sure, jan

[maskormods]

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.

Comments

[fridgeflower]

[ Laurie approaches the diner as the imPort-loving crowd is dispersing, and she spares them a slight raise of her eyebrows while concluding that something especially unusual must be inside. Maybe it was an alien, or another talking dinosaur, or a robot... Really, with everything that could happen here, it's odd that people still makes such a fuss over their arrival. No matter, though. It's malt time.

She sees him as soon as she makes it through the door, because how could anyone not notice somebody like Josh, and she immediate turns around. She hesitates, however, to leave the diner altogether. Hopefully, he didn't see her, and she's just a random blond by the wall as she debates with herself about what to do here.

Ultimately, she decides to just get everything over with. She still approaches carefully, though, hands up as if she's coming upon a strange dog or something. The last time she'd seen him, Josh had been far from level-headed, and she hasn't heard much in the way of comfort since. ]

Hey. Don't freak out, okay?

[drfeelgold]

[Grief is different for everyone. It can be quiet or all consuming or somewhere even in between. And what we do with our grief, well that differs from person to person too. But the sense of loss never really goes away, the absence of someone important to us never forgotten. But as time passes we learn to deal with it, or how not to deal with it, in our own ways and we grow around that absence. We learn the ways we can and can't move forward.

Josh's grief has always been coupled with his guilt- he was so angry the last time they spoke, his last words to her were so cruel, and then he couldn't save her, couldn't save the other kids and couldn't save Laurie when she needed him.

So much of what happened between Laurie being shot and the Purifiers attack is a blur, one that descended into a terrible haze of anger when he saw Stryker, the monster who took so much from all of them. Anger that opened something dark in him and his powers that he will always mourn discovering despite not regretting his killing of Stryker. He regrets that the man became a martyr, regrets it couldn't save Laurie or Jay or any of the other kids, regrets it wasn't enough to bring them back. But he won't regret putting the lunatic down.

But all that fades into the background in this moment, all other noise and goings on around them fall away. Much like that glass he just now let slip from his hands- whoops! Everyone be careful of the glass!

In all this time since her passing, a million different versions of this scenario has gone through his head, what he would do, what he would say if he ever saw her again. But he forgets all of them too, because she's here, she's actually here right in front of him and it's real this time. Not a dream and he finds himself suddenly unable to breathe let alone move or speak. Sorry Laurie, but Josh is definitely Freaking Out]

[fridgeflower]

[ She jumps back with a sharp gasp when the glass drops and shatters, and... Yeah. This is exactly what she didn't want, and she wishes that she could make him calm down, make him breathe.

Fortunately, she realizes that, duh, she can. A deep breath and an exhalation from her, and she sends out a pretty healthy wave of calming pheromones. It's designed to help both Josh and the people around them, startled by the noise of the glass at the stricken state of the shiny kid. That taken care of, Laurie finds herself at a loss for what to say next, so her crouches to pick up the larger remains of the glass, cradling them carefully in two healthy hands.

She's able to collect her words by the time she stands again, and hopefully her pheromones have had a positive effect (for a change) on the area around her. Setting the broken glass on the counter, she's not able to meet his gaze. ]

I didn't mean to startle you. I just thought it'd be better to do something now than to wait. [ She'd caught David much the same way, in a diner, but that was back before she knew. And now... ] I've been here for several months, but I guess... I guess a long time has probably passed for you, right?

[drfeelgold]

[sadly the pheromones don't have as much of an effect as one would hope- sorry, slight power upgrade since last they saw one another, and now he has some knowledge on how to resist and shut off other people's powers, even in times like now. but he watches her, can't look away from her, and her body language is so uncomfortable. and he's the one upsetting her right now, he needs to get it together, owes this to her at the very least.

but she's okay, her hand is okay and he can't move, it's so hard, but he makes himself breathe]

... You... are you...

['are you really here' 'are you okay', he's trying but he's not fully back online just yet. he raises a hand slightly but doesn't try to touch her, the movement aborted and now his hand just sort of hangs in the air]

[fridgeflower]

[ Laurie has always known Josh as someone who speaks and acts easily, without thinking. There were plenty of times in the past where she would have enjoyed having him enraptured by her presence, but it never happened like that. This whole position feels unnatural, and it's more uncomfortable the longer it draws on. People are looking at them, which makes things all the worse, and she doesn't know how to resolve this situation.

She'd been trying so hard not to think about Josh, to not wonder what he'd done since she left, to not consider ever seeing him again as a realistic possibility... Here he is, though, and-- What? Is it because of where and when she'd died? Is it that he'd missed her? Is it regret that's holding him so fast? Either way, it's still too late, isn't it?]

I'm here. [ She wants to sound firm, but that's always been a problem for her. It comes out softer than she wants. She reaches out for the hand that he's left up, curling her fingers around his wrist. ] I was on the lawn, and then I was here. I've been here since April. David was here, too, and he told me what happened.

Do you want to go somewhere else? We're making a scene.

[drfeelgold]

[he finally manages to wrest some control over himself, nodding sort of vaguely at first before it becomes more decisive. he doesn't drop his gaze from her's but he takes notice of the environment they're in finally and recognizes this is not the place for anything of this magnitude. his hand grasps hers back in a gentle grip and in that touch everything is confirmed: that she's real and breathing, healthy and strong like she always was before M day. it centers him in a way nothing else ever could]

Okay, yeah okay. I- wherever you want to go. I'm...

I'm really glad to see you. That- that you're okay.

[fridgeflower]

[ She turns up a small smile at that. She's not okay all of the time, but she's working on it. She won't admit the difference, either way. So there's no more words, for a moment, and she lead him out of the diner as unobtrusively as possible. Down the block and around the corner, there's a small park, and there it is quiet. It's a much better place to have this kind of discussion, whatever it can be defined as.

Now... ] Are you okay?

[drfeelgold]

I'm... I'll get there.

I don't really understand what's going on, but before I say anything else, I just. I really want to apologize. For everything but I- the things I said and how I treated you the last time we... I'm so sorry, Laurie.

[fridgeflower]

[ Laurie isn't exactly sure how to answer that, how to express what he'd made her feel back then and how it had affected her since she'd been here. She isn't sure how to best reassure him without dismissing the whole thing. She pauses by a park bench, turns, and sits heavily down with a sigh. ]

It's... Well. That must feel pretty awful, right? To say something like that and not have the chance to say you're sorry. I was kind of worried about it, because I knew somebody like you would hang onto it, and maybe it would be even harder for you to feel better someday.

I think it kind of helped me, though? If that makes you feel any better? Ever since I got here, even before I knew I'm dead, it... I don't know. It helped me to put some distance between myself and our world, if that makes sense. Maybe I thought that connection was already severed, sorta, so it could hurt less if I just remembered that stupid fight.

[ Now that he's here, though, she doesn't know what to do about it. It wasn't as reliable a thought process as she wanted it to be, in the end.

Not that it matters. That's not what's important. ] I really hope you're okay, Josh. Everything I've heard... Everything just sounds awful. I feel like I'm almost lucky, sometimes.