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test drive | 1
Welcome to the first test drive for Systemwide! We are excited to have you. All prospective players are welcome to tag in and test out their characters, be they unplugged or free born. We would like to offer a range of scenarios that can be expected during gameplay, which are also useable prompts for app samples, and of course, if something else about the setting strikes you, feel free to come up with your own!
Please put your character name and canon in your subject line, and indicate which prompt you are launching from.simulation | maybe this is your first time. perhaps you've been here countless times. it's a room, as confined as a boxing ring, as expansive as a battle field, whatever you need it to be, whatever you're here to train for.
1. Before you is a city of rooftops, empty of human life. This is a safe place, because while it may hurt you, at least it won't kill you. Perhaps you are practicing your influence over reality, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Are you successful, or are you failing to free your mind? Perhaps you're helping someone else overcome their fear of heights.
And of course, an operator can always load up some Agent-like training programs to make it interesting.2. Congratulations, you know kung-fu, or maybe some other system of combat, like crazy parkour archery, cartwheeling with guns, or sword fighting on horse back. Perhaps you're trying out something even more fantastic, a magical skill or a superpower.
Show me. Or a friend.mission | whether on board a ship or with your mind sunk deep into a Matrix, you will have to join the battle eventually. sometimes things go terribly wrong. what are you gonna do about it?
reality | as much as many Matrixes are designed to be a comfort, you have to face the real world sometime. or maybe this is the world you have only ever known.3.
Something's gone wrong with this extraction.There's a lot of information to process. Your target's been extracted, and that's the good news -- your ship, in reality, is heading to their location now -- but the bad news is your team has been scattered. You could be anywhere within this Matrix, deep in the jungle, or lost on a subway train, or staggering out of the crashing waves of a night time beach, and the operator needs a minute to figure out your exact location before they can direct you to a port out of here, or send another operative to collect you.
All you have to do is stay alive for that long. Easy, right?4.
You were warned of this. You've been prepared in endless simulations, with a dozen cautionary tales, training sessions with the EMP. Still, it's nothing like you imagined, when the operator shouts: "Sentinel closing in at seven o' clock. It's gaining."
And then the shriek of metal.5. Annual celebrations are rare to come by, but the anniversary of Neo's Truce is one that always draws in the crowd. The event takes place in a massive cavern in Zion known as the Temple, and there is music, and there is dancing [a little NSFW].
Everyone is there.
Where are you?6.
The wind on your face, up here on the desolate surface, tastes bitter, different to what it feels like in a simulated reality. It's freezing cold and always dark, but sometimes, you need a reminder about what it is you're fighting for. Or maybe you're seeing the wasteland of Earth for the first time.
Either way, you shouldn't be out here for too long. The machines might find you.wildcard | choose your own adventure.
7. Perhaps you're riding with the Dothraki, or sitting under the Sorting Hat for the first time. Maybe the pleather bodysuit is pinching under your armpits as the traffic of the 90's roars by, or the Nova Empire's sprawling city glitters, towering above you. Maybe you're showing someone around the place you called home for your entire fictional life.
Or perhaps it's nothing as fantastical as that: the Council meeting droned on for two hours, and you're just happy to be home, even if it's a tiny enclosure with rust-edged furniture. Maybe someone's coming over for lunch, and there are real greens in the protein slurry today; maybe you're about to ask to join a crew.
There are infinite worlds to explore, but try to remember that only one of them is real.
bucky barnes | mcu
wildcard reality
simulation
no subject
It seems better if she finds that out before Steve.
There's one chair, and she's been camped out in it since they detached the sedative from his IV drip. Occasionally she does stretches, straining against her own weakness while there's no one around to see when she's forced to her knees on the steel floor. Most of the time she watches him, scrutinizing the lines of his face like she can glean something from them, this man who was a ghost story. It's strange to have him laid out vulnerable before her. But when Bucky stirs she's sitting with her legs crossed, reading, seemingly at ease.
There's something bird-like about Natasha like this, elfin-faced and short-haired, her limbs skinny and dotted with those metal plugs like scars from her own rebirth. Normally she wears head-to-toe black, but she's dressed simpler here, non-threatening in soft browns, skinny legs and arms exposed. No weapons. She stays out of arms'-reach but within the Soldier's line of sight. ]
You're safe.
[ Is the first thing she says, voice soothing. And: ]
You're free.
[ Because she would have liked those to be the first things she heard, once upon a time, even if she wouldn't have believed them then either. ]
no subject
Not that he expects, when he opens his eyes and sees who's watching, that she missed either. His gaze is sharp and bright, following the sound of her voice, scrutinizing the new lines of her face and exposed limbs. No weapons. From the metal ports on her skin, his attention skitters to his own, peeking out from a forearm. The IV. The needle within. It isn't much.
He remembers straight red hair and a confident quirk her mouth, camera flashes against well-shellacked courtroom doors on a television behind the counter, but when he speaks, it's in Russian. ]
Is this what freedom looks like?
[ It could be an accusation, as his eyes roll over the rusted metal walls and closed door, but it sounds more like he just— doesn't know. Maybe she does. ]
SHIELD? [ he guesses, trying to piece anything together again. ]
since u asked so nicely
there are worse ways to start your new life than 'with seoraj, who couldn't bring anything he was working on into might-try-and-strangle-you guy's vicinity, got bored, and has been singing drinking songs for a couple of hours'. scottish drinking songs are mostly about someone dying, but he has a good voice for it, even if it does eventually become tubthumping because that's just always been what happens when you pour enough liquor into his dad.
you know, like they say: he sings the songs that remind him of the good times, he sings the songs that remind him of the better times. and then he starts headbopping like your dad at a party, so anyway, it's going to be surreal, is what we're saying. do they even have cider in the post-machines world? has seoraj even experienced cider? who can say.
it's possible he's just going to be too confusing to attack, initially. )
u r my favorite
There are a lot of scenarios cycling through his mind when he joins the land of the living again. HYDRA. SHIELD. He'd been searching for something, something he'd thought would lead him to answers, to HYDRA or something bigger behind it, but instead he'd found himself on another cold metal table in another lab, and he knew — didn't he? — knew with that desperate, vain, sinking certainty that they'd dragged him back into the dark again.
But he wakes now still remembering that he'd woken before, to an old mattress and no restraints and— some kind of song coming out of the mouth of the man seated across from him. Maybe it isn't his first live performance since 1944; soldiers sing, even HYDRA agents, but an organization like that attracts certain types, and the types that are comfortable enough around HYDRA's deadliest weapon to strike up a song — well, he may not remember much, but he remembers what sadism sounds like coloring the voice. And this isn't that. This is definitely not that.
His brows knit. Seriously. What the hell. ]
Who the hell— [ —are you, presumably, but that's what he manages, voice dry from, y'know, the fact that he's never used it before. ]
im everyone's favourite look at this motherfucker
( his tone is that of someone affably correcting an unfortunate gap in someone else's knowledge, because clearly, bucky is asking after the song. did chumbawumba ever exist or were they only ever a part of the matrix? if lots of different matrixes have chumbawumba, does that mean they did exist, definitely, or that they must be programs? these are questions that seoraj has yet to find someone he is comfortable asking at three in the morning when they are trying to sleep, dude, but we all know it's coming.
his boots slide down from where he'd propped his feet up against the wall, his back to bucky's bed, and the motion of his body is more or less enough to get the chair turning in the right direction. he is big, chair is small, it's this whole thing. his tone softens, although the scottish accent doesn't: )
Seoraj. What're we gonna call you?
no subject
—And other such pressing concerns are lost and forgotten in the other man's shuffle of movement. The muscles of his back screw up a tick tighter, but the question scatters his focus again. 32557038 Sergeant J— He shakes his head, a small, quick flinch against the pillow. ]
The asset. [ Is what people call him. It sounds more like a question than an answer. Is that right? It seems safest. ]
Where?
no subject
The [SOMESHIP], ( he says, easy as. as what? is anything as easy as seoraj allaway when he wants to be, maybe not. ) Specifically. Reality, in the more general. You with me, sport?
simulation bro
They won't hesitate. Neither can you. No shit. Thanks for that, sensei.]
You gotta be kidding me.
[Dry but amiable critique, aimed equally at the number of incoming helmets, at the Powers That Be probably grinning at the monitors up there, and maybe also at Bucky's seemingly foolish weapon of choice. All the same, he moves into the blind spot that should appear when the door opens—if only for a moment—and braces the assault rifle against the meat of his shoulder, just like he's seen a thousand times before. Just like the big brain needle taught him how. As an afterthought, he spits out his toothpick.
Another look to the man in black, his stance, his confidence that a knife will do the trick. His crazy Terminator arm.
This ought to be good.]
no subject
No, he's not kidding.
A boot scuff against concrete interrupts. They're closing in. The soldier's attention snaps to the sound and he sinks against the wall opposite in turn. Back presses to brick. Tension eases from his shoulders. He breathes, still and silent save for the gentle exhale of machinery.
And a sliver of metal fingers catching the light. One, the soldier taps beside his own eye. Two, he points to Driver. First, second. They have a choke point; they should use it.
When the door opens, it's with the barrel of a gun, and a metal palm rises to greet it. Before the first guy can hardly get a shot off, the rifle is grabbed, bent, yanked, and let fly in the same smooth motion that brings the soldier arcing around to catch a knife under his jaw and spin him in close. Tada: meat shield.
Which makes a convenient target for contestant number two. ]
no subject
The deadly ballet holds his eye, rapt, until their next guest reminds him what they're doing here by filling Bucky's new cuddle-buddy with slugs. Right, they've got guns. He's got a gun. He should probably use it.
So he does, and doesn't even make a stupid newbie face while doing it. Contestant number two gets a burst of fire, dakkadakkadak, sprayed from armpit to ear, and another when he doesn't immediately drop. Driver's insides fluttering with the queasy thrill of a target made. Then a dry pop, too close, the wall spitting shards of brick at his ear. He flinches away from it, shoulders coming up, as if startling just after the fact will somehow make up for his lowly human reflexes rather than highlighting them. Before he can get another shot off, pulverised mortar abruptly showers him from above. O-kay, time to move...]