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etcelsior2019-10-25 05:03 pm
maskormods) wrote in etcelsior2019-10-25 05:03 pm
Entry tags:
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.)
no subject
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.
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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...?
no subject
She's grateful for somewhere to start. ]
Oh, no. Not for a long time. I— well, I yo-yo'd out and back, a couple times, after you left. The second time I was gone long enough that Kanaya let the lease expire. She kept most of my stuff in storage, though, so I imagine she had one set aside for you, too.
[ She says the name with an easiness that Karkat won't recognize — nothing had ever been easy between them, even after Eridan was gone — but the melancholy is obvious, and the softness of her face as she talks.
After all. If Kanaya were still here, she would have been here by now. ]
So... I'm back, living here. Down the street from our first place.
no subject
Kanaya, who was a constant since before he even met Ruka, since before he ever came to the City, since before the game itself. He's never actually had to navigate a world without her in it, not for any meaningful length of time. It's not a skill he wants to learn. ]
She's-- she's thoughtful like that. I bet she beat herself up about letting the lease expire, too, like she hadn't already gone above and beyond what anyone would consider the extra mile.
[ There's a moment where he wonders, if he shouldn't suggest moving back in together. The idea of returning to the status quo, even in a small way, is powerfully tempting. The ache hasn't even really started yet, and already there's a frantic urge to do anything to make it hurt just a little bit less. ]
How long has it been, for you?
no subject
So much has changed. So much is gone. She never knows what to make of these little reunions, these little returns, but... all this time apart hasn't lessened how much he means to her.
Still. Nothing is easy to say. ]
I lost about two years. All together. I, um. I got back a year and a half ago, or about. ... I didn't "go" anywhere, though. It was just... a black spot of memory, then it's back at the Porter.
... Did you? "Go back."
[ They both know that nobody goes back. ]
no subject
No. As far as my personal sequence of events goes, I was here yesterday. A few hours ago, actually. I don't think it would have mattered one way or another, though. Whatever is going on back in the alpha timeline stopped having anything to do with me a long time ago. [ Ah, there's a familiar wheelhouse of his. The existential despair takes root easily, given his current circumstances. Do those feelings even matter? Is he crossing some sort of philosophical threshold, thinking that?
What do you do with the fact that you effectively stopped existing for half a decade, and the world simply moved on without you? Everything he'd been worrying about, wallowing in... it's old news, by now. ]
Ruka, don't take this the wrong way. [ He draws up short, and places his hand over the one on his shoulder. An affirmative gesture, at first, until he slowly peels the hand away. ] I mean it, this isn't. This isn't me telling you to fuck off, or anything. I feel the same way about you as I did-- three years ago, from your point of view. And... that's a problem, now.
[ He takes a deep breath, and a single step back. ]
I think I need some time, on my own, to think. If it's really been three years for you, and I've been just another photo in a picture album that abandoned you for all that time--if I keep hanging around you now, without getting some distance, I'm just... going to act like everything is the way it was before, and when it doesn't work that way, because there's no way it can be the same after all that time, I'll probably start to resent you. Maybe we'd even stop being friends over it.
I'm not sure I could deal with that, Ruka. I'm pretty sure that would make me just completely lose my mind, and neither of us wants that.
[ IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME. ]
no subject
It doesn't keep her from flinching away from the worst of it, though. I'll resent you. It's not like he's wrong.
With nowhere else for her hands to go, one clutches the other arm at the elbow; as she talks, the other follows suit, folding into a show cross. ]
Yeah. That's... I... I think you're right. I mean, I never thought you abandoned me. [ Not like so many others. Not like people who cut their distance, or forgot her face, or were blind to get existence. But she shakes her head, moving on before he can secure. ] But, a lot is distant. I'm... different, now. Than I used to be.
... I don't know, how much of the me you knew back then is left. ... I don't know if I feel like the same person.
no subject
Right. But I'm still the same. I need to deal with that. [ I need to grieve, he means, but it seems kind of a faux pas to say that to her face? She's not dead, she's just not the same. ] And I know that-- talking about everything, that used to be our thing, but I'm not sure you're the right person for me to be talking to about this. Actually, I'm positive you're not the right person to hear about the latest chapter in my ongoing existential crisis. Maybe nobody is? It might be something I need to come to terms with on my own.
[ She's too close to it, and he thinks most of it would make her feel guilty for doing things like moving on. ]
no subject
[ That strange cousin of grief: mourning the friend you lost, even as they stand in front of you. Mourning the time spent without them, and all that has changed without them. Mourning the place where you could be, if it hasn't gone that way. Mourning your own grief, that now needs to be shoved away. ]
... You'll. Let me know? When... you're ready for me?
[ If. If he ever wants to, really. She can't be the same person she was back then, after all. She can't cut the years off of her personality to become who he remembers. More than that, she doesn't want to. Not when she's finally worth something. ]
You know how to find me.