xistentiaooc | Test Drive Meme #5

Test Drive Meme #5

You wouldn’t wake; i couldn’t sleep for years.

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.

THE RAIN

Here comes the rain. Trickling down the rafters and tinkling down the trees, it starts as a drizzle and steadily increases to a downpour. Maybe it catches you by surprise, chasing you indoors or to share the umbrella of a friendly stranger. There's something oddly elaborate about the gutters of Xistentia's city-- it clearly carries the water toward the temple in the East, a storm system that causes the lamps to pulsate without threatening to shut down.

You'll notice too that you're prone to nostalgia which even infiltrate your dreams, memories sad or happy. This is easily a private experience, but you might find yourself wandering the city to get away from old ghosts or feeling invincible in the glow of memories. More oddly, whether or not you're an artist, you might be inspired to draw on the windows with your finger in the condensation.

Personal symbols, detailed illustrations, these inextricably lead back to the nostalgia. Whatever it is, it might pull someone to ask.

NETWORK

By now, the city of Xistentia has a population of over 400 people. Shops line the streets of downtown, and increasingly well-trodden paths will take you into the agricultural zones nearer to the forest or even down to the beach. There are still distinctive animal presences around— careful with that— but the most common critters you'll see are birds crapping on your stuff outside and tiny winged hairless people creeping your food.

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:

PHOTO SENT

It would appear that your daemon accidentally sent a picture, perhaps one from your photo roll or instagram, or a random shot of you or your surroundings. Wait. Was that a public network post? Wait—

IMAGE CODE TEMPLATE

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hells yeah

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

( she knows what it's like on the first day, surrounded by violence and chaos, always living bodies but some just on the brink. it's not happy, but it happens once a month, every month and shepard has made it her priority to see to the new arrivals, make this transition a bit easier with padded blows. and to get information, if she can, but not even she could tell you what she's looking for. gripping at strings, probably, hoping for something better.

in walk juno steel.

more appropriately, in drowns juno steel -- a lump of brown and black and red buoying in the ocean, bobbing face down in the thrashing waves. first death in xist? shepard chases after him without a thought, picking him out of the water with immeasurable strength, hauling his form over his shoulder while she helps him out. that's easy. he's breathing, she finds out when she sets him down on the sand, thumping his chest with her palms a few times for good measure. alive, that's good news. she breathes a sigh of relief just before he says that -- and a laugh is stolen from her chest, abrupt and sudden, surprising even her. )

First things first -- you got a name, soldier? And how about some dry clothes?

[ oh god.

that's a lot of salt water.

that's more salt water than juno has ever... ever swallowed in his entire life, and more than he ever wants to swallow again. just give him a second shep, he's rolling over just. getting a little dignity here. oh god. she carried him. she carried him out of the water, he felt that.

does she lift?

focus.

no... no. almost vomit first. yeah. spit up a little water, but nothing else. super attractive, but his stomach is pitching a fit so this has to be done before he manages anything else.

now focus.

"do you lift"-- ]

Juno Steel. And unless someone packed my suitcase before throwing me down whatever the hell that was, no. This is, uh, this is all I've got.

[ it's uncomfortably wet. ]

( juno steel, he says. interesting name. i know a star named after you, she'd say in an ordinary circumstance, but now doesn't seem like the best time, so she very politely keeps it to herself, instead offering him a pat on the back while he coughs up, hopefully enabling him to empty his stomach a bit better. it's alright juno, shepard does not have a judgmental bone in her body.

she nods once in understanding, and then again in a specific direction, sitting back on her heels. )

I took off my hoodie before I ran and got you. Sit tight, Juno.

( she scatters to go collect her abandoned, sandy n7 hoodie. the board of human civilization would absolutely have a fit if they found out she'd given it to anyone, but they aren't here and juno is, so.

she patters back to his side, hoodie in hand. holding it out, )

I'm Shepard.

[ juno doesn't really have words as he rolls over in the sand for a hot second, patting himself down slowly. keys to his non-existent car that's somewhere in the martian desert still, his blaster is somehow still in its holster, though the cartridges are probably soaked, wallet, yeah. yeah... just... he's not all put together, not all there, but he's getting somewhere at least. as he sits up, his head throbs, the cybernetic right eye going absolutely wild with colors and readjustments to having gotten salt and sand all over it--

REBOOTING. PLEASE WAIT.

this. oh this sucks. that's one eye going dark while the other tries to adjust to the sudden impact of only seeing half the world again. may as well cover that up while the theia is working its magic, huddling in his drenched coat for just a few moments longer before shepard's quick steps return and he peeks out of his only good eye to see the hoodie in her hand. ]

My hero, [ because as juno (hesitantly) takes the hoodie, he realizes just how terrible at retaining heat his coat is right now and all he wants is to be dry and warm.

this is a start.

god he doesn't deserve this. but. he's going to shuck off his coat quickly and pull the hoodie on over his shoulders, narrower than the deceptively well-cut coat indicates. that feels... so much better already, even if he has to listen to the theia countdown the seconds to full restore (54... 53... 52... 51...) ] You make a habit out of cleaning up the water?

[ bc he's garbage u get it but he's also asking for a real reason ok. ]

Test Drive Meme #5

crash - edits to fit my agenda

thanks dad

np daughter

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