come_sailaway | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The process of actually getting out of the parking lot sure does end up being a bit of an Affair all on its own. Regulated to the back without too much sincere fuss, and settled on a bench directly behind Clarke's seat on the passenger side, Jade's afforded approximate vantage of both the view beyond the windshield and Natsuno's painstaking struggle familiarizing with the controls in the driver's seat. Gradually oriented, at least, by Clarke's enthusiastic encouragement--which...actually does manage to put something of a damper, on Jade's own natural inclinations towards potentially snarking at the very lurching start-stop progress in the beginning. A couple of glib remarks were probably had to start, in the process of setting off...but in truth Jade's quite interested in the instructions as well, listening in a secondhand-curiosity sort of way as her words are matched to the controls at the console and--presumably--some assortment of pedals underneath at Natsuno's feet.

Definitely very different from the setup of a carriage, all this. Different, too, from the ponderous control helm of the Tartarus--where trajectory along the world outside could only be observed through the console displays of fontech radar due to the scale of the ship, and all inputs for movement more complex than a straight line required at least four or five other pilots all working individual controls in tandem. This rover, by comparison, seems far more intuitive in nature...or at least, far more sensitive to the control of a single pilot.

Case in point being--the very sudden burst of acceleration, that comes about when Natsuno hits that perfect transition from the clutch to the gas pedal a little too well--

Goodness, sure does...! Warrant grabbing something....!! There's no stopping the startled yelp that does actually arise from Jade's end back here, as the rover promptly hurtles down the road and he's nearly toppled off his bench entirely. He does manage to grab the head of Clarke's seat in front of him just in time, and from there it's a matter of hauling himself back upright against the inertia of momentum, which is done with some very graceful huffing that nobody's seeing back here! Hopefully. Really though...!]

Faster, is it? I'd surely hope there isn't anything to run over out here, at least...! [So Jade remarks in an exasperated fashion once he's oriented, voice raised over the whistling of the wind throw the windows and skylight.] And just how fast can this transport move, exactly?

[Like, are they at the maximum speed already, at least...?!]

( her delight is not dissimilar to the time natsuno'd shoved her onto the floor of the arcade after a volley of cheating at motorcycle racing games, only this time the swoop of sudden acceleration in her stomach gives 'way to a steady stream of adrenaline coupled with satisfaction pumping through her veins. not enough so to clap gleefully like a small child on a rollercoaster ride, but close.

the one benefit of the bubbled edge of this reality tapping out at ten miles, then looping back around to the beginning, is that they literally have an endless loop of highway to speed down. literally the only thing that would make this brief moment of time better is if they'd paused to hook up music, and blasted something over the speakers that people could hear for miles around them. but, sans any heavy metal bridges, they've still got jade chiming in from the background. clarke turns her head to look at him through the whip of errant strands of hair and infiltrating sand, smiles and shouts back: )

65 miles per hour before the engine gives up!

( not that jade will have opportunity to recognize this limit later, when they're pushing 75mph through charred zombie remains and he's still hanging out of the skylight. equalization with the inertia of a speeding vehicle happens quickly enough, and no longer glued to her seat by physics, clarke's leaning over the dividing console between the seats to glance at the speedometer, see's it's only at 60 but climbing, and — )

Don't kill my car, but — come on, go! Go, go go!

( top this baby out, get the full feel of a joyride, and just don't wobble at the wheel and crash. )

[As the stale stench in the rover fades in favor of hot wind and Clarke's delightful laughter feels the air, Natsuno realizes that yes, this is fun. Who knew speeding down an endless highway could be satisfying? Jade squawks from the back, and while Natsuno keeps his eyes on the road, he can't help but smirk to himself. How that for a "small vehicle?"

He squeezes the gas pedal, though he's always careful not to go over 65 mph. The endless road is fun, but there's still more beyond it...]

The tires can handle this terrain, right? I wanna do donuts.

AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

FINALLY gets back in here to supply the senior citizen panic, sorry for the lateness friends...!

sneaks this one in, what is tag order?

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