worldofmemeness | TEST DRIVE 01

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Welcome to the first Test Drive for Hex! Unlike most test drives, the scenarios included here also feature things that you can investigate with mod interaction. If at any point in your test thread, your character(s) want to investigate something further, please put a "HEY MODS" in your subject line to make it easy to find.

Don't feel limited to the scenarios presented - make up your own prompts as much as you want!

Reserves will open on the 7th and Applications on the 15th.

scenario one - the tree

In a grassy square in the Central District, wedged in between dorm halls, there is a tree. Far wider than it is tall, its leaves are just beginning to turn from yellow to orange, with a few green stragglers near the top and a growing carpet on the grass beneath it. At one end of the tree's reach, there is a picnic table, the sort with benches built in to either side.

Anywhere under the boughs, a distinct ticking, like the sound of a clock, can be heard. Moving about makes it clear that the sound is loudest nearest the trunk. Numerous small gears stick out of twists between branches, though they do not appear to move to the naked eye.

Someone has hung a string of orange lights in the branches for Halloween, along with some cotton spiderweb. No matter how closely you look, there doesn't seem to be an end where the lights plug in to anything. Otherwise, there is nothing unusual about the decorations.

In the center of the table, half-covered by leaves, there is an iron plaque that has not been particularly well-treated for rust. Some of the writing on it is almost legible. It is chill to the touch. Someone's carved their initials and a date into the end of one bench -

scenario two - the wrecking yard

Abandoned vehicles are by no means an unusual sight in the Sixth District. Abandoned buses are slightly more unusual. This particular bus has boarded up windows, a black light string hanging over the windshield, and the words HAUNTED HOUSE written along the side, where the old inoffensive public-transit advertisements have been painted over. The front door serves as the entrance; the back leads into the wrecking yard and the haunted "house" proper.

A girl in her late teens in slightly unsettling gothic lolita sits in a cheap folding chair around the front of the bus. She doesn't charge admission, though there is a candy bowl labeled for Donations on the card table next to her with a few bills and some change in it, in the center of a group of candles that burn in skull holders. She reminds everyone who passes her to please not touch the actors or props inside. Occasionally, mist from a smoke machine on the other side of the wooden fence billows around her ankles, almost seeming to form caressing fingers running down her legs.

Across the street from her, two men sit in a beaten up old pickup truck, the much taller man smoking cigarettes with the windows open. The shorter man fidgets almost uncontrollably, constantly glancing in the direction of the girl and her bus. Their voices aren't loud enough to hear distinctly from the haunted house side of the street, but the woman at the bus entrance shoots them occasional looks none-the-less, alternating between pleased smiles and blank stares. Painted along the sides of the truckbed, in much dirtier letters than those of the haunted house, is the phrase NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH.

scenario three - the party downtown

In a bar downtown, it's not much different from any other night of clubbing, except that everyone is wearing masks. Ranging from the elegant custom work of a nearby boutique (conveniently open even after sundown tonight, if you need to pick one up) to cheap colored paper held on with elastic handed out at the door of the bar, masks are the must-have accessory tonight. Indeed, many of the parties won't let you in if you don't have one.

Those paying careful attention might notice little dots of red on the necks of some of the partiers, especially those who seem a bit pale and have called off drinking for the night. Aside from that, though, it doesn't seem like anyone's really getting hurt; it's just a fun time for everyone. Except for the poor guy who made the mistake of wearing an owl mask and yellow contacts, anyway.

Just within hearing range of the beating bass of the clubs, a young woman in a red jacket holds a mask in her hands, turning it over and sometimes holding it to her face to look at in a window reflection. The long face of it calls to mind some kind of black dog, perhaps a Doberman or German Shepherd. She isn't dressed at all for an evening at the clubs, and has a canvas bag slung over her shoulder with the shape of heavy books straining the fabric at the bottom.

scenario four - the playground

Not everyone seems to be getting into the spirit. A playground near the center of the city has precious few decorations - save for a spiderweb on one of the swingsets that seems to be natural, not man-made. A pumpkin or two have been left near the edges, but they're all smashed, the orange guts running along in a streak that seems to blend into a thin line surrounding the entire perimeter.

The see-saw looks like the board's been freshly painted, but otherwise all of the equipment looks almost lonely and old. The rust on the metal stains everything an orange-red, and the slide in particular seems the worst hit. Still, everything is at least standing, and those who attempt to play on it will find it sturdy and warm in the cool night.

... Except for the merry go round. That one seems to be bent, as if someone very heavy sat on the edge. It still turns, but it wobbles dramatically, with horrible squeaking noises. Still, it's usable, for anyone who would like to play.

MADE BY TESSISAMESS

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At the sudden movement, Hajime tenses, ready to face... a small cat staring expectantly at him. Odd. Odd, but seemingly not an obvious threat. He keeps turning the merry-go-round, but he stops it once the cat is on the same side as he is.

He stares back at the kitten.

This did not go as planned.

The kitten scrambles up over the middle of the merry-go-round and back to the other side. And then immediately turns around to stare at Hajime again.

She wanted to ride this thing, but she didn't want to be that close up to this... person.

Once more, Hajime turns the merry-go-round to bring the kitten closer to him. This is not normal cat behavior. "What are you?"

Look, if he's wrong and this is a normal cat (which he very much doubts), there's no one else around, and it's not like cats can talk about weird questions from weird humans.

...Uh.

She considers running for a few moments. She's just a black kitten right now, there have to be a thousand others.

But that won't change if she replies, will it?

The question is how to communicate without changing her shape. She'll try to talk to him as she would talk to a creature on the astral plane, but doubts that he can perceive that. Most people who look like humans can't, after all.

A person. You don't have to act like that.

"And you don't have to act like that, as well." He's not responding in kind, but he can perceive the way she's speaking to him.

That's a surprise. She hadn't expected to be heard. Is he an adept?

But what if I want to?

She jumps up on the middle console of the merry-go-round though and stares at him from there, their eyes now closer to eye level. And he won't be able to spin her around to him again.

He's a demon. They have their ways...

"Then I'd ask you why you want to." He shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat and looks for all the world like a very harmless human.

Because being spun on this looks like fun.

That's an easy answer, and the child can be easily heard in it.

She has no idea what he is, but the gesture doesn't make her think of him as normal now. Normal people don't just perceive on the astral plane.

"It's damaged. There are better things to play on here." Hajime was not prepared for how the child heard in that voice makes him a little more willing to be forgiving. Stop that, emotions, you are not helping here. "You're also very small for it."

But you aren't pushing the other things.

Her body is much too little to move anything on this playground, and she tried the swings earlier in her human body without any luck. And is fairly certain that even in that body she wouldn't have the mass to push this.

Sure, she could cheat and use spells to move it, but this is a much too public place to just throw spells around. It's like asking for trouble.

It is very much too public a place to do much of anything, which is part of the reason Hajime keeps looking over his shoulder. (The last thing he needs is for people to see him talking to a cat...) "I wasn't pushing it for fun."

But you could now.

A+ reasoning.

Maybe there is a better way to reason, but she will have to think a bit longer to come up with it.

Only a few rounds, and I can pay you.

Yes, that is good. Hopefully nobody mugged that body since she found it, but it was well hidden, and it did have a wallet on it. And here, people still use coins and bills a lot.

Edited 2016-10-06 07:05 (UTC)

"...you'd be willing to pay for such a thing?" Which doesn't make sense to Hajime, really. He realizes he could possibly take advantage of the situation through other, non-monetary means of payment in the form of some kind of demonic pact, but that seems wrong. He can't swindle one so young.

Still, he reaches out and turns the merry-go-round.

No more than it is worth.

Adequately. Not much. Money is worth something, but compared to how important it is to everyone else it has never been very important to her, because food and shelter didn't rely on it before she arrived in this place and the biggest obstacles for finding food and shelter that she faces now are not the money but the fact that in her human form she is a single child without an identity. So she would pay whatever seems adequate in the currency here, perhaps even a bit more. Nuyen aren't worth the same as what they use here, she's already found. It's closer to Euros.

Other things... she doesn't have any useful information or items that she could part with to sell, and while she could do something in return, this would be worth maybe half an hour of observation. An hour because she has nobody to back her up in negotiations, here. And anyway, most of the time people trade services for money. unless they are experts in the area of other things that they offer or they have no money. She wouldn't expect someone to not think of money when she speaks of paying without specifying what to pay with.

But the discussion doesn't have to be continued because the merry-go-round starts to move and she quickly jumps down into one of the seats, to not be thrown off and make the most of it.

...It's not easy to stay on it when the seats aren't made for your body, and she quickly tries to dig her claws into the smooth ground to not slide sidewards and off the carousel.

Really, Hajime is not sure what he wants in return for this...ridiculous bit of work. He's not sure what to make of the kitten as he turns the merry-go-round, really.

Faster!

Sure, she keeps having to hurry further inside and even just staying on the seat is hard, but she's also sure that the faster it goes the more fun it will be.

"You asked for it." Look, even though the merry-go-round is a little broken right now, Hajime can still turn that thing faster than a human might.

She manages to stay on the merry-go-round for two more rounds and then starts slipping, too much of her body off the seat to pull herself back onto it.

Unless Hajime provides some help here, she'll be sent flying.

Hajime's going to provide help, albeit help in the form of catching a flying kitten. His reflexes are very good for a human's...and yet he's somehow surprisingly gentle.

If she was at home, she would wonder if he has cyberware in him or is an adept, but they don't have that here.

Do they?

She sniffs at the hand that holds her. Maybe there is more information to be had in scent.

Something about him smells a little off. Human for the most part, but there is something weird, possibly vaguely like the cyberware she's thinking of, hanging around him. He doesn't realize he's being sniffed. "You need to be more careful."

That's something that people only say when they didn't do the thing themselves.

...Perhaps a higher quality of cyberware? The best that she's ever encountered, at least knowingly and with enough peace to sniff it, was betaware.

She wants to ask about but figures that she really shouldn't do that while her life is literally in his hands. You never know how people react. So she shuffles around a bit, getting ready to jump to the ground.

"You still need to be careful." He sets the kitten down quickly enough, without her needing to jump. It's not that he's afraid of getting scratched, he's afraid of said scratch leading to her figuring out that his blood is a bright, inhuman green because he'd picked up a couple of glitches here and there.

She hurries away from him and up a decorative element of the playground that probably pretends to be modern art in the daytime. Not an ideal place, but good enough - at least she's high up enough that their eyes are roughly level and she can survey most of the area. And if she were to not move, she would visually become a part of the weirdly shaped wood, dark form on dark form.

You too.

No matter how good your 'ware is. She tilts her head a bit. What is it?

Edited 2016-10-10 15:34 (UTC)

Well. That right there is an interesting turn of events. It's not one Hajime was expecting. His expression betrays nothing other than mild confusion. Time to see if he can pass as just a normal human. "I don't know what you're talking about."

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