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

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► Reserves close on SEPTEMBER 25th at 12:01AM EDT
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Comments

[campioned]

The alley has two exits. It's not a dead end. Alec isn't completely stupid. In fact, he's actually being rather smart about this, because he can use the opportunity to catch his breath.

Which is why he glares at Richard so, when Richard's fingers shush him. He isn't talking. He's breathing hard, and it isn't his fault.

He also doesn't like being shushed at all, not by anyone, and it's only the fact that Richard is taking this breach of their peace so very seriously that holds his tongue for a few seconds.

Alec leans against the wall beside Richard. If he wasn't taller, he'd be completely hidden right now. He can't stand being silent; it's choking him. Alec leans over and breathes the words near Richard's ear. "Did you see their eyes?"

The strange eyes that glowed red in the darkness. Alec considered himself too enlightened to call them demons, yet… he's never seen eyes like that before.

[honeywithpoison]

Alec is really being smart about this. Richard appreciates it, as well as the so, so quiet question.

He looks up over his shoulder, and his smile. His smile is really the kind that Alec ought to recognize, by now. Alec has given him a target, and Richard is not going to miss.

The eyes. They are not usually something he goes for, but these are hardly usual opponents. These are enemies, and Richard is going to treat them as such.

His eyes are still up on Alec's face when the first black-clad figure steps into the alley. And, a moment later, stumbles back, the tip of Richard's sword marking the dark fabric of his shirt.

With the next one, Richard goes for those glowing red eyes. The resistance is, as he sort of suspected, that of a protective helmet, but the figure, the hunter, still falls back, fumbling with the now darkened 'eye' that sparks, but is clearly not bleeding, and Richard gets to stab the third one in the arm before the pink cloud is expelled from his device, again.

He barely squeezes Alec's arm, this time, and only takes an instant before nodding in the other direction. More running.

[campioned]

That went well. He had been expecting to be admonished for the question and preparing to both roll his eyes and ignore Richard. The smile disarms him, though. Richard is enjoying this.

But, then again, so is Alec. He likes this flirtation with death, despite its interference with his life. It makes him feel alive, when his breath becomes ragged and his body stiffens with nerves. When someone else bleeds. That release from seeing someone else still forever and the knowledge that he lives on.

They aren't dead, though, nor are they bleeding. It's very disappointing, but it's not Richard's fault. Normal men would be bleeding and dead. Of course, normal men would have swords. This doesn't make sense.

Alec registers the hand on his arm, but lingers a few more seconds, staring at the blackness that was a red eye in a covered face with no human features to be seen. When he does turn to flee, he takes but a few steps before more silhouettes stride into the other end of the alley.

Now, they're trapped. "... Richard."

[honeywithpoison]

Alec likes the flirtation with death, while Richard, Richard likes the challenge. And this is completely unknown, and he, he wants to win. (He also has no idea just how hopelessly he is outmatched, or he might have been smarter. But these things, these people. They are inconceivable.)

He's not very far ahead of Alec, because he waits for him; Alec is always, always his priority, anymore.

So when the figures appear in front of him - one of them drops from the rooftop, somehow! - he stops, backing up a step but not quite into his friend.

"Stay close to the wall, Alec. If the pink stuff appears, try not to breathe in."

And he charges. Of course he charges. The best defense is a good offense, and his... his is the best.

[campioned]

Richard is the best. Watching him work is better than any play; the man is an artist with a blade. Alec can't remember being worried when watching the man fight, even if he was the one who picked the fight. The worry comes after, when he thinks about how, someday, someone will best his friend, and then Alec will be alone.

He's been alone, for three whole days. He hates it more than living. It's duller than a garden party.

But this is wrong, this fight and the way it makes him feel... Richard shouldn't be charging. He should hang back, he always hangs back and waits for the other swordsman to make a mistake. There's something wrong, he wants to scream, but he doesn't dare distract the fighters.

Alec can't take his eyes off the charge. If he had, he might have noticed the men creeping up behind him and leveling their weapons. The hiss of gas is lost in the hiss of his breathing. He tastes it, that's how he first notices the pink substance. The taste of the air in his nostrils, mouth, lungs changes, and then the pink fog finishes encircling his head. He can feel - he can almost see the involuntary flare of his nostrils as they intake out of shock reflex.

"Too l-..." The world is already streaking out into a riot of color and starbursts of light, and Alec's eyes flicker to Richard. He wants to tell him how strong it is, that it's better than any drug Alec has tried, but his mouth won't work. His eyes roll back, and he can't quite finish the warning or the mental admonishment of no, want to look at Richard before his head cracks against the cobblestones.

[honeywithpoison]

"Alec!" Richard is ducking a thing pointed at him when he hears Alec's voice cutting off, and, a moment later, the crunch of head on pavement.

Richard's sword is not merciful, when it strikes again. He stabs somebody in the groin, a wound that he knows will bleed much and, even if it's stopped, will likely fester. His upstroke is perfect--

When something hits him in the back, making air whoosh out of his lungs and his balance falter for a fraction of a second. He takes a breath back in before his eyes register the unnatural color around him and he tries to stop it, but it's too late.

Richard yells, a half-growl that's more than part animal, with his rage and frustration, and he tries, tries, to catch one last look of Alec, to throw himself on top of him and protect him, even now.

Darkness overtakes him far too soon, the sword cluttering on the cobbles from him suddenly loose fingers.