TEST DRIVE #10 - Cetacean Pool and Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

#1

Option 001. Cetacean Pool/Aquatics Lab: Of all the places in the world, you open your eyes and you find yourself in a medium-sized aquatics laboratory, filled with various living specimens along with various science officers bustling about trying to maintain order. There's much to explore here (and hopefully, in the crew's opinion, not break), but the main attraction is the large pool at the far end of the lab; enormous but tanklike in appearance, it contains several dolphins happily swimming about, seemingly without a care in the world.


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Option 002. Aboard the Enterprise, Ten Forward: You have no idea what just happened. One minute you were home, and now you're on a spaceship, in the middle of a crowded room. It looks like a bar. There are people eating and drinking, some in uniform, others not. Some are clearly aliens.

You've managed to land in Ten Forward a long bar with barstools and a bartender, tables sprinkled throughout, and the far wall is nothing but windows out to space. It looks like a nice lounge, low conversation making the room hum.

Better ask some questions and find out where you are, or just tap the closest person on the shoulder and try to make friends. The bar is open.

Comments

[liamjones]

"And now... my brother?"" he asked softly.

[seekingcrocodile]

"Now there is someone I would trust with my life." There has been a lot between then and now, but they'll cover it.

[liamjones]

He gripped his brother's hand across the table again, supporting him.

[seekingcrocodile]

"Two people, now." He'd trust Liam with his life too. "It took some time to get there though."

[liamjones]

He sipped his water. "Tell me," he said, not quite an order, but something more than a request.

[seekingcrocodile]

"This is a bit of a long story. Three hundred years to cover and all." He takes a sip of his not!rum and starts. "After I'd been a pirate for some time, I was in a tavern, doing the sorts of things one does in a tavern, having a good time, when I met a woman. I didn't know it right away, but oh I came to love her so much."

[liamjones]

"Things... certainly you do not mean... drinking, brother?" he asked, startled.

He leaned in to listen about the woman, though the thought of his brother drinking and carousing in a tavern like some common wharf rat was quite distracting. And quite impossible, was it not?

[seekingcrocodile]

"Not all alcohol is bad, Liam. Just a little of it does no harm." They can come back to that.

"It was all so complicated. She had a husband, and a son, and the morning after we met, she came to me and begged me to let her come with us. She didn't love her husband, she was unhappy in her marriage, she didn't want to stay. She wanted a different sort of life, and it was a life I could give her."

[liamjones]

"But... to take a son from his father, Killian," he said, startled again, but his voice was quiet. After what they had gone through, even for love, to take a son from his father... He couldn't quite imagine it. Not from his baby brother.

Not that he didn't think his brother wouldn't make a wonderful father, he was sure Killian would be the very best father, but to usurp someone else's son that way...

[seekingcrocodile]

"I didn't." It's not easy to admit, but he also knows for a fact what that father did to separate himself from his son. "She didn't bring her son with her, and she regretted that until the day she died."

[liamjones]

"...died?" he asked softly, then he shook his head. "I think I should stop interrupting you brother, and let you tell this tail at your own pace," he said softly, finishing off his water.

[seekingcrocodile]

"She was...there were all these things I never knew I wanted before I met her. Then I had her, and she didn't care about my past, she loved me anyway. When I lost that, I never thought I'd find it again."

[liamjones]

He gave a small nod, listening. "And, did you, Brother?"

[seekingcrocodile]

"I did, at long last. She helped me realize I was on the wrong path, the path of vengeance. It's even easier to handle the fact that there was never any justice for what happened to her."

[liamjones]

"I do not follow, brother, please."

[seekingcrocodile]

"Her husband found us. I couldn't stop him from killing her."

[liamjones]

He leaned closer, this time squeezing his arm instead. A concerned look was on his face as he watched his brother, wishing he could take this pain himself, to spare it from his brother. 300 years. He should have been there with him, to help him through all of this....

[seekingcrocodile]

"I swore I'd get vengeance for what he did. Given the nature of it all though, he was nearly impossible to kill. So I returned to Neverland to give myself time to figure out how to get what I was after."

He figures that's enough information to absorb at once right now.

[liamjones]

"To get... what you were after?" he asked softly. He was relieved that his brother had not been able to kill the man. Killing in revenge... that was a line that was too hard to come back from. His brother did not need that.

But they could get into that after.

[seekingcrocodile]

"Aye, vengeance for what had happened. He took her away like that, there should have been some consequences. I never got it though. I came close, but I never did. After that I realized I'd gone down the wrong path."

[liamjones]

He nodded. "Death for death... that isn't the answer, my brother. I'm glad you learned that before you crossed that threshold." He should have been there for him, and the pain of knowing how his brother suffered in his absence showed in his eyes as he squeezed Killian's arm again.

Well, no matter what happened, henceforth, he'd not separate from his brother, not again. From now on the Jones brothers would watch out for each other. He would trust Killian's instincts over his, but still help his brother find and keep the proper path.

[seekingcrocodile]

"What is the answer then? How does he pay for what he did?" He's struggled with that one himself, especially as others have seemed increasingly willing to give the crocodile another chance.

[liamjones]

"That is between him and the consequences of his action, Killian. Do not darken your own heart, brother, because of his dark heart. It is not for you nor I to decide the life and death of any other man."

"It is ours to mourn, and ours to learn how to better defend. You work towards ending his presence in your life, my brother, not towards ending his life all together. And any life that lacks you in it, is all the poorer, I assure you."

"Perhaps vengeance seems as though it would be satisfying, but it is bad form, brother, and more... it will never be enough. His death will not ease the pain, nor will it bring her back. It will only serve to hurt the person she loved, and to do her memory both dishonor and disservice."

"The best way to honor her memory and her love is to live well, to do ever things that would make her proud. To grieve, to mourn, then to eventually move on. A heart undarkened by killing, Killian, has infinite capacity to love. To heal. You can find happiness again, even love, so long as your heart is true. But my brother, the dark path of death and vengeance... it hurts you more than it hurts the one you would have your vengeance on."

"I am not saying that you are not entitled to your anger, for you most certainly are. But it is in service of nothing to do in one who did wrong by you and those you love. To kill for the law, because those trusted to be responsible and dispassionate and separate from the emotions of the incident... that... that be a stormy sea, my brother, and one I'd as soon not sail."

"Our ship saw little combat, because I could never resolve in my heart the need to kill men we knew not, even for king and country. We took missions to protect cargo ships, we killed only to defend, and only when we absolutely had to. Better to take prisoners, better to give all a chance to grow and redeem themselves, those who attacked that which we protected, and ourselves."

"But Killian... every man who ever died upon the decks of my ship... I see every night in my dreams, and before them. Is it not the same for you? Men who died because we defended a civilian vessel, men who died because they took ill and we were too far from shore to fetch help."

He closed his eyes. "Mayhaps, brother, that was why I was so eager to believe the king... think of it... a way that no one ever had to die upon our decks again, a way to undo death itself, to protect but not kill...."

"That, my brother, would have truly been the best form."

[seekingcrocodile]

"Liam, I know all of this. I also know that he killed her, in front of me. She died in my arms, and I couldn't stop it, and he never faced any consequences or met any justice." No one feels as strongly about this as he does.

"I also know he's tried to kill me as well. He almost succeeded more than once." Which is more often than he almost succeeded.

[liamjones]

"We will keep you safe, my brother. We will defend you," he said firmly, his eyes hardening at the thought of someone going after his little brother. He would protect Killian, he would not let him get hurt again, he would not let him get killed.