TDM #1

[glencolans]

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.

NAVIGATION

Comments

[sharktrash]

It's actually a little unnerving, the way the guy manages to remain still despite being threatened at knifepoint, but Squalo does pick up that he's actually not as calm as he looks.

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?"

[hyakuoku]

Senku has been lethally injured a couple of times and he would really prefer not to do that again, but he has a weird sense of how to deal with danger. He's aware that in this world, unless he gets the Medusa working again, petrification can't save him or anyone else from death. It would be pretty lame to just wake up somewhere new and die immediately, wouldn't it?

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.

[sharktrash]

Yet. That implies the guy is confident he might figure it out, and big brain shit isn't exactly Squalo's forte. It would... probably be a waste to kill him, then.

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.

[hyakuoku]

Senku is confident that with enough time and effort, he can figure pretty much anything out. It's annoying that he's here and not back where he was answering his burning question about petrification, but, it's just a bump in the road. Ultimately that's all anything really is. Setbacks are part of a process. This is a wildly unforeseen one, but…all right.

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.

[sharktrash]

Squalo's bored halfway through the monologue, kicking at the sand, hands in pockets. He does send a scoff the other man's way when he looks at him, though.

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."