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OCTOBER TEST DRIVE MEME

ABOARD THE MOIRA

Whether adjusting to space travel has been difficult or not, there is always something to be done. From working to leisure, the Moira offers a multitude of opportunities to get to know your crewmates a bit better. Exploration of the ship is highly encouraged, but as another planet grows closer to being docked, things start to get a little hectic. You'll notice a slight change in the artificial gravity as the Moira is pulled into a gravitational field; however, more noticeable changes can be found in the overall morale as you prepare to descend.

☄ on your own:

There are plenty of other communal areas on the ship to explore! Pick a place, and see where it takes you.

AREA 895B EXPLORATION

Most of this colony has certainly seen better days--on the inside. Upon disembarking the Moira, crew members will notice that Area 895B appears poor but densely populated. It’s a mid-point between several planets, so the culture and its people are incredibly diverse. The docks are intricate and woven together like a maze, and without direction or the numerous signs that decorate the walls, it’s a place one can easily find themselves lost in. The “city proper” consists mostly of slums, but as aboard the ship, there is plenty to do and see.

● bars: A-895B is notorious for them! In fact, there seems to be one on almost every corner that caters to a different sort of clientele. Poor, rich, richer. Do some of them even have an escort service? Most likely, yes.
● sanctuary: Like a church, this building stands tall and proud in the center of the colony. Its structure seems to be in constant change; it is always being worked on. Yet, once inside, the interior is quiet and consists of many, many staircases. Along each step, there are so many candles that there is only enough room for safe passage up or down…
● market: A good place to barter and trade. Like most areas, anything can be haggled for as long as you’re willing to pay the price.

☄ exchange booth:

Throughout random locations in A-895B, crew members will happen upon simple booths with little decoration and a native sitting behind it. For those with experience, they might think it resembles something like a kissing booth. However, these kisses are more an exchange than anything else: trade and receive a “gift”. These gifts will vary depending, but they are all contained inside a tiny box. Could it be something you were missing from home? Is it an item you’ve wanted for the last several trips planet-side? How did they even know, and what’s the catch?

A day of your life taken with that kiss. Should that not be enough to not ask such questions?

OUT OF CHARACTER INFO

FAQ | LOCATIONS | RESERVES | APPLICATIONS | NAVIGATION

For mature or graphic content, please label. Test Drive Memes are not game canon but can be used as samples in applications. For questions, please direction them to the FAQ. As always, be kind and have fun!

[ art credit zarnala @ devart ]

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(OOC: Despite the icons, she's from ME3!)

rec area
The doctors said they fixed her back.

Already she's standing, walking like before Mars, though of course she won't be surprised if it hurts an hour from now. Still, she wants to test it, and so she looks for a pool, where if anything goes wrong, the low gravity will at least make it easier on her.

She changes into a swimsuit and eases into the water, standing by the edge where the water's up to her hips. Swinging one leg back and forth and occasionally to the side probably doesn't look like much, but it's easy, and it doesn't hurt, even when she speeds up her kicks and then stops holding onto the side of the pool, and her face lights up with joy.

cargo bay
In the two years between the first Normandy's destruction and the second's escape from Earth, Ashley's served on other ships, but she always seems to come back to the cargo bay. At first she'd simply felt out of place with a new crew; now it tends to be her favorite parts of ships.

Of course, this one is somewhat different to the cargo bays she's used to on Alliance ships.

"No vehicles," she wonders aloud as she walks through. "So we're only docking in places where everything's in walking distance or there's public transit. No weapons bench..."

A-895B exchange booth
Ashley hangs back and watches for a while, unsure of the practice. She's even more unsure what to make of it once she gets the gist: A day of your life doesn't seem like much when she's still operating on the idea that her days are numbered (being a ~~cynic~~ realist and a soldier in a war does that to you), but the boxes seem far too small for anything she'd want from home except maybe an empanadilla.

When she sees someone she recognizes from the ship, she approaches and asks in an undertone, "Hey, do you think it's worth it?"

So there's still magic. Weird magic, but when you're a dwarf, all magic is at least three parts fanciful bullshit to two parts ow, that burns. But it's the only explanation for, 'give up a day of your life, receive unknown prizes'.

Varric is still only half-convinced he'll survive the next day. Actually, he's a solid quarter convinced he's already dead and he's living in the sky as some kind of dwarven hell.

Maker, Varric, stop talking in math metaphors.

Either way, he sees it like this: if he's only got a day left, he's giving up his whole damn life for whatever's in that box.

He recognises the human from the ship. He thinks. Either way, she's drawing back and asking his opinion. And if there's anything Varric loves in this world, it's being asked his opinion.

"Me? I don't gamble unless I know how much I'm betting with. And what's in the pot. And something about who I'm playing against."

A sound checklist that Ashley herself tends to use two-thirds of in Skyllian-Five. But that's for credits - she certainly agrees on wanting to know something about the people taking a day of her life.

"We've got one and a half out of three," she says, the contents of the box being the half point. People are certainly coming away pleased with their 'gifts'. "As for the third..."

She lets her gaze drift back to the booth, where an unknown alien is handing out the boxes. If this was a species she knew, she could probably guess a little about them, but in this galaxy, she's in the dark.

Plus: "This isn't the first booth I've seen, and someone different -" a different species, too - "was manning that one." What might be true for one of them might be different for the other.

She's not quite worked up the nerve to go in the water yet. First there's getting the hang of swimwear - and then, you know, the minor problem of her being totally unable to swim. The couple of times she's been dunked in water in her life, she just awkwardly floated and watched the water from inside her mask. Nowadays, with no suit and wearing her mask part-time? She's not quite ready to jump back in. So to speak.

But that doesn't mean she doesn't go in a little closer to the pool every now and then and just kind of...look a bit. If there's nobody there, she might dunk her hand in just to get used to it. Even if she is wearing baggy workout clothes and no mask.

There is, however, someone there this time, so all she can do at this point is walk over to the very edge and--

"Ashley?" She starts, takes a step over towards where her old crewmate is right there in the pool and...slips.

It's a bit wet underfoot. She's right at the edge. And thus, with a yelp, a thud and then an almighty splash, Tali falls in the swimming pool. And of course, being totally unable to swim, what follows is a lot of splashing and flailing and underwater panicking. In water that only comes up to her waist at highest.

Ashley's head snaps up at her name, from a voice she hasn't heard in two years. The woman by the pool doesn't look familiar, however, and then suddenly she's thrashing around in the pool with the alarm of someone who clearly doesn't know how to swim.

She doesn't hesitate, just launches forward and grabs the woman to haul her up so her head and shoulders are above water. She's not exactly trained for lifesaving, but the water's shallow, and the woman seems to know her.

"It's okay, ma'am," she says, calm and authoritative. Like a Spectre should be. "I've got you. Put your feet down."

Her sinuses are on fire. Apparently that happens when you try inhaling chlorinated water.

She spits water, coughing and spluttering and blinking hard, though blinking doesn't get the hair out of her face; it came undone in the fall and is tangled in a wet mass around her head and neck.

But her feet are firmly planted. Someone's got a hold of her. She clutches Ashley's arms hard, the other woman's skin cold under her hands.

"Thanks--" She has to stop and breathe for a moment as it dawns on her she's actually just standing in the pool now (it's not as weird as she thought it'd be outside the suit. Just...colder), and then...

"Ma'am?" She stares at Ashley for a moment, hair wet, eyes squinting, water dripping down her face. Somehow, it's gotten really easy to forget how hard she is to recognise out of her suit.

Ashley looks over the woman, confused. She'd said her name - her first name, not Williams and maybe her rank like most people she's worked with lately have called her. But she's not from the hospital, and she doesn't remember her from her sister's wedding or any colonies she's been assigned to...

"Um, were you at my Spectre induction ceremony?" she tries, rubbing absently at the back of her head. Councilor Tevos had used her full name, and there were definitely people watching in the Council Chamber. "Because I was only really paying attention to the Council, sorry."

But that can't be it either. In only three words, the pitch and tone and accent have reminded her so much of that quarian girl she'd come to consider a little sister even though she'd never see her face.

Her shivering is making the water ripple out around her, and she steps slowly and carefully towards the side, pulling her hair out of her face as she goes.

"Spectre?" At that, she whips round - her hand slips over the wet edge of the pool, splashes back into the water. "Really? I really missed a lot these past..." And then it slowly starts to dawn on her. "...couple of..."

Click. "Wait! Ah... Ashley, it's me - it's Tali, I..."

And then, before anything else, almost as a distracted aside. "Keelah, this is freezing."

Ashley stares. She's missed Tali over the last couple of years, but she never expected to see her like this.

"You're out of your suit," she says blankly. "Oh my god, are you okay - let's get you out of the water, you need to get warm, does the medbay here have dextro epipen -"

As she panics, she leads the way to the ladder, nudging Tali up and out of the pool. Once she's safely on dry land, Ashley grabs a towel and drapes it over Tali's shoulders, careful not to touch her any more now that the water can't wash away any bacteria she's undoubtedly carrying, but she can't keep her eyes off of her. A quarian - one she likes - out of her suit?

Ashely's clearly lapsing into a panic, and Tali would try to comfort her - should try, but she's too busy scrambling towards the ladder and clambering up. She murmurs a thanks at the towel draped around her, flashing her a grin that's a little watery - literally.

"That's not how I'd pictured this reunion going," she says presently, hugging the towel to herself and taking a deep breath, dispelling the adrenaline still numbing her legs (or is that the cold?).

"I'm fine, by the way. I mean..." A small huff of a laugh. "I left my dignity in the water there, but I don't need the medbay."

It seems like the two of them have totally switched places in terms of panic levels here.

At that assertion that she's fine, Ashley forces herself to calm down with a quick breathing exercise they showed her in physio. Though her eyes still don't leave Tali as she grabs a towel of her own, it's definitely more confusion now than worry.

"How? Obviously I'm relieved, but..." She sighs. This isn't exactly how she'd pictured a reunion with Tali either. "I've been doing almost nothing but watching news vids for the last few weeks. You'd think something like quarians being okay out of envirosuits - or even just one - would make the headlines."

There's a moment where, as Ashley grabs her own towel, Tali tries to scrub her hair dry with her own. It works...sort of, but it also leaves her long hair in an even more tangled mess. By the time Ashley's back with her, it's starting to look like a bird's nest. Not that Tali's ever seen one of those.

"It's...Ugh, you bosh'tet..." That being her hair. Giving up on it, she throws it back and just wraps the towel around her shoulders for a moment, attention turning back to Ashley. "It's a long story." She flashes a grin that's almost half an apologetic grimace. "I can either give you the full thing or the compressed version, but actually? I haven't seen another quarian in...nearly a year. I know as much as you do about other quarians."

Nearly a year. A human year, granted - it's gotten easier to use those as a frame of reference - but that's, what, a year and a half for her people? It's a startlingly long time however you parse it, and as she says it, the sudden surprise is clear in her own tone.

The mess Tali makes of her hair gets a grin out of Ashley, but without something to fix it handy, she keeps her mouth shut rather than tease her about it. (She only realizes now that for some reason she'd never imagined that Tali might have hair under her helmet.)

"It kinda creeps up on you, huh?" she says sympathetically, wrapping the towel around herself like a strapless dress. "You don't really realize how long you've been away until you hit your mandatory leave - well, I guess that's a non-issue now." Both because she's here and because with the war at home, she's honestly not sure she - or the Alliance - will make it to her next mandatory leave.

There's a cheerful thought. She needs a distraction. "Gimme the short version for now, and we can catch up with the long version later."

She sees that grin and gives a long-suffering sort of a grin back - she's already considered cutting it shorter a few times, but...something about that would be kind of a shame. She kept it all this time, after all.

But the grin fades quickly enough - she hasn't been back home for a long time, but she knows enough. She's been told enough, seen certain videos. The Alliance - the Hierarchy, the Republics, the Fleet, all of them - she doesn't know how much longer they're going to exist, and maybe she has given up the idea of ever going back, but it doesn't mean that doesn't hurt like something crushing.

"The short version... OK, ah, a year or so ago, I was on a planet called Haestrom out in the Outer Rim. It was a classified mission for the Fleet, but..." She shrugs, gestures around them in a way that says the classified part really doesn't matter anymore. "Anyway, from there I got pulled somewhere else, I ended up on..."

She pauses for a second, and in that second the idea of telling Ashley - or anybody - the details about the CDC is so repugnant her mouth twists with it. "On another ship. They were really technologically advanced - more than we are. I mean, they were taking people on purpose, not like here. They gave me some kind of therapy? I'm not sure what they really did, no one explained it, but it fixed my immune system." She suddenly laughs, beaming in that sudden giddy pleasure that still comes over her every now and then. "I don't even wear my suit anymore - I don't have to."

She clears her throat, grin only slightly fading. "And not long after that I got pulled here by the Ingress. That was a couple of months ago - and here I am."

That twist to her mouth worries her a little, but Ashley doesn't push it, not when she knows she has her own stories she'd rather not talk about. Besides, then Tali's laughing, and she can't help but beam back. To be careful, to be trapped your whole life and then suddenly not need to be any more - she can't imagine what that new freedom must feel like.

"That's amazing - you must be stoked to be out of that suit. And it sounds like you've had an interesting time," she says, in the understatement of the year. "More interesting than my weeks in hospital stuck in bed and then struggling through physio, anyway: I went to Mars with Shepard, ran into Liara, got beaten up by a Cerberus cyborg - seems like Shepard's always hauling my ass out of fights with synthetics."

Eden Prime, Virmire, Mars - Ashley stops this train of thought before she goes bitter again, and reaches forward for a hug instead. "It's so good to see you, you have no idea." Not only because it's been two years, but because the hospital's been so lonely and boring with only Sarah, Thane, and occasionally Shepard for company.

She's intensely grateful when Ashley doesn't push it - but then, when you're in the military, everyone you know has those stories. The things they won't talk about if they don't absolutely have to. Things they would just rather let lie. Not asking is a kind of respect in itself.

"To be fair, most of the time Shepard was the one getting us into the fights." She doesn't notice that she used the past tense, but maybe she wouldn't be so surprised if she did - it's been three years since she took orders from Shepard. She has no memory of the Collectors, the Reapers, anything.

Ashley's soaking wet and freezing cold when Tali moves forward and hugs her friend tightly to her, but so's Tali, so it doesn't much matter. "I've got a pretty good idea," she mumbles against Ashley's shoulder, a slight waver of emotion coming into her voice.

She pulls back presently only enough to give Ashley a concerned look. "How are you now? Did you recover alright?"

Ashley's gotten herself into enough fights with synthetics without Shepard's help, but she still chuckles. Her recovery, on the other hand, is a bit of a sore spot (with or without the pun), and she takes a moment to straighten (like she couldn't a few weeks ago) before answering.

"Well, I hadn't finished my PT before I ended up here - but I feel fine now," she says, a note of wonder at it. "I was just trying out some of my exercises, and I've got full range of motion, nothing hurts... I don't know what happened, but I like it."

She'd been planning to keep it to herself, when she'd first noticed movement seemed easier than it had even during her Spectre induction ceremony - she didn't want to seem like a burden to her new crew, or like she was fishing for sympathy. Venting to an old friend, on the other hand, is completely fine.

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tdm 3

Ashley Williams | Mass Effect

exchange booth omg ashley aaaah

I understand I am a rare unicorn!

...no regrets.

HAHAHA oh dear

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