dankmemes | test drive meme #11

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!test drive

test drive meme #11

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 July 25th, and apps are open August 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: WORKING TITLE
[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 few Working Joes, from the Alien: Isolation video game series.

Once simply androids meant for mundane jobs, working Joes have had their programming altered to isolate and eliminate threats onboard their ship- which they now believe to be Hadriel. Super strong, yet slow and plodding, an android may ask you for identification before throttling you when you don't have the right answer. They are quite sturdy and difficult to destroy without the right tools. Have fun!]

H O P E

SCENARIO TWO: BEAUTIFICATION DUTY
[The city has always looked a little drab, but now with some tools from Hope, it's up to you guys to spruce it up a bit! Your character will find themselves in a shop filled with various paints, home improvement tools, window stickers, streamers, and various other items and tools used to improve the appearance of the neighborhood.

You're encouraged to add your own little flair to the project in order to improve living standards and make Hope the happiest god in the pantheon. So, what will you do? Paint a mural? Sweep up some rubble? Install a skylight! The cave is your oyster.

This is a mini version of our Extinction v2 event this month!]

S O R R O W

SCENARIO THREE: CRY ME A RIVER
[When you wake up in the morning, something feels... off. It feels like you just watched 20 ASPCA commercials in a row and then topped it all off with the first ten minutes of Up. You're beaten down, depressed, upset by all the horrific acts and trauma in the world, and it's enough to make you want to cry.

Turn on the waterworks, because Hadriel is about to have a shortage of tissues and everyone's getting dehydrated. You might run into your neighbor crying while you're scavenging for food, or you might just find that one whole asshole in the entire movie who isn't affected.

Either way, it's time to get some hugs, some kleenex, and maybe a little bit of chocolate. Happy... crying?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It suits.

[ River grins as she makes her way past the floating woman (she has a Name, and it echoes like someone listening, is she listening?) towards a blank space near the corner of the wall. Here, she draws a flaming star, reaching out towards one of the blue and broken ones, a thin electric smoke line of red between them, blurring the blue into a rich violet. ]

Hated blue, for a while. Skies and sun, dangerous, both, exposed and raw. Too many eyes to see, too many fingers...

But it's all part, isn't it?

And now she's here. And they're not, unless they're in the Gods. Are the Gods real?

They are.

[ Powerful enough, not strong. Wanda follows the images of sky and sun, endless bright blue that seems to curve and pour away. Each thread seems spider like one second and the other violin strings. Move carefully. Slowly. Don't startle her. Feet, on the ground. ]

I'm listening.

[ Apology is writ in the whisper, this is one mind she feels she shouldn't be. ]

It's all part, [ River repeats, using fingers and hair instead of brushes to continue her small homage to Wanda, her silhouette framed by bright, flaming stars. Too close up and the pattern is lost, but some distance away and there stands a woman, reaching out into the vast dark and dangerous star-filled sky.

She likes how the purple stains her fingertips when she touches blue pain that's yet to completely dry, and puts a dot above each eyebrow as she goes. ]

Gods need people, to worship, to feel? For them. Gods need, gods need, but we can be more than the hands mouthpieces fingers digits of the divines, we are our own universe contained in a house of flesh and blood that is failing and restarting, breathing and retreating with each chemical bond in the brain, a sea of microbiomes encasing walking talking aging temples of light and darkness aligned.

She's flawed for this sort of experiment. Chaos without containment. Has she not learned it or can she not help it? Can it even be taught?

[ Her thoughts are spiraling, cyclical. She thinks of going home and then wonders if this isn't better (safer); she thinks of her brother, of their crewmates, of what they might make of this; she thinks of the monster in the arena, the one she fought, the one she didn't run screaming from, because it seemed smaller than the monster she herself contains; she thinks of Wanda's magic and mindreading, of how her own thoughts echo back to her more quietly, fitting into someone else's pattern of thinking, and she thinks about red, blood, sinew, veins crossing from one open palm to another as she completes Wanda's star-portrait. ]

Even if not. You're listening.

[ She tries to arrange her mind into something with fewer prominent sharp teeth and gaping maws, concerned suddenly about scaring off her new friend. ]

No one can, back home.

Yes, they ask us to pray.

[ Or that is how Wanda sees it, with their use of emotions. She must help Rage a lot, and Fear, though she hates both. Some small part of her holds Hope so tightly her knuckles are white with the pressure. The painting takes shape. There is a silhouette. There is a woman. There are stars and scarlet around her and where it ends there are small blue wisps. No one runs far from Pietro. ]

[ She reaches for one of River's hands, to touch the ends of her fingers one by one, unconcerned about the paint. Faint scarlet bobs around them. There are fractures, and she walks carefully around the footprints. Who cares for teeth and yawning chasms? There is a wreckage in Wanda's mind which is open to a blue sky, dancing silver mist, someone's laughter. Something that yawns and bites in her in turn. ]

A few can, here. One like us.

[ Noah's is always on. Pell and Bianca choose. ]

[ With each small point of contact River finds, in Wanda's own memories, the myriad of ways they are alike. The doctors and the scientists playing with Fate and imitating the work of Gods; the brother, and then the captain; the blood on their hands and the songs in their hearts, the knowledge that a girl can be an army to fell men.

She dips the forefinger of her free hand back in a swirl of purple, and places dots to match the ones on her forehead at the inside of each of Wanda's wrists. Here, she thinks, paint like blood. We are both, the red and the blue. We are both. ]

Build a chest for Hope, only keep it alive and breathing, moving with newness, with the memory of where it has been Before. The rest can scrape for their worship. [ She raises her chin haughtily. ] We are better than they, because we are.

[ One like us. Both a blessing, and not. It's interesting to her, the idea that someone could choose. Would she, if it had been an option?

But it never was, her gifts older than the Academy, so it's a futile path of thinking. River abandons it. ]

Where do you stay?

If Simon finds the Door, there can be a shared brother if you want.

[ Blue hands. White gloves. Can you tear this apart? and be still, girl. Living, breathing things that stop being, when red colours her vision. Whispers, always on, and the blood in her mouth. The cry and stench of things that are paper in their hands. She turns her wrists, and it feels like an offering to some terrible, faceless god. Both the red and blue. Her fingers twine with River's, Wanda doesn't care about the various paints on her skin. ]

I would like Simon.

[ The way River understands Pietro would be hers, too, if that was what she asked for. Cracks fill, after all, Nature abhors a vacuum. She allows something warm and bright to flit into River's mind, breathes hello and my friend. ]

We live in those spires. I will find somewhere quiet for you, if you want.

[ They are better because they are. ]

[ She would ask, probably, standing at the edge of the precipice that is her sanity's stability without her brother's steady hand to guide and heart to listen to. Eventually. But first she has to wiggle her toes in the freedom that is that edge, without her brother worrying over her shoulder.

However long that lasts for, be it a matter of days or months or forevers. (She's not thinking about forevers, purposefully.) ]

Quiet, not too, not even the houses of the dead are silent. Close enough to listen. [ The dreams of others have always been interesting, even when she can't sift them from the realities of the night.

Here, that might be a curse. Or a blessing. She's not sure. ]

[ It is a matter of digging in one's heels, standing firm at the edge. Not everyone can do it, and not all the time. She squeezes River's hand lightly, and smiles, abruptly sweet. ]

Are you finished painting? We will get something to eat.

Ooh. [ At the mention of food, River is definitely done painting. Though her hands are far from clean, she figures she can scrub at them later and eat carefully in the meantime. Wanda's hand is given it's own squeeze back, and in River's mind the two of them are now firmly in orbit around one another.

It's easier to think of loves as separated by gravity wells and atmospheres instead of 'whom do you love the most'. ]

Is there a favorite? [ She stacks the paints atop each other once more, but leaves the yellows and reds outside where the mural is drying. ] Ready!

[ It is never a matter of most. There are people who are irrevocably part of you, and nothing is diminished by being apart because they always exist, and memory consolidates around them. The loose tendrils of her consciousness take root. Give them time, and they grow. She and River both grew up loved. ]

There is fresh fruit in the orchard. There are crackers, but I don't like them. Chocolate in the shops. Water is not always safe for us to drink, so boil it first.

[ Crackers are dismissed (who needs flat flavorlessness?) immediately, but the orchard and chocolate? Those are ideas that River takes to heart, wanting to explore them both...but there's water, to boil, perhaps tea? She'll have to go searching in the trees for that, she suspects.

River skips, but not too far ahead, just far enough for their arms to swing between them as they go along. ]

Met another warrior princess. She said the meat had been tainted once.

[ She has the packet of tea Hope gave her, better tasting than anything else in the shops. That will be shared, without question. She hums quietly as they walk. ]

Yes. Sometimes you can kill the monsters for food. There are hunting parties.

[ Her, she's not quite refined at the killing; Wanda deconstructs without exception. Hard to cook something if it dissolves into thin air, or splatters its insides against the caves. ]

[ Another useful thing of note; River folds that bit of information up and stores it away. River is good with blades the way that Wanda is good at pulling things apart from the atom on up, and following a pattern of food gathering would help her arrange her days into something other than a neverending stream of new-ness from being here.

Underground. River tilts her chin up to look at the ceiling as sky and sighs. ]

Do we miss the stars yet?

[ She smiles, only a little worn at the side. ]

Always. Nobody looks up.

[ River purses her lips and blows air out between them. ]

An experiment was conducted, to remove the sight of the stars from the consciousness. As the night falls to brightness, the mind falls to darkness, and we forget to look up and think outward.

We do.

[ The next swing of their arms, she initiates, changing the flow. ]

The caves go on forever. I have tried.

Older things live in darker places, too.

[ There's a giggle at the interruption of rhythm, the start of a new one. ]

At least you can fly. The spaceship's albatross is grounded!

We are more terrifying.

[ Them and what they do. Fear has left her, or perhaps, more accurately, it doesn't see fit to surface. Laughing softly, ]

I can only jump and land, River!

We are survivors. Valkyries. Harbingers.

[ River gives a little shrug. ]

More than she can. Higher than she can.

[ It is the only description she will accept. Their hands swing. ]

The same.

[ She'll take River along, on the next one. ]

It's good you're here. Good for her, good for everyone. Bad that here is in the equation - the Scarlet Witch has a world to help save.

[ River looks up again, at a sky that isn't a sky at all, just trapped atmosphere and a high natural ceiling. It could be worse, she knows.

The ceiling could be lower. She could be alone. ]

[ She shakes her head. ]

The world will manage. It is people I want to protect.

[ It is a cage, but there is space. There are people. Life happens here. Yes, it could be worse. ]

That's 'cause you're a big damned hero.

[ River gives Wanda a smile. She too, one day, aspires to be a hero. She also aspires to keep food down for a week, so you know.

Small steps, and all. ]

I'm not so sure.

[ She doesn't look or feel like one, even when power thrums through her veins. It is pointless lying or withholding this from River. ]

No hero is sure. That's the difference between a hero and gau; if you're sure, always, at all times, without whatifs or maybes, then it's dangerous.

Doubt is good. Doubt makes heroes.

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I foresee a lot of use of this icon

it's so perfect tho

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