etcelsior | DANCE MAGIC DANCE

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 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.

Unfortunately, tragedy has struck today. It seems like the entire Heropa PD is parked out of a local, popular grocery chain. A huge crowd is amassed in the parking lot despite the best efforts of officers to get them to leave. They whisper about excitement and shame, and you don't have to ask if you just listen in a bit...

"What do you think he'll do to the employees? He sounded so serious..." "He really wants that pussy, huh?" "If I left my man for cheating on me, I'd take the damn cat, too!" "How does he think taking her and her coworkers hostage is gonna make her change her mind about him being a bad boyfriend?" "My wife is pregnant, please - if I don't get her favorite deli sub I might as well not go home!"

Domestic disputes! Tragic. The police aren't too sure how to handle this hostage situation, claiming the man only has a box cutter and isn't actually waving it around at the moment, but...are you an imPort? They'd really appreciate the help, okay. Get in there and counsel the unhappy couple. Or not!

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! Synthetic wonder! Whatever you might be, those words have meaning here. 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.

Today, a company that manufactures tech-based educational toys—"Where Science Meets Fun!"—is running a demo of its latest project, Quincy the QuizBot. Filled with information taken from the curricula of many grade levels, Quincy is whirring through the streets to conduct pop quizzes! Answer a question right, win a prize, ranging from a coupon for a free soda at the local fast food joint to a $100 gift card, based on difficulty!

Except...something's gone wrong with Quincy's programming. An hour or two into the demo session, he starts to approach passersby and demand answers. "WHAT IS THE SQUARE ROOT OF 47284? CAN YOU LIST THE PHARAOHS OF EGYPT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER? ANSWER-ANSWER-ANSWER-ANSWER!"

03. Maurtia Falls, Pennsylvania has carried a reputation for ups and downs ever since imPorts began reappearing again, just those few years prior. Several imPort heroes have put focused efforts into cleaning up the streets of this somewhat infamous city, while a handful of others had swooped in to help the criminal industry thrive. 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. Everything from the classic bank heist to brutal bloodbaths can happen around the corner. You have to keep your eyes open and your mind sharp when you live in Maurtia Falls, and hostility against imPorts can spike. The emergence of locals with superpowers is hardly helping...

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.

Today there's a big lemonade stand on one busy sidewalk, staffed by a group of industrious kids. Aww, isn't it sweet? Wait...is that a cookie stand a little ways down, also run by elementary-to-middle schoolers? Heck, the entire block is full of kid-run mini-businesses — a gathering of pint-sized entrepreneurs! And they have their eyes on you, hero, because as a celebrity imPort, your pockets are full of $$$, right?

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.

Despite the weird constant hum and the creepy cultish bingo, Jeopardy is usually a pretty calm place. A safe place. But not today. Today, someone has released a couple hundred tiny praying-mantis-like robots into the city, and the place is in chaos. Shops are closed up early because though these little destructive creatures don't have bullets, they do have some weird arm appendages that like to just crunch everything in existence. Like a locus swarm of cockatoos, anything made of wood or plastic is being crunched up and left for scrap. But at less than six inches high apiece, rounding them up is proving extremely difficult. Luckily, the mayor in her wisdom is giving out titanium nets to any imPort who wants to help round up the trouble makers. And, in the spirit of the city, she's offering the imPort that catches the most robots a free meal for two in the swanky Radiation Galley - Jeopardy's top tier, five star restaurant.

Get catchin', imPorts!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[This is a bad idea, probably. But seeing the Second Sister just... eat a cookie is so surreal that Cal wonders if he's hallucinating for a moment.

Or three moments. He looks to the children at the stand where she must have made her purchase, and they're chattering happily amongst themselves, unharmed. He remembers with an uncomfortable swoop in the pit of his stomach the story she told of how she'd been caught in the end. The younglings she'd been trying to protect.

And boy, he sure is just standing there in the middle of the street staring at her like an idiot. Uh... might as well go for broke.] Trilla?

[She looks up at him, waiting for him to speak first.]

Cal Kestis.

[There's no vitriol in her voice, only an acknowledgment of his presence. Her cookie finished, she calmly wipes the crumbs from her hands.]

I must say this is not what I had in mind when I asked for you to avenge me. Or are you perhaps taking a break from saving the galaxy and training the next generation of Jedi?

[Cal winces slightly. Cere's attempt to avenge her had gone better than his own embarrassingly short-lived effort to defy the Sith Lord, but neither of them had done particularly well. They'd barely escaped Vader with their lives and limbs, let alone actually doing the work of fulfilling that final demand.

Also he'd cut the holocron in half. These are all minor details that don't bear repeating.] I didn't really plan this getaway. [Has Cal ever actually planned any of his getaways or does he just get dragged through life by the seat of his pants? Honestly.] You seem, uh, well? [Especially for being dead! And as a bonus, Trilla isn't currently trying to cut his head off, which Cal thinks is a very nice change of pace.]

[He's hiding something from her, isn't he? She can sense it, but no matter. Trilla's sure it'll come up later.]

I believe it goes without saying that I did not plan this either.

[Most people don't have plans after getting killed by Darth Vader.]

Is Cere with you?

[He hesitates. In the past, the question would have been a trap—Cere and Greeze are always his escape route, and admitting to being stranded is probably not smart—but it doesn't feel like she's interested in any of that anymore. Which makes sense, considering where dedicating herself to Vader's agenda had gotten her. Even though she'd succeeded, by all accounts: she'd gotten the holocron while he'd sat there useless, overwhelmed by all of the anger and pain packed into her lightsaber.

So he opts for the truth instead of poorly bluffing.] No, she's not here. [He fidgets for a moment, watching her.] What are you going to do now?

[She would've liked to speak with Cere, but oh well. Looks like she's stuck with her replacement for now. Still, there are worse people to be stuck with.

Trilla pauses, her gaze turning to the children nearby.]

I don't know. [She's no longer an Inquisitor, but she's no Jedi either.] Does it amuse you, to see me reduced to this?

[Okay, now that question definitely is a trap.] I don't think you've been reduced to anything, I think you're free now. [Whatever little glimpses he'd gotten into being an Inquisitor, the way the Ninth Sister had talked about it, it had seemed like basically the worst thing he could imagine.] Do you want to go back?

[Trilla expected that sort of answer. Maybe that's why she asked him in the first place.]

There is nothing left for me to return to. [Her expression shifts, and she grins at Cal.] Should I become a Jedi and join you on your little quest?

[Alright, so, maybe he shouldn't just not explain. Cal runs his fingers through his hair, trying not to feel (or appear) overtly unsettled by Trilla's grin.] Uh, actually we're not using the holocron. It's been destroyed. [It's not that he thinks Trilla, of all the people in the galaxy, wouldn't understand the rationale behind not gathering up all those force sensitive children and painting a huge target on their tiny backs, but it was a hard choice and it still feels a little like defeat after the struggle and sacrifice that went into obtaining that list in the first place. Not to mention the loss of the purpose and hope that it had represented to both Cere and himself.

But, even if he's certain she's being facetious, maybe there's something different to hope for:] But you still could, you know. Become a Jedi again. [If Cere were here, he knows she'd say the same.]

... What? How?

[While escaping from Vader, she assumes, something happened? They had spent so much time and effort over acquiring the holocron that not much else makes sense.

Her smile softens at his proposal, and she breathes out, her fists slightly clenched.]

It's not as simple as you make it seem. You may have sensed what I went through, but you have not lived it.

Before you came, at the vault on Bogano, I had a vision of what would happen if we used the holocron to find those younglings. [It couldn't have been entirely accurate, given the large role the Second Sister had played in it and what had happened on Nur shortly after, but that didn't mean that no part of it would come to pass. The Force had to have shown it to him for a reason.] History would have repeated itself. So... I cut it in half. [He's sure she knows what history he's talking about (seeing as it's her history); he doesn't elaborate so he doesn't have to dwell on the memory of it for longer than necessary. Avoidance is a defense mechanism he hasn't managed to shake entirely yet, though he'd been getting better about it since restoring his connection to the force.]

I know. [Wait.] I mean, I know that I don't know what it was like. [Trilla was still the woman who killed Prauf, after all, who murdered all those people on Kashyyyk, who must have done so much worse to so many he'd never even know about. But feeling first-hand how her being gleeful and cruel had stemmed from being hurt and afraid, seeing what the Fortress Inquisitorius was like, it was hard to separate all of that back out. That sort of thing always seemed impossible, when it came to his psychometry. (He can't even hate the clones, not really, not after finding enough bloody helmets and discovering first-hand how little control over their own actions they actually had.) And Cere had deserved her second chance, so it followed that Trilla could as well.] But there's always a path back. [There has to be. Cal wants to believe that so badly.] Even if it's not an easy one.

... Ah. I wouldn't have expected that of you.

[The Jedi of old wouldn't have had as much foresight. And what did it matter, if some children fell in their war to defeat the Sith? The Separatists. Whomever they decided necessitated the raising of an army.]

Whatever you think of her, my master is no longer a Jedi. I could see that, even on Nur. Neither of us can return to what once was. If I still have a path, whatever that might mean, it lies in front of me.

DANCE MAGIC DANCE

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