Test Drive Meme #24

[hadrielmods]

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!]

Comments

[hardwearing]

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.

[requiemshark]

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."

[hardwearing]

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.

[requiemshark]

"Knife specialist. Called her Chica."

Ephemera rocks back on his heels.There are three drawings one the page. One of her with her hair up in a bun, applying lipstick. A sketch of her in profile, balancing a knife on her hand. And the one where she's dead on an anonymous beach, slumped on her side, hair obscuring everything but the sharp line of her cheek. He included that one to drive the knife in a little deeper. Make Washington hurt for what he did.

It's justified, Ephemera thinks. It has to be.

Maybe. But it hurts, looking over at the page and seeing her like that. Even if he drew it.

"Prettiest woman you ever saw. And she worked at it. Always had lipstick on, even when we were jumping."

He closes his eyes. Just for a moment.

"She was one of my training officers, when I was just some idiot kid. She and CT, they look after me.:

[hardwearing]

Chica, okay. Wash wonders if her death scene is accurate or just an imagining -- had that been the woman they dropped off the dock? Had she drowned during that battle? He doesn't ask Sharkface. It doesn't really matter the specific battle they'd killed her in, she was dead.

"None of my team really wore makeup," Wash comments idly, looking at the sketch of Chica putting on lipstick. "Sometimes on shore leave. But we hardly ever got that." He vaguely remembers Connie's eyes lined dark in dim bar lighting, a stain on South's lips that she left behind on her shot glasses. They wore makeup for other people. This woman, Chica, she must have worn it for herself. Interesting.

"Did she teach you to jump?"

[requiemshark]

"Yeah."

And she'd been a taskmaster, absolutely merciless. Nasty as a drill sergeant when you fucked up. Most of the cadets had hated her guts. Ephemera had too, at the beginning. But then they'd gone up to jump the first time and she let him stay there for a moment in the drop ship, just watching the way the sky changed color. And he'd realized she was a perfectionist, but not cruel like some of the other instructors.

She'd used a different name back then, but Chica was the first person Ephemera had ever looked at and thought, this is what it's like to have a sibling. He hadn't seen her die, but he'd made CT tell him the whole thing, how he'd dragged her out of the sand. How she'd drowned, sucked down by her armor. Someone had cracked her skull open during the fighting, knocked her helmet off. She was probably unconscious when she went into the water.

That's probably a good thing. Ephemera read up on drowning, after. It's supposed to hurt.

"I never had family before. But she was my sister."

[hardwearing]

Wash has three sisters. This is... difficult. And he wants to say he's sorry, but knows how well that went over when Carolina tried. No matter how much he means it, it could turn this whole encounter south. So he doesn't say it. Just thinks it as he nods and turns the page away from the image of the drowned woman -- trying not to think of the Meta. Of Maine, another friend lost. But he'd died without anyone noticing, long before the Meta drowned.

He doesn't bring any of this up. He's not stupid.

Who's next?

[requiemshark]

Washington doesn't say a word. Ephemera breathes. Digs his nails into his wrist again to make himself focus. It's fine. It's fine, he's fine, they're--doing this.

Remembering the dead. Someone should remember them.

He clears his throat. It wasn't supposed to be this hard. Remembering them. Talking about them in front of Washington, who should be an enemy.

God, he misses them so much.

"Crow," he says, softly. The big guy, tallest of them all. Bulldog face, nasty scar splitting his forehead. Always had his arms bare because he said it intimidated people when he lunged at them. "He had a thing for old world puzzles. Rubik's cubes and that sorta thing. He used to con people when we'd go out on shore leave. He looked like a moron, so nobody thought he could do 'em fast, you know? We timed him once. Finished that fucker in twenty three seconds. Didn't use his HUD to cheat, either."

Ephemera rocks back on his heels. He doesn't want to do this anymore. It hurts.

"My family."

There's only one left: CT.

[hardwearing]

Crow. A rubik's cube in 23 seconds. Wash files that away with all the rest. A face, a name, a detail, their personality. He won't forget. He never forgets. But he can tell that Sharkface is wearing down so he turns the page, and there's only one person it could be. The leader, the one Connie was involved with.

"CT," he breathes out, studying the sketch. A man with a short stripe of a mohawk and 5 o'clock shadow. Wash had actually seen him without his armor in person before, when they reclaimed Connie's armor out in the desert, but he was. Less handsome, let him say. The seal on the armor served to preserve him a bit, enough that he recognizes him from the sketch, but. Yeeeeeah.

"He was your CO from the start?"

[requiemshark]

Ephemera nods. He's twitching again, knocking his shoulder against the wall. Doesn't want to be here, around Washington. Remembering all this shit. He wants to wake up back with the others, with CT and Chica and all of them alive and at his side. But wanting that doesn't get him anything, doesn't bring them back, and he promised that he'd remember.

If he can't avenge them, then at least he can make Washington remember too.

"Yeah," Ephemera says. Then, louder: "Yeah, he was! He was a good captain. He protected us. He got -- he got fucked up, after Connie. But he came back for me. He came back."

Ephemera twitches unhappily.

"I couldn't fight. Nobody had his back and he fucking died. I was supposed to die with them, do you understand that? Do you get it?"

[hardwearing]

Yeah. Yeah, he can make Wash remember. Every name and face is another weight on his shoulders, another heap of guilt over the things he did with Freelancer. He looks up at Sharkface when the other soldier gets emphatic, and really listens.

Wash has never had a good CO. In that way, Sharkface was lucky, but for the pain of losing him.

No shit the guy got fucked up, he put on her armor and started going by CT. His death isn't one that Wash was involved in, not really, but it was still due to Freelancer. To Epsilon. Wash figures he's lucky he wasn't killed by Epsilon as well, one way or another. Even if a part of him did die from him. He's still not over that, even working alongside the AI for so long now.

At the end of the day Freelancer destroyed everything it touched. Including him. Including Sharkface.

Yes, he understands.

It's survivor's guilt, he knows, looking at Sharkface now. Something in common, since he's felt it too, especially back when he thought he was the only one left. That he should have gone down with the others. Slowly, he's learned to live again, to be grateful he's alive rather than thinking his continued existence was some kind of curse. And he wonders if Sharkface can learn that too.

"I get it," he says earnestly. "It takes a long time, but. You can go from 'I was supposed to die with them' to 'I have to live for them.' Because that's what they'd want. And it seems like... you could have a life here."

Not back home, because Wash filled him full of lead. But here.

[requiemshark]

"Don't," Ephemera warns, sharply. He doesn't want to hear that from Washington. Not right now. Maybe never. They can't fight and most of the time Ephemera knows it's pointless, most of the time the logic sticks and he remembers that nothing would change, it wouldn't get him anything worth keeping. A moment of sick satisfaction to see Washington's eyes go dull or a take a bullet between his own eyes, nothing more. They'd fight and somebody would win and the other fucker would die and that would just be it. Until they started it all up again and then--

His hands are shaking. He forces them to flatten, not to grab for a knife.

"Keep it," he says instead, jerking his chin at the book. "You get to live with them now."

[hardwearing]

Don't. Fine. Wash shuts his mouth and spares another glance down at CT's face before shutting the sketchbook as well. He gets to live with them now. Sure. As if they weren't already seared into his memory... he does appreciate getting to keep the sketch of Connie, though. It's beautiful. And it's too bad there's no way Sharkface would draw anyone else for him.

"You're a good artist," he says instead, smoothing his hand over the cover of the book.

[requiemshark]

Really? Really? Ephemera twitches, grabbing his wrist tight before he can do something stupid like try to break Washington's face again. It didn't go well the first time and he's supposed to be trying to be civil. Remembering the dead. Being gracious about it and all that shit.

"We're not doing that," he warns. They aren't friends. "I'm not killing you. That's it."

[hardwearing]

".....okay. Then get out."

Because he's got nothing else to say. He opens the book again, to the first page, and looks down at Connie.

Except.

He hesitates, then digs into his pocket for the phone he got on arrival. The one that dinged with an ominous message despite his not knowing anyone here but Sharkface. He pulls it up and holds the phone out, screen first.

"Is this about you?"

[requiemshark]

"What?" He's almost out the door - bolting from situations might be childish but he doesn't want to be here - and has to fight to hold still and listen. Ephemera squints, good eye narrowed. Drake's name. Oh, fuck. "You stay the fuck away from him, you hear me?"

[hardwearing]

Well.... that was Wash's first thought anyway. That it was a trap of some kind. But then again he knows he's a paranoid fuck.

That wasn't a reaction he expected, though.

"Friend of yours?"

[requiemshark]

No, no, no. This is not happening. Ephemera twitches. Puts his hand on his gun in warning but doesn't draw it. Not yet. "I won't tell you again."

[hardwearing]

Wash sits perfectly still, hands on the book, his eyes flicking briefly from Sharkface's face to his hand an back again. "Okay... what if he finds me?"

[requiemshark]

"Figure it out," Ephemera snaps. "But you touch him, I won't come looking for a fight. I'll burn you."

[hardwearing]

That's interesting. Really interesting. This is definitely one of Sharkface's people, but maybe not in the way Wash thought. It might actually be worth answering.

"Got it," he says, voice clipped. "Now get out."

[requiemshark]

No argument there. Ephemera sneers at Washington and then promptly flees, slamming the door hard.

It's done. It's fucking done.

[hardwearing]

Once he's gone, Wash lifts his phone again, sending back a text.

Where?