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!]

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"...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."

If Sharkface can't tell that he's genuine here, that's a problem. Because he is. And with each face the guilt grows heavier. He doesn't looks up to see the blood blossoming on Sharkface's cuffs, though, just studies the faces. Memorizes them. Dane and Daisy, went silent. Probably some kind of severe ptsd. Wash can relate to that.

He remembers fighting them, the way they laughed maniacally as they shot. They were broken and never got the chance to heal. But they'd had a family looking out for them.

Wash stays quiet for awhile on this one, finally lifting a hand off the sketchbook and rubbing his face. "Did all of you join together from the UNSC?"

Ephemera nods, clamping his hand tight over his wrist. It stings now, with the blood. Once it would have been enough to keep him focused, keep him centered on his objective. Once, before he had nerve damage, before all the shit went down and he lost his center.

There's an objective here. Washington is the enemy. He has to be the enemy. Because if he's not, then--

"Yeah. CT was our captain. Maybe he did some shit, maybe we killed some fuckers, but they had it coming." He lifts his chin, eyes narrowed tight. "They fucking deserved it for what they did to us."

Wash hesitates -- he doesn't disagree with the sentiment that some people just need to die, some people deserve it, but he has to wonder what else Sharkface deems worthy of death.

"What did they do?" he asks, looking up from Dane and Daisy to see Sharkface clutching his wrist. The blood on his fingertips.

He doesn't comment.

Strangely, no one has asked that before. It wasn't important. Charon needed fighters and if they came highly trained and ready to deal out damage, all the better. Personal motivations were secondary, if that. All that mattered was your willingness to kill some motherfuckers on command.

Ephemera bares his teeth in a sneer.

"They lied."

The UNSC is very good at that.

"Simple job. Insurrectionists had a base on a planet somebody else wanted. Got dropped plane-side, had to blow some shit up. No witnesses. Knew it was too fucking easy the moment we started. The guards had shit armor, no ammo. Not soldiers at all. They were just some dumb kids trying to stay alive."

He twitches. Grabs his wrist hard. He doesn't tell people about this part. It doesn't matter anymore.

"CT radioed back, said there'd been a mistake, we'll wait for extraction. Command said sure, our bad. And then they dropped a warhead."

Cut their losses. Or tried to.

Ephemera shivers. Grins.

"They knew it was a refugee camp. They knew the whole fucking time. Of course we fucking killed them. Every last one of them on the ship."

Yup. That falls under 'deserved to die' in Wash's book. And there was an insight there, as to why Sharkface's team joined the Insurrectionists.

Wash himself has no love left for the UNSC. He might have joined Freelancer willingly (sort of... he'd had no other choice, nowhere else to go with his history) but the UNSC sold soldiers to them for the Director's games. People who were now his friends. Good people. Maybe not good soldiers, but good people.

All these organizations were shit. The UNSC, Freelancer, Charon, everybody. They were all just working for their own gain, and didn't care about their soldiers. You had to look out for you and yours entirely on your own, back in their world. Couldn't trust anyone. Wash was lucky enough to get a new team, a new family. Sharkface wasn't. Wash looks at Dane and Daisy's smiling faces and feels vaguely ill.

He breathes out, glancing up to meet Sharkface's gaze, and nods once. He understands.

Washington doesn't say a damn word. He just listens and when it's done, he nods. A soldier listening to the sit-rep, drawing his own conclusions.

And there's so much of Ephemera that wants to hate him, to see him dead and broken on the ground for disrespecting the fallen, but he hasn't. He's listening.

Ephemera doesn't know what he's supposed to do with that. It wasn't part of the plan. He came in here expecting a fight. Hoping for one, really.

This is almost worst. Looking at Washington and seeing something like understanding.

He looks away. "Tried to make it right for a while."

There's a reason he has redemption tattooed across this chest. For a long time, they'd tried to do the right thing. Balance out their karma and shit like that, before they figured out none of it mattered and the only thing a person could really do in the world was look after their people. Ephemera twitches. "Don't want to talk about that. You're supposed to be looking."

There are more drawings. He doesn't know all their faces yet.

Wash saw the 'redemption' tattoo earlier, in the shop. It's just another piece of the puzzle that is Sharkface, the puzzle he never bothered to put together before because they just didn't have the time to deal with this shit. With one more person who wanted them dead. But there's a person standing in front of him now, who might not be reasonable or healthy but is doing what Wash asked him to. A person. Not just an enemy.

"I'm looking. I'll remember them," he promises, as much for himself as Sharkface.

He turns the page. Waits.

They'll see about that. Ephemera eyes Washington with open suspicion, but doesn't go for his gun. They made a deal. It'd be easier if one of them just broke it already, much simpler to have an enemy to target and destroy rather than deal with another person. Ephemera never was much good with people. He got lucky with CT and the others, found a family that always had his back. The rest of the world never seemed too concerned with that. Most people are out for themselves and nothing else. Even the Insurrection hadn't turned out any better then the UNSC, in the end. So then there was prison and there was Charon and there was Felix with his sneering offer - fight for your armor, or die right there with the rest of the ship.

It'd been an easy choice. There hadn't been much point in dying while the Freelancers were still alive.

Ephemera doesn't believe in causes these days. He wanted to, once. Had liked the feeling of standing for something bigger. Now all he has are people and they've gone and died, left him alone.

He thinks about the people he has here. Drake. Lup. That weird doctor. They're worth protecting, he thinks. And, in the end, it wouldn't matter if he killed Washington. It wouldn't change anything.

"That's Rodriguez," he says, quietly. The drawing is sharper than the others, more angles, harsher light. There were a lot of things about Rodriguez that Ephemera hadn't liked. He'd gotten mean towards the end. Killed things for fun. "The sniper. He was a bastard. Stole everybody's cigarettes. But he'd wait, whenever somebody got hurt. Got into fights with the medics if they weren't fast enough. He broke a vending machine with a rock one time to steal candy for the twins."

Rodriguez. It didn't sound like Sharkface was as fond of this guy, but that's how family was sometimes. You loved them even if you didn't always like them.

A sniper. It makes him think of North briefly, and sadness flickers over his expression. North hadn't deserved what he got. None of them did, but. Maybe if Wash had gotten there sooner... if he hadn't been locked up going crazy while his friends were slaughtered. He breathes, steels his expression back to something neutral. This is harder than he'd thought it was doing to be.

He turns another page.

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cw for self harm

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