metamemes | TEST DRIVE MEME #3

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!test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME #3

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.

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"If it helps, we can get the coffee to go. And hey, I know how to handle Empathy pretty well, so maybe I can talk you through some of it. If I don't get stuck in a loop with you."

It was just because this was Damien that he was so worked up, right? Surely that's right.

“And go where from there?” he asks, glancing up at him curiously.

The idea of going back to the hotel crosses his mind, following him back to his room, or leading Mark to his own…

It’s just coffee, but Damien’s always had a decent imagination.

"I don't know, Damien. This place is pretty fucking freaky and strange and I literally don't know anything about it," Mark was quick to point out. He doesn't dare say the hotel though. He hadn't been to his room yet, he doesn't even know where the space is. But he knows he isn't going to share it with the other man.

"Just a walk, I think. So you don't have to linger in any emotions."

"I figured you'd like it," he says, falling into step next to him once they're outside. "I mean, it's basically like every superhero thing to ever have existed come to life." Mark is a n e r d, this is Fact.

He nods a little. "Sure," the important part of the whole thing is this: Mark isn't suggesting they go their separate ways. Damien will never not encourage more time with each other, if the opportunity is there, and Mark isn't balking at it and shutting it down completely.

Oh god, super heroes. Mark groans.

"I liked that we're not that, back home. Except Frank, in a weird sort of way. But it's just... Fuck, this isn't what I wanted out of my life."

Yes, Mark is a nerd. A super nerd. A huge nerd.

"Not enough of the world knows about Atypicals, I think, for it to have happened at home," he muses. The general population doesn't Know™, and the people that do... largely treat them like a disease that needs to be treated. Then again, Damien has a pretty different experience than everyone else, because of how he went out of his way to try to control... well, everything. So maybe he isn't in the best seat to judge.

He shrugs a little, "I think you could just look at it as... a clean slate. Nobody knows shit about us. You can make your story be whatever you want it to be, here." That, at least, is a concept that Damien is intimately familiar with. Starting over in new places was kind of his entire life since his parents abandoned him and never looked back. "I know it doesn't change anything that's happened... but... trust me," he takes the risk of it and nudges Mark's shoulder with his own. "starting over can be really fucking freeing."

If there were heroes and villains in their world, out and open and visible, Mark had to believe Damien absolutely would have gone full on cape and cowl villain. How could he not with his power?

"And that's the voice of experience talking, I take it," Mark says as he guides them through the twists and turns out of the greenhouse. "That's... harder for me. I'm a photographer, Damien, with a serious love of landscape and architecture shots. In a way, what I am as an artist is about taking those places I love with me, in not letting go of that part of the past."

And that essence to himself was what had put him on the rocks with Sam.

"I've started over a lot in sixteen years, yeah," he nods a little at the assumption. An easy one to make, honestly.

"Stuff is always gonna stick with you, it's not letting go," he shakes his head. "It's just..." he twists his mouth in thought. "Starting over doesn't have to mean throwing who you were away, even if that's how I've done it in the past. Look how that's worked out for me." He snorts a soft self-derisive sound at it. "It just means...you're in control here. How much of which parts that people get to know. Who gets to know it. How it's shown or brought out."

Though he knows that people, as a general rule, do not necessarily seek to control in the way he always has, he thinks there would almost have to be a certain appeal to that idea for Mark– someone who has had so much of his last near-decade controlled outside of his own hands.

He's in control here? Man, he feels distinctly out of control because there are clearly a higher concentration of Metas in the hotel he's supposed to be at than there is, like, Atypicals pretty much anywhere. Which is frustrating

"I'm still scared of this place and what it could mean for me. And I know you can feel it."

"I know... I do, and I get it– at least... academically. Obviously, I don't... know what it's like for you, but I get why you're scared." Maybe more because of what he was given upon arrival here than a true, natural understanding, but is that really such a bad thing?

He hesitates on it, because this is... all such a fucking mess, but in the end he does say, "I know I'm, like, the last person on the planet, in any universe, that you even want around, but... you don't have to deal with this shit alone."

"I mean, I might have to do it alone because, as you noted, you're not the best person to help me deal with this."

But he's also not sending Damien away. Because he can't. This is something beyond him. He hates it's beyond him. It had taken a lot to push him to do it the first time.

He nods a little, rolling his lips together. He expected as much. "Yeah... I know."

Damien falls quiet as they wind through the streets toward a coffee shop. They're easy enough to find, really, they're basically on every corner these days. When they reach the nearest one, he pauses long enough to hold the door open for Mark to go inside before following suit a moment later.

Immediately, he's hit with all the reasons this was a really, really bad idea. Not only is the coffee shop genuinely noisy with blenders and people making orders, music he doesn't like and the swarm of chatter that can't be made out but just heard in a general way. But there's so many people, and so many emotions, and it's kind of like a wave of dozens of things at once––

The sharp spike of annoyance from a girl in the corner booth that's being hit on by some fratboy who can't take a hint–

The idle anxiety in the guy at a window seat, undefined but very obvious all the same–

Absolute glee from a kid sitting with his mom, who just handed him her phone to play a game on–

The boredom from the teenager with a laptop and headphones at one of the tables with an outlet–

The stress of one of the baristas behind the counter that feels a lot more like a hammer pounding in his head than anything else–

And a ton of other things he can't even place because it's just too much all at once. He's tempted to clamp his hands over his ears, but he knows it won't help and it would look weird as hell, so he just tightens the arms folded across his chest and tries not to feel seasick at it all.

Yeah, and it probably doesn't help that with Mark around, Mark's feeling it all too. Feeling overwhelmed by it. At least he has the sense of what he is supposed to do to fix it. He takes a deep breath, grabs Damien's arm, and pulls him back outside. This was the worst idea.

"So you're living a take-out life mostly."

He blinks in surprise when he's grabbed, everything goes tense and he doesn't really know what else to do but allow himself to be dragged back outside. "...yeah."

He shakes his head a little, the clutter clearing at least a little bit, enough to breathe. "I can't live like this, what the fuck?" He scrubs a hand down his face. "Forget the walk, man, do- whatever you want, I'm...going back to the hotel."

"Fuck," he mutters again under his breath as he starts heading back in the direction of the Diadem. Mark can follow if he wants, but Damien is D-O-N-E with being in the general public for the day.

"You'll learn to live with it. Caleb did. I can... I can help you learn," he says.

Back to the hotel?

"You've got a room already? I didn't stick around to see where mine was."

"Maybe, but not today." he shakes his head, and he can't help the confused frown on his face at that suggestion. "Thought... you didn't actually want me around?"

But...

He's following, isn't he?

Shit.

"Yeah, I checked it out. Pretty basic, swanky hotel room shit." Nothing he hasn't seen before. He practically lived in them for years, at no cost to him. So... really, this isn't any different for Damien, in a lot of ways.

"I don't want you around the people that I love, the people you can hurt. I told you, I felt like they weren't safe around you."

Of course Mark had also said he hadn't felt safe but... Well, it had been a while, and Damien had respected the line between them. And he could feel the guy's emotions. That sorta... reshaped stuff some.

"I'm so certain they're going to ask us to repay everything. This is me, looking a gift horse in the mouth."

"...I know." He remembers the rest, too.

He smirks a little and shakes his head, "You're not supposed to do that, you know." He's quiet for a long stretch of the walk back to the hotel after that. He doesn't know what to say, he just keeps hoping Mark doesn't decide this is a bad idea and part ways with him.

"Not supposed to do what?" Mark asked. "Look a gift horse in the mouth? Yeah, think the metaphor is about that specifically as a thing not to do."

"Yeah," he nods a little, glancing back over at him. "Kinda the whole point."

Everything feels like it's turned up to eleven. There's a weight in his chest and a distinctly pins-and-needles feeling prickling across his skin that he doesn't like.

Well, at least he sees a nice, secluded alley. Time to get them down that. He turns them down it.

"I'm going to make sure you get safely back to your room, okay?"

"Okay," he nods a little, following him down the alley. He wants to ask him to stay, but he doesn't say anything else.

Not like he wants to stay here near the greenhouse.

"You got your teleport thingy?"

Shit, the idea of teleportation tied to an ITEM is so weird.

He nods and fishes it out. "Not gonna lie, man, I really didn't really pay that much attention to how to use this thing." He'd kind of accidentally ended up here, with only the vague notion it was this thing that he'd done it with, and started wandering around.

Sorry, Mark, you should know Damien doesn't often carry braincells around.

"Geez, who do you share a brain cell with and why do they always have it?"

Still he thought it was just as simple as activating it.

"Just do whatever you did to get here?"

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me all 'and they were roommates' trope.

haaaa it would be a b e a u t i f u l disaster if they were!!

quite a disaster

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