driftfleet | At least there's no elevator music...

Entry tags:

At least there's no elevator music...

[At least two weeks have passed since the Drift Fleet passengers woke up on this strange wing of the Marsiva... Some new passengers have even joined the group instead of being Shuffled off to a fleet ship! The large monitor in the central room remains quiet for now, so how is everyone holding up?

Have you been relaxing? Enjoying the Earth media? If you can even remember them, how have Calibrations been treating you? Has anyone started getting a little stir-crazy?

Don't worry... This ship has no shortage of mysteries, and you'll be seeing a few more soon.]

ooc: here's another mingle for the current game event! players can start or continue threads here from any point during the event. the additional setting information is still being postponed due to sickly mods, but y'all are welcome to post additional topcomments for reactions and investigation once it's up!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She notices. But it's also the reaction she'd expect if Luffy had come in from Adstringendum, given they were meant to be leaving and then didn't. Crossed wires.

She curls her hand around his wrist in turn.] Get back where? Home? [We don't need to go back to Adstring, that's for sure.] We can't just fly off! First, I need to know how to get us back home, and I don't have the charts. It's like being stuck out in the middle of the Grand Line without any Log Pose, Luffy. We could leave, but which direction would we go?

[All delivered with an odd thread of hope, because Nami knows she's still missing something here (get back? did Luffy manage to make it home and then get dragged here?) and she's really hoping it's the most simple explanation, because this is going to get confusing enough as it is.]

[ It's alright, they're going to have a few wires crossed for a while, and eventually they'll adjust. They've been through worse, so much worse, and they have the added benefit of being nakama. Nothing will break these ties.

He drops his eyes to her hand on his wrist and then back to her face, eyebrows furrowing again. ]

We--

[ His eyes flick one way and another, fishing for something. Any idea. ]

We steal a chart! There's got to be one around here somewhere, we just have to look -- c'mon!

[Patience. It's easy to have, given she was expecting that response exactly, and he can't possibly know how long it's been--]

I've already been here two months. [She doesn't sound irritated. More tired, patient, kind of breaking some bad news here. It feels kind of the same as in Adstring, getting a brand new captain to the mix after being trapped there for so long, and the comparison makes her frown unhappily.] Don't you think if I could find a chart, I would have by now?

There's a lot I need to fill you in on. Are you hungry?

[ Two months, yeah, of course she'd have found a chart by now. Out of ideas -- too quickly, but that's the luxury of the ignorant, and he's got that in spades -- he drops his hands to his sides. At least this place still has sunlight, if you're occupying the right part of space. And food! If you don't mind it being gels or tofu.

She provides an excellent distraction though, and it's timely at that; mention of hunger has Luffy's stomach chiming in with the usual approving grumble, and the captain (former captain? captain on hiatus) bobs his head in a mute nod.

There's frustration there and something new, something a little like resentful resignation, like he can't get what he wants now, so he'll bide his time until he gets the chance. ]

You didn't mention the rest of the crew. Were you alone?

[...something's wrong. He wasn't like this even at Deireadh's worst.]

When I got here, yeah. I was kind of expecting to go home with you. [Watching him so carefully.] But I turned up here alone. Failed on both counts.

Luffy-- where have you been?

With me..? [ But that would imply they were together to start with, and that wasn't even the case back home, last he remembers and--

Oh. So... was Nami some other place, the way he was on another world before he was brought here? Except she was also with him and this...

This is officially headache-inducing! Luffy pulls a face, tosses his hands in the air like 'screw it'. ]

Uh... somewhere else. Like you, 'cept you never showed up there. It's been... um, it's been a long time, and I really didn't mean to leave you alone! Or any of you! We've been trying to get back for ages!

You didn't leave me alone! At least, not until I got here.

[Her face is falling, because goddammit.] You don't remember Adstringendum at all, do you? You were there with me and Chopper and Sanji-kun. And we found our way home, but I ended up here and you ended up--

--somewhere else. And you don't remember.

[What the hell. Is this like Steven? He was in Adstring and he doesn't remember it either.]

This astringent place, that's where you were? I'unno how two of us could be in two places at the same time, but I don't think it's gonna get us anywhere closer to getting home finding out!

[ In other words, too complicated. Luffy's going to discard the question until it somehow becomes relevant to his desire to get back to that dead planet, rescue his friends, and all of them return home.

Which means taking Nami too. He doesn't want her to be exposed to the life that awaits people with her hair color, but he can't abide losing another crewmate, either. ]

[Please excuse your navigator just staring at you dumbly for the next few seconds, captain. She knows you just threw that whole question out the window, and she's trying to think of a way to push the issue in a way that's even worth it.

It's not. She'll just. Work on that herself. But she's frustrated beyond belief now-- someone finally followed her here, but under these circumstances?

...

At least he was spared the despair that came with their last few weeks in Adstring. And how sick he got. And Sanji.

She puts a hand over her face.]

Fine.

What was this other place?

[She really is happy to see him, so don't mind how curt she sounds. It's just a lot of annoying shit has been happening in the last few weeks and this is just the icing.]

[ That was a bad story with a happy ending, an enemy they could take down and wrest from it their freedom and happiness. In the end, everything worked out fine -- they were supposed to go home.

Now it's another story and Nami would be extremely lucky if this one ended in her return home without worse incident. ]

Um... it's the-- thirteenth? Or maybe it was the eleventh planet in the... Flan system? No, Glan! I think.

[ Tides, Nami, he's trying really hard to remember how it was described to him, and he's already screwing up. And he doesn't have his old device, he can't look it up. (And she probably doesn't need to know he'd been recording hours and hours of video 'letters to his crew' over the last few months) ]

Ever hear of it?

[Yeah but Nami doesn't know that, brackets. Shush.]

No.

[Flatly.]

What, it didn't have a pretty name? Four syllables long, maybe?

[EVERYWHERE ELSE DOES.]

...

[ He stands there for a moment, mouth working, until sweat might just be starting to stand out on his brow in concentration. ]

...

...!

[ Let's try that again, shall we? ]

..? I forgot!

[ Nami, no one will blame you for hitting him, but this is going to happen intermittently for a little while. ] I think it began with a-- um...

[He may relax, she's too much a combination of relieved and worn out to employ violence right this second. But she does give him a long-suffering look and a sigh. The more things change...]

Maybe you'll remember later. [She doubts it.] In the meantime, c'mon. I'll show you where you can find food and I can tell you about this place while you eat.

[Draggin' you this way, captain.]

[ Those effects may fade with time, or they might not. Either way, it's tough to dwell on it when one's navigator is promising food; he trots along in her wake as he's hauled on the way to the kitchen. ]

This place is huge!

[ He adds: ]

And kinda empty? I mean, there's people, but...

How many are there here, anyway?

The fleet's pretty small. Ah-- usually, we're not all in this big ship. It's a whole bunch of smaller ships. Kind of like a pirate fleet, only it's space and not the ocean.

[It gives her pause, though, stopping to count. How many of them were there?]

Seventeen ships... most of them have a crew of around six to eight people, I think. So I'd guess a few over a hundred. Everyone new turns up on this ship, and then in a few days they get automatically transferred to a new crew.

There's that many new people?!

[ Because even if he hasn't had the chance to chat with all of them, he's still spied quite a few other people here, besides Nami and he. He didn't exactly hear (or retain) anything about maintenance, either. There's also a slew of other questions he's got to ask: ]

Wow, a fleet of seventeen ships? And all of them with crews smaller than ours, why are they here? Looking for something?

[ Probably a tired question: but why are they here? and so on. Are there audience members who ask what it is the drift fleet is even searching for? Is there even an audience at all?! ]

No. [She gets what he means-- it's a pretty understandable conclusion to jump to. And she doesn't mind explaining-- he still feels off to her, and that's got to do with where he came from, which she's gonna ask about-- but for now the sense of offness colours her explanation in neutral tones, unsure of what tack to take.]

Right now, there's a lot of damage to the other ships, so we all got brought back here for maintenance. I think a couple new people have turned up while we've been here, but mostly we're just... waiting. Until they fix things.

[And traipse through each other's heads. Does she tell him that? But if he only just got here, maybe he won't be affected.]

As for what they're doing, supposedly we're all on TV as entertainment for some audience nobody has any proof of. TV is-- [She stops. He's been somewhere else.] Did your other place have it? It's like being broadcast on the den den mushi all the time.

[ As she explains, Luffy just keeps looking around, not just up and down the length of hallway but up along where the ceiling meets the walls, too. It's just so different from where he's been. You couldn't see cameras because all the surveillance was inside the walls, and sometimes, in cheaper areas, poorer areas, you could see weird sconces that weren't for light and know them for their assumed purpose.

No Chrome patrolling around, making sure to enforce the caste's restrictions, often meeting flouting of those same restrictions with violence and arrest. It's weird to go from a place where you're constantly on alert to a place where you... really don't have to be. ]

What damaged 'em?

[ That's a question he asks idly while he investigates, then turns back to Nami to laugh at the explanation about TV. ]

Yeah! They had stuff like that back there. Shows where they'd pack people in a house and broadcast everything they were doing. They called it reality tv but it wasn't very realistic! Shishishi, it's actually pretty terrible!

[ He smiles a moment longer, and then it finally clicks. ]

WAIT, WE'RE ON A REALITY TV SHOW?

Kind of a big space storm. And--

[UH. Wow, he got that a lot faster than she expected. She just stares for a second, mouth twitching up a bit because now, bizarrely, she feels on more familiar ground. But. Let's get one thing straight.]

Supposedly. Nobody's ever seen any proof of that. For all we know, we're just being lied to and we're here for some other reason.

Edited 2015-11-21 15:45 (UTC)

[ He actually participated in some of those TV shows! He was partnered up with a dour rebel in a cooperative broadcast contest (think a trivia contest meets obstacle course), was an extra in a soap opera (which, by the way, was a hilarious disaster culminating in the set burning down), even a cooking show with Sanji, too, which was a pretty successful pilot (which came with its own set of problems).

Entertainment was a huge deal where he was, and they suspected it was another of the many, many distractions meant to keep the populace preoccupied. Reality tv was so much a part of the culture that he kinda can't ignore it, the same way that its surveillance state and widespread deception is not unexpected, either. ]

...Okay.

[ He cocks his head to one side, considering. Vivi would make nice with the locals. Law would have integrated himself into the administrative functions at the core of a place, figure it out from the inside. Sanji would... disappear, and show up later having done something terribly clever (and probably seedy).

He's not good at any of that, but they're not here, and if he wants to get back to them he has to try, try really, really hard, to play the long game, too. ]

Um, is there anybody here besides people like us?

[...Luffy what are you thinking.

Seriously. She can't read you and that doesn't feel right. Nami frowns, but she answers the question. Uh-- sort of.]

People like us how? You mean from the Grand Line? No, there isn't. Or do you mean people who aren't involuntary TV stars? Because I've only met one, and that was over the screens over there. [She points across the room at a large screen, currently dark.]

They talk to us sometimes. Apparently.

Talk at us, huh.

[ No, no, he gets it. He knows the type. He recognizes too the resigned, disgruntled, impotent rebelliousness of people who don't really think anything will be solved by grumping or flipping off the nearest source of their despair, but do it anyway because it's all they can do. He might not agree with it, but he gets it. ]

Mm, I figured if there were more of us from home you'd have said so!

[ And he can't really hear the 'voice' of his other crewmates, either. ]

Okay, maybe getting cozy with those guys who show up there-- [ And by this, he nods at the screen, indicating Diamond and Co. ] --won't really do much.

[...these pauses she keeps giving him are getting longer and longer.]

How long were you in this other place for?

[ That question's kind of abrupt; Luffy tries counting on his fingers as he sorts this one out loud: ]

Lemme see... there was my birthday, and then there was Torao's... and there's, uhhh... six months right there between those? And then...

[ Although he visibly gives up when counting it out becomes too troublesome for him, it's safe to say it's been at least half a year. ]

At least there's no elevator music...

no subject

no subject

worst castmate returns from the depths

no way!!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)