now don't be rude

[maskormods]

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.

Comments

2!

[hostage]

[That's a new arrival, alright. He remembers having done the same thing, staring at his wrist for hours and wondering about all the implications of literally becoming the government's property. He'd done it in private, though, where nobody could see just how upset he was about it. It isn't smart, he knows, to let them know how much you hate them when they own you.

He comes up from behind her, leaning up against the back of the bench to peer over her shoulder. He's smoking a cigarette, but he turns his head to exhale in the opposite direction. Politely impolite.]

Some crazy shit, ain't it.

[starbuckaroobanzai]

[Scully glances up, gaze coolly assessing -- someone who's used to having to read people before she engages with them and someone, therefore, who is used to being unsafe. She's much too unsettled and it's too habitually ingrained for it to be anything but obvious. After a few moments of searching, she offers a soft, drily humorous huff.]

Crazy is one word for it.

[That it's shit she's not about to contest. A few seconds pass and she looks down again, turning her arm to hide the tattoo and flexing her fingers. Crazy she's used to. Crazy is something that can be explored and explained, and this doesn't have to be. It's not incomprehensible, it's just cruel.

No. No, that's not quite true. She would like some answers.]

It's inhumane.

[Obscene, even, and she doesn't consider herself easily offended, especially after all she's seen. She's been catalogued, tagged, and chipped before, but the men who had treated her with such callous disdain at home had never gone as far as to brand her for everyone else to see. That isn't to say that she's looking back with a sick fondness on the Consortium: these people haven't tried to kill her... yet.

Then again, maybe they've as good as done. There certainly doesn't seem to be much room here for Dana Scully as she was, and after seven years' work on the X-Files, she doesn't know if she remembers how to be anything but.]

[hostage]

[Most people tend to stare at him a little too long. He's got that look about him that makes them think he's going to steal their wallet or something. So it doesn't even faze him, her looking at him like that.

He pulls back the sleeve of his hoodie, to reassure her by showing his own hand. He's already got one tattoo on the back of it - a tribal scorpion that he surely got for himself - but on his wrist is that government stamp that reads REGISTERED. They're comrades.]

Don't try and get rid of it. Nothing works, believe me. It's got a tracker in it, too, so ain't no use in hopping a boat to South America.

[starbuckaroobanzai]

I'm a medical doctor. If I can work out the method of implantation...

[She trails off, giving her wrist another glance and curling her fingers reflexively. As much as she balks at the idea, it remains to be seen whether or not removing the markings or the tracking device via surgical intervention would be worth the trouble or the risk. The consequences for removal, even assuming she or anyone else could accomplish it, might be too steep. Sighing, she rubs at the back of her neck, fingertips ghosting over the little scar just above the vertebra prominens. This won't be the first time she's been made to tolerate being tagged and tracked, or else.]

You know, I am getting really tired of this shit.

[She offers it with a wry smile and a pounding heart. There, in one sentence, she's offered more information about herself than she's been willing to offer in years, and to a stranger. Not just a stranger, a kid, whose mannerisms and manner of dress suggest enough about him that she wouldn't under normal circumstances risk him as a confidant. It doesn't matter now, and anyway, she hasn't offered detail, nothing more than what might be inferred. Maximum catharsis with minimum risk. In that sense she's always been a coward.]

[hostage]

[He's been here long enough to have heard all kinds of stories. That she might've been through this before - maybe on the regular - isn't particularly surprising. But he gives her a sympathetic little smile and offers his own:]

Me, too.

[He straightens up out of his lean and steps around the side of the bench, so he can talk to her without making her crane her neck.]

You smoke?

[It's an offer. He's already pulling the cigarette pack from his pocket.]

[starbuckaroobanzai]

[For a moment, she seems to be considering it. The vague tug of a latent craving pulls at her, but it remains nothing more than vague, and she shakes her head. Even if she had found herself wanting one, she’s done sufficiently many autopsies on sufficiently many smokers as to turn her off to the idea entirely.]

Not since I was an undergrad, but thanks.

[It had been a logical extension of earlier rebellions, a habit acquired from nights on the porch of the family home, smoking her mother’s cigarettes in one of the first, decidedly teenaged manifestations of a rebelliousness that would follow her through the rest of her life. Once she’d been on her own, though, standing nearer the edges of her father’s shadow, the act had ceased to appeal for its own sake, and she’d realised she’d never enjoyed it much in the first place.

In retrospect, probably a good thing. The less that ties her to that chain-smoking bastard the better.

In lieu of accepting a cigarette, she gives the stranger another once-over.]

Do you get to do this often? Give the welcoming speech?

[Both too frequently and too infrequently betray the possibility of an ulterior motive. Scully searches for them out of habit.]

[hostage]

[He shrugs and tucks the pack away again. Figures, really. What kind of doctor smokes nowadays? But it seemed rude not to offer when he's working on one himself.

He takes a seat on the bench so he isn't looming over her - on the edge to give her some space, considering how she keeps looking at him.]

Most imPorts come in here not knowing anybody, so... Yeah, I guess I done it a few times. All we got is each other, really. You didn't hear me say it, but I don't trust the feds around here. And everybody else, you know, either they wanna kill us or they think we're something we ain't and get all weird about it.

"Superheroes". Come on.

[He shakes his head and takes a drag.]

[starbuckaroobanzai]

[Scully, who's heard plenty stranger, smiles to herself.]

I have a friend back home who'd say that's a matter of power and the willingness to use it towards a moral end.

[He'd say it archly, loftily, with a brightness in his eyes that would betray it for the joke that it is, a needling at the edges of her rigid insistence upon the need for evidence, for some modicum of the quantifiable. And though she's perfectly capable of speaking philosophically, she'd play the devil's advocate, and together they'd pass the time. There's a difference, though, between what is said and what is believed.]

Of course, he'd probably also say that no real person could ever achieve that kind of perfect moral balance, that we're too absorbed in our own concerns and our own ambitions. What I can't work out is why they'd take that risk.

[She looks at him as though anticipating an answer, as though she's used to being half of a pair, not just thinking on her own but reaching conclusions collaboratively. There's an expectation of response, explicit or unspoken, in the way her eyes flick over his features.]

I didn't have to hear you say it; I mean, there's got to be something more going on here than they're letting on. Nobody could be that stupid.

[She says it with conviction, trying to convince herself as much as him that there's a purpose for her here beyond that outlined by their captors, something to investigate. After a brief pause she sighs frustratedly, giving a vague gesture of the hand.]

Or maybe I'm just getting paranoid. I don't know.

[Maybe she's spent too much time around Mulder... but then, she's here. If there were ever a time to be paranoid, this would be it.]

[hostage]

[She's talking to a meth head. He's not exactly going to judge her for being paranoid. His lips twist into a crooked little smile and he taps off his ashes.]

Well, if you ask me, we're mostly here as an insurance policy. This world's version of nukes. They're just stockpiling us, making the Russians sweat about it. The whole superhero thing's just to make us feel good about ourselves. And, you know, keep us thinking of ourselves as the good guys. 'cause shit could get real ugly fast if we decided we wanted to go bad.