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pluviosa2025-01-31 10:10 pm
pluviosamods) wrote in pluviosa2025-01-31 10:10 pm
Entry tags:
EVENT - Ripple and Warp IC log (part 1!)
ripple and warp
Hello and welcome to the IC log for Pluviosa's Fourth Wall event, Ripple and Warp!
In addition to providing information about how characters arrive on the new deck (whether they're existing passengers or not), this post also serves as a place where Fourth Wall characters can post top-levels without joining the game community.
Further information on Fourth Walls in general and the other accompanying OOC updates to the game can be found on the OOC information post here. This post also serves in lieu of a regular between-events Test Drive.
Finally, you may now start sending in your applications to keep your AU, CRAU, and so on characters around after the Fourth Wall! Be sure to note the minor changes to the Applications page (namely, the addition of an "AU information" section).
Without further ado - How did you get here? And more importantly, where is 'here' anyway?
Whether or not characters remember falling asleep on the evening of Day 37, they wake up somewhere different on Day 38, lying on a couch in an almost-familiar room. The couch is similar to the ones in the lounge, though those with keen noses will note that the cushions don't smell the same - there's no scent of your fellow passengers, or of the faint hint of an unknown, arid place that first accompanied the clean furnishings the Ship dragged out.
The room isn't one you've been in before, either, but it's still clearly on the Ship somewhere - there's the familiar motion of the legs moving, and the overhead emergency lights (the only source of light initially in the room) are the same as the ones in the hallways on Fern that the Ship has been working so hard to restore. However, that doesn't mean that it's hard to see - indeed, considering the contents of the room, the low lighting might be a blessing in disguise.
It's full of mirrors.
Not only the sorts of mirrors that character would expect to find, the ones that have been missing from the Ship's bathrooms and other expected places, though there are certainly plenty of those in the room - but the walls, the door, and the ceiling are also all mirrors. Mirrors hang on a portion of the larger furniture in what appears to be the living room of a suite. It's not as dramatic as it could be, but aside from the couch characters wake up on, it's pretty close. The floor, at least, is not reflective mirrors, though it's not much less shiny - instead of the usual hotel-esque carpet of the suites, there's seamless stone tile in stormcloud grey, slight variations in the color indicating marble. And all of those reflective surfaces are perfectly clean - although it's possible to find dried spots of decay on the backs of the mirrors, overall, it seems as though time doesn't have claim on this part of the Ship, much less the Growth.
And of course, where there are mirrors, there are reflections.
Some of them - probably the majority - are normal, perfect mirrors of the person the character expects to see. Some of them are distorted, but in a normal, mundane way - funhouse mirrors among the panels on the walls, making you wide or skinny or warped.
And then some of them show reflections of you that are distorted, not as in bent, but as in there being something different about the you that's in them. Different clothes; different hair; different age; different species. Added scars, or missing ones; limbs missing, or replaced with something else. A completely unknown you in the mirror.
For the most part, these altered reflections act the way you would expect, imitating the movements of the rest of the reflections in the room. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they climb out of the mirror - and whether they're friendly or not remains to be seen.
There's a note on the mirror-topped table next to the couch. In backwards writing that needs to be held up to a mirror to be read easily, it says:
For those who are new around here, the method of arrival is... a bit different. This applies equally to characters who are just here for the fourth wall (alternates of existing characters etc) or those who will be apped as permanent residents - there isn't a distinction to these categories until the end of the event.
These characters arrive with a first sensation of being pressed against a hard, glass surface - not unlike the whispers of sensation that haunted the existing passengers over the last few days. The difference is that this time, the glass you're pressed against isn't a horizontal floor or bed - it's vertical or at least mostly vertical, and you can tell which way is down.
Or, put another way: Newly arrived characters start their boatride on the wrong side of the mirrors that are packed away into the unknown deck. They are facing towards the real world side, the way they would if they were reflections made physical, but turning around and looking behind them is nearly impossible.
Indeed, there's a growing pressure forcing them against the glass barrier. It grows harder and harder to breathe, almost like drowning, or being crushed by water pressure -
Until, just when you think you can't survive any more, something gives way, and you stumble out of the mirror into the real world. It's not the glass breaking - it's more like forcing your way through a soap bubble or the membrane that sits inside an eggshell that separates the hard pieces from the white. Water, too, cascades down out of the mirror with you, splattering all over the floor, but it's just water, and it doesn't seem to have left more than a bit of surface dampness on you.
However, when characters turn around, they will find that while the glass is still in place and unbroken, the mirror will no longer reflect anything - not even the shine of light cast on the glass - rendering these mirrors completely black. This reflectivity stays on the puddle of water around your feet instead, which aggressively reflects the area around it even if taken elsewhere - even if poured into a cup. In motion, it's too transparent to be taken for mercury or silver, but when pooled undisturbed, it does not ripple in response to the motion of the ship. Only the actions of characters or other forces can cause ripples. Otherwise, it appears to be normal water.
Characters who are alternates of each other might come out of the mirrors while they're literally being reflected (a certain surprise for those who are on the normal side of the mirror doing the looking), but they might also just appear in rooms all by themselves, or in the presence of someone else they know (or think they know). Those who don't have any immediate connections among the current passengers are more likely to appear in some empty room, but ultimately this is left to player discretion.
Not all reflections are as potentially friendly as those played by those of us on the player side of the screen, however. In addition to the "deeper" reflections played by real humans, who have or at least appear to have personalities and histories of their own, there are also "shallow" reflections. Unlike the Fourth Wall arrivals, shallow reflections can't be of characters who aren't present at the time - they only appear in response to characters looking into mirrors (whether those characters are existing residents or new arrivals).
The shallow reflections come out of the mirrors just like the Fourth Wall arrivals, but there's always something a little off about them. Some of them stay reversed like a reflection; some of them don't make any noise when they move and cannot speak; some of them come out of the mirrors with the funhouse-esque warped reflections and stay that way. Like their more 'real' counterparts, the mirrors the shallow reflections come out of turn completely flat, unreflective black; unlike their counterparts, they don't really hesitate in striding out, much less stumble and potentially collapse.
What do they want? To shove whoever they're a reflection of into the black mirror they came from. What happens if they succeed?
You die. I mean, probably. There's no way of knowing unless one of them does succeed, after all. If you want your character to die in this fashion, please let the mod team know. While we cannot guarantee that interesting things will happen to all characters (and those who are only here to visit for the Fourth Wall are not eligible), this may have permanent consequences for your character, take them out of play for longer ICly than a typical death, or impact other characters in the game beyond the typical levels of emotional harm. Or some combination of all three.
Fortunately, the shallow reflections only have physical strength on their side - they do not possess any powers of those they take the shapes of, and they can be killed in largely the same way as unremarkable flesh and blood humans. A killing blow causes them to collapse into the same hyper-reflective water as described above; the mirror they came out of remains black.
The deck itself is open fully to character navigation. Like the lab specimen storage of Zinnia, this deck - whose name is not posted anywhere for characters to find easily - is clear of any signs of Growth, and manages to feel chilly even if you get up to the top deck where the sun is shining.
Or... Should be shining. Regardless of the weather on other deck dimensions, the skies above this deck are
always, at best, a cloudy, half-stormy grey. The air above hangs tense, like the clouds are waiting for something to happen. Unlike the other instances of Ship weather, you don't need Neuvillette's particular affinity with water to sense it - any character with empathic or telepathic powers will be able to feel the sense of looming, helpless frustration in the clouds.
The most notable feature of this deck, of course, is that it's full of mirrors. Indeed, it's not only the mirrors that are missing from the suite bathrooms, the public restrooms by the cafeteria, and so on - there are far more mirrors than the Ship would reasonably need to outfit the decks it has, even including the multidimensional nature of it. Mirrors hang from the walls, and then more mirrors lean against those, or against the other furnishings, or even against each other (since some of them are standing mirrors), and the groups against the walls are often five or six panels deep with the largest at the back the side of the glass panels of the Ship's sliding glass balcony doors. (Yes, those are also replaced by mirrors, reflective in both directions.) Tabletops are reflective in their own rights, and then littered with even more, antique-looking hand mirrors and makeup compacts and those little circular mirrors sold in bags by the dozen at the craft store, only an inch across.
Considering all the reflective surfaces, it might be a good thing that there is only emergency power supplied to this deck - enough to keep the guide lights on and ensure that the sliding doors (though not the elevators) are working, and that whatever system pumps water through the faucets and showers is still going. The water is all cold, however, and there isn't any food available on the deck so far as characters are able to find. In the place where characters are used to finding the cafeteria, there is instead a terrifying mirrored bar filled with empty bottles and glasses as well as - well. Take a guess.
With the exception of the sliding glass doors in the suites, the glass of windows and so forth seems to be what it should be - though it's more reflective than seems natural, too. Like Zinnia, the cleaniness of this deck means that characters have full run of it, all the way down to the lounge on the bottom of the Ship - which is the only place that isn't completely clean on this deck. The super-reflective water that pours out of the mirrors seems to have flowed down here at some point, where it sits, unaffected by the motion of the Ship, about an inch deep across the entire floor. This water is the only feature down in the bottom lounge - there is no furniture, in contrast to its Zinnia counterpart.
And on this floor, at the very bottom, and only this floor, the reflective water has the smell - only the smell, not any other qualities - of fresh blood.
The Ship will not answer characters here - although the terminals in the residential deck that can normally be used to communicate with it (in whatever limited capacity) are present, their screens are (of course!) mirrors, and unresponsive. There's also no signs of drones about, not even the basic roomba-like cleaning drones; there's no evidence that they've been here recently, either.
A follow-up log, in which the Ship manages to make contact with characters wherever they are, will be posted later (mod goal time is 2-3 weeks from now). That log will take place on Day 40 and will bring with it food (for everyone who has gotten very hungry by then) and drone assistance, but whether characters actually manage to escape at that point or later on on Day 42 is left open to the opinions of you, the players! Both current players and visitors will be able to vote in a Discord poll on the matter, to be posted in the Discord announcements channel tomorrow (after you've had the chance to sleep on this post and let it cook in your brains a little).
Happy playing! Questions can be asked on Discord or added to the usual questions header below this post.
In addition to providing information about how characters arrive on the new deck (whether they're existing passengers or not), this post also serves as a place where Fourth Wall characters can post top-levels without joining the game community.
Further information on Fourth Walls in general and the other accompanying OOC updates to the game can be found on the OOC information post here. This post also serves in lieu of a regular between-events Test Drive.
Finally, you may now start sending in your applications to keep your AU, CRAU, and so on characters around after the Fourth Wall! Be sure to note the minor changes to the Applications page (namely, the addition of an "AU information" section).
Without further ado - How did you get here? And more importantly, where is 'here' anyway?
existing characters
Whether or not characters remember falling asleep on the evening of Day 37, they wake up somewhere different on Day 38, lying on a couch in an almost-familiar room. The couch is similar to the ones in the lounge, though those with keen noses will note that the cushions don't smell the same - there's no scent of your fellow passengers, or of the faint hint of an unknown, arid place that first accompanied the clean furnishings the Ship dragged out.
The room isn't one you've been in before, either, but it's still clearly on the Ship somewhere - there's the familiar motion of the legs moving, and the overhead emergency lights (the only source of light initially in the room) are the same as the ones in the hallways on Fern that the Ship has been working so hard to restore. However, that doesn't mean that it's hard to see - indeed, considering the contents of the room, the low lighting might be a blessing in disguise.
It's full of mirrors.
Not only the sorts of mirrors that character would expect to find, the ones that have been missing from the Ship's bathrooms and other expected places, though there are certainly plenty of those in the room - but the walls, the door, and the ceiling are also all mirrors. Mirrors hang on a portion of the larger furniture in what appears to be the living room of a suite. It's not as dramatic as it could be, but aside from the couch characters wake up on, it's pretty close. The floor, at least, is not reflective mirrors, though it's not much less shiny - instead of the usual hotel-esque carpet of the suites, there's seamless stone tile in stormcloud grey, slight variations in the color indicating marble. And all of those reflective surfaces are perfectly clean - although it's possible to find dried spots of decay on the backs of the mirrors, overall, it seems as though time doesn't have claim on this part of the Ship, much less the Growth.
And of course, where there are mirrors, there are reflections.
Some of them - probably the majority - are normal, perfect mirrors of the person the character expects to see. Some of them are distorted, but in a normal, mundane way - funhouse mirrors among the panels on the walls, making you wide or skinny or warped.
And then some of them show reflections of you that are distorted, not as in bent, but as in there being something different about the you that's in them. Different clothes; different hair; different age; different species. Added scars, or missing ones; limbs missing, or replaced with something else. A completely unknown you in the mirror.
For the most part, these altered reflections act the way you would expect, imitating the movements of the rest of the reflections in the room. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they climb out of the mirror - and whether they're friendly or not remains to be seen.
There's a note on the mirror-topped table next to the couch. In backwards writing that needs to be held up to a mirror to be read easily, it says:
Thanks for visiting! I'm sorry I couldn't be there to meet you, but there's just so many people here today!
I wonder if you'll get a chance to meet the real you?
Good luck!
new characters and visitors
For those who are new around here, the method of arrival is... a bit different. This applies equally to characters who are just here for the fourth wall (alternates of existing characters etc) or those who will be apped as permanent residents - there isn't a distinction to these categories until the end of the event.
These characters arrive with a first sensation of being pressed against a hard, glass surface - not unlike the whispers of sensation that haunted the existing passengers over the last few days. The difference is that this time, the glass you're pressed against isn't a horizontal floor or bed - it's vertical or at least mostly vertical, and you can tell which way is down.
Or, put another way: Newly arrived characters start their boatride on the wrong side of the mirrors that are packed away into the unknown deck. They are facing towards the real world side, the way they would if they were reflections made physical, but turning around and looking behind them is nearly impossible.
Indeed, there's a growing pressure forcing them against the glass barrier. It grows harder and harder to breathe, almost like drowning, or being crushed by water pressure -
Until, just when you think you can't survive any more, something gives way, and you stumble out of the mirror into the real world. It's not the glass breaking - it's more like forcing your way through a soap bubble or the membrane that sits inside an eggshell that separates the hard pieces from the white. Water, too, cascades down out of the mirror with you, splattering all over the floor, but it's just water, and it doesn't seem to have left more than a bit of surface dampness on you.
However, when characters turn around, they will find that while the glass is still in place and unbroken, the mirror will no longer reflect anything - not even the shine of light cast on the glass - rendering these mirrors completely black. This reflectivity stays on the puddle of water around your feet instead, which aggressively reflects the area around it even if taken elsewhere - even if poured into a cup. In motion, it's too transparent to be taken for mercury or silver, but when pooled undisturbed, it does not ripple in response to the motion of the ship. Only the actions of characters or other forces can cause ripples. Otherwise, it appears to be normal water.
Characters who are alternates of each other might come out of the mirrors while they're literally being reflected (a certain surprise for those who are on the normal side of the mirror doing the looking), but they might also just appear in rooms all by themselves, or in the presence of someone else they know (or think they know). Those who don't have any immediate connections among the current passengers are more likely to appear in some empty room, but ultimately this is left to player discretion.
shallower reflections
Not all reflections are as potentially friendly as those played by those of us on the player side of the screen, however. In addition to the "deeper" reflections played by real humans, who have or at least appear to have personalities and histories of their own, there are also "shallow" reflections. Unlike the Fourth Wall arrivals, shallow reflections can't be of characters who aren't present at the time - they only appear in response to characters looking into mirrors (whether those characters are existing residents or new arrivals).
The shallow reflections come out of the mirrors just like the Fourth Wall arrivals, but there's always something a little off about them. Some of them stay reversed like a reflection; some of them don't make any noise when they move and cannot speak; some of them come out of the mirrors with the funhouse-esque warped reflections and stay that way. Like their more 'real' counterparts, the mirrors the shallow reflections come out of turn completely flat, unreflective black; unlike their counterparts, they don't really hesitate in striding out, much less stumble and potentially collapse.
What do they want? To shove whoever they're a reflection of into the black mirror they came from. What happens if they succeed?
You die. I mean, probably. There's no way of knowing unless one of them does succeed, after all. If you want your character to die in this fashion, please let the mod team know. While we cannot guarantee that interesting things will happen to all characters (and those who are only here to visit for the Fourth Wall are not eligible), this may have permanent consequences for your character, take them out of play for longer ICly than a typical death, or impact other characters in the game beyond the typical levels of emotional harm. Or some combination of all three.
Fortunately, the shallow reflections only have physical strength on their side - they do not possess any powers of those they take the shapes of, and they can be killed in largely the same way as unremarkable flesh and blood humans. A killing blow causes them to collapse into the same hyper-reflective water as described above; the mirror they came out of remains black.
??? deck
The deck itself is open fully to character navigation. Like the lab specimen storage of Zinnia, this deck - whose name is not posted anywhere for characters to find easily - is clear of any signs of Growth, and manages to feel chilly even if you get up to the top deck where the sun is shining.
Or... Should be shining. Regardless of the weather on other deck dimensions, the skies above this deck are
always, at best, a cloudy, half-stormy grey. The air above hangs tense, like the clouds are waiting for something to happen. Unlike the other instances of Ship weather, you don't need Neuvillette's particular affinity with water to sense it - any character with empathic or telepathic powers will be able to feel the sense of looming, helpless frustration in the clouds.
The most notable feature of this deck, of course, is that it's full of mirrors. Indeed, it's not only the mirrors that are missing from the suite bathrooms, the public restrooms by the cafeteria, and so on - there are far more mirrors than the Ship would reasonably need to outfit the decks it has, even including the multidimensional nature of it. Mirrors hang from the walls, and then more mirrors lean against those, or against the other furnishings, or even against each other (since some of them are standing mirrors), and the groups against the walls are often five or six panels deep with the largest at the back the side of the glass panels of the Ship's sliding glass balcony doors. (Yes, those are also replaced by mirrors, reflective in both directions.) Tabletops are reflective in their own rights, and then littered with even more, antique-looking hand mirrors and makeup compacts and those little circular mirrors sold in bags by the dozen at the craft store, only an inch across.
Considering all the reflective surfaces, it might be a good thing that there is only emergency power supplied to this deck - enough to keep the guide lights on and ensure that the sliding doors (though not the elevators) are working, and that whatever system pumps water through the faucets and showers is still going. The water is all cold, however, and there isn't any food available on the deck so far as characters are able to find. In the place where characters are used to finding the cafeteria, there is instead a terrifying mirrored bar filled with empty bottles and glasses as well as - well. Take a guess.
With the exception of the sliding glass doors in the suites, the glass of windows and so forth seems to be what it should be - though it's more reflective than seems natural, too. Like Zinnia, the cleaniness of this deck means that characters have full run of it, all the way down to the lounge on the bottom of the Ship - which is the only place that isn't completely clean on this deck. The super-reflective water that pours out of the mirrors seems to have flowed down here at some point, where it sits, unaffected by the motion of the Ship, about an inch deep across the entire floor. This water is the only feature down in the bottom lounge - there is no furniture, in contrast to its Zinnia counterpart.
And on this floor, at the very bottom, and only this floor, the reflective water has the smell - only the smell, not any other qualities - of fresh blood.
The Ship will not answer characters here - although the terminals in the residential deck that can normally be used to communicate with it (in whatever limited capacity) are present, their screens are (of course!) mirrors, and unresponsive. There's also no signs of drones about, not even the basic roomba-like cleaning drones; there's no evidence that they've been here recently, either.
A follow-up log, in which the Ship manages to make contact with characters wherever they are, will be posted later (mod goal time is 2-3 weeks from now). That log will take place on Day 40 and will bring with it food (for everyone who has gotten very hungry by then) and drone assistance, but whether characters actually manage to escape at that point or later on on Day 42 is left open to the opinions of you, the players! Both current players and visitors will be able to vote in a Discord poll on the matter, to be posted in the Discord announcements channel tomorrow (after you've had the chance to sleep on this post and let it cook in your brains a little).
Happy playing! Questions can be asked on Discord or added to the usual questions header below this post.
Rouge the Bat | Sonic the Hedgehog (games)
Tap a rhythm against the floor
Rouge grunts when she comes to. Whatever got her must've got her good, because all she can feel is the pressure of something cold against her whole body. But apparently, that 'bot must not've been happy enough with the job because when she first tries to shift to glare back at it, she finds out quickly that she can't. And as that thought processes, so does the steady increase in pressure. And it's a bizarre pressure, one that feels like that time she grabbed a turtle to swim against a current on a treasure hunt, the water slowly starting to test the limits of her ability to hold her breath, the current and depth alike placing just enough pressure against her before—
—releasing her at the other end of the path, just like now. Like breaching the surface, the water tension splitting over fur and skin, but this time Rouge is facing ahead rather than swimming upward. The toe of her boot skims the dampened floor as her wings snap open with another scattering of water to lift up some foot or so above it as she whips around to see where she's come from, because this sure as anything doesn't look like where she was before. It doesn't look like anywhere she's been lately, even, especially not with the water.
And a mirror without a reflection is just as bizarre.
Also pretty worthless, if anyone asked her.
With a toss of her head, Rouge casts her gaze about for something more useful than a solid black not-mirror, and in so-doing catches the rocking motion of what has to be a vessel's movement before she decides to set down. It takes a second to get used to, wings flapping to make sure she stays upright, and a heel disturbs the puddle left in the wake of her... emergence or whatever it is.
"And I thought the White Space was strange..." she mumbles, cautiously continuing her survey of the room. Folding her arms loosely across her middle, she lets her weight shift, tapping the toe of one heart-tipped boot against the marble-like floor. Mirrors, mirrors, everywhere, huh? Not really the sort of shiny she's typically drawn to, unfortunately.
"You know," she announces with a frown, "I'm getting really tired of forces pulling me this way and that. I decide where I go."
And with that, almost like a personal punctuation, she stomps her way out of the room, fully intent on figuring out a way out of here. The mirror's not likely, given its new look, but maybe there's someone here who can answer that question for her.
To look for another door
She does not like this place, Rouge decides. It's dreary as anything—better suited to someone of Shadow's persuasion than hers. A clear night where she can slip between the shadows on the hunt... That'd be better. Or somewhere nice!
Maybe once she gets out, she'll
badgertry to convince Shadow to go to the beach with her. Omega, too, if he isn't on assignment and wants (might not be much for him to do other than obliterate watermelons or beach balls, so maybe somewhere else).Wherever she is right now, though, she can't help but think back to stories about Chaos. She hadn't been in town for that particular event, but she'd read about it: a watery god of destruction, thunder, rain, and lightning, the danger of rising waters once he'd acquired the power of the Chaos Emeralds... But the description she'd gotten from Sonic and the others had been... sad. A protector abused by Eggman. She grimaces at that thought, opting to blame the dreary weather and the ubiquitousness of water where it isn't supposed to be, turning in place to walk backward a few steps as she holds her gaze upward.
...And then of course: mirrors. Entirely too many of them, even for her. It's actually pretty disorienting, which is part of why she's tried to look up to avoid the headache all that is invariably going to cause, but in so doing she, uh. Rather narrowly avoids running directly into someone, hearing their footsteps before seeing them.
"Hey!" But it's a person, so she can at least ask questions.
I am slipping into the mystery of the night
Wildcard! Got an idea? Something based on another prompt? I'm game!
to look for another door
"Hey yourself," Malos snaps. "It's not like I was trying to sneak around!" It's dark. He's dark. Er, minus the faintly glowing purple gem in his chest, anyway. He also takes up most of the hallway, but let's not be reasonable about this, here, no way.
"Who the hell - " Actually, maybe he knows this... Person? Blade? Maybe anthropomorphic animals are just like, normal in her world. Any memory he had of where he might recognize her from slips away. " - I can't believe we're still getting new people on this fucking boat!"
no subject
"Well I don't exactly blend in, either." Ignoring that she's small enough next to this guy she probably constitutes a tripping hazard. But the second her complaint is out of her mouth, there is something glowy and shiny that catches her eye in one of those many mirrors.
Oh, that's hers.
For now, though: focus.
"Boat?" Her ears perk somewhat. Well, that's one question half-answered. Interesting. She kicks out a foot out a little as she spins to look around at all the mirrors, setting her hands on her hips when she stops. "Looks more like a poorly thought-out funhouse." And, sighing: "Though I guess those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive." And she's been plenty of weirder places.
no subject
Something about her feels comforting. Maybe it's just nice to meet someone of - if not the same stripe as him, then a familiar stripe. No more peppy world-saving self-sacrificing dumbasses. No more sad boys. Just sass. He can appreciate sass. "Heh," he says, smirking.
"Boat, yeah." He's not laughing at your joke, but his smile has definitely gotten wider. "Cruise ship, grew legs in the apocalypse, stomping around the wasteland now... something like that." He waves a hand, clearly not thinking it that important. "Though if you ask me, this funhouse was less of an attraction, and more of an accident. This is the first place on this ship I've seen any mirrors at all. If someone just shoved them all out of the way..."
no subject
Someone has to be there for them through thick and thin.Something about this guy's attitude is entirely too familiar, though—not his specific manner, but something in his presentation and specific way he chooses to address things. Sharp, defaulting to something that puts distance. Between himself and his surroundings, too, maybe. It does make her think of the boys, at least at a glance. Well, it'll take a few more interactions to know if she's on the right track with this initial assessment, either way. Maybe this is his normal. Maybe he's flatter. Maybe he's got more energy, who knows?
"Still, even just putting them away like this seems pretty out of place for a cruise ship, don't you think?" Rouge sets her hands on her hips, looking around them a bit as she continues. "Vacationers and anyone who thinks about their looks will primp and pose before they head out." She draws back the corner of her lip a bit, not quite disgusted but definitely feeling something in its vicinity. And definitely not a normal use for mirrors, besides. Who'd want to do something like this? Either this is calculated misuse of reflections, or someone's got ideas as off the wall as the Doctor's smaller ones.
Wait.
"Apocalypse?" No, the boat "growing" legs doesn't even factor in, she's seen weirder.
i kept wanting to do a Perfect Tag bc ur rouge is so good. but that's silly. here's any tag at all
"I didn't stutter, did I?" Malos says. "Same old, same old, with humanity - they get powerful toys and then use them to blow the world up, whether they mean it or not. Who cares about this 'nuclear' 'radiation' thing all the scientists are worried about - profit profit profit, or something, or other."
Malos shrugs, exaggerated. Counting this world, he's seen this shit happen twice now - and he can fudge the number up to three, even though Alrest wasn't destroyed, and it's problems lied more in religious fervor, or whatever the hell Amalthus had wrong with him.
"Just so you don't get any too-wild ideas, it was well before I got here, and before any of the rest of us got here, either. 300 years, I think the Ship said? Longer? It won't let us at the records, of course. But that was the last time it saw a person, or had any passengers, 'til we got here - Probably why it didn't care too much about shoving the mirrors where no one could reach them."
wAUGH ;v; okay but look malos is delightful as heck so—
Really, who could do such a thing when there are so many jewels to find and add to her collection?
Though Rouge does arch a brow and narrow her eyes ever so slightly at the blame-directing. Uh-huh. She has sense enough to gather her information before drawing any conclusions, but she'll take the underestimation-meets-defense. And if it was nuclear radiation at fault, she's pretty sure no one would be having a good time this close to it happening. The ship has an AI, though: that's good. She can interrogate it later, see what she can pull up. And, if worse comes to worse, she can be persuasive~♥
300 years, though...
"You know, I don't think I'd care where my mirrors went at that point, either. Though I imagine it'd be pretty lonely, at the same time." Folding her arms, the bat takes an almost delicate stance, cants her hips, and turns her gaze to roam over the mirrors without really seeing. Shortly, she lifts a hand to lightly curl at her lips and watch this very tall man with the very shiny gem from the corner of her eye, thoughtful. "Though you talk about the ship like it's a person." She's known robots very much alive and very much their own person, but a vessel with an AI is a little different, isn't it?
She's going to sit on that "got here" for a little longer, though, even if she earmarks the page in her mental file.
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"Yeah, especially since these mirrors seem super fucking cursed. If you haven't seen your reflection step out of one yet, count yourself lucky. I'd want to get rid of them, too."
The talking anthropomorphic bat interrogating his decision to speak like the ship is a person feels a little rich, but Malos magnamiously decides to keep that to himself.
"I mean, isn't it?" Malos responds. "If it thinks for itself, that's person enough, to me. Who cares what the body of it looks like."
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"Can't say I have," she admits instead. "So I'll do just that." It's easy to imagine how disorienting and distressing that could be. That's not how mirrors are meant to work, for one, so the failure to meet the expectations of reality is a definite problem for the mind. But for another... facing off with something that looks like you, or being faced with the possibility that something else is also you, the question of identity...
Anyway.
"Oh, I'm not disagreeing there. One of my colleagues is a robot." No matter how much he makes me want to strangle him when he decides "stealth" is code for "mass destruction". Pay no mind to the fact the word she should have used is "friend"—there may be some things she's slower to admit than others. Or maybe the word isn't right. "But I've never met a whole ship with an AI that complex. It's a little surprising."