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

[hellonspectacles]

[Palamedes hands are in his pockets, his posture easy, something almost dopey in his expression. He’s about to launch into an unnecessarily detailed analysis of the pros and cons of various milkshakes flavors, including which ones go best with fries, when Rita appears.

He freezes, first going pale, and then a blush creeping up his cheeks. He and Clarke speak simultaneously.]

What?

[myagic]

[She snorts--they're so embarrassed, she bets they were fighting over something incredibly dumb--and gives them her usual judgemental glare.]

Don't think you can pretend it didn't happen--it's so obvious, just looking at you.

[skaikru]

We —

( inside, clarke's dying a horrible, painful, mortifying death. outside, she's blinking a bit too much, looking over and up at pal for some sort of help, and then through a herculean effort — setting her mouth in a thin line and committing to playing dumb. )

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, Rita.

[hellonspectacles]

[Pal might be inexperienced, but he isn’t a prude. He doesn’t think that sex, or anything sex-adjacent, is inherently dirty or problematic to talk about. But it turns out that considering such things in theory is very different than having someone in reality look at you with a I know you were just sucking face expression.

Unlucky for him, the ground doesn’t swallow him up. A meteor doesn’t fall from the sky. The Captain doesn’t appear out of thin air and begin monologuing about his latest torture plans. They’ll have to fend for themselves.

Pal swallows a few times, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and he takes off his glasses to busy himself with cleaning them against his shirt.]

Neither do I. Come on, Rita, it’s too hot out here for games. Tell us what you mean, or leave us to go inside.

[myagic]

[It'd almost be funny if she weren't annoyed by both of them more times than not, and the poor oblivious act they're trying only makes her more irritated.]

Hmph--playing dumb isn't gonna cut it, you know!

[They must've fought over something seriously stupid, and while there's a tiny spark of nosiness in her, she doesn't actually care enough to know.]

Whatever...get in all the fights you want; it's not like it matters to me.

[skaikru]

( oh.

oh.

ohsweetlord — the absolute relief that floods clarke's nervous system and settles in her legs like cement... her shoulders drop about a full inch, she looks down at the layer of dirt covering her clothes, and a few bumps and bruises from scaling the cliff face, and would have laughed if not still perpetually horrified about where she thought this conversation had been going. literally never so happy to be wrong in her life, and blurting without much thought: )

Alright, yes, we were absolutely fighting.

[hellonspectacles]

[Palamedes blinks.

The idea that they were fighting--physically fighting--is so ridiculous that Pal almost thinks he misunderstood. Come on, Rita. Have you seen Palamedes Sextus, Master Warden of the Library, literally Chief Nerd of the Nerd Planet? He and Clarke have argued plenty, and they surely will again, but if she ever decided to kick his ass, she'd barely break a sweat.

He looks at Clarke sharply when she responds--okay, that's better than the truth, but it's still pretty weird!--but it's not like he can backtrack now.]

...Mm. Yes. You caught us out. Congratulations. Want a prize?

[myagic]

[She figured that would be the end of it. Instead, Rita narrows her eyes suspiciously; their reactions are both downright weird, and that has to be the least convincing thing she's ever heard come out of Clarke's mouth--

And then Palamedes sounds like he's practically making fun of her, and she crosses her arms and glowers. There's something fishy going on.]

Okay, now you're getting annoying. What were you really doing out there? I've never heard anything more suspicious in my life.

[Yeah, she's exaggerating, but whatever!]

[skaikru]

No, I mean it. ( happening to anyone else, this would have been funny as hell. even now, with the slight turn in the tides, clarke can see herself laughing about this later. but like. privately. as far away from rita as humanly possible. and to achieve that, they must first exit this conversation with (enough of a lie that it earns them) grace. )

We got into a very heated argument about — ( quick, rita hadn't understood nuclear power or splitting the atom at their very first meeting, what's something else that might fly over her head. ) — the Pythagorean Theorem. Escalated to a bit of a shoving match, I'm not proud of that. But we're fine now, we're going to get something to eat.

( possibly her worst lie to date, but told with a solid, impassive straight face. )

[hellonspectacles]

[Forget later, Pal is going to burst into laughter in about thirty seconds. The Pythagorean Theorem, Clarke?]

…Right! [Truth over solace in lies, except when dignity is on the line, I guess] Admittedly not the most actionable line of inquiry at the moment, but the theorem does have some interesting applications vis a vis bone reconstruction, or so I tried to tell Griffin here. She didn’t believe me, and I might have gotten a bit snippy. But all’s well in the name of scientific debate.

If you’d like, I can build a construct and show you both what I mean.

[need to get rid of Rita Mordio? Threaten to make a walking skeleton!]

[myagic]

[There's a nonsensical anachronistic funny thing here--is the Pythagorean Theorem still called the Pythagorean Theorem in Terca Lumireis? Sure, it'd be quite a coincidence if there was an ancient mathmetician by the name of Pythagoras...but then again, Rita's physical artes use incantations like Descartes, Laplace, Wallis...

All this to say that one way or another, Rita's expression indicates that she clearly isn't buying it--and it's only the additional details Pal slips in relating to his necromancy that causes her to shudder and immediately back off.]

Ugh, don't you dare! Keep that stuff away from me!

[And with that...yeah, she's outta here. NO BONE CONSTRUCTS!!]

[skaikru]

( gambles on the pythagorean theorem, maybe lost on the pythagorean theorem...

but no matter, that doesn't come into conversation at this point. clarke volleys an absolutely useless left-field lie, pal lines up his sights, and summarily spikes it over the net with the threat of skeletal marionettes, and that's basically a score. she doesn't even have to put on confrontational airs and half turn to face him, dare him to drag out a construct right here and now to prove his make believe point. rita's just up and immediately out, like a cat spooked by a cucumber.

which... kinda just leaves them in the dust again. like laying flat after falling off a cliff, heart still thrumming with preemptive mortification despite the call out threat skedaddling in a different direction. clarke almost laughs right then and there, but instead casts a sidelong glance at pal and asks: )

"Griffin"?

( surnames, pal? really? after the last two hours... )

[hellonspectacles]

[Look, it had worked, hadn’t it? Maybe calling Clarke by her surname hadn’t been the thing to ultimately chase Rita away, but it had probably thrown her off the scent.

And besides, it wasn't the most ridiculous thing one of them had said.]

Pythagorean theorem?

[skaikru]

( l o o k ! )

I panicked.

( plain, simple; attempted to be communicated with a straight face, but her mouth wobbles and cheeks bunch in a poorly suppressed smile. )

Completely forgot the words quantum mechanics and thermonuclear radiation. Those might have been better.

[hellonspectacles]

Probably.

[And then Pal can’t hold it in any longer. It starts as a giggle, but quickly it grows, until he is laughing with his whole body.

It has been a long, long time since he laughed like this.]

[skaikru]

( she has to roll her eyes and huff, a classical expression of whatever. but it's curtailed because, again, laughter is contagious and clarke has to practically suck on the insides of her cheeks until they taste like blood to prevent herself from smiling so wide it shows most of her teeth.

pal gets a light elbow dig into his ribs. )

Shut up, she'll hear you and come back even more suspicious.

( then with the same arm, clarke smoothes her palm across the back of his damp, dusty shirt and gives a small push of a lead; herding him towards the diner. )

Come on. ( let's go get milkshakes. )