dankmemes | Test Drive Meme #22

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!test drive

Test Drive Meme #22

Welcome to Hadriel's test drive, and thank you again for your interest in the game! As always, our reserves page is here, and our applications page is here! Reserves open July 25th, and apps are open August 1st. Please remember that there is an app cap of 20 apps.

Two quick points here as well:
1. Any thread made in Hadriel's test drive will be accepted as the sole Action Log sample in the application.
2. All threads made in the test drive can be considered game canon, either through handwaving or through a shared mental experience while coming through the Door!

Test drives will be broken up into specific god mini-events, during which your characters can see how well they fare under the watchful eye of one of the gods. Choose wisely or just simply pick 'em all, and have fun!

F E A R

SCENARIO ONE: THE WRONG KIND OF SCARY
[The Door brings in all that is chaotic and evil in the world. This may include you, may include the person next to you... and may include the monster behind you.

There's an odd shuffling to your right and to your left. Do you know what that is? Maybe not, but at least nobody else does either. You might peek at an eye stalk or a stinger, you might catch a glimpse of something that can maybe pass for fingers... or maybe it just has a mouth on its butt because its creator was feeling particularly sadistic that day. That's right, you're looking at the creatures from Spore, EA's infamous alien creation game with the most awkward alien creator imaginable.

These particular Spore creatures are the carnivorous kind, the kind who seek out and eat other creatures so that they can instantly procreate to pass on their victim's genetic code and make their species even more wild. You might not want to stick around and watch the mating process. I promise it's just as weird as you think.]

T R A N Q U I L I T Y / C O N F U S I O N

SCENARIO TWO: STEPFORD SUNDAY
[You wake up one lovely weekend morning to the sounds of birds chirping outside and sun streaming through your window. What a wonderful day to be perfectly normal and happy in the suburbs! Your family is all around you, like a Norman Rockwell painting, happy to go about their average day in their average life in their average city.

So what if your sister is an archdemon? Or your father is somehow a dragon? It's just the way that things have always been... isn't it?

The perceptive of you may begin to see cracks in the veneer, may begin to wonder why everything seems to be so perfect... and as the truth begins to unfold, it paints a much darker picture than the one you're seeing. Are you sure you don't want to stay, just a little while longer?

This is a mini version of our Stepford Summer event this month!]

R A G E / D E L I G H T

SCENARIO THREE: CAKE WARS
[There are plenty of ways in this world to rouse your competitive spirit. Many of them involve athletics- few involve such beautiful edible artistry as this.

That's right, you're in a cake baking competition, and no matter how competitive you normally are, thanks to Rage's influence, you want to win. Competitors can be in teams of two or alone, and they have until morning to bake their cakes to the fullest and bring it to Delight's temple for judging.

So what kind of cake baker are you? Do you revel in your artistry? Do you measure everything and carefully prepare each icing tip? Or do you know that you suck at cooking and decide to use the opportunity to sabotage your opponent's cake instead? Nothing is off limits, and all's fair in cake and war, after all!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No sell. Motherfucker.

Ephemera snorts. Ducks his head. And activates his shield.

"You get one shot, Freelancer. And then I beat you to death."

Well he'll never make a shot with that up. Even if he wasn't on the ground at a disadvantage. Wash sighs, wondering what the way out of this is, until Sharkface calls him Freelancer again. No. If that's what he hates so badly... maybe that's the way out.

"You're wrong, you know. I haven't been a Freelancer for a long time. We brought them down."

It's the wrong thing to say. Ephemera makes a strangled sound, ugly and full of rage, and aims another blow at Washington's head.

"No, no, no! You don't get to just walk away from what you fucking did!"

Well fuck. Wash rolls again, this time getting smoothly to his feet in the blink of an eye. Recovering his rifle and stepping back out of range. If Sharkface wants a fight, he'll get one. This is a sore spot.

"I didn't! You should know what they did to me."

Motherfucker. Trying to dodge the blame as if someone he's suffered enough. As if it changes anything. Ephemera fights down a scream and just drops his shield. "Boo hoo. You think you're crazy?"

Really? Really?

"You killed my family. I'll show you fucking crazy!"

Ephemera knows he's going to take a bullet, probably more than one, and doesn't care. He goes for his flame throwers and lunges.

Maybe he does deserve to die, but not for this. Not for shit the Project made him do. Abused him into doing. They've all suffered. It was a fucking war and they were led by madmen -- Wash is always amazed he's still alive and not in a good way. But hurting him won't fix any of that. He takes careful aim and shoots for the flamethrowers, first the right and then the left, trying to hit the trigger mechanisms. If a bullet happens to go through the canisters and blows them both up, well so be it.

Wash has gotten lots of second chances to do right, he's taking this one. Carolina seemed to have almost gotten through to him once before. Maybe. "We don't have to stay crazy. This won't change anything!"

The first bullet slams into his gauntlet right over his wrist and Ephemera feels his hand go dead-numb. Tries to fight through it. Can't. And then the second shot hits the trigger mechanism head on and napalm explodes around them. Fire, sound, burning--!

Ephemera twists, going low. Protect your head, soldier. "Stop. Talking!"

His arm is burning. He can feel it melting his armor.

Fine. Fine. He'll ignore it. Washington is still standing and that's fucking unacceptable.

His right arm is dead and useless, but his left is still working. Burning, skin bubbling under the armor, but working. It's enough to go for his pistol and aim for Washington's head.

"Start listening!"

Wash rushes in close, knocking Sharkface's burning arm away -- the shot he fires goes wide and Wash hopes it didn't hit a bystander. Anyone with sense will have gotten out of the area, but some people don't have any sense. His other fist smashes up under Sharkface's chin, rocking his head back hard. Hopefully disorienting him.

"You're not the only one who lost everything."

The blow knocks him back. Catches him on his good side and sends the world tumbling into blurry shadows. Ephemera holds tight to his pistol and staggers, trying to get his feet under him. He's fast enough to match Carolina, he should be more than fast enough to put Washington down for good. Except it's going wrong now, isn't working, and Washington won't. Stop. Talking.

Get your feet under you, solider. Retaliate.

"Shut up and fight!"

Ephemera drops to one knee for more stability and fires at Washington's center mass.

Wash only has to twist to the side for the bullet to miss him, Sharkface's aim obviously off. He can take advantage of that, of the fact that the other man has dropped to one knee. He darts forward again aims a kick dead center, reaching forward and grabbing the pistol as he does. Hopefully the pain of impact will have him let go of his weapon. There are just too many civilians around.

"You don't win this. No one wins this."

It doesn't work. It doesn't fucking work and Washington darts in close, lands a hard blow to Ephemera's chest. Ephemera feels the air leave his lungs, a sharp pain in his ribs as he falls, and drops the pistol. There are two rules. The first is don't drop your weapon. The second is don't die out of stubbornness.

He has others. He has fucking knives.

Ephemera bares his teeth in a silent snarl and grabs one of his blades. Aims for Washington's ankle. Get him in the joint, bring him down.

Oh no you don't. Wash moves back out of reach, fast as lightning, Sharkface's gun in his hand. He flips it in the air, grabs it by the grip instead, and adjusts to its weight. He doesn't know it like he knows his own but at this range it'll do just fine. Like hell he's dropping it.

There's two options. Go back in and stick it right under Sharkface's chin, but he'll probably take a blade somewhere. Or hang back and take a shot that probably won't down him. He aims for the shoulder joint of his opponent's armor.

"Stop. Don't make me do this again."

So that's how it is, huh? Ephemera adjusts his grip on the knife, holding it ready. He's going to get shot in a minute. He can tell. Maybe it'll be right between his eyes and that'll be the end. But maybe it'll go somewhere nonfatal and he'll be fine. He's taken blows like that before. Survived them, walked them off and kept fighting.

He laughs, low and hoarse.

"Do it!"

Make it interesting.

"Why do you want me to so badly? You want me to be the villain? I'm not."

He keeps the gun trained on Sharkface because he's not an idiot, but he doesn't shoot. Not yet. Not unless he absolutely has to.

"Stop talking!"

It's pointless, doesn't change anything, and Ephemera's tired of feeling insane. He wants the clarity of a fight, everything drawn into sharp relief. If Washington won't take the shot, then Ephemera will just hit him again. He surges upward, knife at the ready.

With no other options, Wash shoots dead into the shoulder joint of the arm Sharkface is gripping the knife with. No way he could miss, at this range. That's going to be a bitch to heal, and probably hurts a good amount, but pain's never stopped Sharkface. Wash stays on his guard.

Hit. The knife slips from his hand. Hits the ground.

There's probably pain, somewhere.

Ephemera twitches, feeling his arm spasm as if from a distance. His HUD is blaring a warning and somehow that's more pressing than the sharp hurt.

Goddamn it all.

He staggers, fighting to keep his feet under him. Can't make his hands work. The fire's out but he can feel that tell-tale slipping of skin and cooking muscle under his armor. It's probably bad this time, the sort of thing CT would have yelled about. Look what you fucking did, asshole.

Yeah, well.

"Fuck you," Ephemera spits.

Wash moves in, kicks the knife aside even though he's sure Sharkface has others, and would be reaching for them if his hands worked. They obviously don't, which is. Good for him, right now. Good. Slowly, he puts his weapons away, holds up his hands in a gesture -- and it's just a gesture, he could be armed again in a blink -- of truce.

"Fuck you, too. But I don't want to kill you," he admits, and not just because he wants answers. Though he does. He just figures he's not getting them out of fucking Sharkface.

"If you want to blame me for everything, hate me, that's fine. I'm not innocent. Leaving the Project doesn't do that, doesn't tae away what I've done. But I'm not all of it just like you're not. I fought you because I had to."

"You don't get to forget them!"

It doesn't work like that. Ephemera staggers. Forces himself to stand upright and ignores the HUD's blaring warnings. Washington is taunting him, it's obvious, hahaha funny. The motherfucker. He laughs, low and hoarse.

"They were all I fucking had. Connie was the only one of you worth anything and you fucking killed her too."

"I haven't forgotten anything."

He sighs heavily, shaking his head. Connie is a big regret. Huge. He wishes she would have told him the truth, he can't say now what he would have done but would like to think that he wouldn't have fought her. Could have protected her. They were friends.

"I didn't kill Connie, I wanted to help her. My team was all I had, too, the Project took that. It took everything."

"Don't fucking lie!"

Ephemera doesn't want to hear it. Sharkface wouldn't have bothered asking in the first place. Words are pointless. People will say anything to get out of dying, to avoid facing what they've done.

"You motherfuckers betrayed her. Your own teammate! And my--you don't even know their names!"

"I don't lie."

He's facing it, man. He's been facing it for the better part of a decade. Nothing Sharkface believes or doesn't will change the fact that Wash blames himself for certain things.

"Tell me their names, then."

More fire for the pyre.

"You--!"

It's a trick. It has to be another Freelancer trick. They lie, they stab their teammates in the back for some fucked up mission objective or because they just fucking feel like it. Loyalty is only a word to them, worth absolutely nothing.

But somehow, Washington isn't attacking. Is asking for their names.

Ephemera sways, bleeding and furious. He doesn't give the names listed on the official paperwork, on their arrest warrants. He says their real names, the ones that mattered.

"CT. Chica. Barrows. Dane. Daisy. Crow. Rodriguez. My fucking family."

Wash listens, really listens, committing each name to memory. It's the least he could do for the lost, the victims of Freelancer and its seemingly imaginary war. Because really they hadn't done anything besides be there. Canon fodder, same as the Project. Part of a giant experiment.

"They didn't deserve to die," he finally says, but doesn't apologize. He knows how that goes. It won't fix anything. All he can do is respect the dead. Respect the soldier standing in front of him.

Who will probably try to kill him again anyway.

"Let's get you patched up."

"No, they didn't."

Not for that. They didn't deserve to die for someone's game and they didn't deserve to go out like that while Ephemera lived. They died and he lived, and they were all better than him.

Ephemera jerks back with a hiss.

"What? No! Back off."

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