contagio | ( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 003.

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( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 003.

THE TEST DRIVE

Like it or not, you've been dragged from your world into the sanctum. It's a pretty nice city, all things considered--sci-fi, high-tech, glamourous.... Except, of course, for the giant dome encircling it, and the threat of glitching, contaminated zombies at your door. Looks like humanity's built itself a fortress that looks suspiciously like a cage, too.

The object of this meme is to get people familiar with the world of the Sanctum, and to try to see if their characters would fit in a sci-fi utopia such as this. Here are your options:

1. Intro: Waking Up. Make your intro post, folks. You wake up in a strange place, and get a strange transmission to go with it. What are you going to do?

2. Failed Upgrade. One of your upgrades is more wrong than right. How will you cope? What exactly is different? Who will help?

3. Mission outside the dome. You've come under fire. The strange things are coming towards you. Luckily, you have your suit, your teammates, and a lot of firepower. Or are you stranded on your own, looking for someone to come to the rescue? Perhaps you're the rescuer.

4.Infected Something bit you. Now you're turning into them, and all you can hear is a high-pitched squealing in your head, like a frequency you just can't quite hear. Do you tell your loved ones, or do you wait? Do you trust your doctor?

5. Military training Everyone's got to start somewhere. You're training the green folks, maybe you're one of the newcomers yourself. Maybe you haven't even touched a gun before in your life. Either way, you'd better start now.

6. Chance encounter makin' my way downtown walking fast, faces pass--you get the point. You bump into someone! Shopping, or strolling in a park? Maybe just lunch in a cafe?

7. Glory to the Network! Network post. Text with general queries, say what you have to say to the entirety of the whole city.

8. Wildcard: Whatever you want. Mix and match, switch and swatch, make something else up entirely!

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Tis a cruel trick you play.

[He mutters, hands settled firmly in his pockets for want of his hammer by his side.]

I understand well not wishing to cause alarm and panic in public but you need not treat me with such kindness when we both know you loathe me.

And yet back in Asgard they call me Loki the Kind. 'tis my greatest trick of all. [And such a blatant, ridiculous lie.

He side eyes Thor mightily at that next comment.]

What self-pitying nonsense is this? However long we've been apart, it has been no doing of mine.

[Apparently this act is one Loki intends to cling to for some time. Frustrated but resigned, Thor walks on, keeping pace with him. Better the trick spend upon him rather than someone that knew little of Loki.]

I suppose you slipped from the Bifrost and fell rather than letting go. [He mutters. He has been so long in the company of Midgardians that yes, even a prince does mutter.] And merely forgot to contact us afterward to inform us that you yet lived. How foolish of me to assume otherwise.

[Loki does not stop walking; he's trained himself too well for that. But a lesser man would have, and possibly gaped. Because there is only one time to which Thor can be referring, and it did not happen that way.

After a moment, he says, very carefully:]

No, Thor. I attempted to leap from the Bifrost. And you did not let me.

...

[Habit alone has him walking and little else. This was a cruel trick. A lie. An attempt to make him question his recollection of the event that wrest his family asunder. Such tricks were well within Loki's grasp and yet-

He does not think his brother would lie about falling. Not when it painted him a victim to say that he fell.]

You let go. You fell. I could not stop you. I tried, Loki, but I could not.

[Loki gives his head a little shake.]

No, that is not what happened at all. After your father woke to stop the invasion of Jotunheim, I...

[Oh, he does not like speaking of this at all, but this seems to be very important. And this story is relatively well known. It isn't a secret, like his wife.]

Hah. In my shame and desperation, I sought to escape in the only way left. You did not allow it. In fact, you tackled me to the ground and broke my nose, you great, clumsy ass. But at that point we were exiled and there were far greater concerns upon us than my poor nose.

[His eyes narrow]

What have they done to you here?

[Now he does stop. Now he does stare after Loki- this Loki. His brother was a fine actor. His brother could lie with every semblance of truth in his eyes. But his brother has never, not once since the truth came to light, speak of Odin with anything less than complete and utter scorn. Contempt. Loathing.

This Loki merely said 'your father' as though it was something known to him and little else. That rage is gone.]

...Who are you, truly? That is not- Jotunheim was not invading. Jotunheim was under attack. By you, using the Bifrost as a weapon against them. I shattered the bridge to stop it- and you fell. I caught the spear you held and nearly fell after you- but Father- Odin. Odin caught me by the foot and I had to watch you let go rather than live knowing you were a Jotun's son.

[Loki pauses, a slight twitch in his expression showing that he's heard the words and taken them in, but all he says is:]

I'm going to continue walking. You'd best keep up. I've no desire to draw extra attention to myself by having to forcibly adjust your perception of reality in the middle of the street.

[And then he goes back to walking.

What madness is this that Thor spouts? Well, the Bifrost plan is a nice one, and it actually had been his original intention to do so, only Thor had put his foot down over it because it was insufficiently honorable. Which was the point where Loki had learned that truly, there was no good in bringing Thor into his plans unless everything had already been set in motion. And of course Jotunheim had been under attack, Asgard was about to invade it. (And invasion engineered by Loki but there was no need to bring that detail to the fore if it had currently been forgotten.)

...but it had all worked out all right in the end, really, so he couldn't even be that annoyed about it any longer. It had been a fool's errand, and his mind had been clouded at the time by rage at Odin and horror at the knowledge of what he truly was. And then from there it had been exile to Midgard for the both of them, and on the tale had wound.

What kind of lies had Thor been told? What sort of tortures had he endured to set them so firmly in his mind? And more importantly, who would Loki be slowly flaying alive for having done this?]

Edited 2014-04-16 22:03 (UTC)

[Perhaps this is not his brother. The thought lingers as Loki walks on and for a long moment he considers letting him wander. Let him learn the city, learn their plight, sort it out on his own. Perhaps this is another strange twist of reality. Another shade of weirdness that makes mirrored versions of the Dome's warriors and draws them in from other realms.

Perhaps this is Loki, yes. But not his brother. Perhaps he belonged to a realm where his fate was different. Where he had not chosen a foolish course- where he had not been pushed to it.

A realm where he had not fallen and been lost.

Curiosity, regret, and the most disconcerting swell of envy bid him walk on. Bid him fallow. To learn the man his brother might have been were the world different. And so he follows. Selfishly- he follows. For a fair while he walks in silence, meeting Loki's stride and walking shoulder to shoulder with him through the crowd at a pace familiar to him. Something they did often when walking the city streets before...evreything.]

...I saved you, in your realm?

[That remains one of his most bitter regrets. That he had been unable to catch his brother. Unable to follow him.]

[He'd wondered if Thor would catch up to him or not. If he hadn't, well, he'd be easy enough to follow later on. But this is much easier.

Even if the conversation immediately returns to being strange and difficult.]

I was not well pleased at the time, but our exile to Midgard bore interesting fruit.

[For a moment, he glances down at his hand, that same hand. Hah.]

I still loathed your father until the end. He never said as much, but I think he would have much preferred you'd let me jump, all told.

Twas only I that was exiled in my Realm.

[That was the easiest way to think of this. Tis Loki, but not as he knew him. A different man. A better one- and oh how that thought did sting.]

He held me fast by the leg as you slipped and would not let me loose to follow.

How curious. [To think, a realm where Odin was an even worse father. Was such a thing possible?]

I was never what he wanted me to be. Even when I decided that I would in truth be your shadow, I did not do it in the way he wished. [He smiles.]

[He flinches at that word. At shadow. Lost forever in the shadow of his greatness, Loki had said.]

He wanted a pair of princes. I know not what he found.

Edited 2014-04-17 03:59 (UTC)

I think it charming you still believe that.

[Odin had wanted a loyal puppet to eventually take the throne of Jotunheim. What he'd ended up with was a man who had seen his own strings and deliberately cut them.]

So am I dead, then, in your realm? Or far worse, your expression seems to say.

We thought you so.

[He murmurs, head low. There is much to tell- and he finds he does not mind telling it.]

You fell into darkness and we thought you dead. We mourned. Then naught a year later you appear on Midgard in possession of a staff connected to the power of the Tesseract to wage war. You bring an army- we fight.

[Twas a brief battle but a wounding one. He shudders to remember the rage, the instability present in his brother's eyes when he'd looked upon them last.]

I pled with you to end it. To return home. You put a knife between my ribs.

[His eyebrows arch up slightly at that news.]

The strange parallels of the worlds. [He sounds thoughtful at that.]

I had an experience of my own with the Tesseract, when I had a look at it, at Fury's behest. It did not go well, and ended with you and your green compatriot breaking most of my bones before the invader had been driven from my mind.

[His lips quirk in a smile that isn't the healthiest of expressions.] I did get you a good one between the fifth and sixth ribs before that, though.

...Then it was a sickness of the mind?

[The anger, the resentment- that he can work through. That he can accept in some way, can absolve himself of. But that madness. That sick desparation that hounded Loki so. For that to be something else- it leaves him with the barest glimmer of hope where he has had none for so long.]

The Tesseract- it twisted your mind in some way as you bent the wills of my comrades?

The Tesseract herself sings a pretty enough tune. Were I of a less stable disposition I might have listened. [He shudders delicately.] But my downfall was who waited on the other side of that magical connection.

[Another little shudder.]

A foolish mistake on my part, and it was paid in full with blood, both mind and that of our friends.

...You spoke of Fury. Knew you other Agents of Shield?

[He's quiet for a long moment and oh. Perhaps in this world Loki would know the Son of Coul. Perhaps he would feel pain for the blood on his hands.]

Know you the Son of Coul?

[He actually does look away at that question. A cruel question, and from Thor. Hah. In the most technical sense, there are few people in the nine realms truly safe from Loki's daggers, a list that can be counted off on one hand. But there are those who he would not sacrifice unless he considered it an absolute necessity with no other solution, and Phil had been on that list.

And this had not been necessary. It hadn't even been his choice to take that life. There had been no purpose to it, no greater plan, and that is itself another twist of the knife. Worse than a death is a useless death, a counterproductive death, a wasted death. He knows Phil would understand this sentiment, in his own mortal way.]

We were friends. [A tiny, crooked little smile pulls at his lips.] And I was his ringer for poker nights.

...I am sorry.

[Regret is easy to feign- but mourning? Grief? Something so selfless as that is not in his brother's ability to manage. Not for so long. Not so sincerely.]

I still...it is as strange to me to hear of your world with your life as it is to hear of mine.

It does cause me to wonder what went so terribly wrong in your world. While we have been at odds before--all brothers are, at times, yes?--it has never been so dire as what weighs upon you.

But this, we can discuss at any time, I suppose. I would rather you apprise me of the situation in which I've found myself, since the need for that is far more immediate.

I...I know not.

[For all that it has come to pass he never thought much on what could have gone different- no. No, he has. But it has ever been what he might have done differently, what he might have said to save his brother from madness. Futile dreaming that now seems...all the more futile.]

As for where we are- the City is called the Sanctum and tis this people's last defence against an illness that makes monsters of men and ravages this world.

How came we to be here? And why have I been deprived of my magics?

[Unspoken: who do I need to kill to get them back?]

They sent for us. Why it is they say they have need of our skills and then deprive us of them I do not know- but there is more to you than your magics.

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complicatedliar - 2014-04-17 20:53 (UTC) - Expand

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stopmjolnirtime - 2014-04-18 00:24 (UTC) - Expand

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