test drive meme #2

[shadowyfigure]

TEST DRIVE MEME #2

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[Vishvendra Rai]

Hi, It's Me, Back Again

The last thing you remember is either simple or very complicated - you were asleep, or unconscious, or perhaps...you died. Whatever the circumstances, you closed your eyes at home and dreamed of a storm, and when your eyes opened again you were staring at the ceiling of your new home, injured perhaps, but with wounds bound and safe enough. For now.

Upon waking and exploring your new surroundings - a relatively nice, furnished apartment - you will discover a BlackBerry style phone, your apartment key, mail key, and a sensor for "buzzing" into the building, as well as a list of rules to live by in your new home:

1. don't use the elevator between 1:11 and 3:33 am.

2. you will receive mail from 'the building manager' shoved under your door. read it once and then burn it immediately.

3. if someone claiming to live on the fourth floor tries to speak to you, ignore them.

4. never enter the basement, or any area of the building below ground level

5. if you see a shadowy figure in the hallway, run.

The apartment you now find yourself in looks well-kept, the fridge is full, the lights are on, and the whole place looks as if whoever lived in this apartment before you simply packed up and left, minutes ago.

If you leave that apartment, you'll find yourself faced with a dim hallway that leads to a small lobby with an elevator door. You're going to have to explore this new place sometime! Why not now?

Drag You To The Bottom of the Lake

CW: POSSIBLE DROWNING, TENTACLES

Usually, one has to use their fob to buzz into the amenities on the first floor, but today you might notice that the doors are propped open and peppy pop music seems to be playing from down one of the hallways. Echoey and a little strange at first, at a distance, the music seems to beckon to you and you find yourself following the sound of it.

The closer you get, the more clear the music will be, less creepy and echoey, until it's nothing but bubblegum pop that might play on the radio in any world you might have come from. The lyrics are unfamiliar but they're easy to learn if you wanted to sing along! The happy, peppy energy is very familiar and the more you listen, the more you find yourself wanting to sing or hum along.

Eventually, the source of the music proves to be the swimming pool, the doors of which are propped open just like the doors leading up to it. Inside it is lit moderately brightly, the high ceiling sloped from about the center of the room with a glass roof that shows that it's raining outside. Inside, however, it's warm and smells slightly of chlorine and...candy? Upon further inspection, it appears there's a candy and ice cream bar set up at one side of the pool, where a little bit of room has been cleared, the lounge chairs pressed against the walls of the pool. The music appears to be coming from an old school boombox that's propped on one of the chairs and blasting at the highest volume possible, plugged into an outlet on the wall behind it. The doors to the change rooms are propped open invitingly, and the temperature is just warm and muggy enough that the pool? That looks like a great idea. Cool. Inviting. A drop of sweat winds its way down your forehead as you look at it.

The ice cream and candy bar is welcoming, with various flavours available from vanilla to chocolate to peanut butter swirl to...blood? That label must mean blood orange, right? Either way, there's plenty of ice cream to go around, and once you've scooped your portion into your bowl, you can top it with a wide variety of candies - gummy candy that turns deliciously hard and chewy with the cold ice cream, mini peanut butter cups, peppermint swirls, and a wide variety of other types. To top it all off, help yourself to caramel, chocolate, or strawberry syrup. Feel free to dance to the happy pop music in the cleared area while you eat and socialize with your fellow partygoers!

Once you're done with the ice cream, feel free to go into the change room of your choice (male, female, and non-gendered) and find a line of swimsuits and towels neatly folded in matching sets along the benches. Get changed, take a quick shower to rinse off, and go jump into the pool!

The pool itself is quite benign at the shallow end and through the middle, and as usual with pools, as you swim deeper the depth markers printed on the side of the pool go up and up. 5 feet. 7 feet. 9 feet. The final markers simply say "???" though, as you get to the last few feet of the pool, and if you are to look down you'll find that instead of the distant blue of the tile under chlorinated water, there's nothing but black. There's no way to see the bottom, and if you drop something lighted it'll simply sink until it's no longer visible in the dark. The more you look at it, the more it calls to you, as you stare into the abyss and it stares back.

Just when you find yourself tempted to swim down and see how far you can get before you can't hold your breath any longer, something emerges from the dark, a deep grey-purple tentacle with suckers on the inside. It wraps around your ankle, and you can feel the panic set in as it starts to drag you under...

Can you fight free of it? Will someone come to your rescue? Will anyone even notice?

Hope You Didn't See Me Unhinging My Jaw

CW: EMETOPHOBIA, ROT, MAGGOT-LIKE CREATURE

The stairwell and elevator in Penumbra Place have never been what anyone would call 'reliable' by any means. However, it seems that over the next few days after the pool party, they're fixated on the 8th floor. The elevator constantly stops at the 8th floor, doors opening as if to admit or expel an invisible party, lingering at the floor much longer than is necessary or normal. People using the stairwells will find that the numbers painted on the wall of the stairwell to indicate where the doors go are all '8' no matter how many floors up or down they go. There's obviously something on that floor that...requires your attention.

Should anyone be brave enough to actually venture into the 8th floor, they'll find it looks like a normal floor in the apartment building, albeit slightly...squishy. The floor squelches under shoes, covered in an inches-deep mysterious greenish-yellow liquid, the walls dip slightly under the touch of fingers, even the doors are slightly squishy when the knobs are grasped to open or close them. Surfaces are shiny and slightly slimy, glistening in light that's a little bit lower than the lights on other floors. There's a scent in the air like rotting food, spoiled milk, prickling at the back of your nostrils. Every touch stings a little, too, unless some kind of protection is being worn, like acid biting at the skin and eating through it. It eats through clothing too, with drips falling from the ceiling and landing on heads and faces and shoulders, dissolving fabric and hair and the skin underneath.

As you explore the floor, you'll come across apartment 808, where the door is slightly ajar. Moving inside, the scent of rot and digestion that permeates the entire floor gets stronger and stronger, like curdled milk and bile and vomit. The amount of liquid on the floor gets deeper and deeper until it's stinging and biting at your ankles and calves, the sharp but slow throbbing pain of being digested.

And then you see it, the giant thing attached to the apartment's living room wall. About 10 feet long, the thing is like a giant maggot, squirming and pulsing above a couch soaked with that burning acidic bile, seemingly feeding on the wall and the fluid. And anything that happens by, it seems, as the creature shifts and makes a high-pitched noise, reaching out some kind of appendage toward you. In some instinctive way, you recognize this creature as a parasite, and disgust builds up like bile in your own throat at the sight of it, a primitive emotion bordering on fear.

There's no choice but to kill it, is there? Except it doesn't die so easily, requiring ridiculous amounts of damage taken before it will die. Are you going to risk killing it and damaging the building in which you all live?

The World Is Burning

CW: FIRE, POSSIBILITY OF BEING BURNED

The smell of smoke greets you as you awaken, and as you go about your day, the scent doesn't go away. It's faintest on the main floor and the 11th floor, but gets stronger the closer to the center of the building you get. If you happen to be in the stairwell, it's easy to see that the smoke is billowing out from under the door of the 4th floor.

Anyone who investigates the floor will find it on fire, the flames licking at the skeletal remains of the walls, already burned out. And they will hear screams and cries of terror from inside the floor, as if there were people in those apartments! There are 25 apartments on the floor and people in almost all of them that need rescuing! Does it matter that this floor was uninhabitable just yesterday? No! You can hear them, screaming and crying and panicking. Someone is crying that their baby is stuck somewhere, someone is screaming that they're burning.

While some characters may be heroes who'd help no matter what, the others can be compelled by the fact that the only standing and habitable building anywhere nearby is on fire. It's worth the time to help out, in whatever way possible.

Anyone who tries to fight the fire will find that nothing they do will extinguish the flames, no amount of water or ice or anything else will staunch the flames that are burning the skeletal apartment walls. There's hardly anything left to burn, and yet it keeps going, flames licking at the exposed wood seemingly without really doing any further damage. But if a person tries to touch it? Well, that's another story altogether, because the flames definitely harm flesh.

The only way to stop the blaze before it consumes the whole apartment is to rescue the people on the floor. People that no one here has met before, people who seemingly didn't exist before the flames started. Could they be related to the phantoms you can usually see on this floor? Maybe. But either way, once all the people are cleared out of the floor, the fire magically dies down and slowly goes out.

We Go Boo

CW: GHOSTS, DARKNESS

The shadowy figure is old news by this point, and easy enough to avoid. It's simple, if you see it, simply run to the other end of the hall and leave the floor, or duck into one of the apartments. Easy enough, if still pretty scary.

Things start to change in the month of January, though, with new figures appearing. They are shrouded in darkness, enough that making out details of what they look like is difficult. Sometimes they come alone, sometimes in groups of two or three. They're distinguishable enough from each other by height and posture to tell that there are 6 of them, all different save for two that are identical, only obviously two because they often appear together.

While these six figures are much like the original shadowy figure, and don't do much of their own or take initiative to attack anyone, and are impervious to any attacks on them, they are intimidating, and their appearances are more frequent than the shadowy figure's appearances had been. Every night, on multiple floors, and sometimes even in the daytime, most often around sunset and sunrise, these figures appear and sweep down hallways, rattle the knobs of the apartments, and generally make themselves known.

(CODE)

Accessibility: teacodes

Comments

[messenger]

[ joke's on you, bucky. his wallet is empty (save for jimmy novak's driver's license).

on moving away from the pool and toward the exit, castiel almost breaks into a run. he can feel the urge building within himself, the burst of panic. but by the time they reach the double doors it's faded, and as he turns back the tug is only gentle, now, like waves sucking up sand at the beach. ]

I don't have a gun.

[ and his angel blade wasn't on his person when he arrived here.

he moves to begin pushing the doors closed. ]

[freakymagoo]

[Well. To be honest he's not sure what shooting at the pool (into the pool?) is going to accomplish either. Apart from wasting some ammo and some small sense of satisfaction. There wasn't actually anything in the water that he could see.]

Wait. Let me go back in. [Maybe it'll be like that weird party where the spread of food looked normal the first time around and turned into a pile of fermenting, maggot-writhing sludge when he re-entered the building.

It stands to reason that maybe he'll be able to see whatever is lurking in the pool the second time around. Although he's still not sure how to deal with whatever he finds. It's not exactly ideal to throw a deck chair or whatever and hope for the best.

This is why he's not the man with the plan. He'll just. Figure it out if he can't resolve anything with his fists.]

[messenger]

What?

[ the whiplash from locking into "plan a" then immediately discarding it is difficult for him to keep up with, but he doesn't try to stop the other man. instead, he'll follow him back in when he goes.

he has no idea what his logic is, but who is he to argue? he doesn't know what's going on here either. ]

[freakymagoo]

It might've changed. [Does he sound crazy yet? Bucky storms back to the edge of the pool and peers back in like someone who opens a fridge door a second time 10 minutes later expecting to suddenly find something they feel like eating that's drastically different from 10 minutes before.

Of course, he's looking into the shallow end this time so. Nothing seems to have changed looking down the length of the pool.

Except for the uncomfortable warmth and the pull to go in.]

Does it-- look different to you? Somehow? [Bucky can't trust his senses even on a good day. Never hurts to confirm.]

[messenger]

[ what? he thinks to the list of rules he was given, and briefly wonders if this man is a spirit himself. it's possible, isn't it? he can't trust his own senses, not since he blasted the last of the grace out of himself banishing those angels from the warehouse in van nuys.

but as he stands at his side, at the end of the pool, nothing seems to have been altered in any way. air thick with chlorine wafts up from the pool.

it makes him feel a little dizzy. ]

No.

[ is his once and final verdict. his fingers dig into the knot of his tie and begin to pull it loose. it's too hot. it's uncomfortably hot, and he hates it. ]

[freakymagoo]

[Bucky grunts. Glares at the pool for a few more seconds, as if he could conjure whatever it is he thinks is lurking down there if he scowls hard enough. But when nothing comes, his set jaw loosens just a fraction, and he breathes an audible sigh out through his nose.]

Fine. Let's go. [He makes sure the mormon-looking guy in the trenchcoat is in front of him and getting out of the pool area first before he follows closely behind.]

You planning on wearing that everywhere? [He's-- overdressed, to say the least.]

[messenger]

[ castiel is still trying to tug his tie free free when bucky finally gives up on the pool. (on closer inspection, one might realize that it'd been knotted rather awkwardly.)

he's glad for the interruption, and the chaperone. the urge to undress and get into the pool only continues to grow every time he stands at the edge of the water.

castiel blinks at the question. ]

... Yes?

[ when they stop by the doors, he tries to fix the knot of his tie before almost immediately giving up. ]

[freakymagoo]

Okay. [Far be it from the guy who's been lugging a 55 pound titanium prosthetic around, albeit not necessarily consciously or willingly, for most of his years of existence before he found someone considerate enough to design something more comfortable, to preach anything about form or function.]

What're you doing. [If he sounds irritated it's probably nothing to take personally. This is Bucky's happy face. He reaches over and swats those fiddling hands away to help untie the tie and redo it up properly, under and over from right to left.

It doesn't look like it's his first time wearing a suit so it just seems ridiculous that he somehow managed to work a deadknot into his tie.]

[messenger]

Uh—

[ castiel doesn't answer. he was going to. it's obvious. his mouth is open and everything. but then bucky's hands are rearranging his knotted tie into a better semblance of its namesake and castiel's jaw clicks shut. the question was rhetorical. clearly. castiel feels no need to interject, in that moment. instead, he pays careful attention to the peculiar sensation of his chest tightening with a feeling that he can't quite yet identify, gut knotted almost as badly as his tie.

dean did this for him once.

is dean dead?

is everyone dead?

a terrible thought occurs to him: one that he immediately dismisses. he cannot, and categorically refuses to be, a lone survivor.

when bucky is done, castiel stares. his gaze seems fixed somewhere about his collarbone, but it's obvious enough he isn't seeing anything. ]

[freakymagoo]

[Great. Unfortunately he's very familiar with that look. That's just great. Hopefully they last for more than 2 minutes here.

Bucky changes gears to deal with their immediate problem first. He gives the door to the pool a tug, half-expecting it to be immobile. When it groans and creaks with relative ease, he huffs a mildly irritated sigh and closes the door, gaze darting upwards and down to the floor looking for locks.

One of the side tables by the elevator should do, or a larger rubbish bin, or anything to deter the lazier folks among them from entering.

He'll... come back and pick this guy up if he's still checked out. He doesn't look like he'll do anything stupid just standing there anyway.]

[messenger]

[ the other man leaves and castiel doesn't seem to notice when it happens. when he looks up again, the doors have been shut, and he's gone. castiel blinks.

the doors are open again.

he blinks.

they're still open.

but they were shut. when he looked up again. weren't they? the back of his neck prickles with the impression of a thousand tiny creatures marching along his spine. sharp pinpricks of pain, just faint enough they could be ignored by someone with a sturdier mind.

castiel blinks again. he walks inside.

was it just his imagination? is that what it feels like, to have an imagination? what about the pool? was that just his imagination, too? ]

[freakymagoo]

[Clearly, no one can be trusted to be left alone without adult supervision. Not even for five minutes. It takes Bucky some time to look for the furniture he needs to barricade the door.

He wasn't expecting the guy in the trenchcoat to open the door and let himself back in. Did something happen while he was gone? He wasn't even gone that long.

Setting the table down outside, Bucky takes a peek through the ajar door, checking initially for any signs of unnatural activity before he slips in quietly, cautious and guarded like he's stepping through a minefield.]

[messenger]

[ castiel angelofthelord should have a chaperone at all times. if castiel angelofthelord is found without a chaperone he will be escorted out.

bucky is right to be cautious. this building is absolutely crawling with specters, and oh! the things they can do. amazing how vulnerable the flesh and blood brain is. if castiel had command of his multi-dimension-encompassing awareness, he would be able to feel them. to see them. and to cast them out. pity that he came here like this, stripped of everything that makes him useful, just the same as everyone else with none of the experience.

now, he strips his outer layers, wrinkled coat falling in a heap at his feet like a lizard's shed skin as he toes off his shoes and stands at the edge of the pool in his now sodden socks. he extends one leg out over the deep end, balancing on the other foot. his mind is an empty tape deck, and someone's popped in a tape that plays one thing on repeat: this is where you belong.

the sound of the water is loud when he hits it. ]

[freakymagoo]

[Okay but he's no longer angelofthelord, right? Come on. Never take all the stupid with you. And have a little self-preservation, it's apparently sort of important.]

What the fuck? [What did he just say about non-swimmers going in the water? Did he stutter? What is he, just an ornament? If Bucky looks somehow even more irritated than usual, grabbing his shirt collar behind his head and yanking his shirt off, tossing it to one side and making quick work of his bootlaces before slipping into the pool, he's probably justified. He had no intention of getting wet or trying to be a big dumb hero today.

He also probably could have been a little gentler but, you know. Those who don't listen to Bucky should be grateful that they don't get tossed out of the water like a black garbage bag by Bucky when he grabs the idiot by the arm and tries to-- not exactly manhandle but drag him out, kicking and lightly splashing back towards the edge where the ladder in the wall is.]

Grab onto the rail. [Don't make him grab any ass or push the deadweight up by shoving said ass out of the water...]

[messenger]

[ they left all the stupid and took the rest.

castiel thrashes when bucky grabs him. but maybe he isn't thrashing because bucky grabbed him. there's something— there's something else, and it called dibs on the juicy angel steak that just threw itself in the water.

bucky is fast enough to haul castiel away without much effort as long as he doesn't linger, though as castiel grabs the rail, his hand slips, slamming him face-first into the pool edge.

gg. ]

[freakymagoo]

[As far as he can tell, this guy just ignored his warning, let himself back in the pool area, jumped in for no god damned reason and, true to his unable to swim form, started panicking and doubled down on Magikarp level stupidity.

It's almost tempting to just leave him there choking on his own face of blood and chlorinated pool water.

Somehow despite the frustration and the spite, Bucky manages to pick the clumsiest man he's ever met up by the back of his collar like an annoyed cat and pulls him up and more onto dryish land. Just enough that he won't slip back in, but he'll still have to help himself get his own legs out of the pool.]

Jesus Christ. [He huffs a sigh and wipes a sheet of water off his face, blowing out a sigh between his lips. Where's the towels and the first aid kit and whatever? Not that any of that is going to help much...]

[messenger]

[ it doesn't exactly look good, does it?

the pain is so sudden that he goes mute with it. blood gushes from his nose in a shock of brilliant red, and his arms tremble. his stomach turns. his whole body goes suddenly cold.

and then the man doesn't even help him all the way out of the pool. a choked sound leaves his throat, soft and panicked, and he scrambled to haul himself up. it takes a surprising amount of upper body strength, and jimmy doesn't seem to have particularly much of it. his legs thrash, and he fights to find some purchase before another slippery tentacle slips around this ankle— maybe bucky can see it now, the creature, sliding just below the surface of the water.

something brushes his ankle. his foot finally finds the bottom rung of the ladder, and he thusts himself up and out of the water with all of his might.

scrabbling on his hands and knees, he tries to get as far from the pool as possible before his last burst of strength gives out. he bumps into a deck chair and uses it to pull himself up, half sitting, leaving a long, slick trail of blood in his wake. ]

[freakymagoo]

[He catches it out of the corner of his eye and-- honestly, doesn't really know what to make of it. It moves pretty fast, but when he drops everything that he thought of doing and dashes back to the edge of the pool, he can't actually see it once it slips back under. It's not really clear what annoys him more - the slippery octomonster thing or the fact that this guy managed to get himself fully tentacle hentaied after Bucky left him alone for barely three minutes.

Once he's sure he doesn't have to throw the whole fucking deck chair into the pool just to make sure they're in the clear, he hurries to fetch a stack of towels and returns to the injured man's side. Crouching down, he unfolds and shakes out one large towel to cover those soaked legs and lower body with, and then another for the upper body, and then a smaller one for his face.]

Don't-- tip your head back. [Bucky sighs and resigns himself to holding the back of that dark head of hair with his metal hand, holding up the smaller hand towel against that injured face with his flesh and bone hand.]

I told you not to go in. [He can't help but do the whole 'I told you so' thing. Maybe one day it'll make him less annoyed, even though that day doesn't seem like today.]

cw gross nosebleed stuff for the next tags

[messenger]

[ castiel has never better looked the part of the pathetic wet cat. he makes no move to better arrange the towels. that can come later. he's a little distracted, anyway, by the hands holding his hair and his face.

his head is tilted back, and he feels the blood slide down the back of his throat with a shudder. he thinks of vampires and ghouls, drinking it on purpose, and couldn't feel any more human in the moment if he tried. it tastes terrible, metallic and sticky and hot, and settles on his stomach like a stone. to say nothing of how bad his face hurts. as the shock passes, it begins to throb.

he blinks slowly at the other man through the tears in his eyes. like a particularly perceptive zoo animal regarding it's handler. ]

I told you it was calling me.

[freakymagoo]

Yeah, well, the Nigerian prince might call you but you're not supposed to answer either.

[At least, that was one of the many life lessons he was supposed to memorise in the crash course in 21st century living. He's never actually gotten a call from the Nigerian prince. Didn't even give the guy his number when he met him on that last Wakandan mission so he's not sure how the hell he would have his number.

But the point still stands and Bucky has followed those instructions to the letter.]

Tell me if you're about to pass out. [Sigh. He can handle goats just fine but has little experiences with clumsy angels.]

[messenger]

Why— why not?

[ the statement is so absurdly un-topical that it momentarily distracts him from the spark righteous indignation that was about to flare up into a burst of decisively petty, childish anger.

this man must not have any experience with the supernatural at all. that's the only thing he can come up with: that's the only reason he'd leave him alone. where the blame lies is immaterial. castiel knows he should have been able to shake it off. he winces and swallows, eyes pricking with tears as the movement of his facial muscles send signals of pain to his currently very human brain. ]

[freakymagoo]

It's not really him and they'll empty out your bank account? [Obviously? Has Bucky been the only one cruising through the decades in cryo? These are important things for all 21st century dwellers to know. It's also not absurd and not a far stretch from stranger danger. Just because anyone comes calling doesn't mean you have to answer.

He's also not getting any special treatment, if that's of any consolation. Bucky tackles most things alone. Or at least, tries to. Which is not to say that he hasn't gotten plenty of help along the way, but he doesn't expect it and certainly doesn't know how to ask even if he thinks he might need it.]

Can we get out of the pool area now or do you want to keep fucking around with that? [Not right now now of course, but. As soon as the bleeding stops and they've ascertained that he hasn't damaged his brain somehow.]

[messenger]

I don't have a bank account.

[ comes the slightly gurgled answer. his teeth are stained pink with blood between his parted lips. not a bank account, not a single red cent to his name. there's a wallet in his pocket but it isn't his wallet, and the id inside doesn't belong to him, nor do the pictures of the family he tore jimmy novak away from, or the wedding ring he removed a year ago now.

he blinks slowly in deference to the pain, and glances askance. staring at the edge of the pool. ]

Don't be ridiculous. It wasn't me. I lost control of my body.

[freakymagoo]

[Right. So he just expects Bucky to believe that he's some homeless, penniless schmuck in a nice suit and a trenchcoat? Does he look like he was born yesterday?]

Hold this. [The towel being pressed against his face. Bucky works partly to dry the other limbs off, partly subtly feels up for any broken bones or anything else they need to be worried about. As far as he can tell it's just localised to the head, but he's no doctor and he hasn't met any since being forced to relocate to this apartment.]

Still bleeding? Blurry vision? Any problems reading that sign? [There's only one sign with rules for the pool usage over behind Bucky's shoulder so hopefully there's no ambiguity there.]

[messenger]

It's blurry. [ everything is a little hazy around the edges these days. he doesn't have the kind of sight he did when he was an angel; nothing could possibly compare. even if jimmy had perfect 20/20 vision, it would still be something he notices, something that creeps up on him and makes breathing harder than it should be for agonizing stretches of time.

he's so incredibly helpless in this body.

he's nothing at all. ] I can read it.

[ he blinks hard, nose creasing in a grimace. tears run down his cheeks, making tracks through the dried blood. he's probably going to end up with a couple of black eyes for his trouble, but when he takes the towel away to reveal the bloody mess of his face, it isn't gushing anymore, so that's a point in his favor. ]

I want to go now.