☆RESCUER TEST DRIVE: SOMETHING ABOUT US

[interdimanagers]

☆WELCOME RESCUERS

"Daft Punk - Digital Love" (Watch on YouTube)

Welcome to Interstellar's second RESCUER TDM! A part of the Interstellar plot that first opened a couple months ago, this TDM cover the second round of recruitment for those approached by the lone space pilot Shep to join him on a mission to the planet Terra to rescue those held captive by Pride Records and Virgo Entertainment. Rescuers will not suffer any memory loss and will enter the game as they are, in contrast to the memory loss/force humanization of the musician half. Powers will be nerfed to a certain degree upon entering the game fully, but during recruitment they will remain at full power.

☆A DREAM ABOUT YOU

These prompts are designed to be game canon, for both rescuers and musicians both new and already in game. For those in game, they will start occurring around New Years in the form of dreams. The dreams will be very clear while happening, but after waking, they will swiftly fade away into something barely remembered. For rescuers, these dreams will occur very shortly before they are approached by Shep or other already recruited rebels to join the rescue squad and go save the people being held captive in Vista City. Rescuers will remember these dreams as clearly as something that actually happened in real life.

Both of these prompts take place in the dreamscape, ostensibly, and the surrounding will appear as whatever fits those taking part in a scene. It can shift and change as a thread goes along, as well, and may resemble things from a captive's home, the game setting, or anything else appropriate. Rescuers that are already in game can also end up in this dreamscape, and can run into both new musicians and new rescue team recruits.



►A1) FOR THE CAPTURED: The kidnapped musicians of Vista City will dream of being themselves - in a way more true than they have been for months now. They'll dream of themselves as they're meant to be, in physical form and manner of dress, and their personality will align more easily with their true nature, even as the confusing influences of their programming nag at their mind. It could alarm them, or it could feel somehow natural. Either way, their memories will still be gone, except for what they've recovered - but they feel somehow much closer to reach, like they may break through if only given the chance to dig just about deeper. They may dream of home, they may dream of Vista, but either way...when the morning comes, their memories of this experience will be all but wiped away. Including the memories of the strangers that promised that they would find them and take them home.

►A2) FOR THE RESCUERS: The dream is the first sign of something being wrong. You'll find yourself somewhere else - either a scene from your home, or someone else's, or an alien world you've never seen. In this dream, you'll find a person. Perhaps it's someone you recognize, someone you love dearly, but that doesn't remember you. Maybe it's a stranger, lost, confused, and desperate for help. Either way, you find yourself reaching out to them - but outside of this dream, you are helpless to save them. The dream will fade but stay with you in your memory, and may be a key component in you choosing to believe and join the other rescuers when they come to your door. Something has been taken, and you will take it back.

☆MAKE THESE DREAMS COME TRUE

These prompts are design to be kept as game canon after acceptance, and can be used as the official story of how your character entered the game. Importantly, the technology used to enter your timeline causes massive time distortions, which means that the outcome of this scenario will stagger and replay itself multiple times before settling on an outcome. This means that after the fact, you character may remember being encountered multiple ways, or going in more than one direction, before the timeline settled on a final path.




►B1) JUST SAY YES: Soon after these dreams, rescuers will find themselves in a strange situation. Time will abruptly stop for every part of the world except for them, and fade into a ghostly vision of its former self - just in time for them to be approached by some mysterious strangers. Whether your rescuer chooses to run, fight, or talk, eventually they'll be told the truth - people of the multiverse have been captured and taken to a universe far away to be harvested for their souls...in the form of forcing them to becoming rock stars. You heard it here first, folks.

The people recruiting you will mostly be other player rescuers that have already been recruited (regardless of whether or not that's been threaded out - you can assume your guy got recruited by someone if you want to recruit OTHER people.) The pilot and owner of the space ship doing this appears to be a blue man named Shep. He's the guy that's apparently in charge of this whole thing, but he's so busy with the dimension hopping that he's kind of hard to find and talk to. He presumably recruited some of the first members personally, but things have been sort of getting more complicated since then.

►B2) INTERSTELLAR DISCO: After you've agreed to come for whatever reason - to save you lover, friend, some guy, whatever - you're be taken upon the guitar shaped spaceship to wait out the tide of the temporal distortions picking you up has caused. It's a long journey back to Vista City, and you've got plenty of new comrades to get to know. This mission could take a while, so you better get comfy. You're in for the long haul now.

NOTE: If you want to see the interior of the spaceship (or if you want to see Shep dance) watch the music video posted up top. It's going to be a fair bit bigger in Interstellar to accommodate the big crew, but the essence is there.

☆HELPFUL INFO

► Follow the mod plurk for updates: interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► Check out the MUSICIAN TDM
► Ask the mods some QUESTIONS
► Reserves open on February 27th at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on March 4th at 12:01AM EDT

Comments

I SAID I WOULD

[eba02]

[And here J thought the dreams would end once he actually made it to Vista City. Guess not.]

[It's a little nostalgic, showing up in a dream with Bone Man - Sans, he now knows, thanks to Frisk. What's new is the dulled fury in Sans' tune - a mixture of anger and disdain and supreme irritation, worsened by the skipping and warping that the brainwashing creates. At least the damage isn't as bad as it was last time.]

[He approaches, hands in pockets, outwardly casual. Don't want to make the situation worse right off the bat, after all.]

Not a fan of science, huh, Bone Man?

ROUND TWO

[exhumerus]

[Sans looks at J sharply, surprised by the new presence, but only at first. Something about the voice, the questions, the nickname - strikes him as familiar. Is it a dream he's had before? Maybe so.

He lays a finger on some kind of potion bottle, rocking it back and forth gently.]

Kind of lost my taste for the white collar environment, I guess.

[He dumps it on the floor. Good thing he's wearing a labcoat with all this splash back! Safety first, kids.]

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT kiss kiss kiss

[eba02]

[Boy is it a good thing J's out of range right now. He watches the bottle give in to gravity.]

No kidding.

[He looks back at Sans. There's something about the blasé fury in the skeleton's tune that he just can't get around.]

What happened?

don't kiss Sans unless you like dentada

[exhumerus]

Here? Beats me.

[He messes around with some more stuff on the counter, but doesn't actually break it this time. It's likely he will when he's finished, though.]

A lot of failure, so far as I can recall...and the cost that comes with it.

[eba02]

[On one hand, jeez, dramatic much? On the other hand, Sans' tune is still skipping over something - presumably the gaps in his memory - and J can't really blame him for that.]

I meant what happened to you. Semi-charmed kind of life didn't pan out?

[exhumerus]

Well, I'm a skeleton now.

[That much is obvious.]

Part ways in real life, too. Whatever that means to you, dream guy. And apparently I'm not human and never have been. What the hell, right?

[eba02]

[He shrugs again.]

You were last time I saw you, too. You still a wizard time scientist?

[Time to see if Sans remembers that last dream, though if the lab is a surprise and an irritant, he's betting on no. Still...]

Can't say that 'everything you know is wrong' sounds like a fun life experience.

[exhumerus]

[Sans looks back to J, actually sort of surprised at that question. After a moment, that expression eases into another somewhat biting grin. He taps at his temple with a bony click.]

Heh. Yep, still all that. Hell if I know what good it does me.

[He rests his hands against he counter, leaning on them for support, staring down.]

When did we meet, exactly? Can't quite recall...

[eba02]

[Well, at least he's not breaking things anymore, though is tune is still stumbling over gaps. Improvement?]

Figure there's a lot you can do with time literally on your side.

[He waves a hand dismissively.] Once upon a dream, a little while back. Not like dreams ever make any sense, right?

[exhumerus]

Sometimes they make too much sense.

[He can't really decide whether or not to discount this guy's presence. The whole thing sure feels like a dream, but he can't place his role there. There's no reason for him to be contacting a real person in his dreams, unless this is some kind of vision. But...he doesn't recognize this guy from anywhere besides other dreams.

So instead he just starts venting his mental process, as if hoping that throwing enough things at the wall will get something to stick.]

You know what's going on here, pal? You sure sound like you do.

[eba02]

[Jeez, Bone Man cottons on quick. He's hit something of an impasse here; on one hand, he can give Sans the runaround and essentially defeat the point; on the other hand, he can tell Sans what he knows and run the risk of blowing everything wide open. Just because Sans doesn't seem to remember the other dream doesn't mean he won't remember this one, and given the brainwashing factor...well, J can't afford the risk, can he.]

[So he shrugs, completely noncommittal, and evades the question.]

Question is, how much do you know about it?

[exhumerus]

[That might have been a poor choice. At the very least, it makes Sans angry in a way he hadn't been, even before.

He turns on J suddenly, full of a fiercely aggressive kind of discontent despite ostensibly having no physical advantages here. His left eye flickers blue and gold. What is this, some kind of test? Some kind of mind probe trying to figure him out with reverse questioning? A paranoid suspicion has taken root, and now it's not clear if there's any going back.

No way, man. Not this shit. Not today.]

I'm about done having to answer questions for myself. [The words come out as a snap between unmoving teeth. They calm slightly in his next words - forced back behind the wall.] I like to take it easy, y'know? It's a bit more stress than I'd rather deal with.

So, how about you cut the shit, human?

[eba02]

[There's not a lot in J's life to make him contemplate his own mortality. There's the occasional near miss with a car, sure, and the far less occasional alien invasion, but this...]

[Well, this is on a whole other level. Nobody has ever literally changed their tune on him before, but that's what Sans has just managed to do, tune abruptly surging into something J wasn't even aware Sans had in him, something all power and rage, made all the more terrifying by the fact that it's still warping around brainwashing damage.]

[The flickering eye doesn't help either. He's seen enough horror movies to know that crazy eyes are a good indicator that there's a bad moon on the rise.]

[He messed this up, and if there's anything behind the wizard time scientist claims, he could very well die here. It's a sobering thought.]

[He doesn't flinch; he doesn't turn away; he's not running. Instead, he very calmly and deliberately removes his sunglasses, folds them, and slides them in his breast pocket. No sudden movements; no making it worse (or at least, he's trying not to make it worse).]

Honestly, I dunno how much I can tell you. It doesn't sound like you remember the last time we talked, but this time around I don't have a guarantee.

[exhumerus]

[Maybe in the past he could have been a real physical threat here, but right now he isn't so sure - still, that hasn't stopped him from throwing his all into this stunt. It feels right, feels like something he should be able to do. He's powerful, and not in ways anyone knows to expect.

But he's also not a killer, at heart. He's looking to scare this joker, first and foremost, not blast him to dust. It seems like, at the very least, he's gotten J to take him seriously.

He almost eases up, but not quite. That implication has a bit of baggage attached.]

And what makes you think I need to forget anything, huh?

[eba02]

[So much for not making it worse. He isn't dead yet - points for that - but the ever-present threat in that tune is still pounding against his senses, and he's going to have to be extremely careful to get around that particular minefield.]

I don't. I'm sayin' dreams are weird an' I dunno if this one'll work like the last one did.

[exhumerus]

[Sans isn't making a move yet, and that answer has at least seemed to hold off any further agitation. The skeleton's gaze is still far from friendly, though.]

How'd the last one work?

[eba02]

[Better than it's been, at least, and he can actually answer this question.]

A lot like this one, so far. Found you someplace that probably makes a lot more sense to you than to me - last time, it was a little village in the middle of snow. Had a talk with you. [Tried to fix your tune, but that's remaining unsaid for very good reasons.] Remembered the whole thing when I woke up, but I'm guessin' you didn't.

[exhumerus]

[The village...that part he remembers. His stance wavers a little at the thought - about the idea that this guy has been lurking in his dreams before. What hell is happening to him, recently? This is all far more deeply psychological than he'd been expecting.]

Forgettin' stuff is sort of becoming a habit around here. So, I'm going to ask again: what do you know?

[eba02]

[Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and so much worse. At least the village struck a chord. He keeps his voice calm and even when he speaks.]

An' I'm tellin' you again: I dunno how much I can say. From what I know, you an' your friends have been brainwashed to hell an' back, an' I can't give secrets to someone who might not have the choice to keep 'em.

[exhumerus]

You should consider explaining this kind of logic upfront next time. I thought for a minute that you might be working for them.

[Sans stuff his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, looking no less grim.]

You might have a hard time surprising me at this point, buddy. Someone else has already had the pleasure.

[eba02]

[Given that that's the second time he's been mistaken for - presumably - Virgo staff, J's thinking that maybe he should change up his approach a bit. Maybe it's the suit throwing people off.]

[Oh well.]

[Wait, what.]

That's kinda why I was askin' what you already knew. If you don't mind my askin', who'd you talk to?

[Ten to one odds it's Frisk.]

[exhumerus]

[Sans narrows his eyes, his left one still flickering occasionally. There's something protective about the look.]

Give me one good reason to decide you actually aren't trying to jack my mind?

[eba02]

[At least the tune has backed down from murder. That's a step forwards.]

[At this point, J is fairly certain of two things: that Frisk did talk with Sans, and that they got through to him somehow. Why else would Sans be so protective?]

Y'know, I don't actually know what to say. [It's flat honest; he's stymied.] Everythin' I could tell you falls under that whole secrets thing, an' after everythin' you've been through, you got good reason not to trust a stranger. [He makes a small, shrugging, helpless gesture.] So, honestly, I dunno.

[exhumerus]

[Sans's expressions can be hard to read, mostly because his mouth doesn't move much. Yet, there is a sort of spirit to the thing, that sometimes you can sense just by looking at it. Right now, it's the closest it ever gets to his grin fading.]

Then tell me the kid's name. I already know it, but if you do, too...well that's one thing we've got in common.

[eba02]

[His expressions may be hard to read, but his tune reflects everything clear as day. J might actually have an in here.]

Frisk. They've been pretty worried 'bout you.