xistentiaooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #3

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

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.
But like OOCly ask permission ofc.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Despite her best efforts, Blue can only manage to make out a few of the butchered words -- none of which seem to help her actually decipher the message as a whole. ]

Maybe you'd have a little better luck with the video function?

[There was a video function? Thom spent a minute or two after that arguing with Justiced until the action figure finally starts using the camera in its eyes to project his video feed.

It flares into life, showing an incredibly dishevelled Thom in a dimly lit room.] Can you see me? [For some reason the kid felt the need to yell at the Daemon... his telecommunication experience lay completely in payphones up until now.]

[ Blue's own daemon stands there blankly when she asks it to start the video feed -- and if the little sapient tree actually had a pair of eyes it would have likely been staring at her just as blankly. -- purposely making the entire process a thousand times more difficult and making Blue increasingly frustrated.

Eventually, though, Shrubd listens to her and from somewhere inside of all the foliage a screen is projected directly in front of her showing the video feed of who she assumes is Tgim Cteed (Kind of a weird name, but her own isn't exactly normal either.) along with her own feed in a smaller box in the corner. ]

Yeah, I can. [ And, ouch, why is he yelling? ] And I can hear you fine, too.

[Thom has the good grace to look a little embarrassed at the hearing comment,
especially considering some people nearby had stopped to look at him too.] Wow, they should really offer a class to help us figure out these things. [He speaks quickly, nerves making him stop just short of tripping over his words.]

I mean, can you believe that I've never even had a cell phone before and here I am using a little mini-hero to talk to people? [He legitimately used payphones still, the only form of portable communication he had was the League decoder ring and all it does is vibrate when there's an emergency.]

I doubt that mine would listen anyway. [ Her expression quickly morphs into a pointed glare, aimed at her daemon -- but most likely looks like it's aimed at the person on the other end of her video feed. Oops. ] You're supposed to just tell it what you want and it'll do it, but....

[ She gives a dismissive shrug of her shoulder, pulling both of her legs in toward her body and folding them Indian-style, she seated on the floor of her apartment; a chic little place with plant life sprouting from almost everywhere. There's clear surprise on Blue's face at the mention of the other having never owned a cell phone -- because she currently only knew one other person aside from herself who hadn't. In this day and age (or rather, the day and age that she'd come from) damn near everyone owned one. ]

You too? [ She pauses a beat. ] The cell phone thing, I mean. Mine is sort of like a... bush. [ The video feed shakes slightly, Shrubd isn't too happy with the comparison. ]

[Thom thinks for a moment that she is indeed glaring at him before realising he himself was staring at Justiced in the process, quickly filing that away in his head because it could cause some awkward situations in the future.] It doesn't seem to work that way, not for me at least. The keyboard kept moving around when I tried to type! [Which in Thom's eyes was sheer ridiculousness, he didn't understand why anyone would think it a good idea to have a communication device that was also sentient.

He nods quickly.] My dad said they weren't important... I'm pretty sure I'm the only guy from New York my age who knows how to use a payphone. [He grins though.] Mines a hero... kinda like an action figure? The kind of thing I wasn't allowed to play with as a child, kind of ironic how I always wanted one and now I've got Justice and- [The feed flickers out for a moment before coming back.] I take it back. I'm so happy.

[ Blue laughs -- although, it's not at all at the others expense, but more at the fact that she's experienced the exact same thing. Her own daemon rarely seems to stay still whenever she's trying to use the keyboard. ] I think they have really short attention spans. I'm surprised I haven't had to chase mine down yet.

[ Yet. She might be jinxing herself with that one, though. ]

I'm surprised you could even find a payphone, I thought they didn't exist anymore. They seemed like a bit of a waste of money to me, I had a phone in my house so... [ She shrugs in a what can you do? sort of fashion. ]

Like G.I. Joe? He-Man? [ Probably the only action figures she can think of off the top of her head. ]

I'm Blue, by the way. You're uh....?

[ Yeah, she's not even going to try and actually pronounce whatever he'd typed up. ]

Its like having a child! Or at least, this is what I'd imagine it would be like... [Which just makes him sound really strange. It was kind of like the kids he taught down at the community centre, you had to keep them entertained even while you read to them.]

Really? We have payphones all over the place back home... I mean the public places at least? [He grins.] We had a phone too at home but sometimes I needed to call dad at work if I needed a ride home.

Yeah, that kind of thing... except he has a little cape and a domino mask. [A domino mask which rather suspiciously matched Thom's own.]

I'm Thom! Thom Creed! [It was nice, not being ashamed of his name here. After all, Creed was practically an insult back home, especially in the recent climate.]

TEST DRIVE MEME #3

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