reveriance | » TEST DRIVE #001

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I look good in anything.

[ Read: Ren is just has happy to be appearing to be wearing something other than the jumpsuits right about now as anyone, but hey, they all have their crosses to bear.

It's not exactly a blast a minute like he'd gotten accustomed to in Gun About and Ryuji is a lot more likely to shout out an overenthusiastic compliment than Shinya's impatient coaching technique would leave room for, but it's a good time all around. Especially when juxtaposed with creepy abandoned amusement park spaceland around them.

Of course having their fill isn't good enough. Ren reads the blaring red message with something akin to deep seated existential dread but shows none of it toward Ryuji. Dude picks up emotions off the air and internalizes them like a feels vampire. ]

Change of plans. [ He wanders over to tug Ryuji's hands away - stop it, it's not his fault if you ghost lobotomize yourself. ] Guess it's a good thing I got through most of The Watcher before getting Jumanji'd. Think the exit is at the center?

[If everything up until this moment was just practice, then the hours of blood, sweat, and hand cramps that they both endured in a little attic above a coffee shop playing retro games until 3 in the morning (fuck off, Mona) were absolutely worth it. Usually comp play, of course, but that doesn't mean that they both haven't learned exactly how each other's style works. Ren knows Ryuji likes to go hard at enemies, knows he doesn't protect himself nearly as much as he should, but that's #tanklife, and he's gonna be damn sure that nothing happens to his Player 1 if it's the last thing he does.

Just up the stakes a little bit.]

You think if we die here, we die IRL?

[He enunciates each letter of the acronym like it wasn't just easier to say in real life, but when donning the mask of a Phantom Gamer, the lingo is like a thieves' cant.]

Uh.

[Yeah, probably best to get him to stop trying to commit virtual suicide, and Ryuji's keen to give up on the attempt to yank the damn VR helmet off.]

Oh shit, you mean like... Kaneshiro's Palace? [Commander, your orders! Ryuji readies his weapon. It's (potential) curbstompin' time.]

Dibs on your manga collection.

[ Tch, stupid VR headsets and their non-accommodation of glasses. Ren tugs at it until there's a more happy balance between the pressure across the bridge of his nose and the strap pulling on his wild hair, sounding utterly nonchalant about the prospect of dying I-R-L. They've made it through a non-zero number of collapsing Palaces and a deus ex machina plot to kill Rent o save him; they're not gonna die here, not when he has his lancer right here with him.

If they make it home. Also that. But if they have magically popped into existence on a ship in the middle of the cosmos there's no reason they shouldn't be able to pop back. It's, like, isekai rule number one: survive until you can get home. ]

Theoretically, plus it's a game and not a Palace. [ He casually flips the shortsword over end and catches it comfortably by the grip, smirking sidelong at Ryuji. ] Security'll probably be light. Wanna see who can rack up the highest score?

[ Because it's gonna be this guy sprinting past you and into the hedge labyrinth like the reckless idiot he is. ]

[Dibs on his.

Dibs?

If only the stakes weren't so high right now, Ryuji would haul off and stab Ren right through the chest with his own lance and take the chaotic evil path to glory. Even in VR, his expression of outrage and disgust at the mere mention of his prolific shounen manga collection is palpable, and---]

Over my goddamn dead body you will!

[Because they're not going to die. Obviously. Come on, Ryuji sacrificed himself to make an impossibly difficult running jump to save his friends. If he can live through that, he's basically a cockroach. But all of that rage is displaced as he watches Ren start to showboat with his sword, and he huffs out an extremely exasperated sigh, like really, dude?. Doesn't last long since the dueling gauntlets have been thrown down- any maybe? maybe he should've taken the shot at his chest when he had the chance as Ren bolts off ahead of him.]

LIKE HELL YOU DON'T. THAT'S MY JOB.

[He races after, adrenaline filling his body like it always has when he's about to win a race. Which, to anyone watching outside of the VR station, appears to be two giant freaking nerds running in place like their lives depended on it.

And just when Ren gets out of his peripheral, there's a maze to be sorted through. He looks at the entrance and--- fuck... three possible paths, bending and curling and no line of his best friend to follow after.]

Dude... you're supposed to leave me some bread crumbs to follow... whatever.

[He goes right.]

» TEST DRIVE #001

3a theultimategaymerboi has logged on

superSMASHEDbrothers has entered the aRENa

excuse me I'm having a moment over him calling ren his player 1

this smooth asshole thanks i hate it