TEST DRIVE MEME #3

[spoofer]

Test Drive Meme #3

I walk around with all my violent decisions.

Prison World Prequel: Spidermarvel

D.E.S.T.I.N.Y. has learned a new trick to stop characters from defying the end of the multiverse. These are prison worlds, alternative universes, where prisoners are brainwashed into native conflicts so that they will kill each other.

NEW CHARACTERS: BRAINWASH

One minute, you're escaping your dying homeworld. Perhaps through a wormhole, perhaps with some incredible leap of technology, sorcery, or on a magic steed— regardless of the how, the why was clear. Everything you once knew tearing apart at the seams, facing utter destruction at the mercy of an apocalypse no one had predicted.

The next instant, you topple into a street covered in rubble. The Battle of New York (spoilers in the link) rages around you.



Armored humanoid aliens, the Chitauri, run amok in the streets, armed with staffs that blast powerful energy bolts. A hundred times larger, fish-like "Leviathans" are gliding through the air, with fangs as tall as people, damaging skyscrapers with their massive flippers, and ejecting yet more of the Chitauri from their sides. Around you, fires burn and humans are running in every direction in panic, barely taking a second to notice anything outlandish about your appearance. In the distance, there's a blue, glowing portal hundreds of feet in the air.

Maybe you stand and fight. Perhaps you find a citizen or a fellow world-hopper bleeding and hurt and you try to help. Maybe it's the faraway portal you're going for, assuming this is just that damn apocalypse again— but that's when something feels ever so slightly wrong.

This is the sensation of your memories starting to warp, your very identity shaping to fit this world. Your powers starting to flicker, gutter, not operating quite right. Glance down, and for a split-second, it's like your hands are-- pixellated? But blink again, and it's over. Hell, there are more important things to take care of right now...

EXISTING CHARACTER: WRAITH MODE

Technology lights up in the Citadel, the defense systems coming online abruptly, dozens of screens and interfaces crawling with unrecognizable code— and special instructions. Using a visor at the Citadel, brief journeys to the prison world are possible. When you appear in the Battle of New York, the visitors appear like ghosts displaced from space and time. You are now in wraith mode, incorporeal, intangible, and invisible to most of the inhabitants of the Prison World. However, you can be seen and heard by the new prisoners, all the while retaining their personalities and identities. Simulation or transportation? It's hard to tell.

The Temple lights up too, revealing a new chamber filled with dozens of strange stone beds, dimly aglow. But the technology or magic there refuses to reveal anything else.

HEATWAVE IN THE CITY

A week after you arrive in Xistentia, you are still trying to get a grip with life in the city, your new apartment, still trying to understand exactly what's needed of you. The inhabited parts of the urban development have wide boulevards and beautiful facades, well-groomed trees on every street. The further you go from the growing colony, the more overgrown and wild the buildings look, small flocks of birds singing at you from the bridges.

Beyond the streets, the natural environment around you-- wherever you choose to explore— is supposed to be perfect; the weather in Xistentia is designed to be temperate in the city, hotter on the beach, cooler in the forest. But in recent days, the temperature has been climbing. It's a steady thing, but it's felt throughout the whole of Xistentia, and it's not long before it becomes unpleasant, humid and heavy heat that sticks your shirt to your skin.

Your daemon trills, requiring your attention. You've noticed that it now looks different now than it did back in the Prison World, no longer a simple cellphone. When you touch the hologram popup, the message reads:

F.A.T.E.S. WARNING SYSTEM
Threat Assessment: Mild
Phenomenon Type: Weather System Compromised
Predicted Duration: 72 hours

Due to massive energy discharge from D.E.S.T.I.N.Y.'s Prison World program, a heat wave has come. Residents are advised to remain cool indoors or hydrated outside. F.A.T.E.S. requests your assistance offsetting repair power costs by temporarily increasing physical contact, including intimacy. Remember, safezone protocol will prevent combat within the city excepting sparring at gyms.

With expected assistance, the weather system will be corrected in 72 hours.

Fate is your hands. Or possibly your arms, if you're more of a hugger. As characters initiate physical intimacy within the city, they may notice the nearest lamps in the streets brightening.

NETWORK

Chances are pretty good that your daemon is not a phone or a computer or a wax-sealed piece of parchment or a Howler, nothing with a convenient camera or a keyboard; it probably isn't even a pocket sized. Likelier, it stares at you with eyes that contain the lenses-- or powers-- of a camera, and some part of its body projects a holographic keyboard into the air. For those of us who are not accustomed to manipulating intangible light prisms, it's not very intuitive to type on.

But here's your network access. Accessible to all your fellow travelers in XISTENTIA.

Misfires, typos, and blurry video footage are likely. Time to feel like a Luddite!

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

sUPER FUN!

Footnotes

1. Some of these can be nameless, plot-device NPCs to facilitate interactions! But even in this case, please avoid gore in describing their current state of being. Anyone dead or catastrophically injured will have disappeared by the time your characters make it to Xistentia. There are no corpses or dying here.
   
   
2. But like OOCly ask permission ofc.

Comments

[aberth]

Uh.

( It's not what he expected would be the last thing out of the boy's mouth, and it takes him a moment or two to remember the whole good will portion of the deal they have with F.A.T.E.S. )

There's a hospital in the middle of the city?

( Barricaded, ever annoyingly helpful, transforms swiftly into his robot form and climbs the table to stand atop of it next to Thom's daemon, projecting a map with a blinking cursor. )

There might be people there. Especially if we're getting a new spate of refugees.

[sanator]

[Thom nods at that before moving to look at the Daemons on the table, flinching slightly when Barricaded starts to move because he still can't wrap his head around these things but he forgets it quickly in favour of studying the map.] That might work... depends how many people there are.

Unless there's a basketball team here? [ He says it with a grin and you can tell he'd much rather get his dosage of physical contact from the sport rather than healing people and potentially needing a bed in the hospital himself.]

[aberth]

( Adam notices that flinch, but doesn't comment on it. Instead he lets his gaze fall to the map too, studious frown pulling his brows down. )

I've not noticed one? But there are a lot of guys round here that are probably into it. You could ask on the network, see if you can't get a game together.

( He wouldn't, he doesn't like contact sport. He's much better when it's something that relies on his own merit. Blowing a breath out, Adam takes a drink of his water and then pulls a chair out opposite the other boy. At least the coffee shop has air conditioning. )

I'm Adam, by the way. ( Nodding to his daemon. ) And this asshole is Barricaded. ( A siren wails in response, the little robot flipping the bird at Adam. )

[sanator]

[Thom shudders at that, a little exaggeratedly.] I'm staying away from the network right now, this thing- [Gesturing to Justiced with a decidedly accusatory finger.] -is impossible to get my head around. [Which was the perfect moment for Justiced to put his hands on his hips in a perfect hero pose.] I'll see what I can do, I mean it should be easy... heal people, play sports, right? [Because he didn't think he was on board with the other levels of physical contact just yet.]

My names Thom and this is Justiced... and I'm pretty sure he hates me. [Although watching Adam's Daemon's blatant lack of disrespect and he could start to believe that it was entirely to do with their programming.]

[aberth]

( Adam's mouth twitches at Justiced's pose, glad he's not the only one to have a daemon based on a toy. )

I'm not really a fan of it myself. Social media kind of goes over my head. ( To Adam it's a pointless activity. He's never had the time for it, for one, nor the inclination. Why would he want to tell people the intricacies of his life? Why would he waste time reading about others?

Still, he can do the face to face thing. Better than nothing. ) Are you a doctor? ( Healing. Logically, it's the first step. Even though Thom looks fairly young for one. )

[sanator]

Yeah me too, I wasn't even allowed to have a cell phone at home... this is so much worse than a cell phone. [He eyes Justiced with a vague sense of dread.

He frowns, shaking his head.] A doctor? No. [He laughs.] I haven't even finished high school. But I'm a Superhero- [Thom gets an intense look on his face as he stares at Adam, using that second sight of his that he so rarely taps into. First off is the thick viscous wave of psychological damage that seems to delve deep into Adam's aura which Thom tries to ignore, trying to find something else instead but forcing himself to look slightly past Adam instead which is when he sees it and blinks, letting his vision turn back to normal.] Like your ear... I could fix that.

[aberth]

I didn't have one either.

( He used Ronan's though, so he wasn't exactly a newbie when it came to having the ability to text. Actually, scratch that. His phone didn't have a hologram keyboard, so technically Adam very much was new to it. But still, he's almost pleased to know he's not the only one behind with the times.

And then Thom offers the chance to heal him and Adam goes very still. Something blank slides over his face, expression shifting from a careful welcoming to an emptiness that gives nothing away. He wasn't expecting that, and he has to fight the urge to lift his hand and trace a fingertip over his earlobe, feeling it without the accompanying sound. When he blinks, he can see the floor beneath the steps, his father throwing fists at Ronan. He blinks again and he's back.

Thom could fix it. Should that be something Adam wants? ) What do you mean?

[sanator]

Great, so I'm not the only one! [He laughs slightly, more an exhale than anything. It was strange that he would have this particular fact in common with someone, especially when a lot of people found it to be the weirdest thing about him. In the past, the only way anyone had been able to contact him while on the move was Ruth being able to divine the number of the payphone he'd been standing by.

Thom had expected something close to graciousness, maybe shock and awe but instead saw something almost dead behind Adam's eyes... that great blackness in the boy's aura surging up in a way that had Thom looking away, trying to disengage his powers completely.] Your- your eardrum, right? Its broken... I could put it back together, if you wanted. You don't have to... but it doesn't hurt, I promise. It feels nice.

( cw: child abuse )

[aberth]

( It feels nice.

Adam doesn't know what to feel. How often has he longed to take back what happened? How much has he agonised over it. Because if he could go back, if he could reverse what had been done, then where would he be now? Would he have found the strength to get up and walk away without that final blow? Would he have managed to protect himself without needing to protect Ronan first? Or would he be worse off? Would his father finally have found a way to have gotten rid of him for good?

Those may be questions that seem like they have no place in the situation now, but to Adam they do. Adam, who is his own man first and foremost, Adam who shoulders everything that has happened to him and uses it to keep moving. Is it the same as allowing medical help? Is it cheating the law of nature? Is he a coward for wanting it so much? )

I --.

( He opens his mouth, closes it. His heart is racing, palms sweaty, mouth suddenly dry. He will not have a breakdown. He will not let his weakness show. Nobody knows. He swallows, angry at himself. )

How did you know?

[sanator]

[Thom felt bad now, if anything because the tension between the two of them now had become palpable. He'd crossed that same line that Ruth had warned him about, knowing fine well that just because he could heal just about everything wasn't the same as the idea that he should heal everything. Some people owned their pain, after all.

Even more so, some people's pain was important to them and simply getting rid of it could never be an option because it would heal a symptom of a wound rather than the injury itself; especially because those weren't always purely physical.]

I can see things like that... injuries, sickness. Its part of my powers. [He chews on his lip again, wringing his hands together.] Have I upset you?

[aberth]

No.

( Yes. )

It just surprised me.

( He's lucky ( or unlucky, depending on how you look at it ). His situation isn't obvious from first glance. The scars his childhood have left are hidden, marks on his skin under clothes, his hearing unnoticeable. Most of the time, he can pass as anything else but broken.

Most of the time.

Because right now, Adam feels cracked open. He wants, desperately, to go back to his apartment, to Ronan, and that's a new feeling too. He's already thinking of the excuses he could make, of a way to escape. But Thom is ringing his hands in a way that's familiar to him and so Adam shakes his head, carefully pushing all the broken shards back into their place. ) It's okay. But I think I'll pass on that.

[sanator]

[Thom frowns because while Adam seemed adept at hiding his emotions, that black void in his aura rushed into place every time Thom looked at him; it was so prominent that the healer could hardly avoid it and it was causing complications for him as well.] That's fine, yeah... totally. [He chews his lip again and forces himself to reach out and take a long sip of his coffee.]

Listen... I'm really sorry. I shouldn't go on about all that- [He runs a hand through his hair again, stress evident on his features.] -Ruth, my friend. She was teaching me about this kind of thing, its not always my place to talk about the things I can heal, just because I can heal them.

[aberth]

( Strangely enough, Thom's words make him think of Gansey. His absent friend had always wanted to fix things, because he had the means to, because he could. Adam had fought with him on that too many times.

It's easy, to regret something when you're no longer in a position to make amends.

Still, Adam has to fight the urge to rise, to leave. He wants to, badly. Wants to pick his way through the city to the apartment he shares with Ronan, and sink down into his thoughts. Rushing through it would be more of a sign he was affected than anything else, and so he picks at the label on his water bottle and lifts a shoulder in a shrug. ) I think the hospital's your best bet. Or maybe ask on the network if anyone has anything you could help them with?

( Other people might be less aggressive than he is, after all. )

[sanator]

[Thom nods at that, it was pretty clear now that the young hero had opened a void between them. A void that perhaps, if he'd focused a little more intently on Adam before zero-ing in on that ear, he would've been able to have avoided.] Yeah... you're right, maybe I should check those out.

[He pulls his own coffee towards him and takes a long sip, poking at Justiced to see if the Daemon could maybe find him a way to manoeuvre out of this terribly awkward situation.] Maybe there's all kinds of people that want stuff to be healed, but I should probably ask first... before I look for them. It just happens, you know? Like magic. [Except he wouldn't know the first thing about explaining his powers and Adam's concept of magic could be a very different thing than how Thom perceives it.]

[aberth]

( He nods, his dusty brows still pulled down. )

Your daemon should be able to help there. They take a lot of getting used to, but they do actually seem to want to make things easier. ( Barricaded, moved by some strange understanding, climbs back down to the ground and transforms. Adam's hand curls around his water bottle, lifting it off the table in a clear sign. ) Ask though, there are plenty of people here.

( And then he stands, gives Thom a small nod, trying to ignore the quell of awkwardness within him. )

I'll see you around, yeah? If you need anything, just look for Barricaded on the network.