AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

[sailmods]

[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.]

Comments

[prince_of_beasts]

It takes Dimitri a minute to build up the confidence. He fidgets, finding the best way to brace a white sheet on his knees; the pens get a nervous look before he discounts them entirely, like the plastic might snap just from his attention. Then he spends a while staring out over the scrub, sorting through colors, shapes and shadow in an effort to work out how they might look on paper. Finally, he reaches for a yellow crayon.

It touches the paper, and snaps in half.

Dimitri hisses a curse under his breath, dropping the pieces and pressing his hand to his chest. "I -- I'm sorry. I should have known better ... this sort of thing happens with me."

[serialskiller]

Murderbot doesn't comment on the crayon breaking aloud. It just peels the paper off and uses the side of the crayon to shade swaths of canyon. Maybe it's silent commentary on broken things being useful, still.

Or maybe it's just being practical.

"Try again."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri opens his mouth ... then closes it. If he needed to apologize, SecUnit would have said so. If breaking the crayon was a problem, SecUnit would have said so. There's 'trusting people to set boundaries', which Dimitri is still getting used to, but this is an entirely separate degree of comfort -- familiar, and a desperate relief to settle back into. He doesn't have to explain himself; he doesn't have to apologize or perform niceties; he can just ... sit here in the quiet, wind ruffling his hair and skirt, and try again.

He wouldn't have thought to use the side of the crayon like that. It can't break when he puts it on its side. And he can sort of scribble out the forms of the landscape below, though his hand shakes and he can't make the paper match what his eye sees.

" ... this doesn't look right at all," he says, wrinkling his nose, but he's not giving up.

[serialskiller]

"When we get back to the ship, I can share some of the painting lesson videos I have. In the meantime, take a new page, and try just making lines. Different widths, different amounts of pressure. Get a feel for the materials. There's plenty of paper, so don't you dare think of that as a waste."

Because everyone needs a Bob Ross marathon, but especially these two.

[prince_of_beasts]

They really do. Shame everything's about to go straight to hell. "I ... I'd like that," Dimitri says shyly, tucking his knees a little closer to his chest.

It's not so different from sword or lance forms, is it? He's skilled with the weapons now, but he was never a prodigy. It's taken him long, relentless hours of practice and experience to get to where he is, and he'd broken more than enough training weapons in the process. Start with the fundamentals. Learn the weight, the grip, the maneuvers.

Yellow squares, starting small, getting bigger. Blue squares, starting big, getting smaller. Layering them doesn't really make green, funnily enough, but it does get blue wax on the tip of the yellow crayon, which is annoying. It comes off okay with some scribbling, though the crayon gets a fair bit shorter in the process. Dimitri is not very good at 'varying pressure', and the tremor in his hands makes even his simple shapes wobbly, but it's ... something. Soothing repetition, if nothing else.

[serialskiller]

"There you go." Not quite praise. It figures Dimitri would be insulted by empty praise. But that is encouragement and approval, paired with a nod, before it gets back to its own drawing.

The cliffs. The rocks. How light hugs them and paints their edges with color. The sky.

It wants to hold onto this place. Memory is fragile, it knows this--there's a reason it's told Palamedes what it calls itself, so someone will know if that's ever taken away from it again.