❪ test drive: #1 ❫

[natha]

OVERFLOW POST

YOUR STORY BEGINS     The Storm came. You only remember darkness, but you don't remember much after that. All you know, perhaps, is that it was cold as you slept. You don't know for how long you slept, but the dreams were short, at least. You remember the expanse of stars and the universe that came in view. Every world and solar system ever known was displayed in your dreams in careful, pristine detail. You have also witnessed The Storm, which has devoured a fair portion of these galaxies. It was a dark, thick smog; ominous in appearance and ever foreboding. Your Earth and similar planets were immersed in The Storm. Somehow, you knew it would be the last you'd see of it. That was when she told you what happened, and how you can help. You knew that you'll be living somewhere new, even though you never asked for it. The details here weren't clear, but you knew you'd made a deal with Darma. Not long after, you'll wake at Thesa Station — Your body is still cold. It was all a dream, but somehow, you knew it wasn't — now, will you keep that promise you made to Darma? PROMPT: THE MESS HALL     It's fascinating to the Orbiters how such a dull room can be turned around so completely with people in it. All meals are served by Roman, and while all the food is delicious, some of it is a bit odd. Is that neon green soup? That’s hideous. If you happen to be in the mess hall at a particularly unlucky time, you and the food will suddenly begin to drift. Someone’s got jokes, and they’ve turned off the gravity control. Now it’s just you, your fellow refugees, and the floating sea of food. Wait, did that person just chuck a pie in your direction? PROMPT: TRAINING MODULES     While it’s all nice and well to familiarize oneself with Thesa Station, it is most advised that new arrivals venture out a bit. Not physically. No one is quite prepared for that yet. However, there will be several virtual reality training programs set for those who dare to be adventurous. For those who aren’t and don’t dare, well— good luck, all the same. Be advised, however, that participating in one of the training modules will start you off favorably with the Natha Orbiters’ in terms of REPUTATION. Once seated and appropriately strapped in, the system will automatically whir to life and the dense foliage and forestry of a section of El Nysa will open up. According to one’s map registry, it clear to see that it’s miles from the outer gates of Olympia, but not as far enough to venture into any other territories. So, in that sense, you’re safe. 1. Or you could have been, but unfortunately the wilderness is home to various types of beasts and monsters hailing from different universes and galaxies. On the bright side, perhaps one of them will be oddly familiar to you. Or maybe someone else who is currently synced is willing to give you that extra helping hand. Fortunately, if you’re powerless, there are options. From telekinesis to flight, there are strange abilities one can adopt and “test” out in the virtual reality. Granted, you’re only limited to one at a time. They say in the near future, some of you may be granted these abilities under certain conditions. But, please practice some caution. You aren’t alone in the system, after all. 2.. Who do you fight for, the VR system will ask you individually before you enter the module. The righteous Olympians, or the free-spirited Wyvers? Whatever your choice, when you enter El Nysa, you will wholly and truly believe your allegiance. A. Working together: You now have to suffer the consequences of your choice, as you and your partner have been captured by guards of the opposite faction. Now jailed and soon-to-be tortured, you must find some way to negotiate your release. Perhaps you’ll find some means to escape without detection. Maybe you’re the “fight your way out” sort of people. B. Facing your enemy: That person you stepped into the VR with? They’re out to capture you. Or maybe you seek to capture them. 3. When you enter the virtual reality, things aren’t exactly how they’re supposed to be. Maybe that’s natural, especially if this is your first time, but the problems here seem a bit more fundamental. Maybe you find yourself under a parental safety lock, and you’re suddenly censored. Exposed back? Censored. Body suit? Censored. Or replaced with a mascot costume. Worst of all? You can’t sign out. Not right now, at least. Regardless, whatever it is— ridiculous filters, body alterations, or even body swaps with other users... you are assured it’ll all be fixed with due time. Zasere sends his humblest apologies and promises no more wire chewing, or so the announcement states. PROMPT: STASIS UNIT     You have found the massive section of Thesa known as the Stasis Unit. There’s no special access required to access this part of Thesa Station, but refugees are warned that it may not be for the faint of heart. Here, in large pods that nearly cover every square inch of the space, are all of the people the Orbiters have managed to rescue. Your loved ones, your greatest enemy, your next door neighbor— you might find them here. These people are in a state of deep cryosleep. Due to the damaging effects of The Storm, their bodies are not yet ready to be awoken. PROMPT: HANGAR STATION     You find your way to the hangar station. Here rests are a factory worth of docked mobile suits. You recall how the Orbiters had previously spoken of a "space frontier," but only after seeing this you realize how real their words are. Most machinery have marks of wear and tear, assurance that they have indeed been used before, and an assembly of others are going through repairs and maintenance. No one seems to care that you've just strolled in. In fact, there seems to be a couple of the aircraft that beckon you to take a closer look. Maybe you’ll only look on the outside, maybe you'll be greeted by the hand of a mobile suit extending toward you and welcoming you to its cockpit. You go out and explore SPACE!!! Unfortunately, that mobile suit should have warned you it only had 20 minutes of flight time left in its system. Or, perhaps, you’re a particularly ambitious pilot and you’ve strayed past the designated perimeter. Either way, the HUD display is now blinking with errors, cropping up with a single message: DISTRESS SIGNAL. 1. You’re the poor sap who happened to chill around the Observation Deck. Unfortunately, everyone seems busy with the influx of mobile suits out and about, and the only one who can answer this distress signal is on the Navigation System, well, you. Hope you can figure out the controls fast enough. Guide the pilot back to the safety of the hangar using the most efficient route possible. Keen Navigators will find an instruction manual that provides a shortcut to automatically return a suit back to base. 2. You’re actually sitting in a two-seater mobile suit. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Maybe you were unwittingly dropped down a hatch, or dragged along for a joyride by your ambitious co-pilot. Either way, it looks like help is going to take some time... PROMPT: OMAGE     Upon receiving your mobile phone, you will be asked to set a username. Voila, you can now access the network! You can choose to send a message to the entire network, specific usernames, or you can try out the Orbiters’ service, Omage, which connects you to a random user. They thought this might be a good way for their new guests to make friends with each other... Connecting to server... Looking for someone you can chat with... You’re now chatting with [username]... Say hi! PROMPT: WILDCARD     You are welcome to write any scenarios in Thesa Station! Characters have been granted temporary access to the Observation Room, and are encouraged to study it carefully. FINAL OOC NOTE     These threads may be carried over as game canon if players choose! Players are encouraged to submit TDM threads as application samples, but they are not required. Please direct any OOC questions to the questions thread below! A Training Module thread of AC length on the TDM may be submitted for 1 NATHA ORBITER REPUTATION POINT after acceptance. QUICK NAV premise ● faq ● world ● map ● reputation ● npcs taken ● reserves ● application calendar ● hiatus/drops ● modbox [ FULL NAVIGATION ] elnysa nysalogs nysaisles nysaooc elnyan

Comments

Mantis | Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU

[uglybug]

[omage]
> You are now chatting with mantis...
Say hi...

Hello. I am Mantis. :) :) :)
There are so many interesting things here. I suppose that means that there may be interesting people here as well.
Are you one of them?

[mess hall]
[The soup, bright hideous green as it is, did not whet Mantis' appetite in the least; she'd left it alone and found a nice fat slice of what looked to be berry pie. (Though, if one asks her, she'll not be able to tell what pie actually is.) There's no gradual shift from gravity to weightlessness and Mantis cannot help the small startled sound she makes when both she and the pie begin to float.

She reaches for the pie, sending the plate to spinning when she bumps it -- and she laughs. Pie all but forgotten, she turns her attention to the plate, sending it spinning and whirling with nothing but a gentle touch here and there. Eventually, she adds her fork to the mix, sending it flipping end over end with a dextrous touch.

Other people get annoyed. Mantis plays with the flatware.]

[statis unit]
[Mantis does not know if she is faint of heart or not -- she's not quite even sure what that phrase means, though she has an inkling given the context -- but she knows she cannot ignore whole sections of this new place that she has found herself wandering. She spent so much of her life spoonfed what small pieces of information that Ego allowed that she feels as if she needs to learn whatever she can as quickly as she can.

So she enters the Statis Unit with the warning fresh on her mind and, upon seeing it, knows what is meant by 'faint of heart.' Something constricts in her chest, something twists in her throat, but she does not flee (and, in her mind's eye, she sees a cave overflowing with long-dead corpses.)]

They live. [That is the most important thing. They live. She hasn't seen a single one she knows, but they are alive and that is infinitely better than what she is expecting.]

statis unit

[stardaze]

[ the truth is gamora isn't sure exactly who she is looking for here. there are so many pods. so many souls here. all asleep. all waiting. it's daunting to think that among these pods are faces she doesn't want to see again. that it's just as likely that thanos will be here, as it is likely rocket might not. that haunts her.

but she still has to look. she has to know who is here. who she will be waiting for to wake up one day.

thankfully when she turns a corner there is a voice that she wants to hear. one that she is glad not to see among that pods, but rather awake just like her and peter. ]

Manits. [ she speeds up her pace to reach the other woman. ] Have you seen anyone else?

[uglybug]

[None of the faces are familiar to her and Mantis finds a sort of cold comfort in that: anyone she would recognize before she met Peter and company is likely someone she doesn't have the wherewithal to deal with. (Would any of those children she met find her complicit in their deaths? She doesn't know. She doesn't want to know.)

But then... then there's no faces she'd be relieved to see either and she wonders where they are.

She whirls on her heel as a voice rings out, relief flooding across her expression to find Gamora coming toward her. Out of deference, she keeps her hands clasped together in front of her, in no way reaching toward the woman.] I have not, but I am very glad to see you.

[stardaze]

[ there is a thankfulness in gamora that the other woman doesn't try and touch her. she doesn't know if she can handle that. right now she is barely holding it together. the fear that mantis felt once would pale in comparison to what gamora is going through right now.

though at the moment what she is feeling most is relief even if no one else is with mantis. ]

Are you alright? [ that's probably what she should have opened with, but she had been hoping some of the other were with mantis. that they'd somehow all be here together. ] You're not hurt or anything?

[uglybug]

[In truth, Gamora still frightens Mantis a little; first impressions go a long way, sometimes. However, the relief she feels upon knowing she's not alone here drowns that sliver of fear very, very quickly.

She crosses her arms, fingers clasping at her elbows.] I am not hurt. Are you well? How are we here?

id: NINES

[idealog]

It depends on what you mean by interesting.

[ There are a lot of new and fascinating things around here, but he's not sure if he counts as one of them. He's just an android. ]

[uglybug]

Perhaps you are best suited to tell me what makes you interesting. I do not know you at all.

[idealog]

Oh!

I guess you're right. I'm a Scanner model, so I tend to find a lot of things interesting. The world I came from was ravaged by war, so... it kinda got redundant after a while.

[uglybug]

I would be happy to hear of all the things you find interesting!

I am sorry to hear about your world. That must be awful.

mess hall

[volumeone]

Having fun?

[Peter's managed to get some inertia going once gravity switches off and he'd started floating up. The creepy soup he'd been eyeballing, hyping himself up to stick it in his mouth no matter how it looks, achieves flight and he goes screw it, he isn't that hungry to go chasing it down. Once he nails down where Mantis's laugh came from, he gets a foot against the edge of the table, aims himself toward her, and gives himself a push. Not a big push. He wants to actually get to her, not shoot past like a human rocket. Peter drifts at about the same pace as his soup had been, angling low enough that he can hook his fingers against the table's end.

Peter gets his weightless glide to a stop, body spinning around as he fixes a grin on Mantis]

You play with everything that isn't nailed down?

[uglybug]

[She grins at him, all awkwardness in the expression replaced by a genuine joy. It has been so long since she'd just enjoyed what life had given her and she finds that it's irrepressible. Ego could not completely squash it.]

Perhaps not everything. [She's not shoving him into end-over-end circles. Yet.] Look at the way they move, Peter! [And she flicks the fork into a spinning, whirling dance.]

[volumeone]

[Peter doesn't really do adorable and he's kinda sorta maybe got something for Gamora...but he has to say, Mantis is making him all soft and squishy on the inside when she smiles like that. It's genuine, like all the bullshit she's seen on Ego's field trips hasn't totally scarred her for life.

She can't fight worth a damn, yet, but at least that you can fix, easy]

Pretty cool. Hold a sec.

[Peter reaches for another run away plate, swinging his body so he can hook his ankles around the bottom of the table so he can get both hands free. Pretty soon Mantis will have a few more dishes to spin]

Y'know, on Earth they, like, Olympics for spinning plates. Bet you'd win a medal at the rate you're going.

[uglybug]

[She has her foot hooked into the chair she had been sitting in, which affords her just enough space to move as needed for the plates but keeps her anchored fairly well. The plates that Peter gathers are promptly and carefully set to spinning, while she keeps an eye on them and nudges them back into reach if they start to wander off.]

Oooh? I assume that's a good thing?

[volumeone]

It's a badass thing, is what it is.

[Somehow it isn't surprising Mantis can handle herself in gravity better than a fight. He's still wondering how far she's traveled with Ego, the things she must've seen. The girl might have more miles to her name than he does.

Peter watches the plates with a judging eye, as if he's ever been the Olympics in his life]

Can you get them spinning almost on top of each other? That'd be cool.

statis unit

[procreate]

That's the good news.

[Remember how your old boss slash pet owner basically imploded on himself? So that didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to. Now Ego isn't sure if it's a Celestial thing that kicked in and he should be breathing a sigh of relief with his manufactured lungs or it's something else. He remembers making a promise he had no intention of keeping, just to get a second chance and then...well. Here they both are. A god and his little backstabbing bug.

Ego thinks he's being very generous by not wiping her out of her sorry existence.

Instead he comes up behind her and claps a hand on Mantis's shoulder and even squeezes a little, to remind her what he place is]

So. We should clear the air between us after that stunt you pulled. I'm disappointed in you, Mantis.

[uglybug]

Oh. [The exclamation is small and quiet, choked and deprived of any air as her throat closes. The hands on her shoulders feel like a death sentence and a part of her marvels at it. When she was a small child, those hands were warm and kind. As she grew, they were nothing at all, cold and matter-of-fact, giving small acts of affection as a matter of rote if she did something truly noteworthy.

Now, her punishment lay in them. She reminds herself that his children never felt pain.

It doesn't help.]

I-- [The words are caught in her throat. She cannot even find it in herself to move.] I-- I did-- ['what was right.' Those are the words she wants to say.

They won't come.]

[procreate]

[When you have millennia and then some under your belt, you get pretty good at acting friendly, getting under someone's skin or exoskeleton or whatever they have, and somehow ending up as their best friend in the whole galaxy. Or more. It pretty much always ended the same: like always, Ego getting what he wants and some alien left starry-eyed and hoping he'll come back.

Mantis, though. She's been there every step of the way in her short lifespan, enough that she probably knows him better than most. Hence his disappointment, simmering with an immortal's patient rage]

That's the problem. Look what happened. Driving away my son like that!

[Ego's still smiling but his grip tightens for a fraction of a second on her shoulder]

Now why would you do that?

[It hasn't occurred to him, not even for a split, self-aware second, to think it's because of him]

[uglybug]

[She knows him.

Mantis knows his moods. She knows when to approach and when to stay away. Has always instinctively known which days will be good and which will be bad. Mantis knows him and, therefore, is not surprised when he lays all blame onto her shoulders.

Terrified, but not surprised. She evens feels a niggling of guilt worm its way into her mind and that does not surprise her either.

Ego is never to blame.]

I did not drive him away. [She blurts it out quickly, before she can lose the breath to speak, denying that tendril of guilt claiming a space in her heart.]

[procreate]

Really. Sure looked like it to me.

[Ego would love to know how she explains that one. Hearing everything on his planet is one thing - tuning the general noise to the parts he cares about, though, is another. Maybe he's grown careless and soft in his old age, assumed Mantis understood the mission and was committed because he'd raised her and made her worthwhile and he hadn't eavesdropped. Made sure the bug wasn't running her mouth off.

He stops from where he'd practically frogmarched her away from Drax's pod to Peter's, with his son looking like he's half dead thanks to the cryosleep. What a waste. He could've been out there doing good work and instead he's here]

Does that look like a happy man? You denied him his heritage.

mess hall

[krasnaya_vdova]

[Most people get annoyed. But the truth is that as horrifying as the prospect of her world being just gone, Ava can't really wrap her head around it just yet. As small as her life and her world had been it's so much easier to focus on how startling and intriguing this place was.

So Mantis draws her attention, seemingly as fascinated by the way that the floating objects behave in zero-G as Ava herself. After a few moments she can't resist the urge- she calculates angles, and then sends a spoon on a collision course with Mantis' fork, a shameless smile lighting her face as she watches the strange girl.

Ava's never seen a woman with antennae before, but well. Between Thor and the Chitauri and everything else, really... how weird is it, really? Probably about as weird as the way Ava's eyes are almost lightning blue. She waves.]

[uglybug]

[The spoon collides with the fork, sending both into a maelstrom of whirling directions; Mantis catches the fork in her hand and nudges the spoon into a more stationary dance. She looks up, back to where the spoon came from, and finds the woman smiling, bright blue eyes lit with laughter.

It makes her happy. She waves in return.] Hello!

id: nebula1

[ripe]

YOU wErE k KIDNAPPED

[ holy shit, figuring out caps lock is the least of her problems and it's such a major problem ]

[uglybug]

Yes, I believe so.
I am trying to make the best of it.

[because that's what you do when abducted, right? right.]

omagle

[vacuum]

romanée-conti: Of course I am.
romanée-conti: But that also depends on what you find interesting.

Re: omagle

[uglybug]

mantis: I find many things interesting.
mantis: Tell me all of them.
mantis: Please?