aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

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*test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

Test Drive Meme #11

Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.

Remember that Reserves will open on May 17th, and Applications on May 24th!

Two important notes:

1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences, largely in the form of test drive reward items.

Damn It, Todd
The island breeze is cool and pleasant, temperature-wise. The sun is beaming cheerfully overhead, and the waves lapping up against the beach are a crystalline aquamarine. The place may as well be a postcard, with how picturesque it is: from the thick copses of palm trees to the soft white sand, it's a truly gorgeous, becoming setting.

It makes up for the chaos of its inhabitants.

Mu has adopted what promises to be a highly frustrating backdrop for its dreamers, this fine evening. The island looks normal enough, seems normal enough, but for whatever reason, the physics and general behavior seems oddly...glitched.

We don't just mean in the general sense, either. At random intervals, you may find yourself being launched several feet in the air by an invisible abuse of physics, or clipping through trees at breakneck speeds. Maybe you're walking around several feet above the ground, or your hands are much larger than the rest of you. Regardless, the possibilities are virtually endless and promise to be, for the most part, quite harmless for those afflicted - just very annoying. Whether you're swimming in the air, repeating the same lines of dialogue over and over again, or stuck halfway through the ground, it's not clear how one is meant to undo these glitches once they set in.

You could always try helping each other! Though that may simply make things worse; who can say if these glitches might bleed into one another and complicate things even further?

(Oh, and they do. They absolutely do.)

This is Dragonna Suck
When you wake in a lovely, tranquil woodland, it perhaps seems too good to be true. The trees are dense with canopies flowering overhead, and the grass has formed a thick, plush carpet on the forest floor. There's the sound of birds chattering happily in the branches, and the rustle of forest creatures in the undergrowth. That's around the time that a loud, angry roar splits the silence, and something very large and very green barrels into the clearing you occupy with large, barklike claws.

This, dear adventurers, is a rootwyrm. While undeniably draconian in appearance, the effect is offset by the fact that the rootwyrm's skin is more akin to the texture of bark than it is scales. One can generally discern the age of these creatures by counting the number of rather stubby legs that support its ample middle - the youngest will only have two, while the oldest will have as many as twelve.

Rootwyrms move slowly, thanks to the turtle-like shell that sits astride their back in lieu of wings, but they make up for this by hitting quite hard in a fight. Instead of breathing fire, rootwyrms spit a caustic, stinging acid if they can't get close enough to their prey, though they'll be more than happy to try and dispatch you the old-fashioned way: with an extremely large set of reptilian jaws.

Did we mention they don't like trespassers? And that you're standing square in the middle of their territory?

You're Pollen My Leg!
The open spread of the grasslands allows for a clear view of the cloud-scudded sky. This particular setting is that of a meadow, vast and seemingly infinite, hosting a sweeping expanse of rolling hills. The wind's rippling over the fields of rich green and buff-colored grass lends itself to the impression that the hills are in constant motion, as if you're standing in the middle of a verdant ocean.

Naturally, such is not the case. As you roam the landscape, you'll probably notice the dollops of color sprinkled here and there: flowers growing in bright clumps amidst the tufts of grass.

They're not ordinary flowers. Why would they be? They're in full bloom, meaning that thick spores of pollen have begun to waft freely into the air. Careful not to draw too close, because this pollen, when inhaled, ingested, or otherwise interacted with in any nonspecific capacity, will have a variety of...side effects, depending on which particular plant's spores you've just unwittingly imbibed.

There are five variants you may encounter in your dream-travels, each of which will have a different result, depending on the color.

[ ♆ ] Blue flowers will induce short-term amnesia and general confusion. Forgetting your sense of identity, difficulty discerning the difference between right and left, and an intense sensation of vertigo are all common side effects.

[ ♆ ] Red flowers will make you intensely and inconsolably angry at just about everything. You know that guy who chewed gum behind your ear that one time? Fuck that guy! That person over there, with the yellow shirt? Fuck their shirt! Yellow is a stupid color, and you're stupid for wearing it!

[ ♆ ] Green flowers will induce a loss of one important sense - sight, smell, taste, touch, or hearing - though loss of powers is also known to have occurred.

[ ♆ ] Purple flowers will induce silence. We hope you aren't very talkative by nature, or that you can communicate exclusively via rude hand gestures, because now you can't speak at all.

[ ♆ ] Orange flowers will fill you an indescribable terror regarding just about everything. The slightest motion, the most innocent hello, the most harmless small animal - all will tap directly into every primal fight-or-flight response to danger you have.

These status effects can and will stack, by the by. Maybe start up a little game of pollen bingo, and see how many fanfiction tropes you can rack up in one day.

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[Well. That solves the problem. He'll give it to her; she can apparently handle herself without the help of armor mods. She has the raw power of a SPARTAN, but her moves are all brute efficiency, when she discharges a shotgun round into its opened gullet. If that's what she can do without armor mods, he kinda wants to know what she could do with them.]

[Just, as long as he's not the target.]

[The monster's tail thrashes as it shrieks. Wash ducks the overhead swipe of its death throes, already moving back into the surrounding greenery to clear the radius.]

Mostly now I wanna make sure it doesn't have any friends.

I dunno, I wouldn't mind a few more kills under my belt.

[It's not every day you find a whole new species to murder. But she follows suit into the trees -- despite her eezo shielding, she doesn't want to get hit with one of those things' thrashing limbs.]

So, you an Alliance dog? You know you don't need a helmet on this planet, right?

Alliance - what, you mean UNSC?

[He hasn't lowered his rifle as the rootwyrm's dying spasms fade in ferocity, sights still trained on its center of mass. She's only getting about 25% of his full attention as long as that thing's still alive, but he still has the time to counter, dryly:]

You an ex-con who jumped prison ship? [See, look at that. He can make assumptions too.]

I'm a lot of things, man, that's just one of them, [Jack says with a smile meant to mock pleasantness. It drops just as fast.]

Hang on.

[Jack makes a gesture at his gun, and the telltale blue glow of eezo seems to embed itself into the clip. Warp ammo.]

Charged your ammo for you. Now you can pierce shields. I guess that means you get the killing shot, if you want it.

[Okay. That's...new.]

[Wash automatically shucks the mag free to inspect it - just as much to study it as to ensure it isn't about to explode or anything along those lines. Sure as hell doesn't seem like plasma, or any kind of alien tech he's familiar with from Chorus, but the eerie blue shimmer certainly doesn't strike him as familiar.]

[He palms the mag back with a satisfying click and lock, and looks at her.]

That's not standard-issue technology.

Nothing about me is standard-issue.

[She looks a little smug for a second, but when he just seems to be completely not getting it, she groans.]

Come on, first you blank on the Alliance -- despite obviously being a military lemming -- now you act like you've never seen a fucking biotic before? I get it, I'm kind of a badass, but even if you've never met an asari you've got to have people with implants on your side of the galaxy.

[Standard issue technology. God. We've already established she's an ex-con of some fashion -- which really reduces the full scope of all the things she is an ex- of to something way more trite in comparison -- and now he's too confused by her to put the damn dragon alien out of its misery.]

If you want me to kill the fuckin' plant thing I'll do it. God.

Slow down. Let's start with "asari" - what is that?

[She can mouth off at him and call him an idiot all she wants; until he gets some fucking context here, he's clawing around in the dark. Alien tech is hard to come by, where he's from, to the point where certain corrupt politicians feel wholly justified in exterminating the population of an entire planet just to access its untapped repositories of unused artifacts.]

And I'm not firing this thing until I know it's not gonna explode in my hands.

[Jack squints at him, disbelieving. There's no way he doesn't know what an asari is. And -- okay, she has an easy way to prove she's on the level with this.

She puts away her shotgun and unholsters a very sci-fi pistol and does the same thing to it that she did to his gun: blue glow embeds itself into the heat sink.

Then she aims and fires at the dragon, the shot streaking blue of the same color, and finally putting an end to its misery with a single headshot that pierces its hide.]

Warp ammo. Rips apart anything it hits on a molecular level. That's biotics.

[There, she's being helpful and teaching him shit.]

[Well, this sure is a fucking part of the galaxy he's never been to in his life. He's been out of his depth before; that's not the part that needs adjusting to. The cobalt-colored shot hits like plasma, but the way she talks about it, it's something else entirely.]

This is literally the first time I've heard of it. You wanna explain why you're talking about this stuff like it's something you learn in basic?

[Okay. Okay, wait. He actually might have a solution to this.]

...the term "Sangheili" wouldn't happen to mean anything to you, would it?

[It's Jack's turn to look at him blankly.]

...No. It doesn't.

[There's something fundamentally wrong here, in their interactions. How they don't know what either of them are talking about. How that armor isn't standard issue Alliance, while he's clearly human-shaped military.]

What part of the galaxy you say you're from, again? The ass end?

You could say that, but I'm willing to bet it's a little more complicated than that.

[The war blew through just about every colony, even the Inner ones, planets glassed and gusted through with plasma. Only way someone doesn't know about the Sangheili is if they were in cryo for something like the past century. Maybe he should've gone for the more colloquial slang for them instead.]

This doesn't make any sense. It's like we've got two entirely different frames of reference.

[Well, Jack's certainly been in cryo before, but that was more for like two years. At least that's what she gathered based on dates she reasoned out after the fact. Definitely wouldn't have missed something like an intergalactic war.

Hell, she's a part of the current war against the Reapers, for better or for worse. She got the tattoo to commemorate it and everything, after surviving the suicide mission into Reaper space.]

So you really don't know what biotics are, huh? Sucks for you. Human military uses biotics in droves, last I checked. Only reason implants for humans have advanced so fast.

[Jack's own implant, the L5X multicore Shepard had outfitted on her to make her even more powerful, is visible over her right ear, almost like a golden cochlear implant of some kind.]

I know what gene-augs are, thanks. [And he's been to medical enough to know the basics of what body-mods would entail. He was never part of that particular group. Most Freelancers weren't. They ran armor mods, A.I. implants, experimental tech; their focus was in hardware.]

That wasn't my area. Wouldn't have heard of anything called Project Freelancer, would you?

[It's always a gamble, putting his past involvement with them out there. Even if he was one of them that destroyed it, not many people look back at Freelancer fondly, but his involvement with their dissolution was pretty well-publicized.]

Nnnnope.

[Said almost boredly, as Jack starts digging dirt out of her fingernails, effectively checked out of the initial culture shock.]

We could keep asking each other "do you know Cerberus" and "you ever heard of the Citadel" and "hear the news broadcasts about Commander Shepard" all we want, but I'm thinkin' we're just gonna get fuck all out of that.

[Jack squats down and leans against a tree, checking her pistol. Warp ammo wore off by now.]

So here's a better start. I'm Jack. I'm a biotic. That's all you need to know about me.

Like...a cyborg?

[Great. This is alternate slang he isn't familiar with, even remotely. At least the name's easy to file away. Jack. Idly, he wonders if it's a code title.]

Agent Washington. Former Freelancer. [Completely normal, comparatively speaking. He can't spit blue energy out of his arms, anyway, so that's his current metric for "normal."]

[Jack sighs, already limited patience wearing thin. She's not cut out for this kinda shit.]

No, not like a cyborg. Like an adept. I can manipulate element zero in my body and use it to tear shit apart. That's the blue stuff.

[She demonstrates, letting a light show of blue eezo form like smoke around her arm. When she clenches her fist, some twigs and leaves nearby are sent floating into the air, as if a strong gust of wind came at the same moment their gravity was turned off. They float uselessly around.]

So that Project Freelancer of yours. That make you a mercenary?

No.

[The force behind that word suggests that there's maybe a sour association there. He never wants to hear the word mercenary again, particularly not in application to him.]

It's complicated. Let's just say that no one there can manipulate any elements, and no one there is a biotic. Never heard of element zero either, so.

Ooooo-kay. Sore subject.

[She leans back against the tree, looking away from him and keeping an eye out for any more weird alien creatures that want to come play.]

Well, I'd give you the rundown on element zero and dark energy and mass effect fields and all that, but that shit's boring and the point is: I make things go boom because I want them to.

[So basically, she's dangerous and he wants to be on her good side.]

Good enough for me.

[They can chat this shit up later, providing they get the time to do it. This rootwyrm might be dead, but there's the sound of the undergrowth being crushed beneath approaching claws, and Wash immediately braces the stock of his rifle against his shoulder as not one, but two fresh plant dragons emerge from the surrounding bracken to eye the both of them.]

[He breathes. His voice is steady.]

This stuff can go through shields now, you said?

[Jack lifts herself to her feet, bad mood immediately dashed as the promise of a good fight rears its head through the brush. Not just one, but two good fights.]

Must be my birthday.

[She doesn't have one, so she can make that joke whenever she wants. That's how that works. She grins at Washington.]

Yeah. Tears right through it.

That means it'll tear through wood.

[He opens fire and is rewarded with a shower of splinters pinwheeling away from the points of impact, the blue energy shimmering like plasma and painting the fragments with an ethereal cerulean. It's not unlike handling Sangheili tech, even if the shape of his service rifle is familiar in his hands and most alien weaponry is, historically, the furthest from familiar and generally not built for human hands.]

[The rootwyrm screams, tail thrashing, and tries to bull right for him. Wash drops into a roll to clear the path of its rampage. Something's wrong with his combat HUD; the targets don't display in red markers like they should. Seeing as the targets add up to two, that's not as big of a problem as it could be.]

[He breathes.]

I'll give it to your fancy warp ammo - it does a hell of a job.

I don't do anything halfway.

[Jack takes the other dragon that's still unscathed, taking cover behind a tree and shooting at it with her shotgun -- warp ammo equipped -- to lower its defenses a bit.

Then, she gestures with that blue eezo glow, and the thing floats up into the air helplessly. When she shoots again, and the resulting biotically powered blast seems to react with the blue glow already surrounding the dragon's body and detonates the eezo, leaving the helpless dragon roaring in rage and pain.]

[You know, somehow he guessed that was the case. Maybe she just assumes that she'll cause a scene no matter where she is or what she's doing or who she's with, so it's best to just get it over with and take command of the scene.]

[It's never a good idea to psychoanalyze in the middle of combat. The force of whatever energy-force she's exacting on the thing daisy-chains in a series of high-impact, rapid-fire detonations. The rootwyrm roars, and he takes the opportunity to fire into its opened gullet the way he'd originally planned.]

[He might not have the raw power of someone like Jack, but he knows how to make his shots count.]

[Those last few shots into its mouth do it. Combined with Wash's well-placed warp ammo shots and the mass-reduced field caused by Jack's Pull, its mouth splinters into pieces and it is now a floating corpse.]

Kill stealer!

[Still, her tone is jovial. She can't help the Pavlovian rush of euphoria in her veins when she's battling something (or someone) to the death.

She aims her shotgun and blasts the remaining dragon in the face three times in succession, wood cracking and breaking off each time. It tries to charge her, but with one last shot it collapses to the ground at her feet before it can reach.]

Oh, grow up.

[It's devoid of any real bite; it's instinct, countering the babble of the Reds and Blues as they engage an opponent in their typical slapdash, scrambling, unconventional manner. Maybe it says something that he's not used to this, really - working alongside someone who knows what they're doing. Carolina was the sole exception to the rule, but Jack? Jack is something else.]

[He aims for the remaining rootwyrm's legs as it tries to bull-rush her. The bullets crack through its lower legs and slow it into a stumble until she sprays it full of whatever her weapon packs as an equivalent to buckshot and drops it to the ground.]

[He breathes.]

All right. Not bad. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that we're a little bit past negotiation.

[A limb. He's kinda proud of that one.]

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

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