prismaticrap | ▶ TDM .012

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You awaken amidst the darkness with only a faint light to greet you. Your body is hemmed in by shards of crystals, gently sparkling and possibly pricking your skin. The surrounding landscape is dyed in the pinks and purples of the dusk filled with crystals protruding from the ground, some as large as a skyscraper. After an hour or two of wandering through the crystal wilderness, a group of people find you worse for wear. They are the gallant Moon Knights from the planet of Prismatica. Because of the strange phenomena during the past months when scientists observed the sudden appearance of rainbow crystals in the sky, the government has been feverishly combing through the moon for more Moonblessed to be rescued. You’ll eventually be brought into Iris’s moon government center.

You all may have your usual inquiries — Where are we? Who are you? What's going on? — and the Prismals are almost too eager to answer. They tell you about their world and about the first appearance of the Moonblessed as the medical staff give you an examination to make sure you’re not carrying any viruses or biological hazards. If you react violently, you may be restrained and nerfed with a specialized neurotransmitting gun that releases a numbing agent through the top of your spine. Once the examinations are over, you’re informed that you will be provided accommodations on their planet during your stay. You will then be escorted to the docks, and led onto a large transport vessel that makes frequent trips back and forth between the Iris moon and the planet. Faces onboard vary from both old and new Moonblessed as well as the local Prismals.

The next destination: Prismatica.

▶ I am the Terror That Flaps in the Night
Iris Moon, Government Center (Arrival) and Planet Prismatica, City of Lunatia | top

Welcome to Prismatica’s hub, Lunatia, the city of your dreams! A bustling metropolis lush with bright lights, vibrant colors, luxuriant plant life, and all the conveniences of technology absent from your own world… It seems like paradise to all the uninitiated. After a quick tour of the city, new arrivals can find themselves getting cozy in their new homes.

A Settle in your new home at Level 2 to find new roommates and say hello to your neighbors! City officials will give you directions to the designated districts across Level 2 and instruct you to pick out a unit. Each apartment complex has a different aesthetic, some may look cozy, some stylish, and some bizarre. The free accommodations have a basic living space that can only fit two or three people at most in one unit.

Starter Chromaspace furnishings are provided which can be controlled with the touch of a built-in panel. Examples are color-changing curtains, transforming sofa beds, cabinets turning into tables, etc. Customizing your apartment or moving out will have to wait until you earn more chroma. Until then, why don’t you check out your new neighborhood or explore the city levels? Maybe your new roommates or neighbors can give you a “hand” with allowance for dinner.

B Your new flat is covered in a sprinkling of feathers here, there, and everywhere! They appear to be coming through the air vents. This seems to be a city-wide problem in all buildings, as many news outlets are informing people to stay alert. They believe the feathers are from the masked seraphim, King Majestas, who attacked the Elaran Amphitheater a few weeks back.

You are advised to destroy the feathers on sight. Prolonged contact with these feathers cause hallucinations and paranoia. You will feel as if winged creatures are always after you, be it one-winged angels or dark-winged ducks. Other side effects include hearing the chanting of voices in an indecipherable language out of this galaxy. These hallucinations may cause headaches, dizziness, or nausea. Thankfully, a bit of moonlacing will heal these symptoms away.

▶ Got Milk?
Level 2, Crystal Beach | top

With the Coiled Hearts Festival fast approaching, local fishermen have already begun procuring food across Crystal Beach’s clear waters to meet next month’s demands. Around this time of year, the popularity of octopus dishes dramatically rises. The Lunatians have an annual tradition to prepare flavorful octopus dishes for the romantic season, such as the much-lauded dark chocolate-coated octopus or the mouth-watering octopus braised with red wine.

Everyone is welcome to join this heart-throbbing affair. During the Second and Third months, everyone is encouraged to give your loved ones something special for a long, successful relationship. Friends, family, and new acquaintances are traditionally given a small amount of Demichroma in tiny cute cases, while lovers are given something that reminds the gifter of their homeland.

A Interested in catching your own octopus? Horned taurus octopi very frequently migrate to the shorelines to perform their elaborate mating rituals. It’s easy to find clumps of taurus octopi participating in a vigorous dance, filled with undulations and strange moaning noises that octopi should not be making. You can lure the octopi by either using a special flute which mimics their moans to gather them in heavy droves. It’s ideal to have a partner with you to scoop the octopi quickly into water containers once they’ve become entranced enough.

Play the flute carefully! If the taurus octopi grow too excited by your music, they will squirt white ink. If you are spritzed with the thick substance, you will start either randomly puking or uncontrollably secreting a milky sweet substance from any body part that secretes liquids. Luckily, the high-end boutique Prissy Polyp is nearby in case you need a change of clothes due to any sizable stains. Effects will naturally wear off after an hour.

B Come with a friend and enjoy learning some octopus recipes together. The Crystal Beach Resort has opened a seminar where several professional chefs will be demonstrating and teaching how to cook various dishes of different flavors and ingredients guaranteed to impress your date, and taste-testing is free!

One dish makes use of horned taurus octopi skin as the star ingredient, renowned for its irresistibly delectable scent. The chefs explain the palatable skin is a potent ingredient in various love potions and aphrodisiacs, so add or mix them to your dishes in moderation! The effects have a significant delay, so you may feel fine for a while, but when it hits, it hits hard. You will become enamored with every little thing — hey, you just met them and this is crazy — but that person’s smile, the sound of their voice, or the way they say your name will make you unable to resist the urge to shower them with your affection.

▶ Going Viral
Level 2, Moonlight Medical Center | top

“Help Wanted” posters can be found on virtual forums and announcement boards across Level 1 to 3. The Moonlight Medical Center has put out a call for volunteers due to a recent shortage of medical staff. The work involves filling in for overworked nurses, performing tasks such as feeding patients their meals, wiping away their sweat, changing their clothes, encouraging their spirits, and so on. Any volunteers may directly walk-in at the hospital. You will be provided a nurse uniform and any necessary equipment while on the job.

The shortage has resulted from the hospital recently taking in a severe number of patients from a nearby small village to the west of Lunatia, Port Sylvel, a known shipping and freight destination. The number of patients worryingly keeps on rising by the day and will soon fill all available rooms.

A Some of the patients are experiencing varying degrees of paralysis. The worst cases have crystallizing parts of their body. The hospital staff will stress that you should be careful around patients with crystallized limbs. Patients like these have a history of aggressively biting anyone who comes close hard enough to draw blood. Those bitten will exhibit similar symptoms as the victims, including crystallization on their bodies, and experience a steady drop in Chroma. An uncomfortable heaviness will cause you unable to move without the aid of others as well as an uncontrollable urge to aggressively bite someone.

While affected Moonblessed can cure it by moonlacing, the Prismals can only be cured by a gluteal inoculation the Lunar Scientia has recently managed to develop. The sick and beleaguered will probably hate you less if you aren’t the one trying to stabbing them with injections in the hindquarters.

B Aside from nursing duties, other available tasks to be completed include making coffee for fellow nurses and doctors, delivering flowers to patients, and general housekeeping. Specifically, disinfecting medical equipment, tidying up rooms, and cleaning the spaces around the hospital. As a result of the current situation, many crystal shards can be found decorating multiple surfaces, such as floors, walls, toilet seats, and so on. These will have to be swept away!

However, as your work day progresses, some of the shards can be seen suddenly moving on their own. These crawling shards will start clustering together to turn into elaborate, floating monolithic formations that will then begin attacking anyone nearby. Their main ability includes shooting diamond spears to impale any unfortunate victims in their line of sight. In the midst of the chaos, nurses and doctors will beg the Moonblessed to please protect the sick and wounded. The crystal formations can be destroyed by any method, though because of their incredibly sturdy composition, they require multiple hits before they shatter into dust.

▶ Questions
If you have any questions regarding this test drive meme, please ask them in the Questions thread below.

▶ As a reminder, test drive memes are for new characters only. However, current players are more than welcome to use these prompts for their own posts in the IC communities, personal inboxes, catch-all posts, etc.!
▶ As our test drive memes are game canon, feel free to keep any threads that happen here as canon for your character should they be accepted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Howard, for his part, is glad to have someone familiar here. Of course he's a survivor, and of course he's more than capable of being thrown into an unfamiliar setting and thriving - especially, he thinks, a situation like this. But in a situation like this, he needs Peggy Carter to keep him grounded.

(Jarvis' assistance would also be invaluable for so many reasons - like his talent for removing unsightly secretions from clothing. God only knows how he's going to survive for any length of time without his butler.)

To say he's glad to get the message on his bracelet would be an understatement; Howard spends some time making himself presentable (as presentable can be, given the circumstances) before he makes his way over to Peggy's place and raps on the door.]

[ it's almost quaint how she's kitted out her modest flat in anticipation of a guest. not just any guest would receive such a welcome (or any a welcome!) but howard does indeed mean something to her. apart from him, the only person she's actively invited to her door is mister hunter and..

—and that'll be another fascinating conversation, she thinks, when the time comes.

she's left a few store-bought biscuits on the table, on a tray, and she knows they're nothing like mister jarvis's fare but they're something. adequate to have with a cup of black tea and a bizarre conversation about where they find themselves.

peggy isn't nervous when she opens the door. quite the opposite—she's relieved, pleased, happy to see his familiar face and his tragic moustache and although she never initiates hugs, she won't turn howard's down when he inevitably reaches for one.

but only after she's ushered him inside. ]

I should have known you'd turn up sooner rather than later. [ she chides—albeit affectionately. ] This whole place might as well have your monogram on it.

[At least this time he's entering by the front door and (presumably) without stopping to seduce a half-dozen of her neighbors first, so it's an improvement on his end of things.

Howard allows himself to be ushered inside pre-hug - no matter how much intimacy he's seen on the streets here, Peggy is Peggy, and there's no changing that. He's fortunate enough to be permitted this much, he knows as he pulls her into an embrace. Heat rises under his skin in a parody of another sensation he's all too familiar with - that must be the chroma he's heard about. (He wonders just how that energy is transformed into power to run everything biological and mechanical, but that's a secret to work out another time.)

Once he lets her go (and the seductive whisper of chroma makes it hard to relinquish her, but Howard can control himself on occasion, mostly when it pertains to Peggy), he grins roguishly at her.]

If I have to build another fortune from the ground up, there are worse ways to do it, that's for sure.

[ she’s gotten used to the lovely-warm bubble of chroma, generating with another person’s touch. peggy has done a stalwart job of classifying it as something platonic—no matter how sharp the temptation cuts—and she’s trained herself to see simply the practicality in a moment like this and a hug like his. they both of them get a little profit; they both of them get some reassurance that they are here, together, reunited. ]

A fortune, hm? [ she echoes. implying, ever so gently, that she can’t possibly agree. she’s long since decided that survival (a comfortable survival!) will be enough for her. ] Well. If anyone can manage it…

[ she trails off, but then ushers him to stool seat by a shockingly modern, minimalist kitchen counter. the decor decisions weren’t her own; they’re still the default setting. ]

Tea?

[ —because there’s no coffee to be found. ]

[Of course not. Peggy lives a life of simple frugality; she wouldn't see the need for amassing ludicrous amounts of chroma. Howard, however, has his own lifestyle, his own appearances to keep up, and all of those require currency. No doubt he'll manage something technological, given time to study what he's been presented with, but in the meanwhile-

Well. It's not exactly a hardship, is it? At least, not for him. It's practically second nature.]

Of course.

[He smiles as he sits and helps himself to a cookie.] Got sugar?

[ she's mid-pour when he asks. ]

You're in luck.

[ --because she does have sugar. peggy crooks her finger under the bottom edge of a cabinet door and tugs it open. she picks up a small, plain sugar dish and nudges it toward howard.

it's nearly full; it looks like it's barely been used. she's certainly never stocked sugar for her own tea. peggy must be entertaining someone from time to time. ]

Have you run into anyone from back home?

[ an innocent question with a half-dozen hardly innocent answers. ]

[Howard doesn't have Peggy's mind for investigating, for taking note of the most minute details and applying them to the situation at hand. But he does know perfectly well that Peggy doesn't take sugar in her tea, and, therefore, she must keep it around for someone else. At some point in the future, he might be nosy enough to wonder who the recipient of said sugar might be, but right now, he's much more distracted by, well, everything else.]

Not yet.

[A grin laden with innuendo as he adds,] You're my first.

[ a quiet, derisive snort -- it's all his heavy-handed joke deserves, she thinks, as she sinks into a seat across the counter. peggy curls her fingers around her cup, but isn't quick to drink. ]

Just as well.

[ she announces. ominous. ]

There are a lot of us. But you won't always recognize them for who they are.

[ but she has no doubt that many of them will recognize him. if they know her face, they simply must know his. ]

[To be fair, he realizes it's not his best work on the double entendre front, and it's quickly shrugged off. Can't always produce gems, after all.]

Don't tell me Thompson's here.

[Because, wow, he could do with not having to see his face in a place like this.]

Although if Jarvis is-

[A fella can dream, right?]

Wouldn’t that be a windfall—

[ she says of jarvis, considering for a moment how comforting his presence would be. except, of course, she realizes how miserable the planet would make him. without ana, this world would be a gauntlet for dear mister jarvis. ]

But no. No one so convenient as him. Or Thompson, for that matter.

[ because she wouldn’t turn that familiar face away, either, no matter his past transgressions. at least his very existence doesn’t call into question her very understanding of the universe. ]

They’re just about all of them from the 21st century.

[ she pauses—watching for his reaction. ]

[Howard wouldn't really want the Jarvises to be separated, either. He's just not very good at having to make do without someone performing the multitude of tasks Jarvis does. (At least here, ladies are ~~hopefully~~ less likely to want to harm the bearer of bad news and Howard Stark specials.)]

The twenty-first century?

[His eyebrows rise as he's about to take a sip of coffee. This is something that would have been more surprising several months ago, but after Whitney Frost and her multidimensional engineering (and dealing with the Zero Matter itself), not to mention being pulled into an entirely different dimension that doesn't want to consume all matter, time travel seems just a little bit more plausible. There's probably some kind of particle you could harness to make it all feasible.]

Huh. Guess time isn't as linear as we previously thought.

—Time’s not linear at all, I’m afraid.

[ at least that’s the impression that she gets the more she hears about it. both in their own world and in others. but she does show herself to rather at peace with the jumble puzzle that now represents her sense of chronology. she’s had months to adjust. ]

There are some exceptions. Two people, in point of fact, who don’t belong in the 21st century but who live there now. People we have in common.

[ don’t make her say it, stark. ]

[Quantum physics doesn't really exist yet, not properly - at least, not outside a few minds like Howard Stark and Whitney Frost, and even then, it's mostly a vague cluster of what-ifs. So Howard hasn't given much thought to the nature of time as a matter of physics, but there's a good chance that he'll do more of that in the near future, all things considered.

Anyway, Howard might be a genius, but at the moment, he's slow on the take. Blame the lower levels of caffeine in his blood ~~or the lack of alcohol~~. She's going to have to spell it out for him, unfortunately.]

Who?

[ her hand slides from her cup to the table. she taps its surface, idle and anxious, as she considers whether she ought to couch these names in among other words.

other explanations. ]

Sergeant Barnes—for one.

[ she starts with the name that's slightly less painful to repeat. ]

And then there's Steve.

[ the man she'd begged howard to give up and let go. ]

[Howard digests her words for several long moments as he stares into the depths of his tea. His greatest shame, he remembers Fenhoff saying, remembers the visions and the leaping feeling of hope in his heart. He'd finally done something good, after so long, and it had just been a figment of his imagination, dreams kindled into flame by hypnosis.

(He remembers Peggy's voice calling, bringing him back to himself, anchoring him in reality.)

And Barnes - he'd barely known the man, but here he is, rearing his head like Howard's ghosts coming back to haunt him. Surely he couldn't have survived that fall, he thinks. But he doesn't say that as his fingers tighten on the china. Instead, all he has to offer (without quite meeting Peggy's eyes) is:]

You couldn't give me something stronger than tea for that?

[ every muscle tightens; every nerve recoils. howard has always been one of the easier options when it came to discussing steve, his absence, his lasting impact on their lives. but that doesn’t mean she enjoys it.

(and now, with things as complicated as they are…)

peg’s almost grateful that howard won’t look her in the eye. ]

I’ve got a bottle of whatever passes for whiskey in this place. [ a beat. ] Just say the word.

[Steve is one area where Howard doesn't joke, doesn't push - he knows Peggy has more than enough of the former in her life, and she deserves better than that. In short, it's one of the few conversational topics where he displays something like respect (not that she doesn't deserve or garner it otherwise, but it's often leavened with Howard's, well, everything).]

How well does it pass?

[He looks up finally, but his genuine pleasure at seeing Peggy has been exchanged for something wry and...all right, he's not sure how he feels yet. But alcohol will help.

(It nearly always does.)]

[ —quickly, quietly, she internalizes the change. she takes it on her shoulders (her doing; her duty; her fault) and accepts the responsibility for whatever emotions are duking it out behind howard’s eyes. at the very least, this was something she had to tell him. everything else she’s learned—tony included—mightn’t be hers to say.

peg pushes back from the table and doubles back to the kitchen, hauling a bottle down from the cupboard. it’s half-full with something amber. she doesn’t grab additional glasses but simply plants the bottle on the table. ]

Well enough, as long as you don’t mind what’s mid-shelf.

[ it won’t rival anything in howard’s personal collection—but she’s never been disappointed by its bite. besides, regardless of its quality, he’ll want a drink for this next bit. ]

He was alive. The whole time. Lost, but not gone.

[It's probably better he doesn't have a glass, because it would have splintered in his hand at Peggy's next words. As it is, his fingers tighten around the neck of the bottle till the knuckles are white.]

Fuck.

[The curse is quiet, but no less vehement for that - perhaps more powerful than if it had been shouted. If only he hadn't stopped looking, if only he'd tried harder, been more persistent. There's so much more he could have done.

Ignoring the burn (or perhaps welcoming it), he drains a good half of what's in the bottle in one very prolonged go before he has to come up for air.]

[ fuck indeed. peg watches his grip whiten. she watches the soft sorrow steal over him—as it once stole over her—and she knows she can’t hide from the part she played in laying their search to rest.

uncharacteristically, she wants to hold his hand. she wants to reach out and snag a bit of connection. so she does, but only to go as far as laying the tips of her fingers on his elbow. creasing his sleeve. ]

We did everything we thought we could. Looked everywhere we thought he might be.

[ —and it wasn’t enough. evidently. ]

He’s going to be so very happy to see you.

[Howard wants to shout and curse and smash things, to vent his anger at himself. It's all his fault; he could have been better. He should have been better. Instead, Steve spent decades frozen in the ice, lost and forgotten.

He snorts, a self-deprecating noise.]

Yeah, I'm sure he'll be real glad to see the fella who couldn't find him.

[It's not that Howard doesn't fail often - he does, in fact, do it quite regularly (although often his failures succeed in other ways, as proven by his bad babies). But this is a different sort of failure, one that can't be written off by opening a window and airing out the lab. It cuts deeper than that, like he's betrayed Steve and Peggy. And of course she's all British stiff upper lip about it, she might even be forgiving, but Howard can't forgive himself.]

[ howard isn't alone in his impotent rage—although peggy does a better job at hiding hers. perhaps. there's a cool, unhappy glimmer somewhere in her eyes. she's cried enough and exhausted herself and done it all over again in the quiet isolation of her own quarters. alone. there's no need to show any of it now. ]

You and I both know he's better than that.

[ —a little vehement; a little cutting. she scolds him into remembering that steve is inherently more decent than the two of them put together. steve rogers holds convictions, not grudges, and she won't allow howard to even pretend otherwise just so he can crucify himself on their dear friend's imagined disappointment. ]

Edited 2020-02-20 18:11 (UTC)

[Howard wishes he would, frankly, because he feels he deserves a grudge - maybe even a punch, and Howard rarely considers himself worthy of any sort of admonishment. Negative consequences are typically things that happen to other people, especially when you're rich enough to pay someone to take your licks for you (as poor Jarvis so often does with Howard's discarded paramours).

The point is, when you think you're beyond any sort of recrimination (except, strangely, whatever comes from Peggy), those few moments of self-abuse hit particularly hard. (How else, Howard has told himself, would it have been so easy for Fenhoff to worm his way into his mind?) Usually, his self-pitying moments involve more time at the bottom of a bottle, soaking in his own misery like a marinade of booze and regret.

But Peggy - brisk, efficient, very often a pain in the ass Peggy - won't allow that, at least for now. Which doesn't keep him from having another drink, on general principle.]

What about Barnes?

[At least he's not responsible, directly or indirectly, for that. (Which doesn't mean he doesn't feel regret, just not personal blame.)]

[ barnes is another matter altogether. barnes, she knows, might hold something akin to a grudge, if not a grudge full stop. he’d felt hurt, she knows, when he’d realized that there had come a time when the howlies had stopped looking.

so peggy thins her mouth into a line and gives her head a little shake. ]

Similar circumstances on the surface. Frozen, kept alive, revived in the future. [ she picks at a splintered edge of table. ] Except the wrong sort of people found him.

[ —which leads to the man sitting across from her, her dear friend, assassinated. now it’s her turn to escape eye contact. ]

Wrong sort of people,

[Howard echoes with a raised eyebrow. He's still unclear as to how the man survived the fall, let alone the exposure afterwards, but that's just more information to gather, more hypotheses to form and test. He thinks about it in terms of science because it's easier to process that way. Later he can let the emotion seep in around the edges but - god, he's already got more than he can handle right now, is it so wrong to try and push the rest of it off to a time when he can bear the emotional burden more easily?]

The Germans were barely holding it together by then. [He's thinking through the likely suspects out loud, as he does so often. Hearing his own voice helps him think.] Hydra might've had the technology, but we cleared them out. [Or so he believes, anyway.] The Soviets? [He knows they've been hiding technology of their own - that's certainly become apparent enough to all of them.]

no octopi? he's disappointed, peg.

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