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

[pupp3t]

That she doesn't react to him starting to reach for an injury is a testimony to the power of conditioning. The hand on her shoulder gets a flicker of her gaze towards it, but only for a split second. She does not move away from the touch. Humans and aliens alike come out of conditioning like this. The difference is that humans usually break outright during the conditioning process, either dying or killing themselves. That negligible one sixty-fourth makes a slight difference somewhere internally that's at least kept that thought from crossing her mind.

She hears the question but does not correctly parse it. Status update? "No major injuries to report." Is that what he was asking about? That's what would make sense, for a handler to inquire about the status of something so as to know how to properly utilize it. Her voice is flat and toneless, devoid of emotion.

And then he says her name.

It takes her a moment to come out of it. She squints. Xiaohu. 小虎. Little tiger. Somewhere in the depths of memories that were supposed to be trained out of her remains the memory of someone talking to her, holding her in his arms so she could be up high enough to see the altar to Guanyin clearly. The memory has enough sensory information attached to it to haul her back out of this - the warmth of the person (her father?) holding her, the scent of incense, the rich colors of the statue and light reflecting off of the porcelain - and like someone waking up, she blinks, shakes her head, and looks around. She turns her head from side to side, taking everything in, before returning her gaze to Donatello.

"I'm okay, Donatello. I, ah. I'm sorry, if I worried you." This time, there's an actual expression on her face, that of mild unease, and actual emotion in her voice. It's equal parts uncertainty and anxiety that she's about to have to explain this. She blinks again, and then reaches for her left shoulder with her right hand to start trying to brush gravel out of it. Abruptly, she stops mid-motion, alarm crossing over her face not for that shift in and out of Creature mode, but for something else. "The civilians - we need to get back to them, they don't know what's going on and they've just seen smoke and explosions from our direction."

Because clearly their confusion is the confusion to prioritize, here.

[purplexing]

The turtle starts to shake his head; that wasn't what he meant even if the response is something he'd expected. It's when something starts to seep in, to melt the almost doll-like exterior that relief floods Donatello's own expression. His shoulders sag as he watches Li come to, simply glad she hadn't shifted into something and gotten stuck.

"Glad you're back. I-" No, it's probably not something to discuss right now. He's juggling with unfamiliar and unsettling emotions and there's plenty enough on his plate as it is. Boxing them up internally as best he can, he nods as he looks back towards where they'd left the people they'd been escorting.

"Yeah, good call. Hope some of them have at least kept moving." And that no more infected had found their way around the group while they'd been preoccupied. He starts to turn, pausing to look back and make sure Li's really all right to move.

[pupp3t]

She's been stuck before. It's never permanent - she's not sure it can be - but in a pinch she can go as long as her handler demands, assuming she doesn't lose consciousness. Sleep or being knocked out returns her back to being herself, no matter what. This should, in theory, be the point where she realizes this whole thing isn't making sense by the rules of how she herself works. But she's too dazed to make the connection.

Li ducks her head, looking uncomfortable even though it's evident from the slumping of her shoulders and the sigh she gives off that she's not surprised by this. She would tell him something if she knew what to say, but she doesn't, so she can't. Instead she just takes a deep breath and tries to keep it together. Later. They can talk about this later, when no one is in danger. "Gǎnxiè nǐ, Donatello. Thank you." She reaches out and touches his hand briefly, a small smile fleetingly crossing her face despite the heaviness of everything.

She walks behind him, footsteps not as silent or fluid as they had been before but eyes still sharp and focused. There's an aching in her shoulder she knows will likely get worse as time goes on. It's nothing that indicates anything is broken, though, so she keeps moving, glancing at him a few times as if wanting to say something but not being quite able to work up the nerve.

The silence is painfully awkward, though. In spite of her own inability to fully process the situation, she blurts out quietly and quickly, "I'm sorry if I frightened you. I - I was never going to hurt you, though. I would never."

Even Creatures are only programmed to eliminate threats. And much as she knows she's not really a person the way he is, she doesn't like the idea of him being uncomfortable around her or wary of her. She's not a risk to everyone and everything. Those are Monsters, and she was thankfully too old when she was taken to be trained to be one of those. She's not fully human. She's not harmless. But she is still herself, at the end of the day, and she's not evil. Or at least, she hopes she isn't.

[purplexing]

Such a small gesture, but it does ward off the rest of the lingering anxieties. Donatello offers a faint smile back.

It's enough just hearing her footsteps, but it doesn't keep him from looking back over his shoulder, almost like he expects her to vanish. How does something like what happened earlier trigger? A threat? They'd been threatened earlier but somehow something had pushed her over some invisible line this time.

Her apology breaks him out of his thoughts, not realizing how quiet he'd gotten. He looks back at her again, startled before he shakes his head. "No it's... Not exactly that." His gaze skitters sidewise, hesitant. Talking about anything even remotely close to feelings was foreign ground to him. He's never been very good with emotions in general. "It just reminded me of what happened with one of my brothers. He was under someone else's control- an alien, actually." He breathes a small, mirthless laugh at that. "Different alien, pretty sure it's not related to yours. But the way he looked at us, it was like he didn't know who we were. ...we thought we'd lost him."

It was a sickening sensation, like the floor opening up beneath you. Donatello isn't sure how to really describe it otherwise. Explaining the situation was the easiest thing. He supposes that fear was a part of it, but not necessarily in the sense that Li had suggested. He knows the difference, and it hadn't been the same fear he'd experienced when a wild, incoherent Shredder had nearly ripped his shell apart. It was a fear of losing someone, even though they were right there in front of you, and that fear spawned a different sort of helplessness.

[pupp3t]

She's here. She's with him.

The way he looks at her is new. When was the last time she was around someone who didn't know what she was a Creature who then saw her in that mode who actually lived to tell that story? Li honestly isn't sure. There's probably someone, but it was a long, long time ago, and she struggles to recall the order of events in her own past if they took place while she was being a Creature on the prowl. She's never been in a situation like this, either, with chaos on the streets, no handler in sight and no orders to follow - was it all of those things, combined, that flipped the switch inside her? Was it the scale of things? She doesn't know. Li isn't sure how her mind works in this context because this context was never supposed to exist for her in the first place.

Nothing in her life has prepared her to discuss thing or work through her feelings. She's not meant to feel much. She's meant to work and to, at most, feel contentment with the safety of being on what will be the winning side of people who will one day rule the world. Nobody talks to her like this, with emotion and awkwardness and something sincerely concerned underneath it all. This really isn't the time or place to be touched, but she is. Donatello isn't like anyone she's ever talked to before. He's seen her in all her violence and all her Creaturehood and instead of being afraid of her, he's worried for her. He even compares her to someone else. It's like she's a person to him.

"I'm okay." Li is terrible at words, at feelings. What does she say or do in these circumstances? What are the normal things to do? She thinks of the movies she's seen on TV, the closest to normal interactions between people she's observed, and reaches out to put her hand on his shoulder. It's the most she knows to do. "It's just my training. It always shuts off. You won't lose me. Actually," she admits, biting her lip and tilting her head in thought, "you can probably snap me out of it just like any handler would. I've never had someone try it, but there's no reason it wouldn't work. Just say 'huí jiā, chùsheng' and I'll snap out of it. It works every time."

Should they hug? She's pretty sure they should but she doesn't want to subject herself to that much physical contact, nor does she want to smear blood all over him. Crap. What's the correct thing to do, here? She ends up just trying to force a reassuring smile and patting his shoulder in a way that makes it abundantly clear how out of practice she is with these sorts of things.

"Ah, but if you don't speak Chinese, I guess that might be hard, and I don't know if my original name will work, that's not something anyone's ever tried before now... you could try mentioning Guanyin? I always snap out of it if I see imagery of her, or if I go near the temple to her. I... I don't know if I count as religious, but..." Well. It's hard to shake off the nagging feeling of connection, there, the sense someone's watching over her, much as she doesn't deserve it. She removes one of her gloves in order to reach under the neckline of her blouse to pull out a small pendant from around her neck, the leather of the cord its' on well-worn and pendant scratched and no longer glossy. The Bodhisattva Guanyin is carved into it, peaceful face rendered in loving detail. Li stares down at it for a long moment, feeling more grounded for having done so. "Nothing else was ever supposed to be able to get me out of it. She did. So long as I have her, I'll be alright. Just say her name to me. That's how you get me back."

Somehow, this feels infinitely more intimate and vulnerable than hugging would have. She looks at him, eyes earnest and full of emotions she can't name.

[purplexing]

Donatello is a self-proclaimed man of science, in spite of his mystic abilities. He takes refuge in facts and numbers, in things that can be explained logically and prides himself in being able to understand things on such drastically different levels than the average anyone. Emotions took a back seat to science, always giving him a difficult time when they slipped past the neat little lines he'd drawn around their corner of his mind. They're unreliable, unpredictable and inconvenient. They skewed his judgment or just made it difficult to reliably calculate anything. To one extreme or another, they can be absolutely draining.

He realizes he's got a very flimsy hold on them now. He knows why, but it's only become obvious to him now. The lack of his brothers alongside of him is like a void. They'd normally supply enough emotions to make up for what he didn't know how to express, but they understood him enough to both respect and cross those boundaries whenever they felt it necessary. Or unnecessary, because what are siblings if they can't be annoying?

Was it silly to get weirdly sentimental about someone he'd just met? It's not like he has many friends outside of his family, and their list of human friends had only recently gone up by one to a grand total of three. Maybe the circumstances here made it easier to accept new acquaintances so readily, and being thrown into battle alongside someone forges strange bonds. She'd risked her life for him. That it might not necessarily be something she can help is... Donatello isn't sure what to think about that, except that it's wrong and cruel. There has to be a way to break this.

"I'm not even sure how it switched on in the first place. It just happens?" 'Handler.' The word sends a chill down his spine, making him hold his bo a little closer, not so much out of defense as it is simply for security.

He commits the phrase to memory. While he's not really used to speaking any variant of Chinese, he trusts his memory and his tongue not to garble it badly. He just hopes he doesn't have to use it. It's probably a good thing that Li refrains from hugging him. Donnie's in a similar position himself, mostly because hugs and physical contact have always been a strange, fluctuating thing for him in regards to acceptable conduct. It's right up their with emotions, and probably just as complicated for the ties. The pat on his shoulder seems inadequate after all that, but he decides it's acceptable.

"Guanyin..." It's clear the name doesn't mean anything to him, but he waits for Li's explanation. Not much of a religious person himself, it makes more sense once she pulls out the pendant. "Is she tied to something meaningful to you?" There has to be more to it, not that Donatello will brush off this piece of advice. He's been given two keys that he really wishes weren't a thing to be used. The look in Li's eyes is an entirely different puzzle, saying both so much and so little. His hand tightens around his bo before he pries it free, resting it on her uninjured shoulder again. That he's actually reaching out is progress itself, instigating contact, and not merely in reciprocation. He nods.

"I'd rather not have to pull you back again, but if you ever go too far, I will. As many times as I have to."

[pupp3t]

The world of the mystical and magical is beyond Li's comprehension. It may be out there, it might not be. She isn't sure. She's never seen magic back home. At the same time, she hasn't been let out often enough without orders or watchers to truly know if her lived experience counts for much. There are many things out there she hasn't experienced. Instead of science or magic, Li has lived life not grounded in anything. There is no future, there is no past, she was often told. To cope with everything happening in her life, she had accepted this as the truth. Existing purely in the present was the only way to hold onto, if not hope, some desire to survive, some reason not to cave into despair. Emotions would have been too much to deal with, especially in her line of work. The weight would have crushed her.

Right now that weight is not crushing, but it's unbalanced, a strange thing she doesn't know how to carry properly upon the shoulders of her mind. To try to get through it requires, ironically enough, that same thing she's always done: focusing on the present. The past is awful. In the present she has a friend. She hasn't had that in a long time. She has a friend who isn't another Li, a person who's from outside her little world, who wants her to be okay.

Of course she'd risk her life for him. He would and has done the same for her. Donatello is a good person. The actions taken in the depths of her Creature mindset aside, she acted of her own free will earlier, and she'd do the same again. There's a lot of selflessness in him trying to protect innocent people at great risk to himself. That's the kind of thing she wishes she were capable of doing. That's what she hopes she'll one day be able to do back home, if she can do what it's rumored one Li did before her and totally break free of all conditioning, if she can ever gain total control of herself back permanently.

"I usually get ordered to do it. It's only switched on like this a few times before in my whole life. I'm sorry. I didn't think this would happen." If she had, she would've tried to put together some kind of heads-up about it. This unease she's induced in him is nothing she'd ever want to cause in someone so moral and kind. "I'll never hurt you, though, even when I'm like that, and I don't hurt civilians. I'm not... I'm not like some of the others back home." That's not how any of the Lis were programmed. The Xues, sometimes, and the Zhuang, always. Not her, though.

If he knew what that phrase meant in Mandarin he'd be several different kinds of horrified by it. 'Come home, beast' is not a kind phrase to choose as an off-switch. Fortunately he's as ill-versed in Chinese as she is in Japanese. She knows only a handful of phrases, while he probably knows, at most, some basics like 'hello' and 'thanks'. They'll just have to wait and see if his intonation being off messes with the process of reverting her. Some part of her thinks, irrationally, that if anyone can get it to work despite the language barrier, it's him. The improvisation, the inventions, the creativity, it speaks to a mind that's willing to try and keep trying. She trusts him this much. How far that trust ultimately extends, she doesn't know. She doesn't have enough experience to really think that far ahead or understand what she's feeling.

"She's the goddess of compassion. She hears the sounds of the world. I don't remember much of who I was, when I was Pan Xiaohu, I mean. But I remember going to a temple dedicated to her, just a small one, when I was little. When I was doing recon at a night market, I saw a stall with these, and... I woke up, like I did when you said my birth name. I wasn't supposed to, but I did." Li presses the pendant to her chest with both hands, feeling the smooth stone against her skin, grateful for its' presence. She swallows, unable, as always, to put words to the feelings she has for Guanyin freeing her from her handlers' control for the first night in years, in that snowy New Years' market a year ago. "I'm not supposed to have this," she admits as she tucks the pendant away again, putting on her glove once more, "but it's helping me stay me. I don't like what I am when I'm... like that," there's no way to put it that's sufficient, "and she's helping me not be."

She rests her hand atop his on her shoulder, even if doing so strains her injured shoulder a little with the movement. Someone else's hand under hers reminds her of something, of being very young and walking with someone's hand in hers somewhere so cold it almost hurt, somewhere she felt safe. The memory isn't quite there. It could be, in time. Li tries to hold onto that hope, that these things will return in time.

"Thank you, Donatello. You're a good man. I know this is probably all really strange and I don't even know how to start explaining it, but you're taking this really well. I think we can get through this without another slip-up. If I do have one, though, I know you won't let it go on. And that means so much to me."

This time, the reason she doesn't hug him is because it wouldn't even come close to conveying the relief she feels, though it's evident in her voice.

[purplexing]

The brief picture Li had painted of her life hadn't nearly touched upon how twisted and dark things were for her and whoever else had some kind of alien DNA. Donatello's slowly starting to piece together this puzzle and he's not sure he wants to see the whole picture. Maybe there is some weird positive thing to being abducted to a strange place, not that he can say just yet that this place is any better than where Li had come from. Dealing with spore-crazed people is definitely a downer.

That she might have hurt him had been a brief thought. She'd been so focused and intense back there, and it had been impossible to tell what was going through her mind. He hadn't thought too much on how easily she'd obeyed when he'd said things until she wasn't doing anything but remaining on stand-by. Her reassurance is better than nothing, and he wants to believe her. His information-seeking mind however questions just what identifies someone as a civilian. After all, the threats they were currently up against were technically civilians too...

He buries that thought deep. Li trusts him. She's telling him these things, and despite the potentially dire reasons that have prompted it, it still seems like a very personal thing, hints of a life, a person, other than the cold, focused fighter she could be. "...well I'm glad it worked out that way. It means you're still Pan Xiaohu, no matter what else has happened." He doesn't internally flinch at her touch this time, bringing his hand to gently close over hers with a light squeeze, a faint but welcome warmth in the chill of a foreign place.

"I've been through all sorts of strange. Makes it a little easier to take things in. And something tells me the strangeness won't end here. Come on, Xiaohu. -it okay if I call you that? Let's see these people to safety."

[pupp3t]

She's still not even yet begun to hint at the worst aspects of things. This is just what she can't plausibly find a way to avoid talking about - she'd love it if she could pretend to be normal in front of him, but the reality is that he's too smart not to see the many ways in which she isn't and she's not even sure what normal is. Some degree of honesty is forced by circumstances. The picture that honesty paints is not one she'd want to give to anyone, or one she'd have picked for herself, but as should be evident from the name change and the mind control, she never had a choice. None of them did. That's why Li isn't upset about being here - fighting isn't new to her, and at least here she can speak without fear of someone overhearing her say the wrong thing and reporting it back to her handlers or superiors. At least here she can pick who she's fighting.

Anyone attempting to kill herself or her handler gets shifted out of 'civilian' territory into 'acceptable target'. Beyond that, though, there are hard limits on who she gets to fight. Even thinking about fighting her handler would give her severe nausea, let alone trying to act on that thought. Now that her mind has established him as at least a part-time handler, she can't fight him. That could probably go badly if he were infected, but she trusts him to keep that from happening. He knows how to handle himself and he's smart. They'll get through this.

She's trying so hard to be a person that it's probably coming out incomprehensibly convoluted and ridiculous, this life she's lived, this world she comes from. But above and beyond all other things, she doesn't want to be evil. The desire to not be an active threat has her delivering more truths than is probably wise. Tactically this feels unsound. Emotionally, though, he just doesn't seem like someone who'd take what she said and use it against her. Her heart soars at his words. To still be who she originally was, to still be a person and not a Creature, is all she's ever wanted. "I hope you're right."

The smile on her face slips away at the question. That's complicated, too, it seems. "You can call me that if it's just us. If there's any chance someone from home could be here, you can't. You don't want to know what they'd do if they knew I remembered, assuming they didn't order me to self-terminate on the spot." That thought set aside, though, she takes a deep breath, straightens her sleeves, rolls her shoulders to force the stiffness out of them, and nods. "Let's go get to work. I've got your back."

[purplexing]

His smile is almost a smug one, a hint of his usual ego that's been tentatively packed away in the face of a dire situation. "Of course I'm right. There's enough proof of that simply based upon the difference between how you acted before and after that fight just now, and in what you've told me. And you've said so yourself, you don't like it when you're that way, which would make sense because that's not who you are."

The concern that there might ever be someone she knows is a valid one though, and not one Donatello will overlook. He looks a little sick at the possibility that they'd have her 'self-terminate', and the notion that what might happen otherwise would be worse just makes him shiver. So he nods, his face grim, but he's not going to put Li in danger like that.

They head back towards where those they'd been escorting have been left, those who've remained anxiously looking to them once they come back within sight. Some have pressed on, not something Donatello is going to be upset about, and he would have rather they all kept moving although at the same time he can understand why they wouldn't want to. He heads up to start helping the children down from the roof, trying very hard not to look too uncomfortable as some latch onto him. Transporting them back down by flight had not been his intention but it proves to be at least a quicker way to get them off so he can head back up- a double-edged sword as the other kids see this as a much more fun option than climbing down the fire escapes.

[pupp3t]

That confidence is deeply comforting during a moment like this of such utter self-doubt. It was drilled into her for years that she was not a person, until it became as much as fact to her as the sky being blue, but he says it's wrong like it's written in stone, like it was never true at all. Li wants to believe him. She wants more than anything for him to be right, and so she lets herself try to hope he is. "Thank you, Donatello. You always seem to know the right thing to say. Your family is lucky to have you."

His easy agreement to calling her by Li makes her visibly relax. Some days she'd take death over reconditioning. Some days she's not sure. Either way, she'd rather not have to suffer the consequences for having remembered the handful of things that she has. Donatello's somber expression tells her he understands the stakes of this situation. That's enough to make her trust him. She wouldn't if he were human, but people who aren't human live very high stakes lives and appreciate the gravity of these things.

Those who hadn't pressed on are largely families, and Li can't fault them for that. Better to stay together than separate from those they loved. The children, at least, seem in high spirits, one of them yelling to his mom that he wants a jetpack for Christmas, one looking at Donatello and squeeing, "So! Cool!" even as his body language radiates discomfort. Li undoes the fire escapes and leads the adults down the stairs, asking about injuries and seeing if anyone needs help. People are shaken, but unharmed. That's very good news. Better still, a few have talked it over with each other and come up with the path to safety that involves going by the mostly empty part of uptown without adding too many minutes to their schedule, which will help avoid infected.

A little girl tugs at Li's skirt. "Is it okay if I don't go down with the fancy gizmo guy? I don't like heights." Li nods, and holds open her arms for the small child to climb into, carrying her down alongside her father, who's carrying twin infants in his arms. Clearly, this man is not having a particularly lucky day.

Getting everyone together on the ground takes less time than she'd thought it would, and this time, having seen their unlikely heroes fight for them, people are a lot more willing to give Li directions and thank her and Donatello both. They resume their trudge forward with a lot less internal tension, even if one or two of them seem jumpy, spooked by earlier events. It's understandable. This isn't something anyone here is used to. But the path ahead is much more certain now. That's enough to keep spirits from falling.

[purplexing]

His family... It's a complicated bundle of feelings there, manifesting in a wistful sort of smile. He feels the truth is more that he's lucky to have his family and admitting that makes it more blatantly obvious that they're absent. Donatello leaves it at that, opting to latch onto the warmer reassurance of gratitude instead.

It's still weird to him to be interacting directly with people. They were ninja after all, they tried to make sure they kept out of the public eye. So admittedly they weren't that great at it, and when you tended to drive around a giant tank shaped like a turtle it was pretty difficult to expect to be inconspicuous, but people still never really saw who was inside. And now there are kids clinging to him. He sure hopes they're clean. Still, it's kind of nice being acknowledged for the risks they'd taken to keep these people safe.

Having overly curious and grabby children serve well enough as a distraction from other things, Donnie absently shaking them off as he still keeps an eye on their six. Honestly he'll be glad to get everyone packed away somewhere safe, and while their new route is more winding it's at least apparent that none of the actual chaos has reached this part of the city. He glances ahead to see where Li is, but so far as he can tell, things are relatively clear.

[pupp3t]

She doesn't remember her family clearly. A woman who might've been a mom or an older sister brushing her hair, a man with dark red-brown eyes who held her in his arms, and... that's it. There's more people she's forgetting, she's sure, but they're beyond her ability to recall. Maybe one day she'll get those things back. (Secretly, she hopes that one day, when she's fully free, she can go back to Harbin and try to find them. Pan isn't a rare surname, but nor is it common. It'd be a slog, but doable, in time.)

Interacting with people isn't her usual thing, either. She's just trying to act as if she knows what she's doing and hoping that works. Thankfully, no one seems too inclined to question their credibility anymore, having heard fire and explosions followed by Donnie and Li returning to them. Parents get their kids to leave the nice man alone and come walk with them, kids grouse about it but obey, and overall it feels less like herding humans and more like actually guarding willing clients this time around.

Granted, none of her clients ever included fussing babies before or numbered in the double digits. That part still makes her uneasy. The more people are involved, the harder it is to keep an eye on all of them. She doesn't know how long they can plausibly keep the whole group covered. When the intel proves to be correct and no further infected lurch out at them, Li somehow gets more tense, not less. Nothing ever goes this easily. There's always some other hidden trick, some snag in the plan, something else that can go wrong.

It says a lot about her life that she considers only having her life threatened twice by swarms of zombies to be 'things going too well'.

[purplexing]

Donatello chooses to be cautiously hopeful as they near their destination, but he can't shake that tension either. It would be careless to let his guard down otherwise. At least he doesn't have to worry about kids in his personal bubble for now.

The group isn't the quietest given all the children and the parents doing their best to keep them under control, but it's about the best they can hope for. He doesn't think noise levels will make too much of a difference given how uncoordinated the threats they have to watch out for have been. There's not much by way of instinct, the only ingenuity they've proven to make use of has been with their victims' knowledge of tools, their primary directive being to spread the influence of the Troop. Now that he's got more time to think about such things, Donatello's convinced things could be far worse if such a hivemind really had the capability to operate on a more intricate scale.

Eventually some of the adults at the head of the group with Li begin to point ahead as they come within sight of their destination. Donatello can feel the mood shift as spirits start to lighten. He allows himself a sigh, feeling like he'd been holding his breath the whole time they'd restarted their trek.

[pupp3t]

The first instinct of several kids is to dart forward. Li ends up with one under each arm, trying to prevent them from rushing off - if there was an unexpected hostile up ahead, it would be all too easy for one of them to get snatched up - and then grunts in pain as her injured shoulder protests that movement. Parents quickly retrieve their children from her, looking embarrassed. Li is grateful Donatello is bringing up the rear where he can guard that half as all of her attention swiftly turns to keeping on high alert for this last stretch. Some part of her dreads the idea, but it wouldn't surprise her if this alleged safe haven had been corrupted.

Remarkably, despite this day being nothing but a sea of poor luck prior to this, her pessimism is proven unfounded. They arrive and it's not overrun or compromised, just a bit overcrowded and full of people trying to find other people. Only when the very last person from the group is safely on the other side of the large metal gates (this was someone's private, fancy, gated property, once upon a time) does Li finally let herself slump against the side of it and exhale a long sigh, followed by a deep breath.

She turns to Donatello and gives him a small smile. "We did it."

[purplexing]

It's an anxious last few blocks, but Donnie's willing to let the others go off ahead of him while he swings around to keep an eye on the surrounding open streets. He can't help but listen for any signs of those eager sounds of the kids as they rush off to be suddenly cut off, but when that doesn't happen and the sounds of footsteps begin to peter off bit by bit, the turtle teen finally moves towards the perimeter of the designated safe-haven himself.

The atmosphere's so oddly different from earlier on. Maybe it's just the sense of having accomplished something that makes it so. It's a minor thing, but he'll take it.

He joins Li as he finds the girl finally allowing herself to relax. Watching the last few people head inside, Donatello offers her a grin. "Yeah. We did."

[pupp3t]

The civilians are safe. The streets are quiet, at least for now, and it's largely because of what they did. Not just Donatello, with his brilliant plans and improvisational skills, but Li, too. She contributed something to this success. True, she slipped into Creature Mode once. That's not great. At no point, though, did she endanger anyone's lives other than her own, nor did she freeze up in the face of something too reminiscent of the past. The result is that they managed to achieve the actual objective, keeping everyone safe, in spite of that one setback.

She waits for everyone to head in with something strange welling up in her - not just relief or the typical satisfaction of having done a job right, but a feeling akin to happiness. For once she saved more lives than she took. Li is not solely a weapon. Or maybe she is, but a knife can be used to preserve life, not just take it. She's not sure. Either way, though, she positively glows with contained contentment as Donatello grins at her.

"I couldn't have done this without you. Thank you, Donatello. Without your plans, none of this would have been possible."

[purplexing]

Words that Donatello has always hoped to hear but never really had much of an opportunity to have them said. But Li's been nothing but admiring and full of praise for his abilities. It's one of those things he's stopped hoping to expect, but maybe that's what makes it feel so good to finally hear it now.

"Hey, I can't take all the credit." He even surprises himself with that response. "If you hadn't shown up at the start, I might be fungus-brained by now." If there's one thing he'll readily admit, it's that he's no solo act. Having someone like Li had really bolstered his confidence and helped him keep his cool.

"So I couldn't have done it all without you either, and I call this a win." On an unknown scale, but still, small victories count.

It definitely accounts for something, not that they can fully realize it. But there's suddenly a sort of flicker, as though the entire world around them has a hiccup in its transmission, if things were related to a more technical aspect. Donatello blinks, unsure that he'd just imagined it.

Something's changed in the atmosphere and he can't quite put his finger on it. The edges seem a little fuzzier, less defined, and he rubs at his eyes with the back of a hand as he wonders that maybe it's just him. Things seem no clearer and in fact might even be appearing to wash out the more he looks. He turns an alarmed glance towards Li.

"Wait, what's going on? Li-?"

[pupp3t]

She gives credit where it's due, and the reality is that he's done really well despite the absolute absurdity of the situation. He kept his cool, he came up with a plan, he took her snapping into Creature mode remarkably well, and all of that is a huge part of why this turned out as well as it did. Li isn't trying to suck up to him. These are just objective facts.

In spite of everything, Li chuckles. "I kinda doubt that. You seem like you know what you're doing more than I do. I was really just doing what I could to keep things from getting worse. You're the one who figured out how to protect everyone." She's only as good as her handler, really. And Donatello, much as he might not like the title, is a good handler, just as much as he's a good partner in a combat situation.

"Yeah. This is a win. Our win, I guess." Is this what having friends is like?

Then the world changes. Color dims, edges blur, and Li looks around, alarmed, trying to understand what's happening. It hits her, then, that there are a bunch of little things about this situation that don't add up at all, which means this could actually be the dream it felt like at the start. Maybe this isn't real. Maybe Donatello isn't real. The thought has her reaching for him, just to confirm he's here, and the touch lands but it doesn't feel quite as solid as it should. She tightens her grip on his shoulder, eyes glowing with evident alarm.

"Donatello?" she asks, voice a little shaky. "I - I don't know what's happening."

[purplexing]

Normally he'd prompt her to continue, but there's something to just hearing things be said without expectation. He doesn't have to bask in it because it somehow warms him on the inside.

All at once everything is just different. It's not just his perception, judging from Li's expression. The warm feeling from earlier is replaced with a cold dread when she grabs for him. He sees her hand there, he's pretty sure he should be feeling it too, but it's almost like he has to focus extra hard for it. He's not even sure when his own hand's moved, grasping for Li.

...except his hand seems to go right through her, and he's at a complete loss for reasons that he can only stare in shock at his traitorous hand before looking at Li like he's somehow failed her.

There's a subtle but building white noise around them, parts of the furthermost city slowly vanishing. Somehow Donatello has a feeling there's something more happening, but he's afraid to look away from Li, afraid she'll vanish too. A dream, is that all this really was after all? Something to that thought stokes that rare little ember of true anger tucked away in its own corner, but it's quickly swallowed by the growing sense of helplessness because he can't stop whatever's going on. It hadn't been in their power to begin with. The world shrinks in upon them and shows no sign of stopping. He shouts her name but all he can hear is a growing ringing in his ears, even as he tries to reach for her hand again--