annexedmeme | Test Drive Meme #1

Test Drive Info

⇝ Test Drive Memes usually take place in a virtual reality simulation occurring in characters' minds that tests them for 'fitness' before they enter the setting officially. However, for the first TDM, it will be set in the real world and centered around the arrival of the first crop of extra-universal "recruits."
⇝ 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.

Welcome to the Broken World.

You can't even remember how you got here.

All you know is that one moment you were in a world you were used to, comfortable in. It might have been a regular day or the most important day of your life, in the middle of a meal or brushing your teeth or the battle to save the world or the moment of your death. Whoever took you didn't seem to care what you were doing when you were taken, and now that you're here, they still don't seem to care.

You wake up after 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."

i. The Rescue

The moment of peace and freedom doesn't last for long.

Even while you're still disoriented from everything that's happened in the past few hours, the person who's just freed you pushes a gun into your hands. If you're familiar with guns, it's simple enough to use, with a recognizable safety and trigger, a magazine of bullets attached to the bottom. If you're not familiar with guns, well...the person who just rescued you will give you a minute-long introduction to it. Press this button, click this hammer back, pull the trigger to shoot. Nothing fancy, but enough that you won't hurt yourself or anyone else you're not supposed to be hurting. Probably.

After being handed the gun, the person rescuing you looks at you not unkindly and gestures for you to follow, leads you through a maze of concrete corridors to the entrance of the building. There, you'll find something of a small warzone, a battle in progress though almost completed, in the parking and courtyard area between several small, squat concrete buildings. There, huddled in the safety of the building's entryway, the person who just rescued you will point across the courtyard toward an encroaching patch of jungle and quickly explain the situation - you've been brought to this place by the Sylphid, long-standing enemies who will "eat your soul" and replace you if they catch you, and the person rescuing you is part of a resistance army intending to overthrow them. You're to make your way across the courtyard and into the jungle, where you'll find someone named Brycen, a blue-skinned man who will get you out of here even as the battle rages on.

The courtyard is mainly open, with a few benches and trees that can be used as cover, and there is a small group of Sylphid - the enemy, the people who took you and are now shooting at you, but who look like average everyday people - who are taking potshots at whoever crosses the courtyard even as they engage with the rebels. You'll be provided with suppressive fire from those same rebels while you cross the courtyard, but other than that, you're on your own unless you want to take the run with whoever else just got rescued.

ii. Race Through The Jungle

Once you make your way across the courtyard and into the jungle, you'll find Brycen waiting for you about a 10 minute walk in. The moment he sees you, he gestures you over and leads you a few feet further into the underbrush where there are a few All-Terain Vehicles parked in a small clearing. Shooting you a little grin, Brycen spreads his arms to present the vehicles, then heads over to the closest one. What follows is a quick explanation of how to use the ATV, a small hovercraft that can seat two. Brycen points out another ATV that is driven by a member of the resistance, and tells you that this person will guide you to the Witches Camp, where you'll be living from now on. But it's on you to pilot the ATV from here to there.

Well, you and your new friend.

See, there are half as many ATVs as there are people, and each one does seat two. Brycen gestures at the nearest extra-universal arrival and tells both of you to hop on. Now, you're both bound for the Witches Camp together, for better or worse. It's a long walk, so don't piss off your pilot!

Or overturn the ATV or crash it, because the path from the clearing to the Witches Camp is rough, without many trails or paths that have been carved out of the underbrush, something the revolutionaries have done to avoid being tracked back to their home. The ride will be bumpy, hover-vehicle or not, with a lot of swerving to avoid obstacles and dodging to avoid branches. Hopefully, you won't have a run-in with any of the local jungle wildlife, which can range from small, relatively harmless animals to lizards the size of small dinosaurs and wild cats.

It's a wild ride, but eventually you make it to the Witches Camp, a sprawling maze of low-to-the-ground buildings and markets interspersed with jungle for cover, and the rebel leading you keeps doing so until you pull up in front of Central Command. This building is one of the nicer ones in the area, and houses the Witch herself as well as the seat of the revolution. This is where all of the rebel plans are made and where new arrivals are put up.

iii. Welcome Home

Once you enter Central Command, you'll find that they've prepared space for you. First, you'll be led to the residential area of the large building and given the keycard to your new apartment, a small furnished studio apartment with a main living/sleeping area, a desk, kitchenette, bathroom with shower stall, and a walk-in closet for storage. Once you've been oriented to your new apartment, you'll be taken to pick your network device from an array of devices ranging from ultra-modern tablets that can fold into the shape of a phone to an equivalent of regular modern-day cell phones to magical tablets or books that can be interacted with by characters unfamiliar with technology. They'll also offer to alter your own phone or device to access the network, if you prefer that.

After that, you will be guided to one of the big board rooms in the Central Command, where you'll find a large spread of food on the table, ready to be dug into - all the staff at Central Command have brought food from home to share with the new arrivals. You'll also find notebooks and pens to take notes, because this is the official orientation, and you'll come out of it having learned pretty much everything about the rebellion, the Sylphid, how the rebellion originated and most importantly, how you got here and how you can go home.

This is where the rebels point out that helping them is helping yourself, because the only way to send you home is to commandeer the device that brought you here in the first place, and the only way to do that is to overthrow the Sylphid overlords.

After this presentation, no matter how accepting or skeptical you are, you'll be given a small stipend and set free to explore the city, linger around and chat over the potluck leftovers, go back to your apartment, make a network entry to meet other people, or whatever else you'd like to do. Want some new clothes? They can direct you to the markets. Looking to start learning magic? They can direct you to the Mage's Sector where you can find a teacher. Looking to dance your cares away in the wake of this terrible upheaval? They can direct you to a club in The Electric Heart that sells cocktails that'll erase all your pain for the evening.

Go wild. The Witches Camp is your new home. What will you make of it?

iv. Network

Once you've settled into your apartment in the evening, you're free to browse the internet and intranet on your new network device. Care to make an entry and meet the others in your same situation?

NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is not the guy to be reticent with, kiddo. He notes her attention, of course he does, but all it does is make him hunch further into himself and occasionally pat the arm, as if making sure it's not buzzing and bothering her.

If she wants to know something, she's gonna have to ask.

There's nothing really for her to ask that wouldn't seem grossly inappropriate. It was his problem and he was doing what he could to keep it under control. She especially can't ask if she could open up his arm to fix it...

...

Ah! But she could ask: "...is there anything that helps?"

Edited (--last edit! soz u_u) 2022-08-09 18:53 (UTC)

The plates shift a little, clicking together, but don't buzz again. He shakes his head. "I don't know what's wrong. Usually it isn't this bad." Usually he's not surrounded by a crowd of strangers after being yanked to another world and had his strength and healing zapped away. It's hard to be more on-edge than he was with HYDRA, but at least there he knew what to expect.

Hmn... she's not sure, but if the device is indeed tied to his central nervous system... "...maybe your heart isn't agreeing with your head...?"

He misses the metaphor entirely, and puts his hand on his chest with a puzzled frown. "My heart doesn't have opinions. Does it?" His head certainly doesn't. (Yes, it does. He just either ignores or suppresses them. The thought that he'd have to do that with another organ sounds exhausting.)

She was confused too, at first. Idioms and similes have a way of bending their meaning, especially when you are unfamiliar with the original source. "It sure does! Your heart is telling you things all the time."

Perhaps an example will help. "My heart felt heavy when I was inside that cell. I did not know what was happening and I couldn't get out. When someone came my heart jumped up. Was it fright? Was it excitement? My heart wasn't sure, then. Then there was the buzzing of the air with the weapons of the Sylphid and the Resistance. Popping energy that made my heart bump fast and often. The thrill of the challenge and the fear of losing. And now..." And now there was no reason to go through their entire escape. She places a hand to her own chest. "...my heart is slow. Not... calm... but not... scared. Unsure, like a wind..."

He watches her describe all the feelings with a kind of baffled fascination. Those are... some good descriptions, actually. He files the names away to puzzle over later, to wonder if he has the same ones. "You're describing the affects of adrenaline, mostly," he comments, but it's with a distracted air, not necessarily a disagreeing one. "That's chemical. That's. Not an opinion. It's a feeling."

"Mmm!" She nods in agreements, pleased that her explanation landed.

"Feelings are born of the body, like the heart, like thoughts are born of the head. We are talking with words for the head, but sometimes our bodies tell us things and we may not listen."

She's so caught up in this conversation that she forgot she's talking to a stranger.

That sounds very daunting. He presses at his chest with an unhappy little frown. "How do you manage it. It's. A lot to keep track of." As much as he's decided he's not going back to HYDRA-- not that he can at this point, in a whole different world-- he also knows it was... simpler.

"How...?" A muffled question mused. Even to an octopus, that was something as simple as swimming in ink. Which is to say, second nature.

"...have you never noticed your feelings before now?" A genuine question perhaps insensitively stated.

"I'm not supposed to have them," he answers seriously, as if that is a thing one can actually do. Though considering the amount of drugs they'd kept him on, they certainly did their best. "I'm a weapon. Weapons aren't supposed to have feelings about things or it compromises their effectiveness."

Eight frowns, knowing that feeling all to well. Though they never tried to tamper with her feelings, the experiences of being a weapon who serves only her people was drilled into her from the moment she first spawned. Yet when she hears Bucky speak, she feels the cut more deeply. There's a confusion and isolation that she's only seen once or twice before. Among her people, there was a conversion process where octarians are transformed into octoweapons. They become gigantic hideous things encased in a metallic shell of arms and armaments. They lose themselves and become what they were designed to be: a weapon.

Perhaps Bucky too experienced something like that. If the arm was as integrated into his body as tightly as it seemed, they certainly had been making the first attempt.

A hand reaches out, slowly and gingerly, reaching for Bucky's hand that was still made of flesh. "...I want you to try something. This will only take a moment." Her eyes are focused, intent on his. Her eyes are slow, letting him get comfortable before moving to the next step. "You're safe here. I won't hurt you."

He hesitates, twitching back a little before she can actually touch him, and looks from her hand to her face a couple times, though he never actually meets her eyes. Nervous, even though she's just a child. (Children can be deadly, he knows somehow, and he isn't strong here, he doesn't heal--)

He's not safe here, and he doesn't know why she'd want to touch him if not to hurt. No one touched him, before. Not unless it was for pain. His pain, their pain, either one. It's all he expects. But she's been... gentle, so far. Maybe it won't hurt too much.

He reluctantly relaxes and lets her put a hand on his. Not grasp it, not unless she's very slow and very careful, but she can rest on it.

The hand touches, but the palm is never grasped. Instead, her palm touches the back of his hand. Her fingers are cool and have the texture of solid pudding. She notices the texture and firmness of the skin and muscles of of his hand too. And the bones. It feels strange to her.

Gently she raises their hand to his chest, pushing down lightly. Her eyes fall down to watch, closing as she feels the presence of his breathing and his heartbeat "Breathe in. Breathe. Feel your heart. This is you, too. The seat of your desires. The source of your fears. You are a living person. You are alive. Weapons do. People are. Remember. Remember."

Test Drive Meme #1

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject