QUIT RUNNING IN THE HOUSE

[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

Rustin Cohle · True Detective

[proselytized]

01.
The air tastes thick and hot, acrid with salt. Rust is strangely more conscious of that - of the sweat under his shirt collar - than he is of the people at his elbow, in front of and behind him as they're thrust blinking into the sun and ushered in different directions by military personnel. It's the sweat that makes it bitterly real, a certain lack of hallucinogen in the weight of the air across his shoulders and the feeling in his finger tips. He turns his hands over and absently runs his thumbs across his fingers, blatantly ignoring the woman in uniform making overtures at conversation as he scans base. It's not panic riding high in his chest, but it is something: nameless, inarticulate questions skittering at the edge of his tongue and refusing to settle enough for him to work out which one he wants to ask.

The glint of blue at his wrist is negligible in the harsh sunlight, but the shadow of a passing stranger makes it a little more stark. Rust drops his eye, shielding his arm from the light with his body to get a better look at the-- hologram? tattoo? A beat later he exhales (not really a laugh), drops his arm.

"What a crock of shit."

02.
He's one of the lucky ones - meaning he doesn't stick out like a sore thumb and flying under the radar is doable with help from an ugly as sin, twice as old blue corduroy jacket covering the mark on his wrist. It's not the people chasing after anyone in a costume for an autograph or the tech in particular that bothers him so much as it is everything - the whole place, the whole rotten egg. It's clean and crisp, all government provided housing, bright eyes and smiles and free drinks - every imPort getting a pat on the head and told they're important.

The house he's living is is nicer than he wants or needs and his personal file is neat to the point of obsession and they've done something to him that's left him more or less the same person, but alien in his own skin and that sticks in his craw, tastes sour. Things that seem too good to be true usually are.

So he's not taking advantage of the free drink (--malt shop. For fuck's sake), but he will totally chain smoke his way through a few hours in a booth by the window, making absolutely no effort to hide his people watching.

[glassinine]

The first cigarette, Edgeworth tolerates. Smoking in this establishment is not prohibited, after all, and it is not truly his place to interfere. Besides, he's here waiting to meet a contact, and while it's not as though he's afraid of his presence being found out, he doesn't need attention drawn to him.

By the second cigarette, he's growing impatient with his contact's absence, and that manifests in his annoyance with the man in the booth across from his own.

By the third cigarette he's abandoned all pretense of politeness and is leaning over and snapping, "Can you not possibly do that elsewhere?"

[proselytized]

There's an ashtray on the table. Rust looks to the other man (who, come to think of it, has been taking up that booth for a while). After a beat, he takes a long drag from the cigarette -- "Well sure." --and exhales, purposefully tapping loose the wrinkled end of ash into the tray.

"But that doesn't mean I will."

[glassinine]

Edgeworth had started to look away, righteously satisfied, on the well sure; the but has him looking back at this foolish, inconsiderate man, has him straightening up to his full (sitting) height and glaring.

"You know that you're not poisoning yourself alone with that. Everyone else in this establishment is suffering for your addiction."

[proselytized]

"That so." Despite the phrasing, it's not actually a question. And while, strictly speaking, he isn't gaming for a fight there's a distinct collection of angles to the way he sets a look on Edgeworth that says he wouldn't mind one either.

Mostly: see a tender spot, poke it and see what happens.

[glassinine]

"It is." Edgeworth doesn't budge; he doesn't even blink. He just keeps staring Rust down with steely determination.

"So kindly extinguish your cigarette."

[proselytized]

"You know," --his tone is all mild and conversational, drawl making the words hang heavy in his mouth for longer than they have any real right to -- "I'll give you that things are pretty different here, but as far as I know they're still pretending it's a free country."

He could be pointing out that there's plenty of open booths farther away from the literal cloud over this one, but apparently Rust doesn't think any idiot jumped up enough to put himself next to something that offends him deserves that particular brand of charity.

hello sir ur under arrest for being too goddamn abstract

[connate]

"Just like the good old days, right." It's said lightly, but there's a wry edge to it— Nick, for one, is just fine with the fact that smoking bans are pretty in fashion. Back home, anyway. In the bizarrely retro Heropa, not so much.

He's sitting at the next booth over, idly combing over the network and some files in turn, and it's not until the guy's on his third cigarette that he bothers to speak up. There's a slight pause as a car buzzes past the window, and then as an afterthought: "Except for the hovercars."

a thousand years later, smothers rust and then myself

[proselytized]

It's his third cigarette and he's been sitting there long enough that what was initially a pointed inspection of anyone in or out has turned into casual remove - looking, but not really seeing as he works out some inarticulate puzzle or problem, mentally pursuing questions that aren't going to be answered in a malt shop, all check floor tiles and brightly colored walls. So it takes him a second to realize the words are directed at him.

Rust blinks as he snaps out of it, realizes he's been holding the cigarette more than he is smoking it and takes a long drag to make up for it. Doesn't think before he says, "That would require any days to have been good," and exhales smoke. The vibration of the car passes. "But sure."