[ Another day and another set of packages picked up from the sundries shop! And yet another package that isn't for her, which Fio realizes after removing the nautical wrapping paper. This time, the title inscribed on the box is "The Colonel" and there's only one person aboard the ship that she knows addressed as such...
This is the third time now. The difference is that the package is smaller, far lighter than the one she received for Rita and Skulduggery. It almost feels empty. Maybe whatever's inside won't be as weird as the other packages! (It's even weirder!)
It's while she's in her cabin that she goes through her packages, so she doesn't bother contacting Jade by phone. She can simply walk over to make the drop off, since he's down the hall after all.
When calling out or knocking on cabin 109 goes unanswered, Fio is hesitant to stick around. As she lingers, she mulls over the events from the previous month. She's not even sure what his or his roommate's feelings are after the trial. If it comes up, it's a discussion she feels uncomfortable with at the moment.
After about another minute, she leaves the package out front for Jade to discover on his own. ]
thanks this was a super great magic gun intro experience 10/10
[In the end it's later in the day before one of cabin 109's residents finally returns. Fio isn't the only one with recent events uncomfortably in thought, and though by now matters had been vented between Jade and Natsuno in a conversation shortly after everyone's collective return to the ship, there's still something quietly...heavy and unhappy, about the atmosphere in 109 of late. They've both been avoiding the cabin rather more than normal, for multiple reasons--and so situations like this now arise, where a mysterious package can sit at the doorstep for several hours...
But it's hard to miss, at least. Jade picks it up, notices the strange script that flickers to legible letters intermittently, and--alright, weirdly indirectly direct. Clearly not in the style of Friday's usual nautical wrapping. ...No sign of anyone else lingering in the hall. Let's...bring it inside, then...
Feather-light thing, this small box. Shaking it slightly doesn't even offer the vaguest rattle within, and it becomes pretty clear why when Jade finally does gingerly pull the lid off at length. There's a glowing light inside, that leaps up and vanishes straight into his torso with no warning and no sensation whatsoever; "weird" becomes "unsettlingly concerning" in an instant. But the box is...empty, otherwise, and within the next ten minutes nothing else actually happens. There's no change he can sense in his own body whatsoever, and no particular energy he can discern through the same means he might detect fonons either. ...The end of the day is near anyhow, but Jade spends it in a state of mild trepidation that has him examining the box rather far too long. (No further hints are found.) When he does finally retire to bed later that night, before Natsuno has yet returned to the room, a resignation rather unique to the ship's inexorable oddities has fallen upon him. This is all still pretty foreboding, but apparently not fast-acting, and he decides he'll ask around about what a delivery like this might possibly entail tomorrow. No help losing sleep over it.
The Cage's gift does not wait that long, unfortunately.
I was never very strong, nor very good at anything. My life was normal. Average. Boring, even. And that's all I ever thought I'd be--until I got this gun.
Thoughts. Feelings. Images--hazy. Memories...not his own. Foreign in the strangest way, as if watching the events unfolding through somebody else's body--and what grim events they are. A gun that tells a fortune every time it's shot, as if dispensing a piece of a Score through some utterly bizarre reaction mechanic. It grants only visions of accidents and death, inevitably followed by a desperation to avert disaster, and the backfire of those actions upon loved ones instead. The prophecies grow more and more unavoidable with each shot of the gun, until it finally predicts--
Jade doesn't sleep terribly thoroughly on a normal night to begin with. It's abbreviated by habit at this point, a necessity thanks to the nature of his eyes...but even then, for all that a variety of unpleasant dreams do tend to visit him frequently, he's a fairly still and quiet sleeper. --Not this night, though. With this sort of nightmare. It's a new and jarring experience, to jerk awake with a shout barely caught in the back of his throat and the taste of gunmetal still in his mouth, and there's several seconds where he can't tell where he himself ends and that stranger's despair begins.
Nauseating, nauseating. The dread that is but isn't his own takes far too long to fade, and he has to get up, barely manages to get the bathroom door open with hands that shake. Breathing far too fast, need to get that under control. There's a dizzying urge to be properly sick, but nothing ever does quite come up in the end. Nothing for it but to lean against the sink and run icy cold water over his hands until the numbness feels more real and familiar than the sensation of the gun in his grip. ...His face is still his own in the mirror, at least, for all that it's still pale and drawn even after a couple rinses. Jade wonders if this is what the aftermath of the possessions was like for those possessed--no, but for them they at least remembered nothing of the souls that overtook them. ...It's just a bit like trying to recall being hypnotized, though, unearthing memories of thoughts and actions that didn't feel like his own...
This is still very new regardless. And the box must be the cause, because Jade finds he now somehow knows exactly what was actually in there. The gun from the nightmare--"Umbra 1945". If he held out his left hand...he's somehow certain, too, that it would now materialize--
But not now. Not--in here. ...Trying to go back to sleep is going to be an impossible task, too. In the end, there's nothing for it but to wash up and change and set out for the day, hours earlier than he would have normally. ...There's certainly at least one thing he'd now like to properly investigate today...]
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come_sailaway
early jan gift(?) dropoff, congrats on the magical gun
This is the third time now. The difference is that the package is smaller, far lighter than the one she received for Rita and Skulduggery. It almost feels empty. Maybe whatever's inside won't be as weird as the other packages! (It's even weirder!)
It's while she's in her cabin that she goes through her packages, so she doesn't bother contacting Jade by phone. She can simply walk over to make the drop off, since he's down the hall after all.
When calling out or knocking on cabin 109 goes unanswered, Fio is hesitant to stick around. As she lingers, she mulls over the events from the previous month. She's not even sure what his or his roommate's feelings are after the trial. If it comes up, it's a discussion she feels uncomfortable with at the moment.
After about another minute, she leaves the package out front for Jade to discover on his own. ]
thanks this was a super great magic gun intro experience 10/10
But it's hard to miss, at least. Jade picks it up, notices the strange script that flickers to legible letters intermittently, and--alright, weirdly indirectly direct. Clearly not in the style of Friday's usual nautical wrapping. ...No sign of anyone else lingering in the hall. Let's...bring it inside, then...
Feather-light thing, this small box. Shaking it slightly doesn't even offer the vaguest rattle within, and it becomes pretty clear why when Jade finally does gingerly pull the lid off at length. There's a glowing light inside, that leaps up and vanishes straight into his torso with no warning and no sensation whatsoever; "weird" becomes "unsettlingly concerning" in an instant. But the box is...empty, otherwise, and within the next ten minutes nothing else actually happens. There's no change he can sense in his own body whatsoever, and no particular energy he can discern through the same means he might detect fonons either. ...The end of the day is near anyhow, but Jade spends it in a state of mild trepidation that has him examining the box rather far too long. (No further hints are found.) When he does finally retire to bed later that night, before Natsuno has yet returned to the room, a resignation rather unique to the ship's inexorable oddities has fallen upon him. This is all still pretty foreboding, but apparently not fast-acting, and he decides he'll ask around about what a delivery like this might possibly entail tomorrow. No help losing sleep over it.
The Cage's gift does not wait that long, unfortunately.
I was never very strong, nor very good at anything. My life was normal. Average. Boring, even. And that's all I ever thought I'd be--until I got this gun.
Thoughts. Feelings. Images--hazy. Memories...not his own. Foreign in the strangest way, as if watching the events unfolding through somebody else's body--and what grim events they are. A gun that tells a fortune every time it's shot, as if dispensing a piece of a Score through some utterly bizarre reaction mechanic. It grants only visions of accidents and death, inevitably followed by a desperation to avert disaster, and the backfire of those actions upon loved ones instead. The prophecies grow more and more unavoidable with each shot of the gun, until it finally predicts--
Jade doesn't sleep terribly thoroughly on a normal night to begin with. It's abbreviated by habit at this point, a necessity thanks to the nature of his eyes...but even then, for all that a variety of unpleasant dreams do tend to visit him frequently, he's a fairly still and quiet sleeper. --Not this night, though. With this sort of nightmare. It's a new and jarring experience, to jerk awake with a shout barely caught in the back of his throat and the taste of gunmetal still in his mouth, and there's several seconds where he can't tell where he himself ends and that stranger's despair begins.
Nauseating, nauseating. The dread that is but isn't his own takes far too long to fade, and he has to get up, barely manages to get the bathroom door open with hands that shake. Breathing far too fast, need to get that under control. There's a dizzying urge to be properly sick, but nothing ever does quite come up in the end. Nothing for it but to lean against the sink and run icy cold water over his hands until the numbness feels more real and familiar than the sensation of the gun in his grip. ...His face is still his own in the mirror, at least, for all that it's still pale and drawn even after a couple rinses. Jade wonders if this is what the aftermath of the possessions was like for those possessed--no, but for them they at least remembered nothing of the souls that overtook them. ...It's just a bit like trying to recall being hypnotized, though, unearthing memories of thoughts and actions that didn't feel like his own...
This is still very new regardless. And the box must be the cause, because Jade finds he now somehow knows exactly what was actually in there. The gun from the nightmare--"Umbra 1945". If he held out his left hand...he's somehow certain, too, that it would now materialize--
But not now. Not--in here. ...Trying to go back to sleep is going to be an impossible task, too. In the end, there's nothing for it but to wash up and change and set out for the day, hours earlier than he would have normally. ...There's certainly at least one thing he'd now like to properly investigate today...]