aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 014 )

Test Drive Meme #14

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 August 17th, and Applications on August 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.

One Magic Night
The waves are aglow. That might not be the first thing you notice when you wake, but it will probably draw your attention at some point: the way the sea foam glistens with an effervescent light as it rinses the beach in a crystalline, deep blue shimmer. Further out, lurid explosions of color ripple soundlessly beneath the waves - an underwater fireworks show. The atmosphere is peaceful, a blissed-out calm to suit the lazy lap of the surf-spray against the sand.

Maybe turning around will shed a little more light on the situation. What this is, in fact, is the echo of a celebration that was held on Ensō back in June. Torches and campfires crackle with a merry, companionable blaze, and there is food and drink in abundance - including some of the alcoholic persuasion, for those of you who are over the age of twenty-one.

There is, naturally, all sorts to do in a celebration like this. Friendly sparring matches have sprung up along the shoreline; beach cushions and blankets decorate the party site; coconut shells laden with bioluminscent body paint can be dipped into at will, if you fancy shining like a glowstick throughout the artificial night.

Just because you've got no idea how you got here doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good party while it lasts, right?

Growing Pains
The island you've ended up on today is very, very beautiful, particularly if you're a botanist: it's covered in flowers of all sorts. They grow in rich clumps, seemingly at odds with any sense of convention. Here, you can find common dandelions flowering alongside tropical strelitzias, snowdrops spangled beside water lilies. No matter the impossibility of it, despite the discrepancies of seasons and temperatures in which these specimens should be blooming, you'll find that nearly every species can be found represented, flowering in tandem. It's gorgeous. Breathtaking, even.

There's only one problem.

That problem being that the flowers are growing out of you as well.

As might be obvious, this is not exactly a pleasant sensation. There is, in fact, a full list of rather painful symptoms that has been very well-documented of late. All you have to worry about in particular, however, is what has caused these flowers to take root in you in the first place:

Lies.

Is there something you need to get off your chest? Some confession that's aching to be made? Some guilt or regret that you've repressed, that's been dragging you down for years?

Then you'd better get to it. Those flowers aren't leaving unless you spill. And if you'd rather not, well...they're more than happy to fertilize the earth with what's left of you.

Hoo Ha Ha
Stop us if you've heard this one: you and some stranger wake up on a boat. There are no landmasses in sight, and nothing as far as the eye can see but lapping waves and a peaceful, periwinkle, cloudless sky. It's good weather for sailing. Perfect, in fact. There's even a tight breeze that might helpfully guide you along.

The punchline, of course, is the fact that you're surrounded by sharks.

Sorry, did we say sharks? We meant tigersharks, of the most literal sort possible. Part fish and part feline, these dual-headed beasts are summarily more naturally carnivorous and more aggressive than your bog standard tigers or sharks. They're wickedly fast in the water, and just as lethal on land.

And they're currently trying to climb aboard; armed with four sharp-clawed legs, they're more than capable of doing exactly that unless you can fend them off.

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He remembers too much, and he still forgets - forgets that there is a limit to the tidal wave gray churned up in his guts, that there's an asymptote that can still be crossed. He'd forgotten that hatred could swell like bile in his throat and ignite his nerves in a burning hemorrhage of incandescent fury. His hands fall to his sides. His molars feel like they'll crack. The reflexive urge to draw his sidearm and discharge the entire clip with a vengeance robs his stance of even the controlled disdain he could exercise before.

He stares at the Director with a force that could liquefy lead.

"You have no idea what the Meta was. You don't get to pretend that you knew a damn thing about either of them when you couldn't even tell a damn thing about Carolina."

Leonard's expression goes very cold, very hard, and he looks Washington dead in the eye, ceasing to pluck at his own skin.

"You have no idea what it was to have to make those decisions," he said. "I doubt you would have done any better had it been you."

"I've been a real piece of shit in the past." That's not so hard to admit; the tang of rosemary doesn't fade. It's packed into his filtration systems, burning in his nose, watering his eyes. "But I didn't spend my entire military career chasing ghosts."

He worked beside the hollowed-out shell of his best friend for as long as he had to, until it stopped being efficient. He rigged the bodies of old friends to explode, per fucking recovery protocol. He put a bullet in the skull of another, per his own fucked up notion of accountability.

But he can give himself this much: the dead were always just dead to him.

The only Allisons he had belonged to another man entirely.

If Leonard had anything nearby besides water, he would have plunged his fist through it. As it is, he clenches his hands. His teeth grit against one another briefly.

"'Chasing ghosts'," he echoes sarcastically. "I don't miss your subtext, you know. Doing my utmost to fix the failures of the past make me a piece of shit?"

He moves toward Washington now. The swelling buds are giving him worse pain, but he can't ignore his blinding anger.

"Failure is unacceptable," he says. "If I had stopped—"

The interesting thing about lies is someone can sometimes lie to themselves as effectively as they can lie to others. Leonard believes what he's in the middle of saying, but it is a lie nonetheless.

"—if I had stopped, it would have been worse than not continuing."

Three or four buds begin to open. Leonard lets out a cry and searches them out with his fingers and plucks them...but he ends up back on his knees.

He's waiting for it to occur to him that he's taken it a step too far. Waits for something like guilt or pity to break the patina of ruthless emptiness balled up in his chest, waits for something to jag his chest with the tang of adrenaline and a hot swarm of motes to jitter beneath his skin.

It never does.

"Do you still have my sidearm, Director?" he asks, quietly. "Do you still have a full mag?"

Carolina returned without it. He didn't ask where it had gone, or what she had done with it.

He didn't want to know.

Leonard doesn't acknowledge the question for a moment. He's busy moving his hands to pluck the growing buds off. He's done something wrong, said something wrong, despite the fact that he'd thought himself to be telling the truth.

Leonard has been of a duplicitous mind for a long time. Double-minded, knowing he was doing wrong things despite his own justifications for why those things are right. He has a very clear flash of understanding—and then he clenches his eyes shut, denying it to himself.

"No," he says, not answering Washington's question. But then he parses the fact that Washington had spoken and amends: "I used it. It's not full. I shouldn't be here. Is this a dream? What is this?"

Well. Epsilon had to have gotten it from somewhere.

"That's kind of a complicated question. You're not dead, if that's what you're asking." It is, technically, a dream, but he doesn't bother to clarify. There's a petty sort of vindication in that, one that he won't even pretend is anything else; he spent too many years of his life willingly laboring under a command that only offered answers to a fifth of the questions he asked, until he learned not to ask questions at all.

Let the Director flounder in insecurity and frustration for once. He's earned it.

He should be dead, that's something he knows. He wants to approach Washington, grab him by the collar and shake him, but he's incapable of something like that.

At this point, concentrating so hard on plucking the flowers from himself, he's going to end up losing control of his legs and sinking down and drowning.

"Oh god," he mutters, feeling like his lungs are full of toothpicks.

"I know. Trust me, I'm disappointed too." It's so fucking easy. It's so fucking painfully easy, and he waits for some part of him to stir with an echo of pity, of guilt, of regret. It doesn't come, so he simply cocks his head to one side and watches the Director go down with less control than he's ever seen him exhibit. Even in his anger, he'd had a force, a purpose, a directness to cycle that frustration into something he could view as constructive.

Omega burned hot in his soul. One of the first pieces to break away, storming and seething. So very, very fucking close to his heart.

"I guess that would have been too easy," says Wash, and behind the golden band of his visor, he doesn't blink. "For both of us."

Leonard wants to answer, wants to spit some bitter words at Washington, but it's over, he's realizing. It's all over. Whatever he did, whatever he said, it wasn't enough to prevent the flowers from taking over, and he's about to die in the water.

With his dying final gasp, or what might be that, Leonard flings an arm toward Washington, splashing him with saltwater. And then—yes, he's down, he's done for. Leonard kicks his legs, trying to grasp one more flower stem with his fingers, but it's pointless now; he scrabbles at the flower, but it's too little, too late. He can't even drown properly, though, because he can't seem to breathe.

His final thoughts are of Allison. His endings always involve her, somehow. Maybe if this is his actual death, he'll finally get the chance to get her back.

He waits for some part of this to stick in his ribs like a blade. It doesn't.

He watches the Director go down and waits for the knifecut of relief, of victory, of vindication.

There's only the raw, dull acknowledgment that this isn't real, and that it might not ever be real. His dreams tend to be a lot less linear than this. If he could take a guess, he'd hazard that this was the Director - or at least, his consciousness, transposed across space and time.

He watches the man suffocate and drown.

And he thinks: fine.

What he did was unforgivable. But if he remembers feeling the way that Maine must have, once, then it's worth...something.

Something is enough.

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 014 )

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