sixthiteration | Test Drive 18

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→ Choose one of the scenarios below or make up your own. Feel free to try multiple scenarios.

→ Write LOGS or TEXT prompts, or both.

→ THERE ARE ONLY THREE RULES FOR THE TDM:

1. It has to take place in the 6I universe.
2. It cannot be the character's arrival into the game.
3. Please only test new characters who do not have a version in the game. Our cast list is here.

→ TDM threads cannot be used to meet AC, but if the character is accepted into the game and both players agree, you may keep the CR.

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Prompts

Summer is here, villagers! Sunny skies, warm weather and plenty of weirdness are on the horizon. Don't forget your sunscreen!

THE MILK FOR FREE - Somehow, someway, you have been wrangled into milking one of the GROFFLES recently rounded up by your fellow villagers. Maybe you felt guilty for not helping, or maybe you owe someone scary money. Point is, it's just you, a bucket, and your green milk-giving friend. Just a tip: Groffles are good-natured, but you probably shouldn't squeeze too hard.

LIGHTNING ROD - Earlier today, you made your way into the upper foothills — Were you hunting? Maybe just roaming? — and you came into contact with a BLUE LILY. Maybe you thought it was so pretty you've carried it back to the village with you. If your house didn't have electricity before, it definitely does now!

MEET CUTE - It's a classic: You've gone down into the 6I INN'S dirt-walled root cellar off the kitchen. Maybe you needed supplies or were dropping off some fresh produce. Whatever the case, someone's followed you down for a similar reason... and the door has jammed shut behind them. Seriously, it's not budging. Enjoy getting to know your new best friend in the cozy light of the furnace!

WILDCARD - Choose your own adventure. Maybe play powers roulette.

Texts

All characters are fitted with a smart watch-like device on their left wrist, which they can use to send text messages to other villagers.

- Texts may only be 140 characters long
- No video or voice, text only
- No usernames, everyone is listed by their name

Please list your CHARACTER NAME, CANON & PROMPT in your SUBJECT LINE.

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Erik spends a good amount of time at the inn himself, so he's already aware of Jean's presence here, and has figured out that this is a different Jean than the one who was here before. But as long as she doesn't have a problem with him, then he won't have one with her.

He's known for a long time about powers being nonexistent, even if he's not likely to ever be used to it. There are powers of a sort around here, but he hasn't been able to figure out any sense to them yet. And he's never heard anything about plants having anything to do with it.

Idly he wonders if there's a plant out there that can give him something close to the powers he can't access anymore, even as he knows that nothing short of a full restoration of them will satisfy him. "Where did you find that?"

This Magneto is younger than the version she’s currently used to working with but if she’s learned anything, Jean has learned that time is relative. Younger, older - people have their ways of engaging the world and his hasn’t changed all that much provided you look at it from a certain point of view.

He wants mutants to be free, always has. Maybe he’s a little less genocidal these days but what Magneto wants and what Jean wants aren’t always at odds. Besides. He’s the closest thing she has to a mentor right now.

“I found them up at the lake,” Jean says, handing the blossom to him so he can see how it works for himself. “The second I touched it, I started conducting electricity.”

He reaches for it with hands that are calloused in a way that never would have happened back at home; that Erik took great care with his appearance and didn't do any physical work unless he had to. Here he has allowed his beard to grow in, although he does at least keep it trimmed. He's not that uncivilized. He looks more like Henryk than like Erik, but if he doesn't have his powers, is he really Erik? Not that Henryk's life a better option right now either, with everything he's lost.

"That feels different than I expected it to." He's not sure what he was expecting. Perhaps something like what it feels like when he uses his own powers.

He curls his finger and thumb into an O as the lightning arcs from one to the other. "More proof that this place is toying with us."

"More proof? I thought the existence of this place was proof enough," Jean says. She's a little sarcastic (read: a lot) but it's not really directed at Erik, per se. It's more directed at the helplessness she feels in this situation, in being somewhere that she can't use her powers and can't escape.

"Sorry. It's just...frustrating, you know? I've only been here a little while and I want to pull my hair out. I don't know how anyone survives it."

"I don't honestly know that either." And he's been here a lot longer than she has. This statement shouldn't surprise her, given his well-known views on mutants and their powers, and the fact that they're stuck here without them might also explain his new wild man persona, too.

"I suppose just by doing the best they can."

Jean laughs but it's harsh and scraped over, something entirely too sarcastic for someone of her age. She's used to that answer, over and over, but she's a little shocked to hear it coming from Erik of all people.

"And here I thought you knew everything, Magneto."

"I'm not even sure where Magneto is anymore." He wiggles the fingers of one hand at her. "These don't do what they used to. I don't know what that makes me." He's always been proud to be a mutant. What can he be proud about when a fundamental part of him is gone?

"Still you, I think," Jean says firmly. "Because if you're not you, then I have to have an identity crisis about not being a telepath and we're not going to go there."

She's firmly decided that Magneto is going to remain dubious mentor and she's going to remain dubious protege.

"Is there some kind of dampener, you think?"

He smiles at little at that. He hasn't been sure about that in awhile. He'd still been a mutant while locked away and unable to use his powers, because he's only been unable to use them because there was no metal around. Here there's plenty of metal, but he can't manipulate it like he once could.

He considers her question. "I don't know. When I first arrived, powers still worked, but at a lower capacity than normal. Now they don't work at all. No one has a good answer about why."

"Sounds to me like someone is experimenting," Jean says. Humans are always trying to manipulate mutants and, worse, it could be another mutant who is the culprit. There's no way of knowing. What she does know is that it feels like one of her limbs is missing and it's hard to navigate the world without her telepathy and telekinesis.

"I would ask if someone's tried to look into it but you're here and you're not the kind of person to just take things laying down, right?"

"Mm." It's part acquiescence, part uncertainty. Something is going on here, but no one knows exactly how to describe it. He's been experimented on before, and this doesn't feel exactly the same, but he does know that he's being interfered with somehow, because he's missing part of him.

He puts the flower back down. The people behind this put it there for a reason, and he's tired of playing their game. "We have found...observation pods, I suppose is the best term. No longer in use, but they're out there. There's no information about who's using them." He tried to get inside one once, and to find a way out of here. He failed at both things.

He lets out a sigh before telling her the worst part. "They have our blood."

"Our blood? There's no way this isn't some kind of camp to capture mutants," Jean says, cheeks getting hot as she thinks about the implications of that. She doesn't want to think about what people could do with their blood.

"Everyone's? Yours, mine, anyone who's here?"

He nods. "It's been months since that discovery was made. They were labeled with initials and scrub colors. Presumably they've been collecting from everyone who arrived here since, too." Though he doesn't know for sure if anyone has checked on that. But he doesn't know why that would make a difference.

"Not everyone here is a mutant though. Just us."

"So, we're the only mutants but they're collecting more people? Makes even less sense," Jean says, trying to puzzle that out. People exploiting mutants makes some kind of twisted sense to her - people exploiting people makes sense. The mix of the two is strange.

"How'd you guys find it? Accident?"

"Unless they want to see groups react to the same situation." Who knows. No one has found an answer as to why they're here yet, and if they're deliberating being allowed to discover certain things, that's an answer they're likely never going to find anywhere.

"Accident. I wasn't there, I heard about it later, but someone just discovered it one day."

"Well, accident or on purpose, we need to figure out who is behind it," Jean says, determined. Maybe it's a little stupid to be determined about this when she's literally just gotten here but it's her life they're screwing with.

"I'm really tired of always being in the middle of some nefarious plot."

"You're not the only one." He feels the same way, and doubtless others do too, even those who haven't had to put up with the kinds of things at home that the mutants do.

"We've tried to find out about them. No one has found anything yet. There's not even a way in to the places we have found."

"Look, the more you tell me about this place, the less I want to be here," Jean says glumly. She tries to keep a positive attitude in spite of all the crap that threatens to knock her down on a regular basis but if this place has Magneto stumped? That's not a good sign.

"I want to believe I can crack it and get us back home but I'm not really hopeful - you're one of the most powerful mutants there is. If they have you trapped, what am I?"

"I'll stop telling you then, but it doesn't change the reality. None of us want to be here either." Which is why there have been attempts to do something about it, although no successful ones.

"I don't even know what I am. I don't know how to answer that for anyone else."

"It was just wistful thinking," Jean points out. "I know if you could get out of here, you would have. Mutants don't live as long as you do without knowing how to get out of a bind."

He's younger looking here, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that Jean knows exactly how old Erik is and exactly when he came up in the world - that marks a person, changes them. He's more powerful because of it, she thinks.

"I am a survivor." That's the one constant between then and now. He's been through a lot and he's still here. "That's how I know I'll make it out of this place again."

And if he can, he'll rescue as many of the others as possible.

"We'll get out together," Jean says, reaching for his hand. She and Magneto don't touch a lot back home but, to be fair, she doesn't have to. She's been inside his mind before and knows exactly how he works, how he operates. She doesn't have that advantage here and she needs the tactile reminder of their bond.

"You and me, right?"

He still doesn't often touch strangers, but Jean's not a stranger. Even if she's not the same version of the one he knew when she was here before. She's still Jean, and she's a mutant, and now he's not here alone.

"You and me. Together."

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Test Drive 18

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