test drive meme # 41

[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 February 22nd, and apps are open March 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: JUST A SNACK
[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.

Or monsters, as the case may be. It seems like the Door has decided to grace Hadriel with a small invasion of Fallen Angels, from the mobile game Food Fantasy. You might run into a Hamstero or a Forker, a Fanged Snail or a Purple Dumpling. Actually they're mostly... kind of cute.

But still dangerous, so watch your back! These Fallen Angels can really hurt. They go down pretty easy, but there are a lot of them, and they're happy to hit you with claws and teeth and whatever other weapons they have. Sadly, they will not let you hug them.

L O V E

SCENARIO TWO: SOULMATES
[You look down, and all of a sudden you see something new: a name on your wrist, inscribed as if it's always been there. Maybe you recognize the name, maybe you don't - maybe you're happy to see it, or not at all. But it's there, and you can't wash it off, and you kind of want to know what's up with it.

So why not go looking for whoever the name belongs to? There aren't too many folks in the city, they can't be that hard to find. And when you do find them, prepare for the best new friend/lover/family member you've ever met. You'll get along like a house on fire - until the name on your wrist fades away.

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

H O P E

SCENARIO THREE: SCRATCH-OFF
[In your hand there's a ticket. Scratch off the boxes, see if you win - it's a pretty straightforward concept. But the prize is the one thing you want most in the world, and if you can just scratch off the right boxes, maybe you'll get it!

The other prizes are... less enticing. Do you really need a whole turkey, or a new dishwasher, or a lifetime supply of hair removal strips? Maybe you do. But it's that big prize, that golden ticket, that you're hoping for. So scratch away, or find a buddy to help you choose the boxes, or find someone else with a ticket to compare yours to.

Let's just hope you don't run into someone who actually has won the prize... because after all, what's stopping you from just taking it?]

Comments

[volitaunt]

You want to find Finn. I mean, yeah, he's here, we ended up here together--I should explain where here is.

[ He's more and more mystified, more and more feeling like the world is turning on its edge. Poe closes his eyes. ]

Just. Bear with me for a second.

[ He rubs his face with both hands. ]

So we haven't met. Not really.

[garbagepilot]

[Well, that does it. The statement that she wants to find Finn, like it's unbelievable, followed up with him asking her to bear with him and then- that. That stupid (to her) thing he says about not having met when they just had, only for him to turn around and act like she stepped on his favorite-

It doesn't matter. She's bad at getting close to people, bad at letting them in, but it gets even more difficult when they show her exactly why they shouldn't. It doesn't matter that she had heard so many good things from BB-8, that she knows how desperately he loves his master.

Whatever imagined slight she's done to him, she doesn't have the time or the desire to be held to the fire for it.]

No, we haven't met. From the way BB-8 talks about you I expected it to go differently.

[She has no problem calling him out for being a dick.]

[volitaunt]

[ A flash of pain, on his part. God, he misses his droid. It shouldn't surprise him that BB-8 talked about him. They've been together for so long. Poe talks about BB-8 almost as constantly as he talks about his parents. ]

It-- this is complicated.

[ God, he's fucked this up, hasn't he. He was so busy being hurt at the sight of her that he didn't think about whether or not it was the same Rey he'd known.

He should be able to explain this, he's explained the world-hopping, the shifting universes, he's done it all before. He's even met friends here who didn't know him. He should be able to explain, but his thoughts are a mess. ]

Complicated and it's going to sound crazy.

[garbagepilot]

[With Finn, this conversation will be remarkably different. With Finn her hand will be held in his and she'll squeeze back softly to urge him on, she'll be willing to help him through the parts he stumbles on, and her mind will be open. She'll be kind to him because Finn has always been kind to her, the first person to ever offer himself rather than trying to take something from her, and because of that he's reached a place in her heart few others ever can.

But with Poe, he gets nothing like that. Maybe it would be different if he'd given her the same charming smile, but instead she's been met with what she can only call hostility and it's too hard for her not to become defensive. It's only been a matter of days since she first met Finn. She isn't the kind of person who lets people in when they've shown her they don't deserve it.

So she stops dead in her tracks now that they're out of danger, fixes him with a look that says she's waiting for him to start talking, and does exactly that. Waits.

If this is hard, she has no way and no will to help him. He's a grown man, the leader of his own squadron. He doesn't need anyone to show him how to be decent.]

[volitaunt]

We're not in our galaxy. We're not even in our universe. That thing, the door you came through? It drags people in from all over. Sometimes from different versions of the same universe. Me and Finn were in a different universe before this one. We got pulled there, promised we could go home, then we ended up here instead.

[ This is the important part, though. This is the part that matters most. ]

I knew you, in the universe before this one. I knew a version of you. You.... [ He can't help the frustration that creeps onto his face. It's better than hurt. ] You weren't like Finn said you were. You questioned every choice I made, sulked when I tried to explain them to you. [ His throat tightens. ] You wanted to be taught by Kylo Ren. I couldn't trust you, there. Not that person.

[ He has to look away. ] Leia, while she was there, she was the same way.

[ For a while, it made him question everything. Everything. He'd picked fights in Riverview's bars just to get the anger out, just to stop thinking about things for a little while. At least until he got banned from most of the places that cared if you fought.

Finn had pulled him out of it, Finn and BB-8, both of them angry and worried and sensible. Finn and BB-8 and John Sheppard. ]

I couldn't trust either of you, there.

[garbagepilot]

[Her face is kept carefully blank... for most of that explanation, anyway. When he gets to Kylo Ren, gets to the part where she had wanted to be trained by him, her face twists up into something that's equal parts disgust and anger and disbelief, and her denial bursts out of her in a hot rush she can't help.

When she had closed the door in Kylo Ren's face, literally, she hadn't felt much other than a sense of disappointment, in being utterly finished with the path he had chosen for himself. She hates him, yes, but the thought that he could ever teach her anything she wanted to know is just insulting.]

I would rather be torn apart and eaten by steelpeckers and nightwatcher worms than let that monster teach me anything.

[She almost spits it, much like the rush of anger she might shoot venomously at Kylo Ren at the start of those hateful connections through the Force. It's insulting, and it shows on her face.]

The only thing he knows is how to torture and kill. I want nothing to do with him.

[volitaunt]

[ A tiny, disbelieving huff of air that turns into the smallest smile. His eyes are burning. Leia's words keep playing in his head. Even though that day was more than a year ago, he can still hear her clear as a bell.

I know he tortured you.

His vision blurs, and Poe realizes with perplexity that he's crying. The last time he did that it was when he saw Leia in Riverview for the first time. Before everything went bad. ]

Good. [ His smile is wobbly, his voice soft. ] I'm glad to hear that.

[garbagepilot]

[All at once, her anger snaps apart like it was made from nothing but spun sugar.

BB-8 loved Poe with the kind of blind devotion that a droid was expected to have, but there hadn't been a moment in their time together he hadn't told her every single thing good thing about Poe he could. She feels like she knows him just through those stories, his happy little beeping stories that had kept her up through the night. It's why she had felt the easy connection, why smiling at him had been so simple when all her life it had been like pulling teeth.

And Finn. Finn never would have pulled her out of Jakku if it weren't for this man standing in front of her. He'd have been trapped too, both of them would have been, and now-]

Wait-

[Like that might help. She takes an uncertain step forward, hand reaching up and then pulling back, hanging in the air before she forces herself to try.

Why does she do this? Time and time again she falls prey to this unending need to trust someone, and his terrible attitude hadn't entirely killed what little bit of good will she felt for him. It's still there, and it flares to life all over again in the face of those tears.

As delicately as she can, fully aware it might be entirely unwelcome, she puts her hand on his shoulder.]

Don't- please. It's alright. I'm not- [Good at comfort. She wishes Finn were here.] Please don't cry, Poe.

[volitaunt]

[ He hugs her in response, embracing her in the tight, warm way he did Finn when they saw each other alive again.

It's Rey. It's the Rey Finn told him about. She's the Jedi, their rescuer, the woman whose way home Finn entrusted to Poe before he left for Canto Bight. He'd known what a responsibility that was, in the moment. He'd known without a doubt how much trust it took for Finn to hand off the possibility of safety to someone else.

He'd been honored then, in a way he couldn't figure out how to express.

It's hard now to come close to explaining the relief of meeting the Rey that Finn risked a trip to Starkiller Base to save. ]

It's nice to meet you, Rey.

[garbagepilot]

[Alright.

Well.

That just happened.

She can still count on one hand the number of times she's ever been hugged, not to mention the number of people who have hugged her, and it's still something she either blindly throws herself into with Finn or finds herself being wrapped up in by someone she feels like she's been waiting for her whole life, with Leia.

This is no different, and after a moment of rigid stillness she has to remind herself to act. One arm comes up to awkwardly pat his back, but the other wraps more securely around his shoulders so that she can press her hand to the back of his head in a gesture meant to soothe.]

I'm sorry it took this long.

[She doesn't believe whatever shade of her, whatever creature wearing her face that he met, was actually her.]

[volitaunt]

[ He gives her an extra little squeeze and then pulls back just enough to look her in the face, his arms still around her. ]

I'll take you to where me and Finn are staying. I can explain things better there.

[ He finally lets go, wiping his face on his sleeve. He feels somehow lighter, even if he did just start crying in front of her. He can't find it in himself to be embarrassed about that. He didn't realize how worried he'd been over having someone sympathetic to Kylo Ren in their ranks. Particularly a Jedi sympathetic to him.

A long, deep exhale, and he points in the direction they were already headed. ]

Finn might be there already, too, unless he's back in the coliseum helping people get away from those little things.