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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."
no subject
(And it did. Something they couldn't stop.)
Leia stayed with Bail? (She smiles at the choice, obviously approving.) He was a good friend of mine for years. And your family on Tatooine... Those would have to be Anakin's step-family. His mother married Cliegg Lars before... Tusken Raiders killed her.
(That had really been the beginning of Anakin's crumbling sanity.)
Your Aunt and Uncle are Beru and Owen, right? I met them.
(His comment takes her by surprise and she laughs.)
Far from it. I was a politician once.
no subject
He's been on Tatooine, keeping an eye on me. Even if I didn't know it.
[A sheepish grin, because honestly? He's probably been a handful.]
Yeah, she had a good life on Alderaan. So it's not all bad. [He nods at her assessment. Though he honestly knows very little of his grandmother still.] That's right. I grew up on their moisture farm.
[A small nose wrinkle at that, because honestly he's always hated Tatooine. Though that's no fault of anyone in his family.]
I know you were. And so is Leia. [She gets a look for that, how dare she besmirch her own honour?] That doesn't mean you can't be an angel
[The expression of a son, besotted with his mother.]
The most beautiful women in the world.
no subject
That sounds like Obi-Wan.
(Said with the utmost affection. And she knows what that sheepish smile means, mister! How dare you be your father's son?)
Bail would be good to her. (If not outright spoil her. He and his wife are such good souls.)
I know moisture farms aren't exciting, but the point was to keep you safe. Your father was worse off on Tatooine when he was a boy. He and his mother were slaves.
(Leia is a politician? Oh that's fitting. Padmé smiles proudly.)
I pity anyone who stands against her. (Yes, Leia is an angel. She can agree on that!)
Let me guess, you're the one who inherited your father's abilities?
(Stop being so cute.)
no subject
It's kind of funny, but I didn't even know until recently. He'd just been Old Ben the hermit who lived out by himself and was kind of weird.
[Which he's still sad about. Even though he understands a little why his Uncle had been against him training, it still would have been nice to have that extra bit of Familial type presence in his life. But apparently Obi-Wan is why he hadn't gotten into serious trouble the handful of times he'd gone on justice binges as a child. Because he was absolutely Anakin's son. Why not fight against injustice? So what if he's a child and can't actually fight?]
It sounds like it, yeah.
[She absolutely got spoiled, but Luke can't really blame anyone. He spoils her too.]
I know. It might have been boring and a lot of hard work, but at least I was safe.
[Doesn't mean he has to pretend to like Tatooine. Not even for the angel that is his mother.]
You and me both. She's really something else.
[Uh uh, you're both angels. And since Luke knows that both Leia and Anakin would agree with him, that means he wins.]
As far as we can tell, it looks like we both did. Though it sounds like Leia doesn't really study it the way I will.
[Nope, golden retriever for life. If he veers from this he ends up a weird old hermit worse than Ben. No thanks.]
no subject
(She presumes it has a personal resonance for Obi-Wan and everyone has one or two secrets.)
Mm the Jedi can be strange to anyone not familiar with their order. I could see one meditating in the desert, though I had hoped for a happier outcome for him. He was always good to Anakin and I.
(Luke, no one likes Tatooine. The sunsets are amazing, but the days are brutal. Padmé barely hides a grin.)
You sound like a good brother. Leia must love you.
(Okay, okay, she can't say no to that face - much less Anakin's and Leia's face too!)
What do you mean? Is she training to be a Jedi? I know not many are left, but Obi-Wan could instruct you both.
no subject
[It's something he'd always meant to ask, but never got the chance.]
It's not exactly been a safe galaxy to be a jedi in, so finding somewhere remote was probably really smart.
[And keeping a budding young force sensitive out of the galactic eye also makes sense, despite how much he would have preferred otherwise.
The Hutts seem to like it well enough, but that's about it. Plus, he's pretty sure there wasn't enough credits in the universe to pry Uncle Owen off that rock.]
I'm trying, but I haven't really gotten to be an brother for very long.
[The praise flusters him and he squirms a bit, cheeks heating up just a little bit.]
I really love her a lot.
[The fact that she's gone back home still aches, but he's coping a lot better now. Though if he's started keeping a journal for her? Well, that's his own business.]
Not yet. Well, she did for a little bit? It's... complicated again. Sorry.
no subject
It will come naturally to you. We are family. (Seeing him flustered brings her genuine joy.) And, you know what? I really love you a lot. As does your sister and your father.
(Luke should know he and his sister were very wanted - even if they had been a surprise.)
We have time and you can tell me what you wish. Things that hurt, we can leave behind.
no subject
[So honestly there's a lot Luke doesn't know either, or rather didn't. He's been filled in on some of it now, but there's probably still a lot that he doesn't know. Some of it? He's pretty sure he doesn't even want to know. He knows enough now. Besides, the present is for relishing in the gentle, loving touches of a mother's hand. Sure, Aunt Beru had done similar things before, but it's different somehow. Sure, he loved his aunt and uncle dearly, but it wasn't this and he'd craved this his entire life.]
We are. [His voice filled with a tinge of wonder. Family. No matter what else this place might do to him in the future, at least it's given him this. And honestly? There's very little Luke wouldn't pay for a chance like this.]
I love you too, mom.
[And if his voice quavers or even cracks on the words? That's no one's business but there's as he buries his face against her to hide the traitor trickle of tears he can feel. He believes her, he does. The fact that Leia loves him? He's known. The fact that his father loves him? In his own way? It's something he's slowly been realizing, despite their complicated history.]
I wouldn't even know where to start.
[He takes the time to adjust, his emotions so close to the surface because of everything. Takes a few deep breaths. Focus. Center. Like B- Obi-Wan and Juhani had taught him.]
Are you hungry?
[After all, he can kind of smell food. So if she wants to eat...]
no subject
(Grief is a terrible and powerful thing. As much as she wants to protect Luke from it, it's better if he understands it and knows how to overcome it.)
Owen and Beru were young, but so kind and patient. I can see why Obi-Wan brought you to them.
(Happy tears well up in her eyes and she kisses his cheek. She has his love, amazingly, and he had called her Mom. Padmé hadn't realized she had wanted to hear that word until now.)
We start with today and then, when it feels right, you talk about anything you like.
(The real picture will emerge; there is no use in being rash or demanding about it. Padmé can wait for years to hear Luke's full story.)
A little. We should eat while we can.
no subject
[Though his voice still shows that he really wished he could have grown up knowing at least a little something about his family. But it's not something he can change, and it's better now so he's not going to dwell on it.]
You're right. I might not like Tatooine, but it could have been a lot worse.
[He's heard a fair bit about Rey's life on Jakku after all. Could have been a lot worse. Even if Luke could wear on his Aunt and Uncle's patience, mainly his Uncle's, fiercly over the years.]
Focusing on today sounds good.
[After all, none of this quite feels real so just in case he's going to enjoy it while he can. Like soaking up all the affectionate gestures she decides to bestow upon him. The kiss is met with a beaming smile, because why wouldn't he feel proud to receive such a gesture?]
Great! Then we'll eat.
[He's reluctant to pull away, but still hops up before holding out his arm to her with a grin. Still growing himself, there's very few times he's not down for food. And it's becoming increasingly common for him to feed the people he cares about. A love language of food, apparently.]
Maybe one day I can take you around the market stalls. There's a lot of interesting food there.
no subject
(They didn't want Luke running away to start a war he couldn't handle. The Lars were smart and she owes them...everything.)
We find that out, one way or another, when we venture away from home. I visited other worlds as a child and seeing the lack of food and water - things I took for granted - put things into perspective for me.
(He is Anakin's son. They should have been prepared to have their wits tested.)
Oh I get to be escorted? (She beams, fully, genuinely, at his offered arm. Of course it is taken immediately and she finds herself...hungry. Being near him makes her feel stronger - like she is clinging to life harder.)
I would be honored. I can cook! I learned from my mother.
no subject
That's normally how that works, yeah.
[The fact that maybe here, things aren't quite so set in stone, is something they can cover later. Like how he and Rey are desperately hoping they can change his own future because of talking here.]
There are places here that are just full of water. Just to have fun in it! [A foreign concept to the desert bound life he's lived up to this point.] I've been learning how to swim.
[Apparently being Anakin's son hadn't been enough of a warning. Go figure.]
Of course! A fine lady should have a fine escort.
[Their beams are similar enough that it makes Luke's joy even brighter. Mother.]
I don't usually cook that often.
[He can do some basics, but he'd never needed to learn more. Plus now that it's mostly just him at meals, it just doesn't feel worth it.]
But I want to eat your food. I bet it's delicious!
[But there'll have to be some adjustments for what ingredients are available here. As it is, he leads her out of the sleeping area and to the area with tables. Finally letting her go so he can get two plates, handing one to her with a grin.]
no subject
Also it was a given Luke would tear off on an adventure/war prematurely. Of course he didn't have much choice. Thank you, Empire.)I spent a lot of my childhood swimming. Would you like lessons? (She is ready. Luke needs to learn how to dive - cannonballs are fun! - and hold his breath to investigate the depths. Hopefully he won't find a colony of weird lizard people, though that can be fun too!
Except when Jar Jar shows up.Hugging his arm, Padmé looks at him like he placed the stars in the sky. Maybe he did!)
The first chance I get to cook, I will make you a feast.
(She takes the plate with a small laugh and chooses food that she can hopefully eat. Seeing Anakin hasn't helped, per se, but she knows he isn't dead. As long as he is alive, she will keep reaching out to him.)
no subject
Lessons would be great!
[He can add them to the veritable mountain of lessons he already does on a regular basis. Eat your heart out Yoda, eager student willing to learn here.
While Luke doesn't quite realize that's what the look in her eyes means, he knows it well enough. Because he'd seen it before, both in how Padme had looked at him, but also how Leia had. And even Vader. Maybe he hasn't seen his own face, but he knows enough to know that he probably looks exactly the same. The face of someone who loves their family so much it's physically obvious on their face.]
Maybe not the first chance. I think you need to take it easy for a bit. But sometime. We'll have a party!
[The food is a little more familiar to Luke. Which also means on occasion he settles bits onto her plate for her, things he thinks she'd like. Then it's time to find a table, which he settles for one near the food. In case Padme wants more. So that she doesn't have to walk too far.]
no subject
We might need to wait until the weather is warmer unless you know of an indoor or heated pool?
(Sorry, honey, you are just like the rest of your family. You care too deeply, you sense too much, you try too hard. It's the Skywalker curse.)
I look forward to it. (She grins at his actions and ends up kissing his cheek before they take their seats.) Have I told you I am proud of you yet? Because I am.