dankmemes | Test Drive Meme #24

Entry tags:

!test drive

Test Drive Meme #24

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 September 24th, and apps are open October 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: TITAN TERRORS
[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.

In this case, the monster behind you may as well be the monster above you. No, not anything flying overhead, but the freakishly giant nude monsters hellbent on shoving your crunchy body into their mouths and chowing down.

Titans are large humanlike creatures who have superior strength, though more limited intelligence. Much like zombies, they desire only to devour all of the humans in their vicinity and will use any tools at their disposal to do so. Get your steel guitars ready and get pumped, because sie sind das essen und wir sind die jager!!!]

R A G E

SCENARIO TWO: PAINTBALL ROYALE
[You've got a gun.

Okay, it's not a real gun- it's actually a paintball gun, which seems to knock people unconscious when you hit them. That's a pretty sweet deal! Except, you really want to be the last one standing, and you'll knock out countless people to do it. Every fight feels like life or death, whether you're waiting in the shadows to get the drop on someone or spraying paint all across the open streets in the fain hopes that you might get a tag or two.

Either way, if you lose, you'll find yourself waking up in a party! That's not so bad, right? It's a giant gathering of all the paint-covered losers in the city, with free food and drinks and a distribution of excellent prizes. What did you win? Fight your friends, but not in the dark and trauma-y way, and be the next winner of our Hadriel death (not really) match!

This is a mini version of our Party Royale event this month.]

C O N F U S I O N

SCENARIO THREE: WALK WALK FASHION BABY
[Your trusty leather jacket is gone. So are your worn and torn jeans, all your summer dresses, your boots and high tops and heels. Suddenly, nothing is where you expect it to be, not even that load of clothes that you've left in the laundry for the past few weeks (oops). In the stead of all of your beloved duds, you find some stuff that... might be a little questionable.

Whether you were the lucky recipient of the hand shawl, the face skirt, the suspender sweats or some other wild atrocity, you'll be sure to have some fun trying to maneuver around the city in your weird, cumbersome outfits. At least you don't look as silly as that guy over there in the sea urchin costume!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Not that long," Ephemera says, ever so softly. "Motherfucker, I took Carolina."

Washington isn't bette than her. Luckier than her, maybe. But it only takes one good hit. He's only been thinking about it constantly, even after Maketh fucking Tua cornered him after patrols one night and softly laid out what would happen if he fucked with her - or anyone in the city.

And if he took Washington's head off, the bastard would only come back again.

No-go. Breathe.

He lowers his pistol, hands clenched tight. He doesn't want anything more than to rush the fucker and cave his skull in right now. Do it with his bare hands.

"Get. Out."

"Carolina wasn't willing to kill you. I was."

Maybe if they'd had more time, but Wash's instinct was always to protect his people first. And he didn't regret the choice he'd made. Sharkface was lost to this. Didn't care about anything besides killing them... he had to wonder if that was still true, here. If this was some kind of second chance.

He lifts his head, eyes harsh but honest.

"Look, Ephemera. It's not that big a place. We're going to encounter each other every now and then." Especially since he plans on joining the Guard. "We have to learn to live with each other."

Motherfucker. Ephemera twitches. Touches his knuckles to his mouth so he won't start yelling like he wants to. Learn to live with it? He doesn't have to do anything except leave Washington breathing.

A thought occurs to him then.

He smiles. Thinks about the knife in his ankle holster. Goes very still so he won't telegraph before he's ready.

"You know, you don't really need both eyes, Washington. I don't."

It's not killing. So it doesn't count.

Wash watches Sharkface carefully. The way he goes still so he won't show what he's planning. Great, he's in for another fight... Wash is not in the mood.

"I bet you need the one you have left," he comments idly, hands going still on the rack of clothes.

"I don't want to hurt you anymore than we already have. I didn't mean for any of that to happen in the first place. But I will if you make me. You know that."

Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not. Once he would've said losing the eye and having to relearn how to shoot, how to fight, even how to fucking walk without crashing into shit was pretty bad. Then it happened and he adapted. Anything that doesn't kill you is just a chance to come back and try again.

Ephemera holds himself perfectly still. It won't be clean, like this. Neither of them have amor on.

"Yeah. Shit just happens around you, doesn't it?"

He narrows his eyes.

"It's your fault they're dead. You don't get to let it go."

Shit does seem to keep happening around him. Wash doesn't go looking for any of it, but he does take part once it's there and that's on him. He takes responsibility for his actions... but he was given a second chance. To do right this time around.

"I'm not letting anything go." He takes a breath, remembers their names. "CT. Chica. Barrows. Dane. Daisy. Crow. Rodriguez. I don't know which one's which... tell me about them."

"You--!"

He can't help tensing then, shifting into a ready-stance. Because Washington said their names, he remembered, he wasn't supposed to remember. He's just supposed to disappear, die, whatever. Not remember their names.

What is he supposed to do with that?

"I'm not doing this right now," Ephemera announces. Not without his armor. "Later. We're going to talk. I'll find you."

Wash raises an eyebrow -- it's no mystery that Sharkface wants to wait until he's got his armor back. Wash would feel better in his, too, but he has no idea where the fuck it went.

"If we're just going to talk, then why not now?"

"If you're going to remember," Ephemera hisses, eyes narrowed tight, "you should know their faces too."

He's not certain if he can stand telling Washington about his family, what they were like. Why they meant so much to him and why it hurts so much to be alone now, in the aftermath. The words might not stick.

The drawings will. He's filled a sketchbook of them.

Washington wants to remember? Fine. He can live with their ghosts just like Ephemera desk.

"...okay. You've got pictures?" he asks, curiously.

He wishes he still had pictures from Freelancer. Hell, he doesn't even have pictures of the Reds and Blues on him here. Things he should have carried on his person but he didn't, and now he's alone. With just his memories.

It's good if Sharkface has more than that, he thinks. Maybe. Maybe it makes the hurt worse.

"No," Ephemera snaps. He did, once, but they died when the UNSC took his old armor. If he couldn't draw....

But he can. He has to recreate the moments carefully, so he can't forget what they looked like. There's not much that scares him these days, but the thought that he might wake up one day and not recognize their faces sits heavy with Ephemera. It was a little worse when he was Sharkface. The forgetting. The aftermath.

Stop. Breathe. Focus.

"I'll find you," he repeats. Because there's no way he's letting Washington see where he lives, what he's painted on the walls.

Then how..? Okay, he'll find out. And Sharkface will find him, apparently. Wash isn't worried about that -- he wasn't crazy about the other soldier knowing where he lived but it would be easy enough no matter the reason. Just ask after where the other guy in armor was, people would tell him. They were too trusting here.

So he just nods, and goes back to looking for clothes. There have to be some plain jeans left somewhere.

Good, that's decided. Now he can flee and pretend that was the plan the whole time. There's no way he's spending another moment in Washington's presence. Not without his armor.

Ephemera promptly turns and leaves. He'll find clothes somewhere else.

It takes him a while, longer than perhaps is necessary. Tracking down decent clothes - some jeans and an oversized sweatshirt, the shit he thinks college students wear - is fine, or would be if he didn't keep getting distracted. He's jumpy and tense, hates the feel of walking around without the extra weight of his armor holding him steady. Later he finds some boots that have hidden armor plating on the insides and that helps, a little.

Then he finds his sketchbook and stares at it for a long time. He tears a few pages out, things that Washington has no right to see. The sketches of Ephemera's friends, the people he's met in Hadriel and come to care for. None of Lup, laughing wildly as magic flashes in her hands, or Drake grinning at the bar. There's no use in letting Washington see them. He could get ideas. Instead, Ephemera focuses on the drawings of his old squad. Rodriguez dealing cards for poker, a cigarette tucked behind his ears and threatening to singe his curls. Chica smirking with a knife balanced on her ungloved palm. CT watching Connie when he thought no one was paying attention, his expression distant but fond. Dane braiding Daisy's hair out of her face, both of them laughing.

He keeps the drawings of them dying, the ones he's kept hidden. Barrows on the ground, clutching t the ruin of his arm. CT holding Connie as she bled out. Chica drowned and washed up on a beach, her perfect hair tangled over her face. All of it. If Washington wants to know them, really know them, then he has to live with that too.

It goes on like that for a while. Ephemera sits with the drawings and tries to remember their voices, the exact way each of them spoke. Or how Daisy and Dane laughed after they'd stopped talking, how you could tell what each laugh meant if you listened carefully. How they used emojis in every text they sent to his helmet, each one more ridiculous than the last. How Rodriguez had sat down and asked him to design a tattoo - something to remember. How CT had wept at the hospital when he thought Ephemera was unconscious.

Something to remember. Yeah.

It's not hard to track Washington down, even without his armor. The city's small. He doesn't bother knocking, just picks the lock and lets himself in, sketchbook tucked under his arm. He keeps his gun and his knives close too. Just in case.

"If you laugh," he promises, "if you laugh at them, I will hurt you."

Wash Isn't surprised when he hears the door opening, despite it being locked. He stands but deliberately does not pull his gun out... it looks like he found similar clothing -- the shirt from before, a pair of jeans, and a zip up hoodie. Nothing special, nothing noteworthy. He isn't a big guy. Ignoring his scars, without his armor he looks like anyone else. Nothing special. Nothing scary. You can't even really see the implant under his hair.

Slowly, he nods, waving Sharkface forward into the apartment, and sits back down.

The other soldier is holding a sketchbook. Of course. He didn't have pictures, but apparently he could draw. Wash wonders if he'll remember their faces... he saw several of them without their helmets, after all.

Ephemera thins his mouth into a tight line and sets the sketchbook down in front of Washington. He doesn't hand it over. Their hands might touch and he can't, right now. Not with his armor gone. "Look."

Washington wants to do this? Fine. Ephemera will make sure he gets a good look at all of it. Every last detail.

The first drawing is one he fought with. Not the drawing itself, but whether he should put it on top or include it at all. Connie was different. Almost one of them, but not quite. Ephemera hadn't known her too well, though he'd liked the way that CT had gone quiet and thoughtful around her. How her voice had sounded in their com checks.

In the end, he left the sketch there. Right on top. It's Connie from the shoulders up, helmet off, watching something. She's still and a little sad, just like you remembers.

Connie was with CT and Ephemera thinks he could have been friends with her, given time, but she was also on Washington's side for a while.

Maybe he wonders what she looks like, sometimes.

Wash picks up the book and opens the cover, and. Oh. Oh.

Talk about a gutpunch. He stares at the drawing, both missing her acutely in that moment and amazed at how accurate it is. Connie... he wishes he could have helped her. But he didn't know, and she didn't trust him. Didn't trust any of them, except Tex, and we all know why that was. And of course that's the one who killed her, ultimately. Wash's jaw works a little and he lifts a hand to touch the drawing, but aborts the motion before it touches the page. He doesn't want to smudge it.

"She hated when I called her Connie," he says softly. "Said it made her sound like a kid."

Ephemera steps back, folding his arms across his chest unhappily. This moment was never under his control and it's threatening to spiral, to become something he doesn't have words for. Because it's clear now that Washington cared for Connie as well, and that was never part of the plan.

It was easier just imagining him dead. Washington, Carolina, all of them.

"She let us."

Ephemera doesn't know what to make of that. Connie was Connie, and then she was dead.

"I liked her," he says after a moment. "She was -- decent. But CT, he loved her."

Then at least she was with him when she died, Wash thinks to himself. It's a better end than a lot of them got. Probably better than any of Sharkface's family, either. Which he has to get to. That's the point of this exercise, not just to stare at an image of his dead friend. It occurs to him that he should ask for a copy of it to keep for himself, but. Sharkface would probably laugh at him. Like he'd ever do anything for a Freelancer.

Fuck.

"I liked her too," Wash admits, lifting the page to turn it and giving Connie one last glance. He'd had a crush on her once, back in the day. Maybe she knew and that's why she always brushed him off.

Enough of this. He can't even hide his emotions behind a helmet right now. It needs to stop. Wash turns the page.

"Who's this?"

Ephemera rocks on his heels unhappily, trying not to squirm and pace like he wants to. He hates holding still, waiting for an enemy to pass judgement on the past, on the people he loved. That he still loves, so desperately it hurts sometimes, when he looks to the side and doesn't find them standing there. Connie could have been a part of that. She almost was. Chica and Rodriguez had been suspicious of her to the bitter end, but CT said, no. She's one of us. He'd been ready to make a place for her in their little family and Ephemera had always trusted CT's judgement. He'd been a good CO. Harsh, but fair when it mattered.

A good brother. And anyone his brother loved was family too, in Ephemera's book.

He could have loved Connie, he thinks. In time. If she hadn't died.

Yeah, well. Too fucking late for that.

Washington turns the page. He sounds stupidly sincere, like he really does want to know and remember.

Ephemera kicks at the floor. "Barrows. Your friends ripped his arm off."

The sketch is grinning, eyes bright with humor.

"He snuck a cat into our pelican once. It didn't have a tail. His sisters were ODST too, but they got fucked up. Sent half his pay to them every month."

Barrows. A cat without a tail, sent half his pay to his sisters. Wash remembers the guy with the mechanical arm... ripping it off and offering it to help a woman up and then dropping both into the water. It wasn't him who did it, but it had been his team. So for all intents and purposes right now... yeah.

He files the information away and studies the sketch a moment longer, wonders at how much emotion Sharkface managed to put into the image.

"How did he lose the arm in the first place?" he asks, genuinely curious.

He doesn't even remember. Ephemera digs his nails into his palm hard, until it almost draws blood and he can feel it for real. The mothefucker doesn't remember what he did. Doesn't even know--

Stop. Focus. Breathe.

Ephemera bares his teeth, not a smile.

"Oh, you did that too, freelancer. Dropped a building on him. Blast took his arm, broke most of his ribs."

How was he supposed to know which one Barrows was, before the mechanical arm? That's the point of this exercise, isn't it?

Wash grimaces.

"Don't call me Freelancer. It's just Washington."

A pause.

"Was it the same building you were in?"

"Fuck you."

None of this is a joke. Washington better know that.

Ephemera eyes him suspiciously, then nods. Same building, same bad goddamn day. A lot of people died in that mess. He didn't know most of them. "So what?"

He doesn't care much about what happened to him in that building. He lived. His family didn't. That's the problem. That's Washington's fault.

--what. What did he say now? Of course it's not a fucking joke, he's putting himself through the wringer here. Like he didn't have enough guilt over the people he'd killed that hadn't deserved it. Over his friends he hadn't saved. Over being one of the only survivors.

They had that in common, actually. Being the survivors. For so long, before Carolina showed herself, he thought he was the only one.

"I was just wondering."

And he turns the page. Who's next?

God, Ephemera wants to hit him. Grab him by the hair and smash his head into the wall until he gets what he fucking did, him and the other freelancers.

Ephemera twitches. Digs his nails into his arm hard. He doesn't want to imagine that maybe, just maybe, Washington already knows.

The next picture is--

He looks away. Swallows hard. The twins. Both of them professional soldiers, armored up but smiling like little kids. Sitting next to each other, flowers in their hair. Laughing. Trying so hard to always be smiling for everyone. The rest of the squad took turns watching over them, making sure nothing could sneak up on them again. Corner them without their armor.

"Dane and Daisy. The chain gunners. Called them the twins. They stopped talking, our second tour. UNSC was gonna boot them out."

Ephemera digs his nails in again, as hard as he can. He can feel blood under the sleeve of his sweatshirt. It's not enough. He always gets angry thinking about what happened to the twins, how their superiors tried to brush them off. Mental deficiency brought on by trauma. Motherfuckers. Six years, Daisy and Dane never said a word. Not a single one.

"Insurrection couldn't sign us up fast enough, after that."

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cw for self harm