hyperlinks | test:drive

TESTDRIVE_01
THE ARRIVAL. You wake up, wet and bruised, in the water. You don't recall falling, but you recall a flash of bright light, and the next thing you know you're washing up on the shoreline. You can see two moons and a planet in the sky. Directly abovehead is a slash of oscillating lights that flash painfully bright with every passing second - and you witness a handful of silhouettes getting spit out of the lights, falling into the water with a loud splash. It's a surprising sight; just as surprising is the fact that you're not alone. A stranger you didn't notice approaching hauls you up onto your feet, checks you for injuries, and then you're lifted into a shuttle, where you're healed by the med techs on board. There are others like you who were pulled from the water and the sand, and they're in various states of healing. You're all soaked in seawater - and by the look of things, you're all equally at a loss about your situation. An automated message keeps repeating over the PA system in English: "You are currently in Caius Allied Territory. Welcome to Alexandrina." Where the hell are you? You're now in Alexandrina, and we hope you enjoy your stay. NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE. It isn't your lucky day. Something, somewhere along the line, goes incredibly wrong. Rather than keeping you at the shores of Alexandrina, the rift pulls you in and spits you out in a place that's a lot less watery and clear. The first thing you come to is the taste of dirt and grime, and the hustle and bustle of a city that doesn't have an off-switch. Overhead, there are high-rises and towers that go up further than your eyes can see. It seems neverending, and natural light struggles to filter through the metal. The shock only starts to fade away when you hear the sounds of a struggle not too far away from where you landed. Investigating will lead you to a group of Caia Maxus harassing a few Terrans on a back alleyway. The Terrans are trying to sidestep their way out of this (they'd rather not get involved in a fight), but the Caia Maxus far outnumber them and all escape routes have been blocked. No one else is stepping in to intervene. If anything, the rest of the onlookers seem to be encouraging the rough treatment. So now you get to decide: OPTION A \| YOU STEP IN LIKE THE HERO YOU ARE. You step between the two parties to try and avoid an escalation. You don't want to start trouble, or maybe you do and this seems like a good reason to fish for a fight. OPTION B \| YOU LOOK THE OTHER WAY. This isn't your problem really, so without saying a word, you head for the other direction. The Terrans weren't asking for help anyway, so maybe they could handle it. Best hope nothing will let you regret your decision. Choose wisely. You'll feel the effects of your choices sooner than you think. Regardless of what you decide though, the Hypatia Rescue Fleet 409 will locate you a few Terran hours later. They'll tell you they have no idea how you ended up in Koriba, that's never really happened before, but they're glad they managed to find you before anything major happened. THE NIGHT OF. It's a lot to take in. You're on an alien moon, looking out to a planet that looks a lot like Earth but isn't. You can see the storms swirling around, the deep blue of its own seas, as you listen to the crash and pull of the waves not far from where you stand. The stars are different here too - there are no constellations that you recognize immediately. Some of the older locals are lingering outdoors with you, and they nod at you as you make your way around the cottages. Are you headed to the beach? You might find a few couples having a moment there. Are you headed back into the cottages? If you peer into some of the windows, you'll find entire families sitting together, or parents tucking their children to bed. If you're headed into the woodsy areas that extend away from the beach, you might hear a rustling sound or two - from something too large to be another person. Careful where you walk tonight. There's a reason for lights out being a thing. WELCOME TO THE 409. It's the morning after your quick orientation into the Alexandrina settlement, and everything looks dewy and homey — until you start hearing loud splashes, followed by shots firing off nearby. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a bunch of eldritch horrors falling from the rift abovehead. They stand at roughly ten meters tall each, lumbering out from the water with angry screeching and flailing limbs. They're already kicking up a mess at the shorelines, and upending some of the makeshift outposts lining the beach. The locals are shooting at them to keep them away from the settlement borders. Most of them are adults, but some of the shooters are as young as fifteen or sixteen, and clearly used to the kickback of the firearms they're carrying. One of these shooters pushes you forward, tells you to get moving. Another hands you keys to a vehicle and points you in the direction of the fleet — every able adult needs to help in manning the patrol lines, they say. The keys fit into a hoverbike, which in turn is armed with blast guns up front. "Get up in the air and help the guys out," the stranger urges you. "We don't have as many men as we used, to. Get going, get going!" ...Maybe those bikes come with a how-to manual? On the bright side, at least you're not alone in trying to figure these bikes out. NOTHING WASTED, NOTHING THROWN. The beach is saved! You're drenched in monster blood, there's sand in places you didn't realize you even had, and your bike is in some form of damage after those first few crucial minutes of getting the hang of riding them. Now comes the cleanup, and your character is armed with large chainsaws and buckets. The creatures need to be chopped down to smaller sizes before they can be properly incinerated, and everyone's kindly asked to suit up and get to chopping! There are small stalls and tents lined up along the beach for various purposes to help with the process. There are refreshment tents for when the sun heat gets to be too much; there are portable incinerator ovens, which burn the creatures' parts down into fertilizer (no point letting it go to waste, hey!), there are shower tents for when you're done with the hacking and sawing, and at the far end of the beach, away from the gore and the carnage, is a beach barbeque bonanza. From the way people act, this is a normal day in the 409. So why not grab a saw, chop up some monster flesh, and have yourself a nice beef-flavored something? You've earned it today. HYPENET. C̪͇̜̞͇̲a̮̠̝͍̩̦n̪̣ a̦͖n̕y̯̪̪o̟̭͞n҉̩e͢ ̱̜̠͎̖̤h̘̝͔͓̳̪̠e̻̲̦̯ͅa̵r͈̜͙̣̜ ̧m̩͇ḙ͓͡?̩͈̲ͅͅ H̷͖͇͈̮e̲͖❚❚͓͈̥̤̺͔ͅ—͍ N͎̦̫̯͔̯o͖̖͎̠̣̮ ̹̝o̬̦̠̫̮ͅ❚̱͈̺̝̥͞❚͏ ̳❚͉͎͜ş ̨͚̲͓͚̣̫s̙̥❚̮͚̻͠f̟̪̲̳̕e̥̞̲̝̝͟—͈̖ Whoa. What was that? This is the first thing you hear as soon as you try connecting to the network. Something tells you this isn't something that happens often, but asking anyone who knows more about this place than you do isn't netting you any answers. The more people start looking at you like you're crazy, the more you're tempted to brush it off... Connecting to the network again will trigger its original default message: Welcome to HypeNet, DefaultUsername[xxxx]! You are now accessing the Hypatia Mass Network. You may input your personalized username and start chatting now! Time to get some answers. Maybe someone else must have heard it too, right? OOC NOTES. Welcome to the first TDM of HYPERJUMP! We're trying something different with the Koriba prompt, so please bear with us. Cast your vote here! Both options have their own sets of consequences that will affect the first intro log of the game, so choose your actions carefully! Additionally, the interactions in this test drive can be game canon if the parties involved agree to it. Everyone is also encouraged to use test drive threads for samples in your application. We are super excited to have you here, and we hope you like what you see. ♥

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Edith, luckily(?), only has one war behind her. Maybe even only half, since it was still ongoing, when she left. Left for here.

It's Edith's first time on a planet. She's only ever known space stations, shuttles, colonies, and, most frequently, the cockpit of a mech. The gravity of it chafes at her - her eyepatch feels like it's pressing down on her skull, her stump aches. She decides she doesn't like planets, and won't be visiting one again anytime soon, if she has her way. Back when she was a lab rat, she'd peer out of her cockpit on test flights and just view the panorama of the stars. Let herself drift, when she completed courses faster than they planned for her to. She earned those views.

Planets, in her mind, are rapidly seeming like an unnecessary barrier. This is the only time of day she can even see those stars, but there's too much going on. People, places, things. She'd wandered out into the woods in the hopes of finding a better view.

She hasn't found it yet. She's kind of lost in the woods. She's seen a few lights that she's been curious about, but stumbling around half-blind (more half-blind than usual) isn't a good time to check things out. Even if some of the lights seem to be following her.

She stumbles out of a thicket, not on the 'main' path but at some off angle, like she really is bumbling around. She blinks when she realizes she's actually found another person.]

I'm a forest fairy. I'm here to grant your wishes. [She waves her bad arm, the stump, covered in a tied off sleeve.] Oooh. [She's trying to defuse things, because, as a soldier, she recognizes when someone's on the defensive. She can feel those sharp eyes on her.]

... For real, I didn't think anyone else would be up this late. Night owl? [Edith isn't good with people, but she's curious. She likes when things have a natural flow and progression to them, and the fact that someone's up this late isn't normal. She has her own reasons - aches and pains and bad dreams - so she wants to know the other person's.]

Edited 2018-08-05 00:54 (UTC)

[Behind the controls of a Ship-Self, space unraveled itself into a unique experience. Because Ship-Selves were made for combat — but they weren't made for combat, for they were made for communication, and sometimes the only way human beings could think to communicate was through conflict. In the face of an Existential Threat they had bore down upon it with as much martial strength as they could muster without ever even fully understanding it. The Scouts on Earth's surface, and the pilots soaring through heaven — the Existential Threat had folded far sooner than anyone would have anticipated, presenting a new problem: would Earth willingly allow the humans in space to return, or did they fear that they were no longer what they claimed to be?

Because space could change a person. Some people — people like Luna-Terra — had sought something like that out.

But even despite twenty years behind the controls of the Mare Crisium, Luna-Terra is very little separate from it. Outside of the shell of her Ship-Self she feels naked, exposed like a raw nerve, though — she would have to care more about her own safety to feel anything but dully disjointed over it.

All of her instincts leap back into the forefront of her mind at the surprise of the sound, however, and the tension that had written itself into the line of her shoulders doesn't even ease at the sight of the girl, or the way she moves and holds herself, or what she says when she grows close enough to be heard. Luna-Terra is very slow to trust; truth be told, she trusts very little at all.

But she's aware there's very little she has to defend herself, even if it came to such a thing. The girl is also unarmed. Slowly, very slowly, she relaxes, one hand coming to rest on her hip.]

Anyone who promises something like that always has an ulterior motive.

[Luna-Terra remembers sitting, shoulders bowed and back arched, before the agents of what would become the Memorial Foundation, justifying her intentions for wanting to go into space. They had promised plenty of things, too.

She seems more at-ease now, though her eyes are still like flint, giving very little away. She doesn't seem fazed by the girl's eyepatch, the way her sleeve was tied off. Wounds had been common enough in space — it's just that gravity had usually pulled them back together.]

Something like that. [She's silent a moment. It seems she might not elaborate, but — the tall woman sighs.] Haven't seen a night like this in a long time. I'm not used to it.

[Time was only an abstract in space, and on the moon and other terraformed planets, days and nights could last days, weeks.]

It's not safe out here. [An admonishment? Hard to tell, with Luna-Terra's flat tone of voice. Up to listener interpretation, then.]

I haven't seen a night like this ever. I've never been planetside before.

[Because - yeah. The stars are only above her, not below or behind her, or in front of her. She dislikes it. It makes her feel trapped, makes her restless.

Edith hops forward off of a branch she's standing on, shrugs.]

It's not safe a lot of places. I know how to handle danger. [Despite her cavalier attitude, and her injuries, she's a soldier. It's all she's ever known. It's a statement of fact - if something dangerous comes up, her instincts will kick in. It's not any kind of superpower, just how she is. Fifteen years of training, from the moment she was old enough to move.]

Besides, if it is dangerous, we can just use the buddy system. Win-win. [She grins up at Luna-Terra, the kind of grin that doesn't really reach her eyes, comes across sarcastic - she's a short girl, scrawny, not that either of those things matter in the cockpit of a mech.]

Up for giving your name? I'm not the kind of genie that'll use that against you. Edith, by the by.

Never?

[This seems to surprise her, though even "surprise" for Luna-Terra is a highly muted emotion; there's only the slightest lilt to her tone of voice, the faintest arch to her eyebrow. She's no stranger to vat-grown lab rats — the second and third generations of pilots had been full of them, children they'd been so excited to see the full potential of, they'd forcibly pushed them into it. But even those children had seen the sun rise over the horizon, even it had been Earth weeks since night had fallen. It had always been easiest to build their facilities on moons and planets, where the Gravity could be better generated and maintained.

She doesn't seem impressed by the confident assurance. It's because, even with her twenty years in space and two wars left behind her, even she knows she's at danger out here. Without the Mare Crisium, without a weapon, without anything — there was such a broad spectrum of things that could tear a human being apart both on Earth and in space, were they without those things. The thing about Luna-Terra was that she mostly didn't care.

Then again, maybe this girl doesn't either. She'd allow her that, if that were the case.

She almost wants to sigh, or perhaps even laugh? A smart-mouthed space rat. How do these ones always end up finding her? Even out in the middle of uncharted space.]

I usually work alone. [But the way that she says it makes it sound more like a signpost rather than a closed door. A warning, but not an impossibility.]

...Luna-Terra.

[She's not one for pleasantries.

There's a moment of silence before she continues.] Your first day with a sky between you and the stars, huh? What do you think?

test:drive_01.

THE NIGHT OF (omg sorry i didnt realize i tagged twice)

haha no problem! c:

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