etcelsior | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Really, Chad has a girlfriend back home and is used to having cheerleaders all over him, too, things that happen when one is among the most popular boys at a high school, but there's the urge to look when he knows he shouldn't look that's hard to resist. Much easier to just focus on getting his shirt somewhat dry and looking down at his shoes, wondering if they're even salvageable.

Her words though have him raise his eyebrows and turn to look at her.]

By thin air? ...wow. You look like you could take on air.

[What.]

Er. Y'know what I mean.

[ Highschool as a concept would be baffling as all get-out to Annie. Not the scholastics so much as the rest of the social scene, and how long it seemed to favor that adults act like children, while being expected to perform in both worlds.

Her own eyebrow quirks up in return. ]

Have you ever felt a wall of... pressurized air?

[ Tentative with the word, like she's flavoring it for applicability. Creating a pressure wave that had an effect on a concentrated area, more than enough to be felt and to move objects. Given in toy form to kids, it was a step closer to accidental weapon and defintie household item breaker than it should be. ]

[He can tell her about high school, because chances are that if he stays at this place much longer he'll soon realize that his life, that he considers pretty normal and mundane, is actually quite out of the ordinary compared to what most people here know.]

Er...

[he doesn't really want to say 'no', because she is asking as if one should have experiences that, but he doesn't see the point in lying, either.]

Can't say I have, no. But I think I can imagine? Those kids did that?

[ With a nod of her head back toward the kids who were now jumping up and down, one even starting to run back toward the shoreline, she had to consider what it is she was saying. ]

They weren't expecting it to be that effective. Neither was I. They're using toy weapons, to push bottle stacks down and move objects around a course. Even with all five pointed the same way, it shouldn't have been as forceful as it was.

[ A thought that makes her frown. She doesn't like those sorts of coincidences. ]

[He looks in the direction of the kids as well, nodding to her words.]

You think someone might have messed with the settings?

[She definitely sounds suspicious and no children's toy should be powerful enough for this. Never mind how awesome he'd have found it as a kid.]

Maybe we should take the things away from them before I have to dive after someone else.

[ She looks at him, evaluating what he says. Then she looks toward where the pier joins the beach, up near the parking lot. (She's not thinking about the parking lot or how insane cars are right now. It's too much.) ]

If that's what you want to do, I'll come along. Though it's not the tool that caused the trouble.

[ It's a small measure that doesn't prevent repeat performances with other such toys, if there's a perpetrator behind it all in the first place who walks away. She doesn't say this, instead leaving her quite observation there for him to take in or not. Annie isn't the general instigator, more from habit than a desire to walk away.

Though she would not like to be thrown back into the ocean again anytime soon. ]

You just said it did? I'm sure the reason is something else, maybe something bigger, but the toy still catapulted you into the ocean, right?

[He hangs his shirt over one shoulder as he makes his way toward the kids, not running so she can walk with him.]

Besides, if anyone did tamper with them, looking at them more closely might be our best bet.

A tool is a tool. It needed the children, and someone else, to be able to work like it did.

[ Though she says all of this slowly as she sloshes along with him. She lapses into silence, letting her thoughts run and process while they move. The kid who'd taken off toward them rounded the end of the pier, jumping down from the parking lot level to the sands. He stumbled toward them, still waving the toy that looked like an overlarge loudspeaker. ]

Hey! Hey, are you okay? Woah, this is way way way cooler than I thought, it was like bam! And whoosh! And splash! And then um, you know, the... way you didn't swim. Why are you out there if you can't swim?

[ Annie only gives the nine year old a flat look, arms crossing over her chest, damp hoodie pressing against her stomach. ]

throws thumbtack confetti everywhere

boldly going where no one's gone before indeed

and to do it more than once, with gusto

this is the beginning of something great, I feel it

something great and something horrible, I swear the two are never far apart

you're right, those two things tend to come in a horrible pair

which makes it all the greater

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