dankmemes | Test Drive Meme #8

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 April 24th, and apps are open May 1st.

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: DEAD FLESH BUFFET
[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.

Watch out as you explore the streets of Hadriel, because you're not alone, and there's always something lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to swarm around you and chow down. This time, the Door has brought in a group of rotfiends, from the video game The Witcher.

These unpleasant-looking creatures are necrophages, meaning they feed on the flesh of the dead, and if that flesh is in short supply they are happy to add to it. Normally found in groups, they are fast and difficult to corner. What's more, when on the verge of death, they have an annoying tendency to explode into a flammable cloud of poisonous toxins. You left your torch at home, right?]

R A G E
SCENARIO TWO: MMM WHATCHA SAY
[There you were, just walking along the street, minding your own business like a good underground hell-city citizen, when all of a sudden you saw someone. It was like love at first sight - if by 'love' you mean 'deep burning hatred'. You've never wanted to kill someone so much, and why? Well, you're not really sure, but there's probably a reason! You'll just have to figure it out. Or not. Who needs a reason for murder, anyway?

Or maybe you're the one someone else has targeted. Maybe you know they're after you and you're desperately trying to watch your back. Why do they hate you? You don't even know them. Or maybe you do, maybe they're your best friend. Either way, this is a super awkward situation, and someone might end up dead. Hopefully not you!

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

H O P E

SCENARIO THREE: SCRATCH OFF
[This morning, you received a scratch ticket in the mail (who knew Hadriel even had mail?), addressed to you. The instructions are clear enough - scratch off three matching icons, and you win a prize! Sure, okay. But here's the grand prize: a one-way ticket home.

Unfortunately, try as you might, you aren't gonna win that one, but keep hoping! And hey, just think of all the other GREAT PRIZES you could win: an inflatable duck, a plastic ring to give your sweetheart, an empty can of Red Bull, a cell phone charm shaped like a strange green creature with a boner.

So what if you didn't win that ticket home? You got something almost as good: a shitty prize! Thanks, Hope!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Your life."

The words leapt from his tongue before he had a chance to consider them. There was the urge to respond then the words being spoken, something inside him skipping over the vital step of deciding what the response should be. That cross-wire was bypassing vital parts of a delicate process and making him sound as cliche and over dramatic as his former employer. It soured his stomach. This wasn't like that thing in the last cave he'd been in. That gave a chance at resistance. That had been someone pushing at his back trying to force him into action. This was something else entirely.

"You need to leave," he amended. "Now." Calm and firm. The rest of her question would have to remain unanswered as it seemed all he could say of his own accord. Speaking against that feeling inside him seemed to make it crack. The cool, smooth surface threatening to unleash all that it held back. True rage was not something he felt often. That was reserved for volatile boys like Ronan. Even the vapors that escaped the lid he kept on it made his stomach twist.

Nick arrived at a very important conclusion in the instants after he said those words - that she was tired of being pushed around.

It wasn't the first time she'd had this thought, not even the first time she'd acted on it - that happened when she was twelve and finally tall enough to look her mother in the eye and shove her back into the wall after she'd slapped Nick for mouthing off. But now, like then, Nick realized she had power, true power - not just equal physical strength, but something more that she could use to fight back.

A smarter person would have taken the way out when it was offered, but Nick was always too stubborn to give in and run away. She was tired of this place, tired of being fucked with by the asshole gods running it, tired of being a target for monsters and people alike. She'd been pushed, and now she would push back. Let this guy regret the moment he ever laid eyes on her.

"No," she said, smiling grimly. "You wanna shoot me?"

The transformation took only seconds; Nick was practiced enough by now in switching back and forth between forms to call up her Morphus form quickly, seamlessly. She grew taller, bigger; her skin hardened into pale perfect porcelain, marred only by a fissure cracked into her forehead, like someone had been careless with her once. She now resembled a larger-than-life antique doll dressed in Victorian garb, with stacks of ribbons and lace, dark hair cascading in curls over her shoulders. Her blue glass eyes blinked open again as she tipped up her head, and though her painted-on mouth didn't move, her voice still rang out, deeper, distorted:

"Go ahead, pal. Make my day."

She'd been shot before in this form. The bullets chipped her porcelain skin, leaving bruises and scrapes behind once she turned back, but it hadn't killed her, and it hadn't been the worst injury she'd suffered. Maybe she was a monster, but maybe that was fine - at least she wasn't powerless anymore.

Little did either of them know that they shared a path, though his was somewhat metaphorical. A brother instead of a mother, leading him to find his own power and his own armored shell. Years and years spent being the preferred target of a sociopath. Their games turning into torment. Running wild through the neighborhood, his brother would find new toys. Pins and scissors and things that hurt. "Come here, little brother," he'd say. The Gray Man always too weak to fight back.

But unlike Nick, he'd run. He hid from his brother. In studies of history, inside himself, in training, in another state. Until at some undefined point, he'd become something else. He gave up his name, hid so deep that even his heart died. No one could hurt him anymore, because he'd become hard enough to hurt them first. Somewhere along the way the historian and poet had tipped over to be a hitman.

That was starting to fall behind him, because he'd started to come out the other side of that. He'd become hard and cold and unfeeling. Then he found a place, a woman, a home. But now, faced with this impossible thing, a woman turned doll, he turned away from that. It was the rage that filled him, it made it easy to turn back into what he'd been. Instead of just turning off the false emotion, he turned off all of it. Anything that would have held him back.

Without word, he aimed. Not for any of her impossibly porcelain skin, but for her glass eye. There was no hesitation. Just aiming and pulling the trigger.

Even though her circumstances were different, Nick too grew to learn about being hard, and about hurting first, taking after her mother in certain ways despite a vow made to herself that she would never be anything like her. Maybe that's why her Morphus ended up looking the way it did, with porcelain replacing skin; Nick doesn't know, and she never gave it an overabundance of thought, either. All she knew was that she was an ordinary, heartbroken girl one day, and the next, she was a monster.

She hadn't been shot in the eye before, and later, once she's healed again, she'd probably marvel at this guy's impeccable aim. Right now, though, she didn't find it amusing at all; the bullet's impact cracked the glass of her eye, not breaking it entirely, only enough to cause a spiderweb of cracks to spread out over the surface. It hurt like a skinned knee, and it gave her field of vision a kaleidoscope effect on one side, which was more irritating and disorienting than painful.

"Asshole! Do you have any idea how much that stings?" She closed her damaged eye and aimed both hands at the ground near his feet, shooting two quick jolts of dark energy in quick succession, one from each hand. Nick was angry, but she didn't want to actually kill this guy - not yet, at least.

Test Drive Meme #8

no subject

cw brief description of child physical abuse

cw brief description of child physical abuse

no subject