» TEST DRIVE #001

[reveriemod]

TEST DRIVE #001

( 0 0 1 ) » WAKE UP

Were you asleep or were you unconscious? It doesn't matter: when you come to, there's an odd taste in your mouth and there's a low-level mechanical hum in the air. Your head hurts and you feel nauseous. You aren't anywhere you know: everything around you is metal, from the floor you lie on all the way to the ceiling. You are dressed in a jumpsuit you definitely weren't wearing before.

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

The message repeats on a loop. If you look for its source, you find a comms device on the floor next to you. The logo on its wallpaper says REVERIE TERMINAL. Upon closer inspection, you find the same logo on your jumpsuit.

Welcome to your new home. What choice do you have but to explore your surroundings?

( 0 0 1 . 1 ) » WAKE UP WHERE?

When you wake up, you find that you're not alone. But more importantly, you find that you're in a closet. An empty closet, bar you and your new companion. It's small, cramped, and there is no door that you can see. The ceiling is low, there is barely any lights, only some coming from the tiny flashlight clipped to your suit's shoulder. You cannot be sure that there is any air coming in to the room.

Are these grooves in the wall supposed to mean something?

( 0 0 2 ) » OBSERVATION DECK

There were no windows in the corridor you woke up in and no windows in any of the crew quarters you might have checked for occupants — but there are plenty of windows on the uppermost level of the station, deck 1. In fact, there are windows from floor to ceiling all along the circumference of the station's circular deck, and it's possible to walk along it all. What it shows is a strange solar system you've never seen before and a planet that might resemble one you know, but certainly isn't the same.

You're in space. You don't know where you are. Neither does anyone else.

( 0 0 3 ) » BAR

On deck 3, you find the bar. Tucked away from the crew quarters, it's dimly lit, there are bar stools thrown down on the floor and what looks like some very old drink spills, crusty and dark against the bar top. But there is alcohol here, or at least, what you think is alcohol, in bottles with faded labels, most of them indecipherable. Take a drink, get drunk, start a fight, or start a party? You're stuck on this station, might as well make the most of it, right?

( 0 0 3 . 1 ) » VIRTUAL

But the alcohol isn't even the most interesting part of your discovery (depending on who you are, of course). No, what catches your interest is a second, smaller room off from the main bar room, which looks to be some kind of arcade. There are a few VR sets lined up against one of the walls, and surely, they can't be working, right? Nothing is on this rust bucket. And yet, if you put it on, the display comes to life.

It's a pretty simple HUD, and when you move around in reality, you move around in the virtual world you've just entered. It's a luxurious world, full of brightly, saturated colors, making it just a little obvious that it isn't real. Ahead, there is a jungle, a temple, and a city. You can play around, slay some monsters, have some fun, but you can feel yourself growing hot, like the VR helmet is burning your forehead.

And when you try to take it off, you find that you can't. The HUD glitches, the sound cuts off to a blaring alarm, and an error message appears, in glowing, blinking red letters: FINISH THE MISSION. Will you, despite not knowing what the mission even is, or will you fight to get the helmet off?

( 0 0 4 ) » MALFUNCTIONS

(cw: body horror, bodily functions, gore, blood, death)

The fabricators function well enough, until they don't. One day, one moment, everything's all right — the food doesn't generally taste amazing and sometimes downright awful, but it's nourishing and filling no matter what your dietary needs — and the next, things go a little haywire.

In short, the fabricators are malfunctioning.

Oh, they're still producing food that looks and tastes much the same as before, but now there are some unexpected side effects.

NB: Characters may experience any of the following side effects: nausea ranging from slight to debilitating, the sensation of being happily and affectionately — but not overwhelmingly — drunk, bone-deep exhaustion and weariness that makes it hard to move, or repeated hallucinations of loved ones screaming for help, reaching out to characters and leading them down abandoned corridors or being killed by unseen forces.

The extent to which characters are affected is up to players, as is whether you'd prefer to play this more lightheartedly or tackling more serious themes. If the latter, please provide warnings in subject lines where necessary.

( 0 0 5 ) » NETWORK

The comms device you found next to you when waking up connects to a station-wide network, REVERIE NET. You have the option to post video, voice or text messages.

What will you share?

( 0 0 5 . 1 ) » NETWORK USERNAME

When you first turn on your communication device, it requests for you to pick a username to identify you on the network. It can be anything you want. However, as you try to input a username in your wristband to access the network, you get the following message, along with a small, but irritating, warming sound:

this username is already in use.

What does this mean? Is there other people around? Were there other people around?

( 0 0 6 ) » WILDCARD

The station features a variety of locations, from sleeping quarters free for the claiming to a dirty swimming pool and a bar that still holds alcohol (though some of the bottles seem to have been opened a while ago).

Go wild, but don't wreck the place. It's your home for the foreseeable future, after all.

Comments

[dvmn]

[Unfortunately, Ryuji, when it comes to demons, very few things make actual sense. Turns out when you successfully fend off a demon lord trying to possess your body, you end up being able to naturally rock a punk goth look without really even trying. Maybe part of it was subconscious, like, he'd never really turned towards the darker side of the spectrum of his wardrobe before this, but now he found it natural to be leaving the house in as much black as he could. Aesthetic, you know? You had to look the part.

Well, fortunately, Akira didn't really give a damn about personal space either. He watches Ryuji incredulously as he tests the corner of his eye, his mouth tugging down in a vague frown. More annoyed at him not trusting his word than his actual experimentation.

He's about to demand whether or not the guy has a problem with the way he looks when Ryuji continues, stopping the words midway to his throat.] Oh. [People commenting (complimenting?) on his new appearance is still pretty weird to him. He gives a flickering smile.] Uh, thanks, man.

[He takes the pool net off of his head finally, holding it like a staff in one hand as he tilts his head, squinting at the blond.]

...What?

[Sometimes Akira isn't really the smartest on the draw.]

[ryuji]

[The Uh, thanks, man is something that he'd recognize himself doing if he were complimented in the same fashion, completely unsure of what to say or do in the moment, and he realizes it was probably a little bit of a mistake to not take him on face value. It's not that he didn't trust Akira's words, it was more out of a strange fascination with it. The impulse control with this kid was such, such a bad thing for Ryuji.

But with Akira not knowing what Ryuji was really planning all along, the infinite possibilities of how to troll the hell out of him have opened pathways to entire new dimensions of pool horror. The blond trudges through the water momentarily only to pretend to slip and jump onto Akira.

You know the drill.]

HELP, I'M DROWNING!

[Except what the fuck, this dude???

Didn't budge a single fucking inch???]

[dvmn]

[Akira peers questioningly at Ryuji as he approaches, though that look is not necessarily wary as it is just confused - he's the perfect waiting victim, but things... unfortunately don't really go well for Ryuji, who at this point probably deserved to counter-troll the guy who had gotten him into this pretty gross situation in the beginning.

But life never works out fairly, does it?

Akira doesn't move at all, except to instinctually reach out and attempt to steady the guy however he could when he "slipped," but he's otherwise entirely unaffected by Ryuji's full weight. He now gets what the guy had been trying to do and smirks at him, growling a playful,] You sure you wanna play this game right now, Ryuji?

[Because you seem entirely out of your depth.]

[ryuji]

[Actually, he's about to be in the depths in a very non-proverbial sort of way if he keeps this shit up.]

I'm kinda startin' to feel like this is the type of game I'm set up to lose before I even try?

[This... sounds legit.

What the hell is going on? How does he have such a muscle mass if he looks scrawny and tall? Where is this power coming from. He has so many questions.]

Okay, so new plan. I'm just gonna ride you out of the pool. Deal?

[dvmn]

[Oh my god.]

You're smart, then.

[One does not pick a fight like that against a devilman in the middle of a nasty, swampy pool without deeply regretting it.

But don't worry, Ryuji. One day you will learn. It's not too difficult to understand, though? Imagine having your Persona, but instead of summoning it to do magic or whatever, you just transform into it and just tear stuff apart with your hands.

And, oh.

...Phrasing. Akira gives a big smile.]

Hmm. Yeah, I drug you into this mess, so I guess I'll get you out of it. Deal. [He pauses a moment before turning around, gesturing.] Hop on.

[Phrasing.]

[ryuji]

[That is definitely not the case. Ryuji is not smart, unless you're talking about the strict confines of an intellectual battle with Akira and then... yeah, Akira would probably still win. It's the moxie that Ryuji has that's his strong point. Determination and energy are enough to get you places in this world. Or something like that.]

Dude, you drugged me?

[Yeah, see?

He smiles back, anyway. Is there a euphemism here. He's missing it.]

Pony up.

[And he does. He totally jumps on. Cue the Ginuwine song.]

[dvmn]

[Akira can only use himself as a yardstick to judge others' intelligence, okay? He sure as hell ain't gonna use Ryo - absolutely no one matches up to that guy. So here he is, and Ryuji does manage to just edge him out as far as cleverness goes, even though it's still a bit "blind leading the blind."

Or maybe not. Probably depends on the subject, and who's having the better day.

Akira laughs.]

Very funny.

[But yeah, there comes a point where the euphemisms were handled so plainly that they don't even really feel all that fun anymore. It's getting about to that point. When Ryuji clambers up onto his back, holding onto his shoulders, he advises,] hold on tight, [before getting moving. He needs his arms to climb, so Ryuji was just going to have to make sure he didn't fall backwards into the swamp.

To his demon's body, Ryuji basically weighs nothing. Akira wades through the water to the edge of the pool, crouching down for a moment before springing upwards, high enough to catch the edge of the pool with his hands. From there he just walks his legs up and hauls everything else the rest of the way. ]

Okay. We're even then, yeah? [Something occurs to him.] And you still have to tell me where the food is!

[They're drenched and filthy. This is no time for food.

But fuck is Akira starving.]

(fin?)

[ryuji]

[Wow, even in introspection, we're talking about Akira's yardstick. We're certainly going somewhere with this. But yeah. The blind leading the blind is pretty much the MO here, and it seems like they're going to be stuck in this infinite feedback loop of "hey, this is a good idea (it's a bad idea)- wanna do it?" "yeah" "ok that was a bad idea" "but it was cool. hey, you wanna try this instead" - and it'll probably end up like that for a good long while until their better halves come and smack them upside the head and tell them to cut that shit out.

But left to their own devices, Ryuji is just going to do what he does best here- have a little bit of fun, keep it chill and relaxed, and just. Tease Akira to no end, even as he's guided out of the pool.

Holy shit, though, this guy's got some seriously absurd upper body strength. If this is what putting a devil inside someone can do, why didn't Seiten-Taisei make him ripped? Oh, right. Because he was a monkey who lived in the sea of consciousness and pretty much constantly had a middle finger up at the rest of the world. The two were a decent match.]

Okay. It's in the mess hall, yo. I'll take ya.

[Is he going to continue to use Akira as his personal mode of transportation? Who knows. He'll lead him to water (proverbially - that pool is still gross as fuck) and show him where he found the machines that will ruin the both of their lives.

Because food replicators can suck dick.]

(fin!)

[dvmn]

[Jay, I swear to God.

But it's true. They have a dangerous sort of rapport, the kind which only mutually assures imminent destruction by a shared lack of caution and self-preservation instinct. What could possibly go wrong with these two?]

Oh.

[Said flatly once they get out of the pool, still dripping and partially covered in questionable slime. Most likely not the best shape one would want to be in, going to a place where food and drink are had, but... again, they don't always take such things into account, do they?

And the thing about this is, if Ryuji's going to make no move to get him to put him down, he just won't do it. So instead he just says,] Lead the way, [and carries Ryuji in whatever direction he points out.

Because he had pulled the guy into the pool, and he still feels sorta bad about that. After this, they're even.]