synodiporia_ooc | Test Drive #18

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test drive

Test Drive #18

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 March 24th–April 1st. Our next Jaunt will be Olympus Upended: a classical myth and fantasy adventure, set in a Trojan War-era Greece full of gods, monsters, and titans. During the Jaunt, the Olympians and their chosen heroes must deal with the machinations of fate when their powers and domains begin to ebb and flow, faltering or in some cases transferring to others.

Prompt #47 features a liminal space where Travelers find themselves floating down the Tunnel of Love.
Prompt #48 features a liminal space with beds, balloons, and no ground to be seen.
Prompt #49 features a space walk set in the universe from the Escape From Junkworld jaunt. Having escaped the destruction of the prison planet Junkworld Gehenna, these refugees from the four major spacefaring races--crystalline Hecatites, psychic-but-prone-to-hallucination horned Diabolin; scaled Gorgons with their petrifying abilities and tentacled hair, and your bog-standard humans, newcomers to the stars--now finally have a moment where they can slow down.

#47

You find yourself in a boat in a long tunnel, light deliberately kept low. Oh, the sides and the ceiling glitter and sparkle and the dioramas you occasionally pass seem to glow with their own inner light, but unless you’re naturally adapted for low-light, it’s going to take your eyes a little while to adjust. Once they do--or perhaps even before they do--you’ll find that you’re not alone in the boat. There’s someone riding next to you. Maybe they’re a friend among the Travelers, maybe someone you’ve grown to love. Maybe they’re a perfect stranger. Maybe they’re even someone you hate. They’re still stuck in the boat with you.

Once your eyes have adjusted properly, you’ll see that the boat you’re both in is made of chocolate--white, dark, or milk--and carved in the shape of a swan. The ‘water’ it floats down is no such thing, but instead pink champagne. Those dioramas in the wall? They’re dramatizations of various moments of passion and romance in the love-lives of you and your fellow Travelers.

Just when it seems that you’ve been in the tunnel forever, it suddenly widens into a much larger room with a ceiling open to the sky, the underground waterway flowing through the center, constricted until there's barely water in the side, so that you can easily disembark from your swanboat during the minute it takes for the boat to glide through the room, which seems to be some sort of cafe. A ‘Group Date’ cafe, whatever that is, according to the sign. Instead of food on the menu board, there are instead lists of questions to ask your date. The floor is tiled with conversation hearts. The furniture, like the swan boats, is made of chocolate. Finally, the walls are made of valentine’s cards, addressed to initials and signed by Roman numerals, all in the same loopy pink cursive that makes up the questions menu.

#48

You find yourself in bed. In fact, each Traveler starts out in their own private bed, which is suspended from a floating hot air balloon (minus the gas burner) and both balloon and bed are decorated vaguely to the taste of the Traveler therein. It’s a lovely, comfortable bed, perfect for sleeping or just plain lazing around, and it allows a perfect view to all the other beds suspended in the sky--and the doors to created spaces as well, themselves suspended from balloons of their own.

There is no ground in this liminal space. Sky above, sky below, and the great crowd of balloons which are more or less level. Sometimes they drift close enough so that they bump together and you can easily move from one to the other, though of course they’ll soon drift away from each other.

Of course, this being liminal space, there’s no reason why you can’t walk through the thin air or even fly to the other balloons and doors, as long as you realize that’s an option. Just take care you don’t panic and forget you can, because once you forget you can fly the only thing you can do is fall. At least if you do fall into the endless sky, you’ll just have a few harrowing seconds to panic before you land right on your balloon bed again.

#49

It’s been a week since the Empress of Moths reached its destination. The planet below, with no official name, merely numerical designation referring to its star, is not exactly ideal. Its temperature is on the lower end of what humans will tolerate; its bedrock is not the best suited for Gorgon caves; there are few natural resources for the Diabolins to exploit; and its external geology isn’t quite to Hecatite tastes. It is, however, an M-type planet that will support intelligent life and has, in fact, supported a small smuggler’s base for quite some time.

Despite all these shortcomings, it’s much preferable to the radioactive slag heap the refugees formerly called home. Now that arrangements have been made with the local smugglers, most of the refugees have left the ship on outrider shuttles and it’s immediately noticeable how much less crowded the Empress is--even with a few of the local smugglers aboard after the negotiations.

But then, not everyone plans to stay planetside. There’s a sizable contingent who want to keep flying with the Empress, finding work among the stars to support their newfound home. It’s why she still hovers over the planet, instead of coming to an undignified landing on the surface. And before the Empress leaves, her new crew and any visitors currently aboard (smugglers and Investigating Travelers alike) have the opportunity to undertake a space walk together. It’s time to don one’s space suit and helmet, attach one’s air supply, and take a step outside into the beautiful, cold vacuum of the sea of stars.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Broly can fly even without being in liminal space, but when he's trying to make sure he can take the bed with him, it's far more difficult to manage.

Logistics might not be his strong suit.

The Doctor is politely ignored (perhaps he had a bed he was trying to get to as well) up until he speaks up, though the saiyan is aware he's there. Smallish, no tail, awfully grey. Must be very old. The only beings that survived to turn grey were usually formidable indeed, he better mind his manners--

"Ah?"

Oh hey he's being spoken to. There is a moment or two where it might seem like the poor Doctor is speaking to an especially dense person, but it seems it just takes him a moment to collect his thoughts. He studies the door, then the bed. "...It looks like it'll fit. Should I take the floating part off?"

The Doctor isn't bothered by politeness one way or the other. He looks between the bed and the not-ground around them.

"Well, you could try. No clue if inantimate objects will stay afloat or not. But, the width... unless you turn the bed on it's side, I just don't see how it will get through that door."

Because there are some things that are somewhat consistent, right?

"I can probably carry it when the balloon's cut." He was definitely strong enough. Would a bed, from liminal space, even be able to exist outside of the place that generated it? Probably not, but that doesn't seem likely to stop Broly any.

Removing the parts keeping it afloat is simply a matter of tearing them away, the ropes not even remotely strong enough to hold. The balloon part obediently floats away, and the basket-bed tries to sink but is promptly caught and held, and then turned over on its side.

Somehow everything in it, bedding and all, stays right where it is. "...It'll probably fit."

Maybe. But whether or not it'll exist is an entirely different question.

He purses his lips as he watches the other man.

"Well, you're certainly determined. Makes a fella think... Why? It's just a bed."

The Doctor has been in stranger places, well, he likes to think he has, anyway. But the deal with the bed is just - odd. And confusing.

Okay so Broly might not be a complete idiot but he definitely seems a few squash short of a cornucopia, because he's definitely going to try to get that thing through the door even though reason and common sense say it's not going to fit.

"Why not?"

It definitely has to have a better reason than that. But he's not making much headway unless he plans on breaking the entire thing, which was .. doable, but then he wouldn't have the bed.

"It's more comfortable than anything I've ever slept on before. Leaving it here means sleeping on things that aren't as nice again."

The Doctor rolls his eyes.

"Yes. I figured that much. But it's still just a bed."

Things aren't comfy to sleep on, that's just kind of the way of it.

The saiyan smiles, briefly. "That is a matter of perspective. Mine says otherwise." 'Just' a bed nothing it had been strapped to a balloon, it had floated, it was STILL likely to be incredibly comfortable to sleep on.

Well, taking apart things seemed to be the only path. The door's knob is turned by a quick grab and twist via brown-furred tail, and pillows tossed through the opening. A blanket follows. "Good things go away too fast as it is without them being left behind on purpose."

"Well, yours certainly says otherwise."

The Doctor watches, wondering how much of it will make it through. He doesn't say anything when he noticed the pillows faded to nothing. The blanket, it was a little more difficult to tell.

"So are you always this.... What's the word?...."

Whatever the word is, he doesn't make guesses at it, though he does pause briefly to study the far shorter and older alien. Mindwalking was not in his skillset, whatever the Doctor was trying to think of could be anything at all.

"While you think of your word, tell me this. Where you are from, do you have stories of great heroes and their foes?"

"Doesn't matter where I'm from. And I am the stories of great heroes and their foes."

Though he doesn't elaborate if he's the hero or the foe.

"Stubborn! That's the word. No... Perhaps egomaniac. No. That was someone else."

He can't remember who.

"Didn't ask where you're from." Well that's straightforward.

Meanwhile, wedging the bed, basket and all, bit by bit through the door. He's being very careful, at least careful for him. "Stubborn is a nice word. Not sure about the other one."

Something cracks. The door frame? The bed? It's hard to tell with that much stuff in the way. The Doctor's certainly had far more intelligent conversation partners in the past, hasn't he? 'Egomaniac' would ... probably suit him, in another time and space, if he were in his other form. That one had destroyed many worlds and solar systems. This one.. not so much. "Do the foes ever win? I don't mean temporary battles. I mean long term victory."

Odd question.

Megalomaniac and Egomaniac are two different things. And you can be one without being the other... sometimes.

"Depends on who you consider the foe to be."

When the foe is the Doctor? Never. When it's those he fights? Always.

And he's just going to stand there, arms crossed and watch the goings on.

He'll be at this a while. A good hard shove WOULD get it through but also break it and then what was the point?

"Usually it's the ones who want to destroy things, terrorize people and so on. Large-scale meanness, not just pushing someone into the path of an oncoming stampede."

The Doctor smirks. "Funny you should say that. One of the species out there calls me 'the Oncoming ~~pout~~ Storm.'"

He pauses.

"That said, I'm usually the thing that monsters have nightmares about."

The oncoming pout, that's a far more interesting title.

"Storms are good things." Well he thinks so anyway, even if other people might think otherwise. So what if some things got broken? Overall it was beneficial. Rain happened, debris got washed away.

Maybe this species really liked this old guy.

But the rest.. he could sense nor smell nothing overtly unusual about this particular alien. "I'd assume you have to be good at it if you're as old as you seem." His sense of old is ... skewed though. "But nowhere has just one hero or just one foe. Do they ever win? If not against you, then others?"

He raises an eyebrow.

"Well, my storm isn't."

Destroys everything in his path. And the Daleks do everything but like the Doctor. Not telling his age is nothing new. Over 2500 years old, without counting the time lived on repeat in the confession dial. 4.5 billion years old now.

"I'm far, far older than I seem. That's true, there isn't just one hero or foe. And I'm not really a hero. The foes do win against others, which is why they need to call me in."

"If this species was in the foe list and not the general normal species that can think list then it is still a good storm, for everyone else." Broly raises one hand and gestures to his own hair. "Yours is gray. You lived long enough to get that way."

If a saiyan survived long enough to even turn gray? Then they HAD to be formidable and skilled.. and now wise and experienced to go along with it. It doesn't seem to even surprise Broly a little that this man might fall under the same category, because of course every single other species does things the way his does.

"So you fight the ones who are generally seen as foes, and are called when the other heros fail, then you would qualify on a ..."

He frowns. Now it's his turn to lose a word. "Broad ... generalization? Even if the fiddly bits are different. And if you're still alive then foes probably aren't succeeding long-term and on grand scales for long?" He's not really good at conveying what he wants with actual well thought out sentences, and it shows. But he's trying hard.

The bed is given another shove.

"You're assuming I wasn't born with grey hair."

He was - to an extent, born with grey hair, that is. The Doctor just lets Broly stumble for words for a bit.

"You're asking what I am? I already told you. But I'll rephrase it. There have been many attempts to conquer the Earth. Not one of them succeeded. Not a single one. They all lost and burned and ran. That's who I am."

It was pretty simple in the end. Unless you were an enemy and decided to call him the Great Destruction of the Universe.

"That said, most people just call me The Doctor."

"It's not just the hair. Unless your whole species looks elderly but I don't think so."

But there's a shake of the head when asked if he's asking who the Doctor is. He just wanted to know where to put the category, and if the enemy ever won. Nowhere, nowhere he'd ever heard of did the enemy win for long. "Just a category. Big categories."

It seemed the place this man was from was similar. Of course an enemy would see the one destroying them as terrible, but the net gain was generally good for everyone else. He was going to have to find a better way to put that into words so he can actually explain his intent. "Earth is your world?" .. Wait no, his father had mentioned an Earth. Was this an earthling?

"I heard a conqueror named Frieza was killed by an Earth person, did you kill him?"

The Doctor laughs at being called an 'Earth person.'

"I don't look human. Humans look Time Lord. And I'm from a place very far away from Earth. Who is Frieza?"

Because the Doctor is saying way more than he should. Especially if he wants to keep himself low-profile in this place.

Who is he kidding? If there's one thing he does, it's make an entrance.

"I wouldn't know the difference, I've never seen a human either." But he was going to! And if this guy looked like a human or humans looked like 'time lords', then it was basically exactly the same thing!

... Which means humans and time lords look like tailless saiyans. "A planetary conqueror. He'd arrive with his armies, and raze a planet and resell it. If it was populated then too bad for them; sometimes he'd just destroy the planet. If it was you then you'd know his name. It must have been a different hero sort." He sounds thoughtful. Some OTHER human slash timelord who was at Earth at the time. "Is 'time lord' just a title or can you do time things?"

Sure, just keep telling yourself that, Broly. What kind of name is that, anyway?

"Time Lord isn't a title. It's my species."

Why do all the pudding-brained primitives find him? It gets old. Fast.

"I can do time things... Well, not here, not exactly, anyway."

And yet for all that the Doctor finds it tiring to deal with primitives, he has yet to actually even try to leave, and Broly certainly wasn't keeping him prisoner. What kind of name was 'Doctor', anyway?

"Too bad for you I suppose. It would have been convenient." Not for him, but in general. Time control wasn't one of the things he had much interest in acquiring personally.

"Convenient? Time is too weird to keep track of in this place. It's fine."

Because, well, that's how he rolls.

"So, what's your name?"

"For now." Nothing is ever missed so badly as when it's needed and not on hand, but in this specific place with floating bed balloons perhaps it wasn't as needed. Until one of those foes arrive. Time control in any measure would be a good way to keep ahead and alive.

Maybe one was sleeping in such a bed right now. "I am Broly. No titles." There is a great groaning crack from the bed and it pops through the doorway. The blankets at least are lingering, but what of the rest? "If you hear of a universe where adversaries win instead of heroes, please let me know. I would be grateful."

Test Drive #18

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