trans_9 | quest selected: glad to be unhappy [open; backdated options]

Entry tags:

quest selected: glad to be unhappy [open; backdated options]

Who: Elle (Courier Six) and YOU
Where: Anywhere you want, though these are specific locations that'll be popping up: Hydroponics, the Garibah Tree, the Public Bathroom in the City, and a wall near the Level 5 Sleeping Halls teleporter. And, for the sake of narration, the Lucky 38. The Drunken Dragon Tavern will be added later!
When: Any time ranging from shortly after the podpops to the past week or so.
Summary: Elle has been occupying herself by exploring the ship, especially the City. I'm going to set this post up in a bit of a weird way, with the OP being a general exploring post, and then threads for specific locations, just to make things clean and easily organized. Feel free to tag into any of the threads unless it's marked as [CLOSED], and you can start your own thread with Elle set in another location of your choosing if you'd like! These settings are just starting points, in a way.
Warnings: None?

Elle is certain there are better things she could be doing, but... Unbeknownst to her, spending an endless amount of time exploring the Ship and its City has become her coping mechanism. She hasn't quite realized just how hard this whole situation has hit her. The knowledge that her home, the world she had learned to love again, even after everything that happened there, was gone... Knowing that most of the people she'd met probably hadn't been saved... Maybe she's still in shock. Maybe she's subconsciously delaying the information from truly, fully sinking in. But, regardless, she thinks she's fine. Which is why she wonders why she's still doing it. But everything else in her mind is telling her to keep poking her head around, and she's learned to listen to her instincts, so... Exploring it is.

Elle has managed to get herself a dress made a few weeks after her podpop, at the very least. There's a part of her that feels particularly naked without her combat armor, but she doesn't want to run around the ship wearing it -- it makes her seem more heavily armed, and that's not exactly good for making friends. Her dress and her Pre-War Hat will do her just fine, thank you very much, and it's much more comfortable. (Of course, she still has her shotgun slung over her back and a bag filled with extra ammo and her teddy bear over her shoulder. She may not be wearing her armor, but at least she'll be able to fight.)

The small Courier can be found everywhere publicly accessible on the Ship, though it's much more common to find her somewhere in the City. There's a lot more to ~~distract herself with~~ explore there, after all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There was a man that entered the bathroom behind her. He was wearing a suit and had leather shoulder bag that he was carrying around with him. For a moment, after he entered, he spent a moment just standing there, looking around at the bathroom, almost as if she wasn't there.

Elle hears him come in and automatically turns and... accidentally winds up staring. What is he doing? Is he surprised by the bathroom, too? He doesn't seem to notice her... Should she say something?

"Um... Hello?"

The man seemed to have heard her, because he looked at her the moment she spoke, but he still continued to ignore her, instead opting to go over and turn on the tap to see if the water would run.

It did and it looked clean.

"Interesting," he commented to himself.

Then he turned to the young woman.

"You're in my way."

Apparently, he had only passing familiarity with the concept of politeness. Either that or he just tended to flip it off on a regular basis. (Hint: it's the latter.)

Edited 2012-05-03 05:44 (UTC)

Elle moves out of the way without question or argument, but she still doesn't leave. Her interest has been piqued.

"If I may ask... What are you doing?"

Sherlock bent down to take a look at the pipes, reaching into his leather bag to extract what looked like a little plastic slide-out magnifying glass to look a the the tool marks on the pipes.

"That should be obvious."

Elle tilted her head one way, then another.

"Checking out how the running water in here works? Seeing if there's something poisonous or mind-controlling in the water? You want to be a plumber when you grow up?"

The familiarity of the jibing helped temper his annoyance that she was still there. It was almost as if he was used to someone gently and good-naturedly pointing out that some of the things he did were ridiculous...

"I would say all of the above if it weren't for the fact that I didn't want to be a plumber when I grew up."

On account, you know, of wanting to be a pirate.

He does sound annoyed, but he doesn't sound mad, and he hasn't told her to go away yet. Curiously, she scoots closer and tries to get a look herself.

"What kind of signs are you looking for? I wouldn't ask if I didn't come from an irradiated desert wasteland and, y'know, had more experience with water." A pause. "What's made you suspicious of the water?"

"I'm trying to determine if these...facilities were constructed piece by piece or somehow manufactured exactly as they are."

If they'd been moved or built, why go to all that effort? For a public toilet? If they'd been created exactly as they were, all in one piece somehow, then why go through the effort of creating them at all? Again, for a public toilet?

"And a better question would be: what hasn't made me suspicious of the water? And the food, and the sleeping arrangements, and every other minute detail that can be gleaned about this place? Every single one of them is a brush stroke painting a rather grim picture."

"Well, considering that there are people who have been here for... longer than they can keep track of, and they still have the will to fight against the Daligig..." Elle shrugs. "If they were gonna try and mind control everyone into doing what they want, wouldn't they have done it by now?"

She has a feeling she's missing something; it's the kind of feeling she gets when she's a few steps behind someone else's thought processes. But then again, when she considers the way he talks... He probably just does that. Which, at the very least, means he's very smart.

"If they've been here longer than they can keep track of, why did it take them until now to distrust the Daligig enough to act the way they are?" he pointed out. "Their actions have been questionable going very far back, if the records are accurate."

Tool marks. It was constructed. But why? Why a public toilet? Why?

Edited 2012-05-03 07:09 (UTC)

Hmmm... "Well, from what I was told, the Daligig only recently arrived on the ship. But I have to admit that I haven't looked that closely at the records yet. What do they show?"

Maybe just because public toilets are nice things to have?

"Only torture," Sherlock said blithely, collecting a sample of the water from the tap in a small vial.

"Torture?" Elle's mind immediately jumps to what she'd heard about what the Daligig did to those who tried to leave the ship. She knows that isn't right, though, since he's talking about things that happened in the long past. "What do you mean? What happened, and when, and why?"

Of course, it's this moment that some part of her mind reminds her that the man is busy and may not have time for her endless questions. She quashes it by telling herself that if that was the case, surely he would've said so by now.

It wasn't always that people were interested in what he had to say. So far, on the ship, it had actually been somewhat refreshing that people wanted his insight on things.

Even thought it was irritating they couldn't figure things out on their own.

"There was apparently a young woman by the name of Big Zero that received Punishment. That's how they knew what it was, from the first time. By all reports, it was rather gruesome. Some members of the crew were tortured long before that, before the rest of the crew even woke up. Medical torture, psychological conditioning, psychic manipulation; the Daligig sought to weaponize them--but that's not why they can't be trusted. It's a war, after all. Desperate times, desperate measures--no, it's not the torture we have to look out for."

Solely based on what she knows, the only other thing Elle can think of that would be 'what they have to look out for' would be the fact that the Daligig aren't treating them as people. That easily falls under the justification of "it's a war," of course, which makes her hesitant in bringing it up. She takes a moment to turn their conversation over in her mind for more clues and take what he's doing into consideration.

What would it matter if the bathroom was built piece by piece or if it was made all as one?

Something clicks.

"... It's whether or not they're telling us the whole truth, or if they're telling us the truth at all." Elle thinks of the Mojave, of how easily the things that happen across the wasteland can get warped. She thinks of the Followers of the Apocalypse and how part of their mission is to spread as much information -- education -- to people as they can. "They don't need mind-controlling water if they control the things we know, somehow. And the way this place is constructed can maybe provide evidence supporting or refuting what they've told us about our rescue."

The "right?" is unspoken, but still unconsciously hinted at in her tone. She's taking a swing... Did she hit?

There was a level stare at her, and then the corner of his mouth quirked just a bit.

Right on the nose. He did enjoy it when people kept up.

"They saved buildings when buildings can be rebuilt and the same resources could have been used to save more people. Why? Because they're familiar to some of us, because they provide the trappings of civilization. Having a whole city here isn't practical if this were really just an ark, nor would it be large enough to contain all the individuals in podsleep, and this entire area could be filled with more people and more resources to support their survival. No, the City is here for the illusion of freedom. We get to stretch our legs, we get to sight-see, and we forget that we're locked in a mobile prison with them controlling most of the inflow of information and with us having no option of leaving."

Sherlock shook his head.

"The war itself may be genuine, the threat of the Ohm may be real, but the Daligig seem to be rather desperate to cast themselves in the role of the saviors of the multiverse."

He started poking around the stalls.

"If the crew does what it seems like it's about to do and it's a successful venture, what we find on this ship when we have more freedom to access its secrets may be somewhat...illuminating."

Edited 2012-05-03 08:27 (UTC)

Elle is surprised when he stares at her, though she tries to mask it by staring determinedly right back. The result is, unfortunately, a mildly terrified expression. However, it almost immediately melts away and brightens into one of relief and self-satisfaction. She got it! As he expands on his reasoning, she can't help but do a mental pirouette.

Okay, okay, cut it out, get back on track. She runs back over what he said again in her mind. As she does, it strikes her just how well that illusion of freedom has snared her. What has she been doing this whole time? Exploring. Sight-seeing. Purposefully trying to get her mind off of what's going on. Suddenly, she feels incredibly foolish and blind, and she lowers her chin a little in shame.

"I can't really blame them for that, though. They want to believe they're making things better, that they're doing good, saving people, saving their loved ones. But if they're trying too hard..." Here, she pauses. It's just a guess, but... "Someone said something to me once." Maybe it's strange that she can repeat No-Bark Noonan word for word, but this was a speech that stuck in her already good memory. "'I don't trust a man that doesn't have something strange going on about him, 'cause that means he's hiding it from you. If a man's wearing his pants on his head or says his words backwards from time to time, you know it's all laid out there for you. But if he's friendly to strangers and keeps his home spick-and-span, more often than not it means he's done something even his own ma couldn't forgive.'" After she's done, she shrugs, a little helplessly.

How strange a thing it was that there were people on this ship that weren't entirely irritating, some of whom seemed to think for themselves. It was even stranger that some of them didn't seem to mind being in his company, despite his brusqueness and rather brutal honestly.

"An astute sentiment given our situation," he said, "albeit rather colloquial."

Elle is used to talking to all sorts of people and, honestly, Sherlock is not the most antagonist person she's ever met. ... yet?

"It's the way a lot of people talk where I'm from. I think the way No-Bark Noonan -- the man who said that -- really helped deliver the point. And he turned out to be more right than I'm comfortable with." She smiles, a little sheepishly.

"So, what've you found out about this bathroom, Mr. Plumber?"

"It's hiding something."

It was a very ominous and serious proclamation to say about a public toilet, but he clearly believed it was the truth.

Somehow, she isn't surprised.

"Do you have any idea what it's hiding?" She tilts her head, out of habit more than anything else. "And are we going to actually introduce ourselves, or am I going to keep calling you 'Mr. Plumber' and you calling me 'that annoying girl who doesn't shut up'?"

"Several ideas."

No, he didn't have a clue, but he didn't like acknowledging it when he didn't know something.

Then he added, "Sherlock Holmes," by way of introduction. "Though I may stick to 'that annoying girl who doesn't shut up,' for you. It has a ring to it and it's quite accurate."

Edited 2012-05-22 06:56 (UTC)

"Mind sharing? Or are you going to keep it to yourself so you can be all," she wiggles her fingers here, "mysterious?"

Even though she's the one who used the phrasing and she's sure he's just joking back, it still stings a little. It's irrational and she doesn't understand it, though, so she pushes it down and ignores it. She maintains her playful smile.

"It'd be shorter just to call me 'Elle,' though. Y'know. My name?"

There didn't seem to be much malice behind what he was saying, at least and that was because there wasn't any. She was annoying, certainly, but more tolerable than many people he'd met by far.

Since he had no plans at all to reveal that he wasn't sure about what was being hidden (the options that were possible were uncountable), he focused on the name thing.

"It's not as memorable, but I suppose it makes up for it in brevity," he said with the ghost of a smile.

(no subject)

quixotically - 2012-05-27 00:09 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only