legionmissions | CAMPING TRIP! Third's always the worst.

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CAMPING TRIP! Third's always the worst.

Who| Everyone interested
What| A camping trip!
Where| An asteroid resort!
When|
Warnings/Notes| High impact relaxation activities

Once again, Jason's left out some possible pertinent points about the 'campsite'. When the Legionnaires step through the Threshold Gate, it's almost like stepping through to an open sky. The entire place may be inside an asteroid, but the crystals and fungus present glow with soft blues and greens, with the occasional streak of yellow where the worms gather on the walls. Almost immediately, there's a soothing feel in the air, the crystals vibrating with subtle, soothing harmonics. The artificial atmosphere is a little on the cool side, but a warm breeze is constantly circulating.

There are two distinct styles of architecture present. One is squat, built when space was a premium, all flat plain on the outside, paint jobs aside. The original mining colony didn't spend much time on frills for their administration, mining, and processing buildings. Very utilitarian. The newer buildings, however, appear to be rock and crystal shaped in a Stellaris Nouveau style, a slightly alien twist on the ancient Art Nouveau movement. The benches on the side of the slidewalks match the style, allowing one to sit and rest anywhere. Water fountains are spread liberally throughout the complex, the spray shifting into artistic, and impossible shapes.

The entire complex covers just over a hundred acres. There's a series of cliffs at the edge of the complex with large pools water at the base of each. It's hard to see the other side of the cavern after the cliffs drop off, as it was hollowed out to make room for cargo ships back in the day.

The main admin and security buildings in the older style. Used primarily for paperwork, security, and storage, they obviously don't get much traffic. They store equipment for upkeep, cleaning, and repairs, computers that have been locked to protect company secrets and client lists, spare furniture, environmental controls, and the wifi controls.

Fortunately, the entire facility gets Titanet access with blazing speeds, if not quite up to Legion World's standards.

Security-wise, there's a (very locked) cabinet marked 'armory', filled with two sonic rifles, a pair of arresting gel pistols, a dart gun, and two futuristic cattle prods tagged with fingerprint scanners and RFID tags to track where each piece is. There's an entire array of monitors set up near the armory cabinet, with labels for every camera. More than half of them display Legion stickers rather than the bath and spa areas.

The Reception Building has a large lounge and reception area. Comfortable, high-quality seats fill the rooms, the counter has crystalline keycards hanging behind it for guest rooms, and upstairs has a soundproofed arcade for children and teens. Not a single one of the games there is less than five years old, save for a few old classics tucked into a corner. Also present is a PA system and rental datapads.

The lounge has a relaxed atmosphere and a bar with a vast array of alcohol. Unfortunately, Jason's put a bit of a lock on the booze. A helpful note says that if anyone wants to get drunk, then they'll have to sing to unlock the force fields that block the booze. It has to be a different person each time, though, and they'll have to drag in more than one person to sing a duet or in a trio if they go there so often that every adult has used up their one unlock. To add insult to injury, the fields only allow each person to grab two bottles at once.

The Food Court is, unlike Jason's last choice, very comfortable and with a relaxing air. There are multiple robotic vendors present, as well as a standalone kitchen for when there's a live chef (who is, unfortunately, not present) each offering an array of appetizing meals that would please any tongue, from a Khund's to a Bismollan's. Still vegetarian, unfortunately, but that doesn't mean that the ice cream is any less fantastic.

However, tucked into an empty area are several stasis containers. Opening one shows meat. They all have meat. Hamburgers, some with bacon cooked into the burger, cheeseburgers, sloppy joes, ribs (dry rub or coated in BBQ sauce), barbecue chicken, fried chicken, sloppy joes, and hot dogs. They're kept in perfect stasis, meaning that when you reach in and pull one out it's as fresh (and crisp in the fried chicken's case) as if it had just been pulled off of the grill. It's all real.

A Crystal Maze takes up one corner of the complex, acting like a cross between a kaleidoscope and a house of mirrors. It's rather complex, but also has no ceiling in case someone just wants to fly out.

A Theater is present! It's used for musical concerts, stage shows, comedy acts, and even watching various movies, though anyone wanting to watch one will have to pay a fee.

The Spa Buildings are clustered away from the theater. Present is a gym, massage tables with a pair of robots for the actual massages (Sadly, they lack Swedish accents, leaning closer to Canadian.), wet and dry saunas, showers, and a mud bath area. A large chunk of their area is taken up by the hot springs, which are sealed off from one another. Each is shaped to appear as if it were in a natural environment and the water is a pale green. There's a men's bath, a woman's bath, and a mixed, but Jason makes it clear that only people eighteen or older should go to the mixed springs and he doesn't want to hear about it. At all.

The water is hot and soothing, filled with healthy minerals to be absorbed through the skin.

Multiple Communal Areas are around. Some are gazebos, others are just scatterings of furniture around a fire pit. They're all comfortable and have vidscreens for communications or to tune in to some music.

The Guest Rooms are built into the sides of the cliffs. Apparently there was an 'incident' with the anti-grav tubes that people used to get to and from beforehand, so those are, unfortunately, offline. Your options are to climb or use flight rings to land on the balconies that lead to each room. The balconies are large enough for a patio table and a few chairs to overlook the vast cavern and the pinpricks of light that mark the other side. Each room has total environmental controls, allowing a guest to set the room to their desires before they set foot into them for the first time.

Each room is equipped with a bathroom with a sonic shower, a minifridge with a food dispenser, and a bed. Everything else, from the style of furniture to the displays on the walls, is subject to customization. The harmonics of the crystals are strongest here, a practically audible tone, it's almost impossible not to feel relaxed. When each Legionnaire claims a room, they'll find a bouquet and a fruit basket alongside a thank you card.

Five minutes after Grif enters his room and stays there for the first time, the panels of the ceiling will open up and dozens of squeaky rubber bats will fall from the ceiling, supported by strings. Their wings flap ineffectively.

Dave's assigned room is closest to the theater, which might explain why his balcony has a box of crystals sorted into two sections. The section marked 'charged' is filled with crystals that glow, or even just have a faint twinkle in them. The 'uncharged' section is unremarkable.

If they try to explore the caverns, they'll find a complex maze of mine shafts and other holes that appear to have been created by living things. Exploring these could lead to someone being lost for hours, if not days, if they're not careful, and the deeper they go the more grinding noises they hear. Deep enough and they might find a new, gigantic tunnel network that seems more like a worm's nest, with an echo of fluttering, leathery wings carrying through them.

[[If there's something you want to do that isn't covered by the headers, just assume Jason had whatever's needed for it brought in and feel free to start your own thread!]]

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Actually, it probably isn't all that hard to guess which of the guys here is Dave. After all, the guy who writes exclusively in obnoxiously red text is also dressed in red head to toe: soft-looking red pants and shirt, long red cape with attached hood, and a brighter red gear symbol printed across his chest.

Yeah, perhaps not solid enough evidence to convince a court, but a person couldn't be blamed for making the assumption.

For his part, Dave only lingered by the reception area briefly before heading to the food court. Funtimes and team bonding can come later, he is a man on a mission and the mission right now is to acquire some snacks and drinks. Hell, maybe they even serve actual meat here.

She is not going to accost some random Legionnaire in the world's ugliest red onesie if he types in red text unless she has need of being insistent about it, okay. As of yet it's not like she needs to know who Dave is or else she doesn't get to make someone she hates suffer mightily, so she's being laid back about it.

As laid back as she is about anything, anyway, which probably isn't "very" by normal person standards. Which means she does follow after him, after a moment, just out of curiosity, and once he's led her to the food court, to appease her own inclination to be busy doing something else besides follow a stranger around, she orders a quiche from a helpful vendor - at which point she kind of completely forgets about the lanky weirdo dressed like a horrifying reject from a kids' cartoon because there's clearly more important problems to address.

(Look what you've done, Dave.)

But eventually that all gets resolved, one way or the other; whether Dave's stuck around to watch the show or not, well, that's the question.

Dave absolutely stuck around to see the show. And conveniently, the food court even has popcorn. Sadly, it's just a little snack pouch rather than a proper movie theater tub, but hey, close enough. He watches quietly for a few minutes, complacently snacking away, but eventually he can't resist the urge to open his mouth. Typical.

"Dude, I know being endearingly clueless about techy shit is like, your whole schtick, but don't harass the robots. No amount of lecturing about the importance of putting love into your cooking is gonna change its programming."

His tone is just short of deadpan, a pale blond eyebrow arching up over the rim of shades that otherwise do a good job of hiding his expression. With his eyes hidden, his face is pretty unreadable. He's a fairly lanky guy, a bit tall for his age, but still distinctly teenaged.

"Even 'robots' -" The word (along with the entire class of prejudices and expectations that go along with it) is foreign and strange to her and the air quotes are unmistakable even if she's never going to be someone who emphasizes them with a gesture - "can learn."

At which point she pauses and considers him again. Looks him over. (She has to look up at him slightly, in fact.) Thinks about this, but doesn't (yet) say what she's thinking.

"... but there's no substituting for eggs."

"You should probably take Robotics 101 before you start making boldly making claims about what they can and can't do. Just sayin'."

Dave just shrugs, unphased and uninvested. Behind the shades, he eyes the abandoned quiche for a second before just unceremoniously leaning over to snag a forkful. He chews, swallows, and then shrugs again.

"And I know it's kind of a running gag here for us all to complain about the forced veganism, but to be honest their fake shit tastes the same, so who cares? I mean, granted, I didn't eat a whole lot of egg dishes before coming here--"

(By which he means none. They'd worked with what they had on the meteor, and before that Bro hadn't exactly been the home-cooking type and their kitchen wasn't really conducive to Dave learning to cook even simple things for himself.)

"--so yeah, maybe I don't have the expertise to be sayin' shit. But hey, if Miss Medieval can lecture me on how robots work then I can sure as hell offer my culinary opinions with Alton Brown confidence."

"It's not the taste, it's the texture," she repeats, again, slightly less like she's just trying to explain the problem and more like an annoyed tourist thinking if she just uses the same words but more intensely this time it'll sink in - "Did you just eat some of my quiche without asking first."

The most unimpressed of flat tones.

"Yeah, and he just said his hands aren't programmed to work like that, so what do you want him to do?"

Luckily -- for him, not her -- he's very used to unimpressed and flat. Plenty of people don't appreciate his humor, or the often-awkward rambling it can take the form of when he's actually dealing with people in person. Hell, even Karkat gave him that look and tone sometimes. It's just familiar and encouraging at this point.

"What, gettin' possessive over the food you took one bite of and ditched to start complaining about?" The corner of his mouth quirks upward just slightly, and he leans in again to just snag up the whole remaining piece and fork. "I'm just giving it the attention and love you denied it."

It's actually not bad. He always thought quiche was some overly-fancy rich person food like caviar or whatever, but this is pretty good. Huh.

"I did not -" She almost sputters, except she doesn't sputter, so instead she just stutters back a word or two - "I did not abandon it, I set it down to have a word with the cook. Complaining about a meal isn't the same thing as not eating it."

She exhales. "A good meal is made good when you make it. You should know how to make it. Then -" she starts to warm to the topic, getting carried away by the strength of her ironclad zeal for this approach to life in general - "you can overcome whatever's in the way of you making it. Whether it's your hands, or your 'programming', or your sense of taste. Whatever it is."

Her indignation ignored, Dave goes right on eating it. It's a food court, they get free food, it's not like she can't just grab another if she really wants.

"Okay, consider our robofriend here a sentient horse for a second. No offense, dude." He pauses just to give the robot vendor a little wave and snag another bite. "Would you tell a horse to just overcome the fact that it has fucking hooves so it can make a good egg pie thing to your satisfaction?"

She thinks about this.

She thinks about rappig seraphim. She thinks about the sort of thing she'd say to a rappig seraph, if she saw one again.

Her answer is simple, direct, and completely without irony, hesitation, or fuss. "Yes."

Dave's expression is extremely flat, saved for that arched brow again. He frowns very slightly... and then, once again, just shrugs.

"At least you're consistent in your culturally-insensitive stubbornness," he says, and finishes off the quiche with a last bite before offering her back the plate and fork. "You should absolutely try telling some roboticans that, by the way. Overcome your programming and the physical limitations of your robobody through sheer willpower, it really works."

Velvet shrugs. "It's not about limitations," she says, "it's about what you want."

She turns and starts to walk away from the table. She doesn't look back to see if he follows. "Of course there's things that some people aren't capable of. But they should know what it is they want, so they can fight for it anyway."

Then she pauses to look over her shoulder at him. "Maybe that robot can't make a normal quiche with its hands. But if it never knows how it could make a quiche, then it will never do more than mimic a real meal. Even these 'robots' must have their pride."

Of course he follows. He is persistent if nothing else.

"Christ, dial it down a little," he says, hands slipped casually into his pockets. It's hard to tell if he meets her gaze through the shades.. "It's a quiche, not a sacred cause to fight and die over. Do you really take everything this seriously or are you just that dedicated to the whole mysterious-aloof-loner image?"

Shit, he needs to see her meeting Reaper. The combined edginess might just cut a hole through reality back to his own universe.

They do both share some remarkable similarities to Shadow the Hedgehog, come to think of it.

She pauses. Just long enough that it's clear that she is actually considering this question more seriously than anyone should be. (Or, at least, that she seems to be. Perhaps now is a good time for the narration to remind everyone that Velvet has a terribly-located sense of humor.)

"Yes," she says.

That is... not really an answer. Dave's expression goes somehow flatter, but he doesn't bother pursuing it. That's a pit of cliches he doesn't feel like walking knowingly into, the expected "yes to what?" and series of nonanswers that'd follow which would clear absolutely nothing up and just serve to better establish her as a strange and stoic girl. Nah, Dave's not feeling that whole song and dance right now.

"You're more fun when you're on the verge of incinerating shit over critical misunderstandings about how technology works."

Ah. And that answers the question that she didn't ask. (Yet.) She goes still, except for cocking her head slightly, then closes her eyes, her tone of voice going flippant and casually light. By her standards, anyway.

"Well, Dave, I could threaten to set you on fire again if that's what you want me to do, but somehow I don't think that would be an acceptable payback for your services, would it."

Jesus, that's basically open triumph by her standards. Dave takes a moment to parse that response, eyebrow arching.

"What, you just figurin' that out now?" he asks, and the corner of his mouth quirks upward. "You could've just asked anyone up on the ship, y'know, and they'd have told you to look for the outrageously attractive dude with the cape and shades."

"That would mean I was actually looking for you," she murmurs, almost dismissively.

"It is nice to put a face to a name, but ..." Velvet purses her lips, tapping her chin and cocking her head as her eyes narrow in consideration. "You're less impressive in the flesh."

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CAMPING TRIP! Third's always the worst.

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