etcelsior | WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

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WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

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 someone else's thread, either!

And remember there's only one rule in Test Drive Meme Club: have fun!

01. The city of Heropa is what one might expect from a small, bright and cheery place, where locals are friendly enough and local shop owners might offer a free drink to welcome you to their fair city. Some of the locals might thank you for always lending your service to the nation, while others might not say anything -- but if you have something nasty to say, better not say anything at all, right?

Today it's not just imPorts that are making a scene. Given the relatively high approval rating imPorts still pull in here, maybe it shouldn't shock locals and imPorted arrivals alike that new native metahumans are using the city to debute their new spandex and catch phrases while they try and take their own bite out of crime. You know what they say about those darn kids these days though, too much time watching TV instead of say, oh, learning about martial arts or surveillance techniques. Or that the world doesn't actually pause when they start their dramatic entrances like it does on the small screen. There are five teenagers today, each one dressed in elaborate costumes modeled after different birds of paradise (click one of these if you really need examples). And you better believe each one has a dramatic entrance speech concerning truth, Justice, and the American Way, a dramatic pose, and a polysyllabic name to go through before they all strike a team pose and shout 'Birds Of Prey, Uncaged!'

During this time the lone criminal they had swooped down to stop has long since stared running away. Early in the morning, they did this whole production to stop a litterer. Mid-afternoon, a jay walker. Finally, in the evening, they actually try stopping a mugging. Of course the thief and the stolen goods are busy getting away during their intros, a fact the robbed citizen keeps shouting at them through the whole two minute long affair.

It's up to you, dear imPort, to catch these escaping misdemeanors or thief and bring them to actual justice (or, if you're really kind, hand them over to the birds), to stop and tell these kids to get off your darn lawn, to give them hero-ing tips or a real villain to fight against, or to just keep walking and pretend this whole mess never happened. The choice is yours.

02. De Chima, Virginia, is a large city with a healthy economy, and though it's quieter than Heropa, there are still large numbers of citizens to be awed at your very presence. Look at you! Organic wonder! Science and technology are the lifeblood of this city, so you're likely to come across a good many locals taking your picture with the newest of devices. The imPort craze remains high here, and you may find yourself cornered by overzealous imPort fans, media wannabes and opportunists alike, shoving cameras in your face. Their questions are likely to be fairly mundane, however; get ready for an interview about your taste in romantic partners, personal underwear choices, favorite foods, and more!

These questions are better asked inside, however, as a tornado warning has been released for the county. No, they haven't had one here since the 90s, but you can never be too careful! With the torrential downpour currently hammering the city, some enterprising business people have taken to offering storm themed sales of food, drinks, and appliances. Is there any better way to send the rainy day than on nickle shot night at the local bar, where you cannot only get dangerously intoxicated but also ride the newest in fun and games, the Freudian Mechanical Bull? Come one come all and see how long you can stay clinging on as the bull bucks you physically and emotionally, spitting out catchy psychological phrases like 'do you think this will make your father love you?' or 'riding me for five minutes will never fix what you've done.' The bull will detect which sentences seem to get the best effect and keep barring down on that path. Sensitive about your mother? Better believe the whole bar is about to hear a lot about it.

Or if you're not up for that much fun, you can aid worried citizens in securing their homes and businesses against the possible storms. Help them board up holes in roofs, cast wards on their windows, or just point them towards the nearest insurance agent. Surely you wouldn't take advantage of them and sell them devices they don't need or learn where they keep their valuables and how to reach them at a time like this would you?...would you?

03. Maurtia Falls, Pennsylvania has had its ups and downs since imPorts started reappearing. Several imPort heroes have put focused efforts into cleaning up the streets of this somewhat infamous city, while others have swooped in to help the criminal industry thrive. More so here than the streets of any other imPort city, the battle between good and evil looks more like a war of escalation than a heroic tale. That might make the less than warm welcome imPorts are given in the city a little more understandable. The emergence of locals with superpowers is hardly helping. While some of these individuals have turned to crime, many locals seem more inclined to defend their native powered drug dealer than help the non-native hero bring them to justice. Who are you to tell them how to live?

Today is the semi-annual (that no one can quite seem to remember ever happening before) balloon festival. From dawn until well past midnight imPorts and natives alive can pay a small fee to ride in a beautifully colorful hot air balloon solo or in pairs. There is also wonder fried food and face-painting for the whole family. If this seems all a little too innocent and family friendly, don't worry. This being the Falls, there's always a chance for the morally flexible (or horribly naive) to make a little extra money. Some balloons are offering special, 100% totally free in no way catch-possessing deluxe rides to certain 'winners.' Strangely, it appears to 'win' all one has to do is agree to ride the hot air balloon over to another city, drop off one of the 'sand bags' attached to the side at a designated place, pick up a few new 'sand bags' and fly back! Those that can pilot their own balloon rather than needing a guide will be paid extra- they mean, win an extra special prize.

04. Nonah, North Carolina, is the liveliest of all cities; loud, busy and there's some kind of energy in the air that gets everyone buzzing with excitement. To be American is to be part of a melting pot, and that there's more money to be made by the thriving local industries hardly hurts. Natives may gather around new arrivals and ask both personal and broad questions about life as an imPort, what they are looking forward to, what their favorite article of underwear is. A few night clubs offer free entrance - just this once!

But you'll have to excuse the mess. See, a little while ago the city was a real zoo. Animals running everywhere, smashing store windows, eating aquariums, you know how these things can go. In fact, there are still a few stay old world monkeys jumping around, and maybe a baby gator or two in the sewer or prairie dogs in the parks. A small reward is still being offered for their rounding up.

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"It's a sandwich, Charles, you eat it." He puts it down and takes a sip of his coffee, in a to-go cup instead of porcelain, since he'd planned on walking straight back to work. But then he thinks about Charles's words, and it hits him. "You don't remember," he says, finally. The look he gives is a strange one, full of conflict, but he hides whatever his thought is, tucks it into his mind like putting away linens.

"Time does not work here like it does at home. I'm sure you've noticed all the advances in technology." He takes a breath because this is always the hardest part, and he wants Charles to be ready. "I came back last year, when it was still 1983. But For the last year, for me, it's been 2017." He hopes that's a sufficient explanation for now. He doesn't want to explain that he was a thirty-year-old grandfather due to the timeline shifts. Not yet.

"Would it just be easier to..." he taps his forehead with two fingers, pointedly placed.

"I've read the briefing. I know and I've seen the technology and it seems quite complicated," Charles says quietly. He ignores the sandwich because that was never what confused him.

What really throws him into a loop is the fact that he has looked, like Erik is now suggesting he should do. But what he saw made him back out quite quickly. Erik has memories of him that he doesn't remember at all. In this place no less.

"What is it that I don't remember?" he asks and wonders if he should have asked something else, something that would make it easier for him to understand, that would make the picture clearer. "The last thing I remember was trying to convince you to give up on Apocalypse. But you have always been quite stubborn." And now here he is, offering Charles a sandwich.

Yes, here he is offering his friend something to eat, but now his friend thinks it's somewhat like an olive branch. And he thinks there's something suspicious, because he isn't taking it. So Erik caves first, since he's actually hungry, and takes a few bites.

"You were here," Erik says finally, as if it's the most casual thing in the world. "For a good while, actually. That happens sometimes. You might get the memories back, or you might not get them back at all." He frowns. "That happened once before, but both of us had forgotten." Are you following, Charles, because Erik thinks this is all very clear. "Now you're here and you don't remember this place." He sucks in a breath.

"How long have you been here?" he asks. "One day? Two days?" he asks, hopeful that the answer isn't something like a month. "I can catch you up on the work you were doing," he says, and racks his brain asking himself important questions like, what does Charles know and what can I spoil for him? "Jean will be happy to see you. You'll have to forgive most your friends, they'll be expecting you to remember they're your friends."

It's a pained existence, Erik, trying to make meaningless gestures around Charles.

He doesn't like the sound of what Erik is describing. His mind is his sharpest weapon - his only weapon - and if it's going, what is he going to trust in? The part of him that can never quite shun Erik completely suggests that he should trust him, but Erik's absolute refusal to listen to him is a little too clear in his memory to go there.

"A few hours," Charles suggests with an almost comical arching of his brows. "Enough to do some research." But not to get a very clear picture of the whole scale of things. "You've clearly spent more time here. Yet I was with you only a few hours ago. Are you sure we come from the same place?"

The mention of Jean makes him suck in a breath and adjust himself in his chair. "She was brought here too? Is she well?" What he really wants to ask is, is she alright, good, unharmed. "I had friends here?" Is what he asks instead, looking mildly disturbed by the notion that more people have memories of him that he doesn't share with them.

"She's fine," Erik replies. "She lives with me. You did too," he adds offhandedly, as he sends a text to his boss that more imPort business came up and he'll have to take the rest of the day, but he'll be back early in the morning to do the work he's left off. That's how he's able to take off with such short notice; he works in an auto body shop and usually comes in at midnight to distract himself from other goings-on. He hasn't done that in awhile, but he thinks he might have to soon.

"Come with me," he says. "I'll show you." Even though Charles will only believe his own notes, which are all tied up at the Foundation, Erik thinks that might be a little overwhelming. He'll start first with the house, which does have some photographic evidence that he'd been here, or at least photos that Charles won't have remembered taking.

It might be easier to coax him into a nap and then wait for him to wake up and realize this isn't just some very realistic dream that, for whatever reason, he can't control. Erik stands up and places a hand reassuringly and steadily on Charles's shoulder. This probably can't wait.

"Erik, please," Charles frowns at him as he stands up. "El Sabah Nur, what will happen to us? He is about to wipe out the world and you were going to help him."

And here they sit, sipping coffee.

Erik's hand lands on his shoulder and Charles flinches, and then reaches up as quickly as he tried to get away, taking Erik's hand in his.

"I don't sense that kind of anger and grief from you anymore. What happened, old friend?" There's a plea in his voice, asking Erik to shed some light to these events that plague him. He's not so worried about himself not being there. He was merely giving Apocalypse what he wanted and what he shouldn't have. But several hours have gone past and the world could be already turned to dust.

Oh, right. He should have led with that. "Time pauses," he replies. "When you go back, it will feel like nothing here happened at all. You'll resume life as normal. We defeated Apocalypse," he says. "You'll just have to relive it, but... he holed you up in a torn-down building, and you were going to die."

He swallows hard. "I almost let him kill you. I thought about it for one second, you were a sacrifice that needed to be made. But... I couldn't let him. As far as I know, you went toe-to-toe with him in your mind, and then Jean stepped in. She was really the deciding blow; the rest of us were just there to hold him off.

"He's been completely incinerated. You will be fine."

Charles could have retrieved this information from Erik's mind. It would have been faster. But sometimes just information isn't enough. Sometimes there needs to be a vocal confirmation and more.

He breathes out a sigh, hard, rushed, and tilts his head back and squeezes his eyes shut. Jean, of course. And Erik, too. After all El Sabah Nur was just using him and Erik is not someone who would let it continue.

"How are... the rest?" Did they lose someone? Other than the countless casualties around the world.

"Alex is gone," he says, because he's not sure if Charles knows that yet. "And we recovered Warren's body from the wreckage." He doesn't even know if Charles knows who Warren is; he hadn't exactly been one of the X-Men, or around long enough to even introduce himself. But he says Warren because he doesn't want to say the name Angel, even after all these years. "Psylocke disappeared."

So one casualty for the X-Men, two for Apocalypse and-- "Peter broke his leg." Other than that, everyone seemed mostly fine. Even the goldfish and the bulldog were alright. Erik remembers thinking what a miracle that was, afterwards.

"I think you were just looking forward to teaching again. None of the students wanted to leave."

"Alex, no..." Charles struggles to hear the rest after Erik drops that bomb on him. The last he remembers of Alex is when he destroyed Cerebro. I is very sad to hear about Warren as well, but he doesn't really know who Warren is and Alex was a long time friend.

He brings his hand up to rub his eyes, swiping away a few tears that are threatening to spill over. How will Scott take that? Oh, god.

"I... Peter was there as well?" he asks, voice trembling a little. "Peter Maximoff?" The little speedster from ten years ago.

He had been joking about something meaningless with Alex just a few days ago. And now he's dead.

"Scott is fine," he says, as if he can read it on Charles's face. "Or, he will be fine. You've already phoned his parents. There was a funeral, you spoke at it." Erik knits his brows and motions again towards the handle of the chair. "Are you sure you don't want to be at home for this conversation?" he asks.

"Yes, Peter Maximoff was there. He came here not that long ago, but he disappeared just as quickly." Erik allows himself a smirk at that joke. "I'd like to think he's back home with his family now." He says all this kind of... clinically, in part because it's a completely separate place and time from this one, and for these sorts of things he feels... objective, almost. Like everything he reflects on is a dream.

"Yes, I think you're right. I'd rather have this conversation somewhere else." Charles pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment before lifting his chin and looking up at Erik, "You said you had something to show to me."

He will just reflect on those things while they travel to wherever Erik wants to take him. As long as it's not a heavily trafficked public place like this one, it's going to be better.

He wheels his chair a bit forward, rounding the table neatly.

"I apologise for your lunch," he continues politely. That's what Erik came here for after all.

"I have the rest of the day to eat," he replies, though he takes his sandwich and holds his cup. "Do you want me to roll you or do you want to do that by yourself?" he asks. He usually asks.

It's not much, but... he's proud of the home that he's half-built for them, and he thinks that Charles will like it too. The walls may not hold memories the way humans do, but there's something about it that feels like it belongs to them. Well, that's what Erik's always thought.

And if not, there were always the photos.

"Are you sure you're not hungry? We could get something on the way. Or I could make you something."

"You know where we're going, it'll be faster if you do it." Charles surrenders the control of his chair to Erik easily enough. They won't need ramps and it's unlikely to be caught up with any little obstacles that might come their way. It's convenient, that's all it is and Charles isn't beyond choosing that over his pride that has nothing to do with practicality.

He shakes his head at the offer of food, though. "No, I'm not hungry. Maybe something later." Once he has Alex out of his system and he's settled with all these new branches of information that are growing and growing, reaching out without his consent.

Actually, Erik will take the route that Charles could take by himself if he so wanted, because he wants Charles to be able to get around without him later. He thinks that taking shortcuts for the sake of getting them home faster won't help anyone much, considering that he thinks Charles might want to visit Heropa sometime.

That's... another thing; he has to introduce Charles to the intracity porters. "It's kind of a weird sensation at first, but you'll get used to it," he warns, likening it in his mind to what he thinks getting strapped into Cerebro feels like. It's not a far walk to the porter, and from there, Erik walks Charles into the transportation device and--

--Suddenly they're in another state. "Have you ever been to North Carolina?"

Charles sucks in his breath as they are transported. It's not the trip itself that has him rattled but suddenly the mental landscape is completely different. The only thing that stays the same is Erik.

He swallows but doesn't say anything. His eyes might seem a little wild for a second but it's not the first time he's been teleported or whisked around on some unknown power. He can handle it.

"Yes. Not too long ago I gave a lecture in Duke University."

"How was it there?" he asks, as he guides Charles outside. Then they go through a bunch of streets in a busy downtown area, which quickly turns residential, and then turns into something that looks almost suburban. There's a nice lawn on a two-story house and unlike the others, there are no stairs to go up to get to the entrance.

"This is it," he says. "This is home." He grabs a lump of metal that's hiding underneath of a potted plant, and clutches it in his fist for a second, before handing it to Charles. It's a key.

"It was fine," Charles replies a little airily. He doesn't think Erik actually wants to hear about his trip to the university, or the genetics lecture he gave there.

They arrive to the house and Charles looks at it curiously, noting that there are no stairs. It looks mildly different than other houses around it.

He eyes the key, too, then Erik and finally reaches for the key hesitantly. "You want me to open it?" he asks, not sure what Erik is going for here.

"No, I want you to keep it," he replies, and then swings open the door for the both of them. It's... not a terribly large place, with an open first floor layout, low-pile rugs wherever there are any, and plenty of space to maneuver a wheelchair.

Invisible from the entrance but visible from when Erik leads Charles across to the living room is the kitchen (a kitchen with reachable cabinets and with plenty of space under the cabinets to roll under), and behind the kitchen there's a little elevator that seems to go to the same place that the stairs are going.

"Welcome home," he comments.

"Oh." Charles is looking at the key while Erik pushes him inside the house. But then he realises from the first glance that this is where he's been living in. It all screams it. The low cabinets, lack of rugs and thresh holds, even the elevator.

He turns by planting one hand on one wheel and lets the momentum carry him around. Facing Erik, he smiles a little, a hesitant curve upon his lips. "And my room?" he asks quietly. "Upstairs, I presume."

"Downstairs, the entire upstairs is a new addition," he explains. "After Jean moved in." He shows Charles that they actually passed his door, it's the first one on the left, decorated rather traditionally, with a four-poster bed and a pair of cotton slippers right where he left them, a bookcase, a chess board with only one chair.

"You used to be the only resident, actually. It was a small home." It's... definitely larger now, after two rounds of additions to accommodate two more and with room to add more household without additional construction. This time.

It feels odd. To look at that room that is definitely something he recognises as his own, down to the chessboard that he's sure they've sat at several times. But he doesn't remember any of it.

He nods, rolling quietly into the room and moves to touch the table with a few fingertips before drawing away his hand as if he wasn't supposed touch it.

"I'm sorry I don't remember any of this," he says quietly, his eyes tracing the room with rapid glances.

"It's fine, Charles. It happens. You may even regain the memories," he says, hand gripped on his shoulder. "Do you need a moment?"

He understands that this might be a little... rough. When he first arrived here, he felt alone. Even though Billy was here, they'd never met before. And plenty of people had known about him, but Erik hadn't known a single person.

It had been jarring. It had taken him months to adjust.

He tries to project this to Charles.

"I think I will need several moments," he says a bit drily but reaches up to grasp Erik's hand. He doesn't need a moment alone, this is something he throws back at Erik without bothering to voice it. It's one of those things that have always been comfortable with Erik, telepathic communication on a very baser level.

"I wouldn't say no to a stiff drink, either," he says and looks up at Erik. He is still familiar in all this and Charles knows he's leaning on it a little heavily.

"You weren't drinking," he replies. "So there's none in the house." Erik was nice, he decided to keep all his drinking contained to restaurants and the like. But he could make a quick trip to the liquor store, if Charles really wants.

"Maybe some tea instead?" he offers.

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

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