etcelsior | sure, jan

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sure, jan

TEST DRIVE MEME

Considering apping into MASK OR MENACE? Want to dip your toes into the setting and get a feel of whether your character will fit into it? Or maybe you're just cruising and want to play around? Then you've come to the right place!

Pick any of the following scenarios below or feel free to make up your own, but don't be afraid to throw yourself at anyone's thread, either!

And remember to have fun!

01. Your memory is hazy and you might feel increasingly frustrated or anxious, or maybe you're excited as soldiers march past, barely glimpsing you. One second you're somewhere underground, the next you're enveloped in blue light, and suddenly you find yourself directly under Flordia sun's bright and burning glare. A female soldier steps toward you with a wide smile on her face and directs you to a car, ready to debrief you. You realize you are not the only one, surrounded by equally confused or eager faces... and you're all sporting a digital tattoo on your wrist.

02. Welcome to Cape Canaveral, where the smell of the ocean is in the air and locals are more than pleased to see new imPorts roaming their streets. They wave, they cheer, they ask for pictures as politely as they can. The more inhuman you look, or if you're wearing a costume, the more likely locals are to approach. Hey, enjoy the moment! The popular malt shop is offering you a free drink if you need it.

03. The technology in this world is certainly something. The cars are clearly modeled after popular 50s cars, but they hover several feet above the ground as they drive down the street. There are digital jukeboxes in restaurants, motorcycles also hover through traffic, advertisements can be seen on a digital projector on the taller buildings. Even kids on skateboards appear to drift a safe ten feet off the ground while playing!

04. Wherever you are, you can hear the loud revving of an engine, distance at first before you finally see it: a hovercar bursting around the corner, going beyond the maximum speed limit and just barely making its sharp turn. It doesn't appear to be slowing down any time soon, not with two police cars trailing it... and uh oh. Those skateboarding kids don't have much time to get out of the way as the car comes speeding down the road. You've been brought here for a reason Hero — so you better act fast.

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01.

[ there's a large commotion on the street that occurs just after the pretty soldier directs someone to a car, and that would be the sound of someone escaping. shuck. that. says the brain of one former glade leader, who is smart enough to not to get into cars with strange people--not just because he's not a klunk for brains moron, but also because he's seen things and this? this is not the world alby saw when he went through the changing.

something is wrong. were the creators--WICKED, thomas said they were called--lying to them? of course they would be. why wouldn't it be anything else? this is just some other test, some other trial and--

alby is supposed to be dead.

skidding down the street, alby runs, feeling nothing if not panic, all of his old skills of leadership and (mostly) calm replaced with panic and fright, brought on by the changing and amplified by the fact that something was wrong. this sprinting has him looking for somewhere to hide like he's running from a griever (he'd just been running to them, knew it was right but knew how afraid he was of the outside, too) and since he's not looking where he's going, he runs into someone with a crash. ]

Shuck-- [ alby grunts, loudly, as he bounces off the person's chest and jerks backwards ] What kind of stupid shank just stands there in the middle of the street?! Look out!

02.

[ once alby's calmed down a little (as calm as alby can be, anyway) he retreats from a hiding place in an alley and starts to look around. though his curiosity is muted by the changing, the memories skipping around in his head, he takes his time moving around corners and looking into shops. eventually, he settles into the malt shop, shoulders hunched together and sitting in a corner, watching the people who walk in each time the bell above the door rings. the drink is good but--something just ain't right, here.

is everyone here dead? ]

wildcard.

[ c: whatever you want! canon point is tentatively post death. ]

[ It's Minho. Minho is the kind of stupid shank to stand there in the middle of the road. Though, in his slight defense, the chance of a car hitting him is pretty slim. Unless it somehow sneaks up on him despite the loud noises a car engine makes, his ability to dodge has gone up considerably since being dragged into this world. Thanks Porter, for the gift of super speed.

A guy running full speed, though not quiet by any stretch of the imagination, is still a lot quieter than a running car. Though the reason Minho didn't move out of the way wasn't because Alby snuck up on him. Nah, he saw the guy coming from a good dozen yards away. It's more the shock that keeps him rooted in spot.

Even when Alby slams into him, Minho stumbles back a few steps before regaining his balance to resume the dumbfounded staring he was doing early. ]

I'll be shucked...

[ jesus. do people not know how to walk in this place? what kind of shucking paradise is this supposed to be? by now he's figured that WICKED probably can't bring him back to life any, especially considering "griever chow" does not even begin to put it lightly what he was when he ran into them, so this has to be some kind of paradise.

then what the shuck is minho doing here.

he's got one hell of a rant ready to come out, but it registers who he's talking to, first. ] Y-- [ he stops, stumbling back on his own from hitting against minho, and stares at him like he's lost his damn mind. ] Minho?!

[ That's right, Minho is here. Surprise! It's not paradise after all. It's hell. Shouldn't have committed so many sins.

Or, even more shockingly, it's another version of Earth, and there's a force here strong enough to pull people back from death. Even the ones that become Griever chow. Minho's heard a little about that, but it doesn't make this situation any less baffling.

He stands there, still looking shell shocked. Even his tone of voice sounds more dazed and confused than anything. ]

I swear if this is supposed to be someone's sick idea of a joke, I'm breaking someone's shuck face in.

The hell kind of joke do you think it is? It's me, you klunk for brains moron.

[ alby's grumpy temper shows itself as usual, mostly because he's flabbergasted that minho's either A) also dead or B) alby is indeed somehow alive. he likes to think that minho's more or less unkillable, probably because he'd insult death straight to its face before it took him off to his grave, but, he'd also thought that about newt, and that had not exactly been the case.

reaching up to rub his temples, alby gives minho a pinched look. ] Stop staring and tell me what the hell's going on.

[Roxy stumbles with the impact but manages to stay upright, and calmly flips the other kid off.]

Stfu — [she says this aloud, spelling the acronym] — there's like, sixty million people here to watch out for. You gotta look where you're going. You look where you're going, asshole.

Edited (mixing up letters and numbers) 2015-01-31 06:52 (UTC)

[ look okay he is not above punching girls in the face.

also what the hell does stfu mean. he gives the girl an increasingly sour look. ] Sixty million dead shanks don't matter none.

...do you live in some kind of alternate universe where dead people walk around a lot.

I mean, that sounds sarcastic, but I guess it's actually possible, so pretend I asked that genuinely.

[Newt should be used to this by now. Every single Glader had tried ducking out of the car ride to their new house, and this isn't the first time he's been hit by one of them. But where Thomas had kind of half-hazardly bumped into him, the force of this sends Newt to the ground like felled tree. He's a reasonable guy though, he doesn't immediately chew him out for not watching where he's going as he picks himself up off the ground.

But then he looks up and sees who it is, and his eyes feel traitorous. No way. There's no way Alby is here. Alby is dead (but that didn't matter here, did it?). There's a lot of things that race through his mind, things he could do or say and it takes his brain too long to decide on one. Before he even realizes what he's doing, his balled fist is darting out in front of him, aimed straight for his face.]

You! What were you bloody thinking!?

[...Sorry, Alby.]

[ alby has exactly three seconds to digest exactly what just happened. one--he ran into someone, yeah. people are annoying, that happens. two--the person he ran into wasn't just somebody, but it was newt.

newt.

oh.

the emotions sort of hit into him like a ton of bricks--regret, sadness, worry, something warm he never put a name to, anger as always percolating under the surface--and he sort of stands there like a shuckface for a minute before newt is throwing a punch at him. his hand jerks up quick as anything and he catches his wrist, but he definitely has to lean backwards to keep from getting socked.

and then, then the anger catches back up, because if everyone here's dead, then newt-- ] Newt-- [ he starts, and then more or less snaps back-- ] What 'm I thinking, what the hell are you thinking?! What the shuck are you doing here?!

[ alby doesn't care if paradise would be a lot better if newt was there, he doesn't care if he would've waited for him, newt should not be dead.

...he may be sorely misinformed about this situation. (but really, what else is new.) ]

[Newt's fist flexes in his grip, still evidently looking to land a blow on Alby, but after a moment he jerks his arm away when it doesn't seem to be happening. He's so relieved to see Alby here, but it can't make it through the haze of his anger of him dying or the grief he's experienced since he saw him ripped apart by Grievers while all of their friends held him back from following.

He glowers, mouth working, unsure what to say first. He's thought about how this encounter would go a lot, despite trying not to get his hopes up that he'd ever show up here. But now that Alby actually is here, anything he'd thought up suddenly seems miles away and he can't remember any of it. He's always been pretty good with words where his friends weren't, but right now they're failing him. It's been months, seeing Alby shouldn't feel like a wound being ripped back open, but that's exactly how it feels.]

I've been here! [That wasn't what he meant to say. He drags his fingers through his hair, hand shaking. He wasn't ready for this at all.] Just like Tommy and Minho, we've been here for months.

[He takes a deep breath, eyes softening from their glare to something much more sad.]

Why'd you do it, Alby?

[ the anger he knows how to respond to. it's familiar, commodifiable. he can let it out and let it take him over, let newt's--fairly righteous--anger come down on him because shuck if he doesn't deserve it. he knew what he was doing when he walked towards those grievers. alby had every intention of killing himself. and unlike newt--he succeeded. after he'd spent all that time being angry with himself for letting newt get anywhere near that point, for not recognizing the signs sooner, he'd gone and thrown everything away. so of course newt should be mad at him. alby considers letting him throw that punch after all.

but it's not the anger he has troubles with--it's the look on his face. the sadness in newt's eyes breaks his heart.

he knew what he was giving up by leaving, he knew what sort of pain and suffering he was causing newt, too. "happily ever after", he'd said, but happily ever after had been the glade, after all, and newt wouldn't have been able to get that. alby had made up his mind from the moment he agreed to go. the future wasn't made for him--it wasn't made for newt, for thomas or chuck or minho or even the shank girl, or any of them--and he had no intentions of going to it. his sacrifice was noble, he guessed, but if he said that, newt would see right through him, and alby'd feel even more disgusting for lying to him.

he takes a deep breath and matches his gesture, pushing his big hand up and over the bristle of his hair. he still feels wild and twitchy, that creeping feeling of hopelessness somewhere deep in the back of his head, because even dying couldn't push the changing off of him completely. ]

Scared. [ he manages, eventually, choking on the words--alby is not one for feelings but if newt deserves anything in this life (he deserves everything in this life, everything that their world couldn't give him, everything alby tried for but could only reach half way) it's the honest to god truth. he meets his gaze eventually, something far away in his eyes--the same boy who went through the changing and came out a different person indeed. ] 'm still scared. Just-- shuck it, Newt, I know it was bad. Worst damn thing I could've done, but if it helped you...

[ if it helped all the gladers. there was everything wrong with it, but maybe his sacrifice was good for something besides his own cowardice. alby's voice breaks and he reigns it in. ] I'm sorry. Not that it makes up for klunk. [ because he knows it doesn't. ]

Edited (oops broken italics) 2015-01-31 03:22 (UTC)

Helped!? [Newt barks out a nasty, bitter laugh before he can stop himself.] You call tossing yourself on a bloody Griever helping!? It didn't stop 'em, if that's what you're thinking. We lost half the Gladers just trying to get out.

[You died for nothing is what he wants to say, but can't bring himself to do it. The implication is there anyway.

But for all that he's angry at Alby for doing it, he can't... completely hold it against him. He'd been there before, and Alby had been the one to pull him out of it. Which was probably why it hurt so much that Alby was the one who gave up, out of the two of them. He'd fought to bring Newt out of the darkest place he'd been, but hadn't let Newt do the same for him. Some glue he is.]

We got out, ya know. Some of us. [His voice is softer now.] It wasn't any better, you were right about that. We just went from one shuck experiment into another, but we had each others' backs.

[ alby didn't want to hear it but he had a feeling it was true--we lost half the gladers just trying to get out means that what he did was for nothing. he's not surprised. why would there be any merit to his death, to his sacrifice? there shouldn't have been. alby died a coward's death and a coward he'd be in the afterlife--in his second life?--too.

he pinches his eyes shut for a second, frown thunderous on his face but not completely out of place. he still has so many questions, about this place and about everything that happened after he walked into the grievers like it was a shucking sunday morning stroll. who died? why are newt and thomas and minho all here? how many of them did they lose? those boys were his brothers, his responsibility--short of a time as he had as a leader--and his whole world, and he'd let them all down. he'd let newt down, and nothing hurt worse than that. alby takes his bitter laughter in stride. it's not the first time he's heard it, after all. ]

You and Minho? [ he's not hesitant, but alby's not as forward as ever, either. he's more concerned about them than anyone--chuck comes to mind, too, but he doesn't think of a reality where chuck didn't survive, tiny little shank he was. ]

This ain't another trial, else I'd still be dead. [ he says so bluntly. ] So what are you doin' here, Newt? Don't you dare tell me-- [ don't you dare tell me you gave up like i did. not again. ] Shuck.

alby ( the maze runner novels )

A. !!!!!

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1 SCREAMS GENTLY HI

8D

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