tramitem_meme | Test Drive Meme #1

Entry tags:

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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

He has not the first idea what the obvious joke is, or why Clint is grinning like that, but he takes hold of Clint's hands and pulls him out into near the exact middle of the ice.

"Yeah. I kind of grew up skating. Started when I was four."

Where he lets go and skates backward about ten feet away from Clint and stops and beckons.

"Come to me."

Four? Clint is pretty sure the only thing in his life that he's stuck to that long is eating.

He was right about the acoustics, they're terrible and he can see Ben's mouth move but nothing reaches him. The gesture does fine, though, and he moves carefully forward. Careful, this time, because he doesn't want to slam into Ben like he used to do to Barney.

"Good. Now stop." He backs off some once Clint gets close, but also holds his hand up, palm out.

The acoustics in here aren't great, and he knows that. At least he hadn't put on music.

It's a good thing Ben backed off. Clint stops as soon as he sees that hand, but it takes a second of oh shit how to remember what to do with his feet. He does not fall on his face, does not break his wrists either, and he doesn't hit Ben.

"Really didn't think that would work," he admits, admiring his skates and how they almost come to a point at the toes.

He grins in delight at Clint's admission. "Skating's all physics. If your skates are pointing at each other the- You know what, never mind. Let's do it again, only faster. Then I'll teach you some fun stuff and see if I can make you fall."

He's a coach. He is required to have a sadistic streak, isn't he?

"That's what I thought you were doing with this," Clint laughs, but now that he knows he can really truly brake he follows Ben's lead. Faster. Ben has a sadistic streak and that pairs nicely with how willing Clint is to bust his own face open.

"Oh no, this is just the easy part. You're going to learn to spin next."

He's entirely unwilling to let Clint bust his face open, though. Ass, yes. Face, no.

So while he pushes Clint for speed, and keeps backing up this time he stays close enough that if Clint falls forward he can catch him.

When they've found a pretty decent clip, Clint makes the mistake of shifting his weight too far and he does fall. There's nothing graceful about this either, but he doesn't flail or panic--too many falls throughout his life for that. He will, however, be very grateful to be caught and very bloodied if he's not.

Obi-Wan is not a large man. He is, however, very, very solid on skates and even a few years out from his competitive career is damn strong and fit.

Also that his last time was in pairs means that he is pretty used to grabbing and lifting and throwing. Which is a lot harder than just catching.

He catches Clint, albeit somewhat awkwardly and rather than let his face hit the ice hauls him back up. Then drops Clint on his ass before Clint can pull him down.

"Perfect," he says, happily!

He doesn't go down as hard as one would think. Ben catching him and redirecting him provides enough of a change that he barely even oofs when he lands.

"You're supposed to do a somersault at the end?" Clint teases. He's a perfectionist--Ben will realize that later when it's too late--but he's laid back enough to enjoy the mistakes, too.

"Spin, not flip," he says, like he isn't going slightly wide-eyed in absolute horror of the idea. Does he need to put a helmet on Clint before he lets the man back on the ice? Maybe full goalie gear and padding? Because he will. "Flipping is bad. Ice is hard. Keep your head off it." Please.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject