redmarsshit | test drive meme: november 2019

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!test drive

test drive meme: november 2019

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

▶ Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

▶ All TDM threads can be considered game canon, and current players are welcome to either top-level on the TDM so prospective players can tag them, or use the prompts for logs or network posts on the communities. All threads on the TDM can be used for Activity Check.

a. the truth hurts.

As though everything happening in the past month wasn't enough, there's been a minor explosion in one of the labs. No one hurt, if you don't count the hapless maintenance bot that caused the explosion in the first place.

But there are gases drifting through the laboratories, some of them making their way into the air vents, invisible to the purifiers in the system thanks to the explosion. And those gases are leaking into the air around Anchor, little pockets of danger waiting to be breathed in.

Those who breathe the gasses in might be the unluckiest Anchorites of all.

They're stuck telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth for the next five hours, give or take. Good luck with that!

b. retromedia.

Oblivious to what's going on inside Anchor, the shift rages outside, bringing shadows of things and places from other worlds, those things flickering into existence and out of it again.

The bad news is that the Whole Foods is gone.

The good news is the shift left something behind in its place.

A long, squat building, with cement walls painted over with stucco and punctuated by big windows. A flat roof with slanted sides, painted a deep blue. In bold yellow letters bolted to the roof, a sign:

BLOCKBUSTER
The sliding doors are broken, bouncing open and shut steadily, but the inside is clean and well-stocked with rack upon rack upon row upon row of VHS tapes, all of them neatly packaged in plastic boxes. Some of them have the movie covers on them, but most bear the Blockbuster logo and tiny labels running down the back, declaring the box's contents. There's a giant, somewhat busted up standee of Tim Allen as The Santa Clause, flickering holiday lights strung unevenly from the ceiling, and symbols of various seasonal holidays stuck up along the walls and windows.

Any movie you could possibly want lies within, or at least any movie you could possibly want that was released on Earth during or before 1994. And don’t worry if you can't find a VHS player in Anchor! There are whole shelves of VCRs tucked into one of the closets, apparently part of an aborted plan to rent out VCRs along with movies.

Poor Blockbuster. They were innovators. And now they're lost to the sands of the red shift.

c. sweet sweet self-care.

While sickness persists inside Anchor's walls, those in recovery seem to be getting better every day. And while the health bots have been working overtime, some of their processes have gotten a little borked up from all the work they've been doing.

Along with medical care, they're now administering lectures to their captive audiences about the value of diet and exercise, the importance of personal hygiene, and the healing properties of massage. Some of them are forcing massages on people just to prove their point, which, y'know, could be a lot worse. At least they're good at massages?

The spa bots are getting in on the action, nagging the healthy to come for relaxation and decontamination in one gloriously bubbly swoop. They've converted several of their spa pools into sweet-smelling antibacterial baths, so you can make extra-sure you got those visiting-a-sick-friend cooties off!

No, seriously, go with them. Before they drag you there and make you take a bath like an unruly two-year-old.

Believe them, it's worth it. If you complete a circuit of the spa, including the antibacterial baths and the fresh and zesty decontamination shower, you get a shiny sparkly holographic sticker that says "YOU ARE FREE OF DISEASE" in little cheerful bubble-letters. They designed them all by themselves, totally from scratch. Are you proud?

d. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to ask a friend which 1980s teen movie classic to watch at movie night? Maybe you need to hold your sat phone up to whatever crazy thing you're seeing and send out a recording to double-check if your eyes are deceiving you and what you're looking at is real?

Whatever the reason, the network is going strong, so feel free to include a post to it in your top-levels.

Navigation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She looks up at him, eyes wide for a second. Yes she does, constantly, keeps it to herself, because - well, she keeps almost everything to herself, especially when it concerns how she feels.

Just doesn't quite know why she is saying it now, or how the question makes her prompt that same forthright answer. Embarrassing as it is, her face getting flushed with it, the words all come out anyway. "Of course I do, all the time. Your heart, I just think about it beating next to my ear and the world feels just a little bit better. Or that you smile at me, sometimes..." Oh, just stop talking now, it's just embarrassing, Angel.

Bu she can't seem to. Oh, God, God shut up. "I feel you smile when you're kissing my neck when we wake up, just before you get out of bed of a morning and after you're gone I curl up really little in the spot you were in so I can make sure it doesn't escape and I can keep it all to myself even after you're gone."

Nope. Never mind. She just is going to give up and hide her face in his chest again.

Oh, good. Her looking up at him gives him just the right angle to bend down and kiss her forehead, which he does immediately, and lingers for a moment while brushing her hair behind her ear with one hand. When he straightens back up, he's only smiling wider.

It seems she can't stop talking. Which isn't really much of a difference from the usual. Only the words are different.

He thinks he likes this.

He chuckles quietly when she hides her face against him, and soothingly strokes his hand over the back of her head.

Maybe she shouldn't be the only one baring her heart like this.

"I like when you kiss me goodbye because I remember it all day. It makes everything brighter."

It makes it easy to be content, to be optimistic, to not let worries and uncertainties cloud his mind.

He spoils her, in that wash of his affection that her ears prick up to. Her tail as ever winding around him, curving around the back of his leg as she hangs in it, his kind words.

"You're just saying that because I'm always sad when you go." she mumbles it against his chest. Pulling back enough a moment later. "But I believe you, even when I know I shouldn't." Why was she saying these things? She had no idea. "I'm sorry, I can't stop talking. It's... Really weird. I lie all the time, I'm not used to.. To... Just saying what I'm thinking." wait, fuck, "Not to you. Never to you. Or Charles. Except about Pandora sometimes. Or when you've counted your numbers wrong and messed up a calculation shopping or something."

AH! She just gives him an exasperated look.

"Make this stop."

Edited 2019-12-26 10:37 (UTC)

The more she talks, the higher his eyebrows go, baffled and amused at once. He doesn't think she lies to him, even as she talks about lying all the time. She'd told him about it before, while talking about how she wants to live life differently now.

And when she corrects herself, the amusement takes over.

"I could try, if I knew what caused it." Unfortunately, he has no idea. "I hope I do not count my numbers wrong very often."

He sees to the trade at the homestead. It would be very unfortunate if he gets his calculations wrong all the time.

"Not always, usually you're pretty good. I fix them before it causes a problem most of the time. It's not like Jacob. He gets it wrong a lot." she covers her mouth with her hand. Trying to cut it off before it gets worse. "Sorry. Don't tell him I said that."

More squirming, more wriggling. She just can't shut up, every thought as good as said.

"It's not your fault, that's just human error. I mean, I have a computer in my head, you don't. You're pretty good anyway, for someone not augmented. I don't even have to let you win games with me that often. Usually I have to throw most matches, but I only have to do it with you 4.6% of the time. Which is a much better average than the 6.7% I do for most people."

He shakes his head, with a quiet chuckle. Let him win?

"You do not have to 'let' me win at all."

He doesn't care. Games aren't only about winning, it's about spending time together. Even though it tends to come with mocking and bickering, it's always with fondness and love.

That hot wash of embarrassment bound itself deep within her limb, hard to meet his eyes. Biting her lip as she fixed her gaze at about his throat.

"It's not like that. It's that the game would be over in a minute if I did it that... way. So I try to roll for human error so it's... Not over so fast. I like watching your mind think when you're picking your pieces."

In a minute? He's never thought too much about her ... 'augmentation', and how it works. Wouldn't have assumed that it could do that, could calculate just how to win a game as quickly as possible. He raises an eyebrow in surprise, and lifts a hand to gently push her chin up.

"We could just play more rounds."

Not that it really matters. She can do as she wishes.

Her face tilts up as he prompts. Not for anyone else, but for him, always, she'd try. Try to look him in the eye and try to tell the truth. Even if the second was far easier than normal right now.

Even as her lips pull in a smile, because the answer is just so him it hurts. "There you are. The best man I've ever met. You've really got to quit it, or someone's going to have me up for corrupting the last good man left in the galaxy."

The best man she's ever met, when he says something so ... simple. Not that he isn't well aware that goodness and kindness often doesn't take much. No more than a little bit of time, a small favour, offering space and shelter when you can. It's effortless.

He can't help but think that doing the things Washington has done, Charles Lee has done, it can't be the same. Certainly it must weigh on a person, if one has any heart left at all. And he doesn't believe that anyone can simply lose their heart.

He hums quietly, amused, and brushes the back of his fingers over her cheek.

"Who is to say I do not instead influence you?"

He would think if it that way, he would think only of the good he could bring to others, how he could work to make the world better. One of those things, even when she knew she was at her worst, he would try and help.

"You'll never know how much you do. Even when I know it's not a good idea. I didn't lead the Vault Hunters to survive Pandora by being a good influence. I usually just told them to kill everything in their path." she lays her fingers over his. "Sometimes it's hard. I'll lay awake at night, thinking of the slaughter I've caused, worried that the only reason you're with me is because you don't truly understand the sheer number that is. But sometimes, I'll look at you and I feel like I owe it to try, I remember why I was happy to die."

From what she's told him of Pandora, that doesn't seem like it's necessarily a bad thing to tell someone. Perhaps it's questionable to assume everyone and everything will be a threat to you and attack it first, but it also sounds like that's what to expect from Pandora.

It also sounds like there were still people who wanted to try and change things for the better. Including Angel.

They have had this discussion before, and he doesn't think he needs to keep telling her that the number of bodies she may see at night matters little when she tries so hard to be better, since the first time she understood the weight of what she was doing.

He takes her hand in his, and brings her knuckles up to his lips.

"If you ever lay awake next to me, thinking those thoughts, I want you to wake me."

He hopes she hasn't been suffering those thoughts alone while he's been sleeping unaware next to her, but he fears she might have.

Angel giggles, softly as she ever does when he touches her, not just because it tickles when she still finds it so strange to be touched, but that this happiness that pours out of her must go somewhere, she simply cannot hold it inside of herself by her sheer will. That he finds her worthy out of all the world to be the one to touch this way.

"I couldn't do that. You look so peaceful when you sleep. Who am I to disturb beautiful things in the universe?"

He raises an eyebrow, and shakes his head. Beautiful things in the universe?

... All right. Well.

There will be plenty of time for her to watch him be beautiful.

"I am asking you to."

She blinks at him, again, taking a moment as if considering it. That listlessness that comes when she no longer is trapped by her first urge to say what she thinks everyone wants to hear, but what she actually is thinking.

"You know it's not that easy for me to ask anything, from anyone." Her fingers fiddle, brushing against his jacket. "But I can promise to try?"

"You are not asking me. I am offering."

If that helps at all. That this isn't something she wants from him, but something he is very willing to give. He won't pressure her to do anything, but he truly hates the idea that he might be unaware that she's struggling with something because he's asleep.

"I'm here for you."

In all things.

She sighs, deeply, touching his face warmly, kindly, always so adoring of him. It was true, always still, it wasn't some idea of only having him and never sharing via some ancient idea about who belonged to who - or whatever thing they had told her about Earth. It was the simple fact that she can't imagine anyone else being like him.

No, really, it was simple what she felt, "I love you."

And the second those words are out of her mouth, she freezers, flinching away.

Love.

That's the word she talked about when she said she couldn't say what she feels she should say. Because Jack had locked her up with those exact words, as though it would somehow excuse anything, when it couldn't possibly be enough. Nothing would ever be enough to make up for his actions.

He doesn't chase her when she flinches away, but he doesn't move back either. Nor does he say anything. At least for a moment, he has to watch silently to see what follows, before he makes any decisions about what to do.

She'd say she felt like she'd been hit in the face, but what did it mean when you had accidentally hurt yourself? Struck at her own fears and terrified paranoia.

Which comes directly to one point. "Please don't say it. Please don't ever say it."

Raised you right, didn't I pumpkin? You know he won't be different, allll the same. No one else but me.

"I'm sorry - I didn't mean - we can talk about something else? Outside is red. High iron content, probably, oxidizes in the dirt. Stains it. Pandora isn't red. It's yellow and brown, though since the Eridium vein cracked, it's scarred purple. Now the psychos are too. Purple psychos, leaking slag all over their bodies. It's the fastest mutation I have ever seen in a wild group, not under pressure testing to enforce it happens quicker. That's what happened to Krieg. Krieg was a Hyperion test. Was a whole normal guy now he looks like if you and Charles were stuffed into one body, though that's for Maya, I like yours and Charles body as they are - when I used to speak into his mind, he screech the blue eyes were following him and he wanted to carve them into his head, like his pretty lady, it was kind of cute, then he'd - "

It's words, it's just endless words, all truth and facts and earnest observations she usually kept to herself. Anything so she doesn't have to pause and acknowledge anything she'd just said. Just talks and talks and talks. Without a filter, those gruesome awful details she usually tried to spare just kept on coming.

" - So then, the Destroyer just ate Commandant Steele. Just opened its mouth and swallowed her whole. Nothing left. Not even a bit of blood. I wonder if anyone would notice you bleeding in the sand outside? It's so red."

She's suddenly talking very, very fast, and Ratonhnhaké:ton barely hears half of it. She seems to be turning in on herself and he worries he didn't do the right thing, frozen in place for a good while, until he does the only thing he knows to do.

He reaches for her. Takes a step closer and takes hold of her lower arm - gently, wouldn't dream of trying to hold her in place now - and slides his hand down until he can curl his fingers around hers.

"Angel. Stop."

Spoken as gently as his touch, more a request than demand. She needs to stop. Slow down. Everything is fine.

" - maybe we can run tests on it, break down its mineral content, it looks like there is equipment for it - "

Until he asks her to stop, and her teeth click against themselves. Silent. Watching. That half pause wherein a second, right now, she will run. One word and she will bolt like the frightened animal she is. Blinking at him, a half breath of a shiver that runs through her body. A tremor she can't even pretend she doesn't have, this wound that never seems to heal.

When she doesn't act immediately - doesn't tense up, doesn't run, doesn't jerk away - he tightens his grip on her hand and gently urges her to come closer. He doesn't pull. Won't try to force her to do anything. He just wants her to come back to him.

"Breathe, Angel. You are safe."

She goes, the little touch all that's needed to make her come close. To lead her to press her ear against his chest and take his heart in like that first drunken step. Guided then like now, easily falling into him. What he offered her, comfort without restraint.

"I don't want to be safe, I want to be free."

When she presses her ear against him, he lifts his other hand to put it on her head, curling his fingers to gently rub them gently against her scalp.

"I know."

He's not sure he can help her much with that, as much as he'd like to. And as much as he could tell her that she is free, that no one here will lock her up or force her to do anything, that she has every right to deny anyone anything, it won't free her from the scars or the memories. Even when everything has passed, they still linger.

"I know you know." she rubs her cheek against his chest. "I think that's why I never run, even when I want to."

It was a simple thing, really. But it was everything. The only thing she ever wanted. Now or always.

"I know you know what it means to me. Why I'll always come back, I think, no matter what. You're my first choice, in everything, because you understand, and it's not that no one else matters to me, its just that... They're not you, they'll never be like you."

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