling noise that he can't even stamp down and doesn't realize he did, as he goes for the keys in his pocket. Yes he's been carrying those around this whole time, shut up.
Chirp chirp.
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She giggles at the mention of Max looking like a fed, though it does cause her to briefly glance around for Malcolm (WHO IS NOT A COP, she'll insist forever.) He seems more wary about these things than her, but he is one of those squishy powerless humans who has only really gone up against powerless serial kilelrs, so it's understandable. It's fine, she has her best buddies for stupidly running into danger (and each other) with.
The sand and the glare of the sun isn't quite her favorite, and Ava finds a pair of fashionable sunglasses in her pocket to shove on. She's about to ask Skulduggery if he has a pair of his own, if the light even bothers him when he doesn't have pupils, when Max makes a... sound. That sounds happy, perhaps? (She's getting better at reading his little beeps and whirs) that is almost immediately answered by another sound.
Not from Max this time, but from a car across the parking lot. She can only tell which one it is that has his specific attention, because of that little flashing headlights thing that cars do when they're unlocked. She checks her pockets again to see if she has keys.
"Aw, I didn't get any." She thinks it's like the whistles at the camp, randomly assigned, and doesn't quite make the connection yet that the car is Max's.
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The desert doesn't bother Skulduggery much compared to Ava and Max. It isn't hot enough, or red enough, or dead enough to truly remind him of the red planet, but it does remind him of North Dakota, which is functionally the same thing.
"Maybe it's a death race situation," he offers as he scans the absolutely buck-wild assortment of vehicles in the lot. "Everyone gets a car, and --"
Chirp chirp.
Skulduggery's head swivels to Max the moment he hears the car, Friday's cheerful voice supplying the connective tissue of this epiphany.
"Appropriate shore excursions!"
He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, past his guns -- then pats down his gray slacks like he's frantically searching for his train ticket. Or, more importantly, his key fob, which he yanks out with a triumphant shout, thumb sinking down on the panic button and triggering a brief, loud series of beeps from alongside the diner. Which is then accompanied by him bolting for the sound with another triumphant shout, because there, alongside the boxcar, is the long, sleek hood and flashing headlights of his one true love.
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But right now everything has faded out around him, if this was a movie it would do one of those forced perspective things where only Max and his car exist as the camera pans behind them. As soon as Skulduggery says that, Max bolts away to his car, forgetting he was here with two other people, because that's not nearly as important as HIS CAR.
Almost like he thinks this might vanish the moment he gets close, he tentatively reaches out to put his palm against the door, giving his own responding chirp as the car seems to really be there. Pulling the door open he climbs behind the wheel and starts rifling around, trying to make sure no one has been driving his car, no one has touched his baby. Because if anyone has he's going to messily murder them. Satisfied that everything seems to be in order, he pulls out a cleaning cloth from the glove box so he can get every speck of dust off of her.
Skulduggery and Ava might have dropped off the face of the earth for all he's noticed. It's car time.
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About cars. No, she's not jealous.
She prefers motorcycles, primarily because they're more fun to steal and easier to cut through traffic. But she admires some of the classic vehicles in the lot, tracing her fingertips across their hoods as she passes by.
And then pokes her head in right through the window of Max's. "Very sleek. This yours then?" she asks, because he's dusting it. Don't mind her admiring the interior as she slips right inside without bothering with the door. Yes, still holding the milkshake.
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His tone is more annoyed than mad, but if a single drop of condensation touches his precious upholstery he will be furious. There are also no cupholders, not just because he's an Omnic who doesn't need them, but what monster would drink things while driving?! Driving is supposed to be about feeling the freedom of the road through the vibrations of the car, not snacking. Heathens.
"I had this custom created off the original specifications of the 1937 Talbot-Lago of which they only ever made two." His eyes soften again as he glances around at the beauty that is his vehicle, "Everything was chosen and finalized by myself. It took over a year to build."
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And then her eyes widen, because in the heat it's definitely already melting, a bit of milkshake sliding down the side of the curved glass and about to DRIP and Ava makes an emergency lick to prevent it from doing so.
Her expression is definitely one of GUILT and HORROR that she almost allowed something so tragic to occur but mostly amusement, and then she shoves her arm and the offending milkshake through the door. She's still holding it, of course, but it's technically outside the vehicle. "I'd drop it, but I feel like you'd lock me in the trunk if it splattered. ... So why'd they only ever make two?"
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"I might try, even though you definitely wouldn't fit in the trunk. And they only made two because the company produced limited edition variants that were made on custom specs and they were outrageously expensive even for the time. Given the conversion rate it would have been the equivalent of about $900,000 in USD as a base price. The two they made are astronomically expensive in my time since they're also over a hundred years old, and if either of them ever went up for auction I'd have those as well." A huff, because he deserves all the cars. What's his money even good for???
"But this is better, because I was able to design it myself." He runs a hand over the roof, being careful of scratching it given that he's also metal.
Almost as an afterthought he looks over towards Skulduggery to see where he got off to. "Ah, I see our gifts from home were even more similar than we thought."
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"Doesn't even have trunk space? Where do you put the dead bodies, then?" Ava asks, because Maximilien definitely seems the sort that would. But maybe not, in something so expensive, and risk getting gross human corpse smell in it.
"You do clearly have far better taste than m-" she trails off to stare out the window in Skulduggery's direction. Taking in the sight of an almost identically old fashioned, shiny black car.
Ava can't help it. She starts laughing. "Oh... oh my god... you... and then he-" There's tears in her eyes that she doesn't bother wiping away. "No, that's too good."
Ava's already out of Max's car, hurrying over to give Skulduggery a proper mocking.
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There'd always been a chance in the back of his mind that maybe one of his friends would appear aboard the ship one day; that the Valkyrie he's been seeing on and off would turn out to be the real thing, or that someone would tell him about a heavily scarred tailor at the bar. It isn't impossible to see them again. But his car? No. That would be crazy.
And yet, here he is. And here she is. And so far, no sign of sabotage whatsoever...
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"Do you really think I clean up my own messes? I have people who put the bodies in their trunks for me." Perks of being the rich guy in charge with his own lackeys.
He looks between Skulduggery and Ava as she bursts into laughter not understanding what's so funny. But before he can do more that scowl she has vanished to go bother Skulduggery instead.
With a huff he polishes out an imperceptible scuff on the fender of the car. Don't listen to her baby, you're the best car of all.
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"Of course you have a murder butler," Ava remarks, trying to suck down as much of her milkshake as she possibly can while she has a chance. Because, well, the way Skulduggery is treating the vehicle, she's pretty sure he'd give a similar reaction.
So she sets the glass atop the hood of some other car. Before she gives herself another headache.
But yes, she is laughing, circling the vehicle with delight.
"How'd you two end up with the same car?"
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He gestures for her to look at the hood and painfully continues, "The entire silhouette is completely different. Look at how defined the wheel-wells are -- or would be, if there were wheels." He will, however, give her some credit: "I can see some similarities, I suppose..."
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Max's head jerks up at that, sure he's on the other side of the parking lot, but he can hear that slander about his precious vehicle, "What do you mean without a decent engine?!"
Hopefully no one is parked between them just trying to enjoy a meal in their car while these two connoisseurs yell at each other across a parking lot about vehicular personal slights.
And while Skulduggery can see the similarities, Max has to look between them to really see it because the blacks are different hues, different paint saturations, different clear coat densities, the curve of the hood is several degrees of variation and the overall construction is completely disparate if you're looking at it in numbers and schematics and data points the way he is. It's only when he shoves all that aside and actually looks at the two cars that he will grudgingly admit they're vaguely reminiscent of each other. In a way.
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They're the same in all the ways that matter to somebody who doesn't know shit about cars, like her. And either they've discussed their cars together before, a conversation that Ava has no regrets being left out of, or Skulduggery is that much of a car nerd himself to recognize this very specific model on sight.
"Fine. Fine, they're not the exact same car. Obviously. Maximilien's can float."
Which is pretty cool. But Ava kinda doublechecks to make sure Skulduggery's isn't doing some weird magical thing.
"But they're the same concept of a car. Maximilien said there were two. And here they are. One." Gestures. "Two."
A pause.
"So. Are you just going to argue about engines, or are you going to race?"
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"Two one-of-a-kind vehicles," which is as far as he's going to agree on that! But most important is that their cars are their own -- not illusions created by madness or constructed like the fake cars in the lot. (He doesn't even have to look under the hood to know they're all probably hollow like the rest of the technology.)
At Ava's question, Skulduggery immediately looks over to check Max's reaction to the suggestion. Because, like. Obviously, that's going to happen. But... the lack of traction is going to make catching up with Max's car a real trick on the straightaway extending out beyond the diner.
"I don't know," he says. "Does he feel like losing?"
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Max immediately folds his arms, his eyes narrowing in calculation, "Oh please, that would be so unfair to you I'd nearly feel bad about it."
He wouldn't. At all. And he is definitely going to race him. He's not actually sure if they're evenly matched, his car is definitely winning in lack of wind resistance and having no tires meant he didn't have to worry about drag or drifting on turns as the car could rotate on a dime.
But combustion engines had that initial burst of a literal explosion, and could probably go faster all other things being equal. So he's not really sure who would win. At least that's what the calculating mechanical part of him is currently processing. Oh well, he doesn't care about the stats and he shuts that down immediately in favor of: THEY ARE GOING TO RACE THESE CARS.
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