etcelsior | April, Come She Will

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April, Come She Will

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.

Like it or not, thanks to the proximity of the main Porter Heropa has always been the heart of the imPort community in the US. And to show their dedication to making the local-imPort community really work, Heropa has followed in the footsteps of their sister city Nonah and started a Follow An ImPort to Work day initiative. Whatever government assigned job you have there is, suddenly, a child there shadowing you. Well, by suddenly we mean their parents appeared, gave a whirlwind of instructions, pat their kid on the head, and then left them in your tender care. For an entirely unspecified number of hours. Could be you got a surly teenager or a fanboy tween or a gurgling baby that has no idea what’s going on. Whatever age, the government was kind enough to have automatically registered you for the event, free of charge! Or warning.

Maybe you’ll make the best of it and teach the kid a thing or two. Maybe you’ll find some unsuspecting imPort visiting from another city to hand the kid off to. Maybe you’ll realize that absolutely no background checks have been run and small children are probably, entirely unsupervised, following around criminal masterminds or serial killers at this very moment. Maybe you and your new sidekick should do something about that, or at least check to make sure the fellow imPorts you see with a kid in tow are on the up and up. The future of the next generation is in your hands.

02. De Chima, Virginia, is a large city with a healthy economy, with large numbers of citizens waiting to be awed by 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. If you let yourself get cornered, beware! Anything from personal questions about romantic chances to bedroom habits to dietary queries might be come up!

Nothing says warming weather and blooming trees than a massive robotics convention! The first annual ROBOCON is being held, and everyone is excited. De Chima Dynamics is the major sponsor, and they have rolled out dozens upon dozens of bizarre, amazing and slightly disturbing robots in order to inspire awe and wonder in the public. And, of course, to drum up some business. They might be the major vendor, but there are plenty of other robotics companies here to impress and inspire - as well as maybe sell you a brand new house bot on the side.

Everything seems to be going swimmingly - (especially the solar powered fishbots) - until someone starts yelling about how the horse bots have gone haywire. It's a stampede of stumbling, tumbling legs, and they're headed right through the convention hall, barrelling through everything in their path.

Quick, someone has to save all those convention goers from being roughly pushed over or bruised or having their booth toppled over.

Or sit back and watch a bunch of clumsy robots stumble over people, I guess.

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.

With the shift of the season towards warmer weather, winter coats have finally made way for windbreakers, and snow has been replaced with rain.

It's not a disaster as much as it is an inconvenience at first. A sudden downpour quite literally rains on the annual Make Way For Spring Parade (not too unusual, really), and causes it to come to a sudden halt.

The rain turns from annoying, to heavy, to outright dangerous in almost record breaking times. Maybe you're safe and dry inside of a local shop or building, or maybe you're caught up in the rainfall, trying to get out of the storm before you're soaked from head to toe.

But things turn from bad to worse, as one of the parade float drivers tries to get the large decorated platform out of the rain, and the amount of water on the road causes it to swerve out of control. And oh no- is that an elementary school bus it's headed straight for?!

This looks like a job for some super-powered interference!

04. Nonah, North Carolina, is the liveliest of all cities; loud, busy and there's always some kind of energy in the air that gets everyone buzzing with excitement.

Getting jealous of all those kids in school getting their biannual book fair? Wanting to chase that thrilling sensation of seeing so many books you’ve never seen before in one place? Hate the idea of going to a library despite the fact it’s the exact same thing but free? Don’t worry, everyone else feels the same way!

Welcome to the Nonah book fair! It’s hosted outside due to the lovely weather, and around are all sorts of books, new and old, all looking for lovely homes. Some have autographs by the author, some look ancient and should probably be held in better conditions than a plastic table in direct sunlight. Some look even … mystical, maybe? Or maybe just old.

…What, are you expecting some kind of danger about? No, it’s just a book fair. Have fun.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A. De Chima

Positive media attention was something Reyes needed to be used to again. He'd seen plenty in the past, but since heading up Blackwatch media was something to be avoided. With the fall out of the Venice mission, of course, the world knew just who he was or at least what his team did. The dark stain on their exalted Overwatch, or so they claimed. Here, however, no one knew about that. Or if they did, they didn't seem to care. At least he'd learned to pull on a natural smile and engage with people who wanted his photo. Some days he almost felt like things were normal.

That's how it seemed to be going at the convention, at least. Completely normal. He'd come to find how advanced this world's robotics were, out of some lingering paranoia that he might have just jumped into the past rather than another world. However, the AI and machines were nowhere near the near-life his own world created, so he let himself just enjoy the scene.

He was in the middle of showing off one of his powers to people. He dumped the bullets from both of his guns and threw them to the ground. Reaching to the holsters at his hips, he whipped out a pair of identical short-barreled shot guns, now fully loaded. One of his fans picked up one of the fallen guns, and in the middle of asking if he could keep it, the thing simply faded away. However, before Reyes could say anything about it, a commotion broke out. Without hesitation, he simply vanished from where he'd been standing. A series of gunshots rang out through the convention hall.

Like dominoes, the horses started toppling one right after another. As the last slowly collapsed to the floor, Reyes seemed to form out of tendrils of shadow, his still smoking gun pointed at where the horse's head had been. He stared at the collapsing machine, a little stunned himself, shadows rising off his skin like dark smoke.

B. Random ImPort Cities

There were any number of ways to gather information. Some legitimate, others not so much. Thankfully the information he sought was simple and easy to find. He just wanted to get to know the world. Sure, he could dig into the officially sanctioned information, or rely on the "guides" pieced together from other ImPorts. But he knew a little too well that such things were either unreliable or were scrubbed clean at best.

Digging through the internet wasn't his style. So he opted to take a more personal approach. He started visiting bars, from the shady hole-in-the-wall dives in Maurita Falls to the most upscale places in De Chima to the hip joints in Heropa. Well, the hippest that a scarred up, middle aged man could feel comfortable in. He drank and talked and listened. All while piecing together a far more detailed picture of this world.

C. Network -- Audio

[ Reyes' tone is clipped and straight-forward, but not harsh. The military lifestyle tends to do that to a man. ]

The names Gabriel Reyes. I'm sure we'll all get to know each other quite well in due time. But first, I need to get caught up to speed. The introductory debriefing was, to put it lightly, very lacking. Tell me all you know.

Edited 2018-04-25 01:47 (UTC)

[It's the word choice that catch Marr's interest. Debriefing in particular.]

Telling everything would take some time. A number of people have compiled extensive notes and documentation about our situation here, I will allow them to direct you to the most current versions.

But the very short summary is that we have all been brought here from very different places and times, and anything you think is impossible can and perhaps will happen here.

Edited 2018-04-25 02:53 (UTC)

[ Gabe responds with video in turn. Audio is just how they do it on his world. He looks just as stern as his voice made him sound. Or maybe that's just the scars.

He lets out a sound that's halfway between a sigh and a grunt, his lips pressed together for a moment. ]

I gathered as much from the welcoming committee. Are there specific names to go with these "number of people" or am I expected to just wait for them to find me?

I received them from a second hand source, the originator of which is someone named Kaneki.

[Marr has his own fair share of scars, but everything is hidden by his helmet and armor.]

If you have any immediate concerns about the rules of engagement and current situation, I can answer your questions

[ That makes him frown even deeper. ]

Rules of engagement? Just what sort of situation do we have here?

In the month before my arrival, a large-yield missile was fired at this country.

The same day repeated for a local week until it was resolved, and no natives remember what happened.

[That had been INTERESTING to research. He would have disregarded it as some elaborate ruse were it not for the very real responses being made to the apparent origin of the missiles during his time here.]

We have a situation which ranges from petty crime to people with abilities I would have thought impossible for my arrival, and a government which provides us with limited, artificial immortality.

Just in this past month I have been confronted with duplicates of myself and people I know.

The situation is unpredictable and volatile, and most of us are dependent upon a government who has decided the best means of identifying us is via an injection.

[Marr was so very unhappy about that.]

[ Reyes doesn't know whether to laugh or feel more worried. He would have brushed it off as all improbable, except he was in a world that had no sign of omnics as far as he could tell, and was several decades behind his own world in technology in some areas but more advance than others. It was...surreal. ]

Well that raises...several questions. But most of all, how much oversight does this government provide?

[So Jesse knows about the whole timeline fuckery that this place likes to pull, Luci helpfully filled him in on that. But he hasn't actually personally experienced it. So he knows, in theory, that Reyes could show up, alive and well. But he's not really expecting it.]

[Which is why he sounds a bit shocked when he answers Gabriel's message.]

Boss? Th' hell're you doin' here?

[His voice sounds a bit rougher, he's older after all, and he never did take that advice from Angie to quit smoking. He's also only just woken up, despite it being early afternoon. Working for someone that tended to stay up nights would do that to you.]

[ For the moment, the subtle change in Jesse's voice is lost on Reyes. Maybe it's the connection, maybe he's a bit distracted. All that matters is that it's familiar. And that was not something he expected. And he's not up to speed on the time shenanigans. ]

I could ask you the same thing. Guess they brought at least half the team here and didn't bother to keep us informed.

The team?! Boss...

[He pauses, running a hand over his face and lighting a cigarillo, he had not had enough sleep to deal with this.]

What... What's th' last thing that happened? B'fore you showed up here?

[This has to be some kind of time bullshit, because Gabriel Reyes is dead. And has been for a good five years]

[ The true meaning of the question is lost on Reyes, as he has yet to realize there's time shenanigans to consider. ]

Of all the debriefings for you to not pay attention to, I thought you'd at least pay attention after Venice.

[Venice... welp.]

Well, shit. Nah, I remember that one, clear as a bell.

[He pauses]

'Cept fer me it happened eight years ago.

[He plows ahead because fuck he knows how this sounds]

This place is beyond weird boss, there's folks here from straight up other worlds, places that ain't ever heard of Omnics or hell, even Earth fer some of 'em. And this Porter thing that brings us all in don't care too much about when it brings us from.

An' I know it sounds crazy, an' no, I ain't drunk or high or any ah that shit. [After this conversation? That's another matter entirely] It's th' honest t' God truth.

[ For a long moment, Reyes is just silent. It wasn't that he didn't believe such a thing was possible. If they could pull people from completely different realities, it followed that time wouldn't prove much of a barrier. It was that eight years was a lot of time. When he'd left, things had been unstable. A lot could have...come to light in that time.

He wants to laugh it off, but he just can't. So his tone is a little too serious. ]

And here I thought Reinhardt was the only one capable of telling wild stories...

[ Then it hits him. McCree's reaction to mentioning the team. ]

You're going to tell me everything that's happened.

Gabriel Reyes || Overwatch (Pre-Fall)

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