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

[abdiction]

[ Barry nods at her correction, bobbing his head forward and back quickly and brushing his hand anxiously back through his hair. ]

R-right, most people don't. A lotta people, they think I'm pretty weird, you know? Because I dream about aliens all the time. Maybe it is weird, but I-I can't exactly help it, either. Honestly I'd much rather they just leave me alone. I don't even got the constitution for space travel, just flying in an airplane's enough to get me queasy. But, uh--

[ He bites the corner of his lip, looking at his own REGISTERED tattoo when she mentions the implants and curling his fingers into his clammy palm. ]

Lost time I have some experience with. I sleepwalk plenty, a-and my memory isn't too good anyway, but I don't think I've ever been in a spaceship. Or even seen an alien in person, but for all I know... [ Could be what the dreams are, he reminds himself to write down -- repressed memories -- even if he's written this thought down before. He sounds interested and a little awed as he asks: ] Do you really think that's possible?

[starbuckaroobanzai]

I don't know.

[There's the edge of an old frustration in her voice and in the helpless gesture she sketches in the air, a simple parting of the hands. She knows what she'd rather believe and she knows what she's seen and she knows what she's managed to gather hard evidence to support and the three don't always align as neatly as she'd like.]

I don't know what to believe, but there's got to be something I can find evidence to support.

[The possibility of the rest isn't something she necessarily wants to touch. She certainly doesn't want to feed his paranoia by mentioning that she's encountered men she was told were aliens, men who could look at any moment like anyone they wanted, nigh unto unkillable bounty hunters who'd nearly killed her and Mulder more than once. He doesn't need to know about the black oil, or the crashed vessel she'd found on the African coast with the Bible and the Qur'an etched on its surface in ancient Navajo, which had brought the dead back to life and made the sea run red like blood. He doesn't know that she's fallen to her knees in front of seraphim or met a little boy who could read the thoughts of those around him. Mulder's conviction has always been that the truth should be known, that what they do should be accessible to the public, to the world. That proof belongs to the people.

Scully, on the other hand, has seen what the pursuit of it has done to him. To the both of them. To their families, and what scant handful of friends they might once have had. People die for this sort of thing, and they die senselessly.

It isn't, ultimately, that she thinks him crazy. She doesn't think he's right, and she'd put her money on delusion, but it doesn't sound any less rational in a way than anything Mulder puts in his reports or posits on a case, and she sees the value in him. That is in a way her purpose these past seven years: to see value. To believe as earnestly as she can bring herself to believe that Mulder — and by extension this man — are worth no less for what they believe and whatever has made them believe it. Years ago she might have scoffed, but more recently she's sat at the bedside of dying women who believed they were paying the price of what they believed to be their abductions and she could find no evidence to tell them no, even if she had been able to find the heart.

Maybe that, ultimately, is why she says it, looking down at her own hands.]

Five years ago I went missing. Nobody could find me. Not the police, not the FBI. I was taken... by a man, I remember that much. To a mountain. I was gone for four weeks before someone deposited me in the ICU of a hospital in D.C. in a comatose state. We still don't know how I got there or who brought me.

My partner thinks...

[He can work it out on his own, no doubt. Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?

Logically, I'd have to say no.

That was a long time ago. Now she is, in spite of herself, less sure.]

Never mind what my partner thinks. I don't remember much, and the only evidence I've ever found implicates the US government, not visitors from another planet. So I don't know, I have no idea what to believe but I can tell you with certainty that people with enough power and motivation to do terrible things to other people will do those things. That's somewhere to start.