emptynesters | TEST DRIVE :003

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test drive

TEST DRIVE :003

WELCOME to the test drive and thank you for your interest in Station 72! To allow players to experiment with game mechanics, flexibility and to account for the fact that our TDMs tend to span a number of months to make up for our low player turnover, we've put together a game-themes random scenario generator for you to play with. Mix and match prompts at will, pick your own broodmates, experiment with abilities and specializations, talk to each other and maybe make up some pre-established CR, and generally play around however you like.

This test drive is not game canon, so take this chance to go nuts! Current in game players are also welcome to make top levels here and aren't beholden to their in-game characterizations (so if it makes more sense to be a broodmates of a character test driving, feel free to do so for the sake of these threads).

For the full experience, we strongly encourage players to write up a short blurb about what their fellow characters might know about them either through shared time on the Station or through the Nest mental link. Handy links can be found at the bottom of this entry if you have any questions and APPLICATIONS are always open if you decide you'd like to jump into the game proper. If you're having trouble coming up with a symbiote ability for your character for use in either the TDM or for your application, we have an ability workshop post located HERE.

(Mix and match these prompts at will to create your own TDM scenario - there's no obligation to use something from every category. Feel free to make up anything that isn't covered in the prompt if it lends to your playing.)

     THE PLACE

1. STATION 72 consists of massive, alien sprawl. While large sections of the Station might be mistaken for a Station manufactured for use by humanoid beings - the hangar is relatively standard other than its massive size, the Life Support deck with its series of living quarters seems normal enough (if you ignore the part where none of the rooms have doors on them), and there's even a Jai Alai court -, beyond the most well trod paths the Station quickly cedes to the utterly bizarre. Corridors twist and loop back in on themselves, great verandas overlook massive empty rooms, ramps because stairs which lead to dead ends. It's easy to get lost if you don't have a destination in mind. Strangely enough, if you do know where you want to be, the Station's twisting paths will eventually get you there as long as you keep your goal firmly in mind. Knowing that is another thing entirely.

2. THE MELTED WORLD was once beautiful. Then again, maybe it's always been a toughened old rock, but at some point the planet called Ojan was glassed in the throes of a brutal war. The planet's entire surface has become a twisted, mirror-like substance by whatever super hot biological weapon was poured into it. The material isn't actually that horrible, consuming black; it perfectly reflects the empty, quiet space that surrounds Ojan: a foreboding testament to a war long forgotten. But what lies below the surface of the desolated world?

3. THE SCEPTRE is a fabulous building structure suspended from an asteroid in orbit around a planet. The Sceptre pierces down through the atmosphere of the planet below and over the course of the asteroid's orbit, The Sceptre has an opportunity to pass through every habitat and climate the world below it has to offer. The Sceptre is sleek and beautiful (or it is? Maybe it's fallen into disrepair and only ghosts remain) and its massive windows look out onto a varied, verdant world (or do they? What state is the planet below in, exactly? Has it been so thoroughly paved over that the atmosphere is the only place left to build?).

4. PENTARA PRIME is the ancient, meandering capital of the lush garden world of Pentara. Unlike most cities, it is a large, verdant sprawl, made up eighteen clustered centers - groups of low, elegant stone buildings, strung together by winding roads populated with quietly humming pods moving people from spoke to spoke. The capital is built around leisure, not production and there are far more gardens and orchards than there are buildings. The sun is heavy and low, and the air is still and buzzes with the sounds of fat-bodied insects. It’s so still, so calm. It seems empty and there is something unsettling in the quiet. --Or is it? Maybe it's bustling with energy, just as vibrant and delightful as it seems on the surface.

5. CHORIUS is not quite a planet. Not anymore. Once long ago it was, but over time it has changed - been stripped clean of every valuable mineral, every scrap of rare metal, and eventually even of atmosphere. The core has cooled perceptibly and now even its rotation period has slowed dramatically. Now it is a made up of shaped carbon and steel that bridge over the stripped surface of the planet, pulsing with energies, shielded from the harshness of the sun by a webbed dome that keeps the electric scented air from escaping into the space around it. Here nothing is wasted. Everything - everyone - is recycled and reconstituted into new forms. Every one of the cities changes daily, reformatted to meet new goals and new needs. It is a dead world filled with the living. But whether it is thriving or dying is hard to say - and what the newest change will bring with it is even more difficult to guess.

6. SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER. There's a lot of it in every direction.

     THE PEOPLE

1. THE OUTLANDERS consist of small bands of settlers and explorers who have quested out into the unknown, the remote, and the dessicated parts of this galaxy looking for either new opportunities or forgotten mysteries. They are mostly upright though only vaguely humanoid, remnants of a civilization driven from their own failing world, each group is bound only by their own codes and personal laws. They're traders and nomads, largely peaceful but wary of the harsh, dangerous environment and beings they've crossed paths with. Don't cross a deal with an Outlander - they'll make you regret it.

2. A VERITABLE MELTING POT, the beings of this metropolis are as vibrant and diverse as is imaginable. These are a people developed by a myriad of cultural influences, technological insights, overlapping interests and clashing societal norms shaken up and spit out into something that more or less works as long as there's a whole lot of bureaucracy to keep it in order. And boy is there a lot of that. Mind your p's and q's - someone might haul you in for questioning if you cause too much of an uproar.

3. A RUINED GHOST is all that remains of this ancient civilization. Once there were people here leading brilliant or lives, or quiet ones, but all that's left are their ruined structures, old half-functional consoles and signs of lives abruptly arrested. What destroyed these people is initially unclear, but their extinction appears to have been absolute. --Or was it?

4. THE COURT is elegant and beautiful and perfect. Every being is shrouded in delicate, gauzy fabrics layered so densely as to obscure their elongated squirming bodies from head to toe. Each step sounds like a bell ringing from the the small metal plates at the bottom of their soft slippers; every gloved finger glints with small golden threads. The queens sweep through their secret insect gardens and their royal technomancers walk the halls with the glitter of hologlyphs sparkling at their fingertips and in the wake of their sweeping robes.

5. THE GREAT MILITARY is larger even than it’s name suggests. Every member of their civilization plays some part in it, every person has a rank, every family an insignia. The structure is rigid and inflexible and all-encompassing, and it has made them into ferocious enemies. They have been at war for as long as they have been a people, and their battle will never end, because if it did, they would go with it. The harshness of their life is painted on the sharp planes of their grey faces, but there is an indomitability and a pride to them that is hidden by their stern, unchanging expressions.

6. SCUM ALWAYS LIVES at the edge of the universe. Beware the dark of the space and the seedier underbelly of cities or the shadows of forgotten planet - pirates make their living there and these are desperate times, friend.

     THE OBJECTIVE

1. GET UP from where you've fallen. Or get up from the nesting deck pod where you've just woken up on the Station. Or get up to Level 672 where there's a ship waiting for you. Or get up from the knee you've taken before this alien queen. Get up.

2. THE RESCUE might be saving a city from a disaster engineered by an enemy force, playing bodyguard for a government official, or liberating a rare artifact from a crumbling structure.

3. IT'S A RACE AGAINST TIME to collect the relic you've been sent to retrieve from the collapsing ruin. Or to make your way free of the military blockade. Or to make your escape from a crumbling world.

4. THE MASQUERADE is all a cover - for an assassination. For a heist. For a political coup.

5. INFILTRATE you know what you need. And you know who has it. With a little help you’ll be able to break into the place no one is supposed to go. You could sneak in… or smash in. Or maybe just talk your way past every little problem.

6. COME ON AND SLAM and welcome to the jam. It’s a ritual or maybe it’s just a pastime, but whichever it is there are rules and there is a goal. There’s probably even points. If you’re lucky, you just might score one. Avoid the spiky pits? Or maybe the thrown fruit. Or perhaps just the other team...

6. EXPLORE and uncover the secrets this place have to offer. There’s a mystery here if you know where to find it. And all you have to do is look.

7. DON'T DIE is easy to say and hard to do when you're under the guns of an armada. Or when you're trying to outwit spies. Or when the ground is literally crumbling under your feet.

     INSPIRATION

NAVIGATION • PREMISE • FAQ • RULES • GLOSSARY • APPLICATIONS • SYMBIOTIC SKILLS • ABILITY POINTS

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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i. choose your own spy adventure; (or leave the details open and i'll fill them in for each thread.)

[ 'Philip Jennings' is solid presence in the Nest. Even-tempered, reliable, even sensitive to and supportive of the rest of their number. Their work isn't easy, and he seems to know that better than most, to feel the exhaustion of it bone-deep — and to take steps, however small they may be, to alleviate that pressure for the others when he can. But touching his mind always feels like putting your feet down on one side of a prism — fully formed as you need it to be, but still only part of a complicated whole.

Appropriate, then, that his symbiote seems to have granted him the ability to change shape. That fact, and his training before this (CIA, he says, with his after-school-special Dad accent, and maybe that isn't true, maybe he's just making himself believe it when he says it, but what's the difference?) have made him ideal for infiltration, missions he insists on taking less out of a lack of confidence in anyone else's ability and more out of a dogged need to spare anyone else this.

But not every mission can be a solo mission. Maybe with you, he doesn't even mind — or maybe he minds more. Either way, there's a goal they need to accomplish, and the best way to do that is these two people undercover — as colleagues, as friends, as a married couple, as family. ]

So how much experience do you have with this sort of thing? [ he asks, casual, while they put the finishing touches on their disguises. Here, put on this ratty coat, this ridiculous heel, this godforsaken mullet wig. Outside this room, they'll need to be these elaborate fictions. But first they'll need to create them. ]

ii. wildcard;
[ do you need a spy dad somewhere, just say the word. ]

[ How like him to nurture and cajole, smoothen the rough edges to make lying seem palatable to these people who grew up thinking truth was a virtue. Sometimes he could even make their missions seem just a game, harmless in every way, nobody really dies and no harm would ever come to them and theirs. How she envies him for it, when fear turns her hands cold and her breathing erratic each time, how it takes such effort from her.

Her voice is low, but sharp. She jerks her feet into her boots with the certainty it takes to break a man's neck. ]

We don't need them. They're just going to slow us down.

[ Philip makes a mild exasperated noise in the back of his throat that neither of them need telepathy to understand. (More often, he thinks, the telepathy is more than they really needed to know about each other.) She's right, of course; they don't need anyone, the others will get in their way. That isn't the point. ]

There are three dozen of them. [ A few who are more than civilians, sure, but none like them. His elbows seesaw as he works the top button of his collar in the mirror. ] And it's their necks on the line, too. They're not all going to just sit back and let us handle everything.

[ It is surely tempting, the idea that one could shed the trappings accumulated over decades of life to become someone else, even if for a spell, that identity could be such a malleable thing. As changeable as a name. The man beside him seems to contain a multitude of faces without even the help of disguises, while Tenma finds that after a journey of two years and counting, he has barely budged from who he was at the start. ]

Not much.

[ His answer, clipped, betrays his nerves. He was Dr. Chan for a handful of days, a nameless freelance journalist for months and sometimes a lost tourist, but he remained himself throughout. This, painting an array of symbols on his skin and donning a purplish wig to cover his mess of black hair all to pass as an Outlander with years of faux history to memorize, is something else entirely. ]

I know about hiding, but hiding in plain view is different. How do you do it?

[ As mundane as arguing over whether the children are watching too much TV, if they should paint the living room baby blue or teal, if they should talk to the Tylers about their barking dog. Elizabeth yanks on her chosen wig, an overly curled grey mop that would look ridiculous on anyone else had she not paired it with a gaze sharp enough, she hopes, to cut through him. ]

If they know what's good for them, they'd do exactly that.

[ As with all things, there are inevitabilities. Risks and handicaps to shoulder. She moves on to the next thing as quickly, marching toward him to open her palm. ]

What weapons did they give us?

Uh - yeah. Bandages would be good. Look - why don't we check out the medbay and we can clean this up later?

[ Because that's probably more important, honestly. ]

[ Tenma is a doctor, this is no secret, his impulse to care for any physical ailments is as instinctive as the biological imperative to breathe. So is his habit of telling you to stop at one drink, or to quit smoking, or to eat an apple. He is never insistent, timid rather, soft-spoken and unassuming, occasionally morose, the kind of man who blends too easily into the background. But any who ventures into his mind would know he abides with a terrifying sort of intense vigilance, an acute gaze upon the self, and an obsessive diligence to mundane trivialities. He would never forget your name, for one, or how much sugar you take in your coffee, or how you passingly said you miss the scent of daisies — which he then embarked upon great trial and effort to procure a humble bouquet to bring to you many, many weeks later. ]
I. SCUM ALWAYS LIVES.
[ The negotiation has gone badly. It seemed simple on paper, painfully obvious in hindsight. A quick and previously agreed upon transaction: a bag of stones from Chorius in exchange for a memory drive that the interstellar scavengers scoured from a mysterious (read: Nest-linked) wreckage. But the bounty hunters never wanted a bag of stones (who would?), and the real quarry was the messengers themselves. That is, Tenma and your good self.

Immediately, he places a detailed memory of an escape plan into your mind: the path through a narrow hallway hidden behind the single exit, the combination that serves as the key, then stepping out the door at the end will bring you to an expanse dotted with crystal spires reaching through the clouds. Farther out, to the east, lies the shuttle and reinforcement. ]

( At the count of three, you run for the door. Don’t look back. )

[ Then, he shifts his attention to the palms of his hand placed under the table, quietly ready to flip it toward the negotiator. ]

II. PENTARA PRIME.
[ Tenma is — setting out a picnic.

It's early in the mission, with the guardians having told them to rest while they can, though the way he meticulously fusses over the rug and arranges the sandwich-proxies and maybe-muffins and the thermoses hardly qualifies as restful. To each their own. When he finally notices you, he flashes a smile, surprised yet bashful at being found, before clearing his throat. ]

The weather’s nice, isn’t it? [ He reaches over the spread to offer you an empty cup. ] Here. It’s days like these that make me glad to be alive.

III. WILDCARD!
[ I’ll roll with whatever you throw at me or you can PM me with ideas! ]

[ assholes make for good character development. once upon a time, her cup had ran full of them, and she'd been put to the task of reacting appropriately. yes, faye owes every bit of her streetwise and cunning to all those who'd rather guzzle a barrel of their own piss than share a meal with her. so excuse her tangible disappointment, when the man tenders a cup for her taking. it's all very mild-mannered, no offense. not her choice of a good time.

hell she'll turn down food - so excuse her as she hankers down to her knees, squirreling over what he'd packed with too much analysis to be decent. ]

Hmmmmmm... [ faye drips intense underwhelment from every gratuitous 'm'. offhand, preoccupied with sniffing the open thermos in her hand: ] You know what makes me glad to be alive? Alcohol.

[ for added dramatics, she tips over the bag holding the remainder of his foodstuffs. her jesus at the marketplace. ] Sheesh; you could've packed us a single beer.

[OOC: Asellus is circumspect and cautious in this new environment, though there is a sharp and brilliant stroke of excitement behind all of that careful observation-- she wants to explore! To meet new people! To that end, she's trying to simultaneously project a sense of open friendliness and also 'I am completely under control, honest'. It's... not really working out. She feels a lot like a puppy, really-- energetic and above all, charming.]

I. Exploring Pentara Prime

It feels a lot like home, this garden-- all these strange and new flora with the same humid, warm feeling that the rose gardens back home did. There's a strange sense of nostalgia that Asellus is only learning now to come to terms with as she gains the understanding that she won't see the Chateau or the people within it for an indeterminate amount of time, and it lends a slight tone of melancholy to her thoughts as she (perhaps ill-advisedly) runs her fingertips over the leaves and petals of the plants before her. She's perfectly content to be lost in her own thoughts, which is probably why she either ignores or completely misses the sense of someone else joining her in this place until her ears catch the sound of motion within the sea of leaves.

And of course, her gut assumption is that she's overstepped her boundaries, and she leaps back from the flora.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't doing anything, I'll get going right away!"

She doesn't even register how these statements, taken in sequence, might not give the impression of truthfulness.

II. Wildcard

[OOC: I am bad at choices. Please feel free to suggest better options if your character might have run into Asellus, assumed CR or no. I am very flexible, I promise!]

Despite the many times back home when Estelle accused him of being the fun police, Joshua is not actually looking to get anyone into trouble, and he blinks at the response - exactly the kind of enthusiastic denial that he'd gotten so used to seeing in Estelle, the kind that said she was definitely not being straight with him.

"It's...not a problem, honestly."

They don't have much of a formal organizational structure among themselves, after all. (Which is probably why they often have such a hard time getting on the same page to get things done, to his chagrin.) Most of the nest is bad at taking orders, and only a few go to the trouble of trying to give them.

Actually, what he's more worried about is -

"Don't touch the purple ones."

"The purple ones?"

Asellus blinked and barely paused before turning back to the flowers, spotting the ones he had spoken about and then turning back, head slightly tilted. "I'm not going to touch it, but can you tell me why?" It looked harmless enough, but she wasn't going to look this gift advice-horse in the mouth. And she would gauge him by his response-- was he giving her valuable 'that thing will kill you' advice, or is this more of an Ildon-esque 'that thing makes a mess and I will have to clean it up' warning?

Of course, if it were the latter, she probably still wouldn't set it off. It'd be rude-- as long as he was around to see her do it.

He's definitely the long-suffering type who will clean up other people's messes, but he doesn't usually complain...well, too much, at least. This, however, is more advice of the first type.

"It's mildly toxic. It won't kill you, but the rash is pretty disgusting."

Granted, it's not universally poisonous; at least, some of the locals don't seem to have any trouble with it. But why tempt trouble when you can research the biology first and then tempt trouble?

Rash? She wrinkles her nose and turns away from the flower. Fun messes she can get behind, but the last thing she wants is a disgusting rash, and she doesn't have gloves on her to make the exciting rash happen to someone else.

Not that she'd do that to anyone here. They're in far too close-quarters for that. Nowhere to hide if she did.

"Man, that's not much fun." This guy seems to be on the level, and at least he wasn't going to let her learn through experience in this case, it seems. "Any other cool effects? The flowers back home don't do anything special, but this place just keeps surprising me." She looks at her fingers, studiously trying to look unconcerned about the flowers she's already touched. She certainly hopes nothing has a delayed effect. That'd be awkward.

Speaking of... she should probably introduce herself. Just in case. "Oh, uh. I'm Asellus, by the way." Asellus, of the hopefully-not-going-to-cause-rashes curiosity.

The vibes he gets off her are really a contrast to so much of the nest - pleasant, upbeat, other such words that he can't imagine applying to a lot of the others. And while he's not hypocritical enough to ignore that he is absolutely part of that problem, he appreciates the change of pace.

So his smile, subdued though it is, comes more easily than usual.

"Joshua." He glances over the rest of the flowers. He'd paid more attention to the dangerous ones, naturally, but weren't there a few others he'd read in the ecology bit of the briefing...ah.

"The yellow one. I know it doesn't look like much right now, but its sap glows in the dark."

"Are you for real?" Her excitement is almost palpable. She's seen glow in the dark flowers before, in the Bio Lab in Shrike, but those flowers were also violently poisonous in a place filled with scientists whose dedication to their craft had gone too far-- she doesn't like to think about that place. But here...

"...Say, Joshua?" Her tone shifts to-- well, not quite wheedling, but definitely not completely on the level. "D'you think they'd be mad if we picked one?"

She's pulling all of her stops out here. That... frankly unnerving tone? Check. A mischievous smile? Check. Using 'we' and pulling Joshua in on this probably ill-advised idea? Double check.

"You know. For science."

Oh. He knows that tone. It's the tone that usually ends with him getting accused of being the fun police.

It's getting a little eerie how she keeps hitting all the right notes to remind him of Estelle, and that's both comforting and ominous.

"I'm pretty sure gardens try to discourage that, yes."

Hm. Asellus' face shifts into a "ah, good point" sort of expression, before sighing. "I guess. I doubt they'd miss it, but it's probably a bad thing to go making the people who own this place mad at us." She's still new to the place, after all-- no need to go making enemies without having made some friends first. Her Charm doesn't seem to work the same way here, or maybe everyone's more resistant-- but she's fairly sure she can't use it to get out of that kind of trouble here.

But there's something wiggling at the back of her mind, then. "...How do you know the sap glows, then? Have you seen it?" She hasn't yet gotten used to the day/night schedules of this place, but she's used to gardens having closing hours. Maybe she could sneak in at night, if it's not open? The idea has her eyes shining.

[ He responds how he thinks she would want him to, shrinking under her disappointment, shoulders stooping, plastering on an apologetic smile to mollify her. ]

But it'd be warm.

[ The thermos contains some local hot liquid that could pass for coffee only if she had terrible flu that annihilated all her senses, and his fastidiously packed bag contains biscuits in unappetizing shades and various other sandwiches, one of which he salvages from her merciless inspection. This he clasps using two hands, elbows resting against his knees, his attempt at tamping down any urge to stop her. Still he watches her expectantly. ]

Just the alcohol? Or what comes with the alcohol.

[ He means human company or celebrations or, taken less optimistically, temporary oblivion. ]

[ her face twists in a small moue as if to acknowledge his point but not cede him on any of the resulting implications. sometimes you make do. sometimes you make do on lukewarm beer you forgot to show away into the portable ship icebox. clearly he has never had deigned himself to such liquorly indigence. ]

Do I look like the type to get wasted at a picnic party? [ she pours the coffee cognate into the cup with the unsophisticated air of a schoolboy trying to demonstrate how well he wields a fork and knife to his first ever steak. pinky out. ] That's what this is, right - a picnic.

[ spoken like someone who's never sat in on a picnic in her life. and now for the moment of truth - faye takes a sip, pinky still out, and a generous one at that. she lets it linger, slosh to and fro each cheek. to her benefit, her face betrays not a single opinion for good or ill. her years of poker playing have taught her well. ] Hey. Did you make this?

[ There have been other kinds of indigence he has sentenced himself to, though liquorly ones are more easily denied and forgotten. There's a reason hosts serve the best wine first.

He thinks it's merciful to look away from her attempt to distance herself from the impression of a woman getting wasted on a picnic party (her words), noting the orientation of her pinky finger while knowing not to call attention to it. He's smiling anyway, biting the insides of his cheeks, placing his gaze solidly on the pink-mauve sky above. The extended hum he lets out is his way of making this (her) out to be some subject worthy of grave consideration. Worthy, the functional word here. ]

You look like the type who won't stand for no beer or warm beer.

[ Or vegan sandwiches or sugarless muffins or makeshift picnic rugs. ]

Or bad coffee. Sometimes it's a matter of suspending the disbelief. A little sugar can help with that.

[ she'll concur this mild first impression, mild like everything else about his leg of the conversation. of all the things faye won't stand (though often forced to make do), no beer or warm beer represent just a trivial sample. she could lose dangerously lengthy spans of time listing them all. one day she'll make a pen and paper record. ]

And if I told you I liked it? Then you'd be calling me a woman of bad tastes.

[ someone who can't tell good coffee from bad... clearly the worst kind of person. nevermind the fact faye thinks the coffee tastes like how embalming fluid smells. ] Did you make it or not? Either way, you're guilty. If you made this yourself, then sooner or later you might get accused of attempted murder. If you didn't, then you're neg-li-gent.

[ the charade vanishes and drowns in the next sip she takes, only to spit it out in the following instant. ] - Eugh.

If you say you like it, that tells me you're sparing my feelings.

[ To test his point, he now goes through the motions of pouring himself a cup. He moves carefully, methodically, his hands steady as ever. Only when he takes a sip does his expression sour to that telltale sign of inner suffering, though he swallows all the same. Impressive, that she managed to pull off the act for almost the entire minute. But in a feat of daring, (pity the fool who challenges Tenma to withstand any form or level of discomfort), he takes a deep breath before finishing his entire cup with gusto, ending his stunt with a cough to regain at least some of his senses. ]

I did make it. I've learned there's no way to avoid being accused of anything, murder even, and I might as well worry about other things. [ He picks out a blue-tinged cookie which he splits in two to offer one half to her with some urgency. ] Your palate, for one. This one is sweet.

So he can play the logic card, at least. That's good news; maybe he can avoid getting dragged into a harebrained scheme after all.

(This time, anyway.)

"I haven't seen it in person, but I read up on the botany." Not in great detail, but enough to know what was dangerous, what wasn't, what he might be able to take advantage of - always better to work with the local biology when you need to drug somebody, since there's less chance of trace evidence of something weird and foreign giving you away. (The yellow flowers, sadly, didn't have many properties that he could see himself finding use in. But the luminescent sap had been at the top of everything he'd consulted.)

[ faye is no stranger to spectacles or displays of bravado, both engaging and bearing witness in equal measure. she watches with a thin varnish of coolness, seemingly unperturbed by the implications that he may or may not have been accused of murder before. the suggestion either eludes or it intrigues, in some small measure. tenma can only guess which is it. ]

Don't I know it. [ chaser cookies? anything to make her forget; faye accepts the cookie matching urgency for urgency. ] 'Everyone's gonna find something to criticize, so let's just do whatever we want.' I like that. Good motto to live by.

[ in way of parting messages, pretty sure 'haters gonna hate' was unintended, and the same goes 'yolo' or any variation thereof. gone is the pinky finger diplomacy; tenma can hear the #cronch a mile away. ] Not bad. Stick with making cookies.

[ The tried-and-true rule that when someone drops a loose thread (murder) in a conversation, no matter how unwittingly it seems, it is a call on a megaphone for said thread to be pulled. That is, in hindsight he realizes he was fishing for her attention, and finds himself both glad and regretful that she is sidestepping it for both their sakes, much he like he did for her pinky finger act. The basis of a budding friendship, as he sees it.

He chews thoughtfully, sans cronch, and dusts his hands onto the picnic rug before sitting up straighter, legs crossed, to assume his Aesop pose. ]

If you can live with whatever you did. It's yourself you can't escape. [ On cue, the pressure against the back of his head makes itself known. An itch that can't be scratched. He taps his temple instead. ] Well, now it includes everyone too.

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TEST DRIVE :003

philip jennings | the americans

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pls excuse my iconless state!!

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KENZO TENMA | MONSTER

ii.

Asellus | SaGa Frontier | OTA pls

I

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