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.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

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"You think the flowers blinded me." And nearly drove him out of his mind, they can't forget that now. Her voice is flat with skepticism and hopelessness, but her brow is furrowed in thought. She remembers the flowers all around Wash when she'd found him, so bright blue it almost hurt to look at them. And then -

"...Green flowers." She looks around, as if pinpointing the (possible) cause of her blindness will cure it, then shakes her head. "But I know who I am. And you can still see." For now. She swallows. "Why wouldn't they affect us the same way?"

"I dunno, maybe they're color-coded?" There's a joke somewhere around here about reds and blues, but he can't recover enough context to arrange it in a way that makes sense. "Weirder things have happened." Presumably. "Maybe I'm reaching, but if I'm wrong, then I dunno what else it could be, 'cause there's literally nothing else out here besides just grass and some really bright flowers."

The longer he talks, the more...maybe the word confident doesn't really apply, but it feels more familiar, an instinct for stacking words into the silence. Did he know people like this, who were just generally laconic and needed someone to fill their ears with noise in the absence of anything else?

Something about that feels right.

"Either way, I don't think we're in trouble yet. Not...critically, anyway. This could be temporary, or just some kind of simulation experiment, or...anything."

CT rubs her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. She's been unconsciously straining them, trying to see even though she knows it's pointless, and it's starting to give her a headache.

"Okay..." She's still not sure she buys it, but honestly, it's the best theory they've got right now. And the only one that doesn't involve some unknown, untouchable power controlling everything about what they're experiencing through some VR interface for their own malicious purposes.

Wash sounds like he believes it, anyway. His eager rambling is almost familiar (though not from any interaction she'd ever had with Wash) and so optimistic that she can't help but start to feel a little hopeful too. "So...what do we do about it?"

It's not as though they can kill all the flowers.

The sound and sensation of someone else deferring to him, even briefly, is enough to conjure a hell of a lot of associations. He's not the leader, is he? That wouldn't make sense. He calls someone else Boss in the absence of any easy, conventional chain of command, he moves people up and down the board based on combat rankings, he doesn't interact with any agents in the field but he calls the shots and makes the calculations necessary to know where to send them and with what, he flounders to act like he knows whatever the hell he's talking about to a group of hapless sim troopers.

"Weeeee..." He stalls out like an idling engine, straining to rope something of what he remembers into a useable fucking skill or implementation or something. "We...try and find someplace isolated. Somewhere we can think without more shit going wrong."

It is his plan, after all. And though she's (mostly) gotten herself out from under the looming shadow of the board and her perpetual failure to measure up, CT's still a far cry from being a leader herself.

Besides, this is Wash. Without being able to see him, without that visual reminder of how much he's struggling to control the different personalities battling for dominance in his head, all she has is his voice in the dark. It's easy to just cling to it like a lifeline, to trust him to - at least - get them both out of this immediate crisis.

"Right." She nods, swallowing. "Is there...Can we get out of the field? Away from the pollen?" Maybe they'll be lucky, and the effects will wear off as soon as they get away.

"Uhhhhhhhh."

So here's the part where he does another sweep of their surroundings, and notes that, nope, it's pretty much all grass. Pretty much all just field as far as the eye can see. Rolling green-gold waves pocked with vibrant blooms that at least stand out enough to be avoided. Assuming that little batshit theory is correct.

There's not much reason to keep his helmet on; CT can breathe fine without it, and it's not filtering out whatever's making them lose their heads. He thumbs the seal with a faint pneumatic hiss.

She might not be able to see it, but let all parties be advised that Agent Washington has always and will continue to have helmet hair like a motherfucker.

He breathes in, long and deep. It takes a few lungfuls, but he picks up on something that's so quintessentially Earther that it makes something in his chest spool up. Nothing to do with the girl from Texas, because that was such an integral piece of her (the smell of eggs, the swarming of red-brown dust, hair that glinted under the full heat of the southern sun). Everything to do with an inner city west coast kid who can recognize the crisp littoral air cut with salt.

"I think we're near the ocean. It might not be a way out, but it's somewhere that isn't here."

She waits, fighting to keep patient as Wash thinks. He doesn't say anything for a while, and that's unnerving enough. Not that she thinks he'd just wander off, even if she can't see him, can't hear him, but...

She does hear the hiss of his helmet releasing, and that's interesting enogh that she raises her head, even if it doesn't do any good. Wash had always been keener than most to keep his helmet on, even on the ship. She'd heard he'd even tried to eat wearing it, once...

Finally, he speaks again, and her expression turns hopeful. The ocean isn't exactly an escape, not unless they happen to stumble across a fully stocked and unattended boat on their quest, but...at least flowers can't grow on the beach.

And it's something. Better than standing around doing nothing. CT nods, once and then more firmly, setting her jaw.

"Okay." She takes a breath. "Okay." She pauses for a second, and then reaches a hand out, expectantly.

He balances the thing across his hip like a striped bowling ball, the weight heavy and familiar even if its current resting place is anything but, and takes Connecticut's hand without much prompting. Kevlar on kevlar, two special agents shelled in tactical armor - one minus her sight, the other minus every ounce of stability that his memories once allowed.

He breathes out. Can't tell if the instinct to remove his helmet stemmed from his own impulses or ones borrowed from a civilian who was better at losing himself in eddies of memory than he was running a special ops research program. Doesn't take the time to examine it at length.

"I think...okay. Yeah." He can guide her there. It's awkward progress, but he recognizes ocean air - recognizes its scent. "It's this way. I, uh...I think."

Even through two layers of kevlar, as soon as he takes her hand she can feel what she hadn't been able to from his hand on the unyielding plate of her armor. He may be keeping it together on the surface, might not be clutching his hands to his head or speaking in someone else's voice, but Wash is far from okay. The knowledge makes fear and concern spike in her gut, and she squeezes his hand instinctively, doing her best to reassure him. She has to suppress the urge to lean heavily against his side, seeking comfort and giving it at once, as she would have with Max or Varric. This isn't either of them. This is Wash, and...well, it wouldn't do much good through the armor, anyway.

But she has to do something. She tilts her head up to him, trying to give him an encouraging smile. Difficult, when she can't tell if she's really looking in the right place, when she can't tell if he's looking at her at all.

"We'll find it." They have to. But more than that... "I trust you."

I trust you.

Even if she can't quite look him in the eye, her stare strange and unfocused, the words coil somewhere beneath his sternum, couched between the pressure of a demolition config helmet being shoved roughly into his hands, the cerulean glow of names lit up in sequence glinting off the brown streak of her hair. The pitch and cadence of her voice had been clipped and cold, simmering with resentment, even if he can't quite remember why. Is he in the right head? The right memory?

Wash manages an uneasy laugh, a hitch and drag that catches in his throat.

"That makes one of us. I, uh. Don't really know if I trust me right now."

She can't know what he's thinking, what he's remembering, but it really doesn't matter. It's enough to hear that uneasy laugh, the skepticism inherent in the sound. Her words aren't exactly reassuring; she knows they're not, not when he can probably barely trust his own senses, but - well.

This is all she can do. It'll have to be enough.

"I know." She nods, turning her head away from him again, eyes unseeing and unfocused, staring into the middle distance. Her grip on his hand never wavers. "You don't have to. Just - We have to try."

Someone's acerbic retort whipcracks across the space between one recollection and the next. A shrill response in aqua to the tired mantra of, You just need to... try.

It doesn't present itself to him quickly enough for him to cling to it. It slips away. Instead, Wash starts to walk in the direction he hopes might take them to the sea, guiding CT by the hand. Catches himself wondering idly if he has some kind of nostalgia for the ocean, and if he does, what that might mean for the person whose memory he's borrowing.

"I think maybe I missed you," he ventures at last. "Or...one of me did. It's hard to tell. Someone in here - they missed you."

He coughs. His vocal cords still feel scraped raw from when he was screaming himself hoarse in the grass.

"Thought...I guess maybe you'd want to...know that."

God why is he like this.

She looks surprised, maybe just at the candidness of his response, the acknowledgement of his own muddled identity. She knows he's trying to hold it together, but...it's good, right, that he can admit that it's not that easy?

And then she thinks for a minute, and nods.

"It's you, Wash. You missed me." Who else could it be? The Director surely hadn't missed her. And Church - Alpha, or Epsilon, this Church, whoever he is, had never known her. Wash is the only one in his own head who might. She sighs, keeping pace with him as they make their way across the field.

"I missed you too."

He has to trust that - that she knows what she's talking about, that she's being completely honest when she says it, that she's singling out the right personality swimming in his skull. He has to trust it because he can't wholly trust himself, because he can't trust any of his selves.

She sounds sure of it.

"Guess it must be true." The words peter off with a half-huff, like a laugh that doesn't quite make it there, an attempt at levity fading and fleeting. "...you think this is gonna, maybe...wear off, or anything?"

It's all she's been thinking about. The only thing keeping her going, at the moment - the hope that once they get away from the flowers (if it is the flowers at all), once the air clears and the pollen is out of their systems, its effects will fade. Her vision will return. And Wash - Wash will be Wash again, and no one else.

Whoever that is now.

"I hope so." She takes in a breath, trying not to breathe too deeply - no way to tell if they're still surrounded by flowers, or what might happen next if they are. "I - it has to, right?" Permanent blindness by pollen. Flower-instigated insanity. That just - it doesn't happen.

"I mean, if it's..." The protest dies in his throat. It doesn't seem fair. Since when has any of this been fair? He remembers some of it, fragments, pieces - howling when the core of him was ripped to pieces, when he started splitting and splitting and splitting and shearing himself away, partitioning it all off like a festering limb being amputated, numb with the bliss of relief when it could finally be gone. He remembers the kick of a rifle against his shoulder and the way alien blood oxidized from blue to black, stung like hell when it landed on bare skin.

Remember her: flash of white teeth, palm blotting out the camera, and something searing inextricably over his heart.

None of it has been fair. Not to any of him.

"Yeah," says Wash, with more confidence than he actually feels. "Yeah. It's got to. We just gotta wait it out, and - oh, hey. Waves."

He points, before remembering the fucking uselessness of the gesture and dropping his hand in shamefaced realization that's just about as fucking useless.

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TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

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