sixthiteration | Test Drive 21 (October & November)

→ 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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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"Yeah, Sourpatch?" It's offhand and easy like it's always been, like he's said for the past three, four decades. Nevermind that it's still a shock to see him here. Nevermind that he'd been half certain he'd gotten snapped out of existence. He's known Rhodey longer than he hasn't so turning to face him when he's wandered back and to find an absolute dearth of expression- no exasperation, no humor, just vague befuddlement? It's. Disconcerting to say the least. Tony blinks slowly, like it's a trick. Like between one moment and the next Rhodey would shake it off with a magician's flourish and roll his eyes in good humor.

It'd be fair repayment for dumping powdered mica in his clothing and making him the shimmer singularity a day or so ago.

But- this? This is weird. "...there isn't one. We don't really have stores here- are you alright?"

Shit, what happened when he wasn't looking?

He makes a face, a little one, because what kind of name is Sourpatch, other than the name this one guy, this one important, essential guy, has been calling him almost as long as his mama's called him James at this point?

Frankly, this would be a great trick if it was one. If he remembered the fucking singularity prank right now, Rhodey would be all about it. But his mind's a blank.

It's still him, though, under that fog and amongst that conclusion. "Well, how the hell am I supposed to make waffles?" Always with the waffles, Rhodey. Then he pauses; he's...probably going to have to bite the bullet. This person does know him. "Fine. New question, then. Who am I?"

It's kinder than who are you, at least.

Edited 2018-11-09 12:56 (UTC)

It's got to be a trick. There's no way he wouldn't open with waffles and not remember where he is, who he is. For a moment, and because it's Rhodey it's naked on Tony's face, he's stricken. Of all the things this island could do to him- tearing him out of his north star, his anchor, his brother's mind without so much as a hint of warning-

On a sliding scale of Obie smirking overhead and the shield coming down on the reactor, he's not sure where this lands other than painful.

Eyes wide and wounded, brows lifted, shock leaving him pale he tries for a smile. Paints on something half hearted and relatively wholesome. "James Rhodes. Colonel James Rhodes, War Machine, my sidekick, remember? Come on, Rhodey, this isn't funny-"

"Rhodey, huh." It's an interesting name, but it's the look on...the other man's face that makes him pause before cracking one of the jokes that seem to come naturally. Everything is a bewildering fog for him, but for this guy - this is hurting, it's hurting bad. "I'm sorry," he says. It's quiet, and it's devoid of the good-natured sarcasm that's carried he and Tony through about the longest relationship either of them have ever known together. "I really can't remember anything at all. Maybe I hit my head or something?"

He doesn't have a headache, though, just this fog. Whatever it is, it doesn't feel like blunt force trauma. "Feels like it might be a good time to get indoors, though."

"You call me Tones. It's a thing. Our thing." Because they have a thing, they have many, many things and how can he not know? How could he just forget-

A blink and he thinks back to the tidy little list of native flora and fauna, cataloged for newbies to learn of and be wary. Amnesia. "...Fucking Dust Moths. I'm wrapping you in a cedar suit, I swear to god."

Which means it's temporary, it has to be, and he tries to swallow back all the sharpened edges he's gouged into himself because he didn't fucking think to warn him and- not helpful, get it together Stark. "Come on. I'll make you some tea. We don't really have a lot of coffee to go around yet."

"See, now I just have no damn idea what you're talking about," he says to the other man. He rubs one hand over his head, and after a moment decides it's....probably better that one of them have some kind of idea what's going on, even if that idea is the kind of insect that normally eats hand knit sweaters.

So he follows, stepping inside a room he doesn't recognize but increasingly has a feeling he should, just from the face...Tones? Is making. "Well, I'll still take it black with sugar. I think." It feels right to say that, just like waffles had been the first thing to pop into his head when he was looking for the nonexistent corner store.

"What, exactly, are dust moths?" He asks this after another moment. He watches Tony put a kettle on the stove and rubs his fingers on the band of the watch...thing on his wrist. "And how have they fucked with my head?"

"You do." So, some fundamental shreds of Rhodey are still around. That's. Good? But do preferences mean anything when the experience to back them up don't exist? Does anything matter if the memory isn't there? "Dust Moths'. Moths that have this powder on them and for some fucking reason? Exposure to the dust causes memory loss. Temporary but- the more you have on you, the longer your exposure? The more you lose."

He hasn't heard of it becoming permanent- yet.

But if Rhodey doesn't know him? He's lost...decades. And he doesn't know how he's supposed to handle that, waffling between wanting to hover or keep a safe distance.

"I must have been mobbed." With his memory on him, this is where he'd crack a joke about the Mothman cryptid or a winged insect version of Hitchcock's The Birds, and Rhodey can feel the emptiness in the pause. There should be a snappy, snarky comment, and he just doesn't remember what to say. He leans against the wall instead. There's a good spot just above Tony's head to focus on when he needs to not look into his eyes.

"It can be fixed, though," he says, and he's looking at that spot. He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember sixteen year old Tony Stark at MIT and steering the kid through the lake of nerdy piranhas. He doesn't remember finally, finally finding him in the desert after too much looking. He doesn't remember Tony promising to fix it when Rhodey had fallen far enough and hard enough out of the sky that medical science hadn't had confidence. He doesn't remember Tony going into space and not coming back, and he doesn't remember having to hold the world together instead of chasing after him.

But somehow he knows something, he knows that this is a guy that has slapped more than one bandaid on, so to speak. His eyes shift that bare inch lower to meet Tony's. "Right?"

"By the Mothman." It's a beat too late, waiting for Rhodey to crack a joke that isn't there for the shell to shatter and it's- he swallows back the reflexive disappointment. It's temporary. It is temporary. He'll get Rhodey back and they'll laugh at this later for all that it feels like he's staring at a stranger. Everyone he's ever met, the only person that figured him out in less than an hour?

Had been Rhodey. He looked at Tony and he saw him but now?

"Yeah. It, uh. I just need to see if anyone has- and this is fucking hilarious- forget-me-nots. I'll put a call out on the network, it'll be fine." It needs to be fine he needs to be able to fix this but they're coming into the fall, what are the odds of the flowers sticking around as the weather goes cold? Is Rhodey going to be stuck like this until spring?

"You've got to be shitting me." Tony's not, Rhodey can tell that much, but it doesn't stop him from shaking his head with mild disgust. "Forget-me-nots. What's next: rosemary, that's for remembrance?" It's a slight mystery how this memory loss is working. People, places - those are shrouded and hidden. Quotations from a formerly despised Shakespearean play that he had to slog through at one of the few horizon-broadening literature courses he'd taken back at MIT? Right there, apparently.

Though neither of them know it, they might be in luck: forget-me-nots usually bloom in spring, but sometimes they bloom in fall, too. "I'm looking forward to not feeling this...well, it's like a fog. Like I was on pain meds and my brain's not there yet."

"And here I am all out of fennel." Tony's lips twist despite himself, something deeply rooted in his chest curling up and twisting. Like a knife dragging along his ribs from the inside and- no, he'd rather not dig into that. "Just- I'll see if we've got an extract in the medical kit. We've been playing around with tinctures- I say we but I mean Bruce and Peter."

The Chemists, the Biologists, the people that handle the people sciences rather than the technology that Tony lives and breathes.

Bruce and Peter aren't names he remembers - hell, if he doesn't remember Tony, he's not going to remember Bruce Banner or Peter Parker, or any other people named Bruce or Peter. It doesn't mean he doesn't try for a second, and the confusion on his face is definitely visible.

He takes and releases a breath.

"Cool," he says dryly. He picks up the tea and takes a sip, and in that instant knows he definitely prefers coffee. "I'm hoping that the playing around is fruitful, because this? This is shit the way it is."

"Nothing's ringing any bells? MIT? Air Force? Mama Rhodes' Sunday Brunch?" Tony digs around in the kit, squinting at the scrawled handwriting on vials and bottles and- here. There's one. He gives it a shake, stepping back around to uncork it and pour an ounce into Rhodey's tea. "No real dosage written so just. Sip until you start to remember."

It's the best option they've got right now- and it sucks. It's balls. "I'm going to be so offended you forgot me when you're back to normal. I'm going to be inconsolable. Heartbroken. I'm going to mope for weeks."

Rhodey takes a cautious sip, and at first it seems like there's no actual effect. There isn't, if either of them was expecting a burst of memory like a bolt of lightning. And it might be that that's at least what Rhodey was expecting. Instead, it sneaks up on him.

"Mama can't cook worth a damn, it was always Dad who fixed up Sunday brunch," he says, and then pauses with his mug halfway to his lip. After that, it is like the flood he expected. He has to set the mug down and lean against the counter for a moment. "Tones," he says after a second. "Copied my homework the first two weeks of college."

That's just the kind of bullshit Tony has come to expect after the terrifying number of years they've known each other, right?

"Doesn't mean she didn't try to take credit-" Wait. Wait. Tony's eyes snap up and over, the tension holding his spine so painfully straight dropping away the moment Rhodey calls him by the name that's kept him sane since he was 14 and trying so desperately hard to fit in.

In light of, well. Not knowing if he survived, not knowing if he'd remember, not knowing if he'd ever make it back, Tony considers his reaction entirely warranted. He doesn't so much hug Rhodey as pull him in and cling. Arms wrapped around him tight, face pressed to his shoulder, breath hitching. He's fine. He remembers. "Don't scare me like that, Honeybadger."

Rhodey's lips curve in a half smile for a moment before Tony's on him, arms wrapped around him as if he'll never let go. If he were another man, he might be startled; there's a certain face Tony shows to the world, after all. But he's not the world, and this isn't the world either, at any rate. His arms wrap around Tony in return.

"I didn't much enjoy it myself," he says. There's something a little gruff in his voice as he just holds on. "I was scared." It's a rare admittance from Rhodey. But then, theirs is a rare relationship.

"We got you back." Because that's what he does. He has Rhodey's back, he helps him, he takes care of him- for years that's what Rhodey did for him. Paying that back? it's the literal least he could do. "I'll always get you back."

Like it's something he can promise, like it's a thing he can be sure of.

Sometimes when you make a promise it's really just a promise that you'll do everything you damn well can; sometimes when you make a promise, it's another way of saying you won't ever let go. It's what it meant, years ago now when Rhodey had found Tony in the desert and he'd said that the next time he was going to ride with him.

He wasn't and isn't infallible, that wouldn't have necessarily stopped Tony from getting kidnapped. But they needed to believe it would. "I know you will, sugar pie," he says. "I know."

"Everything back?" Every memory, every fogged over thought. He wasn't sure how fast one lost it or how quick one got it back- but that doesn't matter near as much as, well. Having Rhodey solid and stable again. Or at least in his right mind. It was...uncomfortably close to some nightmares he's had, having Rhodey look at him like he's a stranger.

"Because I've got some questions." Like. How did he end up mind whammied by the dust moths in the first place. That's an important one.

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Test Drive 21 (October & November)

Forgive and Forget

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