baby you can drive my car

[rapturemod]

It's anticipated. It's expected. We're all about expectations, aren't we? Sort of? Maybe? Regardless, it's the first official

TEST DRIVE MEME

 

You probably know the drill by now. If you don't, here's a quick rundown: test drive memes are a game's way of gauging interest and such. It's a way to play around in the environment without the commitment of apping, maybe see how well that character you're considering gels with the setting. This one will be open indefinitely, or at least until further notice. You don't need to be apped to the game to test drive a character, or even reserved, or even want to reserve. However, if your interest is indeed piqued, reserves are thisaway, applications thataway.

As of this writing, we don't consider anything that happens in the TDM canon unless you'd like to transfer any threads that happen here to the main comms (provided they don't interfere with pre-established game events, of course). TDM threads are just a way to get a feel for a game, or in case you need that pesky writing sample for an app in progress. We don't recommend you do a standard intro post, however - save that for the game proper!

We don't have a set entry date for the game proper just yet. Once we accumulate some interest, we'll be sure to let you know!

Some resources we recommend that you check out if interest continues to abound:

Cast | Setting | Rules & FAQ | Locations

PROMPTS:

i. do you hear the people sing?
You've heard the rumors circulating about Atlas and his bandits for months. Even the upper echelons of Rapture's high society were having trouble burying their concern under the careful veneer of professionalism. What you didn't expect was an open attack. You'd just been passing by, but the poor souls who lived and shopped and made their living on this street have just found their entire livelihood set aflame. People are saying it's a bombing, while others protest that it must have been something down in maintenance.

Right now, it doesn't really matter one way or the other. The homes and storefronts have been reduced to sheeting flame as hairline cracks go cobwebbing up the glass, the only thing separating the city from a watery grave. Whether you choose to get the hell out of dodge or help the wailing survivors is up to you, but regardless of what you choose to do, this section of Rapture is rapidly coming apart at the seams.
 

ii. who's your daddy?
You've no clue whose bright idea it was to tail the Little Sister. It might have been some gang of spliced-up nobodies thirsty for some extra ADAM. It might have been your best friend's idiot plan. Hell, it might have even been yours. All you know is that no matter how appealing the thought seemed at the time, you and yours are in for a world of hurt. The Little Sister just had to shriek once and her armored protector came barreling into the scene, drill humming to life with a sinister whine. Guilty as charged or caught in the crossfire, you're in for the fight of your life with a Big Daddy, one of the most dangerous things in Rapture. Good luck.
 

iii. a part of the masterpiece

Fort Frolic, they say, is the hub for creative artistry. Sander Cohen is either a wildly inspired artistic genius or a madman depending on who you ask, but the alcohol runs the same no matter how you slice it. For tonight, the Fort is yours to enjoy at your leisure. Take a gander, gamble everything you've got, have a drink, maybe sit in for a show. The only thing Cohen loves more than his exclusivity is rampant attention, and tonight he's on full display. He's even torturing - er, entertaining a lucky pair of dancers in Fleet Hall! Don't mind the wires threaded in and out of their clothing, doubtless unspooled over all those important parts of the nervous system and ready to unleash a burst of fatal electricity at a moment's notice. They've got to be just for show.

One thing is certain about the possibly-deranged Sander Cohen, after all: he certainly keeps you on your toes!
 

iv. wild card! make up your own scenario

We prefer third-person, present tense prose, but if you're just in it for the fun you can write in whatever floats your pontoon. Have fun!
 

Comments

[etherthief]

"Just give me a damn second," she snaps back as he hits the hulking abomination with a burst of blue. Her hand goes immediately to her pistol, armor-piercing bullets loaded (she'd had an inkling she might need them), and she fires as many shots as she can before it recovers from its paralysis and jerks forward again.

"Fuck!" She darts aside, narrowly missing the heavy drill, the point of it just barely catching her arm, shearing easily through every layer of fabric she has, nicking the skin. That's gonna get in infected if she doesn't deal with it, which she will, later. When they make it out of this alive.

She rolls and lands between the creature and the still-shrieking child. Probably not the best place to be, but she's nimble and the time it takes the Big Daddy to turn around is enough for her to raise her left arm and slam it with a wave of frost.

The smart thing to do now would be fire her shotgun as many times as she can, but her trigger arm is burning like a motherfucker and the girl is still crying, and some bullshit instinct has her turning away from the threat and reaching out to the kid.

"It's okay!" she says feverishly. "It's okay!"

[lottawork]

Thank fuck Asadi is fast. He separates from her in a streamlined duck to the other side of the brute as it debates, fleetingly, the merits of pursuing him versus pursuing Asadi.

It lurches in Asadi's direction, and she halts it accordingly.

Rush raises the heavy industrial crossbow that rapidly became his weapon of choice and looses a bolt for the thing's thick metal carapace. It shudders beneath the impact, the thick latticework of frost groaning against its sizable bulk.

"Hit 'em, Mr. B!" the child urges, its face screwed up with outrage, skipping nimbly away from Asadi's outstretched fingers. "Get 'em! Hit 'em!"

"Iman," snaps Rush, left with little choice but to fire another bolt at the thing as its frozen shell cracks and it charges for her.

[etherthief]

Rush using her first name has always been a neon fucking sign that her shit is about to get wrecked. She turns wildly, unbalancing and landing in a sprawl that would mean death if his instincts weren't on it. She knows she only has a handful of seconds before the electricity wears off, and it is quite close to her now, and she's got nowhere to go.

She drags the shotgun from the sling on her back and pumps four agonizingly slow electric bucks into it. Stuns it every time, but it's still struggling and groaning, ready for more. And she's out of shells.

She hurls another blast of ice at the hulking thing and hauls her ass around the nightmarish sculpture, rejoining Rush at its steadily thawing back.

"I'm out," she grunts, tossing the shotgun and holding up the pistol. "I only got a few left here. I'd straight kill someone for a fucking frag grenade right about now."

[lottawork]

He loads a fresh bolt into the firing mechanism, his movements fluid and economical despite the roar of adrenaline flooding every available neuronal pathway.

"As always, your plan was sound and well-reasoned," says Rush. He backs away smoothly from the armored diving suit, firing trap bolts along the wall in a systematic serial loop, each one uncoiling neatly with the bright hum of electricity.

The ground trembles beneath the thing's feet as it turns and whirrs its drill to life in an anticipatory winding back before the inevitable bull-rush, apparently prepared to plow through the equivalent of five consecutive live wires.

Rush loads an incendiary bolt into the curved steel cross. "I'd get ready to move."

[etherthief]

"As always, you followed me," she echoes back, stepping away with him as he sets up his neatly laid trap. Atta boy.

"Ready when you are," she says under her breath, watching the thing heave itself into motion. It jerks forward and she snaps to the side, as far from the explosion radius as she can without letting the Little Sister stray from her sight.

The Big Daddy drives into Rush's trap and for a minute there's just sparks and smoke and ear-splitting noise. Iman covers her head.

It dies down and she peeks up, searching for Rush. She can hear the little girl sobbing.

"Is it dead?" she asks hoarsely.

[lottawork]

The lumbering giant charges directly through the line of electrified bolts and they snap eagerly around it. It sputters inadequately, one great hand outstretched and hanging in suspension for a staggered moment before the whole of it creaks and groans and it clangs to its side.

"Mr. Bubbles!" wails the not-girl, her bare feet beating a rapid tattoo over the ground as she bolts to the fallen brute's side. "Get up! Please get up!"

Rush surveys the carnage dispassionately.

"Yes, I believe so," he says. Whatever the mechanical equivalent of 'dead' it has, he's entirely certain the thing has just succumbed to it.

[etherthief]

Iman gets up, brushes herself off rather pointlessly, and proceeds at once to the little girl.

"Hey," she says gently, lowering herself down. She's never been extremely good with children. Callie was one thing. Lilly was another. Little Sisters are nowhere near either of them.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," she says softly, reaching out, and the girl jerks away, sniffling, staring up at her with big pale dead eyes. "I'm sorry. We don't want to hurt you."

What can they do? She knows vaguely on Tenenbaum, but not where to find her. There's not much known about what to do with a Little Sister when you've got one, apart from the fuckers who harvest them.

"Come here," she presses as nonthreateningly as she can, and the child darts back, bare feet slapping softly on the floor, hiding behind the smoldering corpse's foot.

[lottawork]

"She's hardly about to trust either one of us," Rush says wryly. "She's engineered not to, and we just single-handedly destroyed the one figure that was protecting her."

It would be exceedingly if brutally efficient to simply harvest her here and now, and spare them both the expense of the rich pool of ADAM at their hypothetical disposal.

Fortunately for her, Rush is not completely bereft of moral direction, and is not the sort to murder defenseless children. Simply abandoning her to her fate would be equally inadvisable - in all likelihood, she would simply be left at the mercy of those that would have no ethical constraints with murdering her and siphoning her ADAM away.

"Fuck," says Rush.

[etherthief]

"She doesn't have a choice," says Iman sharply, "and neither do we." She extends her hand again but the kid just curls up and whimpers.

This is shit. There's nothing she can do, but if they walk away someone else will find her.

She lets out a heavy sigh, then shifts herself to look through the corpse. It's a grim business, but it's what she has to do. They always seem to be carrying random shit, and hey - couple vials of EVE, some ammo, not bad. She hands one of the vials to Rush wordlessly, then gets up, turns her back, and starts walking away. Jerks her head for Rush to follow.

"We'll give her space," she whispers. "Eventually she has to go back to wherever it is they come from. Anyone tries to interfere with her we'll make sure they don't succeed."

[lottawork]

"Yes," says Rush, subtly scathing. "I'm sure Ryan will treat her fucking splendidly in the interim."

He slips the proffered EVE into his pocket and avoids Asadi's gaze. The ideology upon which the entire city is founded is not particularly kind to the unprivileged individual, even less so to the unfortunate candidates for conversion into the Sisters or their lumbering guardians. Typical, hegemonic, grating, infinitely insubstantial American capitalist bullshit.

He fucking loathes it.

"Until a sufficient solution can be implemented," he says quietly, "it may be prudent to exercise a strict non-interference policy where she and her ilk are concerned."

[etherthief]

She grimaces and offers him no counterargument. She knows he's right. This was a fucked operation from the start. She couldn't help being curious, but she definitely could have helped the rest of it.

Whatever.

The kid can't be saved, not yet, but at the very least Iman's not going to let anyone harvest her.

She leads them as far out of the Sister's eyeline as she can, and waits. The girl spends a lot of time whimpering and crying over the felled Big Daddy, and then finally, like a homing signal's been activated, straightens up and starts padding away.

Iman follows at a healthy distance. Everything is very suspiciously fucking quiet.