TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

[lifeaftr_mods]

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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Comments

[craterwave]

[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.

[counterblows]

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.

[craterwave]

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.]

[counterblows]

[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.]

[craterwave]

[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.]

[counterblows]

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.]

[craterwave]

A limb.

[Jack is less proud. In fact, she is openly unimpressed.]

We've got where we're gonna get.

[She starts heading off in a random direction.]

C'mon. There's gotta be more than just bloodthirsty plant aliens around here. A ship or something at least.

[If she's lucky, he won't read into the fact that she's willing to work with him to find some form of civilization. She definitely doesn't need the backup, but she can use it.]

[counterblows]

[The implication hasn't escaped him, but they've also had each other's backs for these past two encounters, meaning that the likelihood that she'll turn on him is...low. Relatively.]

[Unless it's a gambit to buy his trust. She doesn't seem the type, but they never do. Either way, he's not putting away his rifle when he answers, following up at her seven o' clock.]

Possibly. Doesn't rule out teleportation. I don't remember how I got here. Do you?

[craterwave]

[She lets him stay behind her. Makes it easier to stab her in the back, but she knows she's strong enough to bite back if that happens. Besides, lull him into a sense of security and he may think less of doing the stabbing. But--]

You have teleportation??

[She turns to look at him incredulously. At least that's one thing that he has that she doesn't, but that doesn't help their case for finding a way out of this shit planet.]

Well, if you're not gonna teleport us back off, we're better off looking for something on this planet than just sitting around sucking our fucking thumbs.

[counterblows]

Not on me.

[He doesn't have the tech necessary to detect slipspace ruptures in his armor, and he sure as hell didn't bring any teleportation grenades with him. (He refuses to call them "futurecubes" on the principle of it.)]

Tech capable of it might've launched us here. That's the only possibility I can think of, because nothing else makes sense.

[craterwave]

Coulda been dropped off by a ship just as easy. You know, in our sleep.

[That's equally plausible! To teleportation! Apparently!]

...Maybe after being gassed. Doesn't explain how we're both here from two different galaxies, though.

[counterblows]

Yeah, that's not my area.

[He's not a scientist, and he sure as hell doesn't look it, anyway. Granted, even scientists in his world tend to be clad in armor on a daily basis. But then, Chorus, for example, was a perpetual and inescapable warzone.]

[He moves pretty easily, despite being decked in full armor. This isn't the first time he's done this sort of brisk jog through the wilderness.]

I can wait on an explanation if it means we get outta this first.

[craterwave]

Yeah, me neither. I don't really care, as long as I can get back in the sky and find some kinda civilization.

[With that settled, she continues trudging with him through the woods, though she notes his ease of use to that armor. She idly wonders what the hell Project Freelancer is supposed to be about, if not mercenaries like the title suggests. He does bleed military with every motion, so it's got some relation to that. And he's very human-shaped.

You can generally tell by the legs, even with full armor on.]

Lucky for you, if we can find a ship of some kind, I know how to hotwire it.

[She's got plenty of experience with that.]

[counterblows]

[You're saying I don't?]

[He doesn't say it. It's far better for an enemy to underestimate him than the alternative. That's one of his defining traits at this point - people assuming that he knows less than he does. All things considered, clamming up has its uses.]

That's assuming we can. If it was teleportation, we're pretty much screwed unless we can figure another way off.

[craterwave]

If if was teleportation, [Jack rounds on him, gone from cold to hot right away,] then we could be on a deserted planet with no civilization, no ships, no people! There won't be a way to get off!

[She grits her teeth and her fist glows blue as she punches a hole into the tree to her right, splintering the wood and spraying chips of bark all around. She's trying not to think about this possibility, okay. She doesn't want to waste away on some nowhere planet for the rest of her very short life.]

[counterblows]

Well, bitching about it isn't gonna get us outta here, so just be prepared to account for a Plan B, all right?

[There's a mild spike in his tone, but all told, he's far from the same level of outrage that's spiking off Jack like a swath of brambles. He's worked with people with anger issues before, which means that, as usual, it's his job to keep the level head.]

Bottom line, we need more information before we can make any sort of judgment.

[craterwave]

[Jack grits her teeth and clenches and unclenches her fists. She's still learning how to deal with being pissed off and not being able to kill things to solve the problem, okay.]

Could use some more dragons right about now.

[Muttered, through her teeth. She continues onward, if only because that's the only productive thing that can be done in this situation.]

Fuck teleportation and fuck this overgrown jungle!

[counterblows]

I refuse to believe this is the worst situation you've ever been in.

[Just being frank there; nothing about her disposition suggests that she's not been hardened by some pretty heavy stuff over a period of time. So she prefers to live in the moment. Fine.]

But if you wanna be realistic, I doubt there were only three of these things on this entire planet.

[craterwave]

It's not, but it has potential to be up there..

[Which is probably a lie. Jack doesn't exactly spend her time ranking the shitty things she's been through. The tattoos are enough.

At least, the ones that have more meaning than "why not".]

Killing dragons doesn't exactly solve the problem, but at least it would make me feel better.

[counterblows]

Well, there's plenty around, probably. You wanna waste your time doing that instead of finding a way off this place?

[Christ, this is Chorus all over again. Only this time they're even deprived of the basics of a comm tower that's feasibly fixable, and whenever he tries to access inter-team radio, he's met with nothing but a squeal of waterlogged static. Fantastic.]

Be my guest.