☆RESCUER TEST DRIVE: DIGITAL LOVE

[interdimanagers]

☆WELCOME RESCUERS

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Welcome to Interstellar's first ever RESCUER TDM! A part of the Interstellar plot that has just opened up, this covers the entrance of those recruited 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.



►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
► Reserves open on January 2nd at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on January 11th at 12:01AM EDT

Comments

B2

[eba02]

J has found the mess; even better, he's found it's capable of hot chocolate; best, it's the good stuff with tiny marshmallows and everything. He grabs two mugs and heads into the ship, looking for someone who could use a little bit of reassurance. It doesn't take him long to pick up a tune in need of help - it's not stumbling and fractured like the tunes of the people he'd met in his dreams, but it's one cry for help away from a mission, and he can't leave it alone.

He finds the person matching the tune in one of the interior rooms, curled up in a chair. He enters quietly and takes a seat, leaving an empty one between them - don't want to crowd her, after all. He reaches across the empty seat and offers her a mug. "Here. This'll help." It ain't much, but it's a start.

[oceantier]

Wide eyes dart up at the voice. They scatter briefly in a momentary panic, as though she is trying to take in all of it at once -- his face, his position, his proximity, the cup that he holds in the space in between them.

For long moments she doesn't respond. The cup steams quietly, the vapor curling into the air.

Then: "Thank you . . ." Her hands reach out to accept the cup. She doesn't drink from it, but the warmth of it is more than welcome, and her fingers twine around the outside as she pulls it closer to herself.

Should she be embarrassed? Concerned? She waits for his next move to declare his motive.

[eba02]

He hears that spike of panic in her tune and tries not to wince. Nothing like the immediate feedback of making things worse when you're trying to make them better.

Then the panic subsides, and she takes the mug. "No problem." On the one hand, she isn't drinking it; on the other hand, he's a complete stranger approaching an upset woman from another dimension on a spaceship. The fact that she accepted the mug at all is probably some sort of victory, and he's going to treat it as such.

"Kinda crazy, huh," he starts after a few more long moments of silence, shifting to face forward and rest his elbows on his knees. "I mean, we're on an interdimensional rescue mission to help people who've been kidnapped an' turned into rock stars against their will so someone else can get power for it. And we're in space. It's like galactic mad libs, 'cept we're livin' it."

[oceantier]

Admittedly, she's not sure what mad libs are. But his voice is quiet, kind, and the mug that he's given her is warm between her fingers. His posture, too, is anything but threatening.

All of it merits a lowering of anxiety towards his presence, and the muscles of her chest ease slowly, moderately.

Though she still isn't sure why he's there, breaking into her silence and offering her a steaming mug. She watches the profile of his face.

"Is there someone you're going for?" she asks at last.

[eba02]

J stays quiet, letting her process, hearing her tune slowly lose tension and mellow out a bit. The flow reminds him a bit of rivers, though he has no idea why he'd get that from her tune.

"More of a something," he admits, still facing forward, looking in the middle distance as he tries to figure out how to phrase this. "Music's pretty much my entire life, an' hearin' that someone's usin' it to break people..." He shakes his head, trying to shake off the broken tunes that had littered his dreams prior to the guitar ship's arrival. "I have the opportunity to help, and I gotta take it. I won't waste my shot." He looks at her. "What about you?"

[oceantier]

It seems very . . . idealistic. Lapis isn't sure what to make of that; it leaves her uncertain. On Homeworld, such idealism would be discouraged -- better to do everything for concrete, tangible purposes.

But . . . Steven is idealistic that way too. Because of him, her paradigm is beginning to shift -- if slowly. Perhaps there is something to idealism too.

Hesitation on her part. "A boy," she says at last, quietly. "Those dreams . . . I saw him. He was taken." A pause, and a shadow flickers over her features. "I shouldn't have come . . . but I owe him to try."

[eba02]

Her tune doesn't settle - every time it sounds like she's hit on something comfortable, she immediately gets uncertain or out and out spooked, like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs - and it's keeping J on edge. He keeps his hands on his mug, forcing himself to be calm. Just because she's twitchy doesn't mean he gets to tap into her tune, even if he knows he can soothe it; she hasn't asked for his help, and that's the end of that.

He doesn't try to unpack what she's just said - there's layers, and she doesn't seem to want to talk about it too much as it is. "Sounds like he's lucky to have you." If she's going to fish-out-of-water it this badly just to help someone, then she's dedicated and the kid's lucky.

And then, because he can't help himself: "Was he on a beach? In your dreams, I mean."

[oceantier]

She doesn't respond much to the first part of what he says -- if anything, clouds further with worry and uncertainty, as though she couldn't believe such a thing herself. The idea that Steven might be lucky for knowing her . . . that seems like an impossibility, given that she only may compound the challenges of this mission -- get them both hurt, perhaps, or even worse.

But the second . . . immediately he'll find her eyes on him again, the doubt whisking away. ". . . You saw him? Steven??"

That can probably be safely taken as a "yes."

[eba02]

For a moment, he wants to reassure her - she gave up whatever she was dealing with in her timeline to come help Steven; who wouldn't be lucky to have a friend like that? But the last thing he needs to do is surprise her with the fact that he can hear her emotions - not when she's rattled enough as it is. So it's still hands off, and hands off is hard.

"Yeah, I did. He's...part of the reason I'm comin' on this trip." Because there wasn't really a nicer way to say he really needs help.

[oceantier]

Her eyes hold him for long moments. Though she's looked at him before, it's as though she's taking him in for the first time, studying him, trying to match him to all the things she understands in her mind. For a moment she's completely without guards, without walls.

"Why?" The note is soft, wondering. She wants to believe that he's telling the truth. Steven, after all, has that effect on people. But far too many of her years have made her unable to at least let the question pass her lips.

He has her attention -- every ounce of it.

[eba02]

Somehow - and J doesn't know how - that gets through to her. That strikes something in her that stills the waters and opens up her tune, quiet and delicate and waiting. His answer's going to ripple those waters one way or another, and he needs to make sure it's good.

Well, if all else fails, honesty is the best way to go. For the most part, it's worked so far.

"'Cause he needs help." He looks over at her, keeping his calm and hoping it'll help her keep hers. "There's a good kid in there somewhere, an' he knows it even if he doesn't remember all of it. I think I can help him get it back, an' that's what I'm gonna do." He pauses for a moment, letting that settle. "Same reason you're here, isn't it?"

[oceantier]

"Steven is good." There's no doubt in that, just absolute certainty in the firm quiet of her voice. "He . . . tries."

Not "tries to be good" -- though certainly he does. More . . . tries to do good, always, even if he doesn't succeed. Even when he doesn't have enough information.

Even when she doesn't want him to.

There's something -- a lot -- to respect in that.

She doesn't necessarily trust J -- not in the sense that this moment has slammed open the door, declared Trust, and stuck a flag in it. Actions and their intentions will always speak more loudly to her, and Steven is too important to trust to mere promises that may not go fulfilled. This man, this human . . . he doesn't know Steven, doesn't have any of the same ties.

But.

Her eyes soften, the muscles in her shoulderblades easing.

There's still a lot to be said for someone who believes in Steven too.

"I don't know if I can get him back." There's a flicker of that same anxiety, but still it's supplanted by the firmness in her voice. "I just . . . have to try."

"I can't . . . leave him. Like that. Not remembering." Her tone takes on a faintly wistful note. "Steven's life, everything he has in it . . . he deserves to live that."

It's possible she's sounding cryptic here without trying, filling the space with platitudes. The words are absolutely meant . . . but there's more that Steven's experience echoes here than she's able or willing to touch.

She's trying.