jackin | test drive

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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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

MATRIX
[One way or another, Korben thinks, things will always come down to this: him, one or two guns with fast-depleting ammo, and at least two-dozen bad guys rolling in on his position. Experience and the ability to think on his feet only has him pinned under heavy fire for a minute before he's shot two between the eyes, smashed a window and made a leap for the fire escape on the building opposite.

Boots on pavement, he bolts for the main street, swinging around into the crowd as he fishes a cell out of his pocket and makes the familiar call. The click of answer and operator would be a relief, if it wasn't for what he hears next.]

Couldn't be on the next block over, could it? [Voice pitched louder from the exertion of running, but the complaint's really only meant for his ears. Maybe his operator's.] No. They've always gotta be half a damn city away.

[And in these situations, he can never tell if he misses flying cars or not.]

REALITY
[It's an unfortunate habit, getting attached. Korben's spent a lot of his life trying to get over it, but it never quite shakes loose. Extractions are the worst, layers of responsibility that anchor down heavy. He shouldn't get involved. Who wants to hold themselves indefinitely accountable for someone's introduction to reality? Their integration to reality. Most times, saving a life stops at a one-off action, but most of the time saving a life didn't involve fishing someone baby-bald and limp-limbed into the real world.

So he sits. He watches. He holds any tools the docs think he'd be useful in holding, trays of those creepy acupuncture needles and weird instruments for the cleaning of recently ripped-free plugs. He doesn't muscle in on being the first face new eyeballs open on, but when they're released to a regular cabin, he's there to wake them up for their first morning, protein slurry breakfast on a tray.]

Time to rise and shine. [He says, dry, setting the tray on the end of the bed.]

matrix
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

Home for Ezio, in some minute way, will never ever be his cramped, metallic quarters deep in Zion. They are where he lives, where he counsels others released from Matrixes similar to his own--so modern to their inhabitants, so ancient and outdated in comparison to reality--but they are not quite home. Home is, was, might always be Roma, and the handsome corridors of the hideout on Tiber Island, fixed deep in the heart of the city that swelled with life. He drank in the sight of it on arrival, the city of seven hills and each one filled to the brim with memories that were only as real as his deepest dreams.

It's not a pleasure visit: his small team had work to do while they were there, mapping out the streets and avenues with careful precision, carrying on an average day-to-day and avoiding detection. Kid's play for a Mentor who trained men and women how to run, how to hide from danger and how to blend in with a crowd in this very city. Ezio took point on this mission, coordinated with their Operator on their drop point, on the access ports in and out of such a world without technology.

Things...went wrong. Agents alerted on his partner sometime after midday at the foot of St Peter's, the basilica dome held fast like a giant's eye in a skeletal frame of scaffolding. They sent human soldiers first, men sweating in their heavy armor under the hot summer sun, easily dispatched; a city guardsman pelting hell-for-leather on horseback for the pair of operatives. Ezio, taking the lance from a fallen soldato, brutally unhorsed the man, and took his horse by the reins to swing himself up into the empty saddle. He thrusts a hand at his teammate, while Papal guards, Agents, in their sumptuous black livery are beelining for them with a machine's efficiency.

"Get up." He gestures again, reaching out for his partner, to pull them up into the saddle behind him. "Andiamo, let's go!"

reality

Ezio tends to get out of the way of the extraction teams in the real world. The nitty-gritty graphic details of the whole process don't faze him, not a man with a history like his, but he's not a medic by any stretch of the imagination either and so he waits. Bides his time. Scuffs his hand through his short hair while he reads the latest dispatches from Zion and gets on with whatever needs doing on the ship.

Once the new recruit is up and relatively fighting fit, well now he can get to work doing what he's always been good at, getting them settled in, assessing them for training, running them through the Construct so they might acclimate to their new skills. Here it's not much different than what he did in the Matrix-- minus pointing them at a target and letting them loose. Here, that isn't his call, and he's had a few years to adjust to the change.

Now, he's rapping his knuckles on their door at hellish o'clock in the morning, because today is a favorite day. Today it's time to Jump.

"Rise and shine," he calls, with the sort of cheer that any night owl would rightly throttle a man for. "It is your big day."

Edited (rephrasing crap) 2015-04-08 21:01 (UTC)

[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.]

[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.]

matrix

The entire ramparts moved slightly to the left and she wanted to pretend otherwise. Already she could feel trouble creeping up on her like an itch. It would always be her right eye that started to twitch. The slightest muscle spasm noticeable only to her whenever she paid too much mind to her surroundings. Her own subconscious raging war on itself when she concentrated for too long on the subtle yet wide of the mark details of her environment. Her home - in all its near perfect imitation.

First, she had to ignore the fractures; even one so jarring as the bridge running over the Skyhold bailey fading in and out of existence before settling in the wrong place. Experience told her once you started paying attention it was then trouble followed. Secondly, she had to stay on script. Come in and out of Skyhold and map out the surrounding area. Deceptively simple a task.

She looked sideways, across the courtyard to her assigned teammate and nodded; a curt and short gesture as not to draw attention. They still had work today and even so familiar a place was treacherous and liable to change.

"Right." She whispered under her breath as she reached back to feel for the feathered fletching of one of her arrows. Anchoring herself to the weight of it in her hand before stalking off towards the stone staircase leading up into the heart of castle.

matrix (tw blood and death)
There are a lot of reasons why this man is not often sent on extractions (anymore). Most of them are the same reasons why this man should not have ever gone on any extractions.

There is not enough time to make a list.

It was a splitsecond hesitation - barely a fraction. But it was enough. The kid they were running with is falling to his knees, s l o w m o t i o n, his head a perfect holiday firework of blood, grey-matter, bits of bone and cartilage. The remnants of one brown eye splatter outward like a wet marshmallow peep caught in a blender. The agents they were running from - he, no longer they, they is dead now, their virtual representation's brutal end terminating the real - are quicker than that slow fall, already pressing through the fine mist of gore, inching closer. Like an iceberg. Like downhill a freight train with no brakes.

Cold horror and hatred devour the ingrained brainwashing (gunsmurderyouaretakingalifeyourparents). Wayne finally pulls the fucking trigger

but let's be honest. It's too late.

reality
Zion makes him uneasy. Part of him - a bigger part than he wants to admit - had hoped he'd get rejected at the gates. But his codes worked, no matter how disgruntled the supervising guard tech they had to call in was. Old codes, old ship that shouldn't be making the trek from the surface (or anywhere), but some shit you just can't get from trading from the littler outposts and flexible pirates. 'Some shit' usually involves information, but runs the gamut from medical attention down to washers half a centimeter larger than he can find anywhere else.

It's too crowded, and he's never been able to adjust to crowds in the real world. He has no reason to slip through them unnoticed, and he's certainly not treated like a prick celebrity socialite, all eyes and flashing lights pointed in his direction. The utterly normal mixture of curiosity, disregard, courtesy, all just rubs him the wrong way. At least the regulars on the docks know to leave him the hell alone. For the most part.

[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.]

When Seoraj catches sight of him in the crowd, he's surprised-- but not that he hadn't heard he was coming, or heard from him since he's been here. For how long? Well, not long, at a guess, due to his still being here and not having already fucked off to somewhere with less of that human interaction bullshit that Bruce conscientiously objects to.

He falls in beside him, heedless of that as ever, and strikes up as if it hasn't been nearly so long since they last saw each other--

"Hey, sailor."

Dude.

Sleep, perhaps, is one of the very few things that hasn't drastically changed since his extraction. Meaning that it's not something that happens as often as he likes.

He's been out of the Matrix for almost four months now, but Arno still finds the whole situation of reality to be overwhelming at times. From roaming the streets of Paris during the French Revolution, out into a world so advanced it seems as if even the buildings can walk, he's at a loss at times with what he should do.

Ezio, thankfully, has been understanding and encouraging in Arno's recovery, going out of his way to make sure things progress and he can still feel comfortable doing so. It's been rough, at times, but stability is one thing he's found that he has far more, now that time has passed. Speaking with others has lead the Frenchman to understand the different worlds and their cultures, and many share a story similar to his own. Ezio has made sure to talk with Arno when he wants, as their first encounter... wasn't exactly pleasant. The legendary assassin was the idol of many fanatics of the Brotherhood, Pierre Bellec among them. It took a month to even coax more than a simple conversation out of Arno, the man still so wary of falling into old habits.

Nowadays it's the exact opposite. The two of them are like peas in a pod, getting both in and out of trouble all around in Zion and out of it. Soon enough he'll be able to join the crew- but that would come later. For right now, working on his assimilation into the modern world is enough work as it is.

Which is why now, perhaps, he's jolted awake by the sound of a knock on his door, body still trying to be awake as his mind is. His eyes open and he stiffly sits up, not completely coherent.

That is, until he hears the words being said outside. He knows that voice. There's an audible over-reactive groan and Arno just speaks in French, rubbing his face and tossing his short hair into a mess, teasing the other right back.

"I'm beginning to wonder if you ever sleep, old man!"

A. reality

[He feels itchy. He knows it's a castoff of programming but he feels like he's still not quite himself. This is reality, he has to remind himself, and he rubs his hands together, as if the feel will jar him out of things.

He's never been fond of green-ish light, courtesy of his home world, but he knows he can find some peace here if he tries. He's whole here, there's no danger of losing himself, figuratively and mentally. Simons' is leaning against a railing, watching the people of Zion bustle about. The sound of feet on metal is calming, at least, though he'd still kill for something he can mentally hold on to, here. He's yet to adjust. Especially to the lack of cigarette smoke courtesy of one Johnny Royalle.

Something shifts in someone's footsteps and he glances over just in time to see someone nearly trip. Simons has always kept to himself (or himselves), yes, but he's never been an asshole. He snaps his hands forward to catch the person--or things they were about to drop--with expert reflexes, quietly tilting his head to the side. It's his way of saying, 'are you okay?']

B. matrix

[ His appearance here and the real world never changes--he prefers a shaved head. The only difference is that he has his powers here--much like he did in that fabricated reality he called home. The problem is that, while there are multiple copies of him, he still feels their pain.

It's just three of him this time, two with their guns firing, the third running to grab his teammate that just fell. ]

Get up. [ It's the clone trying to drag him upwards. ] We've got to keep moving. [ They've got to get to an exit. ]

I'm fine.

[It comes across as a snap, but it's not bad as it could have been, nothing truly toxic in the resonance of her voice. Zora pulls her arms back to herself, straightens, shouldering the heavy duffel bag over her shoulder again. Back in the Matrix, it had never mattered that she was slight and thin. Indeed, it had been fashionable. It kind of sold her whole image.

Here, though, it's far from useful, and she doesn't have her power to compensate. It's discomfitting, the part of her that made her a superheroine gone now. And worse, even if the part of Simons that made him a supervillain is gone too, he's faster, stronger. And she has little doubt he's done things. She doesn't know exactly how she learned of his reputation, but she does remember:] You worked for Johnny Royalle.

[Recognition had shocked her into tripping over her own damn feet a moment ago, but she's more composed now. All the discomfiture and powers introspection in the world can't stop her from stopping to gawk at someone from home.]

[ There's a lot of pride here, Simons had noticed. Especially from those unplugged. He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel it, either--the feeling that, somehow, they had enough stubborn pride to pretend to know what was going on. Especially when they were first integrating.

Simons will refuse, after all, that he's weak. Even if he is: he's relied on his powers of so long. He needs the other parts of him, as he still doesn't feel whole, and it's hard to discern that he's just one from many in his head. Idly, he wonders if he's liable to go insane, dealing with reality.

Maybe it was better before he woke up. ]

He's not here.

[ His tone is flat, point blank, and the only reason he doesn't convey any emotion is because he's shut that part of him down. Tried to, at least. It's harder in reality--there might be a hint of sadness there.

Yes, he supposes. He misses his friend. Misses Johnny terribly. Wishes he could help wake him up. Simons tilts his head to the side, the slightest cant. He knows the girl. He's pretty sure she's stopped into many of the clubs he works at. Johnny's clubs. ]

Do you think we can wake other people? [ From our world, he means. But he's never been one to elaborate ]

For the most part. Some people will be annoying; Seoraj isn't. Anymore. For a long time he was, because everyone is to Bruce at first, and usually at first is all it gets to-- without the protection of billions of dollars and millions of people playing along with his violent ghost stories and tabloid footnotes, Bruce Wayne's unfiltered inexcusable personality is about a thousand times more intolerable.

He glances. Bruce looks rough. Well they all look rough, that's reality, but: "Can I use your shower?"

They're people. He must have asked that once, in the beginning, his skin still cold and crawling from the slide of the needle, what happens to the person who used to be, once an agent takes over? Nothing. They're still in there. They're still people.

(He hasn't forgotten how to kill people.)

It is too late. Bruce's shot launches in one direction and another of the agent's has already left the barrel, a trigger efficiently pulled, a muzzle flash marking its exit, crossing the distance from machine to man with that same relentless speed — until between them, a ripple of steel plates cuts a path through red air and sets the latter bullet to ricochet with a tink. (You're welcome.)

That metal forearm continuing on its smooth hook across Bruce's midsection is not the gentlest of Let's get the hell out of here yanks, but Wayne has the gun and Barnes has the momentum

(and the grappling hook, hopefully)

to take them straight over the edge of this rooftop before the next shot catches Wayne in the head, because it's only too late for one of them.

He's counting down in his head, distilling the sharp, increasingly frantic voice of the operator tinny in his ear to units of time as he charges across the rooftops in long legged, thunderous lopes. This isn't a reality where he can simply fly, but he does as best as his feet can manage as a hefty leap carries him across the open space from building to building.

The target is down. Emergency rendezvous is drastically simplified. Single-minded focus does not come without feeling; Thor is all feeling.

There's no hesitation in his next leap -- launching off concrete earlier, plummeting down for the scene below. He is a big man, all wild blonde hair, the same elemental energy he bore when he was a Nordic god, but he is in armoured black, a coat, a gun strapped beneath his ribcage. He lands on top of an empty box truck, denting metal, pistol already in hand and firing only a second after Wayne.

Return fire puts a hole through flip of coat as he rolls, landing hard but stable.

He's been told before that these kind of worlds should suit him better than others, because of the way he spoke, the way he described the things he missed (simpler things like drink, food, song; not Jane, not the Avengers, not his family). Assumptions. Impressive though this castle of stone is, it isn't the gleaming golden towers of Asgard.

Still, Thor carries himself in a way that suggests he belongs, in clothing appropriate to the world of Thedas, his hair pulled back into a braid, and a battle axe strapped diagonal to his broad back.

He allows for a simple, slight smile when the Inquisitor glances back at him, acknowledgment equally subtle.

And shadows her, the grit of stone quiet beneath his boots.

"Was this always your home?" he inquires, his voice pitched quiet, unobtrusive.

[She tries not to look surprised at his question, the personal quality of it; only half succeeds. Of course, he was different when he was at work.

And every time she'd gone into a club, dressed up in purple and magnetic sheens, that'd been her job too.

Zora twists her mouth, considering it for an instant. At the end, what gets her isn't that they're in the same boat now, the same as all of the other unplugged. It isn't that villainy and heroism have evaporated, leaving them in the same post-apocalyptic drought of hope. It's a meaningless thread of kinship, leftover from the old world: she gets how alone he feels. They were both powers, and it meant so much to her once, that it can't be gone from her yet.]

It's not allowed. [Her voice goes a little softer.] There's a schedule, there are risks. Extractions-- that's what they call them, [she straightens a little.] Extractions raise a lot of attention from the Machines. Going back to the same place twice is too dangerous.

[A beat.] Who did you want? [The obvious answer would be Johnny, until you remember Simons' power; how little she knew of its mechanics then, and even less about the way it functions with the Matrix now.]

Bruce thinks this is a little late. It's neat and all, and some spark in the dark recesses of his brain appreciates the assassin preventing him from getting his head blown off. But half of his coat is covered in the remains of someone they were trying to extract; if Bruce is going to fuck this up to such an extent, surely Bucky's ass could have showed up a few seconds earlier.

(This is why you have no friends, Batman!!)

He relaxes as he's dragged off the building. It's easier that way. An agent leaps after them and Bruce fires before the figure is even halfway visible over the edge of the rooftop. As soon as he hears the grappling hook (if there is one) he'll grab with a stronger hold on the other man, ready to scramble when they collide with the next surface (or alternatively they are both now bloody pudding on the sidewalk).

Once his long shadow that filled doorways in the corner of her stopped having her jump out of her skin or searching for a set of qunari horns, Thor was a face to which she learned to cleaved to as familiar in the way she projected her own situation to. A reaction to being ripped out of the world she knew to be really before someone pulled the plug. Neither of them were quick with so-called modern vernacular or cared much for the onslaught of information via a cold glass slab made of lights and the dull, constant buzz of wiring. Both of them out of place save when it was walking the plains and narrow mountain passes of Thedas or the spiraling golden spires of Asgard. Useful when applied correctly; they had that in common.

Haleth's mouth opened and snapped shut before she could answer with what she had been taught. A phoned in answer how the Dalish had no home but for wherever they stopped the aravels. Now, it felt like a child's answer. An ambiguous response falling on deaf ears to someone who lacked context for a world which no longer, never, existed.

"No," She said, "We were pilgrims - all of us."

She stopped where loose stone groaned under leather boots on the base step of the stair case up from the bailey towards the heart of Skyhold.

"Beautiful for something that was an old ruin, isn't it?"

Edited 2015-04-10 00:56 (UTC)

There's something comforting about the monster-truck impact of Thor bulldozing onto the scene; he's reliable, and quick. Wayne decides it's not the day to let himself be killed since his brain is still sorting things out tactically even while being ostensibly rescued, and moves.

The agent, felled, reverts to a schoolteacher with braided hair. Bruce waits to feel nauseous looking at her, but nothing comes. The sound of pounding footsteps echoes from below them - more coming.

"Exit," he grunts at the bigger man. His own headset is long past shot.

If prevailed upon to explain his attachment, Seoraj probably wouldn't and Bruce probably couldn't; in the opinion of the former, it is what it is and that's enough, and anyway, he isn't in the habit of feeling like he needs a justification for the things he does and the people he does them with and around. He's made friends by slinging an arm around somebody and declaring that he likes the cut of their jib, and it's bloody difficult to get rid of him once he's made his mind up. The things he finds inexcusable are a bit more concrete than the fact Bruce is a fucking asshole-- after all, he's spent much of his operative career working for Simon Metzger.

And he's a bit something unique himself, given that he interprets that query as an invitation to lean over slightly and sniff, experimental. "You'd better," with a laugh. "C'mon. You want something to eat?"

Bruce shoots him half of a wry look, barely a flicker of eyes. Practically banter.

"Yeah."

Well. It's just gonna be goop and vegetables or vegetable goop. Maybe a cave-dwelling lemur steak that tastes like goopy vegetables. Still better than cold, freeze-dried protein goop bars. Delicious reality.

The noises and smells of the docks are familiar. He keeps his eyes forward.

He'll beat himself up over that well enough for both of them later, alone and quiet the way that he gets, but if he's good at anything, it's flicking that switch from caring about things like the person whose grey matter is half all over you and not.

Right now, he cares about Bruce's grey matter. And grappling hooks. The line pulls taut with a sickening jolt of real muscle and tendon strained hard against their combined weight, but they won't be putting any innocent bystanders off pudding for life tonight. A decently-aimed pendulum-swing sends them careening through a plate glass window instead of a beam, the soldier twisting to take the brunt of the impact because what are super-soldiers good for if not human canon balls, really.

(This isn't, apparently, one of those matrixes where he's a few shades short of indestructible, but it helps that he never seems to remember he isn't, anyway.)

"14th and Sumac," he manages to hack out when they land, pushing to his feet again. An exit. "Diner. Basement."

reality
[ Teatime pushed the grayish slop around with a spoon, expression tinged with contemplative displeasure. He could appreciate it in its utilitarian simplicity, but the taste could only be described in simile-- without a doubt, the slop tasted like sadness. Some part of him recoiled with the knowledge that he was beginning to understand poetry. Reality was a harsh thing indeed. ]

---
matrix: simulation
[ Eyes mostly closed, Teatime swayed slightly from side to side, settling into the body that felt more real, more natural than the weak shell he'd left in the real world. Dressed stylishly in layers of black, hair coiffed, he once more looked the part of an esteemed member of the Assassin's Guild.

His eyes snapped open abruptly, one inky black and the other little more than a pinhole of a pupil. A smile lit his boyish face, but there was a cold-blooded wrongness to it. ]

So, what happens to someone who dies in a simulation?

"Two blocks, northward."

Which only helps if you have an ingrained sense of direction or are familiar with the city map, but Thor tends to be, even if this isn't a place where he flies. (He hardly flies, anymore.) That, and he has the operator's voice in his ear, efficient but not entirely keeping the anxiety out of their tiny, tinny voice. "Inside the laundry mat."

Laundromat. Someone can correct him later, because they must already be moving.

You don't stand and fight the Agents, even if you're of an Asgardian. The quarry is dead, and the hunt is abandoned. But he does take a moment to nod at Bruce before taking point at a run, pistol in hand. It's only two blocks, but there are a lot of opportunities to die between here and there.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

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test drive | 2

KORBEN DALLAS | the fifth element

ezio auditore | assassin's creed

matrix;

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LAVELLAN ( dragon age )

bruce wayne | the dark knight

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ʀᴇᴀʟɪᴛʏ

reality UvU

Simons | Powers

reality

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matrix

matrix

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Jonathan Teatime | The Hogfather (Discworld)

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