etcelsior | throws thumbtack confetti everywhere

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throws thumbtack confetti everywhere

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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No. [It's an earnest, if slightly dismissive answer, and he gestures uselessly with a hand, the other returning to nestle in his coat pocket and pick at the worn burrs of wool within. He keeps his eyes on the kids for another moment, watching as they run off to-- I don't know, continue having no supervision whatsoever with their freaking hoverboards. Likely nearly get hit by five more cars.]

You're some guy in a mask grabbing up kids. ,small>[...from danger, but hey, right now he's just deflecting this blue guy's question, not legitimately reasoning things out.

Still, though, he lifts his head slightly to look over the... thing. Hero. dude. A bit more closely.]

...So this's really what the military wants to pay us to do? Babysit kids?

[Sorry, Jaime. Dude's dealing with existential issues and general angst. Gotta direct it someplace.]

Okay, let me rephrase that. I wasn't gonna take off with them. I was just making sure that they didn't get themselves killed. [Geez, tough audience. He never thought he'd come to miss the fact that pretty much everyone in his city knew who he was, but being interrogated about his height is actually a little more pleasant than being accused of being a kidnapper.

What would he even do with them anyway? He'd go deaf before picking up a ransom.

He deflates a little once Shinji mentions the government, and merely offers the guy a mournful shrug.] I have no idea what the government really wants us to do here. All I know is that I'm not about to just watch people get hurt if I can do anything to help stop it.

[...Damn, so the guy didn't have much more information than him. Shoulders lowering as his muscles relax, the tension filtering from them, he lets out a short, almost-disappointed exhale. At least this... blue... wing-dude was forthright enough.]

Yeah. Good thing you could. [Because like hell Shinjiro had any powers that he could use to stop that. Hell, even if he'd been able to call out his Persona, sticking a freaking gun to his head in the middle of the street would probably make him the next to get whisked up by some dumbass do-gooder.]

Damn it... I was kinda hoping someone'd know a bit more-- [But wow this is distracting, so:] The hell're you wearing, anyway?

[And why.]

What, you mean my armour? It's my uniform. It's what I wear to do... [He makes a vague gesture in the direction of the street.] ...that. You know, the whole superhero thing?

[What do you mean that's not a good explanation? It's a fantastic explanation.]

[Uniform, superhero. Sure. Like Phoenix Ranger Featherman.

Whatever, that means this guy's got to know something, right? He's wearing a stupid costume and flying around the city.]

Alright, yeah. Superhero thing.

[Whatever.]

That's what I'm asking about- that's what they want us doing here?

I guess. As far as I can tell, though, they're not about to force you into a costume and a code-name if you don't want one. [He shrugs.] According to everyone else I talked to, they mostly just leave you alone.

[That information should make him relax-- but it doesn't, those brows just furrowing even more, dark eyes glancing down at the sidewalk as the fading noise of sirens finally grows silent.]

...So then the hell's the point? [Don't worry bro, he's not asking you. Just talking out loud.]

I mean, good you were there to keep the kids from getting creamed, but these guys put a hell've a lotta effort in bringing people back from the dead just to set 'em loose.

Who said anything about bringing people back from the dead? I'm just doing the same thing I did back home, and so's everyone else I've...

[And there he goes again, letting his mouth just natter away while his brain goes on sleep-mode in the background. It's a seriously unattractive trait in anyone, let alone a superhero, and something he tells himself he's going to get a handle on one of these days.

Someone coming back from the dead isn't exactly a new idea - at least not if you're a superhero - but he trails off as the penny eventually drops that that's what's happened to this guy. No wonder he's so cranky. Jaime would be cranky too if he got brought back from the dead only to be trapped in some kidnapping city. He rubs the back of his neck.]

Aw, geez. I'm sorry.

[...

Oh. Well. So much for his assumption that being dead was sort of par for the course.]

-Seriously, you guys were still alive?

[For some reason, bringing someone who was dead to another point in time and space made more sense to him than someone who was alive. At least the physics of death were a complete unknown-- in life people kind of had places to be.]

...Alright, I dunno 'bout you, but we didn't really have people in weird uniforms as a sort've secondary police.

[Just fucked up highschoolers but whatever.]

[No? Are they just going to skip over the fact that this guy used to be dead? It seems a little awkward just to move on from here, but it's not as if Jaime has more to say than I'm really sorry you died from whatever it is you died from, so he lets it go.]

Most of us, yeah. I thought all of us were, but.

[Apparently not!]

...Anyway, superheroes are pretty common where I'm from. I'm Blue Beetle. [He holds up three fingers.] The third.

[Just so Shinji gets a good idea as to exactly how common they are - and how they have a tendency to span entire generations.]

[Yep. Sorry bro, Shinjiro has absolutely no desire to get into his life story with a man wearing a mask and a weird suit and calling himself Blue Beetle. Between the two of them, he hardly feels like he should be considered the weird one just for having experienced death.

After all, everyone's got it coming eventually.]

Sucks. That's gotta be weird for whoever you guys left behind.

[benefits of being deceased.]

Shinjiro Aragaki. [Though seriously, the third. There are three guys at separate times who all wanted to run around in broad daylight wearing that. It gets an eyebrow raise, though it's hidden beneath his messy bangs.]

Guess I just gotta get used to anonymous assholes flying 'round, huh.

[Oh, Shinjiro, it's sweet that you think that they all looked as great as Jaime does. The first guy wasn't nearly so stylish.

He skips over who he's left behind, mostly because it's something he prefers not to think about and has therefore thought about it non-stop. He already left his family behind once, and doing it again - and being aware of it this time - is absolutely killing him.]

Pretty much, yeah. But most of us don't really enjoy being called assholes. Just a tip.

[A shrug. Everyone is an asshole, Blue Beetle, best learn to deal with it.]

Yeah, I'll keep that in mind.

[can you hear how akin the the sahara desert that dryness is??]

So, as a newbie: how do you know the good anonymous guys in masks from the bad anonymous guys in masks.

[Hey, it's his (second) funeral. Jaime doesn't really care enough to feel anything beyond mild annoyance, but he's pretty sure that someone like Ravager would stick a knife in his leg.

Granted, Ravager is not the nicest superhero Jaime's ever met.]

If the anonymous guy in a mask is robbing a bank, lighting stuff on fire or punching random people on the street, he's probably bad news.

[that isn't helpful at all you blue douchebag.]

Right. Good thing they're doing that every waking moment. Hell, I kinda wonder why I bother'd asking.

[From asshole to douchebag! It's an upgrade!]

Look, we're people. You can't tell who's good or who's bad just by looking at anyone, and the same goes for anyone wearing a mask. Lotta people back home get by on recognition because we belong to teams, but here, your guess is gonna be as good as mine.

...Then what's with the masks and fake nam--

[wait]

Or is Blue Beetle seriously your name. [three actual generations of that- america you are worse than shitty 90's sitcoms and movies could have prepared him for.]

What? No! It's - well, it's kind of because it's tradition.

[Blue Beetle the third, remember? There is a long and proud tradition of being crushed to death or shot through the skull he has to uphold, here.]

And to protect our families when we go up against the really big threats. Last time the wrong guy found out who I was, he blew up my house.

[With his family inside. Good times.]

[Well, at least that earns more of a reaction than all the previous disgruntled eye-rolling. Shoulders stiffen slightly, and his lips tug down in something that may be akin to realization and distaste.]

Damn, seriously?

[...Well, it's not unlike when Strega help Junpei hostage but even then they didn't blow up the house.]

So you're usually- not just a technicolour traffic cop.

[SLOWLY BEGINNING TO TRY AND ACCEPT THIS FACT.]

Not usually. [Shinji gets a smile out of Jaime for the first time, though it's a rueful one as smiles go.]

Don't get me wrong, I'll help out with the little stuff too. It's important. [Said like the true goody-two-shoes he is!] But a lot of the time, I'm dealing with stuff that's a little too big for cops to handle, and I'm not even in the big leagues. We help handle a lot of natural disasters too.

[Really, that does give a lot of context. It's weird to consider all this being such a problem, but that's likely because he'd just always assumed that everyone in America could use a gun or carried one-- or even before that, the idea that there would be so many problems above the power of the police that they had to recruit so many people with extraneous abilities.

It's just a completely different issue from SEES's back home, if only due to the malicious human element and widespread effects, if what Blue Beetle was telling him was true.]

That's pretty screwed up. The stuff above the cops's head is all home-grown here, then? [Natural disasters-- well, they were what they were. Of course if people could fly or whatever they'd be able to help with that.]

I've been here for like, a week, but I haven't actually seen much. [He grimaces.] And at the rate they're going, they're just bringing more chaos in. They've managed to bring in criminals in from other worlds. My world too.

[It would be hard to sound more unimpressed than Jaime does right now, frankly. He knows that superheroes are supposed to be all optimistic and upbeat - unless you wear black and grunt a lot - but it's hard to have a lot of faith in a structure that brings in people from Arkham and gives them power. He's never been to Gotham, but he knows enough to know that they're not just your regular, run-of-the-mill crazies, and that giving them possibly destructive superpowers is just asking for trouble.]

Wish I had better news for you than that, but this is what we're working with here.

...What, they don't do any research?

[As if the whole thing wasn't retarded enough already-- So now they had the tech to take anyone-- living or dead-- from other worlds and whatever, drag them through some fuckup in space-time here, research their whole histories and abilities.... but they couldn't manage to tell who might be helpful and who would just wreck the joint.]

And they expect us to sign up with 'em when they can't be assed to do a background check?

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throws thumbtack confetti everywhere

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wow what is html, wtg me.

it's okay we've all been there

sobsob everything i do is a mess sobsob feel pity for me

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