rapturefree | baby you can drive my car

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baby you can drive my car

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!

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Can he move? Fuck if he knows. He's stopped screaming, but his throat still feels wet, torn, hoarse and raw from the inside out. Like every other part of him that was scraped clean, nails over the chalkboard.

It's like hearing someone else speak through water. The other guy's beside him now - how did that happen? When? How could he have missed something like that? God, stupid, stupid.

"Can you?" Tim says, and he can't even pull himself together enough to make the words sound wry before they stagger into a ragged cough. Maybe that thing skittering around in the back of his skull would be strong enough - hell, it probably is. But there's no way it's bubbling up now. They're fucked. He's fucked.

"I think I broke something," he admits hazily. Something important, probably. He landed right on his back, smashed straight through the wood.

He thinks, dryly, dully, absurdly, of lighting a last cigarette. But with this kind of fire, what would be the point? He'll die of smoke inhalation one way or another, he was always going to - this just speeds it up some.

He laughs, brittle and forced, a low huff of mirthless irony.

"Sorry about this."

Eliot considers the question, tips his head, takes in a ragged, grimy suck of air.

“’S find out,” he manages on the exhale.

He feels heavy. He’s not sure anymore. He’s heavy and tired and when he bends his knee to get his feet back under him, his leg just slides back to the floor.

“Oh.” There’s a wet sound that comes from somewhere in his chest before he sputters out a laugh. Oh, how embarrassing “I guess not.” He lets his head roll back against the floor. The grin edging up at the corner of his lips is wild and sudden and entirely inappropriate.

“Dunno why you’re apologizing.” His smile drops like a handful of change. I just got you killed, I fuck everyone over, especially the people I try to help, especially the people who think they can help me. “Always figured I’d… you know. Die alone. Didn’t bother me. Just.” He loses the thought, reaches back for it.

“This is okay.”

And in all the ways he’d considered himself dying, this hadn’t even charted. Overdose, intentional, accidental, cops, one of the million people he’d fucked over shows up on his doorstep with a gun or some nastier ideas, maybe someday his head would get the best of him, maybe he’d forget everything, maybe no one would help. This isn’t so bad. Senseless, almost easy. He’s tired. It’s easy. It’ll be easy. In a selfish, awful way, he’s glad he won't have to go alone.

Something surges up inside him, hisses you child, so much like him - weak, he knows whose voice it is but she’s garbled, lost under his heartbeat, the hollow, wringing heaves of his breathing.

Tim closes his eyes. The hot cinders are starting to sting his vision. The crackle and creak of wood crumbling is starting to overtake everything else, even the mutter of the guy next to him. Just someone else, another person he failed to save.

"Not a bad way to go," Tim agrees hoarsely. "Didn't really save you and you didn't really save me but - there're worse ways."

Like being run through with a knife to the throat by a man who's shrieking and sobbing and breathless and helpless, or pitched over a balcony by your old best friend, or shot in the gut by the one person you fought for years to save, or having your mind torn clean from skull while the rest of you snaps evenly under the pressure of a thing you'll never understand. Yeah, being burned alive isn't so bad. It's painful, sure, but he's earned that. More than earned it.

The easiest lesson he ever learned was knowing how to lie down and die. How, and when.

"Tim," he blurts, as the thought occurs to him. "Gonna die one way or another. But, uh, I figure you should know. Tim. That's my name."

Everything is slowing down, he's sure he can watch the embers cooling to grey as they rain down around his head, hear each beam splintering around them. There's too much physical sensation for Eliot to make much sense of it. It's like he's starting to shut down. Alley Guy's voice filters through from both immediately next to him and like it's coming from somewhere a billion miles off in a tinny echo. It's a second before he remembers to pay attention to the actual words.

Oh. A ripcord sound dislodges itself from his chest. Breathing is hard, making words is harder. "Think I've fucked up worse. But. I'm still s-"

Sorry for what? Sorry I'm letting you die? Sorry I'm dying too, so we're both dying for nothing. Sorry you thought I was someone worth saving? He lets it go.

Tim. Alley Guy is Tim. He considers what he knows about Tim. Tim runs into burning buildings for luckless bastards he doesn't know. Tim is absurdly cavalier about his own impending death. What was it he said. Soft spot for headcases. Tim is saving the wrong person. Probably. Probably, he doesn't know shit about Tim.

"Eliot. I'm Eliot. My name is, I mean," No point in wasting your possible last breath on semantics, "What do people say when they're doing this? Pleased to meet you, Tim. Was that out loud?" Not like that was a better choice

Edited 2015-10-05 03:03 (UTC)

"Man, I dunno," says Tim, and he laughs - a dry, rasping, mirthless sound scraping out from the back of his throat. What a goddamn pair they are. "I dunno how normal people do it."

It's hard, awfully damn hard, to visualize anything anyone could do that would be fucking up more than what he's already wrung out of his hands. There's no faceless specter flickering at him in the fringes of his vision, but maybe there should be. He was never religious - heaven and hell never meant a damn thing. But he believes in anything, he believes in it. And if that's his hell, then that's where he's going. That's where he's always been going.

Burn it to ash.

It's what he deserves.

He closes his eyes and tries to suck in the last breath that'll choke him into nothing.

He holds it.

And holds it.

And with a rending creak, something far above his head shatters, and the explosive impact of saltwater hitting heavily against the blackened skeletons of half-burned buildings jars him heavily awake.

He's caught in a current

He's caught in a current, and it's taking him -

This is nothing like falling asleep. Eliot isn't sure whether he's opened his mouth to answer or not, nothing's working right. He tries to shift because his chest feels so heavy, god, so fucking heavy it's terrifying, like being crushed, but he hears his hand shift maybe an inch, less, and just stop. He's trapped and the thought of it is so awful, so stifling that he tries to let it all just go dark.

He begs for it. Maybe he's talking out loud now. It doesn't matter. He doesn't know who he's talking to, anyway. It's not the guy dying next to him and it's certainly not God.

Grating washes of noise and sensation keep pulling him back into his body, not mapping right. Everything jumbled, the sound of something grinding and giving that he feels in his molars, jangling down his back.

And then there's water. A lot of water moving fast. It's so cold he feels his stomach clench once, hard and-

And -

There's the pain that wasn't there before, a sudden throb echoing through his limbs, pounding in his hands, his head. His skin feels ill-fitting, tight to bursting with him, every movement feels like it pulls all the way up to his scalp and-

He's pinned between what's left of a wall and the remains of fallen rafters, caught by the current. His muscles tremble and tremble but he's pretty sure he's not moving, not until he's sliding under.

He watches his hands float up above him, clutch uselessly at the debris that's slipping out of view.

Edited 2015-10-07 02:55 (UTC)

The city groans under the duress of the immense pressure from above as water rushes in, sweeping him and the smoking wreckage into its unrelenting pull. The cresting white-tipped waves suck him away, spinning helplessly in the undertow, silver streams of bubbles flurrying from parted lips as he screams.

It held him down. It held him down beneath the water, choking him, and he thrashed and clawed at it and it wouldn't let him go. It held him until he was tired enough to go shuddering and limp, tired enough to die, and then, and then it released him, let him haul himself out of the laughably shallow stretch of muddy water, sopping and gasping and wanting nothing more than to have had been held down just a little bit longer.

The temptation to cede to that old instinct is still guttering and there and beyond his capacity to ignore, but it's the presence of the other poor bastard caught in this alongside him that forces him to push forward, both hands scything through the water as he tries to break the surface.

He never learned to swim. He never even learned to tread water.

With an almighty crash of water, Tim slams into the ashen remains of what used to be the building's rafters. He glimpses something sodden just beneath, but he can't breathe and he needs to kick out, lashing out desperately to breach the surface and gulp down a relieved gasp of air and breathe.

If he does not move, he will die. Eliot knows this. He knows this as he watches the shapes at the surface of the water grow distant and dim, like they're powering down. He knocks into the rising bilge, bits of broken furniture, chairs, splintered doors, his body tossed and pinned and still slipping.

It's never felt less like it belonged to him, his body. Always needing and rotting and breaking down, showing critical failure points when it's least convenient.

He fights to keep sight of surface. How horribly easy it would be to just forget which way is out, again. No milemarkers here. Just nothing, nothing and wreckage and him. The tightness in his chest twists one tighter, a spike of pain wrings a gasp out of him and he's sucking water, sucking water and he feels hands at his throat, at his mouth. They're his hands.

They're his hands and he can move them. He hauls himself toward surface. Every motion burns, slow and dragging and his head reels. And he's coughing and he's sucking more water and he thrashes, clawing at the water until he feels wood, splinters coming up under his nails. Then air.

Edited 2015-10-08 02:54 (UTC)

Breathing comes with a storm of coughing, his heart juddering in his chest as he spits up water, his throat parched, the insides of his teeth and the roof of his mouth crusted with salt and brine.

It doesn't take more than a cursory sweep of his surroundings to conclude that this part of Rapture is as good as lost. The fires are out, the crowds no longer spilling for the bulkheads, the fierce rushing current having scattered them.

He kicks out clumsily, shoulders still shuddering with each racking cough, and hooks one hand around a charred husk of wood that's managed to stay afloat. All he has to do is steer himself for one of the bulkheads. All he has to do. All he has to do. All he has to do all he has

Tim propels himself forward numbly, mechanically, riding the current where he can. The abrupt shift from hot to freezing leaves him shivering. God, but don't let that mean convulsions. Please don't.

He chokes and chokes until he feels scrubbed out, bringing up water so cold it burns, nails digging into whatever's keeping him afloat. Wet charred wood peels away in streaks under his handholds, comes up like nothing. He claws at the debris with hands hooked and blunted with stiffness, buzzing with pain. Something works, keeps him from slipping and it’s a gift.

It feels like too much to keep in his head at once. Keep hold of this, keep your head above water, keep breathing, keep moving. Aching lungs can’t take in enough air to keep everything from lurching around him, to keep the dark from creeping in at the corners. The current pulls at his legs, wreckage flows around him, constant, dizzying motion.

He needs something to focus on, a fixed point.

Scanning for Tim makes his eyes ache, but it’s not hard to pick out the splashes of water kicking up around him as he cuts a jagged path through the floating debris. He follows, big messy kicks that move him forward in short jerks and leave his trembling legs numb. He counts kicks, it helps until he loses track, but he hasn’t lost sight of Tim. Just ahead of him now, the spray from his strokes stinging his face.

He’s so fucking tired. Tim looks tired too, shoulders shaking with coughs. He wonders if what he’s hanging on to would hold them both. It’d be easier for both of them if it would. Or he could end up drowning both of them. Deadweight. All this for nothing. He keeps kicking. Chickenshit. There’s no winning like this.

The water's crashing into the metal of the bulkheads as it funnels in steadily from the weeping gash in the glass. He hooks fingers around the metal of the wheel that's icy to the touch, anchors himself to it even as the current threatens to tear him away.

Not out of the woods yet. Not ever, not really. He'll always be snarled in one thing or another. He braces his feet against the floor with the water sloshing up to his chest and pulls, throwing all of his weight onto the wheel that groans and shrills as it resists his attempts to turn it.

"C'mon," says Tim, whispered desperately from between clenched teeth. "Come on, come on, come on - "

But it won't give and he can't keep straining to crack the damn thing open. He casts about wildly for something, any kind of tool, anything, and with a sick lurch of guilt to his gut his eyes land on Elliot.

He left him behind.

He didn't mean to, really, he didn't, he just assumed he hadn't made it or that they'd been separated but instead of stopping to look he'd just forged mindlessly ahead and he left him. No better than Jay. No better than any of the self-interested bastards here under the sea.

He tightens his grip on the wheel and reaches out, fingers outstretched as far as they can go.

"Grab," he calls. "Come on."

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baby you can drive my car

no subject

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no subject