etcelsior | HERE I COME

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test drive

HERE I COME

NOTE: This is the final test drive of 2019 as apps will be closed in December.

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, Florida 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. Some of the locals might thank you for always lending your service to the nation, while others might not say anything -- but if you have something nasty to say, better not say anything at all, right?

The recent dimensional anomalies have disrupted people's daily business more than a little, but the latest danger is a herd of zombies shambling towards the annual Mister and Miss Corncob beauty pageant. Right in the middle of the swimsuit competition, too! Of course, who gets the crown is partially based on audience appreciation — are you going to take out some of the undead or cheer your favorite participant on to victory? Either way, you're (probably) a hero!

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! 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. 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. Their questions are likely to be fairly mundane, however; get ready for an interview about your taste in romantic partners, personal underwear choices, favorite foods, and more!

It's nearly Halloween, and the annual city parade and costume contest are underway! You've got one, right? The locals just love it! If you don't, well, that's okay — just for imPorts, there's a special costume rummage bin at the start of the parade route. Try cobbling something together from costume shop donations and items left behind by ported-out heroes! Then strut your stuff and prepare to be cheered for!

03. Maurtia Falls, Pennsylvania has had its ups and downs since imPorts started disappearing. The city's political core now gutted with its mayor and supreme ambassador exported out, the streets have returned to the hands of the local people -- and incidental, the local criminal element. 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.

Despite the lack of gratitude that's in it for you, you may want to step in once you see a very, very sad supervillain wandering Maurtia Falls' streets. Dressed in a cape that appears to be a large swath of fabric purchased from a nearby sewing store, galaxy-themed leggings and no shirt is a man who runs right into your vicinity before striking a pose and yelling, "Everyone, stop before me and my wrath! I am Mister Mars, and provided you give me what I ask for, nobody needs to get hurt!"

At which point Mister Mars snatches an old woman's purse, loudly laughs in her face, and begins to float upwards. By the time he reaches the height of the tallest building in the area, he's beginning to look slightly panicked as he fails to really be able to move anywhere but up. Meanwhile, the old woman has begun shaking her cane at him and screaming quite an assortment of alarming expletives.

Maybe you should help one or the other out? If not, just lean back and enjoy the show.

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. To be American is to be part of a melting pot, and that there’s more money to be made by the thriving local industries hardly hurts.Natives may gather around new arrivals and ask both personal and broad questions about life as an imPort, what they are looking forward to, what their favorite article of underwear is. A few night clubs offer free entrance - just this once!

In the middle of the city's biggest park is an autumn tradition — a corn maze! Of course, it's not real corn, since there hasn't been time to grow it. But craft supplies store Mikey's is sponsoring a maze built with genuine imitation corn, and hundreds of locals have already enjoyed getting lost inside! Curiously, few of them have come out the exit, and those who venture inside will discover the maze is twistier and deeper than they ever could have anticipated. Somehow, it's bigger on the inside, thanks (no doubt) to some dastardly villain's powers. Will you try to navigate a way to the exit, forge your way through the stalks, or have a nap?

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.

Things are quiet in Jeopardy. Weirdly quiet. In fact, way, way too quiet. But if you ask any of the citizens of the city why they won't talk to you, they just raise a finger and make a shhhhing sound and then point down the street towards the church. If you try to shake them, they grit their teeth. WHY WILL NO ONE SPEAK TO YOU?

(The one who is silent the longest wins a new fridge.)

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heropa.

[ There's something different about Heropa, when Karkat steps out into the sun and has to shade his eyes from the glare with a wince. The shambling hoard of the undead, sure, that's not an everyday thing, but it's not too far out of what Karkat would consider ordinary for Florida. What strikes him as more odd are smaller details. A different storefront here, a new palm tree there.

He knows he's been Ported out, but how long, exactly?

To be honest, he'd prefer tracking down a newspaper to find out, but he's not enough of a bastard to just stand there and watch a bunch of scantily-clad, helpless humans get eaten by zombies. Of course, there's every chance he's just offering himself up as an appetiser, and if that happens he's going to be really pissed, but that's a problem for future Karkat.

He draws his sickles with a long-suffering kind of sigh and dashes to catch up with the hoard. He leaps forward, brings both sickles around, and the head of the nearest zombie is abruptly rolling across the pavement. ]

[ You go through one undead infestation, you go through three, you go through a dozen — a girl gets used to the danger, and at the end of the day, you still need to go to the store for eggs and rice at some point.

This is that point.

There's a pageant; there's a decent crowd of regular people; there's a smaller, negligible crowd of the undead drawn in by the spectacle of human flesh illuminated by sunlight; there's Ruka, walking past all this without even an upward glance from her phone. At least, not until her closed-off power-stroll to the market is interrupted when her cute boot kicks into and gets stuck in the severed head of the recently redeceased.

She looks at the zombie head in its eyes, and makes an ugly face in reply. ]

Ugh. Fucking gross.

[ Time to gently... kick the head... off of her shoe...

... and send it flying... back into the crowd of zombies... where it, quite messily, inevitably strikes the guy who decapitated the corpse in the first place.

A most warm and rancid revenge. ]

[ The undead aren't exactly coordinated, but there are a lot of them, and they don't really respond to things like pain or grievous bodily injury, so Karkat really has no attention to spare for whoever might be inconvenienced by stray chunks of flying zombie. That is, until he abruptly becomes one of those people.

The head somewhat disintergrates when it hits him with a wet splat, leaving chunks of decomposing skin and muscle all down the back of his shirt. It fucking reeks, and he's going to have to burn this shirt, and maybe himself, too. ]

What -- [ It's a skill, being able to throw a tantrum no matter the circumstances. A very specific form of multitasking that Karkat is uniquely talented in. ] -- the pungent flapwhiffing fuck was that for?

[ He hasn't turned to look at whoever just threw a decapitated head at him, because he's busy relieving another zombie of its right arm before it can grab his wrist. He whirls around to face the general direction it came from, and there's a brief flash of recognition-- someone he knows? --before he's distracted again. ]

I take the time out of my very busy day-- to clean up someone else's out of control undead infestation, and you people are throwing heads at me? Un-be-LIEVABLE! [ Another slash, another twirl, and there's a lull in the oncoming attacks long enough to allow him to get a good look at whoever just made it to the top of today's shitlist. ]

Ruka? Oh, of course! Just stand there, why don't you! See if you can hit me in the face this time! Maybe some of it will go in my mouth, and you can watch me choke to death on a chunk of festering zombie ooze! It's not like a little help would be great right around now! Have a categorical fuck you, you desultory piece of shit.

[ Considering this is her best friend come back from the void after an absence of, how many years now? Three? Five? (Both?) Well, considering the time, a reunion should be, if not an outright happy affair, then at least an emotional one. Ruka has missed Karkat, more than she's ever rightly known how to put into words, and the sight of him here, now, whole and (mostly) unharmed, it should be... it should be something.

But it is not something. It is this. Ruka crosses her arms, sparing a glance to the horde as Karkat de-limbs what's within reach, and as the others turn away from pedestrians and instead towards them, Ruka...

well. She heaves out a sigh, feeling both that no time has passed at all, and that decades entirely have crashed down on her shoulders. ]

If I wanted to see you choke to death, I'd just do it myself, you know. [ Blithe. ] Do you actually want my help? You seem to be having a good enough time, managing on your own.

[ Friends. ]

Oh, yes, I'm having the time-- ugh! [ Another reaching, grasping, rotting hand. This is awful! Why did he jump into this! He should have just let the stupid underdressed aliens get torn apart. This has nothing to do with him. ] I'm having the time of my life, here, plainly!

The only thing I can imagine that would make this moment any better would be if someone with the ability to produce shielding bubbles would, I don't know, corral this unruly hoard of animated corpses before they start tearing apart hapless bystanders! Or, you know, before one of them fucking bites me, Ruka! I would just go into paroxysms of joy in the event of that totally unrealistic and impossible hypothetical scenario!

[ Please help him he's not actually very good at fighting multiple enemies, his weapon choice is close quarters and meant for one-on-one combat. ]

Edited 2019-10-26 03:24 (UTC)

You're lucky I still can.

[ The light along her arm isn't visible when her birthmark begins to glow, but the shield itself is obvious enough — it zips towards Karkat with the speed and fury of a particularly ornery wasp. It swells to full size around him, first, pushing the undead away from close quarters (and severing the hands of a couple that couldn't retreat back fast enough), and then returns to her side with the troll contained inside. It knocks over other zombies as it goes, and without ceremony the bubble stops with Karkat next to her, then zips off without him back into the fray. It shrinks quickly, no larger than a baseball, and in quick, zagging motions it moves from corpse to corpse, intangible only until it connects with a spine, and then solidifying to tear through their necks like shotgun blasts.

Bodies hit the ground with quick, sickening wetness.

Ruka doesn't watch her work; her arms remain crossed, and she looks instead at Karkat, face pale and damp with sweat under the late it-shouldn't-still-be-summer-but-look-where-we-are sun. ]

Happy?

[ It doesn't even take a full minute. ]

[ The promised paroxysms of joy don't come, and instead he's getting to his feet (he'd fallen, when Ruka's bubble unceremoniously dumped him beside her) with his nose crinkled in disgust at the smell still wafting off his shirt. ]

What do you think? I need to set myself on fire, like, right now, if I'm ever going to feel clean again. Thanks for that, by the way.

[ That sun really has more of a bite to it than it should, and he raises his hand to shield his eyes again. His skin prickles, indicating the risk of his version of a sunburn if he stays out too long. ]

Hey, uh. What date is it?

And I have to get new shoes, again. [ a pause. ] I wasn't aiming for you, you know. It was an accident.

[ She looks him over, the misery and the frustration of the last few minutes fading away, and her expression gets a little softer. She doesn't know how to say this gently. ]

... October something. The twenty... sixth?

Yeah, all right, I guess I can find it in the endless well of magnanimity within my blood pusher to forgive you. [ He says this a little distractedly, because he's squinting at another storefront that he's sure used to be a milkshake joint, but is now an ice cream parlour. Done up totally different and everything. ]

And... the year? [ His tone of voice suggests that he knows he won't like the answer. The look on her face tells him as much. ]

[ She doesn't say the number right away, but the answer is all around them. The new storefronts; the trees that are a little bit taller, a little bit broader than they used to be. Buildings where there were empty lots before; a park where a store used to be. Age in the pavement. Fade to the paintings.

In Ruka, herself. Sure, she's not any taller than the last time Karkat saw her, relatively hours ago, but of course she's different. The hairstyle is new. The clothes aren't familiar. Fatigue carries different in her face — the bags for a lack of sleep are usual, but her cheeks don't look quite as hollowed out as they did yesterday. Her gloves are the wrong color.

Her heart beats differently. ]

It's... um. Twenty-nineteen.

[ Oh. ]

Oh.

[ There's a moment where he reels, a little, rocks back like the words are a blow. He looks around again, at everything that is the same and everything that is different. Five years. Two and a half sweeps. He looks back at Ruka, and this time he sees her, the difference in the way she holds herself. The hair, the clothes, the--

He frowns, then, and focuses in on her empathic input. There's something... missing? And it's more... fluid? Almost as if it's--

The same as his. ]

Oh, wow. [ This is a lot. ] Okay. Alright. Let me just take a rain check on the utterly hysterical meltdown I'm certainly going to have once I let the full implications of that statement sink in. I'm not fucking doing this now. Nope. Nuh-uh. I need a new shirt and a shower before I'm even going to begin to examine that one.

[ She can feel the start of it — bubbles of air climbing the side of a pot with water not yet ready to boil — but it doesn't shake her demeanor, or force her into the same rhythm. Now that there's not also all those cadavers to deal with, she's a lot more steady.

Of course, the polite thing would be to not leave dismembered corpses in the public square, but they're not getting paid for this either.

She glances away. ]

The community pool should be open. They have showers.

[ And probably at least six abandoned t-shirts ready to be repurposed. ]

[ Ruka's suggestion confuses him for a beat. The turn he would expect this to take if five years hadn't passed overnight would be them going back to their shared house, Karkat taking a shower in his own bathroom, and digging through his own bedroom for a clean shirt in his own chest of drawers.

He catches on pretty quick, at least, and boxes up whatever feelings he might have about that to put aside for later. Years of proximity empathy come in handy, sometimes, when you need to do some compartmentalising in a pinch. If he's going to have some sort of episode, he's not going to do it while covered in zombie.

Would he have waited five years, for her? Unlikely. It would hurt too much. ]

Yeah, okay. Let's get out of here before that sun makes the stench any worse.

[ CONVENIENT TIMESKIP post-shower at the community pool. He doesn't have a towel, so his hair is dripping everywhere, and most shirts in the Lost and Found were too small, but the oversized magenta t-shirt they'd managed to wrangle is still a significant upgrade on what he'd been wearing, which has been banished to the bottom of a dumpster outside.

Although, now he doesn't have an excuse to avoid looking the elephant in the room head-on, he kind of wants to keep avoiding it.

He doesn't say anything until they're a few yards outside the community pool gates, and he realises he doesn't know where the fuck to go from here. ]

So, uh. Where do you live? If it's not a weird question. Or I guess, even if it is a weird question, because I just went ahead and asked it anyway. The old place, or...?

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dragony - 2019-10-28 07:36 (UTC) - Expand

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dragony - 2019-10-28 10:30 (UTC) - Expand

[ Funny how the universe works. The big old clusterfuck of time and space, a little meddling from the Porter, and the Spirit of the 21st Century finds herself getting reacquainted with an alternate dimension that comes back to her all too easily, even though she knows she's been gone for years. The shitshow state of affairs is familiar too. Alway felt like there'd been some kind of disaster going on, back then — her fault, at least once or twice. Good to know some things never change.

Zombies. It's quaint.

The girl takes a moment to press a cigarette between her lips as she wanders the infested Heropa streets. Snap — a blue light sparks at her fingertips, lighting up her smoke. Snap — more blue light, as a handful of nearby zombies explode in a splatter of gore.

Then, through the fine spray of rot and blood, she spots him.

...Hell. Figures.

Jenny puts her sneaker on the rolling head of Karkat's most recent victim, stopping it underneath her heel. Wryly, she calls out: ]

Don't know why they'd bother - you're barely a a bite and a half.

[ How long has it been since he heard Jenny Quantum's voice? Well, from his perspective, an extended series of months. If he knew how long it's really been since either of them existed within the same temporal plane, his reaction to their sudden reunion would probably be significantly more embarrassing.

That doesn't mean he isn't going to embarrass himself anyway, though. Why else would she have ever agreed to date him if not for the endless supply of schadenfreude? ]

Why don't you take a bite and a half of my chafe-worn ass, Quantum? [ The mist of rot and blood is absolutely disgusting, and the aerosolised smell is actually making it hard to not be sick. ] Could you use your demented powers to clean this mess up, before I puke up some vital alien organ and die in a puddle of miscellaneous fluids?

Edited 2019-10-28 06:43 (UTC)

[ The corner of her mouth quirks upward around her cigarette. Apparently, despite the ongoing zombie apocalypse, Jenny can still find a minute to be amused that Karkat sounds exactly as she remembers him. Whatever he's been up to back home, it hasn't changed the fact that he's an insufferable, cranky little asshole, and she loves it. ]

You know it doesn't work like that. [ She says so, but as a zombie lumbers up behind her, there's a brilliant blue flash of her eyes as the rotting thing explodes into corpse confetti. ] This universe doesn't listen to me anymore than you fucking do.

[ She gives the decapitated head at her feet a light kick, sending it flying back in Karkat's direction. With a shrug: ]

Puke if you have to. [ Dryly, then: ] I'll wait.

I listen to you. When the words coming out of your squawk hole aren't just belligerent rubbish. [ Said Karkat Vantas, reigning king of belligerent rubbish.

He dodges the head with an expression of disgust, and then marches on up to her, because he's missed her, and he kind of wants to-- do something embarrassing and affectionate, probably. Not that he's going to admit that. ]

Wait for what? [ Irritable, but not as irritable as his usual. He folds his arms. ] What, were you gonna kiss my nasty puke mouth? Gross. [ He says this as though the idea of Jenny kissing him is completely insane, and not something that used to happen on a semi regular basis. ]

[ She eyes him up and down casually as he approaches her, tilting her head to one side as if to make a show of her appraisal. Half the motivation is probably just to see if he'll berate her for it. The other half is curiosity - she wants to see if anything's different from what she remembers. ]

Wait for you to finish. [ Finally, she relieves him of her blatant attention, turning her face away to exhale a mouthful of smoke while her cigarette hangs between her fingers. ] Why, did you want me to kiss your nasty puke mouth with my belligerent, rubbish-spewing squawk hole?

[ It's a casual question. Like the scenario she's describing isn't so outlandish. Or at least not anymore outlandish than anything else in this universe, zombies included. ]

[ He's taller, a little longer in the hair and the face, and his irises are more red than grey, but apart from that there's little change in his attitude or demeanour. Maybe a fraction of a percentage more mellow, less wound up, but who's to say?

He's still wearing her jacket. ]

No! [ He says, too fast, voice pitched up slightly in the way it gets when he's embarrassed. ] Not... here. [ In public. ] And not until I'd washed my mouth out.

[ She's noticed the jacket. Hasn't called him out for it yet, which is either her being unusually merciful or waiting for a more amusing opportunity. She's noticed that she has to look up at him a little now too.

The way his voice pitches when he's flustered is still the same though.

Casually: ]

So, just to be clear - [ Snap. A zombie that was starting to lumber towards them bursts into an eruption of blood and goo. ] - you do want me to kiss you with my belligerent, rubbish-spewing squawk hole.

Edited 2019-10-30 06:48 (UTC)

Not if you're going to be a smug nook fiddler about it. [ That's not a no, but he doubts she'll let him get away with that dodge. ] Ugh. Yes, all right? You shouldn't even have to ask this question, and I know for a fact you're just doing it to watch me squirm.

[ He flinches at the snap, and it occurs to him that this is one of the more ridiculous settings for what should be an emotional reunion he's ever been in. ]

It's been five years. [ At least by this universe's accounting. She's still casual about it though. And it's not clear how she knew that - did the universe tell her? Does she just know because she's the 21st Century embodied and that shit is innate with her? ] Seemed fucking polite to ask.

[ Let it not be said that Apollo didn't manage to teach Jenny some manners. Maybe one (1) whole manner, because she's back to dry mockery in a heartbeat: ]

Or are you just letting everybody kiss you, as long as they don't mind a little bile aftertaste?

[ That draws him up short, and the look on his face is blank shock. ]

I... [ Abruptly, the petulant attitude he adopts for most of their back-and-forth drops away, and he genuinely reels, bringing a hand up to run through his hair. Sure, he'd been Ported out, but the longest he'd ever been gone was a month. ] I wasn't here.

The Porter just brought me back, like, an hour ago. As far as I was concerned, I was here yesterday, at which point you'd been gone, what, a few months? I haven't exactly had many opportunities to go on any wild make-out binges, even if I wanted to have one.

[ He's been home, sure. "Home" doesn't sound right, though-- kind of a misnomer. The Karkat in the alpha timeline seemed to be doing pretty well, but Karkat wishes the Porter wouldn't bother showing him any of it. None of it applies to him anymore. ]

[ She's quiet for a long second, just watching him - watching his reaction. Then, finally, she just lifts her cigarette back to her lips, taking a practiced drag before tilting her head up to exhale a mouthful of wisping smoke up at the sky. ]

Wouldn't blame you, if you had. [ Wanted to. Because she was gone. And life goes on, right? ] Haven't been back since the last time you saw me.

[ She shrugs a little. ]

Not until now, anyway.

Dunno if you ever picked this up about me, but that kind of thing is actually really difficult for me. [ He mumbles. He thinks about Dave Strider, and feels a painful tug in his heart, but-- but what? Jenny is here, and Dave isn't, and Dave has his own Karkat anyway. That doesn't mean the tug goes away, but Karkat chooses to put it aside. ] Really difficult.

HERE I COME

karkat vantas | homestuck

darling

never seen u before in my LIFE

i mean that is true in the very base technical sense

Re: i mean that is true in the very base technical sense

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