Test Drive Meme #3

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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."

NAVIGATION

Comments

[purplexing]

With such pointed comments it's impossible to think that whoever is speaking is addressing someone else. Donatello's eyes slide slooowly in the direction of the offender before he turns his head to direct A Look at him.

"One, that is speciest, and two, an ignorant assumption as turtles do not in fact eat everything," he replies dryly. "They are scavengers only on occasion but largely feed on plants and palatable creatures. But please, if you're that eager to help yourself to the fungi feast then be my guest! I can then observe any adverse effects as you partake in said food and make note of what's actually edible and what's potentially deadly."

[incinerating]

This dream is quickly turning from vaguely amusing to downright unsettling. It's hard to concentrate on what the man-turtle is saying when Lio is fixated on the fact he has a mouth full of teeth.

"I'll eat anything. Scavengers are survivors." He snatches a mushroom off said pizza and pops it into his mouth. Unbothered. The flavour is unusually accurate in its salty blandness. Of all the dreams Lio has dreamt, why does this one have to be the most realistic?

"Hm. Kinda greasy, but I've had worse."

[purplexing]

"What, is there something on my face? It can't be that you're shocked that I'm a turtle on the account that we've already established that fact- which I do have to admit is refreshing not to have to explain."

Donnie watches, surprised, really, as the young man walks over and eats something without an argument. He leans in closer, probably watching for any adverse side-effects.

"True, but that doesn't mean we have to be barbarians about it." Looks like at least the mushrooms are safe? He supposes he has eaten questionably worse but Run of the Mill pizza did cater to the yōkai populace and this place is... Well actually that's a good question.

"Saaaay, random person in my dream but do you happen to know where this is?"

[incinerating]

"I mean, I wasn't expecting a talking turtle, but it is what it is--" Lio pauses mid-grab to glare at his green companion, "My name is Lio Fotia, and you're in my dream." In what universe is a turtle-man more likely to exist than a Burnish?

Honestly, dream or no dream, the whole thing is getting old. A scowl, dropping the mediocre pizza back onto the tray. It's not as if eating imaginary food will fill his actual stomach.

"Listen, I didn't go to sleep to talk nonsense with annoying characters or play out a bizarre plotline, so how about you just turn into a bird and fly off or something, before I dream you into turtle soup."

After everything that's happened, Lio's exhausted and needs the rest. Except... that isn't right, is it? Everything hasn't happened. It's still happening. When did he find the time to lay down? Where? Lio can't remember falling asleep. What was he doing last? Fighting by Galo's side. No, saving Galo. No... Lio squeezes his eyes shut, greasy fingers clenching into fists at his side.

"Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP!" And that's when the small blonde bursts into flames.

Whoever's dream this is, it's about to get a hell of a lot hotter.

[purplexing]

"Uh, no, pretty sure you're in my dream, for whatever reason I'm dreaming about a school cafeteria but I'm sure there's worse-"

The turtle looks flat-out shocked and quite offended then, his mouth agape. "Gasp, how dare you! No one's turning me into soup in my own dream, no matter how fashionably dressed they are!! That cravat is ridiculous, by the way- ohhhh, BURN!"

That is not a statement he'd expected to become literal. Donnie yelps and jumps back, his tray flying up in an almost comical spin above his head before he snatches it and holds it in front of him like a shield. He knows a flimsy cafeteria tray isn't going to save him from getting potentially barbecued but it's better than nothing.

"-AHH I didn't mean it! Oh g- does someone have a hose?!"

[incinerating]

"Don't you dare hose me." A growl from within the fire, Lio's searing gaze fixed upon the turtle. For all the hyper-realistic brightness and heat of the flames, they aren't spreading. Not because this grease-trap of a cafeteria isn't flammable, but because Lio isn't on fire so much as Lio is the fire, and has no interest in wreaking chaos on innocent bystanders. No matter how hot under the collar he gets.

"Leave me alone! I'm concentrating--" Coming to shouldn't be this hard. After a life on the run Lio isn't exactly a heavy sleeper, and right now he's in no place to take a nap. Not when his people need him. Something is wrong.

"C'mon, wake up! Wake UP!!!" The flames burn brighter, hotter, flaring with his frustration, but when Lio opens his eyes he's still in the cafeteria. Now empty because anyone with a lick of self-preservation turned tail and fled at the first sign of fire.

Except the irritating turtle man, of course.

This dream keeps getting better and better.

[purplexing]

Spreading or not, Donnie's not one to stand there at ground zero with someone spontaneously combusting. He dances back as the heat intensifies, dropping his tray. Who cares about the free food right now anyway?

He can't really blame anyone for running, but he can't bring himself to just leave, not when the crazy burning blond has said some really strange things. Dreams shouldn't be threatening you and saying you're in their dream, after all. Or did they? Regardless, this is all way too real. The turtle teen flings himself behind the food table.

"-see, this is why you don't eat alien fungi!!" he shouts as he peers back over the table.

[incinerating]

"Why are you still here?!" Lio shakes his head, blonde hair bobbing beneath the flames, "Why am I still here?!" His flare-up has nothing to do with fungi, and everything to do with the fact Lio can't remember what he was doing before he fell asleep.

Not being able to wake himself up is only adding fuel to the fire.

"This isn't real-- I know it isn't. Talking turtles are not real!" There's no way in hell Lio would have been incarcerated in a minimum security facility. Kray Foresight and the Freeze Force would never be so reckless.

Kray Foresight.

All at once Lio remembers, and if he looked on the edge of an explosion before he's a ticking timebomb now. The men clad in full-body emergency response suits entering the room behind him with extinguishers likely won't help the situation.

[purplexing]

"Better question is your skin not melting off?! Look! I don't care if you don't believe this isn't real but right now I'm having a very hard time believing it isn't because it's getting real hot in here!!"

Humans normally don't have such powers unless they're mutated but this guy had looked pretty human to him. Mushroom pizza, alien fungi and now comic books? This dream's just pulling from everything now... except that Donatello's having a hard time convincing himself that it's simply a dream right now.

"-!" He gasps as the doors bust open then. "Well, figures someone was bound to come and do something eventually. Uh, hey! Fire guy? I know hoses sounded like a big 'no' for you but if you don't put a cap on it you're going to get doused with much more than just water!"

[incinerating]

"My name is Lio Fotia!" Maybe it's the wrong thing to fixate on in the moment, but is it really that hard to remember? As soon as people know he's Burnish it's almost as if Lio ceases to be his own person and is reduced to a fiery threat.

Which is why he takes less than kindly to the armed men creeping up behind him. This is the kind of dream Lio's used to, and the one place he can burn people to a crisp with only a sliver of guilt. He rounds with a hiss, flames leaping away from his body to form a sabre-like shape in one hand.

"I'd back off if I were you, that won't do shi--" Yeah, the sharp blast of firefighting foam more technologically advanced than anything from Lio's world says otherwise. He takes it straight to the face... and so does the turtle, because clearly he's part of this ruckus too, right?

[purplexing]

Donnie runs a hand over his face. Really, he probably should have left with everyone else. Now the exit's blocked and he anticipates that things can only get worse.

"Oh n-"

Sometimes. Sometimes. He hates being right.

He sputters and flails as the foam douses not only Lio but the buffet table and him in the process. "I'm not the one on fire!!!" he tries to clarify, but it's difficult when you're getting creamed. Literally.