test drive | 2

[unplug]

test drive

Welcome to our bimonthly Systemwide test drive. Please feel free to use this venue to test out any prospective character you may have, whether they're unplugged or free born. Comment below responding to one of our scenarios, or invent your own, and make sure to tag around. Note that any test drive tag can be used as an in game sample for application. Reserves are open, and applications will open on April 25.

Please put your character name and canon in your subject line, and indicate which prompt you are launching from.

the matrix | the air feels real, but you know it's not because you have been told as much. due to the fractures of the matrix, you could be standing in a landscape familiar to you, or one that's intensely alien. this could be your first time, or your thousandth time. this could be the real deal, or just a simulation. either way, all you are experiencing now is coding.

This is a familiar battle to you, with familiar demons. An extraction mission gone arwy, or simple spying and recon -- either way, Agents -- either of the suit and tie kind, or something more monstrous -- have detected your presence, and you're going to have to fend them off while looking for an escape route (in the form of a pay phone, or an invisible backdoor of your imagination). But this time, you're among friends in the form of your crew.

Alternatively, you're out of your depth, in an alien landscape, but you're better, faster, stronger than you've ever been before. Or at least, maybe someone on your team knows what they're doing. Either way, you are advised to run.

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.

A new recruit has opened their eyes. What was your involvement? Perhaps you're simply staying out of the way, and you're seeing the expanses of the human field towers for the first horrifying time since you were blind and helpless yourself. Perhaps you're acting as guardian angel, holding the unconscious quarry's hand, or tending to their medical charts.

Perhaps you're the new recruit, feeling the metal floor of the hovercraft beneath your feet, stepping out to explore this new world while still aching muscles protest from all this new strain. You almost don't believe that this has happened, but nothing has ever felt so real before now.

wildcard | choose your own adventure.

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 you're just practicing in the simulation stations.

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. Perhaps you're participating in key events, whether it's something to celebrate, or something sad.

There are infinite worlds to explore, but try to remember that only one of them is real.

Comments

matrix;

[a_lister]

[They don't have flying cars, but it's then that he hears the sputter of chopper blades growing louder as they cut through the open air.

On cue, a helicopter charges into view. Around the corner of the apartment tower down the block, the shiny bulbous shape comes veering on a sharp arc, sketching its shadow against rows of tiny building windows. Its nose is down, aggressive like a charging bull, tilted at an angle against velocity and wind shear. Through the tinted and fortified glass of the windshield, it's impossible to tell who's piloting. They kind of drive like a crazy person by most people's standards, but not Korben's, probably !!

His operator connects the call.]

Need a lift?

[He might remember her. Long hair, real short, cute, stupendously curly eyelashes despite the shortage of proper cosmetic products in the Real. She's made eyes at him on the docks before, in a short-lived, nearly off-handed way that looked like games, but not insincere ones. A couple different ships were assigned out in the area, the Shangrila one of them, but they wouldn't have that new kids in, not with Agents out.

Maybe he can ask her later. Right now, she's barrelling toward a rooftop three jumps ahead, at a hundred miles per hour.]

[aid]

[It's showy. Maybe a little too loud, especially judging by the reaction of the pedestrian crowd around him. But Korben's never personally excelled at subtlety, and he isn't going to make any complaints about a lack of it now. This mission had already gone to hell, and he doesn't care how much more mess it takes to get out of there.

He's only still (staring up at the helicopter a little gormlessly) for a second before he's moving, not actually needing the disconcerting sounds of digital demonic possession behind him to compel him to start running again. The operator rattles off a series of instructions, and then Korben's throwing the cell, boot landing solidly in the centre of a building's back door, bursting in on a disused service stair. It's doubled as storage for who knows how long, leaving him a convenient number of boxes and other supplies to tip down the stairs behind him as he climbs, for all the obstruction they'll offer.

He doesn't make it to the roof. Cut off a few storeys away by a sudden rain of bullets, he dives sideways into a corridor, through into the next apartment. It's a nice place. Pictures on the walls. White rugs on hardwood floors. Balcony. He throws an overly-sculpted metal chair into the sliding door, glass crunching under his boots as he braces his hands on the railing, head craned up at the sky.]

Come on, come on,

[Is a slim prayer offered up for his operator to instruct on redirection, for that lovely voice on the line to manoeuvre the chopper around quicker than the Agents pursuing him can catch up.]

[a_lister]

[For a moment, it seems like she isn't coming-- mostly because it's impossible to tell where she'd be coming from.

The helicopter makes a tremendous amount of noise, and the reverberating funnel formed by the gulf between buildings doesn't help. The thunderous thwop of rotors and blades lurches against the sky, incongruous to the lazy shift of day-time clouds blowing across the sky. The Agents are getting closer. The fact that one cannot hear them above the wind and engine noise and the handful of peering spectators and the rest of the chaos isn't good news.

It might be bad.

But the chopper finally squeezes into view. Its shiny black beetle silhouette pops out from above the edge of the roof. It sags dangerously to a hovering stop, and a heavy black microfiber cord drops down, looped at the end to give it some semblance of weight, but it only helps so much. The rope swings haphazardly in and out, a precarious reach for any ordinary man standing on a balcony.

Zora sounds somewhat less composed this time when she screams,] Get your ass up here! [The head that pokes out to look at him from above belongs to a dude, her fellow crewmember. At this distance, the man's expression is impossible to read, but there's a certain unmistakable urgency about the situation, and the fact he's clutching a semi-automatic magazine-fed rifle by which he intends to cover Korben's leap.]

[aid]

[The rope's too far out, swinging dangerously in the wind, and was no part of this mission gonna be easy?]

This is not a good idea.

[Korben mutters to himself, but he's already climbing up onto the balcony railing, crouched down and holding on for a moment before he reluctantly (and slowly) pulls himself up to stand. It's precarious. He wobbles, heavy boots slipping on the railing before he windmills an arm, regains some measure of balance.

It's all he has time for before the door in the apartment behind him bursts open.

He leaps, more faith than judgement in the outstretch of his arm. For a split second, a heartbeat, he thinks it won't be enough. Then his palm is scraping fibre, rope snapping taut as it takes his weight.

Relief is short-lived. He's hanging from the bottom of a rope under a helicopter, and the balcony is filling with agents who look about ready to make the same jump.

Move, he thinks, both at himself and as a useless attempt at telepathic communication with his rescuer in the pilot's seat above. Twisting in the air, trying not to think about the street far below his boots, he makes a grab at the rope with his other hand, starting to haul himself up.]