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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.
simulation
So he fills it with what he knows. And he doesn’t mind not being the only one. Black tactical gear is met with black tactical gear, even if there’s a little more leather on his than hers — and hers doesn’t come with a metal arm marked HYDRA red and a full face mask. Today at least the goggles are gone. At least you can tell where he’s looking.
At her feet, currently. Explaining is harder than doing. ]
Further apart, [ he says, with a nod to her stance. ] For momentum.
[ A shift of boots, and then he springs from the asphalt, metal and leather spinning in a mid-air corkscrew, impossibly fast and landed with a hard, rubbery squelch. Like so. ]
no subject
And the fact that it maybe, just maybe, gives her a little more impetus to kick his ass in training, well. That's just a bonus.
Her heels spread further apart, feet settling just beneath her shoulders, which shrug and work on an axle like she's trying to loosen them up. Eyes search out every infinitesimal movement he makes while he springs upward. A heavy sigh drains out of her as he plummets back to the ground, boots driving in hard.
She shifts her weight, downright wobbles like a cat trying to brace itself for a jump to the top of a piece of furniture, and then she bends to a crouch, and vaults into the air. Limbs twist, her back bends, and her center of gravity turns up over her head. For a moment, her form looks perfect—and then she comes crashing back to the earth on her shoulder.
One hand slaps the asphalt, rolling out with a graceless grunt, and she remains there on her side, pressing one hand to her shoulder as she drops her head back, panting in a mess of dark hair that somewhere in her mind she know she doesn't actually have. ]
no subject
He doesn't mind that she knows him as Bucky; she fights him like he's HYDRA, and that's enough. They don't train like HYDRA, though. He watches her hit the ground hard and thinks order through pain is— more effective, in certain ways. But not what's expected of him here. She's making progress. ]
Gravity is a lie, [ he says instead, stepping in to look back down at her through his own tangle of not-real hair. He doesn't offer her a hand up, but his head tilts in unspoken challenge. You gonna let it stop you? ] Again.
no subject
Mine it. Use it.
She counts to three, and at three, she forces herself to push back to her feet. Standing, she shakes dark hair from her face and back over her shoulder, with the exception of short, blunt bangs. ]
Anybody ever tell you that you're not much of a people person? Maybe if I was getting a gold star out of this … [ His methods are different than May's; he's harder. Beneath all of May's hard-to-read steel, there's always something warm and protective. Meanwhile, Bucky's freaking Siberia by comparison.
It's good for her, though. She digs her heels into the dirt, nods. There's an ache in her shoulder, radiating outward, warm from inflammation. Pulled something, or chipped something, or— None of that's any more real than gravity. Biting through the pain, she begins to lift the injured arm, rolling her shoulder to try and stubborn her way through the ache. Fire sparks in her shoulder joint, and the pain overwhelms her, but she bites through it.
Crouches.
Jumps.
This time, when she crashes, she lands on her knees. A step closer to making it onto her feet. But she's shaky on her knees, and she falls back onto her face a moment later. ]
no subject
You get to survive, [ is his answer. There's your gold star. But he hesitates when she lands hard again, his face unreadable beneath the half mask and even affect. ]
Better. [ No offered hand comes to help her up this time either, but neither is she greeted with another Again. Not yet. Instead, he keeps talking. Multiple sentences, even. (Try not to faint.) ] Breathe. Don't shake; move. You have to direct it. Use it.
no subject
[ Raising one hand, she brushes dirt and gravel from her face. She tosses her hair back and pushes herself up one both hands, getting back to her knees. Begrudging in a way, she draws in a fussy breath and exhales it sharply, shutting her eyes to try and consider his feedback. He's actually giving it, after all, instead of a cold, blank stare that conveys creeping disappointment.
Annoyance twitches a vein in her forehead, and she lifts herself up to her feet a moment later, digging her heels firmly into the fake ground. Her eyes flash open and fix on him. ]
You know, I've had good SOs, and I've had bad SOs, but I've never had a bad-good SO.
[ She dusts herself off the rest of the way, sizing him up. Rather than move to try it again, she tries to take a stab through his spiny exterior. ]
I'm just saying, HYDRA really could have benefited from giving a reward cookie to its trainees now and again.
cw: oblique reference to child murder....sorry
Except at that last bit. His head tilts. Reward has only a distant and hazy connection to things like back-slaps and arms slung over shoulders, bright raised voices he remembers only muffled by indirect angles and half-closed doors, words not meant for weapons' ears. More than any of that, reward means a skinny elbow crooked around another girl's neck and a snap. ]
You get to survive, [ he says again, with a questioning lilt, like maybe he wasn't clear last time. His brows knit, eyes flicking down to her arms, back up to her face, struggling. ] No threat to eliminate, no reward.
cries
[ No real stakes. Not that she's suggesting they find real stakes, but maybe her survival would feel like an actual reward then. In the meantime, she'd like a milkshake uploaded or something. It doesn't help that she can't keep herself from noticing how threat to eliminate sounds a lot like murder when he says it. ]
no subject
But she seems to think he does. His lips pinch beneath his mask. ]
What do you want?
no subject
So why him? Reluctant and uneasy, she swallows her discouraged expression, dropping her gaze to the floor. One fist bobs in the air before her, as if trying to pull at a thread and get the rest of her thought out, to properly articulate it. She turns away, paces a few steps, then rallies with an answer, eyes back on him and burning bright. ]
I want to feel like it mattered. Like everything we went through, everything they put us through, can't just be wiped away like that.
[ He has to understand. Better than anyone, right? HYDRA warped and changed them both. Broke them down. That can't have been for nothing. She's been building herself back from the ground-up since she got here, like day one on the bus except worse, and keeping her head above water feels all but impossible when it's wave after wave of people trying to tell her that it was never even real.
It was real. It was real to them, while they were in it. ]
no subject
Out there, what makes it matter?
[ From anyone else that would be rhetorical, and there's a hint of that to his tone, but only a hint. He's asking. With purpose, but asking. ]
What makes it real?
no subject
[ Though she tries to make it sound reproachful, even deflective, the fact that she returns his question with a question speaks for itself. She's not certain of it. None of it feels real yet, not entirely. They tell her it is. They tell her she's being put into a program. But if she couldn't be sure the world she grew up in was real, how could she be sure this one was? It felt real. It felt— ]
I get it, okay? That's the real world. It always has been. I got the spiel.