Test Drive; December

[webroketime]

Test Drive

Welcome to the test drive for Time Trapped. This is an open forum to test out your characters to see how they would fit into the game and if you might be interested in apping them here. We want you to feel comfortable and, of course, test drive threads can be used as samples on your application to join.

First, a few housekeeping things before we start:

  ∞Apps will be open as of Dec 10th at 12 AM, and will reopen on the first of every month. They will remain open until the 10th of each month before closing.

  ∞Both first and third person prompts are allowed in the test drive. We encourage both. We also encourage making multiple prompt options in your post.

  ∞Finally, you will be allowed to transfer your test drive threads over into the game canon should you apply and be accepted.

  ∞If you have any other questions please feel free to refer to the FAQ or contact the mods directly.

Aside from that, happy test driving.

Instructions:
Post with Character you'd like to test drive using Name and canon in the subject line.
Receive comments.
Profit

Prompts

   1. Acclimating to the environment
While Gideon has a part of the area sectioned off for now based on her calculations of where the time anomalies are going to occur the area is still large and confusing. It’s easy for a person to get lost or overwhelmed in this big mish-mosh of a world. Perhaps you are lost, or maybe you are just settling in.


   2. Reach out and touch someone
Gideon has been kind enough to provide you with a way to communicate. Whether that be a device or a simple SIM card. Why not try it out by sending a public message. Of course, you could also be sending it by accident.


   3. Make peace, not war
While LA has become a hodgepodge of different times it has also become a hodgepodge of different areas as well. Exploring the downtown LA brings you to a section of Greenwich Village in New York. Unfortunately what was once a peaceful protest has grown into a fight between Mogul hordes and peace loving hippies who just want to protest. Local enforcement is, of course, trying to sort out this mess but it seems they might need a bit of outside help.


   4. What's this strange building?
The 'Hall of Justice' stands in a sorry state as nature is trying to overtake it. Vines are crawling up the walls and there is Dimetrodon sunbathing in the courtyard, or what's left of it. Inside, any technology seems to have been destroyed and there is no sign of life. Still, it is a ruin left to be explored and the local archaeological society is willing to pay good money for relics from inside. Be warned that there may still be some rather nasty traps active inside and around the hall. If you happen to be a from the DC world you might see a few familiar faces among the broken statues that once adorned this building.


   5. Let’s dance
The Verdant. A rousing nightclub in 'bad neighborhood' of what was once Starling City circa 2013. There seems to be a wide variety of patrons here tonight, anything from Greek Scholars to some Greasers. What a great place to grab something to drink or maybe cause a little trouble.


   6. Dressing in style
Perhaps you arrived in less than ideal clothing. You may have arrived in no clothing at all. It might just be about time to look through some clothing stores and find what is right for you. Of course, it’s never that easy though. There are pickpockets and thieves all over the streets. You may just become their next victim.

   7. Home for the Holidays
Little old London town is high in festivities right now. It's Christmas and the area surrounding Big Ben is snowy, though it's a bit melty due to the climate in LA. Festive decor and foods for sale circa 1885 in england and emotions are cheery and positive. Take a horse and buggy or attend a christmas party.

Just hope the mongols don't show up. Or Amazons.

   8. Wild Card. Go nuts.

Comments

[vivifier]

[ And the look on his face is very...confused. Because he expects hang ups, or 'SAVITAR? NOO' or disgust or any number of negative responses. Not...whatever this is. Concern? It's concern, right? It's been so long, it's hard to recognize. ]

Nothing I want to discuss on an open line.

Near Big Ben? [ Which is, for some reason, in LA. ]

[iamsupergirl]

[ What does that even mean? She doesn't know. He's not going to say. At least not like this, and she'd already decided, but that decides it even more. ] I'll be right there.






Kara takes a look at those around her and tears for the closest of alleyways she can find at a brisk walk, barely getting more than three feet in, before she's reaching for the buttons of her shirts and taking for the sky. It's --

It's worse up this high, isn't it? What is wrong with this place? Everything looks like it was thrown together. Some child slamming times and places together without even making the puzzle pieces match. It takes longer to find anything that looks like Big Ben, because nothing looks like it should, in the order it should.

But she finds it eventually and goes soaring for it. Speed still on as she's coming down from the sky, to find the ground, calling out too loudly, but worried enough not to quite care enough to be quieter, as she is looking all around her. "Barry? -- I mean -- uhm -- Savitar?"

[vivifier]

He will join her in what-the-fucking over this place. He spent several hours trying to speed his way the hell out of here, only to run into an invisible wall each time. All he got for his trouble were some new speed-lightning burns on his arm which were easy enough to hide and the 'pleasure' of entertaining Mick Rory with some skid-falls.

So that's great.

"Over here." Sitting on these stairs in front of Big Ben. They are not, however, the stairs that come with Big Ben. So that's...weird.

[iamsupergirl]

The steps from where she is to the direction he is are slightly faster than they should be, but it feels almost slower than it needs to be. Except. Except it seems wrong. Everything seems wrong. The way he's sitting there. The way he looks. Cold creeping down her spine. Ice needles pricking at her heart. Every alarm a concern. Wrong. Something is so very wrong, on top of waking up in the wrong world. Again.

"What is all this?" Everything. This place. It's the right question, but it's wrong, too.
It gets trampled for the thing that can't wait it's turn. "Are you alright? You look--"

Kara floundered for something that didn't like an insult or a judgment. But a mess.
He looked terrible. Horrible. It was almost worse to see than the jumbled city wreck.

[vivifier]

He's well aware how awful he looks, though they may have differing definitions of what they mean by 'awful'. He's also not sure how to go about this, since he really doesn't know what Barry might have told her about him. It's not a memory he can access, as if it happens it hasn't happened yet.

So he stares at her for a moment, hopefully not a long and creepy moment. "Do you know what a temporal duplicate is?"

[iamsupergirl]

He just stares. Just. Stares. At. Her. It is worse.
It's so wrong. Something is so wrong.

She can feel it. Spreading.



"Yeah." This careful, confused, ceding to the obvious, with a fast nod as she stops in front of him.

Of course, she knows. They all know now. "There were --" They just came back from Earth X. Where she was trying to rule the world, and quash humanity under her own boot, for an even worse ruler than she'd ever thought the Earth could have. Except he couldn't have. He doesn't look anything like. He's asking about duplicates like she doesn't know, didn't just see.

"Are you saying you aren't -- you aren't Barry? At all? Are you from another Earth?"

[vivifier]

So that would be a no. He shakes his head, trying to figure out how to explain this to her. It's difficult explaining it to someone like Kara. Someone who didn't actually hurt him in his particular version of the timeline.

He doesn't really want her to have the chance. "No, it's not...I'm from Earth 1. If a speedster, if Barry goes back in time, changes things sometimes a version of him from an aborted timeline will be preserved for a while. If the events needed to have happened, but won't." It's complicated, Kara, okay? "Usually they die. Eventually."

And yet. Look at him.

[iamsupergirl]

Kara's forehead, and the space between her eyebrows, scrunch as she listens. As she's trying to put together what he's saying. That he's either from the future, or another present, but one that's been completely overwritten. But none of that, none of it as important as what stumbles out first, choking at her heart, direr than any of the details he used to get to those words.

"You're dying?" That sounds like the wrong phrased two words. Sounds confusedly disjointed, like she's slotting foreign objects next to each other, and calling them together. But even that obvious, that uncertain, it can't keep the sudden bell-clear anguish wrapping her tone. It's absolutely wrong. All of this is wrong. Barry shouldn't look like this. Ever be erased. Ever be dying. "Supposed to be dead ... soon?"

[vivifier]

"Well, that's how it's supposed to go. The old timeline goes away, the new one moves on. Funny thing is, once you've time traveled enough, the rules don't really apply so much." He's not really looking at her. Of all people, he's sure the things he's done to keep e'xisting would horrify her. And of all people, he thinks he actually cares what she thinks about it.

"And the funny thing about that is, once you're disposable, once you're not the 'real' Barry Allen people stop caring what happens to you."

[iamsupergirl]

"That can't be true." She can't imagine anyone turning their back on Barry. Anything that would have brought him to what he looks like now. She might not understand everything he's saying, but she understands that he was wrong about what he said earlier, too: he is Barry. Barry...from another time somehow. A lost time. Someway.

"I can't imagine Iris, or Cisco, or any of your friends wouldn't do all they could if they knew you were still here."

[vivifier]

And so, he'll bring the hammer down on what might be a perfectly good explanation for why that sort of a thing might've come to pass: "Iris is dead."

[iamsupergirl]

"No, she isn't." Kara was very certain of that point. "I just saw her. Not a week ago. With you."

Er. "The other you." The him-that's-not-him?

Where is Winn when she needs a name or classification for something like this.



"Wait." She's not slow, the girl of Steel. "You mean in the future?" But did he really say future? He didn't, did he? "The other timeline. The one that got rewritten?" She piecing together the words he used into her own sentences, and trying to build that picture, and she can't imagine that. How. It's her last few months, turned worse. "She died. There?"

It was impossible to imagine after seeing them. Iris, so beautiful, and Barry so happy. Asking her to sing for their wedding even. All of them pulled together from different cities, and worlds, and time periods, to celebrate the best news any of them had had in ages. Perfect right up until Nazi's invaded. But that wasn't Barry or Iris' fault.

[vivifier]

He's more patient with her about this than he was with Barry. He wants her to understand where he's come from so maybe she'll understand why he had to do what he tried to do.

She probably won't understand why. But he wants her to. He's pretty sure he can't handle being abandoned by even more people, okay.

"Yes. The Iris in the future." A brief pause. "I guess the past now. In the aborted timeline. She didn't die this time around, but I'm still here."

[iamsupergirl]

"And the others?" She's not far from him, and she's not pulling back. The more he talks, the more he moves, the more he still looks very much like himself. Himself, hurt. Himself, but eyes dark and voice sometimes strangely conflicted, almost begging bitter. Nothing the way Barry should sound.

She can't imagine Barry alone. So many people had come last week. He was always surrounded with friends, and family, and Barry without those. Barry, with Iris dead. Barry, possibly without anyone?

[vivifier]

Barry had them and pushed them away. Savitar had no one and was in agony. Physical, emotional. You name it. Which was worse?

"Cisco lost his hands to Killer Frost. Caitlin is Killer Frost. The one true Barry Allen pushed everyone away, including Joe. Wally's a vegetable." In this horrible future.

[iamsupergirl]

It is. It's so horrible.

"Why would you do that?"

Kara's mouth is slightly dropped, with a tremble, fingers at her lips as he keeps adding to that list. All of them. Iris. Cisco. Caitlin. Joe. Wally. And Barry. Her Barry, their Barry. Alone. Bereft of everything. Everyone. Pushing people out. At the worst time ever. Her eyes, blue and wide, are a horrified sympathy. It's bigger than she knows how to hold. She's never -- he's never.

[vivifier]

"I didn't. He did. He's the original. I'm the time remnant. He pushed them away. They abandoned me." He stopped being Barry Allen the second he was created, acknowledged it the moment Iris West died. Killed by some future version of himself that he had yet to become.

The horrors of a time loop.

[iamsupergirl]

That doesn't make sense, the him-to-me, and even more it's not fair, no matter how or who-what plays out, and worst: worst of all is that pained almost bitter sound behind all the words coming out of his familiar, scarred up face. The one that cuts into her chest every time he speaks.

What come out is even more jumbled, if no less straight from the heart: "I'm sorry. This is all--" So much. On top of meeting her own evil worldself, this was almost as bad. "--but that never should have happened, not to you. I'm sorry--"

Not to anyone, but not to him. Like she should have known before.
Somehow. Been there. Known. Could have helped. Stopped whatever this is.

[vivifier]

"But it did. It did happen." He shrugs, steeling himself. Resolving himself to the idea that there's nothing he can do to explain this in a way where she'll understand why he has to do what he has to do. "You can't fix it."