nolandspam | TEST DRIVE MEME

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TEST DRIVE MEME

NOTES:

IF BOTH CHARACTERS APP IN AND AGREE, THREADS USING PROMPT 1 CAN BE COUNTED AS GAME CANON.
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PROMPT 1: ARRIVAL

You awake laying on your back in an, admittedly comfortable, pod. You can't move anything but your eyes, can't even feel your body yet. How you got here or why is a blank. You may have been in the middle of your day, asleep, or even- for what you remember- should be dead. Then a screen directly in front of your face flickers to life and in crisp, black and white displays: DON'T PANIC. The following video then plays:

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The screen flickers again and reads: CONGRATULATIONS ON PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE! WELCOME TO VAULT LIFE, CITIZEN. WELCOME TO YEAR: [ERROR]. YOUR PERSONAL BELONGINGS ARE LOCATED IN [FILE CORRUPTED. SEE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR]. ENJOY YOUR STAY AND THANK YOU FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT VAULT-TEC.

The pod then unseals and you are able to, unstably at first, climb out of the pod. Your body may feel foreign for a moment- perhaps entirely foreign if you suddenly find yourself a human, ghoul, or super mutant for the first time. But whatever your form, you have two items on: a bright blue jumpsuit with the number 66 in yellow on the back, and a mechanical device known as a Pip-boy sealed onto your arm. If you click on the buttons it takes you to an instruction screen.

You look around to find yourself in a room of other pods. Some are just opening, other people looking as confused as you climbing out. Others remain closed with the status of 'STASIS' on the screens attached to the pods. The rest of the room is less than impressive. Computer systems that seem out of place compared to the technology level of the pods are scattered across the room, apparently running the chambers. Trying to access them, even for the most talented hacker, will simply result in SEE OVERSEER being displayed. There is large metal door leading to the rest of the vault, a lever on the wall next to it that will cause it to open.

Welcome, dweller, to vault 66.

PROMPT 2: SETTLING IN

The living quarters of the vault leave something to be desired. While the current occupants of the vault have made some improvements, it's hard to ignore the pile of skeletons placed into storage (it’s a pretty impressive pile) and the mildew on the beds. It's clear that whatever happened to the last occupants of the vault, whoever they were, it wasn't exactly a peaceful end. The medical wing has some of the worst blood splatter...but that at least you can pretend was from needed medical interventions. Right?

Thankfully, the Vault has power at least. The juke box in the recreation area cheerfully pumps out some jazzy tunes and the refrigerators are happily humming along. There's also clean, if very mineral tasting, water in the sinks, toilets, and showers. There's a pool table if someone can relax enough for a game and doesn't mind the fact it looks like a pool cue shoved in the eye socket may have caused the death of a couple of the previously mentioned skeletons. Further, the kitchen is stocked with some food! It's all pre-apocalypse or some newly collected ‘meat’ (ask the current residents if you want to know), hyper preserved canned goods and sugary cereals that somehow haven't gone bad yet, but it's something.

Today all the local robots have been recalled by the newly found ‘Captain’ to undergo mandatory repairs and maintenance. They’re locked away in the Overseers office, leaving only the human residents to great the newly awakened dwellers. Or to do any of the other day to day tasks in the vault, like make food or keep things tidy. The pool table was cleaned before Louis took off, leaving a fine game open for people to try.

PROMPT 3: A Literal Exodus

The Vault opening earlier in the month lead to a few unintended side effects. First, of course, were the giant mirelurks and their young that had to be fought off. A few weeks later, though, there's a new one: frogs. In the now standing two feet of radioactive water in the entrance area, what used to be eggs in the water turned into tadpoles, then turned into frogs. Not super huge killer frogs or ones that shoot acid, mind you. Just somewhat ugly frogs, occasionally ones with two heads or eight legs or some other small mutation. And without their normal predators around (radroaches don't swim), they're starting to venture into the vault at a somewhat biblical plague level.

Dwellers can find them everywhere, in the food stores, in their beds, merrily croaking in the toilets. Sometimes they can gang up and take out a radroach or two (good for them), but more often or not the roaches will win, meaning even more of these insects are venturing into the open to snatch up these free meals. So the occasional radraoch in the bed may be happening too as they chase down a froggy snack.

Captain Simmons has requested the frogs be herded back into the entry way and that dwellers start working on a way to drain the radioactive water out of the area, but it's not much of a priority. For now, enjoy the newest Vault pets- or eat them, race them, or just get used to waking up to them bouncing on your pillow.

PIP-BOY CHATTER

Post text or audio messages to the pip-boy network to get to know your fellow dwellers!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I can't say I've heard that out of her," Yunlan says dryly, "but..."

He squints.

"You know, there's a resemblance. Sister? Cousin?" From the tone Zuko's adopting, he's willing to bet his newly scavenged revolver that the two of them were raised together. And are not friends.

Zuko drops his hand by dragging it over his face with a sigh. Azula is here.

Azula is here. Wherever here is and however it's happened, she's here and that can't be good. They can barely look at each other without trying to murder one another. (Though, in his defense, it's usually him letting down his defenses hoping that this time will be different and her lashing out.)

"Sister," he admits. "How much trouble has she caused?"

Yunlan exhales, looking away. His eyes are focused on some point far beyond the steel-paneled walls. So, Zuko is Azula's brother. So, it's possible that two people who know each other can both wake up from those pods.

So. Maybe--

Hope hurts like the blood rushing back to a trapped limb, pins and needles everywhere. He shrugs and, with an effort of will, musters a careless grin.

"Honestly, she's been all right. On edge, but we're all on edge. What with the situation."

There's something else going on here; something he's said caused a reaction completely unrelated to Azula, he's thinking, but he's not going to ask. If he needs to know, he'll find out and if he doesn't, it would be information overload right now.

"She has?" On edge, he gets. Azula lives her life that way, but 'all right'? That doesn't sound like the Azula he knows. "Really?"

"Hey, she wasn't the one who tried to club me with somebody's femur," Yunlan shot back. "Let me guess -- you're the older brother?"

Plus, obviously, some sibling rivalry going on. Although to be fair Yunlan was setting the bar for 'all right' low.

"What were you expecting?"

"Two years. Ish." Zuko rocks back on his heels and wrinkles his brow - as much as the scar lets him, at any rate. So someone likes to club people with femurs; good to know.

"Murder, for one. Setting everything on fire." He's ticking these off on his fingers. "Breaking everything. Screaming at everyone. Having a complete mental breakdown."

"Who's she murdered?" Honestly, when it comes to breaking everything, screaming at everyone and having a breakdown, Zhao Yunlan can relate. Arson might be a touch more of a problem -- he already condemned himself to eternal fire once, he's not a fan of burns -- but then, she's said fire's a special power back where she's from.

So maybe arson is less of a problem here.

Murder is a problem everywhere, though.

"Me," he said, a touch wry. "Almost." Obviously, since he's still standing here. He sighs, pinches his nose. "Azula is complicated." As is his feelings about her and his relationship with her. "But if she's doing all right here, then that's good."

Standing here wasn't always a guarantee of not having been killed, but Yunlan doesn't see any need to bring up that awkward subject. He shrugs, instead, and begins walking again. They're almost to the rec room; the faint strains of staticky jazz from the jukebox are just on the edge of hearing.

"Speaking as a cop: attempted murder and murder are very different things! Glad you're all in one piece, though. What do you think, are the two of you going to need a chaperone for your chats to make sure there aren't any more attempts?"

He head his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I'll only act in self defense. I promise." He steps into the rec room, frowning at the static trying to pass as music, and keeps his gaze on Yunlan.

"I make no promises about keeping the volume down, though. We're both kinda... loud."

Yunlan wags a finger at him. "That's a terrible promise! Why would you say something like that? If things are getting tense you should yell!"

With a bark of laughter, he breaks eye contact and heads for the jukebox, smacking it on the side until a little of the static clears from the music. By now, he recognizes every one of the limited library of tunes, but it's better than the impersonal and distant whoosh of air circulation fans, as background noise goes.

"That way, we can break it up before I have to haul any more corpses to the storeroom. So this is our rec room! Kitchen's over there, our household guru Louis the robot's usually floating around somewhere, and that's the pool table in the corner. We're low on pool cues on account of mostly using 'em to bludgeon hostile animals, but you could probably set up, I don't know, mini bowling with the balls."

"Then it'll be fine." He absolutely will not promise to try to keep things quiet, in that case. He can almost guarantee yelling.

While Yunlan sets the jukebox straight, Zuko wanders over to the pool table and picks up one of the balls sitting there. It's deceptively heavy for how small it is. Something to keep in mind for when it inevitably gets thrown at his head. He puts down the ball and picks up the rather hefty stick -- is that the cue? He notices there are only one or two of them. It would make a good impromptu weapon. "What kind of hostile animals?

"Well. Down here it's just the giant roaches and dog-sized rats!" He flicks his fingers at the sleeve of his leather jacket. "This? Rat skin. About one and a half rats worth of skin. Up top, there are some real giant crabs. Three or four meters tall, claws the size of your entire arm."

He watches Zuko's investigation, and offers, "Ever played pool before?"

His lip curls in disgust at the mention of roaches and rats; he's not quite sure they're thinking of the same thing, but he's getting the idea that they're not pleasant at all.

He puts down the cue and shrugs. "I've never heard of it."

"We have to fix that! It's the only game we've got. Unless you can play chess in your head or something." There are two cues left that haven't been sharpened into spears or broken over something's skull, but one of them's tucked under the table. Yunlan crouches and pulls it out, then grabs the rack and starts organizing the balls.

"The object is to get all of your colored balls into the pockets, then sink this black ball with an 8 on it last. You can call stripes or solids, or go by whichever matches the first ball you sink. You can only hit that white ball there--" he points to the cue ball on the other end of the table-- "so you've got to aim it so that it knocks the other balls around however you want them to be knocked. It's a game of complicated geometry! And skill!

"And, usually, alcohol. But we'll skip that." His grin shows a few too many teeth.

Zuko picks the cue back up and gives it a look, testing the weight in his hand. He points the end of the cue at the white ball. "Hit the white ball," he repeats, just to make sure he's getting it right, "so that it hits either the solid balls-" he moves the tip of the cue toward a solid, then toward a stripe "-or the striped balls. The black eight ball remains on the table. Am I to understand that sinking the eight ball wins the game?"

"If you sink it after all your other colored balls. Otherwise, it's an automatic loss." Yunlan grins at him. "You can keep taking turns as long as you sink at least one colored ball and don't sink the white ball. Miss, or sink the white ball, and it's over to the other player -- and if you sank the white ball they can put it wherever they want to set up a good shot.

"Wanna give it a try? You can have the first turn."

With a flourish, he pulls the rack away from the triangle of pool balls and steps back from the table.

Zuko gives the triangle of balls sitting on one end of the table a considering look before hefting the cue again. There's probably a tried-and-true method to this, but there's really only one way to do this without it being ridiculously unwieldy. With the heavier end in his left hand, he uses his right to stabilize the front... and immediately switches hands.

He's pretty sure that the point of this first strike is to break apart the triangle - he doesn't see much else that can happen - so he aims for the one ball at the point of the triangle. Hopefully this is the right way to do things.

His attempt at hitting the white ball is not as could as it could be. He knows that as soon as he connects; the cue slips in his hands and the white ball doesn't hit the triangle hard to do much but send the outer layers toward the sides.

Well, it's a start. He scowls at the table.

"Hey, for a first shot, that's not bad!" He'd hit the cue ball and the cue ball had hit the racked balls. Yunlan has done much worse, although, to be fair, not while sober.

He leans over, lining up his own shot with one eye closed and his teeth catching his bottom lip. And... there!

Well, it sinks one ball: a chipped, striped one bounces off the edge of the pocket and spins itself in, mostly by luck. Buoyed by success, Yunlan misses sinking the ball he aims at next, and waves at Zuko.

"And it's over to you! I've got stripes now."

Zuko watches Yunlan pretty closely as he plays, taking note of how he's holding the cue. (Ah, he hadn't thought of wrapping a finger around the small end; that would help keep the cue from jumping.) He steps forward and nods; solids for him then.

He can do that. Maybe.

... Yeah, no, he misses by a few inches. This is harder then it looks. He scowls at the ball labeled with a "3" as it hits the side a couple inches from the pocket - then huffs when the white ball shoot straight into the pocket.

"More finesse," he says, "less force. Your turn."

"Good advice for pool and good advice for life!" Yunlan picks the cue ball out of the pocket, fiddling with it to get a perfect shot. If he gets this right, it ought to knock two of his in--

--and it looks almost perfect, too, except that the angle is off just enough that both of his targets bounce off the edges of the pockets instead. He makes a despairing noise, sinks back a step and scrubs his free hand through his hair.

"Ugh. More finesse, less ambition! I'm afraid it's back to you."

"You sound like my uncle." That is, if Uncle Iroh had known anything about pool. Zuko is absolutely certain that if he had, he would have found ways to immortalize it in his odd proverbs and sayings.

This would be a lot more frustrating if Yunlan had been wiping the floor with him. As it stands, though, a chance to make a good showing at least - he has no delusions of winning the game - gives him something to focus on other than the situation. (He suspects that is Yunlan's play here.) The situation is prime for one of Zuko's temper flare-ups and had he been losing spectacularly, Yunlan would be witness to it.

It's probably good that he's able to focus on the game. Zuko doesn't even like himself after being stupid about his temper; he doesn't want to lose the only company he has right now over it.

He does, however, have a bit of a vendetta against that three ball. It's not a perfect shot - the five is lined up nicely, he thinks - but it's good enough for a try. So try he does, and he's thinking of the spinning tops he had a kid when he hits the white ball; if he can just the angle right...

Somehow, someway, the three ball drops into a pocket and Zuko is allowed a moment a victory before he realizes that the white ball came to a stop up against the side, behind a couple striped balls and the eight ball.

"Oh," is all he says. He regards the table for a minute before abruptly stepping forward and just lightly tapping the white ball with the cue.

It rolls slowly, neatly stopping between a pocket and a little cluster of solid balls. He looks up, quirks one side of his mouth upwards, and dares Yunlan to say something about it.

"I hope that's a compliment and you're not calling me an old man," Yunlan shot back, grinning as he circled the table. "Very petty shot there, I like it! You learn fast, Zuko. Or is it Prince Zuko?"

If his sister is a Princess, well, he's either a Prince or he's already king. Or dramatically disinherited and cast into the wilderness with a team of wisecracking martial arts buddies before he can reclaim his throne, but that only happens in the cliche wuxia dramas that had been near and dear to Zhao Yunlan's teenage heart.

Eventually, he concludes there's just no way he's going to manage a meaningful shot from where the cue ball's lying right now, and aims a throwaway shot right at the cluster. Solid-colored balls roll in three different directions, nothing winds up in a pocket, and Yunlan shrugs and leans on his pool cue.

"Fire Lord," he corrects and, had he been a little more open about how he got to be the head of a nation, Yunlan's teenage heart may have been sated by the story. "Ruler of the Fire Nation. Please don't stand on ceremony, though. Just Zuko is fine."

He turns his attention to the table and frowns; he doesn't have any really good shots, unless he's missing something. (It's entirely possible he's missing something.) He aims for the two and ends up wincing at the sound his cue makes when it strikes the white ball - a hollow clack - and the end of the cue slips a bit.

The white ball does hit the two, but it really doesn't go anymore. Zuko scowls at it.

"So you are the king! Fire Lord, whatever." He waves a hand, grandiose for a moment, before glancing at the lay of the balls. Yeah, mostly terrible; he goes for a long shot, not paying too much attention, and surprises himself when it topples an entirely different striped ball into the pocket.

"Huh." And - whatever, he can take his next shot in a minute. He glances back up at Zuko, instead. "You're young to be leading a nation."

And the next shot. This one ends about how he'd expected for the last: completely missing the ball he'd aimed at and scratching. He waves at the pocket with the cue ball in it.

"Over to you. I am really out of practice with this shit."

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I saw the announcement but I also really have been enjoying this thread

I am too! I'd very much like to continue the thread.