graveyardsmash | TEST DRIVE MEME

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test drive

TEST DRIVE MEME

TEST DRIVE MEME: SEPTEMBER

Welcome to the Ryslig Test Drive Meme! Below are a few prompts to get you started, but you may make up any prompt you desire! Please take a look at the navigation page for rules, setting information, and links to reserves and apps. Have fun!

SCENARIO ONE

You wake up on the beach thoroughly drenched with your mouth full of sand. The salt water causes various cuts and scrapes on your skin to sting and the sand isn't helping. The air is slightly humid, ruining any feeling of refreshment you might have gotten from your dip in the ocean. There are lights in the distance but the unfriendly scent of gunpowder fills the air. If you're lucky, you're alone. If not, you might find yourself staring up into a pair of monstrous eyes or down the barrel of a local's shotgun.

SCENARIO TWO

So you've just arrived, and already SOME the natives are trying to get on your good side. Offers of food, shelter and other luxuries in return for hoping you don't eat them. They even have some helpful pamphlets to share with you. "How To Deal With Changes", "Alternatives to Human Flesh", "What to Expect When You're Expecting (to turn into a monster)" are all great pamphlets. There's even some detailing certain monsters, and the changes they go through. Some of these seem to have been passed down from one monster to the next.

Among these however, are some... not so helpful ones. "Bunnyipyips And You", "Axe Thief Axehounds," and "So you're becoming a Fur Bearing Trout" among others. Sometimes they have marks on them from previous people who had them saying they are lies, or pointing out good "jokes." Then there's the people who aren't happy to see you at all. Glares and silent, judging stares if you're lucky. Torches and pitchforks attempting to drive you out of the town if you're not. You may need a friend to help you.

SCENARIO THREE

"Seek us out," the voice whispers in your head, and before you have time to question it you've found yourself in someplace entirely alien. Maybe it's the Fog God's ghostly town of Dyster, where exultant followers dance around bonfires and sing their praises to the skies above. Maybe it's the Fourth God's arcade, with small robots wheeling about amidst the lights and colors of old pinball machines. Only one thing is certain: you are not alone, in this sacred place.

SCENARIO FOUR

The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? NOTE: Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.

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[he wakes slowly to the sound of waves and the smell of gunpowder in the humid air, which feels familiar, like home--]

[--until he realizes he has sand in his mouth, coughs, and spits it out, then spits again. disgusting. but not surprising, considering he's facedown on what feels like a beach, from the water lapping at his legs. something stings. he's probably got scrapes.]

[he opens his eyes slowly, assessing his situation and checking that his remaining limbs are in working order. it's not where he went to sleep. but it's also not an attempt on his life, unless his captors were the most piss-poor assassins the world has ever seen and routinely threw their targets on abandoned beaches. the only slightly plausible theory is that somehow he managed to fall off the base at night, not drown, and floated all the way to one of the Seychelles islands. which is beyond ridiculous. but there's no point making a theory without facts, so he looks up at the sky to try and guess where he might be by the position of the stars--]

[--it's cloudy. of course. and he's without his prosthetic leg. this situation just gets better and better. he glances around for some kind of driftwood, trying to work out the best way to get out of this situation, or at least improve it.]

[No prosthetics are the worst. He feels you, mate. Not only is he missing a leg, but an arm, too. Junkrat's managed to sit up at this point, growling and rubbing at his face with his stump. It's hard not to notice the other man laying nearby, noting his lack of limb.]

You too, eh. Fuckin' junkers. You see who did it? [As far as he's concerned, this guy and him are now Buds because... well, look at this shitty situation. Two guys who can't fuckin' walk, stranded on some shit beach??? Yeah. They're totally buds.]

[~~limbs. but the leg (and accompanying crutch) are of far more concern, considering previously he'd neither had an arm prosthetic nor wanted one.~~]

[he turns to face Junkrat, then tenses, ready to fight if he has to, but-- oh. the other guy's missing limbs, too, so it'd actually be something of a fair fight. Kaz looks him up and down. the other guy's got the look of a merc about him, but he doesn't seem to want to fight right now. that's good. so Kaz pulls himself up to a sitting position and tries to adjust his aviators--]

[--which are broken, he realizes with a flash of annoyance--]

[--so instead he takes them off and puts them in a pocket of his soaked trenchcoat, looking at Junkrat with clouded-over eyes reminiscent of cataracts. ]

How do you know it's junkers if you didn't see who did it?

[he is, for once, not being an asshole. it's an entirely serious question. because if the other guy has any answers to how they ended up in this situation, he'd sure like to hear them.]

[Oh, limbs. So they really are gonna be buds! Junkrat isn't shy or subtle about staring at the man's eyes, whistling a low note as though he might be--impressed?? Is this old fuck blind? Don't look it. Not with the way he'd been eyein' him just a moment before--]

Eh? Guess m'just used to people harvestin' bits for scrap. Don't know what you were workin' with, but these? [He lifts his mangled arm and leg simultaneously, propping his good hand on the sand for balance.] Had some fantastic parts to 'em. Worth stealin', if I do say so myself!

Why they didn't just pop us in the head and be done with it though.... [His grin is too wide.] Maybe it wasn't junkers after all.

[...this is why he doesn't take off the sunglasses, besides the migraines. he stares back at Junkrat, with a silent expression that says 'are you finished?' and is thus very obviously not blind. finally, he breaks eye contact and looks away, checking out their surroundings a little closer.]

That's what I was wondering. Why leave us alive and dump us on a beach, if they got as far as knocking us out? What would they have gained? I doubt they were looking for valuable prostheses-- mine wasn't, only would've been good for melting down.

Hm. [He eyes the man at that, but he sounds like he means it. So his stuff wasn't any good--what gives?]

Don't really matter, one way or another. They'll all blow up the same, eh? [He laughs, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.] And THEN we'll get our stuff back! Just gotta find some scrap, make a new leg... and some explosives.

[While there's plenty of sea at the Vandare beaches, aquatic monsters don't tend to call it home. Apparently, most mers and kelpies tend to prefer Lake Dala, over by Bavan. Liquid's no tourist, coming over only to gawk at the newcomers. Nope, these are his stomping grounds.

In fact, if one were to really look far in the distance, on days with better visibility, sometimes the wreckage of a boat can be seen. Once the home to a young soldier in Bwala ya Masa, now the home to that same soldier so much older and farther away. Funny. That's magic for you. Could get anything for the right price.

But he's not in the boat tonight. People are coming, he's noticed, so he's been swimming around, peeking up here and there, seeing who's been dropped into his turf. No one's really caught his eye, though. That is, until now. He knows the signs of someone struggling all too well, and his attention moves to the... sort of familiar figure. He just has to swim right up to the beach to take a closer look.]

Didn't bring Father along?

[Rather casual for a guy just sort of showing up in the sea. Of course, Liquid's a hell of a lot different from the way he was as a child. After all, he's got dark brown scales covering his arms, and who knows what's going on underwater. But he's got Big Boss's face, even if it's distorted a bit by the knife-sharp teeth growing out of his lower jaw, and he still speaks with an accent.]

[when he hears something moving in the water, he drags himself out immediately, since whatever it is, he has no wish to meet it any closer. shit, he really wishes he had a gun, but the familiar weight of the 9mm he usually carries is gone, too.]

[then, he turns and sees Liquid, and freezes. the scales and the fact that he's swimming in some kind of nonhuman way are strange, but at this point, Kaz has seen stranger. what gets him is something deeply, deeply uncanny about the creature's (man's?) face. it takes him a second or two to realize it's Big Boss' face, attached to a blond head of hair and a British accent. and Liquid's words catch up to him. 'bring father'. wait--]

Eli...?!

[he fails entirely to hide his shock and incredulity, and 'hallucination' goes up a notch on his theories of what could be happening. that is what looks like adult Eli's face, attached to a scaly something that's swimming, which seems like something that'd be fair game for his subconscious to throw out.]

[The reactions Liquid gets from humans around here are often pretty hilarious. Even the ones that live around here don't normally expect monsters in these waters (although that's changed a bit since Liquid's moved in). The shock on Miller's face is something to behold, and Liquid doesn't refrain from laughing at the sight of it.

Odd, seeing Miller after all these years. After being responsible for his death, after impersonating him to fool his brother. But, conveniently, Miller doesn't need to know that. No one's here to give up the future, and does it matter anyway, if he's here instead?

He's never really given much thought to the 'whens' of people coming here in the first place.]

I never exactly expected anyone to call me that again. Can't say I like it any better than the last time, either. I go by Liquid, now. Liquid Snake.

[It had been classified, and no one here knows his name anyway. He's a fish with a name that doesn't match, and a past that nobody needs all the details about in the first place.

He leans back a bit, sort of, tail splashing lazily as he moves.]

Rather unfortunate you'd end up here. It's dangerous, after all.

And I didn't call what you liked last time, either. 'Liquid Snake'... someone give you that name, or you get tired of White Mamba?

[funny he'd have a name like Snake's, considering he's not actually-- no, wait. the Phantom wouldn't have shown up as being related on the DNA test. so Eli could well be one of the Les Enfant Terribles. the look of his face now that he's grown up even makes it likely, unless he just looks like Big Boss by an incredibly unlikely fluke of genetics.]

Where's 'here'?

It's like you've never heard of a codename before. I've never had any use for that name they tried to start me off with in the first place. Nyoka ya Mpembe served its purpose, but it doesn't quite work for me anymore.

[He's still using 'whitemamba' as a username on the network, though.

He waves a hand vaguely.]

Ryslig. Vandare. The beach. My turf. Take your pick. It's not exactly the sort of place anyone'd want to wake up, but it isn't like there's much we can do about it.

[Although he seems to be doing pretty well for himself, despite all the fishiness.]

Don't be a smart-ass. The question was whether you ended up with an outfit that assigned codenames, or you're a merc that picked your own.

[and indirectly, whether whoever named you had a sick sense of humor, or you still have daddy issues.]

I'll go ahead and ask the obvious question of 'why are you twenty years older and part fish', too.

I was the leader of a particularly elite special forces unit, so you decide.

[He's just... not going to mention that the whole codename thing was reinstated under his command. Or what the unit was in the first place.]

I'm older because it's been a bloody long time since I got the hell out of there. And the fish thing is the 'fun' thing about this place.

[Isn't the best part of new people showing up getting to tell them what's going to happen?]

Next time the fog rolls around, you're going to change too.

That doesn't answer why you're not twelve years old. Is it some kind of parasite in the fog?

...Because I grew up? Look, there's not much in the way of logic deciding how we get here. Maybe I should be asking why you aren't much older.

[Not why he's not dead, though, because Liquid was dead before he came here, so he knows that's an entire possibility.]

What do you mean there's no logic in how we get here?

Look, unless you're telling me I accidentally time-traveled in my sleep, you're the one that's out of place.

I mean there's no bloody logic. The Fog God doesn't decide 'oh I'll make sure to take my playthings from around the same place and the same time' or anything like that. Hell if I know what her damn motives are anyway.

[He doesn't care for any of the gods around here, clearly.]

Time traveled, space traveled, hell, I don't even know where this is relative to anything else. It's just. [He waves his arms.] Here.

[have a long, disbelieving silence.]

You're... saying we're not even on Earth.

[Yeah, he expected something like that. Wasn't like he really believed much of it at first himself. But disbelieving wouldn't have done him much good anyway.]

If it's Earth, it's not the one we know. You get used to it, eventually.

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TEST DRIVE MEME

1, night

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