walking in a winter wonderland

[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.

Although even Florida can get chilly during the winter, a relative heat wave is sweeping through, resulting in an impromptu Beach Body Competition sponsored by a local gym. ImPorts who are the buffest of the buff all the way down to the super skinniest (competing in separate weight classes, of course) are likely to be urged to join in for some fun in the sun and the extra attention they garner from native fans.

Those who just aren't interested in competing might be called in to judge another competition down the beach: a youth sand-sculpting contest! Only one team can walk away with the grand prize of a laser tag package, but can you bring yourself to be harsh on those wide, hopeful eyes?

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! Synthetic wonder! Whatever you might be, 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.

With Christmas coming, the producers behind a guerilla new reality show are hard at work getting new footage—starring you! Areas of the city with the most foot traffic have been absolutely blanketed in mistletoe. If you happen to pass beneath a sprig, you might find a small camera crew jumping out of nowhere, urging you to give the person next to you a smooch—and thanks to the strange radio waves coming out of the unit on the executive producer's wrist, you'll feel a little compelled to do so!

...except the compulsion isn't that strong, so those who don't kiss on the first meet can easily break out of it. Your next choice: give the camera crew a piece of your mind, or ask the would-be kissee out for coffee? They are pretty cute...

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. 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, and hostility against imPorts can spike. The emergence of locals with superpowers is hardly helping...

The downtown mall is tilting the balance solidly toward welcoming to imPorts with a Winter Welcome Festival. All the storefronts and many temporary kiosks occupied by local vendors are holding special sales, and newly arrived imPorts are given a coupon book to make the most of them. The food court has some free goodies for participants to mix and mingle.

Unfortunately, a local rogue with the alias of Klone Kringle is here to spoil the fun. After a small boom echoes throughout the mall, everything dissolves into chaos as dozens of copies of a man dressed in a polyester Santa Claus costume begin looting the retailers! The guns they wield that shoot snow and ice might not be lethal, but they can certainly slow you down (and give you a cold). Will you be the hero and help take down Kringle(s), or will you seize the opportunity to do some theft of your own?

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.

Thanksgiving and Hanukkah have passed, Christmas and New Year's Eve are coming up, but what about holidays from home? This weekend, the Nonah Cultural Center is hosting a one-day event during which attendees can share stories of their traditions and celebrations (whether they are related to winter holidays or completely different ones) and sharing them with others, either on a small stage with a microphone or in individual recording booths, so that these tales of cultural traditions can be preserved for others to learn about. ImPorts from worlds that are not variants of Earth are particularly encouraged to attend. Small refreshment tables will also be open to those who speak.

05. Jeopardy, Nevada by all rights shouldn't exist. A glowing neon city smack in the middle of the desert, the only reason it's still here is that the central nuclear power plant has tapped half a mile down into a subterranean lake for its water supply. So though the desert around it may be barren, the occupants of this small city are happily self sufficient. Those weird figures you see out of the corner of your eyes? Don't worry too much. Probably just weird radiation after effects. Jeopardy has a lot of those.

Saturnalia is just around the corner and Jeopardy is in full festive swing! The seven-day marathon of festivities includes a parade, with a ((cw: arachnophobia)) very special float from the Web Mistress's church; a day long city-wide paintball game; an attempt to break the world record for largest bingo game with everyone playing in dead silence; and a feast!

The final feast, of course, comes with the main event: ritual sacrifice. Of course, no one actually wants to do anything quite so base, in 2018, so the sacrifice is more metaphorical than actual: the kids of North Jeopardy High have spent three months building a giant chocolate Santa tied up in ropes to be slaughtered and fed to the city at large! Bon appetit!

Comments

I just realized I have an actual map icon

[justlittle]

No. [ Bean squints. What would he want with a park? Parks are wide open spaces, hard to hide, hard to defend yourself from attackers. Nothing interesting happens in parks. ]

[hatejakku]

No one will be able to sneak up on us there. No surprises. And local gathering spots are usually surrounded by other places for the general public. Media distributors or information hubs about the city, maybe.

[ Okay, look, it was the first place that caught his eye. ]

[justlittle]

[ Those aren't bad arguments. Though Bean didn't typically worry about being snuck up on. He was usually perceptive enough that people didn't get the jump on him, and small enough he could evade their sight.

But, Finn had a good point about the rest of it. ]

Park it is. [ He reaches for his phone again, not glancing at the map before sticking it back in his pocket. He's already memorized the layout of the streets. ]

Three blocks west and two south.

[hatejakku]

[ The directions were right from what Finn saw. Bean was oddly good at this.

Knowing it'll be awkward, Finn opts to try for small talk. ] Have you been to any of the other cities yet?

[justlittle]

[ Bean nods. ] Heropa, Nonah. I tried to stay in Cape Canaveral longer, but they wouldn't let me.

[ No matter how Bean had insisted he was a soldier in the I.F., that rank held no sway here. ]

[hatejakku]

[ Finn frowns. ] I didn't try to stay longer than I had to, but I didn't realize they weren't letting us look around. [ He had big plans of going back there, actually. ]

[justlittle]

[ Bean just nods, frowning. ]

It doesn't go very far in getting me to trust them.

[hatejakku]

Me either. It's not like things don't sound bad already. They take us from our homes to give his powers and brands?

[ Not a great thing to say to an already paranoid kid, but Finn doesn't see the flaw in speaking up either. Unless they're listening in, that is. ]

[justlittle]

It's not like we didn't have important things to do back on our own worlds.

[ At least Bean did. But then, what could be so important for a seven year old? Oh, only the fate of the planet Earth... ]

[hatejakku]

Tell me about it. [ Said under his breath and in a huff... ]

So, what's your home like? Not this, I take it.

[justlittle]

[ Bean shoves his hands in his pockets as he walks, looking around with his keen eye. ]

My Earth was further in the future than this one. The city I'm from is more crowded, dirtier. More homeless kids running arround. [ He looks up at Finn, not explicitly stating he was one of them, but implying it. He's also judging how much he wants to tell Finn about himself. In the end, he decides there's no harm in trusting him a little. For now. ]

I left the planet about a year ago, to attend a military school. [ A gross oversimplification of Battle School's true purpose, but it would do for now. ]

[hatejakku]

[ Finn nods to the story, already feeling a little exhausted about it. He knew back home that there were enlisted people who also had no real choice. This sounded like much the same. ]

I hope it was better. [ But he already feels like it probably wasn't. ] I was in a military, too, ever since I was young. Younger than you are now. [ So... he gets it. ]

[justlittle]

It was... different. [ Whether Battle School, with its constant tests both academic and psychological, was better than struggling for survival on the streets of Rotterdam... Bean isn't really sure.

The last thing Finn says gets Bean's attention. Younger than him? ]

I was the youngest student in Battle School history. They made an exception for me. [ Because he was also the smartest student in Battle School history. ] You must have been really special to start so young.

[hatejakku]

No, I wasn't. I wasn't the only one.

But you must be a genius for them to make an exception. [ Or he knew someone. Someone that was able to get him in or someone they wanted leverage against.

But maybe it was his own merits. Bean certainly didn't seem to be faking anything. ]

[justlittle]

[ Of course. Why hadn't Bean seen it right away. A whole army of soldiers, conscripted from a young age. Birth, probably. That would be the best way to ensure compliance with your rules and structure. It's the logical conclusion of what Battle School started. Don't just train the smartest minds. Train every young mind. Armies need footsoldiers, too. ]

That, or they were getting desperate. We were fighting a war. They trained kids to be commanders, to win it once and for all. [ He shrugs, feeling somewhat detached from it all now, even though the final battle took place less than a week ago, for him. ] I was their second choice, in the end, to command the fleet against the enemy's home world.

[hatejakku]

[ The battle Bean almost alludes to sounds decisive, but he doesn't want to make any assumptions about that kind of thing. ]

That's-... [ Children as Commanders sounds... extremely desperate. Even so, he doesn't plan on underestimating Bean any time soon. ] It sounds like a very high honor. [ But even the way he says it is almost automatic, like he knows better but doesn't want to discredit Bean's achievements. ]

[justlittle]

[ Bean brushes off the compliment. He doesn't want any high honors. Not after seeing the toll it all took on Ender. He would never see his friend again, because Ender could never return to Earth. If the Porter should have taken any of the Battle School graduates, it should have taken Ender.

Bean is quiet for a moment as he thinks of this, before he deftly changes the subject. ]

What sort of war were you raised to fight?

[hatejakku]

[ Finn stayed quiet through Bean's thoughts before grimacing at the question. The answer had been so easy before. ]

They said it was to bring peace to the galaxy. Really, we were trained to create a hostile takeover.

I've... recently switched sides. Now I fight with the people trying to stop them. [ Still fighting, though. Always fighting. He was starting to believe there was nothing else for people like him. ]

[justlittle]

[ Bean considers this. It sounds preposterous to him. No human would join forces with the Buggers. Or, perhaps he should think of it the other way around. No bugger would switch sides and fight against their own kind. Because the Formics were the invaders, weren't they? That is, until the most recent battles. Until the International Fleet showed up on their doorstep and destroyed all their queens. Total xenocide.

If it was so easy for Finn to switch sides, it must have been a very different sort of war. ]

I take it it's not a racial fight? Humans versus aliens.

[hatejakku]

[ He wouldn't say easy. ]

Not... really. I mean, everyone I've seen in the First Order, the ones trying to take over everything- They've all been human. I didn't really notice it until I joined the other side, where everyone fights together.

The First Order has standards on what they think superiority means and it's getting really specific.

[ He grimaces again just thinking about how much he hates Ren and Hux. In the end, they were going to be swept under, too. Idiots. Or they were before Snoke was killed. ]

Is that what your war was about? Humans versus everything else?

[justlittle]

[ Bean thinks briefly of the inevitable wars waiting for him back on his Earth. The fight for supreme rule of Earth now that the unification over the war against the Buggers is over. Man fighting man. Back to the old divisions of national and religious lines. ]

Well. Versus one specific everything else. [ His little shoulders shrug. ] There could be more out there besides the Formics, but we haven't seen them yet. Humanity is pretty much limited to our one planet so far.

[ That is, not counting their stations and bases in space, on former Formic-held worlds. ]

[hatejakku]

[ That gets an eyebrow raise out of him. ]

Most of the galaxy I'm from is colonized, and we travel... pretty freely from place to place. People who never leave their homeworld isn't unheard of but being cut off from the rest of the galaxy is pretty rare.

Sounds like a small population of humans.

[ So small, he could barely imagine it. ]

[justlittle]

Sounds like you're from a lot further along than we are, technology-wise. [ Humanity as Bean knows it has only just figured out faster than light communication. And even that is kept secret from the majority of the human race. ]

I don't know if I would call several billion "small." But compared to a whole galaxy, I suppose it makes sense.

[ That was the direction his world was heading in, he would guess. Earth can't support its growing population forever. As soon as technology catches up and becomes widely available, humanity will spread to the stars.

That's not Bean's concern, though. He's not sure he'll live long enough to see it play out. ]

[hatejakku]

Several billion is pretty big for one planet, even where I'm from.

[ He never knew exact numbers unless the planets were important to his mission, but he did know the population in some areas before.

Regardless, he can finally see the park. ] Looks nice. They keep it up. The people must care around here.

[justlittle]

[ With his lower vantage point, Bean has to crane his neck to see the park up ahead, glimpsing the tops of trees and a gate and little else. It does look nice, from what Bean can see. He can't remember the last time he was in a park. ]

They have the time to care. [ No wars to make them forget about the small things. A luxury that must be nice. It would drive Bean crazy, though, not having a use to put his mind to.

He's reminded of a Bible verse, of Sister Carlotta. ]

"Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it."

[ He looks up at Finn, a small smile on his lips. ] I guess it's our turn to pursue peace for a while.