test drive | 1

[unplug]

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.

Comments

skye ( agents of shield ) | multiple scenarios!

[hacker]

[ simulation ]

Show me again.

[ Since she got back on her feet, she hasn't let herself rest. The compulsion to keep moving has Skye trying to mainline everything she can about bettering her in-Matrix training so she can escape the real. Not because she's too horrified by what humanity has become, but because she doesn't want to have to stop and think and question what that means for the reality she's known.

So in here, she feels better. She still dresses like a SHIELD agent in here—black tactical gear, leather hood that fits to her shoulder harness—and she likes it that way because this is where she can still feel like one. Anywhere else and she's just one more naked baby who was fooled for more than twenty years, one more to be told that none of that really mattered. ]

[ reality ]

[ Sometimes, she still wakes up from nightmares, scrubbing a hand over her face and remembering a temple that never really existed, remembering a father she'd never had. She has as hard a time accepting the loss of her reality as any of them, stubbornness always tethering her back to it.

That's why she has to go up to see it. Leave the ship, break away from the bleak desolation of the metal traps humanity has locked itself away in to climb up and check out what happened to the planet. It really sinks in then, staring out at the wastelands and darkness, feeling the wind whip at her face. It blows right through her, taking the bluster out, draining the last of her resistance to the very idea.

She leans her weight onto crutches helping her through the physical therapy, to get unused muscles into working order, staring out at the ashen desert. It doesn't make sense that she can look out and remember cities and skyscrapers, people buying coffee on their way to work, bustling through downtown L.A., squinting through sunglasses on the beach, can remember the news when Chitauri poured from the sky to invade, the stills from news footage that she'd overanalyzed. The days, weeks, months spent training, getting stronger, only to be too weak to even stand on her own feet now.

If she can remember all of it, how can it not have been real? Everything in her mind resists the image before her. Turning away, back toward the ship, she lets go of her crutches, leans over, and hacks up bile and some weird non-oatmeal that looks the same coming up as it did going down, shoulders shaking with the force of her violent gags. ]

bill cage | edge of tomorrow.

[onyourfeet]

SIMULATION;

[ There are many places that Cage would rather be, and none of them are where he needs to be. This training simulation is a new one, but eerily familiar to him. The air is warm and smells like metal, these details stitched into the programming with an expert finesse. The training floor is big and industrial, and great, spider-like robotic horrors hang from mechanical arms from over head. They move with insectile, jerky speed, given to suddenly twitch and spin in a frenzy, and attack suddenly, from any angle.

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.

[repetitio]

[ she joins the simulation, or perhaps she has been there from the beginning but silent — either way, she does not immediately make her presence known to cage or the person he is talking to, teaching.

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. ]

Kara "Starbuck" Thrace -- Battlestar Galactica

[starbucker]

Get that sentinel the frak off me!

[ Kara put her head down, muscles straining as she dragged the controls over and sent the Bellerophon spinning on the Y axis. The ship screamed its dismay, energy crackling against the narrow rabbit hole down which they'd found themselves, but the sentinels just kept on coming. She jammed on the gas, and the heavy hulk of a ship roared forward, the sound of displaced air and whirring engines bouncing off every hunk of concrete and broken pipe out there, but they kept moving, and moving meant alive. For now.

As soon as they were out of it, she was the first to throw herself out of the chair and go hunting through the ship, either for the weapons platform operator or whichever poor person got in her way first. Agitation always needed its outlet somewhere, and that had just been too damn close. ]

And where were you?


----


[ Dancing is good though. Dancing in a mass of bodies, nobody really looking beyond themselves to try and identify who the people they were writhing up against were? She could do that. It was a way to detach from reality - a way that wasn't the obvious - and after a long, hard mission that was exactly what he needed, the roll and thrust, the sweat and the rhythm. This was living.

Except sometimes she didn't know what living really was, any more. ]

Yeah. [ She panted under her breath. ] That's it.

[ Man, woman, other--it didn't matter. She wasn't really looking, and didn't care. A warm body could let her forget for a little while what was real and what wasn't, a mystery her life had taken on long before she'd woken from the Dream. ]


----


[ She'd asked for some personal time in the construct. At least, that was what she called it when she went back to her apartment to mope. They all knew she was doing it, but sooner or later someone was going to break her self imposed solitude.

It was funny. So sometimes she laughed. Sometimes she looked out the window at Delphi and thought: this isn't possible, all this is gone, and caught herself thinking it. Then she thought: I'm mourning a city that was never real in the first place. And then she thought: what did we go through that hell for? Had it just been some divine game? Why hadn't everyone come from a matrix where they'd had to suffer just to live, had to question their own humanity? Why was that fair?

She always came back to the same questions, and just like at home, there were never any answers. So she'd lay on her not!bed, and stare at her not!ceiling, and think about her not!life. It was a waste of time, but it was all she had left. ]

[onyourfeet]

[ Arms folded, there's a hawkish regard for the newer recruit as they field spinning, metal limbs, the flashing lights, the sheer randomness of the attack system. But focus breaks at the sound of Rita's voice, casting a look back over his shoulder.

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.

octavia blake ‣ the 100

[grounderpounder]

simulation (1).

You want me to jump. [ sure, it was no problem at all when they told her, but now she's seeing the gap from this rooftop to the next firsthand and the only reason she's not straight-up calling bullshit is because after the decently humiliating process of extraction rehab, her pride can't take any more hits right now.

this is impossible. but she's gonna do it. ]

Remind me, why do I trust you assholes again? [ it's hushed just like the first part, like she's talking to herself because they'll hear her either way. don't worry, guys, she doesn't actually think you're assholes. she's just putting her game face on, with all of the sass and reckless abandon it entails.

octavia backs up now until she's just a yard or so from the opposite side of the roof. then she takes a deep breath, sets her jaw, and drops into a sprint for the edge. here comes the jump, in five steps, three, two, one, and she leaps. and she soars, at least that's what it feels like. she lets out a sharp exhilarated exhale, her mouth twitching into a grin, because this is actually happening. it's working.

...almost.

she aced the jump, in theory. in practice, however, her arc comes down a little short and the balls her feet just barely catch the rooftop before sliding off, sending her dropping down hard onto her elbows with most of her body dangling over the edge and slipping more by the second. she lets out a grunt and spits a disgusted expletive or two, attempting to wriggle up onto the rooftop with the leverage she's got, but her arms hurt like hell from the landing and this just isn't gonna be a thing.

if this were life or death, it'd be different. as it is, she finally gives in and lets herself drop over the ledge, landing none too gently on the top-floor fire escape. and she lies there on her back for a good few seconds, breathing and wallowing in her failed attempt. which brings her to: ] If you guys are laughing at me right now, I'm gonna find out. I'll make your lives a living hell, you know I will.

reality (5).

[ octavia hates crowded parties.

at least, that's what instinct tells her. she's been unplugged for almost a month now, but she was in the ark-to-earth matrix for almost eighteen years and some things are a little hard to shake. but none of it was real, right? is she seriously gonna let something that wasn't even real get under her skin? no way. she refuses.

and she's opting to get over that particular fear-based loathing in the form of what some might call immersion therapy: you'll find her smack dab in the middle of a crowd of people, her hands hovering above her head as she twists, bounces, and sways to the music. it's not quite how the locals dance, but it's close enough not to draw a ton of attention. her eyes are closed, but there's a sort of tension in her body underlying any kind of enjoyment the dancing might bring. someone should tell this chick to relax a little... ]

reality (6).

[ she shouldn't be out here. that's what they told her, as a suggestion rather than a rule but it was clearly a suggestion they wanted her to take. but here she is. she can't help it. before she was unplugged, her first step into the fresh air and lush forest of earth was the first time in her entire life that she felt... free. she wanted to see it - no, she had to.

but she wasn't expecting this.

it sucked the breath right out of her lungs, much worse than the cold could've managed alone. part of her says there's no way in hell that this could be earth. but she knows it is, deep in that twist in the pit of her stomach, and all she can do is drop down slow to her knees in the dirt and take in the desolate landscape until she remembers how to breathe.

she's been out here too long. octavia's not stupid, she'll realize soon that she should head back, but not for a few more minutes yet. not unless someone comes up to remind her, anyway. ]

wanda maximoff | marvel comics; early 616

[chuvihani]

simulation

[ Wanda has been on this rooftop a hundred times before, sometimes alone, more often with company. The first day she took this jump, she fell half-way and then gently sank, like the air was thickening quicksand, moving slower and slower until she'd been kneeling on unreal asphalt. The second time was actually worse, the third time startlingly bad, even if she'd never slammed into the pavement, exactly. It was baffling, that initial session; people didn't usually get worse at this with practice.

The nature of her magic — what she'd believed was magic, anyway, even if now she knows better — had once interfered with her understanding of her new surroundings. Wanda had lived a lot of years at war with her own mind, learning to doubt herself. For her first few months of real freedom, she'd wasted too much time questioning whether extraction wasn't a self-imposed trick, worrying over the instinctual ring of truth she felt in her gut.

Now she was better at trusting herself, and much, much better at the jump, but she'd never forgotten her first failures. Never forgiven them, either. She doesn't look pleased with herself when she clears the space between buildings. Just determined. ]

reality

[ Wanda appreciates the progress of the newly extracted. After a few weeks, once they've adjusted to using their bodies, they often start to push themselves, seeking ways to become stronger, and that is something she understands intimately. She's disinclined to hold anyone's hand unless they really want it, and hardly anyone out here ever does, but she's patient and not judgmental regarding the natural psychological roadblocks that come with discovering real life. She can be a bit matter-of-fact, actually, but it's delivered with a kind of quiet earnestness. ]

You're healing well. [ All of them, excepting the free-born, rose up dotted with those round metal pieces all over their bodies. She'd never felt so conscious of the idea of flesh before she was really awake, and the machine's ports were like old war wounds. She indicates her right arm with a light gesture. ] We have had these our whole lives, and they remind us where we come from. But the other marks will fade.

Wedge Antilles ✖ Star Wars (Legends)

[sfoils]

REALITY

[ Wedge skipped the identity crisis and jumped straight into duty.

It wasn't a slight against the others. Everyone has different methods to cope. But Wedge's coping mechanisms were always pragmatic—compartmentalize, go on. It'd been surreal to see himself as hairless as a fresh Imperial recruit, to feel as weak as a newborn baby. So he'd jumped straight into physical therapy to strengthen atrophied limbs, to feel more human and less like a number, expendable. Wedge never liked feeling expendable.

Absentmindedly, he cards his fingers across his scalp, liking the sensation of softness and resistance provided by a head full of hair. It'd been a couple of months since being unplugged. These were small comforts, meaningless in the grand scheme of the rebellion. But they all need their anchors.

Wedge stands on a corner to ignore the dancers. He stands at attention: chin up, chest out, shoulders back, stomach in. He's as still as a statue, but he addresses passersbye with a friendly demeanor. ] Sorry, I'm not a good dancer. [ He'd attended enough 'official parties' in his past life to dislike the artificial formalities of such events. ]

MISSION

[ Wedge takes to the hovercrafts like a fish to water. He's a steady and graceful pilot, guiding the ship through tunnels in maneuvers that can only be learned from experience.

But that damned Sentinel is still gaining on them. No amount of fancy maneuvers will delay the inevitable. ] Alright, everyone, [ Says Wedge calmly, fingers tightening around a lever, force of habit making him reach above his head for another lever that'll activate non-existent s-foils. ] brace yourselves. I'm going to engage that squiddy.

And I'm going to win.

will.i.am graham / hannibal

[look]

reality

[ Will has always liked mechanical things, the simplicity of interlocking pieces fitting together. Some people like to play around in the code, but he doesn't want much at all to do with the Matrix. Point of fact, he prefers reality, even dingy as it is, the itch of his hair growing in reminding him of how his mother used to shave he and his siblings for lice. He's already known poverty. That it comes hand in hand with dirty work isn't much new either.

So it is that he's off on his own with a rustbucket of a hovercraft, familiarizing himself with engineering technology far beyond anything his Matrix-life ever touched. Will learned boat motors, but the physics of one combustion engine isn't all that different to another, so with trial and error he's learning how to keep one running.

Maybe his brain would be better off doing something else, something bigger. But at the end of the day when he falls onto the bottom bunk, he's glad of hard work, complicated work, to exhaust him so much he can slip straight into sleep. Otherwise he'd think too much: about who was real and who wasn't, replaying his life over and wondering about the AI, wondering what sort of Matrix allowed someone like Hannibal to thrive. To win. ]


simulation.

[ When Will does head into the Matrix to learn, it's with the reluctance of a man who doesn't want to be as good as he is. Will has been spooling and unspooling reality in his head like a nervous habit for nearly as long as he's been alive. He always had an overactive imagination — that was probably why he started to doubt, to feel like the world was out of whack in some essential way. And now it serves him with a flexibility of the mind that allows him to go with the program however physics-defying it may seem.

Will doesn't feel like a fighter. His potential for violence is a deep and creeping thing, but he's not a man of action. And yet, he knows that just like he used his skills to help the FBI catch criminals, he'll use them now to rescue others from the Matrix, because it's the right thing to do. Still. He's not exactly a team player. ]

Just jump.

[ Standing on the edge of the towering skyscraper, looking out at the perfect blue of the sky, his arms folded. He's supposed to be training someone, but he's given his lecture on how this all works and now he seems to just expect it to happen. Go ahead, ignore the vertigo. Just leap. ]

Chase Kilgannon | The Amory Wars

[the_vishual]

SIMULATION 1: TRAINING

Hello. [ She looks 8 or 9, but she's surprisingly calm as she surveys the busy, New York-esque rooftop. It's all of the hustle and bustle of an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar world for her, but she's regarding them somberly. Constructs, sure. Who's to say she isn't one in a far more elaborate ploy? It's the one thing she's yet to adjust to--not being a pawn in something greater. Autonomy.

Enough reflection--she reaches out to grab the person next to her's hand, squeezing it slightly. ]

Don't be afraid. Jump.



MISSION 4: SENTINEL

[ In the city, in the simulations, she has power. She's the catalyst for a revolution in her world, the Vishual, the one that bears the Gift. Here, she's a small girl that can't do a single thing. There's a sentinel, she knows. She hears the screeching of metal and there's no energy here she's able to manipulate and throw. Nothing she can use because here, in the real world, she's nothing.

Chase screams, despite herself, and wishes more than anything her brother was here as she scrambles for her station. Feel free to either literally trip over her or scoop her up, as she's panicking and flying blind at the moment. ]

Dean Winchester → Supernatural

[righteously]

simulation;

[Alright, so, the thing is, Dean's had time to process this whole... virtual reality the matrix is real thing, sure. He's been through the denial and the angst and the disbelief or whatever, that's all well and good, and sure, he's buying it. He's on board. Cheat the system, yeah, great, awesome.

But when you're standing on the edge of a ten story building looking down at a plummet to the death and somebody's asking you to jump that bitch?

...]

Nope.

[He declares, holding up his hands and backing away. His head shakes back and forth firmly, adamantly denying the entire prospect.]

No, no, no, nope. Not happening. Nope.

reality;

[If you're in a communal dining area, best prepare yourself for Mr. Winchester, because he slams his tray down at the table without preamble or introduction, taking a seat with a disgusted look on his face.]

Seriously? Seriously? They've gotta be kidding with this crap, right?

[Is he even talking to anyone, or is he just yelling at his tray? Probably mostly the latter, to be honest, considering the way he's staring at what this crap-hole reality calls food.

Spoilers, he's completely unimpressed by it.]

This looks like a yeast infection on puppy chow.

reality.

[yansa]

[ There are ways of figuring out which of the extracted folks you can ask questions. For Oya and the other free-born, the tales told of the machines' duplicity are chilling and often grotesque, but she has never been and will never be trapped inside one. She thinks that the people who escape all kind of have a haunted look, like they've seen some crazy shit, and she can only imagine what it was.

(The machines are not crazy, not to her. They have always been there.)

Others, like the guy working on the messed-up looking hovercraft all by himself, don't seem like the sort who'd tell many stories. Oya finds that more reasonable. It's better that they start over; any long-standing attachment they may have to their false lives is sad and all, but she can't fully understand. Despite being a skinny teenager, she is toting a sack full of miscellaneous mechanical parts with considerable confidence, carrying it over her shoulder. ]

Hey. [ Her tone is casual, even a little brusque. ] You want to look through these, see if there's anything useful?

[ Lots of her family chose the engineering route. Not Oya—she wants to do health and wellness, and her age is not a big deterrent, if you're able to, you work, in Zion—but she's picked up a thing or two. ]

reality;

[hacker]

Well, that's a colorful and disturbingly specific way of saying … exactly what I was thinking.

[ Summoning up a distasteful look, Skye pushes her tin bowl away, leaning back. Hungry, yes. Not that hungry. ]

[righteously]

Right?

[He agrees emphatically, like he hasn't just disgusted her even more than the food managed to do. He picks up a fork, that grossed out look never leaving his face even as he pokes it into the goo.

Lifts it from his plate.

It oozes between the prongs of his fork, and grossed out becomes straight up horrified.]

For the love of-

DEUCALION | teen wolf

[scission]

simulation

[Is it strange to feel a sense of nostalgia for something that isn't real? It's a question that Deucalion has found himself thinking far too many times, the concrete of the rooftop settling under his feet once again, the wind whipping around his face. The temptation is to walk to the edge, as it always is, and he follows it, looking down on distant tarmac that he could almost call familiar for how many times he'd hit it.

If it was real.]

No one can tell you how, I'm afraid. Your limitations are your own to break.

[His voice is smooth, calm, invoking certainty even if his words lack anything as overt as encouragement. Training - guiding - is a role he'd fallen into reluctantly, all the mistakes in his past, but it still fits easily.]

It's time to jump.

reality

[The dancing doesn't appeal to him. He stays long enough to watch, the impressive visual of the cavern filled to the brim, just how many bodies make up the population of this city. But the heat and the beat drive him away, as if could still imagine how it might be, the scent of so many people pressed so close together, the drums deadening sensitive ears.

He works his way back, through the tunnels, up level after level to the dock. It's not unmanned, not even now, on a day of celebration. But there's something quieter in looking out, knowing most are deep under his feet. Looking up, the high dome of the cavern's ceiling.

Sight still feels like a gift, the short amount of time he'd had it restored before being pulled free meaning nearly nothing to all the years before. But there's no sky to see here, no rain, no green left alive. He must be mad to still think there's anything wolf under his skin, but it claws at him sometimes, an itch like an instinct choked and caged.]

[hacker]

No! Not again!

[ 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.

[hacker]

So this is you, huh?

[ When Skye steps into Starbuck's scheduled alone-time, it's as much to get a peek at what the hell she's doing in there as it is to follow orders and pull her out for some of that fancy piloting. She makes no real effort at disguising her interest as she glances around the apartment, surprised to find it so subdued. With as isolated as she made herself, she somehow expected something more …

Dramatic? Elaborate? Whatever it was, it wasn't this. But she's able to do the math quickly enough. Folding her arms over her chest, Skye hunches her shoulders, realizing that she's intruding on the reality that used to be home to the pilot. ]

simulation

[lostsoldier]

[ Downtime has been a difficult concept to adapt to, even before he’d been unplugged. Briefing, mission, debriefing, storage is a cycle ingrained in him as deeply as the metal ports that now line their spines in what they’re told is reality. Even the long quiet of a stake-out carried with it a certain focus that’s lacking here, a space that needs filling.

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. ]

melinda may | agents of shield

[succinctly]

[reality]

What drew May to the party in the caves tonight is anyone's guess. She doesn't look like she's interested in celebrating. In fact, she's staying far above the dance floor, observing the throngs of people from a cavern up above. Arms crossed above her chest, she lets her gaze sweep the group.

She could have stayed away, stayed somewhere quiet and heard about the festivities in the morning. But when you get this many people in one place, when you make them forget the troubles they face for too long, people tend to get reckless.

She doesn't know all of them, but she doesn't want to see any trouble tonight. Sometimes the thing that people need to be protected from most is themselves.]




[simulation]

[Standing on the edge of the roof, May takes a deep breath. The air feels crisp here- clear and clean. It's a lie, of course. The air doesn't actually exist. But it feels fresh, which is enough for now.

Inhale. Exhale. The quiet up here is calming, almost so much so that she forgets what she came up here for in the first place.

Almost.]

You're not chickening out on me, are you? [She says, turning to glance over her shoulder at the person she was coaching through the whole 'flying leap from building to building' thing. There's the slightest trace of a smile on her lips, the question dry, goading.]

reality.

[polyphemus]

Here.

[ Possibly she had heard the sounds of foot steps before he's near enough to say anything, holding out the canister of water (tasting strange, saturated as it is with nutrients, electrolytes) for her to take, and a keep it gesture in the play of his hand if she does so.

A hazy presence during the early stages of her recovery, it's amazing how good Banner is it at keeping his distance since then, even in the confines of a hovercraft. He is all at once present now, though, the near-freezing wind ruffling his hair, grown in enough to denote the months he's spent in reality. Grey-speckled graininess is rough on his neck and cheek, his eyes button dark and kind, in their ever assessing way.

His hands come together, rubbing warmth into his palms. ]

You should step out when we dock at a coast sometime. You can pretend, a little. It's nice.

JOHN CONSTANTINE | constantine (film)

[ashing]

simulation

[For a man that had been as difficult to extract as John had been (angels and demons were a headache for even seasoned operatives to navigate), you might think he'd show a little more gratitude for it. But John had his ideas of reality punctured enough times, and as much as he may be failing to pick up the mechanics of this one, it's caused no shift in his attitude.]

Screw you.

[Is his response to being instructed to jump, only delayed by a moment for him to step forward, take a peek over the edge. This may not be real, the jump might be completely possible, but that still doesn't mean he's going to do it.]

reality

[He's ignored all offers of crutches to get him around, using the walls and railings of the ship to lean his weight as he drags weak, difficult limbs into moving. He prefers it, somehow feeling like he's getting a better sense of the ship, this place by having his hands on it constantly, reality in its solidity under him. Though that was as easy to trick as anything, wasn't it?

It's a late hour, most of the crew asleep, and he shouldn't be up, stumbling around. If he falls, hurts some weak part of this frail body, how many more hours of rehabilitation would that be? But he's never been one for listening to caution, and he's got a destination.]

Someone told me you're the person to talk to. [He says instead of greeting, when he finds who he's looking for.] About something a little stronger.

[Than protein slop and water. Humans were humans, as far as John's concerned, and where there's humans, there's alcohol.]

Tony Stark | Marvel Cinematic Universe | Simulation & Real

[servomotor]

Wildcard Simulation

Get out.

[He doesn't even turn around to see who it is. He certainly ostensibly busy, here in this sprawling complex of blue lines and translucent geometry, scrolling panes of code that look nearly like the stuff that the Matrix is made of, but. isn't quite. The body render keeps Tony looking like himself, black hair, pruned beardstache, the rudimentary clothing provided to all residents of Zion, simple and organic and familiar to those who've ever met him.

Quite unlike the high-tech sprawl of icy light and sophisticated program structure that he's playing with.] Not taking visitors, [he clarifies, makes a shooing motion over his shoulder.] Private reunion. And you know, who doesn't understand what putting a sock on the adjacent headjack means?

[The more tech-savvy of you might realize that that's AI code he's fooling with.]

---

Jump Program Simulation

My mind is already free, [he says, loudly.] Two thousand miles in a rough-draft repulsor suit trumps a seventy foot long-jump. That repulsor suit came outta here. [He taps his head.

The wind whistles over the rooftops. He looks a little bug-eyed. It's different, without a literal jetstream of singular intellectual genius to ride along.]

---

Wildcard Real

[The brown glop slides off the tip of Tony's spoon. He stares at its downward, gravitational movement, with the fascination that a much younger boy might watch the plump pulsating innards of a translucent caterpillar approaching the final stages of its wingless life.

With obvious resignation, he winds up taking a slice of bread out of the communal plate, slathering brown onto grain with something that certainly isn't gusto.] Bottoms up, [he says, and then the liquid crunch.]

[OOC note: I'm quite RLed at the moment at least until Tuesday, please forgive for slowtags.]

[onyourfeet]

[ He's quick to slap his palm against the off switch when she calls no, not in the business of fucking around in case there's something wrong -- even in simulation, no one gets the kind of resets he had access to. The robots twitch, swing to static, lights blinking to idle.

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. ]

reality;

[hacker]

Not our whole lives.

[ Stubborn. Skye refuses to accept that the only part of their lives that 'counted' was post-wakeup, or in that pod. No, what she remembers from before, in the Matrix, that has to count, too. If it doesn't count, then who is she? Who are any of them? She reaches up, rubbing the port on the back of her neck. It fits oddly, and the short hairs on her head bristle against her fingers to remind her just how new she still is. ]

simulation;

[hacker]

Excuse me?

[ Just jump. Like it's easy. Like he's not telling her to skydive with no parachute, no bungee cord, no nothing. Skye steps to the edge of the roof, peers off the skyscraper, and looks back at him like he's lost his last marble. ]