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uploadedmeme2018-08-18 12:01 am
uploadedmods) wrote in uploadedmeme2018-08-18 12:01 am
Entry tags:
Test Drive
TEST DRIVE 001
-TDM threads can be considered game canon if players involved agree & if it suits any roles you may decide to choose for the current plot.
-Any reserving player that does not submit an app by Saturday morning will be subject to challenging applicants.
-Participation in the Test Drive is worth a flat 10 points per month rather than per thread, and you must have a minimum of 5 comments in that month to qualify for it.
-This TDM is good for the duration of the Mist setting. A new TDM will go up before the next setting.
The NETWORK for this setting is a voice-only walkie talkie system that can be used to communicate between all locations. The default channel will be open to all walkie talkies, but characters can change to an unused channel for private conversation.
of note: There seems to be something strange about these walkie talkies, in that there is no static. The quality is disturbingly crystal clear, like the person you're speaking to is right next to you instead of miles away.
CONTENT WARNING: Some prompts contain gore, character death, and substance abuse.
Applications will open Saturday, September 15 until Saturday, September 22
The lights above you are a blindingly, pristine white. The walls around you curve up into the ceiling like the inside of an MRI machine. Your hands, feet, and midsection are strapped to a clinical table, and minutes seem to tick by, with no clear course for escape presenting itself to you.
The curved white space above you flickers with color, and a perfect square like a television screen expands before your eyes. It pans over what appears to be a town, something small and simply populated.
“Hello, and welcome to your first setting,” a neutrally cadenced feminine sounding voice begins, riding the line between human and machine. As she speaks, captions of the text type themselves in neat and perfect Arial font. “The location is loosely based off Bridgton, Maine, United States of America, Earth. The year is 2007. You have been selected to participate. Obedience ensures an enjoyable and immersive experience for our audience. If you have been granted a role, instructions will follow. Do not talk about the role. Do not attempt disobedience. If you have not been granted a role, your objective for this round is simple: survive.”
After that, the shackles may release promptly and allow your character to roam free. Or perhaps not — perhaps they've been given a role to play, and if so, further instructions will play out upon the screen. Once suitably briefed, characters will be released to their own devices. Beware the mist.
learn from the mistakes of others
A pair of unperturbed mall inhabitants decide to chance the mist. They're the first of a handful to trickle out the front doors, and they seem to get by just fine. About a minute ticks by, and they disappear completely into the dense fog that presses in from every direction. It's so anticlimactic that for a moment it almost seems stupid to feel uncomfortable by the sight of it.
Until precisely one half of a body is hurled abruptly and with great force from an indeterminate point in the obscurity. It's not a top half or a bottom half; no, it's a cleanly sliced left half, head to toe as though a neat line were cut down the middle. It slams into the transparent glass doors and crumples before them, still and obviously unmoving, slowly leaking.
After a few seconds, a dark tendril of something reaches out, curls around the jutting left ankle, and drags it with painstaking slowness back into the fog.
At least the rest of them probably made it, right?
Right?
Hopefully you weren't one of the others to follow their lead. If you were, that dark shape seems to be closing in awfully quick.
eff this, let's bounce
A pair of car keys can be found discarded or perhaps dropped in their owners' haste. Braving the mist when it's at its lightest and pressing the key fob will cause a car to beep politely, flashing lights to indicate its location in the fog. Take anyone willing to go with you and pile in. Try to get the hell out of dodge!
An excellent idea....
Within five miles of the car's journey the battery will die and the engine will stall. Consider yourselves effectively stranded and with no one but yourselves to blame. Perhaps help will come if you wait long enough? Hours, surely no more than a few days... Maybe you should consider braving the fog to get back? Five miles can feel like a hundred in conditions like these.
Either way, it seems like you're trapped in the car for about as long as R. Kelly got trapped in the closet during that one unfortunate CD.
radio chatter
Characters in the library and the church will be able to communicate via walkie talkie radio chatter immediately! Characters in the mall will not have this ability until later in the month, so any network style threads with a mall character will take place during Week Two of the October plot or later, after most people have already been fully introduced to the setting and given time to adapt.
Employee of the Month (Multiple)
Some characters will be printed wearing a designated kiosk uniform, their name sloppily stickered in slightly crooked letters onto a Dippin' Dots badge, or whatever store they may happen to be assigned to. The cool voice that introduces them to the mist will carry on to tell them that they'll be playing employee # _____ in this month's immersive experience. Their motivations and objectives are simple: go to work.
Except the role seems to be bugged, because they can never not go to work. If they leave the five or six foot radius of their designated post they'll begin to experience consequences, which worsen in severity based on distance and duration. The role doesn't end at mall closing, it doesn't end on Saturdays, it simply doesn't end. Hopefully next month's code push will have a bug fix; we apologize for the inconvenience.
(If choosing to keep these threads as game canon, the role will wear off within the first in-game week)
Aggravated Assault
Congratulations, participant! You will be playing the role of a CONVICTED FELON having recently been released on parole. Your motivation for this month's immersive experience is frustration. Having undergone hard time, you'll find that we have increased your aggression and temper characteristics, and lowered your inhibitions. Your objective is to find and begin an altercation with Snuff the Rooster, who will be playing the role of the person who turned you in, NARK. Your altercation must take place in a public space with witnesses, and may not stop until Snuff the Rooster is unconscious, evicted from the mall, or someone intervenes.
Thank you for your participation!
Consequences for not completing the objective in this role can be moderate to severe.
Snuff the Rooster
Congratulations, participant! You will be playing the role of NARK. Formerly a close friend and ally of CONVICTED FELON from Aggravated Assault, you were quick to roll on them during police questioning in exchange for your freedom. Your motivation is to turn over a new leaf, and get your shit together. Your objective is to survive the altercation.
Thank you for your participation!
The Lovers (Duo Role)
Congratulations, participant! You will be playing one half of a partnership role! Please seek out (character 2). Your motivation this round is love, and the need to protect your partner from threats both inside and outside of the mall. Your objectives is to greet your lover with a kiss and place them above all others. Do not act like strangers.
Consequences for not completing the objective in this role or failing to present a convincing couple can be mild to moderate.
Pathological
Congratulations, participant! You will be playing a background character in our current setting. Your motivation is to tell lies; at least one third of what you say must be unarguably untrue. Your objective is to keep these lies from being discovered as false.
Consequences for not complying with this role can vary from mild to severe, with the compulsion to tell larger and larger lies growing as time goes on.
Scared Speechless
Congratulations, participant! You will be playing a background character in our current setting. You may choose one person, stranger or otherwise. This is the only person you may communicate with, either verbally or through writing.
Consequences for not complying with this role are severe.
potency error
Someone seems to have miscalculated the relative strength of intoxicants; all inhibition-altering substances seem to have been cranked up to eleven. One shot has the strength of three, though the taste seems to stay exactly the same. One or two drinks will quickly creep up on you. One of the joints found discarded in the bathroom trashcans will easily green you out. God forbid you've got anything stronger.
greatest movie of all time
Settling in to the relatively nice theater found at the far end of the mall is a decent way to make the time go by. The projectors are automated, and there are six different theaters that show flicks at scheduled times.
Except that every single one of them is showing Spider-Man 3. Every single one, every single showing, no matter what is advertised, becomes Spider-Man 3. That's how you know this is a horror game. Hope you didn't wander in by mistake because the doors will shut behind you and leave you to watch the entire showing. Please keep your feet off of the seats.
please replace toner cartridge
It seems there was an error in printing someone this first time around; everything came through but the visuals somehow. Your character is flesh and blood, fully formed, wearing tangible clothes even, but are completely invisible. Donning additional clothing causes it to clip out and then promptly disappear. Taking clothes off will cause them to reappear. Hopefully this gets fixed in the next lite patch.
(If choosing to keep these threads as game canon, the glitch will wear off within the first in-game week)
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[And, well, Izuku was more familiar than anyone else he'd run into.]
"Hey." [Well, he's another person that isn't really obeying Bakugou's demand for codenames or proper radio protocol.]
"No changes at the food court. Where are you stuck anyways?"
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Shinsou! It's good to hear you. I'm glad things are stable on your end. I'm...
[His sigh is loud enough to be heard over the radio, as he looks at his new "job".]
..i'm in the middle of the mall. They put me at a hair kiosk...so there's not many people over here, if you can imagine. Even the real people avoid me.
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"Yeah, if I could move I might just walk by, too." [More a teasing comment, as if they weren't like- kidnapped or trapped in some virtual dimension with weird glitches and bisected bodies.]
"At least it means you don't actually have to work? If I slack off, I get a nasty headache. ... I won't even talk about what happens if I try to leave." [From what Bakugou said it sounded like Izuku experienced something a little different, he definitely hadn't almost broken any limbs. Then again, Izuku just broke limbs naturally.]
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Yeah, it's been a real problem trying to get any information working at a place like this. But...you have issues if you don't work? [Izuku didn't even consider the possibility that the simulation would punish you for not fulfilling your role to their standards. He understood they weren't supposed to talk about it, but this brings a whole new dimension to the problem.]
I can't really work if there isn't anyone who wants to so much as look at me, so I haven't experienced anything like that. [That was a small stroke of luck on his part.] Are the repercussions for not working similar to the ones you get for leaving? Like, still headache related?
[He's got his spare receipt paper out again, taking more notes.]
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[Simply put, it's embarrassing. Even if he did already embarrass himself in front of Izuku in their match.]
"They're not as bad at leaving." [He can say that much.] "Then again, I don't usually push it. Maybe the physical stuff starts happening if you're too stubborn."
[For caring so much about him reliably playing his role, they sure made him stand out when he didn't. Whoever wasn't supposed to know would have to notice something of these symptoms.]
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[Izuku is jotting down notes as Shinsou talks--comparing his experience as a worker to the other.]
Well, that's both good and bad...hopefully you don't have too many customers that come to bother you. [There were degrees of disobedience, then. Maybe since the objective said go to work it was more focused on them being at their station than doing the job properly. But it was hard to tell with only two points of reference. He needed to talk to more people.]
All of my issues seem to be physical. I can only get about fifteen steps away from the kiosk before they start to become more serious. I assume it's the same for you?
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"My area's a bit bigger... probably because it's a store and not a kiosk." [A wider area theoretically meant a wider "ok" area.]
"I started feeling some stuff pretty quickly but I made it a couple meters out before I couldn't really move. Someone-" [No, you know, if admitting how sick he got was embarrassing it was ten times more embarrassing to admit he was carried back. Princess style.]
"Someone helped me get back." [Short, non-descriptive.] "And then it took a while to feel normal again."
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That gives you a little more freedom, but not much in the long run... [Izuku inspects his injured finger, testing it with a flex. It was sore, but decidedly not broken.] I felt pretty normal immediately when I returned to my station, but the bruises are still left behind from whatever was happening to my body.
Ah! [And then he remembered what Kacchan had mentioned before he left.] Are you still having problems with the mist in your area, though?
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[But, of course that wasn't the case. And plenty of the hero course kids had gotten sick of it much quicker, acting and reacting. He tries not to overthink it but there's so little else to think about.]
"It's getting closer, I think." [He peeks up from behind his barricade, checking to see the end of his vision being much closer than the last time he checked.]
"At some point I'm going to seal the edges entirely with tape that your loud classmate brought me. Then hope for the best, I guess."
no subject
I wish we knew more of the nature of this mist, but I haven't even been able to see it much since I'm in the middle of the mall... [A blessing and a curse. the only way he could really see it was from the skylights that were scattered here and there in the ceilings--but it's not like one was right above him, so it was hard to tell anything beyond the fact that it was still there.]
Is your store by any outside facing windows or doors? [Food courts were often by entrances or exits of the mall, right?] That could be a reason for it creeping in on you.
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[He'd seen one or two people who looked like people go that way and not come back. Hopefully that meant an exit. Hopefully.]
"... I did hear a thud from that direction a while ago."
[And, you know, maybe it was a good thud. He hadn't heard any glass breaking to let the mist in. Maybe it had opened a door? Somehow? He doesn't really want to think too hard about it but they might as well try to get something from the shreds of information they'd collected.]
no subject
[Izuku is humming, considering the thud. Maybe someone had left a door open accidentally which was letting the mist slip in. Or maybe...
...it could be whatever it was in the mist again. If real people went outside at any point, then maybe...
...ugh. He didn't want to think about it, and it wasn't productive to his brainstorming right now.]
Maybe whatever caused the sound let some mist creep in. [Which was somehow the best and most tame option he could say.]
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"Kacchan?" [Okay, like, he is still a bit scared for his life but some things are like a magic spell that breaks tension and hearing Bakugou called by his cutesy childhood nickname is one of them. There's another light, breathless laugh at that. Kacchan, he was definitely going to have to try calling him that sometimes. Even if calling him "Mom" for bringing snacks and supplies was already pretty funny.]
"Yeah, okay, right, I can ask Kacchan to check it out next time he stops by."
[Which, like, if they get more evidence it's unsafe he won't and he'd even try to stop him. But, for now, it sounds like a good idea. They only had a few people of their group that could move around anyways.]
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I always call him that...
[Oh, he sure was going to hear about this later. No one in class 1-A ever questioned how Izuku addressed Ka--Bakugo--so it had escaped his mind that Shinsou wasn't in class 1-A and wasn't used to it.
It's just what he always called him, okay? He'd been Kacchan for ten years!]
[A sigh punctuates his thoughts.] At least if there's an exit that is letting in the mist, then there might be a way to seal it...but if there's not, we'll have to consider other options.
no subject
[He indulges in it for a few more moments before letting the grin settle down and going back to, you know, the murder mist.]
"Yeah, it'd be best if the door was just opened... Hopefully none of the glass shatters."
[Closing a door? Easy. He could maybe even do that while half-dying. If they had to seal up a broken window, well... he'd rather send Kacchan.]
"Have you caught anything else on the radio? Anyone get outside?"
[Even if neither of them could get outside safely it was nice to at least know it was there.]
no subject
Hopefully not. It would be easier to deal with this mist if it...well, behaved more like mist. It's hard to figure out a plan when it's so unusual...
[Would sealing off the area keep the mist out? Was it being generated outside--from a single source--or could it be generated anywhere the simulation deemed fit?
For now, they would have to hope sealing against it would work until they had any other clues.]
I haven't really talked to many people outside of the mall, but did have a conversation with someone over the radio. Apparently there is also a church nearby--near enough for the radio signal to reach over here. That place is also surrounded by this mist.
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"So there's at least us and a church." [and presumably an in-between, covered in mist. He assumed. It's too weird to imagine there wasn't. Then again, he was making a lot of assumptions, he couldn't get anywhere near out of eyesight of his store.]
"I guess it's easier to be stuck here than a church." [way more resources, shops, the existence of a food court at all...]
"Oh, yeah, have you gotten anything to eat? Not like I can really bring you anything, but..." [Maybe he'd also gotten a snack delivery from- Kacchan- and didn't need it but, like, if he was going to be stuck in a place with food he wanted to help.]
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[Its just a lot of conjecture from two kid stuck at "jobs", but it was good to keep track of. It's not like they had as much to worry about as people like Kacchan did.]
Ka--Bakugou brought me something. [The damage was already done, so he didn't know why he was even bothering to correct himself.] A whole backpack of supplies, actually. Todoroki also stopped by and brought me some more protein bars. [Well, shoved more protein bars in his face, but it was the thought that counted.] I would've been out of luck if they hadn't though--my location isn't as convenient as yours.
[Though having no supernatural mist seeping into his space was a plus.]
no subject
"Ah, yeah, I get it." [He glances down at his lap, just sort of thinking.]
"Must be nice to have your classmates looking out for you."
[There's a lot of different layers there. On one hand, he got the sinking suspicion none of his classmates from general studies would show up here. Everyone else he'd run into had been from the hero course. They were all special. He was an exception. He wanted to get there, though. He was willing to do whatever it took to get there. Actually experiencing something like this, though, it gave him doubts.]
no subject
Strange situation or not, they could make it work if they could depend on each other.]
I'm lucky to have them looking out for me. [Especially with him being unable to do much besides sit and think--but Todoroki and Kacchan would keep their eyes out in his stead.
And it wasn't like he was alone in his thoughts.] But we're looking out for you too, Shinsou. We're all students of UA, right? [General studies or not, they had all gone to the same school with similar dreams, right? And Shinsou...his dreams resonated with Izuku, even if he couldn't tell the other why.] We'll get through it together!
no subject
[And, well, he hadn't made it all the way, yet. So, there's a sort of bitter reaction in his stomach where he can't tell if Izuku's acceptance made him feel better or worse.]
"And I'm looking out for you."
[He says it, a little stubbornly, even if he couldn't leave his station. There was still that underlying feeling that he was the one who needed extra attention from people like Izuku, even people like Bakugou, when he'd really much rather meet them on equal footing.]
"So don't break any more bones or anything, got it? We don't need Recovery Girl mad at you when we get back."
[It's "we" and they would get back. He says it with all the quiet confidence he can.]
no subject
[Izuku looks back at his notes, mind considerably clearer than when he had talked with Kacchan earlier. He would still rather be able to move around and help people, but at least with someone like Shinshou to bounce ideas back and forth with it felt like he was a little less idle.]
Speaking of home though. [Another question that had been bothering him.] Is your quirk working here? [He had to assume there was some kind of power suppression going on--to give the monster in the mist more of an edge. But there was a worry in his gut that maybe he just didn't have One For All at all here. He hadn't asked Kacchan about it...]
no subject
[Which, it's not like he did. Much.]
"It definitely doesn't work on those drone people." [If it did, he should be able to activate it with any "can I take your order?" No luck.]
"I feel like I can use it on the other people like us but it's not..." [how to put it?] "It's not complete control."
no subject
So when it activates, it's faint? Like subliminal messaging? [He had written up a lot about Shinsou's quirk after he had spoken with Ojiro--and a little bit more after their fight at the sport's festival. It seemed pretty all encompassing for Shinsou as a user to have control over someone, so if there wasn't as much control...it would be hard to utilize in a place like this.]
I haven't been able to use my quirk at all, so far.
[Frustrating. He could try harder to summon One For All to see if it was completely suppressed--but if he pushed too far without any control, it was very possible that he would break himself trying to use it. Which wouldn't helpful to them at all.]
no subject
It doesn't always work. It depends on how willing they'd be to go along with my suggestion anyways.
[And, of course, the target retained full consciousness. Usually, with Brainwashing, the victim entered that sort of stunned, unresponsive state. There definitely wasn't that here, even when he could feel that he was successfully activating his quirk.]
It's not worth you breaking a bone to try and push it anyways. [It's almost like he was reading the other's mind- or, well, most of his experience seeing Midoriya's quirk involved breaking a bone anyways.]
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