maskormods: (Default)
Mask or Menace | MODERATORS ([personal profile] maskormods) wrote in [community profile] etcelsior2020-05-24 09:21 pm
Entry tags:

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!
 
heroondecku: (pic#12255281)

[personal profile] heroondecku 2020-06-01 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
[Well, that answers a few of his other questions, at least.]

It's...complicated.

[And probably not a conversation they should be having while a very aggressive quizbot is pestering them, but sometimes you gotta work with what you've got. It's not like it's thrown a question either of them know an answer to yet anyway. (What year was peanut butter invented? Who holds the world record for most consecutive hits of a ping-pong ball? Recite the first ten numbers of the Fibonacci sequence!)]

I know this sounds weird, but I need to know what the last big thing you remember happening before you came here was. It'll help me explain things.
floatsaway: (35)

[personal profile] floatsaway 2020-06-01 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
[That really doesn't set her mind at ease, and while Quincy keeps trying to ask them questions, Ochako eventually has to turn to it and place her hand squarely over what would be an approximation of a face.]

Sorry...but can you leave us alone a minute?

[And...up they go. Like a cast away balloon, the bot begins to ascend into the sky. Not far - maybe ten feet - just enough that she and Deku can have a peaceful conversation, without being interrupted every few seconds. This seems like something they need to discuss, after all.]

Mm...I suppose that'd be the training camp. We were all working hard to improve our quirks! It was hard, but I've gotten better at not getting sick so quickly!! Everyone was doing their best, even if it was hard! [She grips her fists, then punches the air a little - one, two - then resumes her peaceful stance.] I was...having a really good time, watching everyone grow.

[So why are you asking me that?]
Edited 2020-06-01 02:37 (UTC)
heroondecku: (pic#13813236)

[personal profile] heroondecku 2020-06-01 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
[WHELP BYE QUINCY Izuku will Blackwhip you back down safely, he promises.

Not that he has much time to worry about the bot, because...that's. A lot to deal with. Uraraka might be the furthest "behind" out of everyone here, and he was already the furthest "ahead" so this...this hurts, in a strange way. Like a whole big chunk of their friendship is just all in his head now.

It's not her fault, and he'll never blame her for it, but...he'd been so excited to have one of his best friends back and now he's not even sure how to talk about even good memories they're supposed to share.]


That's... [He swallows hard. Deep breaths. Just focus on explaining things, and worry about the other stuff later, when Uraraka doesn't have to deal with it.] This place isn't our Earth. It's a different one, and it...works weirdly, sometimes. Yaoyorozu knows more than I do, she can probably explain everything better, but the big thing is that time doesn't quite work right compared to home. People from the same place aren't always from the same point in time, even if they already knew each other. And time kind of freezes back home when you're here, so you can be gone for ages and suddenly someone from your future can show up and insist you never left.

[He tries to smile, because he wants her to know that everything is okay, but it just comes out sad.]

The last thing I remember before coming here was our first class after winter break, and it's been two months since then.
floatsaway: (33)

[personal profile] floatsaway 2020-06-01 02:04 pm (UTC)(link)
[It's a lot to take in, and honestly Ochako's not sure she really understands the full picture of the how and the what. Another world, a separate earth...but people back home are frozen in time? The more Izuku explains, the more fantastical the story becomes, more surreal and extraordinary, but she hangs on to each word carefully, watching his face, his expression, the shift in his body language...

And the realization begins to sink in well before he utters those final lines. Why else would he ask her what she remembers last? She's been left behind by time. Are the others like that too? Is she the only one who's been left stranded at the starting line? The gap in time seems like an unending ravine, and frankly she's a little--no.

She's terrified to ask about the future. Hers, his, anyone else's. It feels like cheating.

Hence why the silence that lingers after is long, and heavy, and Ochako has to look down for a moment to gather up her thoughts. Izuku is suffering too, isn't he? Two months... two months since he last saw the majority of Class A. Two months since he's been home... That seems really sad.]


Deku-kun? [She starts, and offers him her hand to take, the smile on her face frayed, but remains steadfast and strong. She has to. He's hurting right now. She has to smile... She has to be strong.] We're still friends, right?

Two months...six months....ten years...a hundred... That won't change. We'll still be friends, right?
heroondecku: (pic#13758332)

[personal profile] heroondecku 2020-06-09 08:05 am (UTC)(link)
[Uraraka is so strong.

It’s the first thing that pops into his head, watching her process what he just...basically dumped on her without warning. He’s not sure he’d be able to handle this nearly as well if their positions were revered; he’d be a sobbing wreck right now, he’s sure of it. He probably still will have a good cry about this later when no one will notice.]


Of course. You’re one of my best friends, Uraraka. I wouldn’t give that up for anything.

[She’s arguably one of the first friends he ever made, really. Even if they were to drift apart someday (not that he ever wants that to happen) she’d still always be important to him.

His eyes might be starting to water just a teeny bit, it’s fine. He’s fine. Everything is fine how are you?]
floatsaway: (23)

[personal profile] floatsaway 2020-06-09 04:22 pm (UTC)(link)
[Oh, Izuku, if you think Ochako doesn't notice those weepy eyes, you are gravely mistaken. There's a moment of hesitation before she decides "screw it" and takes his hand into hers, giving it a very tight squeeze. Best friends, no matter what. No matter what. Deku, Iida, everyone...is so very important to her, and she loves each one with all of her heart. Nothing can change that. Nothing will change that.]

Same for me, too. So... [She holds their joined hands up, forcing a smile on her face, even if it doesn't really reach her eyes all the way. She just doesn't want to watch her friend be upset. She almost feels a little responsible, for being the outlier in causing him a bit of grief. Might as well try to remedy it, in any way she can.]

We should do something fun together! Just you and me!! You know this place right, Deku-kun? Can you show me around? Is there anything cool to see? I've never been to America before!