Attention: This is the Nurse Speaking

[thenurse_tlv]

[Over the network:]

Good morning, everyone! We're about to meet a whole lot of New Friends! They're coming to us in a way that's just a teeny weeny bit unusual, so it's up to everyone to make sure they feel welcome! Let's all show our New Friends just how nice we are here on the Clipper. Ta ta!

☆ 104 ☆ (AUDIO | SPAM)

[punched_hitler]

[AUDIO; PUBLIC]
[Steve's not familiar with the wristband that's apparently locked onto his wrist, but pressing the button pulls up an interface that he spends just enough time to figure out to get out a short audio message:]

B? B, are you here?

They said —

[The last two words are quieter, and then he's fumbled the device off.]

[SPAM; OTA]
[No sooner has Steve sent out his message than he's pulling the curtain at the front of the tiny cabin aside. It takes him a minute to, well, take in the new ship — but then he starts searching for B, not really willing to sit and wait for a reply over the network.

He can tell immediately that the serum is gone. Not so gone that he's small again, but he's spent enough time in this still-big body without any powers that he knows what it feels like. Between that and the fact that his shield is gone, he has a not-so-slowly sinking feeling in his stomach.

But it doesn't matter. What matters is finding B. If he's here. The Authority said they'd try. They said they'd do their best. And he said he was willing to stay in the system until they could get back to him, because they had seemed sorry they couldn't debrief him immediately and he'd wanted to prove he was helpful. Prove he trusted them.

He suddenly feels very foolish. And there are the stirrings of something very much like desperate anger sparking up inside him, just under that pit that's opened up in his guts.

Immediately after the "transfer," Steve is tearing through the ship, level by level, looking for B. But he'll stop for anyone he recognizes from the Barge. He tries to get into the Assistant-locked staircase and, when he realizes he can't, will ask passersby for entry if they seem like they might help him. He is clearly an agitated, unsupervised Patient.

Later, after he's found B, he's… calmer is mostly the appropriate word for it. He makes another round of the ship, less frantic this time, inspecting every corner of the Common Area, pulling books out of bookcases to flip through them, poking at the furniture's rounded corners, sticking his head into the Bathhouse. He even goes through the Sick Ward (or what parts of it an unaccompanied Patient might be able to access), though he clearly doesn't like the look of what he can see.

He still doesn't look happy, exactly, but the wildness has bled out of his eyes.]

(no subject)

[mycitynow]

audio, public

[ There is a lot of loud teenage yelling in the bracelet. ]

This is some baloney! Gramps! Hey, Gramps, Crozier, where the mess are you? Ya gotta get me to him, you sanctimonious Nurse jerk, he's sick! He ain't doing well and someone's gotta look out for him. Tell me where he is or I'll break your kneecaps!

spam

[ Understandably, telling someone that you'll break their kneecaps gets you sent to the naughty room. Kyoko is speedrunning getting in trouble as not even two hours into her stay on the Clipper, she's sent to a padded room in Sick Bay. Anyone visiting can hear faint yelling from inside of one of the rooms and actual yelling should they go inside to see what's what.

Later, she can be found skulking around the ship, glaring at everybody and shaking down anybody from the Barge to try and get information. Crozier isn't here. And in Kyoko's mind, that's not going to stand. ]

(no subject)

[hiyaspaceguys]

[Video]

[Longterm residents will be familiar with Axel's... performances, which can be anywhere from daily to on alternate equinoxes. If even Axel knows how this part of his brain works, he is unwilling or unable to share.]

Hiya, new guys!

[What absolutely looks like a toy waves at the camera. Mobile on its own, clearly, with a grating, pitchy voice, and slightly mismatched limbs and bright blue skin. It's an adult's idea of a child's idea of a dinosaur, none of the exacting scientific accuracy a real eight year old nerd might want, but all the soft, chubby lines that suggest the shape of a theropod without imparting the slightest hint of the real thing.

The waving goes on an uncomfortably long time.]

Did you know we're in space? So we're not shielded by planetary-scope atmospheric conditions and all the space radiation stuff is right outside? But so are the signals from the space guys! So I like telling them what's going on in case they wanna know how we're doing. If you wanna tell TV Frog anything you can say so, too!

[Who is TV Frog? It is unclear.]

Hiya, Space Guys! It's me, Axel! I still haven't heard from Doc and Tom and Doctor Margaret and Agnes and Hetman and Pierre and Baraboo Bob...

[He does not name all the hundred and some saurs he knows personally, but it does take a while to run out of steam.]

But if you talk to them, you should tell them hi! I'm not supposed to talk about secret stuff like eggs and Geraldine remember so don't do that. Today what I did is...

[The! Most! Mundane! Details! Related with exclamation points! And! Superlatives!]

Your friend, Axel

[Spam]

[Axel struggles occasionally with being slightly less than a foot tall, but he has what appears to be a motorized roller skate to zoom around on, and a set of stairs he can roll up to things with great effort. The vast majority of his time is spent in the common space, zooming around and trying to engage. Everyone. Do you know Not So Hard? It's a great game where you hit checker pieces with your tail. If you don't have a tail you can do it with fingers. It's okay. Not everybody has a tail.]

(no subject)

[kethel]

[Video]

[On video, Kethel looks more or less like a youngish human man, albeit a jacked one with an allergy to shirts. Even knowing almost nobody here knows what it is, it likes that softer first impression. It's got sharper teeth than quite make sense, but overall, this shape is comfortably soothing.]

If you're new, I'm good at showing people things.

[There's something ponderous in its deep voice, like language sits a little alien on its tongue, and every word is a deliberate choice.]

[Spam]

[In person, Kethel comfortably tops seven feet and change, and while the almost human effect isn't entirely spoiled, its fingers end in something more like talons than nails, and its feet aren't just clawed but faintly scaled, shiny black pebbling tracing the skin in odd patterns. Despite its size, or rather because of it, all its movements are slow and gentle, taking up as little space as possible. It's watchful, tracing every sound and movement around it with a predator's natural precision.

In the event of any altercations, it's usually strong enough to just pick the offending party or parties up by the scruff of the neck and gently separate. It tends toward silence and stillness, but will happily engage.

In the evenings, it tends to abandon its two-legged groundling form and stretch a bit. At the base of the tree most nights, something between a dragon and gargoyle, the size of an ambitious elephant at least, curls its black-scaled bulk around the trunk and snoozes.]

Codex 1

[why_me]

[ The guy on the communicator screen looks appealing in a boy-from-the-next-farm kind of way, unassuming and nicely 'plain'. But there's a glimmer in his blue eyes, plainly mocking even as his tone screams deep sarcasm.]

Welcome to the party, new neighbors. Name's Garion. I doubt anyone of you is from my world but...

I came here as an Assistant. And I've been a Patient here for... hmm. A few years I think? So if you'd like that perspective... feel free to find me. I'm the one in blue.

Always happy to chat.

[ You'll find him at the base of the tree in the Common Room Floor 1 most of the time. If you happen to wait long enough to hear him at one of the morning sing alongs... I'm sorry? He's sorry. Because his singing voice makes you long for the sound of dying penguins at best. He works in the Kitchens during his shifts, because of course he does, with a tendency most often to do the scrubbing and dishes. If he's not people watching, he's got a book; someone learned to read late in life and is making up for it with all of his current ample time. ]

network audio/actionspam [OTA]

[citizendetective]

[network; audio; immediately after arrival; being a cliquey bitch in front of god and country]

Hello - roll call, please! The Authority wouldn't tell me anything; did we all make it? Did we all get chosen by the same ship? Pagan--

[Her voice quivers a little when she says her warden's name, and so she makes herself stop and breathe for a second or two, until she can sound smooth and airy and cheerful again.]

I'm an assistant now, so if you need anything - favors or perks, or, um, requests - I have clout! I think it goes without saying that we should all stick together as much as possible.

[actionspam; first few days after arrival]

[Misty's feelings about all this are deeply ambivalent, to say the least. On the one hand, she has no real attachment or loyalty to the Barge as an institution, and her prospects as a Clipper assistant seem much better than her prospects as a Barge inmate had been: all she has to do is graduate a patient and keep them on the straight and narrow for three months, and she can go home! And that should be the most important thing.

But on the other hand, there are people that she worries about; people that, already, she misses desperately and can't stand being universes away from, without any warning. Even beyond them, there are people that she thinks and wonders about - far more than she would have expected. The Barge residents hadn't been her team, but they'd been something, and to have all that ripped away throws her off-kilter.

So, naturally, she backslides immediately, making herself feel better by indulging in her worst habits of light stalking and petty power-plays. She patrols the circular hallways, keeping an eye on patients, enjoying the feeling of having power that she can use however she'd like. During at least the first few days, she participates fully in the morning and evening group meetings, and makes careful mental notes of who does and doesn't do the same. She'll dole out kindnesses and favors to those who treat her well, she decides, and to those who don't... well. She'll just have to see.

She spends quite a lot of time ensconced in the assistants-only treehouse, where she uses the binoculars to spy on people for hours on end: sometimes aimlessly looking around the whole visible space, and other times picking a person at random, dedicatedly following them until they exit the panopticon area and leave her sight. And when stalking people who are mostly strangers stops being enough, she retreats to her cabin, where she watches her saved security camera footage of Natalie, Shauna, and Taissa, thinks about how she doesn't even have a photo of Pagan, and - in private, out of the public eye - allows herself to cry.

She always carefully cleans her face and puts on eye makeup before leaving her cabin, wiping away tear tracks and concealing any puffiness. But whenever she spots anyone that she recognizes from the Barge, her public facade drops a little.]

Oh, my god--

[She'll say as she rushes over to them, uncertainty and anxiety clear on her face.]

You're here! This is crazy, right?

Track 1 | video

[lonelinessloop]

[ A young Japanese girl seems barely able to hold her excitement. She's pretty enough, with a certain star quality that can't be missed. She favors grey, red, black and white for her clothing choices but it works for her.]

[  assistant-locked  ]

 
Do you think it might be nice to throw a party for our new arrivals? I know some of the people on this filter just arrived as well, but hopefully you don't mind that it isn't a surprise. I just thought it would be nice to make everyone feel more welcome here.

Hey everyone! My name is Haruka Sawamura, and I'm originally from Tokyo on Earth. I'm an Assistant here, and I just wanted to welcome all the new arrivals here and offer any help or guidance you might need while you're adjusting to your new home away from home.

I'm pretty good about my communicator, but feel free to catch me around the halls or the common rooms; I'd love to get to meet you!

[  private to the Darkling ]

 
Did you want to maybe have lunch together sometime? I know we just got paired but I want to get to know you and see if I can help.

[ True to her word, Haruka can be found just about anywhere on board and wherever she happens to be, she's probably willing to chat with you. ]

Annoyed Old Man-Dragon [OTA]

[scarsolderthanyou]

Who: Stone and OTA
Where: The common room, kitchen, and bathing room of the Clipper
When: First half of August
Warnings: Just a grouchy old man

Anyone who's seen Kethel will find some aspects of Stone familiar: he's not nearly as broad, but he is almost as tall, and his bare feet have the same slightly scaled look, his fingers the same claw-like nails. His teeth are also far too sharp for a human, an he moves with the same kind of predatory grace.

There the resemblance ends, though. Stone is lean, to the point of being kind of twiggy, and his weathered skin and shaggy hair are a pale ashy gray. One blue eye is clouded over, pupil impossible to make out under scar tissue, and he squints a lot like he has trouble seeing. He doesn't look old, exactly... but he definitely looks aged.

He ambles around the common areas boredly most of the day. He pokes at whatever is going on without much interest, but can be roped into tasks or play if anyone seems to want him involved because they actually want him and not because it's what you're "supposed" to do. Try to sweet-talk him without showing actual interest in him, and he growls, "Go away." Actually growls: the whole floor vibrates with it.

He hangs out around the kitchen munching on various food options for a lot longer than most people. He'll find somebody with a boring plate and drop something more interesting on it. "Try that," he says. "It's great."

He spends at least an hour a night soaking in the hot tubs in the communal bath, where he waves people over to join him if they want, and don't have issues hanging out with a naked, gray-skinned old man. "It's not hot enough," he says, gruff but not unfriendly, "but it's not bad, either. Best place on this pooping boat." He really hates the censors here.

And he sleeps... wherever he feels like. Very rarely in his actual room, but rather on sitting up on one of the benches in the common area, laying on one of the branches of the central tree (how did he get up there? nobody knows!), curled up behind a cupboard in the kitchen, or sprawled on the floor in an out of the way hall. One eye pops open when approached, but otherwise he doesn't move.

Not A Safe Space [OTA]

[worthallthis]

Who: B and OTA
Where: Various, see prompts
When: First half of August
Warnings: PTSD reactions, some disassociation

( The soft edges make it worse. )

All casing, no bullet, first clip

[tinstar]

[Give 'em hell. Raylan hadn't needed any encouragement, but he took some from it anyway, stubbornly ready to meet things head-

He wasn't ready. There was no question about him staying, and it wasn't even about his deal anymore. If he had to go home and murder half of a mob or more, he'd find a way to be okay with that. Losing Flint, there was no being okay with that. 'Fine', Raylan had said. He was still a warden, there were still moves here, even if he didn't see it yet.

Until Raylan realizes that he's been demoted for some reason. Installed as a Patient. Something inside him fractured. The control he so tightly kept rapidly starts to vanish rapidly. Give 'em hell. Oh he freaking would.

His curtain is very nearly torn off the rail as he exits the sad excuse for a room, stalking out onto the glassed off walkway that would eventually lead him down. There was no stopping his futile punch of the glass.]

--

Video:

There's been a series of several dramatic and unreasonable mistakes here. I want someone who has access to the Nurse to contact me immediately about a meeting or a conversation to correct the oversight. [Raylan's voice was cold, compressed, and utterly furious at the same time without rising a fraction as he barked out his command and promptly closed the feed back down.

Spam
The first few days had Raylan pacing like a tiger up and down the panopticon, into and around the common rooms before doing it all again, using the limited space to strech his legs as his brain chewed over ways to get out of this. It would be a cold day in hell when he sang, much less sang under duress and his meals were less meal and more incidental snack.

It was all a giant Fudge You to the whole system, his small part.

The bookshelf was the second inanimate object to get his bitter, petty ire, a half moment between him muttering about the content and him clearing the shelves with bared teeth at at least two good attempts at tearing the bookshelf itself off the goshdarned wall.

Video + Spam (CW: unintentional self-harm)

[just7seconds]

VIDEO

[Cloud is very reluctant, but also very... worried, to say the least. This isn't a place he recognizes, and there are far more new faces than he recalls being on the Barge. Everything feels completely wrong, and he was already dealing with distortion and confusion.

He's giving the camera a very sharp glare.]

Who the hec-... [Okay, no - what the frick is this shoot? UGH.] Where is this? ... Why is this?

[That just leaves the what, but he's fine with not getting that answer, just yet. Duck ALL of this, really.]

---

SPAM

[Otherwise, people are welcome to find him just about anywhere he has access to. Catch him trying to kick a door down - HELP him try to kick a door down, if that's more your thing.

Additionally, he might be trying to test the durability of the knives around here (by using other knives to sharpen it), in his efforts to get the stupid device off of his wrist. It... goes kind of badly, however, and he completely slices into the palm of his own hand. Given that his knife was still fairly dull in some places, it somehow hurts even more than it was ever meant to.]

Dang it- That's not what I was trying to say, darn-...! [AUGH] Screw it.

[He throws the butter knife at the wall. If someone happens to be walking by.... Whoops?]

Audio/Spam

[mrballisticsdummy]

[Anyone who's met Jacobi for more than fifteen seconds would be forgiven in thinking that this isn't Jacobi. This isn't the same man who packed explosives gleefully while being a sarcastic brat all at the same time. But Jacobi knows this. He knows what this is. So he's cheerful in a way that he had to once be literally programmed into.]

Hey guys! This isn't so bad, right? We're definitely going to be alright, aren't we? I mean! At least we have some food and water and a place to sleep! That's progress and something we can look forward to! We just need to work together and keep our chins up, right?

[Spam]

[It's easy to play the part when he isn't actually with anyone else. But Jacobi is frayed at the edges, and he knows that this won't last. There's even a time when he wishes for the regulator again. The very thing that had taken his freedom from him. And those times are when he paces his room like a caged tiger.

And that room is as much his prison as he makes it. Jacobi doesn't leave his room except when forced to work or forced to sing or forced to be social. He will take visitors, but he won't be pleasant to be around. He knows he can't graduate that way, but it just feels so good to be angry. Especially at first.]

(no subject)

[skitter]

((All of Taylor's posts this month will be cw: bugs and emetophobia))

The small white room was bad. And Taylor knew she should have kept her head and kept calm, made herself sound reasonable. But almost all the swarm was gone, and so was the link to the twins, and she was disgustingly alone in her own head and the room was so small. And then the Authority had refused to tell her how to reunite with Dad, with Hunter, with Shen ge or anyone at all, and she had said things. Screamed things.

At least the door to her room here is open, can't be closed. But the swarm situation is... worse. The bugs aren't all gone, she can feel some around her, little grounding points of orientation and senses. But there aren't enough, and and the ones she can feel, she can't control. Like limbs half-asleep, wandering around in and out of her painfully contracted range on their own.

Like her first day on the Barge, but so much worse.

She doesn't give herself any time to acclimatize. She has to find people. She staggers out of her room, never quite able to trust where she thinks the floor is or how far away the wall is, but that's not going to stop her.

Week 1

She's a frequent visitor to the Sick Ward at first, for various reasons. The over-the-counter-strength anti-emetics they give her help a little. The stairs up to her Floor 4 cabin don't, though at least the padding means she hasn't broken anything.

Then Norton's request comes through in a sizable explosion of butterflies, and life gets a lot easier for Taylor. She traps a few dozen before they can disperse through the ship, carrying them with her, and plans her day around staying within range of the large majority. During the morning, that's upper decks, sitting in the glassed-in walkways outside the cabins. Later in the day, she can move to the main common room. She sleeps there, sometimes, so long as there's someone familiar present.

((Further weeks to be added))

Early Month Catch-all

[the_executioner]

[First Day]

Is anyone really surprised Anita got placed on the Clipper? The Nurse likely clapped their hands in giddy delight going 'ooh that one!' considering Anita's immediate derailment in the white room. She didn't much care for the word 'confiscated ' being applied to her like she's property. A few choice words were thrown right back, and the chair they gave her.

So here she is. The first thing she tries to do is remove the band on her wrist, and works at it hard enough, and long enough, to leave marks on her wrist. Then it's time to start looking for her people and a weapon.

Why doesn't she call them, you ask? It took her a year+ to figure out how the old Barge phone worked. Smart watches are way beyond her.

Find Anita anywhere on the Clipper that a Patient can access, snooping around. And possibly trying to break into places that are Assistant only.

[First Week]

Anita doesn't participate in morning sing-alongs, or the evening bedtime stories. If she's somehow made to be there, she sits as far back as possible, and staunchly avoids participation.

"This is the most reductive crud I've ever seen."

What makes a rabbit Lucky?

[wastedluck]

Well.

That sure is a cartoon bunny. And not even like, a 3D rendition of a cartoon, this is literally a 2D rabbit - maybe two feet tall, and almost as much again for the ears - quite literally waddling around the Clipper like he belongs here. Except for the fact he's, you know. A black and white cartoon, at odds with the brightly coloured scenery. Even his pants are a very dull blue, almost grey. That's some Mickey Mouse bull-honkey right there.

Everyone knows Oswald, here. He has to admit, it's a weird change. If only because he's back to being a Patient, again.

Contrasting that cheerful Disney imagery, though, is the fact he's scowling constantly, and more often than not makes attempts to viciously kick the cuddly plush stools lying around. It just makes the stools flip in a neat little three-sixty and land right back where they started, which only serves to infuriate the rabbit even more, to the point that-- yep, there is literally smoke shooting out of the rabbit's ears with an whistling tea-kettle sound, before he storms off.

It's actually pretty easy to find Oswald all over the place, besides the fact that the ears put him around waist height with most of the humans; possibly to general surprise, he spends a lot of time in the bathhouse, floating in the pools with floaties on - because yes, he is too short to go into the water "without supervision". He's also too small for the kitchen, so he's never actually allowed to help cook, and there's an incredibly telling high chair that suggests the Nurse has, in fact, seen fit to provide him with appropriately heighted seating at the food counters; it's got a Mickey Mouse logo on the back.

Just Thin him now, yeesh.

"Ulla felt hate bloom in her heart."

[neverwaitslong]

Who: Ulla & open
When: Early August
Where: around the Clipper
Warnings: Anger, possible ineffectual violence
What: Furious mermaid is not settling in well

Being captured all over again was bad enough.

But then there's this, her power stripped from her, stuffed into a body that used to be hers but doesn't feel like home anymore. A body even more ill-suited for being trapped in the confines of a ship than her eel tail was. At least that let her slither. Slow and unwieldy, but not impossible. Now, she'd flop on the deck like a caught fish.

The beautiful silver scales on the fish tail she grew up with are a reminder of all that she lost, and she hates it.

"Warren!" she yells. Because if he's here, it would at least be some consolation. He has to be here.

--

Eventually, Ulla figures out that the ridiculous ostentatious open seashell is meant for her, as a form of transportation. It feels like a mockery of a throne, an absurdity. She misses the fishbowl Warren got her. She misses her old cabin, with the comforting weight of water pressed around her. She misses Warren. And she's furious all the time.

All of the songs she sings are angry, impotent things that would tear the ship apart if she could put any real power behind them. She composes spells of destruction, and wishes they were more than an intellectual exercise.

[For Nanny Ogg]

Ulla glares daggers at her new warden. Or assistant, or whatever they're calling themselves here. "I've already had a warden for two years. You aren't him."