sixthiteration | Test Drive (December & January)

→ 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 NETWORK 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

SNOW BLIND - It's snowing, a lot, and pristine landscape though it might create, it also brings plenty of problems, especially when you live in an Edwardian-style village with a serious lack of snow shovels. It's currently blizzard conditions and visibility is nil — Maybe you gave in and ducked into the nearest house for temporary shelter, and discover someone else had the same idea (or just lives there, oops). Maybe you're stubborn enough to still be out in it, struggling against the wind and snow. Or maybe you've tromped into the South Village Inn like a human popsicle, and are just hoping you don't lose any fingers before you make it to the fireplace.

JUMPED-UP - Winter's here, which means it's the perfect time for an expedition to warmer, southern climes. You've joined a group following the river all the way down to the far southern beach, for fun and for science. On this latest break in your journey, you've spotted a large, jewel-colored feather and picked it up, maybe as a specimen to bring back or just a feather for your cap. Turns out it's an archaeopteryx feather, and you're now, well... let's call it a little gravity-challenged. Not a bad benefit once you figure out how to control it.

COLD CALL - The snow has slacked off, leaving behind a winter wonderland. Sure, there's plenty to do, but after being cooped up inside for days, most people won't blame you for a morale-booster — That is, unless your way of starting a snowball fight is to pop up and throw them at unsuspecting passers-by. Making a snow man or snow angels might come with a little less retribution, but you do you.

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

Network

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

- Text and/or video, any length
- 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

SNOW BLIND
This snowstorm reminds Reyes, awfully, of the ice planet Voeld — except this time there’s no thermal armour, no spacesuit neatly sealing away the freezing environment and circulating heated air across all his limbs instead. This time he can’t feel his fingers, and despite the scarf he’s wound tight around his neck, the wind is still blistering his cheeks and condensation is freezing in his nose and he can barely see even a foot in front of him.

This is how I die, he thinks, bleakly and a little (more than a little) melodramatically while he trudges forward through what he thought was the village street, but is mostly an endless snowdrift. Who thought he’d ever miss his toxic, radioactive planet? At least the sulphuric hot springs were, well, hot.

The shadow of a house finally comes into view, and he makes a decision.

A moment later the front door bursts open, and in comes a bedraggled darkhaired man, breath steaming in the air, wind blowing in more gusts and flurries behind him.

JUMPED-UP
It really isn’t the most dignified position.

He’d made the mistake of leaping from one rock to another while trying to cross the river, only to find himself floating inexorably up into the air, that single leap carrying him up into the sky. It’s like wearing jump-jets again, except as far as he can tell, there’s absolutely no way to control it — which leads to one (1) smuggler windmilling through the air, drifting slowly upwards, finally colliding with a tree branch and clinging to it for dear life. He eventually manages to step delicately downwards to earth, but even the gentlest step pushes him too far away from the ground, and then the whole damned cycle begins all over again.

Spotting someone from the group who came with him, Reyes perks up. “Find me something heavy, will you?” he calls out to them. “Or, better yet! Get over here.”

Every day comes with something new and insane, Rhodey thinks as he adjusts his pack on his shoulders and moves over to where Reyes is, uh, floating. Flying. Whatever it is, it's not ideal. The real shock, honestly, is that this isn't happening to one of his two roommates.

"Not sure something heavy wouldn't result in a hilarious pile-on," he says. "Let's try this." He braces himself and then offers both arms. Rhodey's left leg is basically robotic, and it's definitely heavy metal in the non-musical sense. It should keep him tethered to earth.

It’s like fishing for smugglers in the air, and Reyes lets himself be hooked by the other man’s arms and gently guided back down, anchored by the weight of that mechanical leg. It looks like armour, but something tells him it isn’t. “That came with you?” Reyes asks, nodding to the leg. He still hasn’t been able to sort out what makes it through the tubes and what doesn’t.

He still feels eerily light, insubstantial, like a gust of wind could carry him off. Reyes sighs, and keeps a tight grip on Rhodes’ shoulder; they’d introduced themselves before setting off earlier, but not much more than that. “Thank you. I’m not even sure why this is happening, except—”

He’s learned to accept this world’s oddities in stride, but he starts patting down the pockets of his backpack, rifling through the supplies they’d foraged along the way. Some fluffpods, fruit and nuts, a feather that had looked beautiful enough to decorate a barebones inn room…

"Can't walk without it," Rhodey says matter-of-factly. "Guess that meant it could stay. Otherwise who knows how I would have gotten through that water. It's also good in a situation like this, and slowly Reyes gets back to solid ground.

Rhodey raises a brow at the feather, which is bright and shiny and would definitely make great decor - except for the fact that he's quickly learned not to trust the bright and shiny. "Do you think that's what did it?"

“Who knows,” Reyes says, with a shrug of the shoulders that somehow manages to convey ah, right, this new place we’re stuck in, its rules remain absolutely insane. “Unless fluffpods have suddenly picked up some very new and exciting effects, but I doubt it. This is a feather, after all, and they’re traditionally very light—” He drops it immediately, and they watch it flutter gently to the ground and sit innocuously on the ground, like a jewel amongst the dirt.

But Reyes’ personal gravity remains stubbornly broken.

“I am never touching anything ever again,” he announces, a shade melodramatically. He still has a steadying grip on Rhodey’s shoulder to avoid floating away, though, so he adds with a harmless wink, “Except for other people.”

The weather in 7's world had held steady between extremes, and she'd had little time to get used to the idea of cold before it really set in. As such, and despite her tendency to wander and scout, she's become a hermit, camped out by her fire with a blanket and a mug of tea and an irritation from being homebound.

While she had friends that would visit and do their best to keep her spirits up, she wasn't currently expecting anyone, so having someone burst through her door is that much more surprising.

Already tightly wound, her movements are swift, dropping her tea and leaping to her feet, grabbing the spear that is never very far from her, and landing ready to attack.

After a moment to let the situation settle in, she eases back.

"Hello ... I don't know you."

“You know, you’re all far more forgiving than I would be,” Reyes muses aloud. Back in Omega or Kadara, barging into a stranger’s apartment would likely give him a blaster to the face for his trouble, but he’s learnt that the weapons here are cruder — death can’t come at the twitch of a finger anymore. He supposes that’s meant to be a blessing.

“But, my apologies! I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. My names is Reyes. I’m new here, and it would be dreadfully embarrassing if everyone woke up tomorrow to find my body frozen in a ditch. I just need somewhere to thaw out, if that’s alright? I promise you that you have a spear and I don’t. I’m unarmed, and rather helpless.” A fact that had ground on his nerves hopelessly. He missed his pistols.

He’s talkative, this stranger, but there is a despondent cast to the way he’s shivering in that doorway, covered in snow dripping off his nose and melting into his eyes.

Edited 2018-11-30 17:55 (UTC)

He is talkative, and in counterpoint 7 listens quietly and without much movement, But, it is a rather sad sight and she's not about to let anyone die out in the snow without good reason.

With good reason and she'd certainly help them along.

She motions for him to follow and turns back to the fire, still holding her spear as she collects her mug and pushes the blanket out of the way of the spill with her foot.

"Just, you know, close the door behind you." She wanders to the kitchen to put on more tea, and pull out a bowl for Reyes (she only has the one mug). "You can call me 7. You're new, I take it? I haven't been out much, because of the weather."

One reason for her enthusiastic welcome.

“A wise choice, 7. And that is Seven? Like the number?” He’s come across stranger pseudonyms — people liked to reinvent themselves when crossing to a new galaxy — so it isn’t too far-fetched as far as things go. Shutting the door and pulling up a chair to the fire, Reyes is practically out of his seat and half-hovering in the grate, hands heating gently in front of the flames, by the time she returns with a bowl of tea.

A slight flicker of surprise reaches his eyes. “You are exceptionally kind,” Reyes says, and that particular compliment might even be genuine. He settles back into the chair and nurses the bowl close to his chest, enjoying it more for its warmth than anything else. “And I… am hopelessly new, yes. Was it so obvious?”

"It is the number, yes." As much the shape of it as the sound. She hands him his bowl and settles down on the hearth herself, pulling the blanket back to tuck around her shoulders.

"You could say I learned it from the others here." Not to say she would have kicked him out if this had happened when she had first arrived, but her experiences had allowed her to open up and relax around humans.

"Well, you don't look familiar, so that's certainly part of it."

“I’m still not used to living in such a small community, where people can spot each other based on so little a thing,” he admits, sipping at the tea and letting it warm his bones. Even with a limited number of passengers to Andromeda, even with Reyes’ stubborn attempts to assemble the manifest and pin names and identities to every single person who passed through his port of call, there had been too many strangers to keep track of. Even too many aliens flocking through. The intimacy of these villages is a far cry from it.

“Is this what small-town living is supposed to feel like, do you think? Or, was like.” Time is a nebulous concept here; looking around at the rustic little cabin that 7’s taken up residence in, it honestly feels like he’s stepped into a time machine and emerged a few hundred years before his era.

Natasha's not expecting company today, and even if she was, it'd probably be cancelled with that weather outside, especially given how far down the road she lives. The only reason for anyone to come this way is the springs, and even they're probably frozen over in this cold.

So the sudden banging and then opening of the door she's pretty positive was locked (not well enough, obviously, have to talk to Tony about that) is entirely unexpected, and may explain the knife in her hand as she appears in the doorway across the living room, frowning at the apparent snowman now melting onto her hardwood floors. He's ill-prepared for the weather, and despite the frown on her face, she does take pity on a traveling stranger.

"Close the door, you're letting my heat out," is her only comment, knife still in her hand at her side but her voice perfectly calm. "Then maybe you can tell me who you are and what you're doing here."

This wary pragmatism is something he recognises, and appreciates; it’s similar to the way he would have assessed and processed an unfamiliar situation himself. So Reyes complies quickly, shutting the door behind him, shaking off piles of snow on the doorstep and stomping it off his boots. It doesn’t look like a home invasion: he’s just wet, and miserable, and shooting her an apologetic smile that he tries to look devil-may-care (but he’s still too sodden and worn-out to make it work, this time). “Hopelessly lost,” he admits, gesturing vaguely to the whiteout conditions outside the windows. This house is warm and comforting and toasty by comparison, which is exactly what he was after.

“My name is Reyes,” he introduces himself, a faint Spanish lilt to his voice even with the centuries separating them, “and I’m sorry for barging in. No nefarious purposes intended. I was trying to make my way back to the inn, but it’s impossible to see anything out there, and you get turned around after a few feet— I’m not accustomed to this sort of weather.”

Hawke generally prefers her room at the inn, as it is warmer and less intensely lonely as a house, but she found herself in much the same situation. She couldn't see five feet in front of her while outside, and at this point she'd accept just about anything to get out of it. The strangest thing about the fact she was currently in an empty house was that she had a dead animal carefully set down to the side. She'd been out hunting to make certain their storage was filled, and yes that led to her fingers turning blue but her arrows flew true anyway. The small deer was out of the way of any furniture and rugs so if someone did leave there, it would be easy for her to clean up.

The carcass did not smell though; it was a very fresh kill. There was unfortunately some blood on the floor though, but these things happened. Hawke herself was partially stripped down. Not naked, she had a loose undershirt on that went almost to her knees, and underwear, but it was obvious why since her clothes were hung up nearby to dry. The heavy coat was draped out of the way. Long dark hair was wet and a mess, and there she was sitting casually in a chair, half dressed, cleaning off her bloody arrows with her bow lovingly placed nearby.

She glanced up when the door opened and wasn't alarmed in the least, arching an eyebrow at the person. "Not even a knock? Where are your manners, serah?" The tone was droll and partially amused. "Close the door, I came in here not to freeze my nips off."

Reyes drew to an abrupt halt, surprised for once. On a list of things he thought he might find in this abandoned house (mainly hoping for a dry roof and protection from the wind), a half-naked woman sitting over a blood-splattered corpse wasn’t one of them. A glance at the remains reassured him that it was animal, not human, and so he shut the door again, having to shove it a bit with his shoulder over where the snow had already started piling up.

“I wasn’t sure if anyone was in here,” he admitted; but even if it had been occupied, desperation would have sent him through that door nonetheless. He’s not actually that accustomed to knocking, either — a ping through an omni-tool tended to serve all purposes, sending a request for entry, doors unlocking and sliding open by themselves. Having to fold hand into fist and slam it against a wooden door hewn by actual human hands, well, that’s unfamiliar.

But they were obviously caught in the same boat, waiting out the storm in whatever shelter was nearby, and so Reyes shrugged off his soaking coat and draped it over the back of a chair, settling in it himself while blowing on his hands, shoulders up around his ears. Though his gaze wanted to catch on the line of the woman’s bare legs, he was polite enough not to ogle. “Reyes,” he introduced himself, “or, perhaps a drowned rat, if that’s more accurate.”

Edited 2018-11-30 18:23 (UTC)

Hawke was much more forward in how she looked at him, although it was appraising more than anything else. In any given situation, Hawke thought about whether or not she had to kill her way out of it, and if that included a person being in the way, so be it. After a long steady gaze, her smile flashed to life, full of mischief and menace. "A pleasure to meet you, Drowned Rat. You are allowed to seek refuge within my stolen house, as long as you don't plan on stealing the best items. They have my name written all over them."

She said steal, but this place was abandoned, so anything left behind was hardly worth taking. It was the principle of the thing. The rogue's way. "Which is Hawke, by the by. With an E at the end." Hawke spelled out the E with the tip of her arrow in the air, wiping the last of the blood off it afterward. He was handsome, she noticed that right away, sighing out loud. "Another beautiful person to add to the buffet in the village. There's only one person here I wouldn't call traditionally attractive, and I'm certain he's handsome for whatever giant tree race he's from." This was an observation she made many times since coming there, and it was far from a complaint. If she had to look at a bunch of strangers, they'd better be painting worthy.

Hawke saw no reason to get up from her comfortable perch, glancing down at the carcass and giving a casual shrug at him. "Sorry about that, I was certain if I left it out there it'd end up buried. Have you seen these little monsters before?" She leaned down, part of her shirt going with it yet still within reasonable modesty, to poke her arrow at its little deer mouth. "It looks so innocent here, but it has vicious teeth on the inside, and it would eat a drowned rat with its little monster friends in a moment."

It was always an unusual tightrope line to walk, running into someone new and sizing each other up for potential threats. But rather than wary assessment and facing each other down over this bare room, Reyes had been content to take his seat, warm up, and try to regain sensation in his hands again. Freezing and exhausted, he was practically past his usual paranoia for once: if his fate was to die at the hands of a pretty brunette during a snowstorm, then so be it.

When she relaxed an iota and gave that description of the village, though, he laughed. “Don’t be so judgmental, friend Hawke. What if giant trees really, really do it for me? I should meet him.” He scrubbed at his face, wiping the melting snow away, where it had crept down the neck of his jacket and chilled his skin. Thawing from his agonising trek outside, he shot an inquisitive look at the beast as she pointed out its sharp teeth. It really had looked like a harmless deer.

“I haven’t seen one of these before, but I’m still new, and getting accustomed. What do you call it? I’ve been learning so many new types of animals, like croc-o-dogs and pea-cats. Apparently looks can be deceiving. At this rate, I predict I’m going to get my face eaten by an adorable kitten.”

Hawke laughed out loud, relaxing even more so; she did love anyone with a good sense of humor. Her own was often a blend of gallows and I'll-keep-joking-until-we're-friends variety. "By all means woo the tree, I'm certain his bark is as welcome as his bite in your case." Also puns. Loads of puns. She hadn't met the tree herself, but she would one of these days. As friendly as she was, there weren't enough hours in the day to chatter at each person individually. "There are apparently these occasional parties people put on where you can approach someone. I went to one where they put us in ridiculous clothing." She hated that. Loathed it. "But! There was amazing food and drink."

She spun the arrow in her hand expertly. "I believe they are called chupapacas, which seems like so innocent a name for little nightmares. I have it out for them a bit. They almost chased me down at one point." Hawke could kill one or two, but a whole group, not so much. She hid in a tree for an hour throwing branches at them. Perhaps it was petty to pick them as her chosen hunt because of it, but well, petty was a fairly apt description for her.

"The kittens just make you drunk. Or high. I haven't touched one myself, but I saw other people turned into blissful idiots after stroking one. So if you ever need a great distraction, there you are." Hawke would try one eventually, no doubt, since i was a relatively innocent want to ingest endorphins. Plus she really did like petting things. "There's these big beasts called Groffles, when I have more people I take them out for one of those. Big meat, but they're fairly docile. Also there's these moths that make you forget everything. Really we might all die from the animals alone."

A snort of delight. “They’ve been named after the chupacabra,” Reyes said, charmed to find this small piece of long-ago Earth and Mexico in so unexpected a place. It’s like a comforting echo of home, a small reminder despite the uncountable distance between there and where he is now. “An old folklore creature. It drinks the blood of animals, typically goats. So this thing is well-named, but also terrifying, now that I think about it.” He nudged the edge of the dead deer with the toe of one boot.

Her descriptions were like a quick whistle-stop tour of fauna and bestiary — and it was both helpful and funny, which was two of his favourite things combined.

“My next goal, as soon as I’ve survived this damned blizzard, is collecting an entire roomful of blissful-idiot kittens. I don’t know about you, but I desperately miss having a private bar.”

Edited 2018-12-09 00:18 (UTC)

Kassandra is well aware that she shouldn't laugh. But she's not particularly good at pretending things that are funny actually aren't. Which means that there is a misthios laughing at the spiraling smuggler. Of course, she's finding it amusing from the position of having a very solid hold on the ground, an excellent ability to climb, and good judgment about how and when to jump from high places.

It does, however, only take a few moments for her to realize that she really should actually help the man.

"Only if you promise not to drag me up there with you!" she says, but it's in jest, because Kassandra does as he asks and goes over to him.

"And I thought I was light on my feet."

“I used to be, but far more gracefully than this,” Reyes says, lamenting. After that initial burst of flailing arms, he’s now trying to pull off calculated nonchalance in midair, like an embarrassed cat, as if this was exactly what he’d planned all along, of course it was. It does mean that he’s floating gently a few feet above the ground, arms folded and leg crossed at the ankle like he’s lounging on an invisible sofa, and scrutinising Kassandra once she comes close enough.

“Is this normal here?” he asks — a fair question, honestly — as she catches his hand and reels him back in, until Reyes’ boots touch earth and he keeps a steadying hand on the woman’s arm to prevent himself from floating back up. “Does the gravity simply turn off on a whim? I’ve lived on space stations before, I’ve seen how that can happen, but it happening selectively is… new.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Test Drive (December & January)

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JUMPED-UP

JUMPED-UP

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Snow Blind

Snow Blind

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Snow Blind

Snow Blind

Snow Blind

Snow Blind

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we don't have to keep this going since we have a proper thread, but just had to deliver this bit lol

Jumped-Up

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