HOT DOG FRENCH FRIES COME ON BABY TELL ME YOUR LIES

[maskormods]

T E S T D R I V E M E M E

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 ON THE TEST DRIVE MEME!

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. Today is even friendlier, as the Florida city is experiencing a dip in the temperature that allows it to feel more like autumn -- why, at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, people might start breaking out their winter coats soon!

With a certain spooky holiday coming up, the city's main hospital has gotten in the spirit by setting up a Happy Hallow-Vein blood drive at a local block party. Maybe you've stumbled by and had your attention captured by a bunch of phlebotomists dressed up like Dracula, or maybe you volunteered your services as a celebrity imPort, here to encourage others to donate today! Either way, consider donating and then enjoying some fried Oreos and lemonade at the street fair. Gotta top off those fluids, after all!

Oh, but if you're an imPort, you might have to fill out a few extra forms... they have to watch out for alien blood, after all, and you might just run into a couple of people wondering if they can get your powers from your blood.


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! Those words have meaning here. 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 or recently published PLoS papers. 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. Some of them MAY ask if you personally know the De Chima Ambassador, Sam Merlotte. Beware if you answer in the affirmative; anything from personal questions about romantic chances to bedroom habits to dietary queries might come up!

In this spooky month of October, special effects companies are doing a limited-time outdoors expo to really show off their stuff! You may see terribly convincing lizardpeople, zombies, monsters, elves and aliens in your midst, delighting in peeling synthetic skin off to reveal horrifying makeup beneath the masks and occasionally ducking away to perform a little last-minute costume maintenance. The kids are agog and aghast at what’s surrounding them, and if you, imPort, happen to be a little less than human, you might get children and adults alike yanking on your ears, tails, and other non-human characteristics while marveling, “Amazing! How do they make it look so real?”

The rest of the expo is spent showing off holograms of explosions, entirely too many smoke machines, demonstrations of stuntmen on bungees, and more! Guests are welcome to get their faces done up as the mythical being of their choice or, for the truly daring, to try their hand at a stunt or two themselves.

03. Maurtia Falls, Pennsylvania has carried a reputation for ups and downs ever since imPorts began reappearing again, just those few years prior. Several imPort heroes have put focused efforts into cleaning up the streets of this somewhat infamous city, while a handful of others had 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 -- but that war waging is taking a turning tide thanks to the order and regulation established by Ambassador Petyr Baelish. Locals know him best for his library and his hardline on containing the criminal element. Trustworthy guy, they'll tell you. But one man's leadership isn't enough to clean up a troubled city in a year's time; everything from the classic bank heist to brutal bloodbaths can happen around the corner. You have to keep your eyes open and your mind sharp when you live in Maurtia Falls.

Infuriated by the reappearance of some members of this old imPort team, you might run into a few gangmembers spoiling for a fight with any imPort they can get their hands on. You can see them striding angrily down the street, giving innocent people the stinkeye and glancing at everyone's wrists. Eventually, they come across a poor soul that simply has a very distinct aesthetic - look, they just like cyberpunk! - and, having mistaken them for an imPort, drag her into the shadows for what they feel is a well-deserved beat down.

What do you do, imPort? Do you save her? Do you run away to avoid capture yourself? Or, you little villain you, do you go in and beat them up so you can take her purse? It's easy to see that she's carrying an awful lot of money on her!

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. Today, much of that excitement centers around tryouts for The Sing-le Long, the hottest new singing competition/dating show to hit the airwaves! Held in the outdoor ampitheater of a local park, the lines for tryouts are somewhat disorganized, winding around into the audience area—you might come to take a look and find yourself accidentally onstage! Or maybe the tryout coordinators spotted an imPort and bumped you to the front of the line. Either way, prepare to belt out a song and list your turn-ons afterward!

Outside the park, you're still likely to attract attention. Natives may gather around new arrivals and ask both personal and broad questions about life as an imPort, what they are looking forward to, if they're looking for a sidekick. A few restaurants will offer a free appetizer (with the purchase of an entree), and you may be offered product samples from local businesses! Just be sure to speak to an agent before signing any endorsement deals.

Comments

Ellie | The Last Of Us

[epundemiology]

i. heropa - in the blood

[If you'd asked her a year ago if she'd like to see what the world was like before the outbreak, her answer would have been an enthusiastic hell yeah. Now? It's all a little bit overwhelming. She may or may not have tried to stab a soldier when they tried to inject her with the nanites. She may or may not have tried to jump out the window of the moving car as they tried to 'escort' her to her new home.

She may or may not have spent the last roughly three or four days holed up in her apartment before venturing out to stock up on food and stumbling across the block party. It's surreal, walking through well-paved streets and seeing shiny-plated chrome on fucking flying cars and people wasting water on their plants, of all things. Everything is clean and colorful and bright and she feels a little bit nauseous, like she with her dirty, sweat-stained clothes and her unwashed hair is somehow...marring the place. A spot of ugliness that doesn't belong amidst all this beauty.

She can't help but think she doesn't deserve it, either. Yet again, she's given a gift she never asked for, and she can't help but think it should be someone else--Riley, maybe. She always dreamed of something better. Or Tess, who died trying to get her to the Fireflies. Sam. Henry. Even Sarah, who died right along with the old world, and took a part of Joel with her.

The thoughts of Joel pang the most deeply; she can't decide if she's grateful or miserable that he's not here. Maybe a little of both. With nothing she can do about those feelings, though, she finds herself taking a page out of the man's book herself and tries to push them from her mind. The presence of a cheerful volunteer holding a notepad and wearing fake vampire fangs offers a well-timed distraction, dragging her out of her thoughts to ask if she'll be donating blood today.

God, donating blood. What a notion. If she weren't so nonplussed right now, she'd almost find it funny.]

Uhhh, no. I mean, you don't want it, trust me.

[She's not really sure if she can infect anybody, honestly, but she's sure as fuck not about to take any chances. The volunteer looks unconvinced, though....help a girl out, perhaps?]

ii. heropa pt 2 ooky spooky electric boogaloo

[So, uh. Halloween. That's a thing that still exists, in a world without Cordyceps. Inevitably, Ellie comes upon a shop with Halloween goods. At first, she's charmed by it; it reminds her of one of her last good memories with Riley, when they'd found that abandoned shop and tried on dumb wolfman masks and laughed about how silly it all was.

Until, of course, she finds the zombie makeup. It's the packaging that does it, the cracks about terrifying your friends with the impending apocalypse, the cartoony graphic of a zombie chewing on a person's skull, their mouth open in perpetually unvoiced terror, and she wants to throw up. She thinks of the world she left behind, thinks of David in that fucking burning restaurant and how the real monsters are never the infected ones, and she's angry. It burns her up inside that her entire fucking life is such a big joke, such a fascination to all of them and they don't even know how blessed they are not to be living it.

She stands there for awhile, just staring at that fucking plastic container, and then she throws it back in the bin in disgust before hightailing it out of there like a bat out of hell, in enough of a rush that she almost misses the person coming in at the same time, and has to pivot suddenly on her heel to prevent a collision.]

Fuck--

...Sorry about that.

iii. maurtia falls

[She's not really sure what's happening, when a bunch of tall, burly men come barreling down the street, seemingly looking for something in particular. She keeps one hand on the pistol hidden in the waistband of her jeans, just in case, but it's not her they grab. It's some other woman, and she hears them mutter something about imPorts, and suddenly she realizes why they were looking at people's wrists like that.

(she'd been paranoid, for a moment, they were looking for bite marks, before she realized that didn't make sense)

Ellie might have a healthy respect for her own skin, but she's always been ballsier than was necessarily warranted; she follows the thugs down the alley and aims her gun right at the biggest, ugliest one.]

Hey, motherfucker! Why don't you mess with someone your own size!

ooky spooky

[heisenbitch]

Whoa, hey—! [ Jesse hands shoot up in defense/surprise while jerking to a halt in the doorway at a kid barrelling almost straight into him. He would assume the kid was shoplifting with how fast she's bolting out of here, if it wasn't for the look on the face. Distraught? Furious? Bothered by something, that's for sure. So, in response to her startled apology, with his hands still poised in surrender: ]

Hey, it's cool, it's cool. First time I've ever seen a kid running away at top speed from a Halloween store, though, gotta say.

[epundemiology]

[There are a variety of rude and sour responses that pop into her head at that observation of Jesse's. The one she settles on is probably the tamest of the lot, if only because she's out of sorts enough that she'd rather just not risk it with this guy. Who knows how he might react? So she merely offers a dry:]

Haha, guess I must be special.

[She feels a little gross even letting those words out of her mouth. David had called her 'special.']

[heisenbitch]

[ He should let her go, though her cagey nervousness gives him pause. He flattens himself against the door to let someone pass through into the store, then looks back down at the girl. ]

...You okay, though?

[epundemiology]

[No, she's not okay. She feels like she should be, in this place where everyone's clean and well-dressed and well-fed, but she isn't. Part of her wonders if she's ever really going to feel "okay" again. She can't just trust a complete stranger with any of that, though. Fuck, she's not sure she would even be able to talk to Joel about it, if he were here. She looks at the ground, frame radiating tension.]

Yeah, I'm fine.

[...]

--Fuck, you probably wanna like, buy shit, right? Here, lemme just ....

[And here she is, standing like a lump right in his way. She takes a couple steps back and to the left, to make room.]

[heisenbitch]

[ Jesse doesn't move. A small frown of genuine concern creeps onto his brow while watching how tense and— scared this girl seems. ]

Nah. Nah, it's— [ A quick glance thrown into the store. ] It's nothing important, it can wait.

[ His attention returns to her. He takes in how skinny she is, how underfed she appears. How ragged she seems. He decides to try a gentle, casual approach, given how tense and nervous she is. ]

I was gonna go grab a bite to eat afterwards, anyway. You hungry?

[epundemiology]

[She scrunches up her nose in a skeptical glance. Is she hungry? Of course she is. She's always hungry, because there's never enough food. But the question is, why would he get her food? Clearly, he was intending to go into this shop and buy things, and now he's changing his mind, and that just makes her vaguely suspicious. Altruism for altruism's sake just straight up doesn't exist anymore, in her world, and even though she can tell things are different here....she's not ready to just throw her lot in with the first person to speak gently to her.

She looks him up and down, not bothering to hide the scrutiny in it. He's tall, but also skinny. Joel could probably snap him like a twig. Not that that helps her, here, but at least it means that he's probably not strong enough to hold her down if she started thrashing in earnest.]

Maybe. Are you offering?

[She wants to be clear on this, so she can decide whether or not to consider going with him. If he's not offering, then she's extra not interested.]

[heisenbitch]

[ Jesse's shoulders slouch while the kid suspiciously scrutinises him, his whole body language attempting to convey that he's seriously not interested in being remotely any kind of threat to her. He tilts his head at her with a tiny gentle quirk of his mouth. ]

Wouldn't ask if I wasn't offering, right? [ Then, he gestures to her with his finger. ] Lemme guess: Pizza fan.

[epundemiology]

[Nonthreatening body language is good. But she's still hung up on why he wants to help her. David had been good at faking nonthreatening too, before he and his merry band of cannibals came and fucking hunted her down in the basement where she was taking care of Joel. She scrunches her nose.]

Never had it, actually. So, what's in it for you? Helping me, I mean.

[heisenbitch]

[ Jesse's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. She's never had pizza? Another person squeezes past Jesse to enter the store, which distracts Jesse for a moment from answering her. Deciding to actually move out of the way, he gestures for the kid to move out of the way with him. He's now standing out on the street, among all the noise of the traffic and people bustling past and horns occasionally blaring. All the usual city hubbub. ]

[epundemiology]

[Her hand twitches as the new person suddenly appears in the doorway, reflexively reaching toward the gun hidden in her waistband, before they scoot on past, and she lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding as she follows Jesse out the door.

Once they're outside, she shifts her weight from leg to leg, looking a little awkward.]

Sooooo. You make a habit of feeding random people?

[heisenbitch]

[ He notices the awkwardness. How scared she seems to be underneath how scared she's trying not to be. It makes Jesse's heart ache for her. ]

Only the cool kids. [ A gentle, joking smile. It's not true he'd help only cool kids: He would help any kid, cool or not. ] Especially cool kids that've never had pizza before.

[epundemiology]

Well, I am pretty fucking awesome.

[Maybe he is just being nice. Maybe people were just...like this, before the infection. She wants to trust him, but her caution tells her she shouldn't--and she can't help but feel a little guilty for that. He seems earnest, in the way Henry had.]

...And I really want to try pizza, so I'll go with you. But if you fuck with me, I will fucking stab you. Just so we're clear.

[She thinks maybe she wants to keep the fact that she has a gun to herself for now. It might give her an advantage, if she ends up needing one.]

[heisenbitch]

[ Jesse quickly shoots his hands up in surrender. That... is a kind of terrifying threat, coming from a kid. It's not even the threat itself so much as the way she says it. The fact that she feels like she has to warn him with such a thing makes his heart ache just that bit more for her. Jesus, what the hell kind of shit has she gone through to make her feel like she has to leap to such a mode of defense? ]

One hundred percent clear as crystal, yo. You got full permission to stab me if I overstep, promise.

[epundemiology]

[She can't help a snort. Okay, shit, that was pretty funny. He's doing a good job being disarming, which logically should put her further on guard, but she can feel herself starting to relax a little already. She decides to trust her gut instinct on this one, at least for now. After all, she apparently has his permission to stab him if she needs to.]

Oh shit, I've never stabbed someone with permission, before.

[She grins, for possibly the first time since this encounter began, and the wariness in her eyes seems a little eased when she looks up at him again.]

...I'm Ellie, by the way.

[heisenbitch]

[ Jesse keeps his hands raised, for the moment. Totally one hundred percent not interested in hurting her. Her grin, however, makes Jesse ease into a small grin of his own. ]

Ellie. Cool, got it. [ And now he slowly lowers his hands to gesture to himself. ] Jesse. The guy who's gonna introduce you [ pointing at Ellie now ] to pizza, 'cause not ever having had pizza is total blasphemy.

[epundemiology]

Jesse.

[She nods in acknowledgment. It's still far too early to actually trust him, but he seems legit so far. Sure, he could be planning to lure her into an alley and shank her or worse, but he could be just taking her to get pizza. Given how he's reacted so far, she feels okay playing it by ear from here on out.]

Well, I guess I better not keep the pizza gods waiting any longer, then. So, where to?

iii.

[candor1]

[They turn to look at her.

In which instant, a shadow of a man drops down from a fire escape behind them; he grabs the woman's hand, pulls her to her feet, and puts himself between her and the gang, across the way from Ellie.]

Or two.

[epundemiology]

[...Okay. That sure is a new guy. But it sounds like--at least for now--this person is on her side rather than the thugs' side, so she'll take it. Even if this guy's intentions are shady too (which has a nonzero probability when you're from Ellie's world), at least one guy is easier to take down than three.]

That's right. So if you don't want to get your fucking brains blown out then beat it.