Test Drive Meme 014

[voidtreckermods]

Welcome to the Test Drive Meme! Here is the place to see how your character might fit the setting, grab samples and have fun!

1. Post with your character, including their name and series in the subject. We’ve written out some prompts but feel free to make up your own, you have a whole train to play with!

2. Assume they've been around long enough for threads to jump right into the action.

3. Have lots of fun. Mandatory, mod-sanctioned fun.

Happy testing!

Making Music

The latest addition to the train is the Music Carriage, a double-decker space with reasonable acoustics and more tambourines than you can shake a drumstick at.

Upstairs, a small stage in the middle holds a piano, and seating aisles on either side run back to the ends of the carriage and the stairs back down. Curtains and basic stage lighting give some control over the performance space, or act as tools to annoy your fellow 'treckers.

Downstairs, boxes and racks of acoustic instruments up to the size of a guitar litter one side, along with sheet music, manuals, music stands and stools for the budding musician. The other end has several screens set into the wall, through which you can access either a jukebox or an extensive but ecclectic music library from millions of unknown worlds. Your SCA can store up to a hundred tracks for your personal enjoyment, so find your favourites. Or maybe you're the unfortunate soul who found that entire crate of recorders...

Green Fingers

The greenhouse is a surprisingly bright room, its vaulted ceiling made of a transparent, incredibly tough material that shows the light of the Void along the entire length of the room. The single metal support beams is bedecked in roses. The aisle of grass running through the centre of the carriage is riotous with strange plants and flowers, small stone paths leading off to this flowerbed or that.

Usually, this is a fairly calm place to be. Usually, someone hasn't smuggled a bag full of magical seeds back from a mission, and planted them all through the greenhouse. Seemingly overnight, the room has filled with a multitude of strange and wonderful plants. Dare you investigate?

Unplugged

The latest mission has the Voidtreckers in a strangely barren city, its citizens wearing skinsuits, wired gloves and headsets. Just like the ones the dressing car put you all in..? It makes more sense when you turn on the visor and the world comes alive around you. Welcome to Amp Online! The danger this time is in the virtual world overlaid with the physical, as a wave of animal-themed viruses sweep through the cyberscape, destroying livelihoods, and perhaps lives.

Team One

Primarily the fighting is limited to the virtual world. The locals are happy to upload basic combat software into Team One's gear, but the good stuff is locked behind paywalls. Hackable paywalls, definitely, but, luckily, the viruses seem to be dropping something called amp-cred when slain. Which... is apparently money, because the balance in the corner of your vision just ticked up. Time to grind. Wait, are those... limited edition skins?

Team Two

The technicians and sysads insist that the viruses are totally foreign to Amp Online. So... where did they come from? Team Two is tasked with deep-diving into the network, through back-end servers rendered by their gear into dungeon-like labyrinths. The 'monster' viruses are fewer here, but instead, paths are blocked by worms and barrier-like popups. You all have tracking apps and hacking software that looks oddly gamified. Go!

Team Three

Not all threats are online - after a while, a virus manages to follow a link back to the real world, and hijack something. A combat drone, a refridgerator, someone's car... Another follows, and another. Team Three are ejected from Amp Online to troubleshoot in the physical world, protecting data centers and civilian housing stacks from rogue machinery... or their own smart-homes. Ever fought a toaster? Alexa, play Ride of the Valkyries.

Comments

[messwithtexas]

"Hey, I'm not the one driving it!" At least crashing into a house seems to have stunned the car, which Lappland takes as an opportunity to regain her footing and stab it through the engine a few more times.

"Do you think it's dead? I'd die if I got stabbed that many times, but I don't know much about cars."

[crapmetal]

"You're the one stabbing it, asshole!" He tries pushing against it to get out of his predicament but the stabbing makes him back off. You know hard it is to get new fingers? He's not gonna risk losing one again.

"How the fuck should I know what stabbing a car does? My expertise is crashing 'em, not stabbing."

But he feels for the purr of the engine. "Its sputtering and coughing a lot so its definitely getting there."

[messwithtexas]

Oh, good. The stabbing resumes, with more enthusiasm.

"Then crash this one before it gets any more ideas!"

[crapmetal]

He recoils again from feeling the hood, barely missing more stabbing.

"I'd be crashing a lot more if some asshole wasn't stabbing fucking Herbie while Herbie's standing on my fucking foot!"

[messwithtexas]

"Oh, really? I figured my sword would just bounce off someone like you. Here, she's all yours."

Lappland finally stopps swinging her sword around, hopping off the good. Go nuts, Cliff.

[crapmetal]

"I'm not about to risk long a finger! They're valuable!"

He says, showing off his middle finger proudly.

But no, he's gonna try and shove the car off of him with some grunts of frustration. He does manage to make some space between himself and the car, but the car is still firmly in the forward gear. "Stupid piece of Knight Rider bullshit nonsense."

[messwithtexas]

Lappland watches, a little disappointed. She had imagined this guy just bashing the car to pieces, but it's not happening.

"I could go back to stabbing if this isn't going anywhere."

[crapmetal]

He can feel the judgement and its only making him more angry.

"Stop stabbing things! I don't know how sentient this thing is, I'm not gonna-"

It slams into him again. He growls and kicks it, leaving a giant dent. Which also happens to destroy his balance. The car proceeds to just run right over him, sending Cliff to the ground and soon trapped beneath the thing.

So not a good day.

[messwithtexas]

Lappland was expecting this to be a lot cooler than it is. She's starting to feel bad for this guy.

Still, she rolls her eyes and steps in to help lift. She's no robot, but she's strong as hell for a meat person. Maybe between the two of them, they can flip the thing over.

[crapmetal]

Cliff is only allowed to succeed if he immediately fails horribly afterwards.

That said, the combined mission of flipping a car over does seem to leave that thing spinning its wheels helplessly with no where to go.

He's gonna kick it again because anger is the only thing that's worked out for him so far. "Piece of crap. I never betrayed cars, why do cars gotta betray me?"

It revs pathetically.

[messwithtexas]

Lappland wipes her brow, exhaling with a sense of satisfaction. "Guess it's not going anywhere now... kind of feel like we should still kill it. You know, in case it gets unflipped later."

[crapmetal]

"You are way too jazzed about murdering a car. Did Thomas the Train kill your dad?"

She's got a point though, looking at it. "I wanna say you were on the right track stabbing the engine..."

[messwithtexas]

"It's a fun challenge. I've never tried to kill a car before, so I had to get creative."

With that, she hops up on the car's exposed underbelly, lining up a good stab to get the engine real good. "I'm Lappland."

[crapmetal]

"Don't make it a habit."

He tilts his head (as best he can), observing this. Trying to get a read on her.

"Cliff. Cliff Steele."

[messwithtexas]

She's a bit hard to get a read on. She does seem to be enjoying herself - a little too much, for how violent this job is - but doesn't seem to have any hostility spilling over towards Cliff.

One last precise stab impales the car, and its engine finally sputters and dies.

"I've never met someone who looks quite like you. Are you a robot?"

[crapmetal]

Enjoying violence is a language he can understand. More than he'd probably like.

"That's cause I'm one of a fucking kind. I'm the only robot like me."

[messwithtexas]

"For a one-of-a-kind robot, I'd think you'd be able to handle a car or two without help." She went there.

[crapmetal]

Wow. And the worst part is she's right.

He sputters angrily for a moment, trying to find the right insult. "I had it under control! I don't recall asking the furrball for her opinion!"

[messwithtexas]

Lappland laughs at the insult. Fair enough! Between the ears and the tail and the bits of rock poking out of her legs, she's not in a place to call out other people for being weird-looking.

"So what can you do? What's Cliff the One-of-a-Kind Robot's special trick?"

[crapmetal]

"I can shove my fist into your face so hard it blows up, how's that?"

Footnote: Cliff has not successfully pulled this off more than once.

[messwithtexas]

"Are you serious, or joking? Because if you really can do that, we should fight right now. The cars can wait."

If that was intended as a threat, it may have had the opposite of the intended effect.

[crapmetal]

Cliff's terminal case of "never back down" is flaring up dramatically. He adjusts his punk jacket confidently. Or an attempt at it. His body doesn't exactly move fast.

"You wanna go, Garfield? Because I'm all too ready to make lasangna outta you."

Cliff is already running dangerously close to using all the fictional animal references he has at his disposal.

[messwithtexas]

Who the hell is Garfield?

No time for that, sword out. "That's what I was hoping you'd say! Bring it on, tin can!"

Brute force and metal body versus berserk swordplay and originium arts. Who will win?!

[crapmetal]

Its a climatic battle, with chills and thrills aplenty.

Cliff status by the end of it is with the top half of his torso on one side of the lawn, and his legs on the other. He is, extremely pathetically, crawling towards said legs. "I bet I can still find a way to shove this boot up your ass!"

He's not getting anywhere fast.

[messwithtexas]

It's not like Cliff didn't get a few solid hits in himself. Lappland's got a black eye and her fair share of bruises in the aftermath of the brawl.

"What do you say we call this one a tie? I'm sorry I called you a tin can."