We're wide awake now, our eyes are wide open. We're running this world, we keeping it turning

[opheliac]

Who: EVERYONE ON THIS DANG SHIP!
What: IT'S A PARTTTYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When: last week of april before more shit happens.
Where: rischie
Warnings: PG-13??? alcohol is definitely involved, teens being teens, drunk people or doing bad decisions??? who is to say!!!





Fast Travel Thread Links

★ ENTRANCE.
★ THE DANCE FLOOR.
★ AT THE BAR.
★ GAME AREA.
★ DJ TABLE // PRIVATE WITH JINX
★ LOSER CORNER.
★ THE FOOD TABLE.
★ KARAOKE.
★ OUTSIDE RISCHIE.
★ WILDCARD.

Comments

[makesomedeals]

Strange that Skulduggery is getting serenaded by Queen when over on the other side of the table it has gone completely quiet. The quiet in a movie trailer before the Inception noise plays. Where it's so quiet that for a moment your brain tricks you into thinking there must be noise because it couldn't possibly be that quiet. That's the sound that Max is hearing right now.

He has now stared at the cards for a good minute, hoping that the 900 different computations he's done a thousand times are somehow wrong - hoping that somehow all those diamonds don't count.

But they do.

As his gaze falls to the shirt again that Inception noise finally plays. Max's eyes have moved, but he has not. Perhaps if stays right here and doesn't move eventually the sea air will rust him and corrode through his central processors and he'll die. That's a solid plan.

Okay he can... He can... Well.. He still hasn't done much, but he has picked the shirt up.

Why oh why does he honor his deals?

[light_mischief]

Max certainly can't see it, but Skulduggery has braced his feet against the ground in preparation for... well, something. A table-flip, maybe? An attempt to flee? Maybe he's just expecting Max to try and strangle him. Either way, he wants to be prepared.

He's patient as the stages of grief recycle themselves through whatever processor Max uses as a brain. There's a brief second, right before Max reaches out to take the shirt, where Skulduggery almost wants to tell Max he doesn't have to, really, it was just a little prank --

But that magnanimous side of him is choked to death by the part of him that finds the whole thing fucking hilarious. No. No, he can't actually laugh. No matter how much he wants to, no matter how hard it is, he cannot laugh at Max.

That shred of decency is probably the only reason Skulduggery doesn't immediately start to quip about the fit and cut of the shirt. Cherish it, Max. It's the only respect you're getting out of this.

[makesomedeals]

If he laughs at him Max will rip his jaw off with his bare hands and then bludgeon him to death with it. He has no idea how hard you have to hit a skeleton to break all its bones but he's betting he can punch harder than that.

Max lifts the shirt up to look at it one last time.

"I hate you with every fiber of my being."

That's directed at Skulduggery by the way, not the shirt. Though he also hates that with every fiber of his being and every synthetic fiber in that shirt.

Fine. Okay. He is a man of honor. He will put the stupid shirt on. It's just a shirt. It's just a shirt _{it's just a shirt it's just a shirt}

He's not going to take anything he's wearing off, he's going to put it on over his clothing because he is not letting that polyester nightmare touch his delicately polished exterior.

Look. He has it on. Is Skulduggery happy? IS EVERYONE HAPPY NOW??

He is just going to sit there and stare directly at the table and the cards that betrayed him and resist the urge to just shut down and hope someone throws him in the recycling.

[light_mischief]

In the future, when things are looking their worst, and Skulduggery finds himself precariously suspended over an internal vat of boiling rage and hatred, only one thing might keep him from absolutely losing his shit over everything. That one thing will be this moment, ensrhined in the amber of his memory.

The entire vision before him is a... a masterpiece. His own personal piece of art, all of his own design. The dead-eyed stare, the way the $20 shirt bunches up over the shoulders of Max's likely $1,000 suit, the sheer dumb fuckery of it all -- it's all just. It's too much.

The absurdity of his situation hits him like a brick through the eye-socket. All of it overwhelms him at once. He's stuck on this damn boat in the middle of an infinite ocean, after having been ripped from the clutches of evil gods who most certainly are still out there looking for him, playing cards with a robot for an ugly shirt when he should be looking for a way back home...!!!

"I think," he begins, and then he has to bury his face in his hands, lest his hysterics overcome him and cause a scene. He visibly struggles not to burst out laughing, but a few unhinged giggles do slip out. "Sorry, just --"

Oh, wow, is this what losing your mind feels like? Skulduggery's never done it before, so he's not sure!

[makesomedeals]

The way the shirt lays over his $40,000 suit is not ideal. It doesn't really fit over all the layers he's wearing even though it is all boxy. And he's not going to button it up because he is going to wear this for approximately ten minutes and then stuff it into the trash.

He is losing years off his lifespan for every moment he wears this.

At least the eruption of sound from Skulduggery unfreezes Max from his stupor. He's basically blue screened and needs to be rebooted. But the sound that Skulduggery makes, which sounds like giggles but might also be sobs, actually causes him to look up.

"Oh fine. Go ahead then." said tersely as he expect Skulduggery is going to burst into hysterical laughter while pointing directly at Max.

He just sits there. Waiting. Trying to tell himself he's been through so much worse than that. Having his memory wiped? That's worse. Being interrogated by Reaper? Worse than this.

But that also had been out of his control. This was him losing. Which feels like it's also his fault.

So he's having trouble setting it aside and concentrating on the many other terrible things that have happened to him. It would be so much nicer to focus on the time he almost had a hole blasted in his chest by Null Sector. Ah, happier times than right now.

[light_mischief]

There is a fourteen-year-old girl in Ireland right now, staring at an empty field where Skulduggery had just been standing moments ago, or, well, days ago now, and while she's been standing there staring at that empty space, he's been playing with ice cream and, and, and singing karaoke! Valkyrie coping with his death and he's just sitting here?

He sobers up long enough to lift his gaze back to Max, and then the laughter threatens to overtake him again because Ghastly would be dying at the sight of that absurdly expensive suit being absolutely outshined by a cheap polyester-cotton blend! And Valkyrie, bless her, she'd never forgive him for having a meltdown when something so funny was happening in front of him!

Finally, he manages to string together a full sentence, although it takes a beat to form. "I am... so... sorry. But -- but it looks. Looks great..."

[makesomedeals]

Skulduggery should be forever grateful that Max is so demoralized right now he doesn't dive across the table and start ripping him to pieces. This is an Omnic that has actually been in jail and been tortured, but he's never felt so much like he's lost until right now.

According to his internal clock he's been wearing it for 7 minutes and 32 seconds. At precisely the 10 minute mark he is going to take it off because that's the arbitrary time he's decided is enough for this bet. It's really longer than he should even give this because it's just so stupid.

They're both having an existential crisis on different ends of the spectrum here.

It is pretty telling for the future that clearly Max's reaction to trauma is to shut down, so that might be useful to know for no reason at all. Though he does manage to glare at Skulduggery. It doesn't have any of the heat behind it that his previous scowls did, partially because it's just not intimidating to wear nine Hawaiian shirts stitched together, but also because he's pretty sure this thing is sapping his energy.

"You're a terrible liar you know."

One minute. Tick tock.

Nope he's done now. Off it goes. He might even rip it in his haste to get it off before bunching it into a horribly patterned ball and putting it on the table.

[light_mischief]

By the time Max is ripping the shirt from his body, Skulduggery has managed to get control of himself. It helps that he doesn't have any face to school into neutrality and that his grin is multipurpose.

"Hah! Whoo, boy." Skulduggery pushes his hat back to rub at his skull like he has sweat to wipe away. "I... did not expect that. At all." Actually, okay. In the cold light of post-hysteria, that was a fairly unsportsmanlike reaction to have. It was hilarious, no doubt about it, and it absolutely warranted a polite round of laughing, maybe a finger point or two, but...

"Sorry about that," he says, "I think I might have just had a mental breakdown."

He probably shouldn't sound so grateful for it, but honestly? He really, really needed that.

[makesomedeals]

That toothy grin may never change but Max can feel the intentionality behind it. He knows that he's still giggling somewhere in that skull of his.

Max balls the shirt up and puts it to the side, but doesn't throw it away yet. Theoretically he could use the thread out of it to stitch up his damaged pants. So maybe it could be useful eventually, but right now he's too traumatized to even look at it. This thing is going to give him PTSD if he spots it in his closet.

He makes an angry sort of computer sound, more mechanical than he normally is because he's pissed and also distraught from the thought that someone other than Skulduggery might have seen him in that shirt. He isn't yet aware that there's a whole area where hundreds of pictures of that might show up. And when he finds out he may just chuck himself in the ocean.

"Well at least we've both been damaged by this thing. Maybe the Captain has more influence then you think."

Skulduggery might be basking in the aftermath of a nice resetting breakdown, but that's gonna take Max a few deaths to achieve so he's not having quite as much fun.

[light_mischief]

"Oh, don't say that," Skulduggery groans, although if the captain had had any influence on this, then he certainly couldn't be as bad as everyone says.

Finally feeling like himself again after that brief foray into madness, Skulduggery adjusts his hat and straightens his jacket as though his hysteria somehow rumpled it. "I appreciate your fantastic sportsmanship. If you can handle this, you can handle anything the ship throws at you."

And look. To show there are no hard feelings, Skulduggery sticks out his hand across the table. "It was a good game, Maximilien."

[makesomedeals]

There is very real hesitation there, and the look of smouldering resentment doesn't help anything.

"It certainly was a game Skulduggery."

And he will shake, because he's still a man of his word and somewhat honorable. Kind of. If you squint. But after this he is going to take his new piece of fabric and go fix his pants with that thread, muttering obscenities in French the whole time.