TEST DRIVE MEME: THE SELF TITLED ALBUM

[interdimanagers]

☆WELCOME TO INTERSTELLAR

And welcome to our first TDM! We've got two types of prompts to use this time around: the first takes place while your character is in the process of being captured, and the second is during their first brainwashed rockstar tour. The former is designed to be considered 100% game canon if you make it in officially, while the later is more speculative and will only work if you get lucky during label and band selection.

☆THE TALENT SEARCH

These prompts are design to be kept as game canon after acceptance, and can be used as the official story of how your character was captured. Importantly, the kidnappers entering 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 captured multiple ways, or going in more than one direction, before the timeline settled on a final path. Or at least, they'll remember this until their memories are wiped shortly afterwards, but that's okay! That's what memory regains are for. Read this page for more specifics on this situation. Any powers the characters have will be weakened and prone to malfunction to the point of uselessness.



►A1) THE SEARCH: It always starts out this way, doesn't it? At some point in your life, you were just doing your thing, wherever you call home. Then, all at once, it's like you've been torn from your dimension by the roots. Time and space displace, and it's like you've been shifted one layer of reality to the left - like some kind of subspace where you can see your reality through it, like a rainbow surrealist image of your home. Even if you can see this ghost image of where you were, you can't interact with it meaningfully. Any friends or family are somewhere else. As you begin to wander, without any other options, you'll find that the scenery gradually shifts to ghost images of other places, other worlds. If you wander long enough, you'll even find other people, lost just like you are. But you probably won't have much time - you've been brought here for a reason, after all.

►A2) THE HUNT: It could happen almost immediately, or it could happen hours later - but, at some point, your dimensional kidnappers start to do their sweep. Space Men in black body suits and gas masks pursue you on foot and in small spaceships, trying to sweep you and the other displaced up like fish in a net. Their guns contain a weird pink gas that will knock out most with only a single breath - and for those more enduring, they have the heavy artillery, like electrical nets and guns. The fallen will be sealed up into stasis pods for transport and loaded onto the ships, which seem like the only way to get out of this place by choice. This is where it ends, but are you going to put up a fight?

☆THE MAGIC TOUR BUS

By default, these prompt aren't considered canon, but if after you are accepted and sorted they can be tweaked into working for you, it'll be totally okay to keep them as a part of your rockstar's personal history. They take place after being kidnapped and brainwashed, on your character's first tour under their new label. As it turns out, it seems like brainwashing aliens isn't the only thing the abductees have to worry about.



►B1) PLAY IT STRAIGHT: It's just another day on the tour bus, in between long stretches of highway. How do you fill your time? Do you practice your instrument, or do you take full advantage of the open bar? Do you sulk and try go to bed early? Do you yell at your bandmates for ruining the toilet? Do you troll people on Twitter? Tours being what they are, everyone is probably at least a little bit tired or cranky. Just don't do anything that will get the Manager on your ass, because that's always more trouble than it's worth.

►B2) THAT'S NORMAL: The Managers aren't here, as far as you can tell, leaving you in a moment of relative relaxation. Something about those guys just make you uneasy, and they're always shoving you around and making you do things you don't really want to. However, these moments of peace don't last long, because it stars to become increasingly apparent that your tour bus might be...haunted? Whether its the bus turning on without a driver and without a key, wine glasses falling off tables, or guitar static sounding like frantic whispering, things are starting to get weird. Yet, at the same time, something in your subconscious is strongly suggesting that you should ignore it, and that everything is normal and fine...

►B3) THEN WHO WAS GUITAR?: These weird experiences eventually culminate in a kind of phantom music bleeding in from the air around you. The source is impossible to discern but it's somehow...familiar? Like something that played at an important moment in your life, even if the event itself just won't come to mind. What's weirder, is that everyone seems to hear something different. It gets to you in a way that your programming doesn't like - but how do you react? Reluctantly take it in, or throw a fit until it stops?

☆HELPFUL INFO

► Follow the mod plurk for updates: interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► We are still looking for some mod help, so if you are interested let us know!
► Reserves close on SEPTEMBER 25th at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on SEPTEMBER 24th at 12:01AM EDT

Comments

[mildwildchild]

Jamie is ready to scramble to his feet as soon as Itachi moves, but ends up halfway dragged by his mysterious benefactor anyway. He catches a glimpse of the masked men as he does so, and the panic flares up again in full force.

"Where?" he squeaks, tensed to run in whatever direction he's told. It still doesn't look like there's anywhere to run to; maybe the best they can hope for is maintaining enough of a lead on the hunters to stay out of range of their weapons. And maybe then the guys will get discouraged and give up! Right?

Right?

[yuruse]

The answer to Jamie's question is anywhere, but Itachi can't get himself to say that. A flying device like that could easily catch back up to them no matter which way they went, but he isn't sure surrendering is a better option.

The situation is rather hopeless, unfortunately. "This way." He leads the kid running off in one direction despite this. He isn't yet ready to turn himself over.

[mildwildchild]

Jamie's getting that hopeless vibe, too, but he can't let himself give in to it, not when there's a chance of escaping. He bolts off after Itachi, managing to keep pace with him surprisingly well for a short, wimpy-looking kid. Turns out that unrelenting terror is a pretty good motivator.

"What do these guys even want?" he demands as he runs - whether he's asking Itachi or the world at large is unclear, but he'd really like some kind of explanation from somebody.

[yuruse]

"I wish I could tell you." He doesn't even know why they'd been brought there to begin with, or for that matter how he's even still alive. His confusion has been buried beneath the urgency of escaping their pursuers. What was the point of bringing them into this strange place just to have them be hunted?

"Do you remember how you got here?" If his situation is anything like Itachi's, then he's not expecting much of an answer.

[mildwildchild]

That's not exactly comforting, but Jamie guesses he wasn't really expecting a more decisive answer. However many other people there are stuck in this situation, it seems like they're all just as clueless as Jamie himself.

He shakes his head as he runs, trying to think back to how this nightmare started. "No," he answers, "it's like I was home one minute and then there was just - this." You know, the magical LSD trip they're mutually participating in right now.

A hint of movement on the fringes of his peripheral vision causes Jamie to startle and issue a terrified squeak. More masked goons, bearing down on them from the right.

"Uhhhh there's more of them," Jamie informs Itachi, aiming to adjust his flight path accordingly.

[yuruse]

"Just keep moving." Right now it's all they can do.

Jamie's answer is interesting in that he mentions nothing about being dead. If he'd simply been hanging around at home then the chances of him having died suddenly were small. Meanwhile, Itachi had basically died twice before being brought here, his spirit just on the verge of release.

So much about this is wrong.

There are more closing in, and their avenues of escape (if they ever had any to begin with) are getting smaller. Maybe he's supposed to be taken. Maybe this is the afterlife he deserves. Despite these thoughts, he stubbornly keeps running.

[mildwildchild]

Some little part of Jamie objects to this, insists that they need some kind of plan other than "blindly keep running" - but Jamie's never been particularly good at strategizing when he's the one facing imminent danger, and there's no chance of a time-out so he can collect his thoughts and assess what's going on. (Not that he could make any sense of it to begin with.)

So he keeps pace alongside Itachi, even though his lungs are burning and he's not sure how much longer he can keep it up, and he too notices the ever-increasing numbers of foot soldiers closing around them. And then a glance overhead reveals one of the small aircraft banking toward them, and in his panic the only thing Jamie can manage in warning is "UP!"

This isn't one of his more eloquent days, really.

[yuruse]

Up, he says, and it takes only a single glance to notice the oncoming aircraft. This is bad, since the earlier tactic of simply throwing both of them to the ground probably won't work a second time.

Itachi reaches into a pouch at his hip. He might not be able to use his chakra properly, but he still has a couple tools he might be able to make use of. A ninja has to be able to work with what he has. In this case, the item in question is a smoke bomb. If he knew anything about the sort of technology in use here, he might wonder if there was some way for the ship to seek out their heat signatures, but right now all he's concerned with is getting them out of view long enough to escape the ship's direct path.

Smoke covers the ground, and Itachi grabs for Jamie's arm in order to pull him to the edge of it.

[mildwildchild]

Jamie doesn't resist the pull, although - distracted as he is by trying to locate a route of escape himself - he's startled by it and lets out a yelp as he's dragged behind Itachi. It doesn't take him long before he's moving on his own, though, squinting through the smoke to follow his companion.

Once at the periphery of the cloud, where the smoke particles are a little thinner, Jamie thinks he can just barely make out some kind of structure a short sprint away - something that might provide a little bit of cover long enough for them to try to brainstorm a way out of this mess. He gives Itachi a nudge, indicating it with a look and then glancing up at him to gauge his opinion.

[yuruse]

Itachi follows the look with one of his own, having to squint a bit to see what Jamie's pointing out. Given how unstable this place has felt so far, he's not sure anything they might see in the distance will be reachable, but right now there aren't many other options.

He doesn't say anything, as any noise might draw attention back to them, but continues to pull the boy along. It's a last ditch effort, as their chances of escape at this point seem abysmally thin.