goneawaymemes | TDM #2

Entry tags:

*test drive meme

TDM #2

TEST DRIVE #1

So it's your first day at your new job! Welcome to the Jorgmund Family™! It's time to settle into your new workplace on the Piper 90 rig, the coziest place of employment this side of the Livable Zone. A leader in its industry, Jorgmund is excited to have you join them in enthusiastically envisioneering team-driven paradigms.

The Piper 90 rig's mission is not only an impressive undertaking in terms of impactful customer-oriented deliverables, it's providing a vital backbone to the Livable Zone by creating a safe region for citizens to live, work, and play. Jorgmund's "outside the box" thinking means they understand the importance of wisely investing in their human capital - you! You'll soon find that you'll take pride in this vital work - and the benefits can't be beat.

Rest assured, Jorgmund's multidisciplinary approach to our world's period of recovery means we know how to keep it real when facing this opportunity for restructuring and growth. Jorgmund: Even if most of the world has gone away, we can make a world of difference!

Synergy!

USEFUL LINKS
It is recommended you check out the following links first for info on the rig, rig conditions, game mechanics, and the intro and slideshow your characters would have to endure that takes place chronologically before the Test Drive Meme:

Welcome/Arrival | Rig Weather & Hazards | Rig Setting Page | Game Mechanics

SCENARIO #1 - MOVE-IN?! MOVE OUT!

Well, hell, that was fast. Basically as soon as orientation's over, everyone gets shuffled into armored vehicles and a few boxes of gear are tossed in after them. Motion detectors, flimsy medical face masks, and... guns. Guns with flamethrowers. Even for the old hands at this, that's a new attachment, but the boxes all of the gear is in has electronic locks that refuse to open.

Before anyone gets any ideas, the doors are closing. The last view they get inside the Rig is a pair of medical workers dragging someone out of the 'interview' room, a tall muscular man in mismatched combat fatigues. Even without the twitching, the way he hangs limply in their arms leaves little doubt that whoever he was, he won't be joining them for cake. One of them carries his removed helmet, the other carries a removed body armor. On the chestplate a skull and crossbones can be seen, on the backplate are the words "contents under pressure."

When one of them sees them staring, she says, "Epilepsy, it seems, no doubt aggravated by Stuff exposure. We'll be taking good care of him."

Right, because the military lets epileptics in all the time, don't they.

They will never see him again. If asked about him later, they'll say he was transported to the Livable Zone, for the very best care in a proper hospital. Of course they wouldn't hire someome with health issues for a potentially stressful job like theirs, they aren't monsters.

The truth is he will get more coherent later and start complaining of a stomach ache, scans will verify something alarming, and he will be quietly killed with sedatives and quickly incinerated.

Before it's too late.

a) TAKEN FOR A RIDE
They're left to get to know each other, with the driver (in a separate compartment) informing them that they'll be at their destination in about four hours.

Meanwhile, for their viewing pleasure, there's a marathon of The Nutshack. Working media in the Gone-Away World is sometimes...lacking.

b) A LATE EASTER
...Blissfully, it's interrupted some three hours later. The boxes all click, allowing the unfortunates to grab the gear, and the Nutshack ends abruptly as the face of a harried middle manager takes up the screen, people walking back and forth behind her with the faked urgency of people who know the boss is watching. "All right, New Hires. I know some of you have just been hired, but we here in Jorgmund like our people to be able to hit the ground running." She smiles blandly, in that corporate way where no muscle above her nose so much as twitches. "This mission should be a milk run for you, though, a good way to stretch your legs and show what you're made of. It's just a bit of a delivery job, that's all. You'll be making your way to the old Pilton town, recently the site of an Incursion. To go with the milk, you're grabbing us some eggs."

Suddenly, her image contracts to the lower left corner of the screen. The main screen is filled with a single image, rotating slowly. "Our resident biology experts think that the life forms that hatch from these will be very useful in advancing various areas of science, plus they might be able to resist Stuff storms. We want an unhatched egg, drone footage shows that there's a good number of them are already empty."

Another image, this time of some kind of glowing box. "The engineers say that this will keep the eggs, and their cargo, in a kind of stasis. Just get one in there and it's mission accomplished. Easy, right? Makes me wonder why we even hauled you guys out of orientation for it." She shrugs, tossing a folder aside and glancing at a paper someone's just passed her. "Oh, right. Pilton's a write-off. They rejected our offers of help with this whole mess when it started up, so they're probably all infected with Stuff or some shit anyway, so safeties off and fire is free. Don't kill each other but anyone else is fair game. You're probably doing them a favor somehow anyway, we don't need mutants mucking up the place."

She sets everything down and leans in, filling the screen again. "Yeah, and just so you newbies know the drill, don't run. You remember what it felt like during orientation." They've already felt the first bite of the nanochains. "We got trackers in you and we don't appreciate it when our boys go AWOL after we go through all of the trouble of saving their lives from the Wilds." The transmission ends and all that's left is a map of Pilton displaying, with the cartoon's audio still playing in the background.

The vehicles all clank to a stop and open the doors. Pilton looks to be a mid-sized town, might've been home to a few tens of thousands of people once. Curiously, a tall, thick wall surrounds much of it, but something's knocked holes in it. It's in front of one of these gaps that the trucks have stopped. Inside, a thick mist obscures all but the tallest buildings, half-ruined by some disaster. Lots of shorter, squatter buildings just barely poke over the top. But some of them seem to have some sort of newer additions, a black, shiny, organic support for a few buildings. Hard to see details, though, because of heavy mist obscuring vision. The map suggests that there's a subway system... or possibly just an oversized sewer. It's hard to tell, but the way the drivers honk, so they can leave, they're not giving any more time to decide.

Motion detectors on? Locked and loaded? It's time to go. Just ignore the feeling that you're being watched.

c) THIS WAY FOR SENSITIVITY TRAINING
Well, it turns out that those eggs? They hatch sometimes! If you're lucky, this side will be all that you see. If not, well...

The radios crackle and the manager's voice comes back on, for everyone. "We're seeing some funky bio readings. Yeah, the Science department thought that one or two of you might get jumped. It's fine, just don't lose whoever that is. Pop your stasis box around them, it'll expand, and drag them back to the trucks. You can try pulling them off, I guess, but they want to see what happens when someone gets up close and personal."

There's a pause.

"Oh, uh. Don't try to pull them off. Got a report from another crew that it'll tear and dribble acid over everything. Well, we at Jorgmund appreciate the lengths you all are willing to go for the company and it'll reflect in your quarterly performance reviews." That's small comfort for anyone who's at risk of being down a man.

Then again, at the noise, there are moans from the walls and ceilings. There's a few people stuck in there, some with those creepy things wrapped tight around their necks and faces... some with with them lying dead at their feet. Some of them aren't making so much noise on account of the massive, gaping hole in their chests.

Something's hissing and writhing around your ankles, by the way.

About to spring.

d) YOU DONE KNOCKED OVER THE ANT HILL
Did you get lost? Not to worry, if those motion detector pings are anything to judge by, you're about to have lots of company! They're big! They're fast! They're black, shiny, and can climb on the walls!

Oh, and these guys bleed acid too.

The manager's voice on the radio blares out loudly. Too loudly. "By the way, it sounds like you guys have company! Did we mention that Jorgmund has excellent medical benefits and a highly trained staff with the latest equipment? Don't be afraid to get into a bit of a scrap! And remember, teamwork makes the dream work! So fire up those flamethrowers and show them how Jorgmund takes care of the competition!"

As bad as everything is, at least you can hide from them for a bit. And, hey, that civilian stickied to the wall who got all chummy with the alien babies? The one you might not have managed to seal into the box correctly? They're waking up now! An extra hand to fight these guys off will be handy! Especially since the monsters seem to be trying to guide you away from the exits, pushing you further into the hive.

e) MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS
So, a heartless, soulless, people-eating monster who doesn't care who suffers as long as the numbers go up? Boy, that sure sounds familiar.

Whether it was a tactical withdrawal, a blind rush, went in to rescue a pal, or you were dragged into a lower chamber after being snatched up by a batch of drones, you're now in a vast chamber filled with eggs. And there's the Queen hissing her displeasure at your company. And you thought the regular guys were huge.

She's lounging on the wall, attached to a pulsating ovipositor that stretches the length of this massive room, surrounded by smaller drones caring for her and the eggs surrounding her. But, luckily, it looks like before the bugs... adapted this whole mess to suit themselves, it was a construction site, and the hive resin hasn't quite covered some of the equipment.

Or some of the barrels with explosive warnings written on them.

Whatever you're going to do, think fast. This lady's no pushover, and she's the kind of boss who likes to get her hands dirty to show the troops that she still has what it takes.

Due to Stuff shenanigans reality will glitch, making this fight one that must be accomplished possibly quite a few times before reality allows her to be dead.

Because she doesn't believe she would die that easily.

Every time she dies, she'll come just a little closer to being gone for good.

f) HOMECOMING KING
Maybe you were there for all that. Maybe you missed it. Maybe you actually did your job. Somebody must have, because you're out there in the open air. The wind is sweeping through the ruins of Pilton, a refreshing rain washing away all of the evil that's been committed there. Even the manager's voice, congratulating everyone on a successful mission complete, ordering everyone back to the armored vehicles, seems upbeat and chipper.

Gather your wounded. Pick up your trophies. Usher civilians you may have saved against orders into the transports. It's time to go home. Your team's about halfway there when thunder booms menacingly in the background. Seems to be a messy storm coming, so it'll be a relief to be inside.

...Funny, that thunder just now. Thunder's supposed to come after lightning not-ah. There it is. Maybe it was an echo of a flash you didn't notice.

But don't echoes get quieter?

That's when a big fella comes around the corner. It turns its head, looking dead at your group, and the hiss it makes is a nightmarish mingling of a bull crocodile and one of the drones from inside. And then it roars, charging towards your group, massive tail smashing part of a building to rubble as it goes.

Bullets aren't going to be enough for this tyrant.

Even worse: the ground suddenly shudders even more, rumbling and shaking in a great cacophonous outpouring of sound...

And you see that the smaller version of the creatures aren't the only ones that travel in packs.

g) ON THE ROAD AGAIN
That was awful. But it's over now. The ride home is quiet, with the dulcet tones of Bob Ross filling the air on the way back. Rest, relax, drink some water, have some rations, and check up on your friends. Because after an experience like that, what else can they be?

If any New Hires have saved a civilian against orders, hopefully you're not in one of the unlucky trucks where they're starting to groan and clutch at their chest, face contorting in agony. Hopefully that's not a fellow passenger for you, and you can just ride home.

OOC DETAILS
➤ Feel free to play around with powers. If your character has powers from canon you want to play around with, go for it. If you'd like to test out possibilities for game powers, also go for it. Feel free to change it up from thread to thread if you need to. This can be handwaved as exposure to Stuff making characters' powers shift a few times before settling.

➤ Potential players may use test drive threads as their log samples. However, at least one post in their thread must fit the requirements for apps, both in length (200 words) and in quality. If you do plan on using a thread as a sample, please make sure the writing throughout your threads is a good example of your writing skills and has some solid examples of the character's voice.

➤ Players can eventually count TDMs towards AC. They can only count towards comment-based AC proofs.

➤ Potential players can opt to keep these threads as game canon when they app in, or start over fresh, based on preference. The Stuff bringing them to the game universe can fog their memories, if players don't want their character to remember TDM threads when introing into the game.

➤ The game is invite-only. Players without invites are allowed to tdm since some of them may know someone in game to ask for one, and since some people enjoy TDMs just for fun in games they don't plan to app into. But an invite is required during the apping process.

➤ The game is at a starting cap at 30 players. Apps are rolling apps that have a wait queue if the cap has been exceeded. Currently the cap is 23 of 30 players.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Wash has more than one ticking time bomb in his body. The nanochain seems to come bog standard for all these New Hires, but the implant...]

[Even if there's no actual explosive in his head (which he doesn't trust), even if it's something they can pop without making his head blow up, their ability to make it break down and dissolve remotely? Provided that it doesn't cause him to stroke out, there's a life-altering consequence.]

[And if he succumbs to it, how long will he even last in this place? He doesn't know how bad the brain damage is, how functional he'll be. Wash is a survivor, he likes to think that he could maybe recover over time from something like that, hopes he could still strike out into some kind of worthwhile existence even if he can only heal so far. But he can only do those things - heal or find some new normal - somewhere safe.]

[By giving him the brain implant, they've given him a second chance but it's just so they can dangle something else other than death over his head: helplessness. Death from the internal shock collar is a quick way to go, something he might risk facing for a chance at freedom, but being helpless in this place, having to rely on others? There are niggling instincts that tell him maybe a part of him knows how to do that - but if there is one, it's definitely the part locked on the other side of the memory block they said the implant caused.]

[And even if there was a part of him that knew how to do it, it's one he'd have to body check because that only worked with people that could be relied on.]

[Those don't exist. They never really did. Right now - as always - it's him against the world. That means that when Jorgmund tells him to go on a mission, he does. That means when the objective seems sketchy, he ignores it. That means when their mission liaison answers his objections over not getting his armor back with "We'd like to see what you can do without it, Agent Washington," he simply says, "Yes, ma'am."]

[That also means when the liaison says "We hope you understand that your loyalty is to the mission and that you are to hold yourself to that above any other loyalties, including your teammates," he says, "Understood."]

[Of course the mission comes first. This is just another prison and this little deal he'd made - to be Jorgmund's eyes in the field, to make sure someone sabotaged any efforts the group made to go off script - was just another deal to get him out, same as the last one.]

b) A late easter

Motion detectors.

[And a picture of a very suspicious and oddly familiar egg. And a town that's eerily quiet.]

[And they didn't give him back his armor. He's regretting not pushing harder for it now, but chances are they would've still said no, and right now his deal with them is tenuous. He can't risk pushing too hard too early.]

[Wash clicks the proximity alarm to be extra sensitive. They've all got sensors to make sure it doesn't pick up friendlies, and potential attackers have to move faster than a certain threshold anyway, so he wants it to be able to pick up if a rat so much as sneezes.]

[Wash eyeballs the other gear, picking it up.]

And flamethrowers. [At least they look like they're not as low tech as some of the other tech on the rig and are therefore portable.]

[After they're geared up, the drivers start driving away. He sighs the wearily comfortable sigh of someone who sighs frequently.]

And our transport is getting as far away as humanly possible. All of this is just so promising.

[One thing others might find promising, at least he's reassuringly comfortable with his weapons, loading them and getting them ready with the experience of someone who's constantly had a gun in his hands for over a decade.]

c) THIS WAY FOR SENSITIVITY TRAINING

[Wash doesn't just automatically shoot at the facehugger writhing near his feet. He jumps back and then aims his gun. Even with putting some distance between them, a few droplets of acid sizzle through his pants and hit his legs once the thing practically explodes from the bullets. Jorgmund wasn't joking about the acid being under pressure.]

[He winces, but keeps moving, not even bothering to treat it. One of the last things he remembers from home is getting hit by a Warthog and trying to climb over the hood to shoot at the driver. It's not easy to keep him down.]

[He mutters under his breath, his tone an almost perfect imitation of the smarmy middle manager.]

'Let's see what you can do without your armor,' they said. It's not like you'll need a helmet or anything.

[He expected more common sense from that frequently delusional soldier on the red team. Wash isn't even sure of his real name since they only called him "Sarge." He vaguely wonders if his actual name is "Sarge" because he can't actually imagine him having a real name. At least the man seemed like he thought body armor was mandatory dress for all conditions.]

Cover me. Someone needs to... [There's the briefest hitch in his voice] - do something for these people.

[He may be a soldier, and is certainly comfortable with killing people that might not deserve it if he feels he needs to - like when he shot those two red team soldiers. He's even comfortable with a certain degree of civilian collateral. But at the end of the day, things like Project Freelancer were supposed to be protecting people. They had utterly failed at it, but all the soldiers that signed up for it had thought they were doing the right thing.]

[It doesn't feel wrong, but sometimes even if you can do something, that doesn't mean it feels good. That's the least they deserve - that someone might feel uncomfortable with what needs to be done - and that they'll still do it anyway.]

[The second he has someone at his back, he takes out his sidearm to do the job, going towards the nearest groaning person with an open egg right in front of them. He wants to save the larger rounds in his assault rifle for...whatever laid these. (And even though it seems impossible, he's fairly certain he knows what did).]

[The facehuggers are the babies. If this is anything like the movies (why is it like the movies??) he knows what's inevitably coming next will be a lot bigger.]

d) YOU DONE KNOCKED OVER THE ANT HILL

[He's clearly engaging in some positive self talk as he fires at one alien after another, prioritizing the ones lunging closest.]

It's just aliens. You've fought aliens. Maybe they didn't have pressurized acid blood and didn't lay eggs in your chest but you've fought aliens.

[He's by nature a very brave person, who has indeed fought in a war with aliens.]

[He's also seen the Aliens movies and that pushes this a small degree into 'aaah what the fuuuuck??']

[Breathe, just breath. Count rounds. His brain ticks an ongoing ammunition count and every time he's close to out of bullets, he's ready with the flamethrower in the other hand, pushing the aliens back so he has a chance to reload.]

[Whoever Wash is with can at least be reassured by the fact they're with someone pretty competent. Maybe even hyper-competent compared to the average person. The way the muscular, blonde soldier carries himself is tense but he's definitely sweeping through the room and controlling the chaos around him.]

[But they're still getting awfully crowded in.]

There are too many! Head towards the exit, we need to fall back to a more defensible position!

We also need to cover each other when we reload. Do call outs when you're close. We can cover each other with powers or the flamethrowers.

[If the other person doesn't, in fact, have a weapon, he hasn't noticed because all he's looked up enough to see is that they're a teammate.]

[Also, who would be dumb enough not to bring a gun to an alien fight? The fact they offered flamethrowers and gave them a picture of a very unearthly egg should've been a clue.]

g) ON THE ROAD AGAIN

[Wash is exhausted. Because weird...confusion power or not, otherwise he is 100% human, and he's used to having his armor helping to take the edge off of just about everything. That's what power armor is for, it's protective, so you take on less injuries, it eases the burden of movement slightly, it's got life support functions to help regulate your temperature, etc etc.]

[He's been hurt, even shot, while in his armor. He barely survived the latter. But he hasn't been this exact combination of hurt, dog tired, dehydrated, and sweaty since basic training. Or...there was another time wasn't there? A time he couldn't move. There was a room and figures frozen - no, whatever memory he'd been thinking of slips out of his hands like soap in the bath.]

[Even worse - the water bottles waiting for them in the transport he's in have some kind of un-removable no-spill sippy top that prevents you from just guzzling water, and he can't seem to pry the lip off when his fingers are practically numb from the cold, since they're passing through desert that's rapidly cooling as night falls.]

Why is this childproof?

[It's the weird cherry on the shit sundae that today has been.]

[And it's definitely gone to shit because he purposefully flipped the bird to the mission objective and is dreading what might result from that. Before they left he made sure to damage as many of the storage units as possible, enough to kill what was inside.]

[He was smart about it. Set the temperature regulation too low until the eggs and facehuggers froze solid, then knocked them to the ground enough to shatter what was inside. Then he grabbed the dismembered arm of one of the drones and ruined a very nice knife he kind of wanted to keep to strategically splash acid over each one of them. By the time they got back to the rig, the contents would be an acid filled mess. He even took some light spray to his fore-arm and a few droplets to the face for his efforts that he was going to pretend happened during the battle. He'd needed the transport medic to dilute the acid down and they'd bandaged it for now, with some kind of healing gel.]

[Those things needed to stay as far away from civilization as possible, and that included the thousands of people - including kids and innocent families - on the rig.]

[He's already mentally rehearsing what he'll say to explain not completing his first mission objective. Unfortunate damage during the battle, they should've warned them about the acid. They'd been going black on ammo. The New Hires have nanochains because they're that much of an asset that Jorgmund can't leave them volunteering to chance, and they were looking at a full team wipe if they hadn't prioritized escape, etc etc.]

[It's about protecting the more important asset over the other. Of course. No other reason.]

[It's a tight rope he has to walk here, the lying. But he's used to lying his face off to a commanding officer. He'd done it the entire time he'd worked against to expose Project Freelancer. There are times he'll just do what he's told but this...this time was different.]

[For some reason he's erring closer to the side of rebellion than caution here. He doesn't entirely know why. Not very long ago he'd cut a deal to get out of prison and killed two members of the Red Team he'd worked with, to make it clear he meant business and only left one alive to call down a medic.]

[And he's made a similar deal here, sold his soul yet again, promised to add to the mountain of regrets he'd already built up. There is far too much he's risking losing. But there'd also been the tiniest thread of shame, a vague feeling like he'd be disappointing someone if he just did what they said.]

[The problem is: he has no clue who it is he'd be disappointing. If there was someone, the memory block caused by the implant means he can't remember. But the feeling had still been there, so he'd acted on it impulsively - and had to hope he could be convincing enough to make them buy it.]

[He turns to the driver.] Do you think you can turn up the heat?

["No," the driver grunts. "My pay is higher if I save on gas."]

[Wash lets his head thud back against the side of the transport and then takes a sip from his sippy cup, wallowing in the indignity of it all.]

Worst. Mission. Ever.

Of all time.

[He really, really means it this time.]

Edited 2020-09-15 03:47 (UTC)

[There's some mental calculus that needs to be done here. These humans are clearly trapped, possibly impregnated. Alia bleeds out the higher colors, lowering the wavelengths that her eyes process until the visible colors start sliding over into the infrared spectrum, the heat painting over the hanging bodies.

The bugs don't give off heat, she can't see them using that method, but that much mass in someone's chest makes a difference.

As far as she can tell, there's no way to save someone once they've been infected. She doesn't know the gestation period. And Jorgmund has offered no evidence that they can, in fact, remove them safely. These humans will die, regardless of whether it's at the merciful hands of a New Hire or from the 'birth'.

She doesn't know Wash, he's too new, but she does have some files on human behavior and it's easy for her to play back and catch that little hitch in his voice.

He doesn't want to do it. Or, rather, he regrets the necessity. Either way, it would cause him emotional harm to euthanize these victims. She considers their possible lifespans, his possible life span, the emotional trauma it would cause, just what they'd need to do to chance one of these people coming back intact, and the chances that they'd need the ammunition later on.

It takes 0.0024 seconds for her to process all of the variables and come to a conclusion. The First Law demanded she do nothing that could harm a human. But allowing them to die in fear and agony would be so much more harmful, and that dropped a brick on her mental scales. One hand drops to his shoulder, gently pushing him aside. The other morphs, transforming into an arm cannon, a high pitched whine starting up.]

Stand aside, sir. You need to conserve your ammunition. My weapon is solar powered, I won't run out any time soon.

[He'd probably take that so much better than 'I think you're going to hate yourself too much for having to do this.' The decision is twisting in her belly, and she'd be sick if she were human, but Alia's ethical calculus has already played the situation out. Her tone is filled with regret, but... Well, what else could be done?]

You can turn away.

[They don't have time to argue, but the ammo thing is definitely valid. He has a feeling he's going to need a lot of ammo before the day is done and they only packed in so much. If he uses his sidearm ammo on anything, it'll be the facehuggers instead.]

[She's wearing armor like his and he's a little jealous she got to bring hers along. It's a little...pink, but so was that red soldier he shot. He assumes military - who else wears armor like that?]

[That means she's likely just as mentally equipped. And even if he could do it and walk away, he's just not super keen on killing any innocent civilians today. He'll take the out.]

I'll cover you.

[He keeps the sidearm out because there's less of a chance the facehuggers closing a distance beyond the barrel of his rifle that way. They move fast enough he wants as much reaction time as possible.]

[Well, at least she didn't have to argue. The look at her armor is noted, but she just trades him a cocked eyebrow for it.]

This won't be long.

[She'd love to take the time, figure out some way to surgically remove the acidic little worm-bug-things in their chests. But she's not a doctor. Perhaps with a Life Saver-class... But no.

She'd also love to take the time to apologize to them. But there wasn't any time for sentimentality. Alia steps to the side of the first victim, levels her buster, and simply lets loose with a burst of plasma that rips through the bodies cocooned to the wall. Against a weapon designed to battle enemies with heavier armor than hers, human flesh is only so much matter. She'd love to say that the damage she could do comes as a shock to her, but she's seen too much over the years.

Two more, much smaller, shots to take care of the few people who hadn't been aligned just right and she sighs, then moves to walk past Wash.]

The others might be in trouble. And we've still got a mission to accomplish.

[As much as she tries, she can't quite keep that bitter tone out of her voice.

Besides, the noise of that first burst... wasn't exactly quiet. She fully expects the motion sensors to start pinging at any second.]

[ Carolina is tired. It's a familiar kind of tired: bone deep and tinged with failure, and she hates that. She also hates that the acid scoring on her left leg is considerably more real than Wash's. Two drops, but the fuckers went in one side and out the other and even "highly advanced medical technology" doesn't keep that shit from hurting.

And Washington is here.

There's the soft cracklepop of Carolina cutting the top off a bottle with a knife while he's complaining, then she throws back her head and downs it. It's a couple more seconds in which to think.

Is Wash a threat?

Possibly. But that would require him to know what she's planning, and to seem hostile. He hasn't so far, and Wash... well. He was a lot of things, but an amazing liar? Carolina never really paid close enough attention to the guy to see that kind of evidence.

If it becomes a problem, she will solve it. Later. She's tired and pissed off and mostly just resents that someone who knew her once can see how the mighty have fallen.

She doesn't have it in her to figure out the ins and outs of potentially killing one of the last of her old friends.

For now. ]

Saying things like that is how you set yourself up for disappointment later, Wash.

There's always a worse mission.

[ There's no amusement in it. ]

[That voice. It can't be...]

[Wash leans forward, craning his neck to look down the transport at the people that came in after him. He'd been so exhausted he'd mostly sat back and breathed.]

[But there she is, down the transport a little, across from him. Unmistakable. Even the misery over the outcome of the mission is palpable and familiar. She was always in a whole Mood like this if a mission didn't go as planned. Even her disappointment is familiar.]

[He actually had not noticed her until now, which was a failure of his environmental awareness he immediately kicked himself over, but also a cluelessness she might not be entirely shocked by. It's the kind of vapid, rookie move of the Wash of yore.]

[(He's very tired right now, okay? So sue him.)]

You're not dead.

[A long pause.]

And here.

[He squints, trying to make sense of that. And then takes a sip from his sippy thermos, in deep thought, with no regard for dignity.]

[A pause.]

Does this mean I'm dead?

[The whole thing feels like a punishment - the implant, the nanochain - the being forced on missions under-equipped with under-trained people not used to working in a cohesive unit.]

[His mind has, at times, not had the best connection to reality and that means he has to question the reality around him sometimes. Reorient. What if he hadn't survived whatever caused the brain damage they claimed he had? What if thinking he's still alive is part of the punishment?]

[With the life he's lived, he really couldn't expect something nice after death, if anything existed after death at all.]

Edited 2020-09-16 01:35 (UTC)

If I'm dead, it's a really big surprise.

[ Here she is, quietly judging him like she always did. ]

I see you're as observant and alert as I remember.

[ See? Judging. ]

[In the past, Wash might have let that slide. The same way you sigh and let it slide when your friends mock you for the umpteenth time for having your nuts grappled.]

[But it's been a long time since he's seen Carolina. A lot's happened since then: Recovery One, the end of project Freelancer, a short stint in a military prison...]

[So instead his voice gets dryer than a tumbleweed.]

We're in another dimension where people broke reality with magic fairy dust that grants nightmares [He wiggles his fingers] we got put on a mission with people who don't know how to fire a gun, and we just fought chest-bursting, acid-spewing aliens from the movies.

And I'm talking to my friend who supposedly fell off a very high cliff.

[He holds up a finger.]

I think questioning my entire reality and wondering if this is a very punishing afterlife is incredibly observant.

Agent Washington | Red vs. Blue | cw: mercy killing for option C

C

no subject

no subject

g

Re: g

no subject

no subject

g

no subject

no subject

g

no subject

no subject

no subject

B

no subject

no subject

g

Re: g

Re: g

D

Re: D

no subject

a.