ataraxioff | TEST DRIVE MEME 001

Entry tags:

!test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME 001

T E S T D R I V E M E M E

A R R I V A L
You wake up, alone in the dark. There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Through the fog you can see shadows of movement, the muted sound of alarms crying. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're suddenly dropped several feet onto the opposite wall.

It takes you several minutes to catch your breath and gather strength in uncooperative limbs; more time still to climb up through the debris to the hole in the outer wall high above. You emerge in bright sunlight, surrounded by an immense jungle. As your vision clears, you realize you stand on the hull of a colossal spaceship, crashed on an alien planet. There's a shout behind you, and as you turn, figures climb over the curve of the ship towards you: your rescue party, weathered and scarred by the efforts necessary for survival.

B A S E C A M P
A ramshackle spread of tents and shelters built out of resources salvaged from the ship and gathered from the jungle. Not sleek, not clean, but alive: people coming and going from tent to tent, heading out into the jungle or returning with freshly foraged food. Some are working to build more shelters or improvize working tech out of parts salvaged from the ship; some are cooking; some are just taking shelter from the sun for a while. Whether you find somewhere to help or apply your skills, it's probably a good idea to get to know your neighbors.

E X P L O R A T I O N
The jungle is dense and green, teeming with life, high calls and cries of strange animals and birds, the low buzz and murmur of insects. There are no paths or notable markings; go too far into the trees and you may not be able to find your way back. Dangers hide in the shadows but there's also food, water - or perhaps you're looking for more, pushing further in a search for answers about this planet you're now living on.

Or you can turn your attention to the crashed ship, the huge bulk of it balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff. It creaks and groans in its delicate position, audible from a distant but all the louder should you venture inside. Dark corridors made even more dangerous by the damage to the internal structure, debris and obstacles blocking progress, and any wrong step could cause it to collapse in on you, or send the ship over the cliff. But finding any tech, resources or supplies might just be worth the risk.

C H O O S E Y O U R O W N . . .
Hunt or flee from strange creatures in the jungle, take a try at rock-climbing down the cliff-face, or practise in-game gained abilities. Ataraxion is currently without a network until one is built, but test-driving on a prospective one is also totally fine!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ARRIVAL;
[ At first, this is familiar. Not safe, never safe, but familiar. Cyrofluid, breathing tube, alarms, shapes beyond the glass -- it's another jump, or rather just after.

Then the gravity couch opens and Carolyn falls, slowly registers different -- wreckage, the ship on its side.

Not so familiar, that.

Something's gone wrong, they've crashed, had to have. She stands, glances at her nanites; jumbled, nothing clear on them. She can understand the people around her, though; they still work for that. The place where the bioraptor impaled her aches as if it's fresh, and when she reaches up to brush hair out of her face, she realizes: the scars she gained on the Tranquility are gone. ]

Wha-...?

[ How long has she been out? How long...?

It's possible, she realizes as she picks herself up off the ground, that it's not how long she's been out. It's how long she's been gone. There are no new memories of her universe, but there wouldn't be; she's dead there. Still, it wouldn't be the first time this has happened. It makes her feel faintly nauseated (also not unusual, with jumps), but she swallows it down.

If the ship crashed, then she has to move, figure out how stable it is or isn't. She can see the way out. She just has to climb up. Hand over hand, foot over foot, try not to think too hard about the hundreds of possibilities as to what happened, try not to think about the people (Nathan? Tyke? Wash? Riddick?). Focus. Breathe in, breathe out. Survive, then you can help others. ]

If this happened because someone was an idiot... [ she murmurs; a waste of breath, but this planet has more oxygen than the last one she was stranded on. More gravity, too. If there's anyone friendly outside, she'll just have to hope they're on the more intelligent end of the spectrum.

God, she hopes no one made the Tranquility crash because of something avoidable. ]

BASE CAMP;
[ She's seen worse than this ramshackle setup of tents and almost-shelters. She's seen people living in sewers and beneath pieces of fabric, people hoping to stowaway on a ship because even months or longer while everyone else is in cryosleep was preferable to where they were. That they're so close to the crash site makes sense as much as she wants to move away from it, as much as she knows they can't because they all feel the pull when they move too far away.

It has her scowl even as she stomps on a branch, bending it with her weight to try and help loosen the roots, pull it up. Just cutting it off won't stop the growth of brush, and Carolyn doesn't want to wake up in the middle of the night to a bush instead of a pillow.

Not that they really have a lot of pillows.

Dirt smears her face where once it was engine grease when she goes to find the non-acidic water, when she pokes through what's been salvaged and hasn't been claimed. She feels unsteady, off her feet; she knew the shuttle bay like the back of her hand and now it's gone, hasn't been hers in months anyway. Now they're on a strange planet and it's both exactly like and completely different from the world she can't ever go back to.

You may just hear a sigh and Carolyn muttering. ] Shit.

Come on. Can't be all that bad, can it?

[ Who's surprised that James Potter is offhandedly eavesdropping and offering a remark while someone else is trying to make themselves useful?

James isn't as casually messy as he would normally prefer. Even with his magic, he's finding it hard to completely adjust to suddenly living in the wilderness. He isn't the roughing it sort, and it shows. His hair sticks more on end than usual and he's sporting a bruise on his cheek lately from a run-in with a tree branch that he'd prefer not to talk about anymore, thanks.]

[ Carolyn isn't, since that seems to be her lot in life. She looks up, eyes narrowed simply because she doesn't recognize the voice, but after a moment she relaxes a little. ]

That depends.

[ Her fingers dig through the dirt around the root, Carolyn careful to pull back if it looks like there's something strange, setting rocks to the side in a pile. ]

The last planet I crash-landed on had one form of life and they tried to eat everything.

Dunno about you, but I'd eat everything if I was the only form of life, as well.

[ Jokes. There's never a bad time for them, in his opinion. Well. Perhaps a few. But he's fairly certain their current situation isn't quite serious enough to dictate the need for strict sobriety. Getting more to the point and sliding sideways into actually making use of himself, James combs the fingers of one hand back through his hair before reaching for his wand.

He's never exactly been the staunchest supporter when it comes to the statute of secrecy, so it's natural for him to flaunt it completely now that the Ministry is a universe away. ]

Need a hand? I wouldn't mind giving whatever you're up to a go.

Pretty sure they're at least part of why they were the only form of life.

[ Because if you eat everything... well, you run out of things to eat until someone crash lands and doesn't get off the planet in time.

She's seen wands before, mostly whenever Sirius was harassing her about something. There's still enough distrust over magic to make her hesitate, but then she nods, straightening up and stepping away. Just in case. ]

Trying to get the plant out. Roots and all.

Not a problem.

[ James gives a flick of his wand, muttering the appropriate spell and backing up half a step as the earth cracks a little, straining against the spell before the plant begins to pull free. The roots hold taunt for a moment, but then they're sliding out of the earth as well. He smirks, not taking his eyes off the prize as he steps forward to catch the plant mid-levitation and lower his wand. ]

There's one magical fix to you problem. Remember me when you've got extra soup or whatever it is you've been surviving on out here. Merlin knows soup is likely a touch classy for our lot.

[ And he's holding out the prize, dutifully not being a total git. ]

I just got here. Used to be on the ship, before it crashed, but that was... apparently a while ago.

[ Too long. Months, and she's still working out everything that had happened while she'd vanished.

But Carolyn nods toward the plant, even as she takes it. ]

If this is edible, though, I'll split it with you. Might be that with your [ urgh ] magic, you can catch sort of game that we can add, actually make that soup.

[She's within reach of the rend in the Tranquility's hull when a hand appears, reaching down to her. Palm open, bare of those distinctive gauntlets, but still likely recognisable. They'd spent enough time watching each other work with their hands; enough time that Riddick even does this, turning back to offer her a hand up as soon as he'd heard her voice. Maybe some part of him had been listening for it, searching for signs of her from the moment he'd woken, climbed his way out of the wreckage into the sunlight.

The ship destroyed left questions, left him wondering how long he'd been out for, but he'd been here before, crashed on an unknown planet. It could be adapted to. Carolyn Fry's survival, that was something else; a level of importance in his mind that he'll never admit to, but has left him reaching down to her without a second's consideration that she might reject it.]

[ She knows that hand and she takes it without question. It's familiar even as it feels a little off, as though work on shuttles never happened but work with shivs hadn't. Still, it's a hand she knows. It's his hand.

Climbing out of the wreckage with Riddick's help, Carolyn sucks in a lungful of fresh, non-recycled air. It's not like the last planet she crashed on, at least. That doesn't mean there won't be challenges, though.

The fact that she's still covered in blue goo, for one. ]

How long have I been out?

[Carolyn out and on her feet, Riddick lets go, one look over that tells him she isn't injured before he turns his attention back to the sweeping landscape of green canopy spread out before them. He'd found his goggles, at least, eyes guarded from the blazing sunshine, but he's dressed in one of the ship's jumpsuits, sleeves already torn off to allow more movement.]

Got the same question.

[She was awake, last he remembered. And the ship was still up in space, stuck on whatever course it was taking. Someone - or something - had clearly fucked with that, but he has no knowledge of it, nor of ever seeing a planet quite like this one.]

Thinking we need to take them there.

[A tip of his head, indicating a cluster of half-built tents and shelters sitting in the treeline further out from the ship. Signs of people, other survivors. Ones that might know enough to fill in the gaps.]

[ Well. That isn't an answer she likes, but it's an answer. It at least tells her that, whatever happened, she and Riddick weren't- without each other. She's waited for someone to wake up before; she'd rather not do it again, and she doesn't wish for it to happen to someone else.

(Not, she thinks, that Riddick would lurk outside her gravity couch -- but he'd know she was asleep.)

Carolyn's in a jumpsuit and managed to find her belt; her previous tools are gone, but an oxygen tank from their world is fixed to it once more, curved claws hooked in. It had made her scowl to find, but there's no denying that they could be useful. ]

Hopefully it goes better than the last time I found a settlement in the middle of nowhere.

[ She draws one of the claws out, turns it and offers it to him, dull end first. ]

Not sure what you found in there, but- just in case.

[ maybe the worst part of coming back here yet again is the lack of familiar faces. oxford had grown strangely accustomed to the healthy amount of friends he had accumulated here over the time he had spent on the tranquility. their absence now aches, but he realises it is a selfish impulse more than anything. he can't be sad for their being gone, so long as it was under... more acceptable circumstances, hopefully, than what was experienced by others. being reunited with these memories again is very strange. he's been gone long enough, in his own world and from here, that they fit a little uncomfortably (but snugly?) in his mind.

to see someone he knows, however, provides him with more comfort than he could have imagined. of course, he knows how this place works, how fickle it can be with what people remember and what they do not, if they remember anything at all.

he joins carolyn, standing by her side, observing the plant she is so actively trying to remove from the ground. he understands her concern for the bush; this seems to be a very healthy sort of jungle, with all its various, thriving dangers and an abundance of plant life. oxford wears a faint smile, crooked to one side, but not at all a smirk. a habitual, characteristic smile. the kind that'd tell anyone quite easily what he thinks of this place, and it is not much, essentially. ]

Agreed. [ and finally, he turns his head to her, brows arching questioningly. ] Would you like a hand?

[ It's a familiar face, though that doesn't always mean anything. They both know that. Still, Carolyn gives him a slight nod when Oxford turns to look at her. Then she rocks back on her heels, gestures at the plant that she's currently more than comfortable calling a weed. ]

Give it a shot. Its roots are either extremely deep or extremely twisted. Or both.

[ She isn't entirely sure; she's not really used to dealing with plants. ]

Probably why I'm the only one bothering to try and pull it up.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TEST DRIVE MEME 001

carolyn fry | the chronicles of riddick: pitch black | reapp from months ago hi

Base Camp

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

arrival.

no subject

no subject

no subject

BASE CAMP ; HI!!!

AND THEN I GOT SICK AND FAILED AT TAGS