test drive meme 21

[savmods]

NOTE: The locations in this test drive are placeholders and do not fit with current game events. Due to ongoing changes as we shift to arc 3, contents of this test drive as they related to specific areas or activities are unfortunately not able to be incorporated as game canon, though if it is possible for a particular thread, you may assume conversations took place similarly in a different setting once the changeover happens ICly. Test drive threads may of course still be used for application samples!

--

Ingress travel can be disorienting, but there’s no need to worry! All side effects are temporary and lessen with each trip. Your body may experience several sensations at once: being pushed forward as if a hand is resting on your back, momentary and startling blindness, a gentle ringing in your head. You may have difficulty discerning whether it is hot or cold, but where you have been prodded is noticeably warmer than the rest of you. Some may suffer from dizziness while others are perfectly fine. You notice that the area you are in is filled with a soft cerulean light and feels slightly humid and dark despite the glow around you. Regardless of your current state, however, the stress of initial Ingress travel forces your body into unconsciousness.

Waking up is another story. Or maybe it isn’t.

You find yourself in a nondescript room; sometimes with others who have found themselves in the same situation, sometimes alone. A robotic medical tech is always present to explain what’s happened in a rote fashion, though his programming does not permit him to answer specific questions. He provides some clothing, a TAB, and a guide that explains the basics of Ingress travel and why you are here. Outside the room, you'll find you're on a space station that is staffed only by other robots; the only other organics there are those who recently arrived with you, or perhaps your predecessors, who are strolling the halls in search of an observation deck or the tech they've been sent here to fix. Why not introduce yourself and say hello?

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phanos

* The planet Phanos is not as it was during the last visit there. Storms of dark energy swirl across the sections of the world, though they do not yet overwhelm it. The temperature is cooler now, but sandstorms still kick up with great frequency, making cooperation an important part of survival as groups make their way across the landscape, investigating the changes. The pyramid forest remains, but the griffins who live there now venture farther down from their nests, and around a third of them have been twisted by the storms' energies into even more aggressive, monstrous versions of what they once were. Do not take one on alone, or it may be your last mistake.

* Inside one of the tallest pyramids, the lab remains intact, and rumors speak of a locked chamber in its heart that contains valuable material—but is that in the technological sense, or does it hold something monetarily precious in the right market? Maybe you don't care and you're just nosy. Either way, the vault is sealed away behind a series of complicated sliding puzzles that have just one catch—they are not possible to solve without two people operating the locking station. Are you here with a friend? If not, better hope the next guy to come along has a sharp mind for this stuff.

---

OUT OF CHARACTER INFO

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Comments

[inconsequence]

[They're still smiling. Evasion is his talent, and they should know. There's a loose thread tickling their wrist inside their sleeve. But they don't shift an inch, aside from what it takes to let their head tilt casually to one side.]

Did you know the consumption of Echo Flowers can make someone terribly sick?

[They'd not be surprised if he claims he does - what doesn't he know, right?]

[Only there's a world of difference between what he knows and what he doesn't. And he certainly doesn't look to be in any hurry to fill that gap with anything but, what's the phrase?]


[He likes whoopee cushions, does he not?]

[Oh, yes.]
[Hot air.]

[skelepun]

[I mean technically, it doesn't half to be hot air. Could be cold air. Any air, really. For a human, I guess it'd be more carbon monoxide, and that's not really air...

... But anyway. Back to being cryptic. This edge won't sharpen itself.]

Never heard that, nope. What sorta bonehead eats flowers?

[inconsequence]

[Now you're getting it.]

[They don't take their eyes from him for a moment, but they've begun to laugh. It pitches upward, a thin, vaguely amused coil of noise. Maybe he finds it unsettling. Maybe he's heard it all before, too many times to count, too many times to even blink.]

[But he needn't worry. The laughter is, after all, as genuine as is possible for a creature like them.]

What sort of bonehead indeed? A perceptive question, I'm sure.

[A pity it came too late.]

[skelepun]

[This was fun and all, but Sans was losing the plot a little. The kid clearly couldn't stand him, that much was obvious from the pointed questions and charming implications. They enjoyed the dance of it all maybe, but the antagonism was writ into their every word. At least it seemed that way from where Sans was standing... sitting.

He thought back to Toriel again. Where was she? Why wasn't she here? It's a question that Sans was rapidly beginning to draw a conclusion on, and he didn't care for it.]

So I'm gonna circle back here a second, don't mind me. What're you doing in here, kid? Maybe I'm selling myself short here, but I figure it isn't the conversation.

[inconsequence]

[They'd really be the wrong person to ask, as far as the location of the former queen of monsters. Or maybe he thinks they're the right one to ask. They probably look terribly suspicious. He knows what they would do, given the chance, and his judgments have a habit of superimposing themselves over just about everything.]

[Including sound reason, it would seem.]

And here I thought you must have had enough of circles.

[God knows they have. Ha ha.]

[skelepun]

[Shockingly, it's not Chara he suspects, but a big mechanical intersection of space, science, and magic Sans is no closer to understanding than he was when he left. It took Papyrus, it only followed that...

Welp.

Suffice to say, big broken machines are a sticking point for him. Not a fan.]

That's a roundabout way of avoiding the question. [He winks, then points up at the large puzzle of interspun circles.] Sides, they're not all bad.

[inconsequence]

They're not all sides, either.

[A straight answer from them is like water from a stone. But, let's be real here: getting water from a stone gets a lot easier once you loosen up your definition of water. Also, stone.]

Call it an eye for an eye.

[As in - they're taking what he's giving. A non-answer for a non-answer.]

[And so it goes.]

[skelepun]

Wish I could give you one, kid, but I'm plum out. [He hits the back of his skull, eyelights briefly stuttering to blackness before returning.]

But hey. [He tosses the coin Chara gave him up in the air, letting it hover for a few moments before it falls back into his hand -- and promptly falls through the gaps in said hand onto the floor. So much for smooth.] You know my rates, what're yours?

[inconsequence]

[Ah, well. They have plenty to spare. There's something perhaps coldly humorous in his rates, and the form of currency he prefers. Is he encouraging them to just wander around, looking for people...killing them to take their money? That's just plain messed up.]

[Maybe it would justify what they assume he already suspects. What any judge worth his vast and veritable salt would suspect.]

[They're empty inside, aren't they?]
[Just like him.]
Might I propose a Game? [They both ever do so like Games. Or maybe they just know how to play them better than anyone. No one cheats like someone who knows the rulebook back to front.]

A truth for a truth.

A lie for a lie.

[You are the apple of my eye.]

[skelepun]

[Make your mother cry.]

Hm. [Sans drums his fingers against the sign, a gesture of thoughtfulness. Or maybe thoughtlessness. This was probably a bad idea, and yet he was hungier than he cared to admit for what's changed in his absence. As... exhausting as Chara could be sometimes, they held their fair share of answers.

And besides, everything exhausted him.]

Sure. Won't kill us, right?

[inconsequence]

[That's another laugh. Like everything else about them, it's wholly insincere, but their amusement counts for something, surely.]

[It counts about as much as a lie.]

Unfortunately. [It seems nothing here has.] It seems we've paid each other in lies.

[Dozens of times over. Maybe hundreds. Some versions of them keep careful count. Step by step. Nine hundred, and onward, and onward, and on. Some don't. Some just never mastered the ability to count that high. Ha ha.]

[So. What are you doing here, kid?]

As for me?

Call it a break from it all.

[skelepun]

Can't fault anybody for needing a break.

[It's one of the few things he's always up for. If up is the word anyone wants to use. He shuffles back against the wall, setting his sign aside for the time being.]

As for me, I came here for the cool thing in the middle. At first, anyway. Couldn't make my way through this puzzle.

[inconsequence]

[They honor their promises. They honor their consequences.]

[But him?]

[Perhaps you would call them paranoid, for presuming that he'd not grant them the same courtesy. Call it the voice of EXPerience. Partial truths and not-lies they'd anticipate. Particularly from someone like him.]

So you contented yourself to reap whatever cool things you might coax from the pockets of passersby?

[skelepun]

Whoa, hey, that's a bit of a leap, huh? [Sans laughs, holding up his hands in mock defense.] Whaddya take me for, some kinda thief?

S'on them if they wanna get it appraised and trade it for some of my bespoke lies.

[inconsequence]

I cannot say I put much faith in your wares.

[Given his history with peddling, can he precisely blame them? His hot dogs are as much susceptible to his own persistent garbage habit as he himself is.]

Not to mention, sir, the fact that a health inspector would have a field day in an establishment such as yours. [As as a result of his disgusting apparel, if nothing else!]

[skelepun]

Sounds like you're gonna rat me out. [Sans leans forward slightly, jaw balanced against the palm of his hand.] Don't gotta be such a narc about things, kiddo.

[inconsequence]

What's wrong, Sans? Scared of a little judgment?

[skelepun]

I wish. Have you seen this coat? [With his pocketed hand, Sans fans out the coat as if it were a set of wings. The fabric is still flecked red with something, along the frayed edges of a cut.] You don't wanna know the last time I washed this thing. People got plenty of people to judge, and I won't begrudge 'em.

I just wanna keep my revenue stream flowing, that's all. Got mouths to feed.

[inconsequence]

Mouths, plural. My, but we've been busy.

[Gross?]



[Gross.]

[skelepun]

[Watch what you say, kid, he was briefly married to one of your moms and went on a few dates with the other one.]

Haven't you heard? I ran off with a whole ship. Someone's gotta keep the crew in animal crackers and Dramamine.

[inconsequence]

[Like they said: gross.]

You never particularly struck me as the nurturing type.

Did standing idly by and watching them fall like ninepins get to be too tiring?

[skelepun]

[It's only the space of a moment, that Sans' face remains fixed and rigid and silent, but it's enough time for someone who knows the ins and outs of his mannerisms as Chara did.

That one landed.]

The rules are different here, or haven't you figured that out yet?

[inconsequence]

[Hilarious, is it not? It's not the same as reading into the subtle twitches at the corners of lips and the pinching of eyes, the kind of careful deduction that requires skin to decipher. The kind of plastic smile they wear, the kind of stoic flatness that Frisk perfected into a mask out of necessity.]

[It's different with bone. But there are little tells you learn to look for.]

I see. [They do see - with entirely too much clarity, and with the even-toned finality reminiscent of a different tone altogether - perhaps one more appropriate to an exchange held in The Corridor.]

It must be awfully nice, to feel that you can pick and choose which rules you would prefer to follow.

[Such as the ones that allow you to bow out at your own discretion.]

[Nothing left but us ghosts.]

[skelepun]

Sure is. Once you sub out L, Y, N, I, C, and E, anyway.

[As quick as the moment is there, it passes again. Sans slumps back against the wall, hands plunged deep into his jacket pockets as he lets his sockets fall shut.]

Don't you have anything better to do, kid?

[inconsequence]

[You must have misunderstood.]

[Not everyone, Sans, has that luxury. Not everyone can choose to break the rules and be a dirty hacker when they so choose. Not everyone can simply depart the story, no matter how hard they tried.]

[This world does not want them dead. For reasons beyond them.]

[Or maybe that's just what hell tastes like.]

[That's funny; maybe someone told him that too. Or maybe he just sunk his bony little phalanges into the walls of the world, tore up its skin, picked at the numbers just like how he could read the hot gurgle of LOVE in someone else's chest, until he learned what he would about one very specific child.]

[Don't you have anything better to do?]

Not particularly.

[As always, it all cycles back to the script.]

[It's a good script.]

I just wanted to see you suffer.