Test Drive Meme #4 (cw vehicular crash, moderate injury)

[spoofer]

Test Drive Meme #4

Fall toward me with your entire body.

CRASH LANDING

Exit one dimension, enter the next. It was chaos: pressure against your ears, light bending in an impossible, unimaginable way. The very molecules of your body vibrating against one another. If you have windows, the view outside makes no sense. Even if not, your hands, your face, your feet seem like an uncertain thing. It's the feel of reality itself tearing apart, reshaping, reconnecting, thread by thread.

And suddenly, there's a beach— or ocean, whichever you land in. Smoke. Fire. Salt water churning up, fizzing around.


Maybe you crash, in a ship wrecking into sand. Maybe you merely stumble out of a portal, a ragged wormhole in space. Or maybe you fall off the back of an incredible steed, some creature that carried you into this place. Either way, there's pandemonium around you. Incredibly, severe injuries are far and few between— nobody's screaming about the dead. But you might have to help pull someone free of wreckage, or move quickly to salvage burning belongings from the landing craft. Maybe it's the crafts themselves, that you're trying to salvage.

Likely, you don't know them, these other strangers who arrived here^[1]. Maybe you don't trust them— you just came out of a dying world, after all. But you all have one thing in common: you're here now.

When you get a second to breathe, maybe you'll see it. The brilliant green forest across the sand. Beyond that, the glint of a faraway city.

FAIRGROUNDS

Xistentia's late summer fair is on! As F.A.T.E.S. learns about different universes and different people, the event looks mismatched, beyond complicated, and you might wonder why, exactly, how to get ride tickets when no money is exchanged. But as you wander through, you can see a rollercoaster, a five-a-side soccer pitch set up for a tournament, facepainting, an archery range, a haunted house, a circus tent, a Ferris wheel, plenty of different food stands with eclectic choices all over, from kebabs to Taiwan's infamous penis-shaped waffles^[NSFW] to popsicles for two. Maybe this is only a front to get people involved with each other?

Everybody is welcome to man a booth, or just walk around and participate in the different activities set up around the fairgrounds.

NETWORK

One afternoon, you are taken from whatever you’re doing - taking a walk through the city, sunning yourself on the beach, running around in the forest shoring up defenses - by a message, appearing on your Daemon’s network screen. It’s a simple line of text, that reads:

NEVER HAVE I EVER...?

If you choose to answer it, you’ll be connected to another player at random. You both get 10 points. The loser? Owes the winner a favor.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hells yeah

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

[upside]

( on the offensive immediately, shepard crouches into a fighting stance, pistol cocked and aimed at the speedy projectile. too red to be part of the ship, too fast to have been thrown. despite thinking she's being attacked, shepard holds her aim out for the opportune moment ... just watching. curiously. her aim eases a bit at the apparent politeness of the projectile -- a hand, she takes, which at first makes her think geth before she shakes her head and says synthetic.

the woman herself lights up in a purple glow, the bulk of which she sends over towards the ship's hull, lifting it with a wave of her hand, and a powerful surge of biotics. the hull lifts, delicately moves over, and gets placed back down in the sand where it won't be in the way.

shepard turns towards the direction the hand came from, gun still pointed, calling out. )

Hey!

[servomotor]

[There's a groan, a puff of sand. It is one Tony Stark, half buried in beach, half his armor on. The shiny red breastplate is peeling silver in parts, and his sleeve underneath is charred, blood showing on his bicep. He's seen better days. Peculiarly, he's seen worse days too-- the sky is blue, he can smell beach, and now

there's a hot redhead running over. Tony's arm hiccups back into the air, just in time for the glove to snap onto his hand. As soon as it's bound to him, the repulsors immediately go dark. The articulation of small metal parts sleeks into place.

He tries to say, Hey. What comes out instead is half a lungful of wet earth bits and,] Hhgnhk?

[upside]

( ah. not a synthetic, then, that's definitely a human hand sticking out of the sand. shepard jogs over in time for the metal one to click back in place -- which is an interesting concept, she guesses, although she's lowkey judging the intelligence behind projectile bits of armor. maybe it's smart, who knows??

at his side, she analyzes the situation -- a good soldier doesn't take too long. his arm has to be treated, but first things first. )

Alright, take it easy. I'll get you out. ( her body hums, lighting up with a purple glow. ) Close your eyes, try not to breathe for a second.

( a second is all it takes, anyway -- parted hands use the the purple fuzz to split the sand right down the middle of tony's chest, immediately piling over itself on either side. back to normal human colors, shepard takes a spot next to him, tilting her head. civilians don't wear high tech armor, last she checked. )

Let me see your arm.

[servomotor]

[Don't get him wrong. Tony is always in the mood to argue. He just usually has coherence, or at least, not half a pound of sand in his face. He hacks and grumbles and spits bits out and sits up, when he realizes that his chest has been relieved of the weight of sand. Reopens his eyes and gets to breathing again, as regular as he can. It's within normal limits of his character that he does what he's asked, handing her his arm.

He doesn't like being handed things, but he'll hand. His appendage over, that's fine.]

'Sg'rden?

[He squints at her under the delirious sunshine. Under her scrutiny, his arm doesn't look too too too bad. Skin's crispy, minimal damage to the underlying layers, if any. It'll be painful, but that's all.]

[upside]

( she frowns, inspecting the area with a careful few prods. she's seen worse. his grumbling makes amusement flicker across her face -- she gets the impression this bump isn't the first one tony's experienced. )

Hey, he lives. Very eloquent. ( she releases his arm, looking for immediate damage anywhere else. ) On the brightside, it looks like you'll live for another day, too. On the downside, I think you've got a concussion, and the closest town seems like its past the forest over there.

( she gestures behind them -- past the various chaos surrounding them, there's a bright cluster of lights on the uprising behind the woods. automatically, shepard starts looking at the other crashed people, searching either for recruitments to help carry this guy, or for someone wearing a doctor's lab coat. )

[servomotor]

Not— [hack. Tony sounds more like a cat regurgitating a furball than a person, but then he's done.] Not Asgardian, [he says, looking her over properly now. She's not wrong; one of his eyes doesn't seem to be focusing quite right, which is clear to her given her better-than-human acuity. But he seems to know that she's,] Not Asgardian.

They don't have bright sides. Nyeh. [The latter is him wiping residual sand off his tongue with his actual fingers. The ones attached to his non-singed hand.] And the aesthetic. [His eyes skip past her armored shoulder, down to her. Armored tits, the N7 marked there. And abruptly back up to her eyes, which are up here.]

Hammer Tech. Your incarcerated boss might fire you for not letting me die. Nice suit.

[upside]

I'm human.

( asgardian, what the fuck. she has vague memories of ancient earth history, although most of that has been replaced by weaponry knowledge and the brutal n7 training she went through -- she can very confidentially say that no, she's not an ancient norse god. being considered as one, however briefly, sets an unease in her stomach.

she follows his gaze, unimpressed. he has a concussion but that doesn't make you stare at tits -- she has half a mind to bury him in the sand again.)

Okay, one, this is Systems Alliance military issued armor. Never heard of Hammer Tech, but thanks for the compliment. Two, ( her hands are digging under tony, now, getting a good vantage grip. ) I'm a Spectre. I don't have a boss.

Let's have a three, just because. Try not to let this blow out your ego.

( because shepard is just going to scoop him up bridal style, as if he's as light as a feather in his suit, and head towards the woods. )

[servomotor]

[Asgardian, is the fuck. Tony's tongue still tastes gritty, but it doesn't bother him too much; the current circumstances are a vast improvement on being squished facedown by a little jet. Even if this woman is Hammer Tech, and he doesn't think she is; her gear looks too good, and she seems to be quite earnest talking about the Systems Alliance and 'Spectre.'

She doesn't have a boss. That makes the two of them.

And now he is being princess carried out of the beach. Jarred against her armored chest, it occurs to him only now that having sand inside his clothing is a tad uncomfortable.] You underestimate my ego, [he says.] I'm human too. Fancy meeting a fellow homo sapiens here, marooned on a beach paradise after I think my world ended. Do I have a concussion, or is there a tiny person with wings on your shoulder right now?

[He has a mild concussion, but also, there is definitely a tiny person with wings on her shoulder right now, fiddling with the red curls of her hair.]