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

[wherewoof]

Colden didn't see what was so funny. Really, he should just go, but he hadn't finished finding music to put on his SCA, and leaving might be seen as running away, soooo. He was kind of. Stuck between a rock and his pride.

He didn't back away when Grimmjow came closer, tipping his head back to watch him. "Now what do you want?"

[kingcat]

"Nothin'," Grimmjow replies lazily. "Just lookin' for somethin' to do, and watchin' people get goosebumps is kinda fun."

[wherewoof]

Colden crossed his arms, shifting his weight a little. "So you're an asshole. Figured that out already."

[kingcat]

Grimmjow rolls his eyes. "What, you expected a hollow to be nice? Tch," he scoffs, folding his arms over his chest. "D'you even know what a hollow is? We're what happens when a soul suffers and loses its heart. An' that happened to me thousands of years ago. Since then I been eatin' other souls to get stronger an' stronger. There are only two hollows left that are stronger than me," he holds up two fingers to illustrate his point. "And I ain't gonna stop until I'm stronger than them two, and can kill that jackass Kurosaki." It's that last part that's going to be hardest -- and Colden may've even seen that name on the train's roster.

[wherewoof]

That explained a lot, actually, but it didn't make Colden feel sorry for him or anything. It didn't usually work out well for people who were power hungry. Also, assuming Colden remembered every name on the roster? Pfft.

"Good luck with that," he said flatly. "Why the focus on one person? What'd they do to you?"

[kingcat]

Grimmjow reaches down to the hem of his shirt, pulling it up to reveal his chest all the way to his collar bone. Just above the hem of his pants is a hole, going straight through his abdomen. It isn't ripped or jagged, but smooth, and goes all the way through like someone's punched through him with a cookie cutter. The inner surface of the hole is inky black.

But that isn't what Grimmjow is trying to show him. No, he's showing the scar that goes up from the top edge of that hole, all the way to his throat, where it's joined by a different scar, which Grimmjow obscures with his hand. "This mark, goin' straight down me? This is from Kurosaki, the first time we fought. I underestimated him, an' I ain't gonna do it again."

[wherewoof]

Sorry, but it was the hole that Colden stared at for a long moment, both riveted and horrified. It wasn't like any wound he'd ever seen before, and he couldn't be sure it was a wound, but what else could it be?

After another moment, he finally wrenched his gaze away from it, looking at the actual scar he was supposed to be seeing. Except his attention kept flickering back down to the hole even then. "What were you fighting over?"

[kingcat]

The question gets a blink, as if he expects Colden to just know, even though he doesn’t even know what a hollow is. “I fought him cause he was strong.” He says it like Colden’s stupid. Technically there’s more reason to it than that, but the core of why he’d done it, every single time, was to test himself against someone like himself — strong, fierce, unafraid.

And, maybe, because Ichigo had treated him like an equal, moreso than anyone else ever had.

[wherewoof]

"And...is that it?" Colden was still staring at the hole, sorry. But at least he managed to look up after a moment. "That's why you want to kill him?" That...wasn't a very good reason, honestly. In fact, it was pretty shit.

[kingcat]

Grimmjow shrugs. “Well... he’s a soul reaper and I’m a hollow. Fightin’ is what we do, if we cross paths.”

[wherewoof]

Frowning, he considered that for a moment. "Why?" What was a soul reaper?

He couldn't take it anymore; he had to ask. "And why do you have a hole in you?"

[kingcat]

Grimmjow lets out a bark of a laugh and sticks his own hand into his hole. "It's cause hollows are hollow, get it?" He completely ignores the first question and grins, pulling his hand out of the hole and lowering his shirt again.

It's weird to have things in his hole, even if it's just his own hand.

[wherewoof]

Colden made a face when Grimmjow stuck his hand in the hole. "That's really weird. Does it hurt?" Was it just a physical representation of what a hollow had lost?

[kingcat]

That earns Colden an odd face, Grimmjow's lip curling a bit, like he smells something nasty. "Why the hell would it hurt? It's a hole, not a wound. Does your mouth hurt just 'cause it exists?"

[wherewoof]

"Does your face? Because it's killing me." He huffed out a breath, looking away for a moment. "It looks like it should hurt. The hole, not your face."

[kingcat]

Grimmjow barks out a laugh, shaking his head. "Nah, the hole's been there long 's I can remember. Don't hurt any more than any other part of me," he rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "Sides, even if it did I'd be used to it by now. I've had it for thousands a years."

[wherewoof]

"Thousands of years?" he repeated. That was way longer than he could even begin to wrap his head around. "That's a really long time." No shit, sherlock.

[kingcat]

He stares blankly at Colden for a moment, then reaches out and flicks the man's forehead with a finger tip. "You must be a hollow, too, with the hole inside your head."

[wherewoof]

Colden reached up to swat at his hand. "Shut up," he said, "Old man. What era are you from?"

[kingcat]

That gets another shrug. "I dunno. I don't remember what I was before a hollow. I musta been human."

[wherewoof]

"Do all hollows forget?" Was it part of...whatever happened to them? Or was it just because this guy was so old?

[kingcat]

"Nah, but all the ones strong as me have, but I ain't exactly had long conversations with the other hollows 'bout it," he replies, shrugging yet again. "Why's it matter ta you?" Furthermore, why is he even bothering to explain? This guy was nothing but a snack... but he is bored, and at least this guy doesn't run away like a coward. That's gotta be worth something.

[wherewoof]

"I have trouble imagining you having long conversations with anyone." Were they having a long conversation right now? Did this count?

Colden shrugged. "I'm curious is all. I've never heard of any of this stuff before." And it was better than being backed against a wall and insulted, for sure.

[kingcat]

If his grin is anything to go by, Grimmjow takes that as a compliment. "You're damn right. Only conversations I have are when I'm kickin' somebody's ass." Except for this one, apparently.

"Most humans ain't got a clue about this shit 'till they're in it."

[wherewoof]

"The ability to hold a conversation is a good thing, you know." Something something social skills.

"If we're being honest, I'm not human," he admitted. But he still hadn't known about any of this stuff.