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

viktor / arcane

[grindset]

i. lfg

So this person who frees him, this stranger who won't explain, who keeps forgetting his pace and then waiting for him to catch up, this lady gives Viktor a gun.

It takes a moment for his brain to filter through the thus far overwhelming quantity of information such that it can comprehend the nature of this gift. After two entire seconds, having made the relevant association (long straight hair, stock raised to cheek, finger a careful hook), it registers. The result: a comically honest flash of dismay, a panicky attempt to hand it back that becomes angrier the longer it's refused, but listen, they don't have time for this, so he just holds it, this ugly thing making his hand heavy at the end of his wrist. And they press on.

That he can barely keep up is irrelevant to the necessity of the situation. Someone grabs his arm, efficiently thrusts a shoulder under his armpit and hauls him along in spite of hissed objection, the crutch's foot skipping a few quick bounces behind them before it's lifted clear. He's released to stagger and sag at the concrete entryway, skim-milk pale, heaving wet coughs, holding back further complaint and nonetheless telegraphing a great deal of pain. There is no way a person this frail is going to make it across the courtyard by himself. There's simply no way.

In what can only be described as a perverse rejection of reality, this wretchedly sweaty, crooked scarecrow of a man, leaning heavy on his crutch and carrying a sidearm with a grip better suited to a banana, still looks like he's calculating how best to accomplish this.


ii a. buckle in

Somehow, he makes it as far as the ATV orientation. Somehow, he perks up for it. Though the unforgiving jungle terrain slows him to mindful clumsiness, and his shirt is blooming patches of darker grey, he still musters the enthusiasm to ask enough technical questions that he has to be cut off, because look, they don't really have time for this, he can get the full run-down later.

Unsolicited, he climbs into the driver's seat, wedges his crutch in alongside and then just sits there for a minute, with the shirt loose on his bony shoulders (leather strap on the left) and the jut of his thin neck and his hair like a spiky bird's crest in disarray, looking at the dashboard. Just his head turning, his eyes moving here and there, shrewd, gleaming yellow. Like someone left a seasonal prop there as a prank.

The gun is... somewhere. Not here. Don't worry about it.

He adjusts the token side mirror. He lifts his hands to the steering control and squeezes bony fists around it. He does not look in any condition to drive.

ii b. yep

He was not, indeed, in any condition to drive. Fortunately, the ATV is in one piece and all limbs possessed at the start of the ride are (presumably) accounted for on arrival. Maybe this is only true because there was a necessary, hastily performed seat swap somewhere along the way. Maybe someone got motion sick. Maybe someone's formidable eyebrows are making a sullen shape about it.

"You got the easy half," he grumbles, unfolding with extra stiff care to disembark, as though he managed to age a hundred years during the last leg of their trip. He's all slouch and gawky elbows, his crutch like a wizard staff.


iii. it's fine

In a daze, Viktor selects a tri-fold tablet he does not yet know how to use, because it looks cool; he does not eat any food, because he doesn't like eating in front of strangers; and he scowls through the entire orientation, because a scowl is his default expression for most things anymore.

Afterward, he takes his stipend out into the hallway, stands off to the side, and looks at it like he's not sure how to interpret its presence, with rather more benign results than were produced by the gun. This, of all things, really gives him pause. This is currency—the tangible hallmark of a culture. Among the most common of items. Nearly universal. He can feel the waxy patina of every hand that touched it before his, see on its face the results of who knows how many iterations of design. Imagine the mold or press that might have formed it. The unknown mind that wrought its shape from an idea. It's real. This is real.

A voice reaches him as though through water, a blur of sound. He turns his face in its direction, sharp cheekbones and lingering scowl.

"What?" In contrast, his voice is soft; his accent plucks gently at consonants. "Sorry, I... were you speaking to me?"


???. wildcard

[Feel free to tweak any of these to suit or hit me with something else. Will match format + will tag around in a bit. You can find me on plurk @ abyssal or discord @ abyssal#7007 if you have any thingies to thingy, you know the drill.]

III

[maskedtyrant]

"--Hmm?"

The ginger woman hovering at Viktor's side looks similarly startled at being addressed, jerking abruptly upright like she's been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Both hands are behind her back, of course - nothing unseemly happening here save the fact that she's snooping in this wiry stranger's business.

"Oh! Just wanted a penny for your thoughts." Codi flashes Viktor a disarming smile, raising her eyebrows. "No pun intended I guess. It's a lot to process, yeah?"

[grindset]

It isn't that he thinks this particular ginger woman is going to snatch the money from his hand—it's a reflex, born in a place that insists if you have any brains at all, you don't stand there with your palm open, you close a fist around what's yours or you lose it. So his fist closes, and his arm comes in. Body language says it will take a lot more than a smile to disarm him.

A lot to process.

"That's a farcical understatement," comes out grim. A flick of the eyes, down-up, for her grey garb. "You also awoke in a cell, I take it."

And all that implies. The firefight, the jungle, the hurried escape.

[maskedtyrant]

Codi seems to read that defensive body language and respect it - to a point. She takes a step back to give Viktor his space and her hands come out, thumbs casually hooked in the hem of her standard-issue pants that she hates, but his dourness is staunchly ignored. He's far too interesting to give up on so quickly.

"You got me." The woman shrugs in exaggerated defeat. "Did the 'drowned rat' aesthetic give it away? Not what I would've left the house as, but, y'know."

There are those implications, returned. Codi pushes them a little further, her smile turning into more of a sad smirk. "Illusion of choice and all that."

[grindset]

"A flimsy illusion at that." His dourness, of course, persists. "The communication devices. The food. None of these choices matter."

Even the rescue itself was a sequence of momentary options, all leading to the same outcome: fight in someone else's war or never see home again. Maybe never see it again anyway. Being someone whose concept of home has never been very broad, whose past, future, present ambitions, and everyone he knows all reside within one fractured city, and whose daily life has become increasingly limited to just a few rooms within that city, for Viktor especially, this is

a lot.

"And this." A listless gesture with his memo book, because of course he took one and filled as many pages as he could, and not only with presentation notes. "Front-loading us with a flood of information."

[maskedtyrant]

"Hmm."

Codi tilts her head in acknowledgement and intrigue, although it certainly isn't directed at the more esoteric topic of determinism. That's all a bit too abstract for Codi's tastes. Viktor looks like a pensive man, though, so she leans into it, even if only at the surface level while she drives at what actually interests her--

--that notebook that she spied him diligently filling out during the meeting. She'd taken her own notes, sure, but hardly more than the presentation material. The rest had been passing observations of the people she was stuck in the room with. Viktor's apparent eye for detail marked him as a particular point of interest.

"As if we're in a position to do anything with it," Codi huffs, eyebrows arced. She keeps her tone deliberately hushed and conspiratorial. "I don't know about you, but this is already way too much. I might have been better off skipping the meeting and trying to find a nice café or something--somewhere that makes decent coffee. At least then I could pretend to relax."

ii a.

[noisecomplaint]

Viktor is the only person to pester their rescuers with questions, but he isn't the only person listening. Standing off to one side is a silent young man who may be the only person less equipped to drive an ATV than Viktor.

At first glance, Rokuro appears fighting fit (excluding bandaged right eye). The opposite of Viktor in build, complexion, and physical condition. Why is a strong, healthy young man hesitating to hop onto an ATV and take off with everyone else, holding back until the very end when this human scarecrow is the only other escaping prisoner left?

Because all the queries, explanations, and information in the world doesn't make anything less terrifying when the closest thing you've ridden to an ATV is an armored horse. He's fresh out of feudal-era Japan, would be shaking in his hakama right now if the Sylphid hadn't already taken them.

Finally, when it's clear Viktor is preparing to leave, Rokuro takes a tentative step towards Viktor and the ATV he's seated upon, eyeing the vehicle like it may turn around to bite him.

"You... you know how to ride this contraption?"

[grindset]

"No." This is spoken the same way he might respond in the affirmative: confidently. "Not this one specifically. We do have motor-carriages at home... prototypes," he adds, as if this will somehow be reassuring. Operating principles should be similar, he reckons—the laws of physics are universal.

Presumably.

The human scarecrow does something or other at the console; in response the vehicle gives a brief lurch forward, like a dry heave, gently undulates to a resting state. The shape of his mouth sketches a little yikes as he recovers his posture. Not an unhappy expression, mind. It's only now that he deigns to tear his attention away from the machine and turn it upon— whoever. This guy.

"Unless you plan to make the journey on foot, I suggest you get in."

[noisecomplaint]

"I see." Said the half-blind man, staring at the human scarecrow on the iron horse?

'No' isn't the answer Rokuro was hoping for, and watching the ATV buck under the feeble young man's weight does little to reassure him.

For a moment, making the journey on foot honestly seems preferable to trusting the contraption or its rider, but then Rokuro remembers he is without his comrades, weapons, or abilities, and thinks the better of it.

He approaches the ATV tentatively, with the same respect as any war-horse, and climbs onto the seat behind its driver. A moment of awkward silence, and his arms loops carefully around a too-small waist.

"Is this alright? I do not want to hurt you."

[grindset]

The awkward silence has at least enough room to persist as remains between them: not much, but enough to matter. Truly, Viktor hadn't considered this part. The scrub-like garments do absolutely nothing to pad out just how gaunt he is, nor to hide the stiff, angular shapes that might be felt around his waist—something like a belt, or a harness, thick leather with smooth rivets, streamlined to mitigate catching on clothes.

"It's," somewhat terrible, kindly do not perceive him in any fashion, "it's fine. It doesn't hurt."

Anyway.

"Hold that, please, if you would." The crutch, he means, projecting back at an angle alongside his thigh. Their thighs. Ugh— "So it doesn't go flying off. Ready," he calls to the guide ahead. Adds, quieter, "I think."

This ought to rev the engine...

It does. Smooth vibration, an alien sound; it snaps a frisson of electricity up his spine, prickles the sweat-damp hairs on his neck. This is insane. A fantasy. He's delirious, hallucinating, he's going to wake up in another hospital bed with cannulae in his nostrils and tell Jayce about this stupid dream he had—

[noisecomplaint]

Rokuro takes hold of the crutch. The harness hasn't escaped his attention, or that Victor's thigh is a quarter the width of his own, and he seems generally unwell. If it weren't for the fact he can afford such unique assistive devices, Rokuro might assume he was a sickly and/or starving peasant.

"Can I safely assume you are not contagious--" then the ATV rumbles into action, and his free arm snaps around his partner's waste with far less concern for either of their comforts.

Maybe it's best Rokuro can't finish his sentence anyway, given people who are from times and places with far less pestilence and famine might take said 'practical' concern as an insult.

What he wouldn't give for a horse right now.

[cynicte]

Of course Nicte is saddled with a weedy civilian, one she eyes warily as they size up the courtyard ahead. He truly thinks he's going to hobble across the way while she provides cover, a thought that might have been laughable if it didn't threaten to cow her entirely.

Would she be any better? The gun is inelegant in Nicte's hands, heavy, unwieldly. She still doesn't understand why she can't pelt everything around them with sound when there is no restrictive collar around her throat, but the link to her work is missing. Stays missing the more she grasps at it, working her vocal cords. Trying for a seed, any note, any lone chorus.

She clears it, giving up, "Wait." There has to be a way to make this work. "Don't be a waste when we have time to think."

The cover is sketchy, but holds up against the errant fire. They aren't the only two out here, clutching guns.

[grindset]

They're both clutching guns. Only one of them is clutching a gun like they have any intent to use it, and not simply because their hand formed a white-knuckle squeeze when someone gave it to them and refused to take it back and now it's just Here. But he is thinking, thank you—

Thinking, while hovering near the exit, unintentionally looking like he's about to go lurching through it. This is easily corrected by a couple steps shuffled back, by turning his attention her way.

Maybe it's the acute humanity inherent in witnessing a face, on looking into an eye—the moment their gazes meet, his bearing seems to shrink.

"I'm," he looks at it, the ugly thing in his hand, "I, I can't—"

lfg again, I do what I want

[fightscene]

All Sevika can do is laugh, hoarse, and wipe her mouth off on her arm.

"You've got to be kidding me."

That he even holds the gun like a child would, clutching it upon the instruction of a parent, "You know how to use that?"

A glance across the courtyard reveals little option for cover. So they'll be running it in one go, with one arm heavy at Sevika's side, two lots of dead weight. They left it on her but the lack of shimmer makes the mechanism drag and stick and she'd almost rather not have it all. Fuck 'em for grafting it to her. They welded the ship's own goddamn anchor to its hull.

She sucks in a lungful of air and resents it immediately for not being cigarette smoke.

"Right," is the only warning he'll get before she grabs him unceremoniously around his skinny middle, hoisting him off his feet and under her arm like a rolled up carpet. If he wants to protest, he's got seconds to do it as she holds for a gap in the fire.

hollers

[grindset]

That's precisely what he was thinking. The kidding-me part. This situation is so surreal it verges on abstract. Desperation or cruelty, it must be one of those—no other objective could possibly inspire anyone to place him in such a circumstance intentionally.

Then Sevika keeps saying things,

"Of course not," comes out maximum defensive. The vaguest whiff of a suggestion that he might theoretically be interested in knowing how to operate this thing, and thus susceptible to a jab about his nonexistent marksmanship skills, is infinitely more insulting than pointing out that he doesn't have any.

Then Sevika is moving,

and Viktor expresses his feelings on the matter with a super articulate croak, something like huk, ggh, as her big arm jerks the air from his lungs like a bony bagpipe. What else is he meant to do? Register his complaint? Tender a reasonable objection? Nothing reasonable is going to solve this. So he clings and, in the last of those seconds, chokes out,

"If you drop me, I'm shooting you."

(He absolutely is not.)

ii b.

[septad]

Mildmay had been too angry to say anything, when the driving had started, and fuck, the guy knew how to make the thing go. He would have done better than any of Mildmay's fuck-stupid attempts. So he sat. And he fumed. Sure, put the cripples together. Makes sense.

They get there, anyway, so Mildmay reckons he weren't wrong.

He walks without a cane. The limp drags his bum leg behind him like an apology. Should have done better. Should have been faster. To Viktor's comment, he can only shrug. His words are slurred by the scar cutting up the side of his face, breaking deep into the muscles of his lip, "didn't do nothing."

[grindset]

He made it go, sure. Nearly made it go straight into a tree, nearly took their heads off ducking a low-slung branch, jerked the craft to a nauseating nigh-halt more than once for unexpected terrain. But he sped up and slowed and weaved as the jungle demanded, stopped only the once to be sick, and didn't even make a sound when that web stretched right across his face. All in all, nearly has afforded them both an escape free of injury. So. Good enough.

"Yes... well..."

He's pausing, pulling a face at the remnant he's just picked from his hair: the chitinous legs cocooned in spider's work are still moving. He flings it aside, gives his hand a few loose flicks to fail at shedding the remains of the silk, wipes his fingers on his leg.

"Next time. If we're trapped here long enough for a next time to come." He hopes they won't be.

iia.

[alittledream]

Kimiko looks at the man in the ATV - haggard and drawn, in need of a few of Serge's best meals - and knows this is a bad idea. This man, driving? Everyone looks as though she could snap them in half, but even Hughie would manage to leave some damage on this pale scarecrow.

(One of the worksheets she did, when she was learning to write, had a scarecrow on it. The little line drawing had looked happy. This one does not.)

She shakes her head and tries to open the door, pointing to the passenger's seat as she does. Move over, and let her drive.

my girl!!

[grindset]

She may open it if she likes; this man in the pilot's seat will watch her hand accomplish this, then take a look at her other hand, pointing, then glance to her face. Despite the quiet kindness in her suggestion, his eyebrows appear to have taken issue with it.

"I am perfectly capable of operating a self-locomotor, thank you."

Never mind that he looks like he's one good paper cut away from death. Never mind that he's never sat behind the wheel of a vehicle like this one. Vehicles are vehicles, there is no paper aboard, and, most importantly, he was here first.

[alittledream]

Kimiko shakes her head again, bugging her eyes wide like the idea that he's capable of anything is insane. He's untested, and that makes him untrustworthy - and all around them, ATVs are revving their motors and driving off. The options are narrowing. Let me drive, she says, not caring that he won't understand. You just called it a -

But there aren't words in her hands for 'self-locomotor'. Not yet, anyway.

[grindset]

That look certainly gets the point across, and were it not followed by a flurry of gestures, he'd have soured for it immediately—but the manual linguistics strike enough of a dent in his prepared stubbornness to break its seal. Not all at once, but incrementally, a series of glances between this girl's hands, the departing fleet, the big insistent stare, his own hands on the wheel—

"Why? No." Find your own, he's about to say, but there aren't any others. "You can't just— I'm driving."

Is he, though.

iii

[consider8]

Eight had not known many humans, they being an extinct species from her world. However, even a complete stranger to their kind was able to identify that something was wrong with this one. His face was pallid and his expression gaunt, like the creatures that inhabited the deepsea metro. Where that was normal for such creatures, of what she had seen Viktor was a deviation that was worth closer examination.

"I was asking..." She repeated the question, slowly and clearly. "...whether you were alright and would benefit from a visit to a medic."

[grindset]

Ah, there it is. The inevitable. Such questions, new and infrequent as they are, still make him feel like he's been rapped across the knuckles: it barely smarts, but the awareness of it lingers like an unpleasantly warm reminder of one fleeting moment of humiliation.

So when his wary look, tentatively opening with the beginnings of curiosity for this person's uncommon appearance, claps shut for the gentle sting of it, it's only reflex.

"I'm fine." Also a reflex. He could stand to be less brusque. "Just... just tired. It's been a long day."

To make the biggest understatement possibly ever.

[consider8]

She took no offense to the tone, knowing even before she asked that it was none of her business. His was a way she was all too familiar with: proud, independent, stubborn. Qualities that she was encouraged to embrace too.

"It has been." She nodded in agreement. "Such experiences are seldom relaxing. Please, allow me to accompany you to your room."

And before he gets a moment to protest, she adds: "I'm not really taking no for an answer." She offered the gentle method, she had no problem with taking the stronger position.

[grindset]

His mouth has already taken the preliminary shape for polite refusal when that addition comes. Surprise jerks his chin back toward his neck just a tick.

"Excuse me?"

They met just seconds ago. And this person is, what, fifteen? Sixteen? But that's by a human metric, which could be completely off base. Her look doesn't really factor in beyond the relative novelty, anyway—there are all kinds in Piltover, a tentacular scalp is hardly a stretch beyond the norm—but his eyes take another pass at her regardless, flicking here and there.

"Do you... work here?"

Probably not, she's wearing the same drab grey as the rest of them, but why else—