driftfleet | Temper Tempo

Who: Nami and you!
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Bloodsport/Iskaulit for you drinkers out there.
When: Now-ish

[Nami's been in a bad mood of late. Mostly it's to do with Sascha and trying to shove her own feelings down and trying to deal with it in a responsible way because some jackass luck of the draw happened to make her Captain. Hooray! The bite has healed enough it just looks ugly instead of actually hurting (it itches, thanks so much for that), so she still keeps a loose bandage over the top. No big deal. She'll get over it. There's not much choice.

She works off her grouchiness at the bar in bits and pieces. She was doing pretty well until a box turned up in her bedroom addressed to Captain Nami.]

One piece--

[No, that's not a pun I swear. The feed clicks on to Nami's furious face, tapping the screen with one section of blue metal piping that a handful of people might find familiar.]

Problems with shipping? Delays in processing? IT'S A MATCHED SET! Why would you even break this up!? If you've lost the other parts I'm going to--

[RANT USELESSLY AT EVERYONE APPARENTLY. She shuts her mouth with a snap, fingers wrapped around the climatact piece in a crushing grip, before she suddenly smiles sweetly.]

Thank you so much for finally processing my claim, Diamond. Or whoever. At this rate I'll only have to submit those forms another eight times!

Don't think I don't know you're doing this on purpose. [And finally she pulls back, tapping the piece in hand before pointing it in the vague direction of her closed door with a dark mutter.] I bet it doesn't even work r--

[FWOOM.

...that'd be the sudden howl of wind punching through the air much like this, only more powerful and far less gracefully, given Nami went flying in the other direction with a yelp. There's a long moment of silence, punctuated by the sound of several maps falling off the walls, and the broadcast picks up nothing but the visuals of a room that looks like a small tornado just went through it.

......
......]

...needs calibration.

[Ow.]

-------

[You can also catch her at the Iskaulit. Not on shift tonight, kthx. She's just nursing a drink in the corner and glaring holes through the table.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wow. And here I thought Diamond couldn't get any more passive-aggressive.

I'm here to break all your low expectations. She done anything specifically before this? Besides the too-much-smiling routine, anyway.

You were around for the fanmail, right? Where she'd read them out loud and then ask our opinions?

Beyond that, there was... [...] Nevermind. It's not important enough.

...I don't think I was here for the fanmail. Or maybe I was asleep through part. When was that?

Umm... I wanna say around September? Maybe even August of last year.

[There's a lot of hesitation on his end, as he sends her in the direction of those broadcasts.]

I don't know if the letters were real, but if they weren't? Atroma spent way too much effort on 'em.

[There's a long pause while she chases down the link and listens to the broadcast and its responses, brow furrowing.]

I think this is just before I got here. Just the one letter, or did you have more before this one?

[Because if it's just the one, then that leans her in the direction of fake as hell, but...]

I found one or two more.

[He attaches the links, but he also sounds a little exhausted - technology is nowhere near Stefan's forte.]

Three's less than I remembered, but it also coincided with summer vacation back on Earth.

[She appreciates it.]

...so you think the audience might be back on Earth?

It's still one each time, so it could be fabricated. Whether it is or not, that last one sounds like either the Atroma or our "audience" are getting bored with how "unmotivated" we are.

[Maybe her snarky comment to Kirito was more on point than she realised.]

No idea. There's too many connections back to Earth for me to rule that theory out, given how many people lived there.

[Along with a whole host of things that he's not willing to tell Nami over the network. Atroma sees everything, etc.]

Either way, they've gone to enough effort to make reality TV a plausible enough scenario. I'd rather not ignore it until we have more evidence.

I'm not ignoring it. I'm just not taking it as gospel, either. No place we've ever stopped at has heard of this show, that's for sure, but that doesn't mean much either. You're running a show, the audience is meant to be separate from the stage.

[It's something she'll look into as she goes, at any rate.]

Right. I just don't want you falling into the idea that this could be false, when uh. If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it's probably a duck?

[He can't blame her. He also doesn't have enough evidence to throw out his current hypothesis.]

You're probably right. I guess I'm just used to coming from a place that looks different on just about everything at first meeting.

Adstringendum, right? Or do you mean where you grew up?

Adstring was pretty straightforward, actually.

Home is... layered. A lot of layers. Some of them are dark as hell, covered in all kinds of festivities.

Ah. [...] Mystic Falls was the same way, a lot of the time.

The council thought that if you threw some grand party, people would stop noticing the little things.

[She gives a small snort.]

Your council sounds a lot like a few island authorities I could think of.

That bad? [He gives a sympathetic wince.] The Council's all but gone, last I remember, but I can't blame you for wanting to dig deeper.

People and societies all have way too many layers. [Grin.]

I won't rule out the idea we're on TV. I won't rule out the idea that we're not. [She lifts a finger.] I also won't rule out the idea that we're on TV, but it's to fulfill some other kind of motive than what the party line is. So it goes. Keep an open mind.

Edited 2016-09-06 10:39 (UTC)

Exactly. Do you subscribe to the theory that it's one big social experiment?

[Stefan doesn't, but he wouldn't be surprised if it were the real answer either.]

There's a ton of reality TV back home, and for all we know, we could secretly be the stars of some weird home improvement show.

I don't know enough about reality TV to really form opinions on it one way or another. What would the point of a social experiment be?

[That's actually a genuine question. Pirate worlds tend to be alien to the concept.]

I'm not entirely sure. See, the reason I'm wondering about a social experiment is because back home, you'll have all sorts of shows - and after the fact, contestants will admit that their contracts said they'd signed up for show X. When in reality, they were doing show Y.

[He sighs, rubbing his temples:] I keep wondering if the Fleet's the same way. Like, we might be on TV, but not for the reasons Atroma's told us we're on TV for.

...that makes sense. And wouldn't surprise me, either. Would the audience be clued in on the real reason?

[He nods.] Almost certainly.

The hosts make it super explicit that we think one thing, but we're actually doing or being led to do another.

Right. So... being entertaining for the sake of ratings may not even be in our best interests or even what they're looking to see from us.

Maybe. I'm not attached to my current theory, since our payment's still based on our ratings, but... it's something to think about.

video.

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