tramitem_meme | Test Drive Meme #1

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Test Drive Meme #1

✦ TEST DRIVE MEME ✦
... And when my good dream came to an end, I woke up more than ready to bend ... Game Navigation

✦ Directions A few rules for the TDM: 1. Pick a prompt 2. Comment with your thread start, with your character name and fandom in the subject line. 3. Tag into other's threads. 4. Have fun! 5. And what happens on the TDM stays on the TDM (it's not taken in game). If you have questions, ask the MODS ✦ PROMPT ONE – Déjà Vu** This may not be the first time it has happened. You really wouldn’t have any way of knowing, would you? You’ve just been living your life as a citizen of the city you live in New York, the city, they say, that never sleeps. It’s a place you always wanted to live in, hearing about it as a child, and it sounded exciting to you. Or maybe it was the place you wanted to get to in order to become something more, something interesting, something that would bring you up in the world. You wanted to be there more than anything. But anyway, right now it sure seems like the first time it’s ever happened. You experienced a sudden flash, a rending of unreality from reality, the way a person would rend a piece of cloth in two, but this is the world, and you don’t know what to think at first. Because this isn’t your life. Except it totally is. You know it is, like you’ve never known anything. This is your memory and when you come out of it you know that was your life you were witnessing. This is known as the Event, and it will change everything for you. Those around you notice one thing about you during the time you’re experiencing this memory—you’re frozen, as if you’re frozen in time. And it’s catching. ✦ PROMPT TWO – Network Life before the Event and after are a study in contrast. Before, you thought you knew who you were and what you were doing here. Now, all of that is in turmoil. Especially after your encounter with the man from the Bureau. Now, you don’t really know whether to trust the man from the organization that came to talk to you. Something about him seemed...off. Something that was enough to, perhaps, even make you feel suspicious. But now you know...you are one of the Different. You feel like it, too. Members of the Different, the man from the Bureau told you, have their own special Network to communicate on. Will you post to it? Will you relate your memories to the others among the Different—or will you come up with something completely different to say? ✦ PROMPT THREE – Support Group There’s a generic spread of food on a table off to one side of the room: donuts and muffins, coffee and lemonade. Maybe you’re hungry enough to try it—it’s free after all. Or maybe you can’t stomach anything, given the event you’re attending. The space is a local rec center, reserved for the evening. The beige-painted cinder block walls and the fluorescent lighting are a terrible combination. The meeting was interesting—who knew there were so many people like you, receiving memories of a past life? The group was led by someone from The Bureau—the Department of Medical Services. Some people are staying in their chairs and chatting—they must know each other from previous meetings. Some of them are gravitating towards the food. How do you feel about tonight? Has it helped you come to terms with the dream of memories you’re having? Maybe it’s time to talk to others, get an understanding of their experience. ✦ PROMPT FOUR – Crime wave New York City has grown increasingly more safe over the last decade or two—statistics bear that out, as well as the experiences of the people who live here. But something seems to have suddenly broken in the hearts and minds of your fellow-citizens here in the last day, ever since the sun has come up. People are being incredibly opportunistic about carrying out their wildest dreams, or at least, as long as their wildest dreams include attacking people around them to try rob them or to kill them. The longer the day goes on, the more and more people seem unable to resist giving into their bases desires. Bank robberies are happening right and left. The strangest part of it all, though, is that anyone who is defied by their victim seems to snap out of some reverie they couldn’t control. That’s right, this whole crime wave seems to be some kind of brain sickness. Maybe this means the people around you need to be cured by having someone fight back. Or maybe it means you catch the sickness yourself, before you know it. ...Maybe it’s time to hide and ride the whole crime wave out somewhere where you won’t become collateral damage. ✦ PROMPT FIVE – Zombie Universe Bleed Over - the crack option (Third person log or First person Network response are both encouraged.) One week ago you were living an average life. You were trying to make New York City work for you, a place to call home. Were you in a rough patch? Were things just starting to pick up? Or was life swimming along as you expected? Today, you are running down the street with a lumbering hoard of the Undead ambling after you. They have caught the scent of your living brain and it is a tasty snack to them. You have a weapon in hand - a pipe? a crowbar? a bat? but there are too many behind you to take them all out before they get you. You’re only option is to run, find help. (Power mode – along with your memories you’ve started getting back powers, what if you tried them out against the zombies?) When you were told that different universes bleed over into this one, did you believe it? Do you believe it now? ✦ PROMPT SIX – Wildcard What are you doing around NYC?
... What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause ...
( return to top \| Last updated: January 23, 2020 )

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Clint splits his time between sleeping in his car and sleeping on the sprung out mattress in his apartment. Neither place give him much access to other people's names or faces, so he nods as easily as he would with any other stranger.

"Clint. I rode in from Hell's Kitchen for this." He's pretty sure Ben is from a better part of town. In any case, Clint seems a bit excited by the whole thing. Excited in a maybe-hasn't-slept-in-two-days way. "How many memories have you had?"

"It's a pleasure, Clint."

Yes, he definitely came from a better part of town - or rather lived in it, now. He was not a native New Yorker.

"I've had a handful of memories. Enough to have a few faces and names and a strong desire to buy a sword. You?"

He is both amused and disquieted. "Just one, so far." A laugh. "But I'm an archer, I guess. I don't remember what I was shooting at. You think anyone else here fits with us? Someone who knows how to joust?"

He's amused too, and laughs quietly. "Maybe someone who knows how to make chain mail and we can form our own re-enactment troop? We can perform in central park."

"I'm gonna be real mad if it turns out this is all the CIA's way of getting a LARP group together," Clint clucks his tongue in dismay, shakes his head.

Seriously though. "I've only had the one memory. It messed me up. Made this world, the clothes I'm in, my house, seem like it's not so real anymore." He looks at Ben, too polite to ask if it's the same for him, but too blunt not to show that he's being nosy.

"The clothes are strange," he admits, "but the thing that really keeps tripping me is technology. I keep reaching for things that aren't there." Not just the sword, no. "Even that this is the only planet that has life on it seems strange now."

Clint nods the way any person does when someone else confirms something incredible.

"The memory wasn't long but it was long enough to know I wasn't using these," he taps his hearing aids, which are old and bulky and don't really do that much to help him out if he's not two feet from whatever he's trying to hear. "I could hear some electronic feedback so I know I was still using something but- But I haven't heard that clear in years."

That's the main reason he's come here: to figure out if he can get access to something better. Or it had been the main reason. Now that curiosity is nibbling away at him he has other questions. Like, "What kind of tech was there in a place that had you using a sword?"

He winces, just a little bit. He hadn't noticed the hearing aids until they were pointed out to him, but once he does- Well, he does not talk louder, at least, but does make sure he doesn't talk with his mouth full. ...extra sure. That was never going to happen, anyway.

"That must be incredibly frustrating to return to. I don't remember much, but the sword had an energy blade and one memory was most definitely on a space ship and another was watching cars flying." He sounds almost embarrassed.

Clint's eyebrows go up and then up a little more. No wonder Ben hadn't started with that. Clint works hard to suspend his disbelief.

"That's got to make life here pretty boring. What do you do in this city anyway?"

It's pretty ridiculous. It's in his head, knows it's real - more real in some ways than anything he remembers from this life - but it also just. sounds. ridiculous. Like some children's cartoon.

"I teach ice skating. Mostly to small children." Still dry, and now with extra self-depreciation. "What do you do?"

Well there go those eyebrows right back up again, but this time Clint's expression immediately turns delighted. "I play a drum on a corner for spare change when I'm not waiting for temp agencies to call me." His life is so glamorous, ice skater.

"Back home sometimes we'd skate around on the pond in winter. I always wanted to be better at it, instead of the guy who made a good goalie 'cause I always fell on my ass at the right time." Clint grew into someone with pretty good coordination but back then? Hopeless. He rubs the back of his neck. "Twenty-six is probably too old to learn any of that, huh..."

Clint's eyebrows may never get to come down and stay down at the rate this conversation is going.

Then again, his own twitch up a little at drums on street corners. Not judging per-se but it pretty immediately makes him go from wanting to give Clint an answer to deciding to make that answer an offer.

"Five minutes of conversation and I'm sure you can learn at least as much as a six year old. I rent the rink pretty regularly. If you want to learn you can join me any time you want. I'll even find you a pair of skates."

He laughs at the at least as much as a six year old, thinking that what Ben is going to offer is just encouragement to go find lessons and give it a try. Instead, Clint is given what seems like a genuine offer. For a flash he pictures himself the lone adult wobbling around on the ice with a group of second graders, and how humiliating that would be. And how he doesn't care that it would be humiliating.

"Yeah? How much do you charge?" He could scrape it together, it's not like his money is going toward anything he actually cares about, but Ben looks like a man who makes a pretty decent buck. It might take him a week or two to scrape that money together, but the more he thinks about it the more he wants to try it.

The laugh is nice. He likes convincing people to laugh, though it wasn't like Clint was worked up to start with.

"That depends," he says, tone still pretty dry. "If you want to learn to do a triple axle and have plans and need help with your long program for nationals - a lot." Clint doesn't need that. "If you want to learn with the kids, less. If you're willing to share my rink rental, show up at Aviator Arena with coffee and tell the front desk you're looking for Ben and need a pair of skates."

It's impressive that Ben can even talk about nationals. Clint never followed sports, but his father had been an avid Olympic spectator. Not that old man Barton had been any better at following sports than his sons were, but he viewed it as proof of his patriotism and so every few years the family crowded around and stopped fighting each other.

"What, you don't think I'm the next Scott Muir? You're not getting a tip from me now." He's grinning like a kid on any candy holiday. "Yeah, I'll be there."

He already knows where he'll get the coffee.

The grinning and enthusiasm make him happy and really glad that it was an offer he had made. He was even looking forward to giving up some time to watching Clint wobble around on the ice.

"Unfortunately, no, which is a shame. It would be nice if I got to stand on top of someone else instead of being stood on for a change." He flashes a quick grin. "Tomorrow morning at nine."

At which point he'd be met by a nice lady at the front desk, handed over to a grumpy older man who would get him into a pair of skates and sent out to the rink where Ben was waiting at the entry gate near the bleachers.

Athletically speaking, Clint is pretty spry. He grew up hiking and running and jumping around the forests outside his tiny hometown; he followed that up with running around crowded city streets. He likes being unexpectedly graceful.

Let it be known: he is not graceful right now.

He feels just like the giraffe calf he once saw in the zoo, when it had been birthed and dropped right on its head, then staggered around for an hour while its mom ate leaves. Poor thing probably had a concussion. Poor Clint is probably going to get a concussion.

This is gonna be a great day, he can feel it.

"It's a lot bigger than I thought it'd be," he says, looking around the rink with obvious approval.

Clint is not going to get a concussion if Ben can help it.

He can help it primarily if Clint doesn't get too stupid about it, and really he's curious about just how that's going to play out. He's also interested to see if Clint is one of those guys who seems surprised that ice skating is an athletic activity.

"Skating eats ground like crazy once you know what you're steady on your feet. You said you'd ice skated some as a kid, right?"

"Yeah, that wasn't so long ago," he's convincing himself with that. Trying to anyway. He can stand up straight right now, blades steady under him, so that's progress. If he was a statue of a guy who knew how to skate, he'd be very convincing.

"Uh, it's going to be hard for me to hear you out there if you're not on the ice with me. Not tryin' to be the clingy new guy but I probably should cling to you today."

He laughs and steps out onto the ice and then closes distance between them rapidly.

"Clinging to me is better than clinging to a wall," which was what he'd been trying to figure out. "At least then you'll push us apart instead of just wind up with your feet four feet behind you."

He was actually trying to assess where Clint was, and truthfully? Already better than most adults who don't really know how to skate, just in that he doesn't seem terrified of falling down.

"Do you remember how to stop?" If it was when Clint was a kid - "Snow plow?"

Fortunately, there isn't much that scares Clint at all. Getting banged up is so far down the list it might as well be a perk instead of something to avoid. "I just plowed into my brother," he confesses. "Pissed him off every time but he never gave me a better way."

And this is why, before he asks Clint to go, he's asking about stopping.

"If he couldn't be bothered to teach you something else, it served him right." Probably, anyway, given that he had no intention of getting slammed into because Clint couldn't stop. "Toes together in an A-shape is your stop. Wall if that doesn't work, now show me how good you are at going."

...It would get more fun, he promised.

Getting started is problematic, and he sure does resemble that concussed baby giraffe even when he starts moving, but he does move. What's more is he doesn't move so slowly the ice could melt around him.

But when he reaches the turn he loses momentum and his legs almost slide out from under him. He's saved by clinging to the wall instead of throwing himself on Ben. "Impressed yet?"

"I am, actually."

Totally not sarcastic and skating over to join Clint at the wall. "You haven't busted your ass, yet, to start with. You just need some mechanics, some physics, and some confidence. Come on, give me your hands." He held both his hands out, palm up.

He hates the wall. Getting stuck on it is a no go from him, dammit.

He doesn't comment on that 'yet'. It will happen, he knows it will, and he's at peace with risking his tailbone. He also doesn't make the obvious tease when he sets his hands in Ben's, though the joke does occur to him and his grin gives it away.

"You did competitions, didn't you?" He asks instead.

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