Take what is lovely, leave before the rain hits [OPEN]

[cosmompolitan]

[The short version is: free yacht!

The long version, for the narratively curious, is that this time the Joyous Nerd Convention made the mistake of trying their summoning ritual on a boat. When Dr. Lalonde's confused, but affable attempts at conversation led to the appearance of chains, she promptly noped out of that non-consensual clusterfuck and threw her summoners overboard.

She left them a life raft, but she took their champagne and other victuals. A woman has needs.

Now, after a day spent lounging on a deck chair in Pearl Rock Bay sipping bubbly right out of the bottle, Dr. Lalonde's making harbor in the port of Arcrion. She's not terribly fussed, winking and flirting outrageously with any sailors who come to help her tie her new boat (to be rechristened The Rosie once she gets some paint) and paying for their trouble with the cash she found aboard, but it's also clear the woman knows her way around a boat.

No, it's stepping onto the dock that's a problem. She is super drunk. Giggling and somehow still the picture of class in her lab coat/dress and heels, she staggers her way towards the city proper, holding onto various passersby's shoulders and smiling brightly up at them.]

Thanksh, sailor! Hic!

[She laughs and pats their backs and continues on her merry way. After all, what port city doesn't put their finest drinking establishments close to the docks? Brawny seamen and abundant booze. This must be her eternal reward.]

Comments

[planetary_bonds]

[Hell yeah, booze and brawn! Best combination ever.

Hold up, wait a second. This guy you just patted looks kinda scrawny-looking compared to the others, right? It's not that he's not brawny, he definitely has some defined muscle that's showing thanks to him wearing a tank top (there's even a bright red tattoo right on his forearm! not on his shoulder like a good sailor BUT IT'S A TATTOO STAMPED RIGHT ACROSS THEM MUSCLES), but it's decidedly more lean muscle than a proper brawny sailor should have. Boo.

Sniff. Kinda stinks too. Not like sea salt and sweat. More like grease and oil. Eugh.

Face is kinda boyish looking too, even though it's also very surly-looking and set in a perpetual resting bitchface. Tattoo under his eye and everything, very tough guy esque.

And what's wrong with his hair? It looks worse than the average bedhead-there's yellow spiky bits all out of place and it's all fluffy and scraggly and long-and there's streaks of blue in it?! How messy!]

...Aah. Not a problem.

[...Polite enough, one supposes. It's pretty clear he's used to dealing with drunken lots wandering the streets (it happens a lot in the Satellite, see), but still. What's a messy kid like him doing here?]

[cosmompolitan]

[Oh no. Oh no! This is a child. Oh no, he's so dirty. Who let him go out like this?]

Oh, honey...

[Because she's a mother, and because she is inebriated, Dr. Lalonde feels no shame just reaching right up and attempting to smooth back the boy's hair. Except then her hands bump into something much too solid to be hair. She frowns, blinks, and tries again. Bunp.

She scrunches her eyes up curiously, then tries to part his scraggly hair from whatever solid thing that is. Hmm.]

Dear, 're you a cosplayer?

[It might explain the smell.]

[planetary_bonds]

[Yuusei goes out the way he likes and you can't stop him! You're not his mo-]

Ah-

[Why are you touching him, woman. Stop that-ow.]

Tch-!

[Yeah, whatever those are on his head, they're stuck on there pretty tight. Like they're attached on there. What.]

A-what?

[What the hell is a cosplayer. Jack mentioned something like that being something his fans did, but-]

[cosmompolitan]

You know, like for the animes you kids like! 'Cept...

[She's not pulling at his hair, at least, just trying to push it out of the way so she can see where the horns connect, and... yeah, sure does look like they connect to his skull!]

Hmm.

[Oh my god, Mom, don't you think that's worth more than a "hmm"? She drops back onto her heels, pointing at him with the hand that holds her (sadly, empty) champagne bottle.]

Young man... young man, were you aware you got horns comin's outcher head? [She makes an O.K. sign with her fingers.] 'S very interesting.

[planetary_bonds]

...I don't watch that sort of thing.

[Ain't got no time for that, mom. He sighs in annoyance-apparently he has been getting this question a lot.]

Aah, I am. My hair turned into that not soon after I was taken here. I'm not sure why, either.

[Taken, is it?]

[cosmompolitan]

[Hm, yes. It's taken, huh?]

"Taken"?

[She pauses, leans in (swaying only a little in her heels), and lowers her voice to what she probably thinks is a whisper.]

Hey. Are you in some kind of trouble? 'S okay, you can tell me. I got a boat.

[planetary_bonds]

...

[He crosses his arms, skeptical. You don't look fit to drive a boat, m'am.]

I hardly think you'd believe me if I told you.

[No one else here does. He thought he'd find some people willing to spill information on weird cults at the seedier bars, but everyone's just laughing off his stories like the tall tales of some whimsical kid! Bah.]

[cosmompolitan]

Hey now, All Star. [She hiccups again and places a hand on her sternum.] Don't go assumin' assumptions about what Miss Dr. Lalonde can believe. I mean, I'm dead! Pffbbttt.

[She waves her hand dismissively.]

What'll it cost me to believe a strappin' young man like yourself?

[planetary_bonds]

[Dead? Not like the Dark Signers, is his first thought. Then he dismisses that out of hand. Maybe it's just more ramblings of a drunkard. She looks drunk enough to be dead on her feet.

...Bah. What would it cost him to tell? Just more needless laughter, and while that's annoying, it's not a huge deal.]

Hm.

[He sighs.]

Some strange cult summoned me here. Bunch of people called the Joyous Order. Some others and I managed to escape from them, my hair started changing a little while after that.

[He narrows his eyes, tilting his head inquisitively.]

Have you heard of them, this cult?

[cosmompolitan]

Ohhh. Um.

[She pauses, then looks back at the yacht now moored properly at the docks. She taps her fingernails against the glass of her bottle. Ting, ting, ting.]

I think I took their boat and left 'em up the shore without a paddle.

[Dr. Lalonde considers this a moment, then breaks out into a wide, sheepish smile.]

Oops!

[planetary_bonds]

Oh...?

[Wait, did she actually run into some members of the Joyous Order? And left them in such a fashion...

Oddly enough, a small smirk crosses his face at the thought. Seems like you've touched on his more troublemaking side.]

Not bad.

[cosmompolitan]

Mmm. I'd help you look for them if you wanted to billy goat ram 'em with your magnificent rack, but that was a while ago. This mornin', I think. They probably disper...serated by now.

[She shifts her weight and puts her hand on her hip. Whatever her drunkenness might imply about her physical powers at the moment, the way she plants her feet is solid, for all her dizzy weaving.]

Is that what they were tryin'a do with all the circles and the chanting? Summon peeps? Rude A. F., honestly.

[planetary_bonds]

Ah, that wouldn't have been a bad idea, now that you mention it.

[He's all up for fighting cultists, honestly. Too bad they're probably seafood by now.

Now that she's told him what she did to the other cultists, he's honestly finding himself reevaluating his opinion. Finding her stance to be surprisingly solid despite her apparent drunkenness is helping that impression nicely.]

Seems so. We're not sure why, so we've been trying to find out more about them. It might give us clues on how to get back home.

[Pause. A guess, but...] So, you were summoned here, too?

[cosmompolitan]

I... s'ppooooose?

[She doesn't sound entirely convinced.]

I haven't really been thinking about it too much. 'Cause, you see. I sort of assmuzed--assumed. Pardon. [She brushes her hair back from her face and huffs out.] Sorta assumed this was heaven? Or something.

[If she even merits a pass to heaven, anyway.]

Clearly gotta rethink that hypothesis if there's evil cultists kidnappin' young guys and dead women all over the place. That doesn't sound very heavenly. Though the boat was nice.

[planetary_bonds]

...In my experience, anyone being brought back from the dead doesn't lead to much good.

[Yikes.]

You don't mind showing me the boat? There might be clues on there.

[cosmompolitan]

Sure! Come on down to the party boot. Boat. Haha, what am I, Canadian?

[She waves for him to follow and sashays (or maybe just sways) her way to the open platform at the back of the yacht.]

All aboard!

[And she just--yup, she's just going for it. She just jumps. She lands like a pro, but what the fuck, Dr. Lalonde. Who left you in charge of a child for thirteen years?]

[planetary_bonds]

[Holy shit.

Doc Lalonde, you're a pretty cool mom. Yuusei, no.

Anyways, give him a sec and he'll jump right after you because if an eighteen year old daredevil of a child wouldn't try that shit out after seeing someone else do it then Yuusei'll join you in drinking that gross alcoholic stuff.]

So this is it, huh?

[A small boat like this...?]

[cosmompolitan]

This is it! The U.S.S. Rosie. Which will be what I name her, soon's I get the opportunity.

[She gestures widely to the contents of the boat.]

Make yourself at home, darlin'. I'm afraid I wouldn't know what to look for. Never had much dealin's with cults, being a science girl myself.

[She takes the nearest seat and crosses her legs neatly.]

Oh, I did find their booze and cash stash and some eats, but thassit. Probably they were just taking a day trip, not livin' here.

[planetary_bonds]

Hah...

[Wow, that was actually kind of a laugh. Nice job, Doc.]

To be fair, I've never seen much what cults do, myself. Some summonings...but they weren't anything like this, I don't think.

[He hopes they weren't like this, at least.]

So this might have just been an attempt at a more isolated summoning?

[Maybe they heard about the escape of Yuusei and the others and tried to create more favorable conditions? Hmm.]

Can you show me which part of the boat they tried to summon you at?

[cosmompolitan]

Oh! Yeah, 'course.

[And up she goes again, throwing the over-long end of her scarf over her shoulder and leads him further inside the yacht. Within, there's a large space that looks like usually it's well-furnished, but the couches and such have been pushed aside to make room for the summoning circle and its various arcane inscriptions. Dr. Lalonde points to a set of fat candles which were carefully blown out hours ago and placed near the sink.]

They had these at some of the focal points of that doohickey. [Gestures to the circle.] Definitely more Rose's thing than mine. Anyway, I didn't want to burn down my new boat, so I put 'em away.

[planetary_bonds]

Summoning circle, is it...

[He doesn't recognize any of this, as expected. But at least he can take pictures with one of the phones he'd snagged and repaired earlier! Bless smartphones.]

Thank you. This really doesn't look like anything I've seen other than in storybooks. [He blinks at it.] It's surreal.

[cosmompolitan]

[She paces the circumference of the circle, examining it more thoughtfully than she had earlier.]

It's the sorta thing my daughter was interested in. I mean, me too, to a degree, 'cause, dear, let me tell you: I love me some wizards. But the eldritch beast majjyks? Classic Rose.

[She kneels to press very carefully at a line and rub the material between her fingers. Chalk.]

But, again: not my field of study. I'm an ectobiologist, not some kinda sorceress. [She smiles up at him.] Nice phone, bee tee dubs.

[planetary_bonds]

Mmm. The ones I've witnessed only required the mass sacrifice of hundreds of souls during battle-nothing this elaborate.

[Bee tee dubs? Is that supposed to be him? (What the heck is that supposed to mean...?)]

It serves its purpose.

[cosmompolitan]

. . .

Does that happen a lot, where you're from? Sacrificing souls and all that?

[planetary_bonds]

...

Presumably it's happened in ancient history before, but I only experienced it myself recently.

[It wasn't fun.]