come_sailaway | SEPTEMBER EVENT: WE'RE ON ISLAND TIME BABY

SEPTEMBER EVENT: WE'RE ON ISLAND TIME BABY

on the 16th, starting at 6AM and continuing until 10PM, Friday herself will be driving the ship’s tender back and forth between the ship and the excursion, making the trip about once every 30 minutes. those who board the tender will find that they are knocked out for the journey, but will wake up still on the tender, wearing whatever it was they’d been wearing before getting on, and with no side effects.

the destination is a tropical island, with white sandy beaches and turquoise water. the island is rather large, with dense tropical foliage inside the barrier of sand, but passengers will find it difficult to get more than a mile inland. not because of the trees or bushes, but because the villagers intervene around that point, and politely but firmly return them to the beach.

yeah, there’s a village. wood and frond huts built in a clearing just past the sands, populated by about twenty beings that appear to be some kind of bipedal salamander. if they have a verbal language, they aren’t telling it to you, and mainly communicate through gesture. there is a sort of vendor nearest to the beach, sitting on a blanket that holds a variety of exotic fruits, trinkets, and cool shells that they will exchange for literally whatever you bring from the ship. they are also trading bottles of a dark-red, citrusy rum; they also either have difficulty judging or don’t care about human drinking ages, and anyone who isn’t clearly a child will have no problem getting some.

the jungle is teeming with a wide variety of tropical flora and fauna. the plant life is whatever would normally be found in a tropical Earth location, while the wildlife is limited to what can be found on this island and in the jungles of Sumeru. why? because I feel like it. my fleeting whims decide every aspect of this game and i ain't stopping now..

the surrounding ocean extends out about five nautical miles before reaching what could most accurately be called The End of the Map: the water ends very suddenly, followed by the sky, and beyond it is an endless black void that makes your brain twitch the more you stare at it. if you try to enter it, you will die, and it will hurt the entire time you are dying.

there doesn’t seem to be any restriction on magic, except for one rather major one: anyone with the ability to fly will find that they are suddenly unable to. whether magical (i.e. Venti), biological (i.e. Phil’s wings), or mechanical (i.e. MB’s drones) in nature, anyone attempting to take flight will find it impossible to get any lift. just barely over the horizon, something gleams as it points to the sky.

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[Pratt decided to trust Friday and is wearing jeans, his police utility belt and a short sleeve button up shirt from Tommy Bahama in green. So ultimately he still looks like he's in his deputy uniform, but a slightly more swishy one. The best news of all: not wearing the jacket or the dog tags.

His tried and true method of pretending absolutely nothing is wrong and never has been wrong is going pretty well for him so far; might as well keep that compartmentalizing train going strong.]

Hey. You uh.. just chilling?

[ He plops down next to her in the sand, not using his hands to ease himself down because his hands are otherwise occupied. Unclasping his fingers, a small black lizard pokes its head out tasting the air with its tongue.]

The sign wasn't lying, there's actual animals here.

[He grins in delight, even though judging by the state of his fingers this little guy bit the absolute shit out of his hands before being caught.]

( "chilling" is a pretty strong word to ascribe to this absolute dictionary definition of sulking she's doing right now, but. more or less, yeah. there's nothing else of note going on, nothing of importance other than questions of morality and mortality dancing around her head, and a screen like a drive-in movie theatre where clarke tries to draw lines between where she'd ended on earth and where she supposedly ends up. it's a dark pit of spiraling emotions kept bottled behind a thin pressed mouth and furrowed brow and, end of the day? even deputy pratt is a nice distraction.

he's settling himself before there's any time to respond to his question, but clarke ultimately just gives a little shrug to say yeah, and then looking at his awkwardly clasped hands until fingers part to reveal — oh, okay, she's pretty interested in the wildlife around here. back straightens a little, one arm uncurling from around her knees to plant in the sand and lean closer for a better look at the lizard. )

Yeah, I saw some birds earlier. ( but not this up close and personal. that little dart of the tongue is so strange and fascinating to watch. )

I thought about catching one but — ( oh, and his oh so obviously bitten hands... there goes her brow, immediately re-furrowing. ) You sure that thing isn't venomous?

Edited (IT MATTERS OK) 2022-09-16 05:46 (UTC)

[The lizard is pretty chill now that it's been caught, but it definitely wasn't keen on this big lumbering human chasing it around. Right now it's sitting there watching them, tilting its head back and forth.]

I don't think so, I haven't keeled over yet. Which... okay. There's a slim chance if it was hella toxic, the venom wouldn't even work on me, but if I drop dead no one will make that mistake again.

[See? He's helping.]

Little dude was sitting on a rock doing pushups at me to try and intimidate me so, you know, can't back down from a challenge right?

[He grins because yes, Pratt would fight a lizard.]

If you drop dead and he escapes, no one's going to know what killed you in the end. ( so how helpful is that, pratt? not very — ignoring the fact that, yes, he's blatantly showing her the lizard, clarke would know, but the lesson means more if she's not involved in the narrative okay??

also ignore the fact she's pretty immediately raising a hand and slowly reaching out to see if the thing will let her brush a fingertip along its back. and... talking... to... it. )

Were you being intimidating? With those wiry little legs and tail as thick as a pinky finger? No, I bet you were sunbathing and a big mean human came along and ruined your tan. You're cool, though.

( and petting accomplished or dodged, she's then holding her palm out flat to see if the lizard will crawl on over. )

Okay so my plan isn't totally foolproof, but an attempt was made.

[The truth is pretty obvious: he just really wanted to catch a lizard because he's secretly 12 years old. He slowly opens his hands so that the lizard can scurry onto her hands if it wants, not making any sudden movements to scare it. It sits there and takes the petting with the aplomb of an animal that has no idea what's happening and therefore doesn't know what to do about it.]

It put up a decent fight. And if it was a little faster it would have gotten away, I outsmarted it though.

[He trapped it with a leaf.]

Kinda weird, how seeing actual nature is so much different than the nothing on the ship. Though there was a cat, I haven't seen it in a while though.

( oh hey, a neat new fact she recently learned and can share! )

Black fur and red eyes? Not a cat, that's a guy actually. A shapeshifter, but not the one who turned into a dinosaur during the zombie thing.

( has pratt heard about the dinosaur? 9/10, promise it's at least a little bit cooler than the flamethrower. fun event gossip dropped super casually while clarke's distractedly enamored with the lizard just chilling on her hand and flicking it's tongue out to try taste-test her thumb. )

No this one was black and white. The guy with red eyes can turn into a wolf too, which is awesome.

[He is in the Aiden fan club for that one.]

Man I missed the dinosaur. Someone else mentioned that too, I was stuck on the other side of the portal and didn't get to see zombies or the dinosaur. What kind of dinosaur?

( a cat, a wolf, even a bear? she may have to sign up to the aiden fanclub, if it's open for new members who may or may not have... wrapped the cat in a table cloth, thrown it into the brig and alternated between booping it's nose and telling it how she was going to kill it on the off chance it was an evil creation of the captain's. )

I didn't see it very well. ( nor is she super well versed in dinosaurs, but having recently played the jurassic park shooting game in the arcade and giving an educated guess: ) Velociraptor, maybe?

( allosaurus. but, yanno, bipedal and lotsa teeth. a sideview mirror isn't a reliable narrator when one's mostly focused on not hitting a rocky ditch while mowing down zombies. speaking of which, clarke makes a bit of a face at the vestiges of fomo in pratt's comment. )

Trust me, it was better you missed out on the zombies.

That's so fucking cool! Who turns into a dinosaur? Man everyone has kickass powers, I just have.. psychosis. I want a refund, can I get like levitation instead?

[Or the ability to shoot fireballs or something.]

You can say that, but like.. just being on the ship doing fuck all wasn't that great. At least being there I could have done something.

Haven't figured that out yet, but feels like it's just a matter of time. There's not that many people here. ( enough not to know everyone by name anymore, to have no met every single newcomer, but not enough that people are bound to go their entire stay here without bumping into each other.

clarke moves to extend her hand towards pratt, gently passing back the lizard before luck fades and it tries to bite her and escape. )

What do you think you would have done out there?

( something heroic? have a psychotic episode after seeing the face of a dead loved one or enemy? died? add a new list of horrors to the personal trauma count? )

I heard the people stuck on the ship set up some sort of first aid station. And Johnny Summer's still taking names of people who want to learn basic triage skills. That'd be way more useful than shooting zombies or putting your friends in mortal peril.

( know who could have avoided fighting zombies almost all together? the entire rover team if clarke hadn't driven them out to the cliff. )

[He lets the lizard crawl around on his fingers for a few moments before setting it down on the sand and watching it scurry away to the safety of some rocks. Where it will sit there and stare at them, maybe do a few push-ups in the future because it won that fight as far as it's concerned.]

I'm a tool, killing things is my purpose. Could have bought you guys time, or been a distraction, lots of things.

[He's killed so many people he knew at this point, either in a haze or because they'd been turned into brain-dead angels, that seeing them as zombies might not have really registered. Well, not until later anyway.]

Yeah I know, I was there. Me and him don't really uh... He has some dumbshit idea that he can fix trauma, that he can just like... hug it all better or something. [Pratt glares, kind of still offended by that.] So I left before we got in a real argument.

And I know way more than basic triage skills. I'm part of Search and Rescue, before the cult I was dealing with that shit all the time. I'm a helicopter pilot, we were always rescuing hikers who fell down ravines or people trapped in blizzards or attacked by bears.

[Sure he's the pilot so he's not really in the trenches, but he knows what to do and how to do it. He stabilized so many broken bones and done impromptu stitches, staples and glue more times than he can count.]

( either of them could eat that lizard in a single bite for a lack of better food sources, former-veganism and current-vegetarianism aside. you better scamper, distant cousin of the salamander hosts. )

Hm. ( it's the only response clarke really has to most of that. if he was a tool in the hand of a heretic meaning to kill humans, he'd have been a useless one out in the desert; those weren't humans anymore, and the only distraction would have been making pratt into a patte, which wouldn't have taken long. noble gesture, but flawed.

secondly, to listen to the recount of a discussing between the deputy and johnny summer leaves a sour taste on her tongue. wouldn't it be lovely, if trauma could be fixed with a hug and kiss, like they were small children who'd fallen and scraped their knees. but it seems both know better, and clarke just offers a slight shake of her head. it's agreement for pratt, disdain for johnny's ideals. you don't ease pain, you —

but witness her visibly perk by the tail end of his conversational turn. search and rescue out in the wilderness isn't a foreign, unimageable concept. it's actually the easiest picture of her own world that clarke can take, and superimpose paint over to get a grounded idea of what he means. take a helicopter, replace it with a rover or dropship. bear becomes a gigantic, irradiated gorilla with the rage of it's entire species behind the pounds of its fists. blizzard? deathwave. but also simpler, an example of life before the end of the world, and isn't that something to behold like a masterpiece from an 1800's french impressionist painter? )

That's cool. Got a top rescue story of all time?

( though what she really wants to ask and what comes bubbling out not a half second later: )

You think the Captain'd ever give you a helicopter?

Doubt it, and even if he did there's a barrier around the ship right? So I couldn't really go anywhere with it. Though if we went to another place like the diner that'd probably work...

[A wistful sigh, because he might not have been a great deputy, but he sure loved being a pilot.]

It was fucking awesome back home, flying just above all the trees, getting glimpses of the river occasionally, and sometimes the sound would startle animals and you'd see whitetails, or elk or even wolves running along ahead of you through the trees... [He hates being homesick for a reality that doesn't even exist anymore, but he can't help it.] Top rescue story is definitely the dad and his kid that tried to drive from their cabin in the mountain down to town before the storm hit and got caught in a blizzard. Had to fly out during a lull in the storm, and then try and keep the chopper steady while the team rappelled down to grab them. And keeping that level while in violent winds, and people actually climbing out of the helicopter makes for a helluva story even if it was the most stressful shit of all time.

They both had frostbite but we were able to get them to the local clinic so they could be stabilized until the winds died down enough to get them to the actual hospital another town over. They made it and didn't even lose any fingers.

( it strikes clarke, as pratt's talking about flying above trees and doing daring rescues, that she's never really seen earth that way. it's always either been from so far above that the landmasses are blurred swatches of green overwritten with clouds, or down in the dirt. the drop ship hadn't had any windows, and staring out the access vault of a mountain dam had been about escape — not appreciating the view. it sounds pretty. )

That sounds like it was equally dangerous for you and the people you rescued. But it also sounds pretty exhilarating.

( would they have been able to find and save more of her people after the ark crashed if they'd had a helicopter? would they have been able to cross distances unimpeded by foliage, and a lot faster than by rover or horse? could some crises have been avoided with faster travel time, and would it have been really hecking cool to fly among birds? would her people have eventually turned the machine into a tool of war?

...yes. probably. obviously, actually — to all of it. and that's the sort of practical resource thinking that has clarke resolutely deciding helicopters are cool despite never having seen one. search and rescue doesn't sound so bad if the stories have happy endings. )

So why'd you decide to become a Guard? ( "cop" isn't an unfamiliar word, but neither is it part of the every day vocabulary. the insinuation is pretty plain there, though. )

Yeah, but the danger for me is danger for everyone. Because if I can't keep control of the helicopter we all go down.

[A frown because, well that actually happened once and led to the whole fiasco of them all getting tortured back home. But he's gonna try and not think about that while on this island adventure. He'll mope on the ship, not in a tropical paradise.]

I uh.. [He laughs, running his fingers through his hair.] I wish I could make up something noble, like I wanted to help people and shit. But.. I wanted to get laid, and I looked good in the uniform. And it uh, worked so. I wasn't wrong but..

[His own words ring back to him, what he'd told Rook when he was in the Wolf's Den, "The whole time I was locked in that room I just kept thinking about how I got here. You know why I became a cop? To get laid. That was it. It was a whim. And then after a while I tried to convince myself that I did it for the greater good. To help people. But I can't. I know that now. Jacob taught me that. I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore. I don't even know who I am."]

But I did want to become a helicopter pilot to help people. That was genuine at least. And you know.. [Deep introspection incoming,] that's probably why I was good at it. I was a fucking great pilot, I was a pretty shitty Deputy.

( ah, well. that's leadership in a nutshell, she thinks but doesn't say.

besides, the thought is immediately curtailed when pratt's big calling ended up to be chasing tail. clarke can't help the first initial snort that originates in the back of her throat and escapes out her nose, but at least has the decency to briefly turn her face from him so pratt doesn't have to see the waves of bemusement and humored disapproval playing across her features. yanno, she knew a guy who started that way too, loved the power of authority and unabashedly had horny teenage escapades despite being twenty-three (responsibility repression, he still counted) and in a camp made up of tents with zero sound proofing.

ah, she misses him. )

Sometimes — often, I'd say — our original intentions don't really matter. It's all end results, and yours sound like you did an overwhelming amount of good for people. I hope you focus on them as much, if not more so, than anything else.

[He rolls his eyes.]

You sound like Sharky. Trying to convince me that helping Rook escape and making sure Jacob went after me instead of them, was super great and counteracts all the fucking horrors I did prior. Like .. Rook is still just one person. I killed way more than that.

And I'm gonna be real, I was fucking worthless when I finally got out of that bunker. Spent three days catatonic on the floor and then another week slumped in a chair.

But.. yeah. I did some good shit occasionally. Eventually. Hope I can here, but... I don't even really know where to start.

( ah, that's fair. that sentiment always sounds like a load of drivel unless it manifests in one's own brain. and even then, it's easy to override and ignore, and doesn't shine like a light when one's immersed in a pit of shadows. honestly, she doesn't think ten days sounds that bad of a turn around time from being tortured to being vaguely functional, good on you pratt. )

Yeah, well. It's a lot easier to kill someone than it is to save them. ( the temptation to ask how many is there, but not everyone's like clarke who has a suspiciously specific rough estimate in mind at any given time. )

Start small. Next time everything goes to absolute hell, pick a stranger and help them.

[He wouldn't be able to fully answer, he doesn't remember what he does when he snaps but he has woken up next to some atrocities and covered in blood. And sometimes Jacob filmed it and made him watch after to give him 'pointers'. The things he's done while aware are bad enough. Skinning someone while not in a catatonic state is worse. So much worse.]

Yeah. My current thing is trying to get to know as many people as possible so they kinda.. are aware I'm here? So if I start ranting and pacing someone will know something is off. It can't just be Sharky and you and Clara. Because I'm fucking stupid right before I fully go over the edge, but if I snap that hard... I'll avoid you guys. Like it won't be me, not really, but a... version of me I guess. And I'd know to stay away from all of you and go after someone else.

[He sighs.]

Sorry. Getting all depressing here on a beautiful fucking island meant for relaxing. Can't ever ignore it, you know?

( sometimes a little catatonia doesn't sound so bad. but, same time, being aware of every single awful decision, outcome, and choice she's ever made has settled into a very comfortable yolk around her neck. and clarke no longer knows what she'd do without it.

pratt sighs. and bidden by his words, clarke again looks out over the sparkling glint of gentle ocean in the distance, and the soft white crest of waves that slowly inches up the beach leaving behind a smooth stretch of unblemished, dark, wet sand. it is all pretty beautiful, isn't it? but earthly beauties have faded in their wonderment for her, and after a minute long of silence it's impossible not to open her mouth again. )

I get your approach. But I meant what I said before. ( stops with me or stays with me. ) Don't just go after someone else.

I won't. But it's.. you get that's not me right? I don't remember what I do if I fucking go full cultist, it's not me. I'm just a shittier version of Jacob. That's why I was his second in command, he could just .. turn me into him. Basically. Sort of. Look this is fucking shitty to explain and doesn't make any sense and I don't want to go ballistic for no damn reason.

[He glares at the light sparkling off the ocean, staring long enough to see residual images when he blinks.]

If I could control it we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

...alright. I'm sorry.

( sentiment strong as iron doesn't mean she's blind to how wide off the mark it's falling. clarke shifts her position in the sand, finally letting her legs away from her chest and settling criss-cross applesauce with spine arched in a c-shape, elbows on her knees, and chin in the palm of her hand. they can both stare out at the ocean for a beat, and digest what's been said. )

We don't have to talk about it anymore. But I have to wonder, long enough away from him, what if you could learn to control it?

If I wasn't, [ He turns to gesture at the hallucination of Jacob as if she'll be able to see him, only to realize he's not there. Of couse. Typical. He glares at where he'd been not a half hour before.] Asshole.

If I wasn't hallucinating him half the time maybe. It's not like he's gone. He's just, [ Pointing to his own head.] in here. For fucking ever. I can't get away from him even in death.

( politely, or just curiously, she looks where he gestures. the image in clarke's mind of what jacob seed must look like varies widely from reality; honestly she paints him more like the heretical flamekeeper titus, but looking at the expanse of sand, there's nobody there.

can't get away from him — )

Do you want to?

I don't know.

[Once again the honest answer before he can think of a way to dodge the question. ]

I need to. But.. so much of me is him now that I dunno how to sort out the pieces. [Then he grins. ] Though earlier I dragged that hot dude with the tattoos into the trees and that was all me. So maybe I'm getting myself back. Or something.

[One tryst at a time. ]

SEPTEMBER EVENT: WE'RE ON ISLAND TIME BABY

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