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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.
bill cage | edge of tomorrow.
He is decked out in familiar armoring, strapped into the power suit native to the world he came from, a lighter weight, more agile thing than the APUs in the real world. ]
Before we get started [ he says, possibly to the omniscient operator overhead, possibly to whoever is joining him ] I'd like to point out that the last time I did this, it was kind of a predetermined--
[ But a whine of machinery stops him from talking, and he moves faster than the clunky machinery he's encased it ought to suggest. A blare of machine gun fire fills the room, mounted off his left arm, sending the hanging mimic-like bot veering away sharp. The next one is slammed aside by the swing of his right, the screech of metal almost as intrusive as gunfire. ]
--
It's not enough to know where they are.
[ If Cage is taking any small amusement from standing where Rita had once stood, repeating her words, it's communicated in the half-smile on his face that is ever present anyway, only a private joke to himself. He's off on the sidelines, now, with a hand on the switch that stops and starts the training, as he watches the latest recruit fathom the machines put in place to test their reflexes, strength.
They're the same as his world, impossibly fast, devestatingly ruthless, spinning four legged starfish mechanical monsters whose only objective seems to be slamming with lethal force into people and sending them flying. ]
You have to know how to kill them.
[ His thumb depresses red button, and the machines twitch to life, whirl in place. ]
Again.
no subject
rita is quite good at that, being silent. (not a fan of talking.)
it isn't until he says again that she steps forward. it isn't entirely familiar, not in the same way it must be for him, but she recognises the words and the intonation as something not originally his, a copy of someone else's words and tone. so, dryly: ] Are you mimicking me?
[ the phrasing is deliberate. ]
no subject
His eyebrows hike up. ]
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
[ His gaze returns frontwards, even though he is far more switched on to paying attention to where she is in the room. ]
Worked for me.
no subject
half a mind doesn't translate into action, this time around. ]
I don't need you to flatter me, Cage. [ that is quick, sharp without true reproach. ]
no subject
[ --is immediate, unsurprised that she might be less than thrilled, because 'less than thrilled' is her ordinary state of being. Cage is not psychic and has not been here before and does not catch her catching him paying her better attention than the new recruit flipping around the mimic machines, somehow, through the back of his own skull.
But he's still moved to ask; ]
Are you assessing me or our latest victim, Vrataski?
no subject
anyway, it surprises her sometimes, and then she is less than thrilled at her own surprise because it shouldn't, but then sometimes there is a gap between should and does or their negations.
arms crossed, she comes to stand next to him. ] Can't I do both? [ multitasking. ]
no subject
[ Acutely horrified, Skye holds up her hands in a readily defensive pattern, taking one quick step back. ]
I don't know about you, but being bull-rushed by a mechanical starfish once wasn't how I pictured my day going, I'm definitely not going for round two.
no subject
Which doesn't mean he's letting up. ]
I'm with you on that one. Maybe try dodging it this time. Shooting it. They can take it.
[ His hand lifts, hovers over the button. ]
no subject
no subject
You could say I'm familiar.
[ The switch is thrown again. Behind her, one of the mechanical stars swoops on by in a wide circle, barely avoiding collision with another. The one she's sizing up starts to life, spinning a short circle, its lights blinking, its claws extending -- as if it's staring back at her.
In the same motion, Cage steps over the line, and onto the training ground. He is not a huge guy, on the compact side of things, but there's a confidence at his core. He's equipped with a sidearm, but little else. Perhaps his role as trainer gives him some immunity. ]
You have a distinct advantage that you didn't have before. Everything around you -- gravity, friction, these machines -- are following orders. You're making decisions.
Decide to be better. Than these things, than gravity.
no subject
[ She swings her hands forward, clapping them together to psych herself up and adjusting her footing. ]
Decide to be better than gravity.
[ It sounds exactly as ridiculous when she says it as it did when he said it, and her tone deflates comically to reflect her lack of faith. Her brow furrows, creases lining her forehead, but she nods, ready to try. ]
no subject
[ His tone is pitched easy and lighthearted, but so it was the last time she got thrown across the room by mechanical spinning monsters. He's a salesman at heart, more than soldier.
And the programme hardly needs more than a signal from her to get started. The one she'd been eyeing off makes an immediate dash, sliding smooth and spinning with bone smashing zeal, quick enough to push her reflexes but thankfully within her line of sigh.
But there's one creeping up into her blind spot, and it makes a winding turn for her at the same time, the sound of whirring machinery and slicing air giving it away. ]
no subject
Successfully dodging one puts her right in the path of the other, and she can't move quickly enough to get out of the way of its moving parts. The machine plows straight through her, but instead of simply taking the hit, Skye leans away from it, raising her gun between them to fire a shot into it from close range while it drives her back into the wall (and to her knees). ]
no subject
None of that has kept him from getting thrown full speed into the wall a dozen times.
He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t say much, period, and he keeps getting up, keeps throwing himself into the training. But that last Again brings a flex to his jaw. Cool, steady eyes follow Cage over his face mask.
You want him to kill it?
When the next spinning metal deathtrap comes for him, he jumps. Steel fingers reach out to lock on the bot's shaft, sparks flying off the beam as the weight of power suit and pilot sends him spiraling around it. With a clench of his fist and a shriek of twisting metal, he rips back the plating and yanks the power cords clean out.
Like that? ]
no subject
Okay.
[ Upon critical injury, the machine withdraws at a slide, sparking, swinging, and Cage steps out onto the field, the hydraulic of his power suit a hum between the clank of metal boots striking the floor. He probably won't ever be as fluid in these things as the likes of the Full Metal Bitch, god knows, but he wears it like he's worn it so many times before.
Behind him, one of the machines passes by, almost silent save for how it cuts through the air. There are three more, and they circle like predators. ]
New game. It's called have my back. You heard of it?
[ Hopefully it has, because by miracle of coincidence (or the key stroke of an operator with a sense of humour), one of the spinning monstrousity suddenly zooms for Cage, coming at his blind spot. ]
no subject
Anyway. Fucking robots!
--Except they're nothing like she imagined. They whiz around her like huge bugs, terrifyingly fast, zipping here and there, and a couple of times she ducks only just in the nick of time.
Ellie is a fighter. She's strong, she's brave, she's capable. But this? She's never fought shit like this. She only knows how to outrun Infected, how to shoot a pistol right between a guy's eyes, how to fire a rifle, throw a nail bomb, survive through a post-apocalyptic winter.
This is out of her fucking league. ]
What the fuck--!
[ And before she can yell that she wants off this fucking ride, one of those giant bug things slam into her. Sends her flying backwards, sprawling onto the ground with a hard thud. A winded, choked, "Ugh, fuck!" squeezes out from the back of her throat.
That smirk, smug asshole is telling her she's got to do it again? With a pained struggle, she rolls onto her front, starts climbing to her feet. Jeez, she'd landed on her butt hard. ]
Hey, wait, wait-- [ Too late: he's pressed that goddamn button; the robot bug things are whirling back to life. There's a look of panicked indignation on her small, sweaty face. ] Hey, asshole!