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glencolaaa2023-05-01 03:59 pm
glencolans) wrote in glencolaaa2023-05-01 03:59 pm
Entry tags:
TDM #1
TEST DRIVE MEME #1
Welcome to Glencola Reef's first Test Drive Meme! This is a place where anyone interested in applying a character - or just curious to see how their characters might interact with the setting and others in the game - can mingle with one another. General prompts are provided below for inspiration.
TDM GUIDELINES
- Please read the rules before posting to the TDM. These still apply here and will be enforced, up to and including deleting tags/toplevels and prebanning.
- Posts from a TDM are required to apply. At least three tags across any number of threads within a TDM, posted within the last 6 months, must be provided in every application.
- TDM threads can be used for AC. Note that new characters only need to check in for their first AC cycle, but established characters can use TDM tags for their AC.
- TDMs are not considered game canon by default. This is mostly for logistics reasons - due to how characters travel on the map, it's unlikely that non-network threads that take place here will actually happen in-game. However, I won't stop anyone from working out how to make parts of threads game canon if they really want to.
- New TDMs will be posted every three months. Keep checking back into the current TDM for new toplevels!
I. ARRIVAL
You awaken on a tropical island beach, soaking wet, powerless, and without any idea how you got here. Were you carrying something important, or wearing powerful armor? How unfortunate - it looks like only the most basic clothes, items in your pockets, and simple weapons managed to make the trip with you. Are you even physically the same as you remember? If you had superhuman abilities tied to your physiology, you might be stuck in a completely different body that lacks your usual senses. You might've been whisked away from a tense battle or a near-death experience and wake up delirious, or even injured.Thankfully, against overwhelming odds, you're not the only one to wake up on this particular stretch of beach. You and your companion have a lot of puzzling out to do.
II. NETWORK
Even if you weren't lucky enough to wake up near someone else, at least you've arrived with a military-grade radio transceiver gripped tightly in your hand (or mouth, or other vaguely opposable appendage of choice). The clunky walkie-talkie will start buzzing and crackling for every public message that starts coming your way. Answering them back is as easy as pressing the "talk" button on the side of the device and either speaking into the receiver, or using the keypad to type into the message box that appears on the screen, then pressing the button again to send. A list of ongoing conversations with responses that are less than 24 hours old can be found by scrolling through the menu, identified by the callsigns that are participating in them. It seems that you've been assigned a callsign, too - it shows up in the top right side of the screen, format AB123C. The letters and numbers picked are...probably random.
This is your easiest avenue to communicating, or coordinating with, or complaining at the other people stuck on this island; how you decide to use this tool is up to you.
III. EXPLORING
For a place that appears, by all signs, to be an equatorial island in the middle of a tropical ocean, the local environments are surprisingly diverse. Beaches range from idyllic white sand to storm-swept pebble crags to cliffs with waterfalls cascading off the edges; the interior forests can be thinned from sandy soil or dense jungles full of prickly underbrush and with towering canopies; and the central mountain peaks, perilous enough to climb on their own, terminate in ravines and sinkholes that are hidden by thick foliage until you already have one foot over the edge.The animals that make their homes here are equally as varied, and sometimes just as dangerous. The standard Earth fare of tropical fish swim right up to most shores, especially where reefs have grown, and a multitude of seafaring and jungle birds make their homes in ocean-facing cliffs and trees. Any one of these creatures would make for an easy snack. But you're not the only opportunistic hunters here; sharks prowl the waters, big cats stalk the jungles, and feral boars raid any camps that smell enticing. And that's just the stuff that looks like it came from modern Earth. Your improvised fishing rod might have captured a trilobite, or maybe that deer you were stalking has rounded on you with a set of alien mandibles full of sharp teeth. Or maybe, among the plants and animals completely foreign to you, you've stumbled across one that's strangely familiar to your home and no one else's.
There's a lot to figure out about this place. At least, in this instance, you aren't doing it alone.
arrival; sry
Surely whoever made it here with him would have answers, he decides. The other man seems preoccupied with checking his belongings, so in a few long, quiet strides Squalo closes the distance. This is pretty exciting, the stranger says, and the next moment he'll see the blade of a knife in front of his face, threateningly hovering just under his chin.
Squalo's sword may not have made it in with him, but that's where carrying a bunch of stabby things on his person at all times came to the rescue.
"Ain't it?" His tone sounds almost chipper, but the knife is steady, and out of sight his eyes remain cold despite the vague grin showing his teeth. "No sudden movements. Who are you, and how did you do this?"
it's fine, he probably deserves it
All of that thought process is interrupted, though, with a blade in front of his face.
He stands still, hands at his sides where they already were. This could get pretty dicey; Senku isn't a fighter by any means, and all he has a little knife anyway. He can't take someone in a fair fight, and he doesn't have anything on him that might be a chemical weapon. He hasn't yet discovered anything that will work as defence. Whoever or whatever planned this did a good job if it was looking to take him down.
He doesn't look scared when he raises his eyes to meet Squalo's. He's smart enough to be scared, but he's also used to not showing it. It's just physical reactions, anyway, completely pointless. He's not Gen, but he's learned a couple things about how people work. Maybe.
Either way, he settles for the truth. It's the easiest answer in this situation.
"I didn't," he answers, ignoring the first question for the moment. "I woke up on this beach 522 seconds ago."
no subject
He could also be in league with the Vindice, Millefiore or whoever fuck else, in which case some more of a shakedown could be fruitful.
"Hey, what kind of an idiot do you take me for?" He practically shouts it, or maybe that's just how his voice is, energetic, scratchy and too goddamn loud. "I wake up on a whole new damn landscape, and you're the only other person here." (He's technically not, but the island is huge, and no others are in sight at the moment). "I'm sure you can remember a few details about where we are and why."
Squalo brings the knife closer with a sudden movement, resting the flat of the blade against the underside of the other man's jaw.
"This should help, yeah?"
no subject
He's also loud as hell, but half the people from the Kingdom of Science yell all the time. He can live with that part. He could do without the knife, though.
He raises his chin just slightly.
"Did you even look for other people, or do you just assume it's only us?" Senku asks. He can't just shut his damn mouth, even when there's a blade against his skin. He knows he's right, though, so why not say it?
"Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't remember anything about this place. I told you how long I've been here. I don't know where here is anymore than you do. If you chill out, though, we're ten billion percent more likely to find answers than if we just stand here with you threatening me." It's a sort of oblique offer of a team up, and maybe a weird thing to say to a guy who doesn't seem to want to make friends. But Senku doesn't really see people as enemies, even when they're threatening him. As far as he can tell, they're in the same predicament. He just has to convince Squalo of that.
no subject
The question is fair enough, and he scowls, not budging.
"Haven't seen anyone else," he shoots back, but his grip on the knife seems to be getting less tense, and he draws it just a little further away from Senku's neck, but still close enough to be a sufficient threat.
"Do you work for the Vindice?"
no subject
He still doesn't move, watching Squalo, his heart pounding in his ears. He knows the biological reactions of fear, the chemicals and processes that cause his hands to tremble just a little at his sides, the way his jaw is still clenched behind his self-assured expression. He can stand still, but he can't completely control it. He's just a scientist, in the end.
"I saw footprints," Senku offers, eyes sliding off to the side, "a little ways down the beach. So there must be someone else. Whether they're the one responsible for us being here or not, I don't know yet."
He looks back at Squalo, notices the knife move a little bit away. That's a start, right?
Confusion passes over his face at the question. That's not even a word he knows at all. Is that Italian?
"The what? I don't work for anybody," he says. "I'm the leader of the Kingdom of Science." He says that so matter-of-factly, like it's just some fact that barely matters. To him, it is. It's not that interesting a thing, it just is something that is true. "I've never heard of any Vindice. You think that's who brought us here?"
Gears turn in his head, trying to break that down, but for once he comes up short. Something is going on here that he can't quite figure out. If he gets away from this whole knife deal, he might be having a ball about it until they run into some fire-breathing bird or something.
no subject
He keeps still for another moment, then withdraws the knife and flips it closed, raising his free hand in playful placation before stepping out in front of the other man and pointing at him with the folded knife.
"No funny business," he reiterates, just in case, but at least he seems content to keep his weapons to himself for now. "But suppose I'll hear you out, King of Science. Who do you think brought us here?"
He's asking questions, not answering them, thanks. Not that the answer isn't obvious anyway. And that was indeed italian, though he doesn't seem to have a prominent accent at the moment.
no subject
Finally Squalo puts his knife away and Senku lets his shoulders relax just a little. Not that he can put his guard down or anything; people who start out waving knives around are probably not very safe. Senku isn't a fighter, and his own knife wouldn't do much good anyway.
"I'm not a king," he says, insistent, making a face. Ugh, the very idea. "I'm a scientist. That's all."
No answer to his question, fine, difficult man can be difficult then. He chances to look away, off down the beach. What did bring them here? He considers. Right before this…he was with Suika, reviving a bunch of people with them. There was no flash, nothing weird. Anyway, no one has cracked the secret to teleportation yet, unless there's some other new thing he doesn't know.
Wouldn't that be exciting as hell, though? Real teleportation? But no, that kind of speculation can come later.
"Who or what," he says after a moment. "I'm not sure. I don't have any list of suspects who even could. There weren't exactly a lot of people around, and the ones with the technology to do anything, I already had with me. It would have required some kind of knock out drug, maybe? I didn't feel drugged when I woke up. So it could be something like rohypnol, but I would have imagined that to have a worse effect waking up. Not to mention no one could have had such a thing anymore."
He's thinking out loud more than he's answering the question.
When he looks back at Squalo, he's got this sort of half-grin on his face again, wider this time.
"That's the first question to answer, isn't it? The how more than the who. If we figure out the how, it narrows the list of who could have accomplished it."
There's a flaw in this idea, and he's aware of it. The fact that he has no idea what Squalo was talking about, the Vindice, is telling. How could he not know? He knows almost everyone who has been revived at this point, and until like a day ago, everyone in the world was petrified again.
But his methodology is still the same to start with.
no subject
It's not like there are any hints to the how, and he's personally not as interested in it as in how to get out, though he supposes the same method could be used. Still, they have nothing to go on, and he's not exactly an engineer.
"How the fuck we stay alive ain't a bad one either," he suggests huffily. "Bet someone's either trying to get rid of us, or to use us entertainment. Maybe both."