» 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

001 let's!! talk about our feelings ren!!!

[uragiru]

[ consciousness comes to him slow, and slow enough that for a moment it doesn't occur to him that it shouldn't be coming at all. things register one by one: he can hear the sounds of someone near him, feel a cold metal floor pressed against his forehead; someone tries to gently rouse him, asks him questions that don't really make sense just yet. his head is killing him, and maybe that makes the disorientation all the worse, because he starts to catalogue his surroundings and remember what could possibly be going on, where he's waking up and why he would be there—

and then it hits him: he died. what he remembers is bleeding out in the bowels of a ship, with nothing but that fucking cognitive copy of himself nearby, the pain of being shot fading into unconsciousness. and now he's... awake? still alive on the ship, maybe, but he isn't in any pain. and there's someone else here.

he finally sits upright, a hand to his aching head, and turns to look at whoever is here with him in the dim light. he freezes. ]

—What is this.

[ he's dead. and he died, pathetically, so that Ren Amamiya and his stupid friends would live and see Shido fucking suffer. but Ren is standing there, looking at him now. and if Ren is here, if that was all for nothing, if he died for absolutely no reason at all—

Akechi sits up on his knees and grabs a fistful of Ren's clothes. ]

Amamiya— You were supposed to get out, you idiot. If you go and fucking die, then what am I—

[ what was the point of anything he ever did, if Shido doesn't pay for it? ]

he thought you'd never ask ♥ spoilers errywhere

[intrusivethot]

[ Look - Ren hasn't forgotten anything. Not the red flags he failed to pick up in their numerous treading-on-eggshells conversations in Leblanc, not the opportunities to probe into Akechi's life that he passed up. Not the way Akechi made it feel like he was within arm's reach and then shoved himself as far away as a human being could. It was Ren's fault that he didn't push harder, but it was Akechi's abject disbelief that there was any other path that killed him.

With so much happening afterward, Ren hadn't really given any thought to seeing him again in the slim chance that he actually escaped Shido's Palace. Maybe part of it was Morgana not letting him have the time to himself nor does he broach the subject as anything but in the context of What's Done Is Done. And now faced with an impossible scenario, what is it that- what does he do but meet it head on?

Which is why Ren doesn't do anything when Akechi grabs him except grab him back, long fingers firm around Akechi's wrists but refusing to wrench him off. Or drift away out of reach again. ]

We did- we did.

[ Ren isn't so far gone as to lose his cool and snap at a dead man but Ren's never had to even think of facing him again. On some level he owed it to him to carry out that promise, and on another he doesn't have to do a single fucking thing for this traitor and there are certain members of the Phantom Thieves that might give him a real piece of their minds if he did, but.

But. What the hell does he feel right now, feeling knuckles curled into his jumpsuit and knowing how impossible their solidness is? ]

Shido's done for, as promised.

[ He just doesn't know what happened to you. ]

[uragiru]

[ oh. it's — strange, to try and process that. Shido's done for. Ren says it so simply, as if Akechi didn't start building a funeral pyre at fifteen with the single-minded intent of bringing that man down with him. it seems like the kind of thing that will take a lifetime to really sink in. perhaps it was for the best that he died in that ship; his life was always going to end with Shido's destruction, no matter how it went.

but it didn't. he's alive, now, and kneeling here at Ren's feet. all the tension goes out of Akechi at once, like his strings have been cut, air leaving his lungs in one huge sigh of relief. there's no doubt that he believes Ren's sincerity, at least. Shido is done for. not dead, but suffering for the rest of his miserable fucking life. ]

... I see. [ he swallows, steels himself, and then smiles as pleasantly as ever. ] At least I didn't die for nothing, then, right?

[ the look that Ren is giving him, the way he grips his hand like he's not entirely sure it isn't a ghost pulling at him — Akechi suspects there must be doubt there, about what happened. whether maybe he survived and crawled off somewhere to lick his wounds. which is ridiculous, and if Ren truly believes that, then he clearly doesn't understand who Goro Akechi was after all, because if Akechi had lived he would have dragged his own bleeding body back to that ship to at least bear witness to Shido's fall. no. if he didn't die there, it's as unknown to him as it is to anyone. he can't see a way that he could have survived that. he's not sure that he wants there to have been a way.

he releases his grip on Ren's clothes and pulls his hand away, as forcefully as he has to in order to break Ren's hold; his smile loses a little of its saccharine charm, turning caustic instead as he drops his gaze. ]

I did, you know. Die. [ he'd like to be clear on that. ] I'm not sure how I'm here — or where here is, for that matter, which is probably the more pressing issue.

[ all of a sudden, he gets to his feet and brightens up. it's over, isn't it? all of it is finished. he died, Shido was ruined, and whatever happened to the Thieves after that is none of his damn concern. as soon as they get out of this room, Ren can wash his hands of Akechi and it will all be done for good. so he shoves absolutely everything caught in his throat down as far as it will go, and smiles. ]

Now, what did you ask me? Something about a message?

[intrusivethot]

[ Oh hell no.

Ren hates how disappointed he feels to be brushed aside so easily, like refuse caught up along with the subject just swept out of the way. Selfishness was - is core to Akechi, he's known that for however many weeks and months now but it stings to have Akechi twist out of his grasp, smoke that Ren is no closer to capturing than when they first met and that's so - so -

A muscle jumps out in Ren's cheek where his jaw clenches. Frustration with a target and no effective means by which to meet that target without driving him further away, and - he never thought he'd get the chance, right? To speak again. Even if Goro Akechi is the most intentionally obtuse person that Ren has had the displeasure of meeting, he's found a way to mean something to Ren without trying. Which is perhaps the most anger-inducing point with a bullet.

He died. There, mystery solved. Ren gets to live with the festering guilt of not doing enough alongside the useless fury at what Akechi had done, and the best part about it is knowing that doesn't burn out the need to reach out to him now that he's standing right there, not three feet from him.

But Ren follows suit, standing up and loosely sliding his hands into his jumpsuit pockets, leaned on the backs of his heels. ]

That's it? "I see." [ Calm though he may sound, Ren's gotten pretty good at swallowing the brunt force of his anger when called for. ] Nice to know that only the things you sacrificed meant something.

[uragiru]

[ ah, well. he should have known Ren wouldn't let him get away with it that easily. so determined to make a connection to someone who has long since lost the means to connect with others — or, that's how Akechi sees himself, anyway. and as much as he'd like to be above it all, and say something about how this isn't the time nor the place, that they don't know where there are or what's happening or how the fuck Akechi is alive here... if he's being honest with himself, he isn't capable of indifference when it comes to Ren. especially not now, when he has no goal left to see him as an obstacle in the path of.

Akechi stops pretending to inspect their surroundings and sighs; the charming facade comes away easily, and beneath it, his honest face is one of exhaustion. a little cold, perhaps, still trying to distance himself to cover for how much Ren affects him. ]

I don't know what you want from me, Amamiya. [ he doesn't know what Ren has ever wanted from him, really. gaining adoration and approval from the public was something Akechi had meticulously engineered. but he's done nothing to warrant a hand being offered even at his lowest, his most useless and pathetic, when Ren had every reason to see him suffer. ] Would you like a "thank you"? I suppose I could give you that much, since you did bring Shido down.

[ he does mean that. it doesn't even begin to address how much it matters to him that Shido was punished in the end, of course, but he would at least show a little gratitude. for making it a promise, if nothing else; for succeeding where he had failed after all his miserable effort, too. he looks Ren in the eye and doesn't smile. ]

Or is it an apology you want? For whatever it is you've sacrificed — which I really wouldn't know, I'm afraid.

[ he's getting colder now, that sharp, sarcastic thing he pulled up in their last conversations; a mouthful of bitterness and the desperate need to hold onto his disdain because he knows that what lies underneath is just lonely and jealous. ] To be honest, I thought you would be more upset about the things I took from you and your friends.

[intrusivethot]

[ If Akechi wanted out of having to answer for his shit then maybe he shouldn't have done the equivalent of saying how about this weather eh? Neither of them know what the hell is going on and why Akechi remembers dying and yet Akechi is still desperate to stay separate like their wishes weren't the same in the end.

All but a smolder, an ember that flares and is lost in the dark, Ren scorns any kind of litmus paper that Akechi has. How dare he think that he is anything resembling the monsters in Akechi's closet, that he'd discard Akechi because he wasn't "useful" to him in some way. How dare he still think he deserved it if he ever did put Ren in the position to do so. ]

Condescending prick. [ Strangely that has no heat to it at all, rather a wry weariness while Ren stretches his neck a bit. ] I don't need to hear it; it was your dying wish.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm pissed. But you didn't succeed in taking a thing away from me that I didn't already have. I'm not who you should apologize to.

[ Which is a patently ridiculous claim to make being the victim of attempted murder twice over but it makes emotional sense to Ren very much in spite of it. Haru actually lost her father, Futaba actually lost her mother, though Ren had his doubts as to whether or not Akechi had the first clue as to what would happen at the time he presumably invaded Wakaba-san's little slice of the Metaverse.

Nice to see him actually reacting; Ren's mouth tips up in a faint smirk. Now he knows he's getting somewhere underneath the skin. Fact is that the only thing Akechi took from Ren had all to do with himself. ]

I don't care about punishing you. It's not for me to decide.

[ Stand your ground or don't - Ren steps forward and uses all one inch of his height advantage to tilt toward Akechi, gray eyes staring solidly back in a compassionate brand of defiance. ]

But stop pretending that nothing means anything to you.

[uragiru]

[ it's not the first time one of the Thieves has called him something like that, but it is strange to hear it without any animosity. he pretended to be someone else because there was something inherently unlovable about him, after all; he can't quite stomach anyone reacting to his "honest" self without some kind of hatred. can't stomach Ren Amamiya at all, maybe. but he listens, at least, notes with some distant amusement that Ren doesn't seem to consider his framing and attempted murder as something Akechi needs to apologise for. none of it is really surprising, up until Ren steps closer and says that.

he doesn't stand his ground. whether it's because he's shaken from everything, or he's wary of Ren, or he just isn't used to anyone being that close — he backs up on instinct, the half-step that he can before he hits a wall, and his heel thuds loudly against it, enough to make him startle. pretending. god, when is Akechi not pretending for one reason or another? but to say that it meant something is— that's... ]

I'm not pretending anything. If you wanted honesty, then this is it. [ a lie: his hands are trembling faintly. it did mean something, somehow. he's not sure if he cared about Ren, if it's too strong a word, if the attachment he felt was the potential for caring. and if he did care, what kind of monster does that make him, to have gone through with his plans anyway? ] Whatever kind of person you think I am — whoever I could have been, if things went differently... I'm not that person.

[ there's no reason to want him as he is, he means. the boy who killed the parents of his friends, who carried out Shido's plans like a loyal dog, who tried to kill him. and who failed miserably despite sacrificing everything he was for the sake of his revenge — nothing more than a useless, pathetic child, in the end. he knows what he said back there. that if they had met a few years earlier. they didn't, and the person Akechi is now won't ever be that hypothetical one. he's a lost cause.

it would have been nice if he'd stayed dead, and Ren could have gone on pretending things could have been better. ]

What did you think would happen, hm? If I had survived. What were you expecting?

[intrusivethot]

[ All that really tells Ren is that there is no part of Akechi that is without artifice. It tracks too well to have been the first time Ren has thought of it either on some level when he laid in bed or washed dishes in Leblanc, worrying over the subject of Akechi like tonguing a sore in his mouth: painful but drawing his attention inexorably.

Still, it's startling to see Akechi cede ground so readily, surprise halting any thought of pressing further. What Akechi saw in him in that moment was likely something wholly unintended; a threat of violence, or worse, the threat of understanding. For this much Ren has mercy in his heart, taking back the advance and a half step on top of it with a look ranging from concern to careful blankness within the span of a few seconds, cockiness extinguished for the time being.

He hears it, maybe not for the lie that it is but there are strains that he couldn't pluck out of Akechi's voice before. He might be imagining it. But from early on - either the chance meeting in front of the bread shop at the underground mall or the first unannounced visit to Leblanc, meant to set Ren on edge... no. Earlier than that. The woman on the street, being attacked by Shido.

Ren is terrible at ignoring calls for help. ]

I'm not sure.

[ Honesty, right? The set of his shoulders is looser, a softer look for a frame that was still steel behind his eyes. ]

I might not've had to go turn myself in if the real culprit of the mental shutdowns was around, for one. I suppose that doesn't sound too enticing for you anyway, owning up to the crimes you committed in pursuit of revenge. That even if they ever did let you back out there's no way you could lead a normal life.

[ Ren's not without sympathy. He shifts, tracing what details he could make out in the meager light while he thinks seriously on the hypothetical a bit further. What is it that he could want? Does it matter? It's not possible to accomplish; the Phantom Thieves were never able to alter reality as it was to bring back someone that didn't deserve to die and if they did Akechi wouldn't be first in line. He owed that much to Haru.

He acknowledges that the only reason he's entertaining the scenario is because Akechi wants to know. Maybe it's okay to pretend if he's given the leeway to. ]

But I guess going to jail for one more person's sake wouldn't have made much of a difference either. It'd be worth it if that person would have done whatever they could to atone.

[uragiru]

[ honestly, he asked because he was looking for an excuse to cut Ren down. he'd expected to hear either hopeless naïveté — something about Akechi paying for his crimes, about justice and rehabilitation like he was one of their usual targets — or an acknowledgement that nothing good would have come of Akechi surviving, that it was a lost cause anyway. instead, he gets... an answer that cuts a little too close, a scalpel sliding between two of his ribs, because Ren does actually understand. the fact that they might not have ever let him out of prison, after the things he did, even if he was under Shido's thumb; and that if they'd let him go, what kind of life would he be going back to? unlike Ren, he would have had nothing left. no way to just pick up where he'd left off and continue living.

that's bad enough. what's worse is the way Ren ends it. for one more person, that's— Akechi is already shaking his head, insistently, before he's even thought of how to respond to that. his expression twists wretchedly, like he's trying to glare and he can't keep it steady. ]

You wouldn't have done that for me. [ his voice comes out thin, strained; the sound of it balancing on a knife's edge between anger and distress. how dare Ren lie to him that transparently, and why would he even bother? ] You wouldn't.

[ he needs that to be true. if he's wrong, then that's something too much for him to bear, something that will catch in his throat and stay there until it chokes him. no one would have ever done anything that significant for Goro Akechi when they still believed in the charming, pleasant person he'd created for himself; he knows that because he has a lifetime of evidence to prove it. he doesn't want to— he can't accept that Ren would have gone to prison and let Akechi walk free even knowing who he really is.

he can't even look Ren in the eye now. ]

Even if you had, I can only imagine what your little friends would have done.

[ if they'd let him go, by some miracle, then what. it's not like they would have wanted anything to do with him. he'd go back to his empty apartment and his empty life and think about how atonement is an impossible, nebulous, meaningless thing that he could never reach because it doesn't fucking exist.

no. he'd rather be dead. ]

[intrusivethot]

[ It could be about justice. The entirety of what the Phantom Thieves did was about Justice and exerting their influence through it without once clearly laying out the true, inalienable ethos of what it was for save for the calling card that Akechi never got to see. Maybe that's why they screwed up, why their message was so easy for Shido's lackeys to wrench away from them and use to string them up. Justice without compassion for the victims is meaningless.

Ren couldn't look Akechi in the face and tell him that he was wrong to choose his version of it. He still barely knows the intricacies, the real torture that twisted Akechi into what he was before promptly sacrificing himself when he knew he lost, and Ren takes no satisfaction in it. Just from what Akechi told them, what he bled from every invisible wound the world laid on him wouldn't let Ren simply condemn him and wash his hands of Akechi.

So yes, atonement. Rehabilitation of a sort. The rehabilitation that Ren had been offered at the beginning of this ordeal had been false but that doesn't mean he didn't wish to offer Akechi a real chance at the same. And going by how some of their attitudes shifted, he doesn't think the rest of his friends are that far off...

Crowding Akechi into a corner merely by caring is... different. And uncomfortable. He reaches up to "fix" his glasses, reeling back his tone to a more neutral state. ]

We were speaking in hypotheticals. [ Note: Ren isn't taking it back. At all. ] If we're here then I'd think there's a good chance some of them are too, so you can pose the same scenario if you like.

But I don't think you're giving them enough credit. Or you don't want to, anyway, for one reason or another.

[ The aforementioned fact of being a condescending prick, probably, but also a lifetime of pain that makes Ren liken Akechi more and more to an iceberg breaking the surface of the water. He can wish he could understand Akechi, or he could delve beneath the waterline.

Fine. Be whatever gets them out of here alive for now and Ren will deal with it, reaching over to the grooves in the walls for any mechanism that might get them out of this incredibly tight spot. Wear the mask. Ren can hardly judge. ]

We can survive first, and if we do that maybe I can answer some of your questions. Okay?

[ If he didn't think Akechi might slap it away he'd offer his hand. Truce? ]

[uragiru]

[ at that, Akechi seems to be a little relieved, like he's been let off the hook for the moment. he doesn't relax, because despite what Ren is saying, he should obviously want some sort of revenge given that he finally has the chance for it... but it's true that they have something else to worry about right now, and whatever revenge Ren and the other Thieves want, it won't be something as crass as executing him. they think they're above all that, so he has time.

even if Ren didn't take back what he said, it's gone now, as far as Akechi is concerned. ]

That's what I was saying in the first place...

[ well — no, he was saying that to try and avoid a conversation by pretending they had nothing to talk about. but that's his only passive-aggressive comment, and the fact that he moves on from there without another word makes it obvious: truce. he stops glaring at Ren, if nothing else, and arranges his expression into something neutral but focused.

the act he pulls up is less intended to be deliberately grating this time, more to compose himself than anything. it's plainly Crow; no-nonsense and self-motivated, capable of working in a team. it's not as though he has to conceptualise everything as a mask he's already worn before, but it makes things much easier, like closing the curtains and giving himself time to compartmentalise everything backstage, pack his thoughts and feelings away into tidy boxes that he doesn't have to deal with right now. ]

Let's see... Joker, knock on the wall; I want to see if any of them make a hollow sound. [ he taps on the wall he's backed up against to demonstrate; not the sound he's looking for, apparently, because he shakes his head. he doesn't even notice that he used Ren's code name like a reflex. ] If we can orient ourselves towards the door, at least we'll know what we're trying to open.

[ he's also checking over himself for anything that might have been left on his person, but — they've been picked clean, it seems. ]