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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.)
omggggg aaaa that's a good canon point. i'm doing rachel earlier (last read-thru ended on #28)
she wraps her arms around him and gives a squeeze, friendly, and glad. she hears him, feels her own face bending into a smile so hard that it hurts. her eyes sting a little, but between the nearby battlefield and her own emotional calluses, she manages not to embarrass herself in that moment.
and then the next moment, she realizes there's something— extra about jake's reaction. she can't put her finger on it, exactly, and her mind immediately jumps to the obvious conclusion.] Hey, hey. How long have you been here by yourself? [that has to be it. she claps her hand on his shoulder, looking him over. it's not that she thinks he can't take care of himself, but they're a team.] I was thinking it's the Ellimist too. But I didn't get any explanation, and I haven't seen the others.
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and then he realises that she doesn't know. she doesn't know. she doesn't know. of course she doesn't, if she's younger. rachel pulls away and tries to jolly him out of it, and jake tries to rearrange his expression into something more normal. a smile, without looking like a rictus? god, he doesn't know what to do with his face. ]
I... No, I just got here. A few days ago. I'm still getting my bearings. I...
[ it's giving it away: there's something wrong with this picture and in his too-pale face, the way he just keeps looking at her. running into her here feels like a miracle, a second chance, but maybe it's also a nightmare. rachel's the albatross around his neck. she was always going to be. ]
Rachel, what's the last thing you remember? From back home.
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she remembers for entirely the wrong reason that jake might think. her expression drops. she isn't so hard to read, sometimes.]
We were on the Pemalite ship, bottom of the sea trench, [she says. intellectually, she knows that jake can't possibly know, this can't really be why he's acting so weird, but it's an... awkward moment, to say the least.] We'd stopped the Crayak from... influencing the timeline, changing the fate of the Iskoort. We went on the mission in squid morphs. On the ship, the Drode was talking to me, and I told him to go fuck himself.
[she didn't quite use those words because of the constraints of her genre, but she doesn't know that. the bigger point, the one she isn't saying, is that the drode had asked her to kill him— to kill jake. to earn her way into the legions of the crayak.
she hadn't been tempted. not for a second. but she knows it hadn't meant anything good, that she was the one that the drode had chosen to try to tempt. she blows a lock of stringy, blood-matted hair out of her face. she actually remembers, too, seeing tobias later. but she thinks that he means the last mission. after all, he's jake. worthy of the andalite title, even if he doesn't want to be a prince.]
Listen, Jake. [why does he look so pale?] The Crayak's not gonna win. I've got your back.
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the drode. and words that had burrowed into his head like the dark seed of a possibility, though he had spent years trying to forget them: have you killed your brother yet? no? well, you will.
it had taken so long to come true, but it did eventually. that incident was so much earlier in the war, and it's obvious by the ripple of surprise that goes across this face that he's caught off-guard by her answer. by rachel focusing on exactly the wrong thing. ]
Yeah, no, that's not— The Crayak didn't win. Doesn't win. It's okay.
[ his throat is clenched, and it's hard to talk around it. her reassuring words almost made it even worse, because it reminded him that she did have his back. she'd had his back, until the very end. jake scrubs at his face, as if he can wipe it all away. ]
I'm from later. We're used to time travel weirdness with the Ellimist and the Crayak, but this is still... I'm from a couple years later, Rachel.
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and she'll realize that's the consequence of a lot of things about her. bloodlust, the risks she's willing to take, that she wants to take.
and also: she tends to focus on the wrong thing. little bit.]
We won?
[just like that. she seizes his arm, not hard enough to hurt; trying to ground him. unable to make sense of the pale grief on his face. they won. she can't believe it! and there is that part of her, even before she's consciously thought about what cost of war could stumble jake berenson in victory, that has to believe, is already completely and abasolutely certain, that it was worth it. she laughs. it's heartfelt, comes from her heart, but there's an off-note quality to it. it would've been better if there had been no war to win.] Jake. That's incredible. My mom, Jordan, Sara? Your parents? Jake, come on.
[be happy with me. the thought lives adjacent to: you're scaring me. but she's bad at admitting that. the rush of triumph was always so much easier for her.]
Jake, come on. Think about it. We won. It was worth it! Everything.
welp sorry just ruining myself w feelings here
all of them would have given their left kidney to be told that they win. by the end, they were just ready for it to end one way or another, praying for it, but losing hope by the day. seeing peace slip further and further from their grasp. he'd managed it, he'd pulled it off against all odds, but—
at what fucking cost?
rachel's hand on his arm is steadying, but jake feels her touch like a burn. his other hand catches hers, traces the line of a knuckle, feels his cousin's pulse throbbing in her wrist. alive. he squeezes, once. he tries to smile reassuringly but it goes lopsided, doesn't sit right on his mouth. ]
Your mom, your sisters, my parents. They're all okay. Everyone else on the team, too.
[ there's an omission there. his dark eyes are staring into hers. steady, but it makes him look aged. old. marco had always said that, by the end, jake was an old man in a young boy's body. and even now, he's thinking— maybe he could lie. sweep it aside, save it to tell her another day. but it's written all over his face and rachel can already tell that there's something wrong; apart from marco, she's the animorph who's known him longest. ]
Rachel. You and Tom... You don't make it.
[ his grip tightens. ]
s c r e ams self inside out!
she doesn't smile -- more, mind you. she's just still smiling, even as red flags pop up in her head and the doubts begin to multiply. she sees every little off thing in her cousin's behavior, and it threatens the warm glow of her excitement, the sense of triumph. she doesn't want to be conflicted about this, damn it, jake.
but there he goes. he tells her.
for a moment, she doesn't believe him. no more than any sixteen-year-old girl can contemplate and accept her own mortality. her face, flushed an instant ago, turns white as chalk.
the next moment, she doesn't believe she heard him right.
and then the moment after that, she knows.
rachel doesn't have to sit down, but she isn't that girl, and he knows it. she doesn't swoon, fall. she doesn't even cast around for something smash. it's a horror, what he's telling her, but it's a horror that they have met before. death, they'd cheated, time and time again. and of all of the animorphs, with direct action, physical combat, rachel berenson took more lives than any of the others, as best as they can ever know.
it's quick and strange, the transition. but he can read it anyway, fifty subtle yet discrete shades of emotion passing over her face. kubler-ross's five, a dozen other strange hybrids that would be impossible to describe to anyone who had never had the heart of an actual fucking grizzly bear, beating inside their heart, once.
jake has. and every bear they've ever been was always fearless— but did not, like any of mother nature's other creations, ever want to die.]
How? [she asks. and then, because she's rachel:] Was it early?
[in the war, she means.]
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and he can give her this, at least: ]
No. It was... the end, the very end, the last battle. The one that won us the war. We— you— stopped Tom from getting away with the morphing cube.
[ it doesn't wash it away (nothing ever can), but it's what he's got. that her death mattered. it's the only thing jake had to lean on, too: that the sacrifice was important, that it wasn't all for fucking nothing. ]
He probably would've risen again with an entire faction of morph-capable Yeerks, and we couldn't let that happen. I couldn't.
I sent you in alone and made you kill him, and you died doing it. I'm— Rachel, I'm sorry. It was my fault. I'm so, so sorry.
[ his voice cracks and he looks so much less than the leader she's accustomed to. how many times had he had this silent internal conversation with her, above her grave, with a red-tailed hawk wheeling overhead? but this time, she's actually here. ]
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she needed these answers, and now she has them.
there are a long few seconds, in silence, where she stares at jake's face without seeing it. but slowly it seeps back into her awareness. his sad, worried eyes, always older in spirit than she had ever known them in the flesh. the stern line of his mouth, the shape of his hairline, his solid shoulders, accustomed both physically and metaphorically to carrying burdens that nobody was ever built to lift.]
Stop apologizing, Jake, [she hears herself say. she doesn't mean it cruelly, but the words are there. her tone is detached, strange. not without love.] Don't say you're sorry like you would've taken it back if you went there and then. Like you would've let them take the Cube that day, or... or risked it all to change the course of time from some earlier date, if you could. [she gestures. time travel.]
You can be sorry it has to happen, Jake Berenson. You can be sad I have to die. You can even regret that it has to be you who makes that call, instead of... some Andalite General, or the President of the United States, or whoever's there. But you can't say you're sorry, as if it's a mistake.
[the gesture turns into a grip on his arm. she's not as strong as a grizzly bear, when she has her human hands. but she's still strong, as fierce as the eye that finds his.]
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because as much as this broke him — i had ordered my cousin to execute my brother. how would i ever explain that? — jake can't even say he'd rewind and undo it all. because he couldn't. because victory had been such a hard-won, implausible thing to begin with; remove one tiny factor and maybe they lose. maybe earth is infected by aliens, or a smoking ruin left by the andalites.
rachel latches onto him, and he seizes onto her hand too like a drowning man hanging onto a life raft. maybe this was what he'd been waiting for, all along. just this. her understanding. her acceptance.
how fucked-up that she had to accept this. ]
Okay. I...
Yeah. You've got a point.
[ she shouldn't have to be the one comforting him about this, and that firms up his spine. makes him stand up straighter. ]
I didn't want to dump this on you, right off the bat, first thing, but I just— it didn't feel right hiding it from you either. Like, when's the best time to bring that up? There's no right time.
Jesus christ.
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she drags him into another hug. she's always been stronger than people expect girls to be, and while that's less noticeable in absence of grizzly form, she still has really solid arms and a grip to make a man breathless, when she means to use it. she holds her cousin to her sticky, gore-smeared chest for a long moment. it's the one moment where she lets the smile fade off her face, because he can't see it, her chin over his shoulder.]
So what do we do now?
[is her question, as soon as she's straightened her arms, putting a space between the two of them. so she can look him in the eye again. she has a good game face. not fake happy, just game -- and sincerely game. nothing fake about it. there are zombies out there, and people to save.
or there is also somewhere to regroup, probably. a place to eat, not because they need it -- thanks to morphs restarting the physiological clock every time. import housing, that shit. she looks at him with utter trust, complete faith. for his next command.]
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Now, we...
[ he falters for a second. it's like tripping over a rock in the undergrowth. he's not used to giving orders anymore. the war had ended; his purpose had ended with it. but there are zombies out there and people to save, and that shoves jake's head back on straight. clears it with the cutting clarity of a job to be done, an immediate threat to be faced. he can do that, at least. they can do that. ]
I have a room in a house. Which is kinda weird, since I'm still just a teenager, but— Come on. Bird morphs. I'll show you the way, we can rest up a bit and then head back out. From a better position than this construction yard.
[ it's something to do, thank god, and once he's back in peregrine falcon form and sees her bald eagle, he feels, ironically, more grounded. in morph there's less to think about. no human hormones and brain chemistry pumping through your system, muddying the waters. so he's able to calm himself down once they hit the thermals and rise up above heropa in a leisurely drift, and it gives them a view of the zombies, too, an idea of where they're congregated and where the trouble patches are. jake leads rachel to his government-assigned housing, and when they land in the backyard he's regretful, for a moment, that they have to go human again. that they can't just fly forever, leave the state, leave the current emergency behind.
sometimes, he understands tobias. ]
I pay rent. Can you believe that. [ a dry bark of a laugh. ]