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annexedmeme2022-11-06 09:45 pm
modaccount) wrote in annexedmeme2022-11-06 09:45 pm
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Test Drive Meme #3
Test Drive Info
⇝ Test Drive Memes take place in a virtual reality simulation occurring in characters' minds that tests them for 'fitness' before they enter the setting officially. Because it is set in a simulation created by the Sylphid, the missions, while being comparable to regular missions in the game, will be from a Sylphid perspective.
⇝ Characters will not be chipped during the simulation, and will have access to their abilities from canon, but will be chipped upon waking for the rescue.
⇝ Current characters can easily be pulled into the simulation if they are sleeping and dreaming when it's happening. The Sylphid cast a wide net with the simulation to fill it out with characters to interact with for prospective new arrivals.
⇝ Test Drive Meme threads may be considered game canon so long as all parties agree to it.
⇝ Test Drive Meme threads do count for Activity Check.
i. Awakening
It happens in a dream. You fall asleep and the next moment you feel like you're awakening again, but without any exhaustion, as if you've had a full night's sleep. You find yourself in a comfortable bed in a room full of comfortable beds, all of which contain other people waking up just the way you are. The room is large but cozy, with wide windows that are framed by light curtains, and the sun is shining in from an angle that suggests morning.
Once you're up and moving around a little, ready to explore this new place, you'll discover an open door on one of the walls in the room, through which soft strains of music can be heard, and above which there's a sign saying "Free Breakfast." Once you make your way into the room, possibly with some of the other people just waking up in this strange place, you find a buffet table loaded with breakfast foods - some familiar, and some strange, mainly featuring mushrooms and root vegetables. Quiet, soothing music is playing and there are a variety of tables with chairs available to settle down and enjoy some food.
This is just a dream, right? What could be the harm in eating a bit of food, maybe trying out some cool alien cuisine, and getting to know the other people here?
ii. The Mission: The Fungus Among Us
Once everyone has eaten their fill and gotten to know their new compatriots a little better, there is an interruption in the music playing in the room. Three musical chimes sound, and a pleasant female voice speaks.
Attention, new recruits! We have a mission for you.
The intercom goes on to explain that there is a forest of mushrooms called The Troop that borders on the northwest walls of the city, which releases spores near constantly (though more prolific in fall) that have a hallucinogenic effect on sentient beings. These spores can cause people traveling in The Troop to become disoriented and confused, experience vivid auditory and visual hallucinations, and become permanently lost. Generally, the spores aren't a problem inside the city or in the surrounding area because no one has built close enough to the Troop to suffer serious effects. However, this particular fall, the spore count has been significantly higher than previous years, and spores are making their way into the neighborhoods bordering The Troop. Even worse, the spores are having a slightly different effect on top of the usual ones.
The spores, once inhaled, are growing into microscopic fungi that populate in the brains of citizens and take over the brains of the infected. Once taken over, the citizens who are infected are servants of The Troop, and will do whatever they can to infect others by whatever means possible, whether it's by capturing spores and releasing them in people's faces or by gagging up fungi that will infect others. Beyond that, there is a kind of mania about the people who have been infected - they are wide-eyed and high-energy, they will accost random people with spores or fungi, they will chase people down on the street to infect them.
Beyond that, there's another effect. Those inflicted with fungal infection become distinctly lacking in any kind of verbal filter. They will say exactly what they're thinking, they will blurt out secrets, expose themselves emotionally, and share their innermost thoughts and dreams. After all, it's not like the individual mushrooms in The Troop keep secrets, they're all part of a larger whole, and that's how infected individuals will behave. It's as if they're sharing a consciousness, taken over by the hive mind of The Troop, and see others as simply extensions of themselves.
Will your character get infected, try to help the infected somehow, or just plain stay out of the way of all this madness?
iii. The Mission: Full Fungal Smackdown
As the infection gradually progresses, those who are infected start to become more violent, which is a big problem. The infection is slowly spreading throughout the low-income neighborhood that it initiated in and moving toward the city proper, with increasingly aggressive infected doing their best to infect others. Their methods are starting to become more aggressive as well, where before they would simply spray others with spores or present them with mushrooms, they are now altering common devices like leaf blowers to spread the spores over a broader area and violently attacking people to shove mushrooms into people's mouths, curling fingers inside their mouths to force the fungi into their victims' sinuses and infect them.
It isn't just infection techniques that are getting more aggressive. Their behavior in general is aggressive - the infected are starting fights, are attacking people, often shouting in a strange, unintelligible language. The tone of the attack is that of people defending their own territory, fighting off intruders or predators, even if the person they're attacking made no moves to strike first. Attackers may fight hand-to-hand or even employ weapons that they are familiar with to attack others, whether it's guns, knives, laser swords, or anything else they might use in their regular uninfected life. Even those who were non-combatants will use kitchen knives or other makeshift weapons to attack the uninfected.
They never attack the infected, somehow they seem to know immediately who is and who isn't part of the hivemind.
As the attacks start to really escalate and there is panic in the streets, characters will be informed that a cure for the infection has been found, and everyone who isn't infected should stop by one of the Sylphid trucks carrying syringes of the cure and load up. Anyone who's able to fight, or even who is just capable of carrying and using a syringe, is asked to take a bandeau of them and to inoculate anyone infected. Unfortunately, though, the only real way to tell if someone is infected is by that wide-eyed look, and the attack that comes out of nowhere.
iv. Welcome to the Broken World.
The simulation is over, and you don't even know how you got here from there.
All you know is that one moment you were participating in a mission to save the Sylphid children, to uphold peace talks, and then you were asleep again, after the mission was over.
You wake up in what seems like the blink of an eye, nauseous and dizzy but otherwise unscathed, possessions taken away, barefoot and dressed only in a set of plain grey clothing, like the most bland uniform ever imagined, in an empty room with empty walls and one single door with a small barred window and a single number printed just above it. The door is locked and cannot be broken by any means, you can feel your connection with any superhuman powers you had severed, leaving them just out of reach - you can feel them there, tingling at your fingertips or in the back of your brain, but you just can't get to them. There is no one to greet you or explain what's happening. You start to lose track of time, the only sound the distant ticking of what sounds like a massive clock.
Just when things seem hopeless, when you feel like you're about to go mad, there's the sound of a commotion outside your door. The sounds of a battle, or perhaps an infiltration gone just slightly wrong. Either way, when the door opens, there is a figure there with a hand outstretched.
"Welcome to the Broken World. Come on, we'll explain everything just as soon as we get you and the others out of here."
iii
The second is that he looks rougher than some of the prisoners they've pulled out of facilities like this, like he's been here a while, or started out somewhere bad before landing here in worse.
The third is, grudgingly, Smart kid. The wariness is inconvenient to a rescue effort. It isn't, she has to admit, exactly unwarranted.]
Which part?
no subject
What planet are we on?
[ It's not the most pressing question on Boba's mind but it is the one that should be the quickest to answer. As for the woman's allegiances and her purpose in helping him escape, Boba will have to make do with what information he already has. She'd mentioned breaking out others. That means whatever intentions her faction has aren't for him alone. Boba supposes that's more promising than the alternative—again, he can't think of many people who would target him for rescue.
Yet, even knowing that, he hesitates to step out of his cell. The thought that he'd evade punishment for what he'd done—exile, execution, or otherwise—had never really occurred to him. He'd accepted the price he'd pay for his crime. It had been worth it to him. Now, with the door thrown open and a stranger offering him a way out, Boba finds his unsparing sense of justice warring with his will to survive. Martyrdom or cowardice—neither sounds particularly appealing to him. ]
I might deserve to be here for all you know.
[ It slips out almost like an aside. "Deserve" is a treacherous word to use, but the point still stands; whatever his own justification of his crime may be, it doesn't change the fact that he has, quite officially, been declared an unrepentant murderer. More than that: he wouldn't have it any other way. ]
no subject
[She doesn't expect him to recognize the names. The question's reasonable enough - and the way he asks it suggests that interplanetary travel is more than just science fiction, wherever it is he came from - but so far, anyone they've pulled out of the Sylphid facilities who hasn't been from the Broken World has been from somewhere much further removed.
One corner of her mouth quirks upward in a small, wry smile.]
And yeah, I do know you don't deserve to be here. This isn't a prison, it's a holding pen for people meant to be used as hosts for telepathic parasites. Now, let's get moving, yeah? Before anyone thinks to stop shooting and start closing off our exit route.
ayo he has a face now
The bit about telepathic parasites? That comes as a surprise. Boba stares hard at the woman, trying to figure out if she's joking or simply mad. But the face that looks back at him appears neither amused nor insane and while that doesn't necessarily rule either out, he has a limited amount of time to make a call—
Something must explain the gap in his memories. Either something was inexplicably done to him by the Imperial or Concord Dawn authorities or, as the woman says, there's another party at play, telepathic or otherwise. If he wants to know for certain, the only sure answers lie on the other side of the door—and, if there's the slightest possibility it might be the latter, he can't afford not to know.
He steels himself briefly, then steps out of his cell to join the woman in the hall. Something in his mind shifts the second he crosses the threshold, like some long-dormant engine coming back online. For months now, his only goal has been to endure. Now, with a chance to escape lying before him, all the questions and possibilities swirling about in his mind go quiet, replaced by wide-awake focus. He looks around, alert for any incoming signs of danger and speaks to the woman without looking at her: ]
Lead the way.
so sorry! my email swallowed this notif.
Her gaze flicks briefly over the doors to the other cells in this block, confirming that they all show empty. Not ideal - the more spread out the prisoners are, the more chances for the rescuers to be cut off and pinned down - but there's nothing to be done for that. She heads for the door at the far end, careful of the sightlines of the cameras. They should be down - temporarily - but caution is always better than assumption.]
I'm Layla. What's your name?
[In case she needs something to shout to tell him to take cover.]
no problem, it happens!
He feels a hollow pang of loss at the thought, one that is just as quickly pushed from his mind. Focus.
He opens his mouth to answer her question. ] Jas— [ He cuts himself off with a short, sharp shake of his head. Fool. ] Boba. My name is Boba.
[ He'd drilled the alias Jaster Mereel into his head until it had become part of him. Some good it had done him in the end. ]
no subject
Do you know how to handle a gun, Boba?
no subject
[ His answer is immediate, as is Boba's renewed attention on the woman. Does she have a hold-out weapon for him? Gun is a bit of a niche term, but so long as it has a trigger and a barrel, Boba reasons he can figure it out. ]
no subject
That is definitely not a blaster. It's also, judging by the lack of wear, relatively new.
She's not unaware of the risk inherent in arming the people they're rescuing - disoriented, angry, and frightened people don't always make the best choices, and that's leaving aside the possibility of the Sylphid seeding one of their own amongst the prisoners. But the likelihood of getting out without encountering any resistance is slim. They need all the advantages they can get.]
no subject
He's got this. ]
Thanks. [ Even if it's not a blaster, the feeling of a weapon in his hand comes as a relief. How long has it been? He'd lost track of the days in prison on Concord Dawn and he has no idea how long he's been in this facility. At least he's sure he isn't rusty. He's been handling firearms since he was a kid; it's not the kind of skillset that just fades away.
He takes a brief moment to test the sights, keeping the pistol pointed down and away from Layla, then looks back with a nod. He's ready to go. ]
You said something about an exit route?
no subject
This way. Stay close.
[And she continues toward the door at the far end of the cell block, pausing to listen a moment, then swipe a stolen keycard across the security panel and crack it open to peer through from her spot pressed up against the wall - out of any easy firing line from the corridor beyond.
Unless there are lurking Sylphid with the ability to render themselves invisible, it's empty - so far - and so she eases the door open the rest of the way and slips through, trusting him to follow her.]
no subject
As they slip into the corridor and begin to make their way along its length, a sound catches Boba's attention from around the next corner. It had been quick and quiet—the scuffing of boots against concrete, perhaps. It could be someone from Layla's faction—or it could be a hostile getting into position ahead of them.
Boba gives his guide a rough tap on her arm, then motions for her to stop. He signals to the corner with a nod of his head. She'd heard it, too, right? ]