Test Drive Meme #1

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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

Comments

iv

[stargazed]

While Mikumo's lived experience with the world is somewhat limited, she has at least done her own shopping without her handlers hawking over her shoulder about it, so finding new clothes is very high on the list of priorities after the orientation ends. She assumes it's going to be the same for anyone else here who doesn't like feeling like a number, but what she isn't quite expecting is to find someone outside a clothes shop and simply staring at it.

Something about his bearing strikes her as familiar - something she's seen in soldiers who have been at it for too long, ones who don't quite remember how to be at peace. But the person it reminds her of most strongly has been gone for some time, and the memory of him may just be what makes her approach the man, making sure she does it from an easily visible angle.

"Has it been a while since you've had to do this?" she asks, tone light and calm, not specifically trying to soothe but not judging either. It seems, at the very least, like she's familiar with behaviours like this.

[worthallthis]

He's silent for a long moment, but finally he nods. "Outfitting was handled by the technicians," he says, voice so low she might have trouble hearing it.

He's stolen and scavenged for clothing in the days since the helicarriers, but for some reason that was easier than staring at a whole damn store full of options.

[stargazed]

Mikumo would have an easier time hearing it if her enhancements were still intact, but as it is she still manages to pick up on it. At the very least, even if she's been returned to normal human hearing levels, she doesn't have any additional ear damage to account for.

A difficult-to-read expression crosses her face momentarily at the mention of "technicians", though. She had handlers, of a sort, and even though they didn't handle her clothes shopping for the most part, she's familiar with how it can detach someone from doing things themselves.

"If you'd like a second opinion, I was planning to go in there myself. I may not be an expert, but I'm sure I know enough to help you find something," she offers, that airy neutrality to her words lingering. She might not be the most emotive person ever, but an offer is an offer.

[worthallthis]

And it's an offer that he'll take. He badly wants different clothes, and more clothes, but the task of actually sifting through everything that's there on sale is-- not possible. Not alone.

So he nods again, this time more quickly and with more certainty. "Okay. Sure." And he'll shift slightly to one side, aiming to fall in behind her and a step to her left.

[stargazed]

The responsiveness is reassuring, at least, though Mikumo notes the way he positions himself as she moves forward into the store. Like someone following a superior officer - it reminds her of where Kaname usually places herself when speaking to Commander Arad.

"I'm Mikumo, by the way. You are?" she asks, as she pushes open the door. The clothing in this shop seems rather mixed, not quite the fanciness of a boutique but certainly some level of curated to what she imagines the owner finds interesting. It does make sense, given she can't imagine much trade would be possible outside of the camp's walls, so only a certain level of mass production seems like it would be possible here.

[worthallthis]

For a moment he's silent, mouth firmly shut, as he files in after her. He never knows how to answer this. Honesty means more awkward questions, but he can't claim a name for himself. He can't.

So he finally says, "I don't know. They called me the asset. Or the solider."

[stargazed]

That does give Mikumo pause, but only for a moment, the look on her face a little closed-off.

"Your handlers? How impersonal of them," she says, the idea somehow not entirely out of her experience, but the idea that they wouldn't even bother giving him a name apparently the problem point for her. "It might be a good idea to give yourself one, before someone else here tries to give you one. Your handlers presumably didn't follow you here, so as little as you may know about your identity, you'll have to take some control of it here."

There's some level of...familiarity, almost, in the way she talks about it, as if she's perhaps seen a similar situation to this before. She'd rather not attach herself to this sort of thing, because it opens up too many topics she'd rather not talk about, but it's hard not to relate to the idea of being deprived of developing your own identity when she'd been steered away from it for so long by her own "handlers", even if they were less controlling than it sounds like his were.

[worthallthis]

His shoulders hitch up defensively. "People keep saying that," he mutters, acknowledging the advice without actually taking it. Names are... hard. The thought of having one is bad enough; the thought of picking one, when he can't even pick out clothing in a clothing shop, is impossible.

Most people don't call other people handlers, though. He recognizes this on some level, picks up on her familiarity, looks at her sidelong. Asking is dangerous, might make her change her mind about helping him. But he's thinking about it.

He asks something innocuous, instead. Mission-oriented. That's usually safe-ish. "What are you looking for. In here. What kinds of clothes."

[stargazed]

"Perhaps there's a reason for that," she says, a touch of some kind of dry amusement in her tone. While she's helpful enough, she's not exactly the most sensitive person around.

In any case, she moves towards the shelves and racks, starting to pick through them. While her requirements for clothes are fairly loose, she does at least have one or two.

"Anything I can move well in that looks like it's fairly durable. I don't care how much or little it covers for the moment, since we don't seem to be in an extreme season here right now," she replies, nodding in the direction of outside. While things might end up warm and humid at some point of the year in a jungle environment, right now it doesn't seem too bad, so she's not taking it into account for this initial clothes purchasing.

"I'd say you not remembering your size might be a problem, but it's unlikely whatever sizing standard they use here will be the same as the one I'm familiar with either."

[worthallthis]

Following her to the clothing racks, he hovers a little awkwardly, not touching anything himself. After a moment, he does realize: "I can judge clothing sizes by eye." Which surprises him a little to hear himself say, and he blinks. But he's pretty sure it's true. Either it's a mission skill or... something else. It must be a mission skill. "Better to be too big than too small, though."

He can wear more layers that way. And he kind of wants as much clothing on him right now as possible. It's the closest to decent armor he can probably get.

[stargazed]

"Interesting skill to have," she remarks mildly, shuffling one or two items to the front of the rack that are apparently worth considering for herself. However, as she moves to the next one, there seems to be more of a mix of items, and the store isn't clearly divided by gender, so she pauses on a few more things to see if they might work for her companion too.

One thing goes to the front of the rack fairly quickly - a pair of dark, fairly thick cargo pants. Nothing to write home about, but they look durable and they have plenty of storage space, at least.

"Is that the right size? I would say it doesn't look smaller than you, at a glance."

[worthallthis]

Storage space is an absolute plus. He comes up to give the material a critical poke, then nods. They're slightly too big, but the only place that will matter is where he'd step on the hems. "A little long in the leg. But I can. Fix that?" He squints at it. "Need a needle."

[stargazed]

"I've certainly seen some sewing supplies at the markets already," Mikumo says, glancing back outside as if trying to nail down the exact location. "I suppose it would be a bigger necessity here, since they can only produce so much."

Clearly there's enough production in the camp for shops like this to exist, so she figures there's at least a small level of industry here, but she wouldn't call it mass production. Being able to alter and repurpose clothes is a more needed skill when there's limited supply.