Test Drive 21 (October & November)

[sixthiteration]

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Test Drive

→ Holds and applications are always open. Holds are required for all applications.

→ 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.

→ Character want ads are here.

Prompts

1. STAYING POWER - Go down to the bunker, they said. You can get yourself amazing powers from the vending machine, they said. Well, you've done that, and you've made your choice, but one thing nobody told you was that unless it's a power you're familiar with, you might be on a teensy bit of a learning curve when it comes to keeping it under control. You have a week to figure it out without killing anyone; have fun!


2. FORGIVE AND... - You poor thing, you've gotten into some dust moths. Not that you can remember that, because depending on how big that swarm was and how quickly you got out of it, you might not remember much at all. Better hope somebody's got some Forget Me Nots on hand.


3. HIT & RUN - Life in the village can be pretty sleepy... until suddenly, it's not. Were you being a troublemaker? Were you disturbing the local wildlife? Because it's now disturbing you, chasing you down the street in front of everyone. Maybe it's a herd of chupapaca or a swarm of fireflies. Or maybe you went old school and it's just a really pissed off badger. Godspeed and good luck.


4. 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
- Display names may be changed by characters on the fly, but anyone can tap to see someone's real full name

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

Comments

[borneinblood]

There are some people of that nature here, yes.

[spoileralert]

"Thanks, but I'd rather not know," she grumbles, feeling very much like a student caught in misbehavior. She isn't Oracle's student anymore. She doesn't want to be. She just wants to be, god help her, normal. Or at the very least safe.

She sets the cards down so Babs can see she was right. Then she draws the next six cards.

"Next time I'm in the bunker I'm going for bird shape again. That was fun."

[our_promise]

"I'm not sure I want to be here for that," she decides with maidenly disgust. She doesn't really like any of the creepy crawlies he keeps around. At least the snake-bats are odd enough that they don't scare her like normal snakes. The candy frogs are apt to start hopping all over the place.

All the same, she collects the requested items and brings them over to his desk.

[allscreening]

5 out of 6 right this time. A 7 of clubs where she predicts an 8.

Still, impressive for a beginner. She Steph draw six new cards.

"What kind of bird?" she wonders, and- yeah, she has to admit there's some appeal there. She almost smiles at the thought. Almost.

[cryptoherpetology]

Alright, okay. [ He repeats the description to himself under his breath as he begins to search through the brush, first for the grass patches ]

Australia far, or- [ frown ] further.

[ He has a few of the blossoms in his hand, and spots a few more a few yards away. He walks very, very carefully to fetch them while he listens. ]

[cryptoherpetology]

"You can stand back if you like. I'm keeping them calm enough to stay still." He motions to their surroundings, where most of the animals are dozing, despite being a mix of nocturnal and diurnal species.

He pulls on the gloves, and lifts up the lid for the frog tank, picking one groggy froggy up and gently using a metal spatula to collect the secreted venom.

[unraisehell]

"Yeah, about half the wildlife here seem like the result of God's Dadaist phase," she allows.

"You wanna help me pack these up? They're small but the meat's rich," she's stuffing dead vampire deer into a cloth sack that is only a little bloodstained so far while she says this.

[quinientos]

How is he going to prove this, he thinks, and he decides that he has to do it with one of the only ways he knows how. It's why he starts to go for his shirt and vest, stripping himself down to the point that he can yank it aside and show Faraday the fully healed scar wound. "This," he says heatedly, "this is from the Gatling gun that took me, it hurt me."

"It's healed. See how healed? It's nothing but scar," he says, and he's running high on emotion, thinking that he could say something here he doesn't want to share, but he's angry and hurt and wants to do anything he can to keep him here, even if he's pissed at him.

"See," is softer, quieter, "Why would I lie to you? I never have, querido."

[onesyllable]

Faraday shifts, hands on his hips as he considers what this man is going on about. "You and I aren't ever gonna see eye to eye on it bein' easier to keep a snake alive than dead. Like some men, just no point in them," he says, not one to look at things from a conversational viewpoint. Especially with anything that causes trouble in his life like snakes can.

"Well see, there you got me. I can see that. Hence why I don't get keeping them alive. Less snakes means less holes a horse can turn their ankle in. Less horses boltin' and leaving a man in the dust. Less heading out in the middle of the night for the outhouse and ending up bucknaked on the ground with a bite in your leg."

Okay at the last there's a bit of a smirk. He's seen that happen and since it wasn't him, it might have been amusing.

[onesyllable]

"Hey, I take offense..." Well he might be a fool but he stops, watching as she vaults onto the roof. Okay, that is fairly impressive. Especially for a girl.

Glancing back, new enough not to be sure why they're fearing them, but also new enough to know his luck is that they drink blood or something.

"Well, shit." He reaches up, taking her hand and planting his boot against the side of the building to use the two to scramble up the building. "What are those things?"

[cryptoherpetology]

Alex actually laughs at that as he makes his rounds through the lab, checking locks on cages, and feeding the things he isn't handling today.

"Well, the medicine also means we can treat crazy men who handle snakes, too," he says with a good dose of self-depricating amusement. "Believe me, I've done things that look a lot dumber than this."

[onesyllable]

Still red from the anger he's feeling, Joshua's face screws up when the first answer he gets if the man undressing. Mouth hanging open, wanting to ask what the hell he thinks he's doing, but then there's an answer. One as verbally give as it is visual.

Faraday has seen Vasquez naked, and recently, and there was no wound like this.

"A Gatling gun." He repeats that, marveling at the very idea. "They brought..." It's a cold splash of reality as he reaches out, his stomach turning as he hesitates, not quite touching it. Afraid Vasquez will pull away in that moment, deny him that and then his fingers close the gap, brushing over the scar.

Definitely old. Sealed and healed and... He swallows hard against the wave of nausea hits him. "I left you to that?"

His eyes close, all of that anger turning in on himself. He left them to face a Goddamn Gatling gun, and no matter what he's told the idea he was there and can't remember it...

"I... How..." His gaze raises from the scar to Vasquez's face. "How bad was I hurt? Is that why I can't remember?" Frowning heavily, his hand going to the hem of the weird night shirt he's wearing, lifting the hem to try and look at his stomach, his chest, trying to see if he bears scars that would explain how he went a year without a thought. Without those he'd gone to war with. Without Vasquez.

[quinientos]

Vasquez hates hearing Faraday talk about the battle like he had been the one to run away. It irritates him wildly, which is why he thinks that he's going to give up the ghost and say all the things that he hadn't meant to say.

"You didn't leave," he spits out. "Stop saying this." The only way he'd left had been dying and that had been something that Faraday doesn't want to spend much time thinking about, because it still leaves a pock-marked hole of grief on his heart.

He swallows hard at the touch to his scar, not wanting to move. He wants to freeze in this moment to let Faraday keep touching him, leaning into it, his eyes turning sad when Faraday looks to his chest. "Do you want to know the truth?"

He won't say unless Faraday asks for it.

[onesyllable]

Shifting, Faraday sits up a bit more with his back to the wall and his legs bent to provided that distance between them he feels he needs. Watching her warily, a lot of years of having someone looking for him leaving him with a sharp eye and a lot of paranoia to have playing through his veins in that moment.

"That what you're claimin'? I mean, not seen anything that before. Thought maybe you were some kind of monster of machines and man," he says, and in the place he is mentally, he might truly believe that. "What is it?"

[allscreening]

She moves the chair a few more feet away, engages the breaks, and uses her arms to transfer herself into one of the Inn's wooden chairs. At no point does any part of her lower body move on its own- in fact, she has use her hands to position her legs in place once she's seated.

"It's a chair. On wheels. I'm paralyzed from the waist down," she explains, a little more bluntly than she would a child, but without the bite the words would have to someone of her own time. Mostly without the bite, anyway.

She gives him a few moments to see that she is not, in fact, attached to the chair like some sort of cybernetic wheeled centaur, and transfers back into it, taking a few moments to get her feet in the right place on the footplate.

[spoileralert]

"Dunno," she shrugs, drawing more cards. "I didn't ask." And mirrors are very difficult to get to when you're a bird.

"Some kind of songbird, probably, by the size."

[our_promise]

She sees that, yes, but frogs. She backs up to the door, so she can escape if needed.

"Enjoying your new power?"

[onesyllable]

His hand splays over the wound, pressing his palm flat to it. Feeling the heat of Vasquez's skin against his, the edges of the smooth scar, the very idea in his head of a bullet ripping through his skin, through muscle and bone and taking the abilities of a gunman like that.

He swallows hard, a sound that felt like it echoed in the air around them as his hand flexes, dragging his nails over the edge of the scar.

The entire time his gaze doesn't leave Vasquez's face. Seeing that pain there, the way his expression is just as tight as his words. For a long time he stands there like that, both holding Vasquez at a distance with his arm and desperately holding onto that contact though he's not sure why it's suddenly so important to him.

After a time he shakes his head. "The truth is that I must have spent the last year sick from the fight. I must have only just woken up," he says, speaking a truth he isn't sure he believes but needs to say out loud as if that makes everything okay.

[cryptoherpetology]

"Yes, actually," he says, sounding awfully cheerful for a man holding a deadly amphibian with only leather between him and horrible poison.

"If I'd had this when I had my poison dart frickens I probably could have kept the little guys. Gorgeous coloration, but not so great for captivity."

[allscreening]

More predictions are made, growing increasingly more accurate.

"Okay. Fine," she says, hopefully before Stephanie's patience wears out too far. "We can take this outside. You can throw things at me, it'll be cathartic."

[our_promise]

"You would keep them? As pets?" She's horrified by the very prospect.

[spoileralert]

Steph has long since stopped paying attention. She doesn't really even need to be here for this. Instead she lets her mind wander, which mostly leads to brooding, which at least has the effect of making her okay with sitting still for extended periods.

She jumps right to her feet at the permission to go outside and starts stretching her arms.

"You know how much I love throwing things."

Knives Chau | Scott Pilgrim

[chau_down]

STAYING POWER

Part of growing up is learning about things that sound a lot cooler than they are, and maybe also that the road less traveled got that way because it just isn't all that great, and not because the roads less traveled have been waiting all this time for someone cool enough to walk them a few times and brag about it on their blog.

Not that she's ever had a blog, or could have one here if she tried. If she writes anything down at all, it's really not for public consumption.

The rest of her--well, she just kind of wishes it could be.

The point is, precognition is kind of boring and anxiety-inducing. A lump of porridge fell on her hand at breakfast, and it sent off all kinds of warnings in her head that had nothing to do with how embarrassing it was to try discreetly licking it off. Also, just--porridge. Her hair keeps growing out and she eats porridge.

She'd only started to unlock how cool Toronto could be, and here she is, having weird dreams and reading breakfast omens. Nobody she knows well enough to trail after, and the whole--Bunker thing. Well, that seems kind of played out, and aside from the power machine there's not really anything to do there.

Knives is searching for a more salient sign in the dregs of her porridge when the kitchen door swings open, someone bustling in from the cold, and there's something so familiar about them that she stares, openly. Then gasps, openly, and flings out a hand to point.

"You were in my dream," she says, voice subsuming and flowing back out on a new octave. "Our meeting is destined!"

UN: PLAYER 2

how many things fall under cute and deadly here? and how deadly is deadly? those deer with the fangs are suuuuuper cute and no one has one yet

[quinientos]

Vasquez wishes that maybe he had something to drink or a reason that he could cite for why he stares at Faraday so long, why he lets that pain show on his face, but he has nothing. All that he has is the grief of losing something on the cusp of it becoming something.

He'd wanted it to become something so badly, he can barely put it to words. He doesn't know if he should elaborate, if he should say something else, but he'll leave it to Faraday to choose. "Tell me, if you want to know how it all ended. I know," is all he says, simply.

Moving to clap a hand on Faraday's other shoulder, he holds onto him. "I can show you where I've been staying." Though, maybe now with Faraday here, the inn isn't where they'll stay, because maybe privacy will be a better option.

[onesyllable]

It's not good. So not good. It didn't take a man that could read others like Faraday to see that pain on Vasquez's face, and he's pretty damn sure it isn't just about the wound he could feel against his palm still. A Gatling gun did damage, destroyed lives, but that look carries so much pain and Joshua isn't sure what to think about that. More what it means about him.

He shakes his head again, quick and in short shakes. Not caring that maybe his expression shows more than it should, a fear that he isn't trying to hide. "I don't want to know. There's nothing to be had out of knowing."

That gets a nod from him. "Yeah. Show me where we are," he says. "Where are we?" It doesn't look familiar, and he can't remember anything before waking up in the water.