synodiporia_ooc | Test Drive #11.

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cuts there are two new prompts, and here are the prompts from previous test-drives, which you’re still welcome to use in this post. When you comment, be sure you specify what prompt you want to play with, and please put up your own threadstarter - it makes for a much more friendly environment that a forest of bare toplevels! OCs are especially welcome! Please take a quick look at our Directory & familiarize yourself with the concept and setting of the game before you jump in.

Our upcoming app round runs September 1st-7th. Our next Jaunt, The Lightning Age, a postcolonial steampunk romp with a hunt for a fugitive disordering a peaceful flying city, will run September 12th-October 19th, and an alternate player-driven setting, or Walkabout, will be available (but the specific setting has yet to be voted upon).

Prompt #33 is set in the sometimes Mad-Max like post-apocalyptic academia of the Ivory Tower jaunt, where an isolated school works to restore civilization decades after a brutal war destroyed it. But off-campus, things can get a little rougher…

Prompt #34 is set in the world of Heartbreak Academy, a shoujo high school world where Social Technology, or S. Tech, allows the physical conjuration of emotions - sparkles, roses, soundtracks, emotes and rainclouds. Heartbreak Academy teaches elite students how to better master their S. Tech - and as you could imagine, this makes practical exams… very interesting...

Prompt #33: Pop Quiz.

There are chlorine bombs in the library, and snipers outside.

To be more specific, the library is an open-air market set up in a suburban French high-rise parking garage, one of the few buildings on this side of the city to survive intact, and a good place for gatherings that might need a quick getaway. Academics from across Europe use it as a trading post - bringing old books, or bringing computer printouts collected in three-ring binders, driving up in dune buggies or armored trucks, landing on the ceiling in helicopters, conducting a rapid swap of the valuables, and leaving.

But this time, the warlords knew they were coming. On each floor, among the parked cars, there’s a truck or van with deflated tires and an empty gas tank, in which an oil-drum and a detonator have been mounted. It’s overkill, but worse is the fact that in half-demolished buildings to either side are snipers. To the west, they only have crossbows, but the raider on the northeast has some sort of pre-War antimateriel rifle, and he’s already scragged a buggy in the exit ramp and shot a chopper pilot on the roof.

So now, it’s up to the academics. Those who study environmental sciences are trying to find ways to neutralize the chemicals. Engineers are working to disarm the detonators or fix the vehicles enough to safely transport the bombs. The history and humanities students are given the job of finding some way to stop the snipers, and stop raiders from getting in to steal any of their texts or other resources.

And some, of course, are caught in the fine traditions of academic debate, and may need Travelers to steer them to more decisive action… but of course, there might be Travelers among the raiders, too.

Prompt #34 Partner Exercise

The exam is simple. Each of you’s been given a spare, teacher-monitored Moe-Meter and left alone in the exam hall. Using S. Tech - not just fancy manifestations, but your words and actions, your persuasive skill and acting ability, all the skills that make you effective with S. Tech - you and your partner for this exam have to bury the needle. The problem is, you have to do it in both directions - positive emotion, maxing things out with cuteness, fondness, or warm feelings - and negative emotion, hitting empty on the meter through sadness, anger, or fear. Any sort of against-the-rules physical contact is an automatic F (if your partner reports it), but apart from that, it’s up to your imagination. You have fifteen minutes - that’s like Seven Minutes In Heaven and Seven in Hell, with one minute of cooldown in between.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hajime hadn't been feeling good about this Jaunt at all. Why couldn't they do something where he got to fight stuff? Or even cook things? Things he can do. But he's never been too on top of emotional things, and all the Undead stuff he's got going for him now only makes it worse. He's got a few steps up on the guy he was in another existence, but that's setting the bar pretty low.

So now he's got some kind of exam to take care of with this emotional stuff. He's been pretty sure he's going to bomb this and bomb this hard--emotions are hard, okay--but when he sees his exam partner, well. He doesn't bow so much as kind of awkwardly head-bob in response, because that's him. Kenzaki. The one he remembers. The one he...has all kinds of feelings about thanks to those memories. "...uh, yeah. You too."

He'd been so quick to get to his feet and bow, it's only on the way back up that he really sees who he's partnered with. "...Aikawa?" And then he's... not straightening up the entire way. He's kind of cringing. The last time they'd seen each other, it was in Junior High, at graduation, and it had been awkward and awful and he'd never kept in touch either because of it or in spite of it.... where can he even go with this?

"...it's been a while." And when he straightens up, he has a perfectly straight, slightly judgemental look on his face. Let's get all the bad feelings out of the way. They've got to have enough of that to at least pass half the exam.

Hajime nods. "It's definitely been a long time." A long, awkward time, made all the more awkward by the fact that Hajime remembers another version of Kenzaki on some other world and is dealing with some kind of lingering reincarnation memory thing, and that Kenzaki's dealing with some kind of fake alternate universe memories...

If Hajime's looking a little green, well, that's what happens when you have green blood and you're feeling intensely awkward with this whole scenario.

This is a complex situation. There are a lot of layers. But the only one that Kenzaki is tapping into is the immediate one, and that simplifies things somewhat on his end.

"...Hey." Although as soon as he catches that green tinge that Hajime is taking on, his half-formed plans to go all cold and bitter seem like less of a great idea. He's actually worried, and making his way out from around the desk and towards his old friend. "Are you feeling alright? Should... should you be here?"

And then he is up in Hajime's personal space. And then he is reaching and putting the back of his hand on his forehead. And then there is a shift in the light of the room, a tinge of pink, of mist, of sparkles. "...I thought I was the one that had to go away to the country for my health." At any other time, that would have been said jokingly. Right now, it's surprisingly intense. Up goes the Moe-Meter, at least on his end.

"I probably..." Hey personal space wait what too much too fast takes whatever else Hajime was about to say right out of his mouth. His own Moe-Meter is steadily ticking upward, and Hajime reels back from a sudden extreme nosebleed from that surprisingly intense concern that should not be so intense.

"Woah!" So much for intense concern, and the rising of the meter. While theatrical nosebleeds rarely stain, you still don't want to get nailed by one. (And was it green? Green? What in the heck?) Kenzaki windmills backwards, his retreat halted when he bumps back against a desk.

"Uh..." And now he's going to fail this if he doesn't somehow get the mood back on track. His Moe-Meter is wavering uncertainly as he scrambles to compose himself. "I... I didn't think it was that big a deal!"

"It's--it's not!" What is he doing why is this happening why must he suffer so? Hajime's becoming increasingly more awkward with this whole thing because he's having genuine feelings over here, and Kenzaki's not exactly himself, and that doesn't even really matter now anyway because he's not the Hajime Kenzaki would know in any permutation of events here, and..."I...I just missed you, okay?!"

Smooth.

As though to irritate the smoothness on display there, the minor greenish blushing he's doing goes full-on exaggerated anime style--he has no idea how to work any of this crap why is this doing this why--and are those shoujo bubbles behind him that he's just accidentally released while trying to backpedal and regain some dignity? Freaking shoujo manga bubbles?!

Someone please kill him now.

"Really?" Ding, and up goes the Moe-Meter another notch, as those shoujo manga bubbles just start overtaking the entire classroom. What he wants to do is cough and dismiss it all and bring the subject around to safer territory, but... but there is no safer territory between him and Hajime, is there?

Alright then. He's going to run with it. He has an exam to... to at least not completely and utterly fail.

"I... guess I missed you, too!" And he puts on a well-practiced everything-is-just-fine smile, pushing forward a step or two from the desk that he had bumped back against. "I'm glad you're... feeling better." Even if he is so, so green right now.

Wait..."Really?" Kenzaki had missed him too? (Did that even matter here, with the infiltrating thing?) But it's enough to make his own Moe-Meter start ticking upward. "Uh...yeah. I'm feeling better. Lots better."

Was it hot in there? He's thinking it's hot in there. Yes. Just the air conditioning messing with him. Yes. "So...how have you been?"

Test Drive #11.

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