jackin | test drive

test drive

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?
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.
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.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Grant doesn't offer even a token resistance. Even if his muscles tense in reflex at being grabbed and thrown, the urge the react is consciously suppressed. And he stays silent as as she snaps at him. The knew you cared that could have been shot out in return is firmly crushed under the heel of the idea there really were ways to die in the training level (useful info to have, all in all).

But while he many not say it, the god-awful smirk is forming on his face as he pivots on his toe some half dozen feet from the ledge, finally absorbing the momentum enough to turn and face her. There were still some absolutes in the universe, it looked like. Even if Earth itself hadn't turned out to be one of them.]

How about a demonstration?

[ Bluster swells in her chest, squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin. Her readied defense, the one waiting for him to decide he's worth anything to her, gets choked back into her throat when he settles on the smirk, but she has to tilt her head to hold it back, eyes narrow and burning.

It was a trick. And the worst part is that she can't imagine for the life of her why that's surprising. For all she'd let herself believe she had him figured out, there was always another angle with Ward. For all she expected the worst of him, he still managed to twist and manipulate his way straight on through.

In the real world, she'd never turn her back to him. Didn't trust him enough, never would. In the real world, she'd never leave him on a rooftop alone, because it'd almost certainly come back and bite her in the ass. But within the confines of the training program, he can't get far. It's not connected to any real matrix, not giving him any chance to be a real risk—hell, in reality, he's laid up in a chair beside her. Same as anyone else.

Keeping that in mind offers her a sense of perspective, but it's still something she struggles with. Some people are better at letting go of the matrix than others. Skye refuses to accept that it never meant anything, and that keeps the real world from feeling truly real for her some days. This feels like the status quo, especially when she's in it with him—a token of sorts from her old life, even if it's a bad token that she wants to smash on the ground and stomp on and set on fire. ]

Scared?

[ She takes some small satisfaction in her assumption, lips pursing as her expression sours. As she turns from him, her hair flips. It's beginning to feel stranger to have it than not. Maybe that means she's adapting. Reaching one hand up, she brushes bangs out of her eyes.

Deep breath.

She can feel his eyes on her, and she curls her hands into fists accordingly. Like she'd advised him, she takes it at a run, sprinting the ten feet to the edge of the roof, stepping up onto the ledge, and leaping off. Against all rhyme, reason, or natural laws, the momentum carries her through the air (it's not real air, that's how), a full one, two hundred feet onto the next rooftop.

And when she reaches it, she rolls with the landing, springing back to her feet. Rather than look back, she adjusts the velcro on her gloves, shaking her shoulders out. In no way is this some elaborate metaphor for running away from her problems and their collective past. ]

[ That was something. He paces for a few seconds before making his choice. Not closer and further from the edge, but parallel to it, trapped in the in between without retreating or moving forward. It wasn't that she could do it so he could do it to- it wasn't. It was a matter of orders. Orders from the people that controlled whether the both of them lived or died, and so naturally Grant would jump, but-

Fuck. She had gone a long way. A literal leap of faith. Possibly the worst virtue they could have tested him on. But there's nothing else to be done. He inhale, runs, leaps-

And is falling, pavement quickly approaching, approaching- maybe she had it in for him after all- and he hits the pavement, and-

And damn if he wasn't still alive. In a significant amount of pain, but alive.]

[ And suddenly, the fact that she hadn't bothered to turn around gains context.

She'd fallen a half dozen times, almost didn't have it in her to get back up from some of them, and she could only just now get across. Reaching up, she pushes her hair back into a ponytail, tying it up. Though she makes her way down to his side where he lays in the street, brightly colored cars whizzing past with blaring horns, Skye takes her time in doing it. Of course, not being in a hurry in a training program is a relative thing: there are shortcuts, and Skye's hacker predisposition makes her inclined to use them.

In a moment, she's beside him again, squatting and resting her elbows on her knees to look down at him. ]

Bet you wish you spent less time on strength training with nazis and more time on yoga, huh?

[ There had to be some incentive for her to be in here with him: watching him crash into the pavement might be a petty thing to consider a perk, but that didn't stop her. "Free your mind." That's how they'd sold it to her. Her instructional methods are far less zen and supportive, at least where Ward's concerned. ]

test drive | 1

nope you got it right!

k sweet! ty

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