TEST DRIVE MEME #3

[metamods]

TEST DRIVE MEME

A confluence is defined as the convergence of one or more forces. A Confluence, capitalized, is the converging of one or more supernatural forces.

Confluences have been mild ever since the Godfall Event occurred in the 1980s. The older generations tell their children of the confluences they remember as children, the earth-shaking events that transformed the landscape of the world (and the people) every time they occurred. Now they're largely inconveniences. An explosion of experimental ALIEN NANOBOTS here, a magical LIGHTNING STORM there, nothing particularly disruptive to day to day life.

ONLY SHOOTING STARS. CENTRAL CITY.

Awareness hits you in a rush. As does the sound of a town’s EMERGENCY ALARMS WAILING.  Just as you begin to register the sound, you realize how quickly the towering skyscrapers are coming up to meet you. You may throw your hands up to shield yourself from witnessing your own grisly demise. Not to worry - THREADS OF MYSTICAL ENERGY rush up to meet you, grabbing for limbs and catching you before you make landfall.  A NET MADE OF STARS has come up to cradle you, giving you a much gentler entry into this world than most others have received thus far. A smattering of exhausted looking people holding staves and wands peer up at you and attempt to smile, though they appear to be much more focused on keeping you held aloft.

Correction. They’re keeping MOST of you aloft. The mystical net made of stars doesn’t seem quite large enough to cover the entire sky. THERE ARE STILL PEOPLE FALLING. Perhaps you’re not spared the fall, plummeting through the gap in the net and straight into someone’s living room. Or car. Or straight into the sewer systems.

DIADEM HOTEL

You're not going home anytime soon. Hopefully, the LUXURY HOTEL they've put you up in will ease that sting.

The DIADEM HOTEL is usually reserved for the obscenely wealthy. Its rooms are enormous, the beds quite literally enchanted to offer the perfect night's sleep, and the food would usually cost your life savings just to sample. But given the circumstances, the Guilds feel its the least they can do to aid your transition into this world. EVERYTHING is complimentary, and everyone gets an ALLIANCE CREDIT CARD to spend on entertainment, clothing, and whatever other necessities they might need. The cards have an obscenely high limit and there doesn't seem to be an expectation for you to pay it back... though if they catch you abusing it, their accountant will be coming for your head.

There's a shopping center immediately across the street. It has an impressive array of outlets that cater to your every need. Food, clothing... and swords? If you can think of it, it's for sale. Although anything clearly supernatural or metahuman seems to be at a minimum and offered under the table. You can grab clothing made to withstand any superpower and a surprisingly mediocre Taco Bell order while you're at it. There's a Super Cinema in the shopping complex across the street that's showing the highly anticipated DROP DEAD GORGEOUS movie, a thriller wherein a fictional beauty queen accidentally swallows a fragment of the Necronomicon and becomes the world’s most powerful necromancer. Oh, and her boyfriend transforms into her chainsaw.

CENTRAL CITY isn't exactly the nicest place in the world. Wander too far from the shopping district and you'll find yourselves thick into territory controlled by the local non-meta crime syndicate... but maybe that's where you want to be. Maybe you're here to see just what this world is dealing with. If you're going to be stuck here you might as well make yourself useful, right?

Or perhaps you're NOT the heroic type. Maybe this is simply scoping out the competition.

Regardless, it won't take long for TROUBLE to find you. Test out your new powers, do a little thieving, stop a few muggings - this is your time to use as you see fit.

MAY FLIES AND FLOWERS. EXCELSIOR.

EXCELSIOR has just opened its very own BOTANICAL GARDEN! The facility is roughly the size of a city block, a modern monolith of steel and glass, specially equipped to prevent birds from flying into the many windows. There’s plants from all over the world growing inside, different rooms hosting rare and exotic specimens from different climates. Each mini-biome has animals native to the regions they mimic, of course - not a great many of them, but you’re likely to see some insects and birds flitting here and there.

To better protect the guests, all animals inside are man-made creations - be they mechanical or genetically engineered for a single purpose. The most notable of these projects is a MECHANICAL BUTTERFLY enjoying its first test flight. Researchers hope that these butterflies can be introduced into nature to aid the waning bee populations. These butterflies, beautiful creations spun from delicate metal wire, can be found in nearly any of the ecosystems present in the Botanical Garden. Aside from being hardy and efficient, they’re also equipped with a CHEMICAL ENHANCEMENT that makes the pollen they collect twelve times more potent. Everything’s getting pollinated in here! Best hope you don't have allergies.

This SPECIAL POLLEN also has the side-effect of making anyone in the vicinity feel quite lonely or loved. Theorized as a way to make dates more intimate, no more consideration was put into the ethical ramifications of subtly altering people’s mood for commercial benefit. It’s Excelsior, after all, hopefully someone warned you they view ethics as optional.

Should you have come to this beautiful slice of nature alone you may find yourself OVERWHELMED WITH LONELINESS as the flock fly overhead. Yet this loneliness comes with an edge of courage. Perhaps you’re emboldened to approach another lonely heart and ask if they would care to accompany you. 

If you’ve come with someone you all may find yourselves feeling much more WARM AND AFFECTIONATE towards them. Such a pretty place, such great company - let’s spend some real quality time!

WORKING ALL ANGLES. SUNSET FALLS.

Be you hero, villain, or unaligned - socialite KATHERINE WEST has a request for you. Miss West appears to be quite distressed. The weirdness of Sunset Falls has put her dear father in a bit of a pickle and she’s looking for strapping heroes (and villains, and unaligned, really anyone with two feet and a heartbeat) to help out. She states that she’s no metahuman and so she can’t offer you a team-up, but she can offer you a shoutout on her Instagram page.

The TASKS she’s issuing seem simple on the surface. Safe enough that you may be swayed by her sweet smile and the 15 million followers who might take a shine to you.

HUNT SOME WOLVES.

A shame she didn’t mention that these wolves are WEREWOLVES.

A pack of werewolves has been wreaking havoc in the PARK. They come out at night to grow their pack. Nearly a dozen locals have been conscripted by this infectious bite.

Luckily, there is a POTENTIAL SOLUTION! This particular brand of lycanthropy can be cured if you grievously wound them with a SILVER WEAPON. A quick google also tells you that curing the ALPHA – or killing him – will end the curse for the whole pack. She’s twice the size of a direwolf with jaws like a steel trap. 

Granted, killing them is the faster solution. There is a slight hitch in that plan. These wolves REVERT BACK TO HUMAN FORM upon death. It might look weird to find a bunch of bodies in the park so you’d best be prepared to clean up after yourself.

There’s always the risk you’ll get bit and JOIN THEM. Should this happen, the transformation will come on suddenly and painfully, your body distorting under the light of the moon. The ANIMAL INSTINCTS will come on just as powerfully - you’re part of a pack now, and you’re out on a hunt. Hopefully some kind soul can hit you with silver or take out your alpha, because you won't turn back on your own.

HERE KITTY KITTY.

Miss West has tasked you with finding all of the town’s TREED CATS. This one is an easy enough task, right? For the last four months there's been an absurd amount of cats getting stuck in trees.

Well, it seems two months of storing AMBIENT CHAOS MAGIC has made these cats more unpredictable than usual. Chaos magic isn't something you want to mess with, especially not when it's held in purrsnickety paws. It's easy to snatch them from the branches if they don't know you're coming, but if you approach under their watchful eye you'll begin to find the rules of reality start to bend. The ocean becomes a sky full of fish, and the grass beneath you a warm carpet warmed by a sunbeam. Your thoughts and feelings suddenly seem to be able to influence this space - so careful! You wouldn't want your worst fears to suddenly manifest.

Now would be a really bad time to remember that dream where all your teeth fall out.

DANCING SHADOWS.

This one is fairly simple. All Miss West wants is a PICTURE OF YOUR SHADOW. She gives you her best camera and asks you take the very best shot you can.

The ambient mystical energies of Sunset Falls are known to be chaotic. The LINGERING MAGIC of the spell that snatched you from the sky is ignited. Your shadow begins to glimmer faintly like the night sky itself. If you catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of your eye, you could swear you spy your shadow smiling back. Its eyes appear to be bright, burning stars.

These stars grant it a RUDIMENTARY SENTIENCE. And with it, liberation! No longer is it bound to your feet.  Your shadow-self wants to live it's very best life and that means doing whatever impulsive thing strikes its brand new consciousness. CAUSING MAYHEM, infecting other shadows with its newly gained brilliance. Before long, the town is OVERRUN with dancing shadows. While their antics don't affect the physical space, if you glance down at the ground in pure chaos.

The magically inclined among you may want to work together to bind your shadows back to your feet. It's not good for a person to be split between planes like this. It's not good for the world, either, as the ground seems to give an ominous rumble every now and again. Catch your shadow and pin it under your foot!

WILDCARD.

Metaheroes takes inspiration from all walks of comics. Take a look at the CITIES to get an idea as to what day to day life is like in the other cities. Perhaps you've encountered a supervillain (or hero) who needs to be thwarted, or a metahuman with unusual powers creating bizarre effects. You can also take a look at the MISSION BOARD to get your start as a professional hero, villain, or vigilante.

Comments

[atypical_echo]

"Don't read hope out of genuine confusion maybe. Especially when you can feel the confusion."

Because he isn't here with all the answers. At all. He is here to just survive, thanks. Because he can't get home.

[heydrb]

"If you really believe I'm as bad as everyone says, and you really hate me like you claim to," he tilts his head slightly to one side. "what's there to be confused about? Shouldn't it be pretty clear cut, if I'm just the devil's incarnate?"

If there wasn't any confusion, he wouldn't be reading any reason to hope at all. It's the maybe. It's the possibility. How can he walk away from that?

[atypical_echo]

"I've always been confused about you," Mark says, his voice sharp and angry like his heart was, like his emotions were. "Because you were the friend I needed. We could have been-"

And he snaps his mouth shut because he has to. Because they could have been. It's a weighty statement. And frustrating.

[heydrb]

The words strike him sharply, and it makes him feel like he could crumble right here and now. He doesn't. He won't. He does compartmentalize better than that. But it doesn't stop it from feeling like he might buckle under the weight of that statement.

"Yeah," he says with a nod, voice a hoarse rasp. "but I fucked all that up."

[atypical_echo]

"You fucking think?" Mark snapped, because he has to. His own frustration is feeding back on himself. "If you had just brought me to Joanie then we could have been friends, Damien. You got me out of the AM, as part of their plan, but do you think I would have turned away the guy that could have gotten hurt coming to get me? Do you think with time I wouldn't have been able to try your powers out myself?"

IF he had just taken Mark back where he was supposed to, things could have been different. For all of them. Maybe Damien could have belonged.

[heydrb]

"I don't know. I don't know, okay? I was desperate!" The words rip out of him, but it's more than just anger, it is a thread of desperation, but it's longing and lonely and disconsolate and it chokes. "And I've just been so desperate for so long, I couldn't– I couldn't take the chance, Mark! I just needed... someone."

He runs both hands through his hair, lacing his fingers together at his neck, and takes in a slow, deep breath. "I'm sorry it was you... God, I'm so sorry it was you."

[atypical_echo]

It... It feels like a legitimate apology. Which was a fucking shock because he didn't think Damien could do that. But he does. Damien apologized and he means it.

And Mark doesn't know what to do with that.

"Not sure it could ever be anyone but me."

[heydrb]

Damien has probably never meant anything more than those words. "Yeah... that's the fucked up part." He'd finally found someone that, probably, in another life, with a different set of circumstances, in some alternate reality where Damien had just done what he'd promised and not gone off the rails to break everything in his path... they really could have been... something.

But true to who he's always been, Damien left nothing but wreckage in his wake.

[atypical_echo]

Well shit. Mark takes... he takes a deep breath and tries to clear all the emotions from his mind that aren't his own. He should walk away right now. But every time he even tries to think about it the terrifying loneliness threatens, so he has to stay. At least until there's someone else around.

None of that meant he was ready for all this baggage though.

"So I guess that's what it comes down to. I don't know what the right thing to do here is. I should tell you to stay the fuck away from me. I know that."

And yet Damien is also the only touchstone of home he has and that's pretty fucked up.

[heydrb]

"Then just say it..." It would be so much easier if he could. Not that Mark hasn't already told him off, in no uncertain terms, before now. But... Damien can't be expected to be the one to draw that line in the sand. Not like this.

He looks up at him again, lip weathered between his teeth, unsure if he really wants Mark to tell him to fuck off, or for this to go literally any other way.

[atypical_echo]

Except he can't just say it, and there's definite exasperation in the way he sighs.

"I've already told you that I don't know. Which is the worst. Sometimes you can know something in your head and not... not be able to do it. It's hard."

Like quitting his drinking had been hard.

[heydrb]

"Well, I know this..." He rocks back on his heels. "I can't live in the same city as you and ignore you. I- I can't, Mark. And I'm not saying you gotta leave, if that happens it should probably be me doing the leaving, but..." he licks his lips. "I already left you once... I don't think I have it in me to do that again."

[atypical_echo]

"And this is where we get into the whole 'this city isn't big enough for the two of us' again, isn't it?"

Dammit he hates that. He hasn't even checked out the different Confluence cities yet, the places that they're being told they 'can' settle. He doesn't even know where he wants to be, or if he's truly stuck here.

"How long have you been here?"

[heydrb]

He shrugs, arms folded over his chest. Deflection at its most obvious. Like maybe if he puts a barrier between them, it'll make any of this any easier.

"I don't know, two, three days. Why?"

[atypical_echo]

It won't make this easier, and Mark knows a 'textbook defensive gesture' pretty well. Why does he need to be defensive?

"Means neither of us even knows how we fit into this or how to make lives here or anything. And until we do we're sorta stuck, right?"

Shit, they're both staying in the Diadem, aren't they? That leads to a strange sort of fluttery feeling in Mark's stomach. Is it... half excitement? No, it can't be.

[heydrb]

Daminen should know better by now-- nothing about his life ever gets easier.

"Yup..." he nods a little, but he's... distracted by that weird little flutter and he frowns. And then his eyebrows pop up. "What did you just get all happy about?"

Thing about this empathy thing is... it's easy to pick out an emotion, but following the thread to make it make sense? That is so far outside of Damien's wheelhouse.

[atypical_echo]

"I'm not happy," Mark says, instantly defensive.

And yet it is, a little. There were parts of being around Damien that were good. Not the gaslighting or the forcing him to talk about stuff or the threatening people he loved. But there had been things that were good and some part of his mind had suggested, just for a moment, that it could be good again.

"That's trepidation," he continues, lying. Yeah, Damien was right, he didn't lie well.

[heydrb]

"Nah," he shakes his head. "I may be new to this thing, but that wasn't trepidation. That was– bright. Shiny. Just for a second, but it was."

Fuck. If Mark could find some tiny twinge of something positive in all this, maybe... it could be different, here.

[atypical_echo]

Bright? Shiny? Fuck, stop seeing him so much. That knowledge, that he could be seen so much, it makes him nervous. And yet also hopeful. Less for himself and more for Damien. Maybe, maybe with Empathy, Damien can grow a bit on his own. Come to understand other people more. Come to fucking care about their feelings.

Like he seemed to have at first with Mark. Before he got pushy. Back when he was still more patient.

Fuck he missed it. Oh how he'd longed for it, back when he'd seen Damien as his knight in shining armor, which was stupid.

[heydrb]

"It's weird when you're quiet." In fact, he genuinely liked it when Mark got onto some topic he could ramble about for awhile. Just listening to him, uninterrupted, it was kind of nice.

He presses just a little, "Cat got your tongue?"

[atypical_echo]

"Maybe I'm trying to not ramble someone's ear off for a change," Mark says, his voice a bit shaken. Stop watching him this much. Stop knowing.

"I have my own tongue. It's a stupid metaphor anyway."

[heydrb]

"I don't mind it," he says and there's so much honesty attached to it, there's no denying it isn't just someone saying something for the sake of saying it. Not that Damien is much that type either, but. Can't really deny it when he can feel how genuine the statement is.

He grins. "Yeah? Well, it's the only one for that situation I know."

[atypical_echo]

It's familiar, friendly, like the first days on the road. And Mark hates how much it feels like that. Because he also remembers some of how he felt in those days, where he couldn't keep himself awake very long and while he was still not sure about whether he should reach out to Joanie or not, he had wanted to feel safe.

"Yeah, I guess you never have. Though you definitely weren't a fan of my singing."

[heydrb]

"Because you can't carry a tune to save your life, man." He laughs, a small, unbidden thing. He really didn't mean to... but it felt good to do it.

[atypical_echo]

"Man, everyone's a critic. And clearly you didn't hate it that much, given you never made me stop."

Never wanted him to stop. He'd wanted Mark to fill all the space around them with noise. Which Mark had gladly done.