ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴏɴɢ 18ᴛʜ ᴍᴏᴅs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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brethrencourt2017-04-29 11:17 am
pyracy) wrote in brethrencourt2017-04-29 11:17 am
Entry tags:
TEST DRIVE 001b
Try on those ridiculous clothes, sample the catering, and run through your lines. It's time for the Long 18th Test Drive.
ARRIVAL: Characters come to in a dark, tropical forest in a huddle. There are the sounds of strange birds, animals, and insects all around, some of them perhaps worryingly close. With a closer inspection, arrivals realize they're on an incline: Going up will prove fruitless, no matter who they are. The ground there starts to grow rocky the further they climb, and they may find themselves slipping back down to their arrival point, even if they're expert mountain climbers. The ground sloping downward will eventually level out leading toward light, music, and noise. But for the moment, they're simply a group of lost people (or monsters/bipedal animals/robots/etc) with no idea where they are or how they got here. Now's probably a good time to ask, "Who the hell are you? Where am I?" Time to use the buddy system.
TORTUGA: There's a town off the coast of Hispaniola that never sleeps, and that town is Tortuga. It's swapped hands more times than anyone can count, but for now, the French have it. And they do like the extra money the pirates that frequent it bring in; they like it so much that they imported over 1600 prostitutes from Europe to keep them happy. So you might as well relax while you're here, as much as you can with random gunshots and fist fights, anyway. Drop in for a drink at the Faithful Bride, check out the wares for sale (provided to you tax-free thanks to piracy) near the dock front. Visit the warehouse where those ill-gotten goods are stored and distributed. Maybe you're looking for work on a ship? The captains can usually be found - frazzled and busy - in the taverns and at the shipwrights and everywhere in between (just look for the hats), and if they're in a good mood, they might be willing. But the key point of Tortuga is this: Have fun. Some examples might include: A barfight! Wandering into a brothel (maybe by mistake)! Getting duped into joining a crew! There's no end of trouble to get into.
MIRROR POST: When they arrived, every person found, in a pocket or a bag or tucked away somewhere on their person, a little compact mirror. It's nothing fancy: Square, with hinges and a latch that keep it closed, the outer casing carved from seashell, the inner mirror a little spotted with age. But if it's played around with enough, it quickly becomes apparent it works as a communication device. Here you have access to all of the marked folks, no matter how far and wide they might spread. Need to have a heart to heart with a buddy in Singapore? Want to send out a general ad to everyone at large? Looking for answers to questions? This is the quickest way to get all of that.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: The world is open, and it's full of pearls that are just waiting for you to take them. Maybe you want to have some quiet time to scrub clean in a bathhouse in Singapore. Perhaps you're visiting the fabled pirate city of Libertalia in Madagascar. Maybe you've found yourself lost in Mayan ruins or stranded on an island. Or you were shipwrecked in a hurricane. Or you've decided to relocate to Port Royal or one of the American colonies for a quieter sort of life. Either way, this is your story, might as well make it a good one.
Arrival
Chill, friend. I'm as much in the dark as you are. [His hand is on the grip of his cold gun...just in case.]
Not that I'm above the occasional kidnapping, but in this case I'm innocent. I despise tropical vacations.
You're is. WTF me?
You're Terran. This place? Is it Terran?
[For once, he's actually inclined to trust the guy. Not because he seems terribly trustworthy, but he also seems to have that same variety of confused.]
[He does keep his coat open, though. Two guys just talkin'. Hands on their weapons. No big deal here. Nope.]
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Looks like it to me, but then I haven't seen a whole lot of alien planets.
[Spaceships, yes. Different eras on Earth, yes. But alien worlds are in the same category as alternate universes: he's aware they exist but it's all hypothetical to him.]
But I'm guessing from your words and from your... [He waves gloved fingers (from the hand not still on his cold gun) around his face to indicate the man's skin.] ...blue...that you have seen a lot of alien planets.
[Maybe not a meta after all.]
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But if it ain't more familiar to you than that then it's got us both beat.
[He turns and looks up at the tree tops, wincing up at the sky in scrutiny and baring slightly sharp teeth in doing so, some gold plated.] Don't see no ships coming in and out. They'd at least streak light. Open up hyperspace jump points.
We got ditched and someone ran off 'n left us.
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The ship could be cloaked. Which means it might still be here.
Not sure on the motive, though. If we're valuable, why dump us off in a jungle, and if we're not valuable, why go to the trouble of snatching us up in the first place.
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You sound valuable.
[In the way that Snart has one of those voices that sounds like he's a schemer. And schemers usually come with money or bounties or both. Yondu turns to look at him, tipping his head.]
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[In Snart's experience, if someone asks what your net worth is, there's a good chance that they're thinking of robbing you or ransoming you. Or marrying you, but he's pretty damn sure that's not what's on the alien's mind.
...And this is really not parka weather, but he's not ready to let go of his cold gun yet and he can't take off the coat unless he takes his hand off the gun. Sweat beads on his face.]
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[At least he doesn't seem to be angling for Snart at the minute anyway. But he doesn't necessarily want to turn his back on him. Today is a day of mixed emotions.]
[But that reminds him- he pats himself down to make sure everything is there. Then pulls out a... mirror? He scrutinzes it as he's opening it up.]
...
[He's sneering as he turns it around to look at the back. Then at the mirror. Then at the navigation on the mirror.] Okay, this ain't technology I ever run into before. It's like a lady's mirror so she can get all dolled up. But it's also some sorta comm.
An' it sure as hell ain't mine.
[He shows it to Snart. Is it his?]
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There's an uneven weight in one of the pockets. He pulls out a mirror that matches his companions in size and shape.]
So, someone kidnaps us, plants compacts in our clothes--all without us knowing--and then drops us off on in a tropical paradise and flies away. [He gestures expansively to the jungle around them and then a swoop of his hand to mimic an airplane or spaceship in flight.]
I'm gonna go with reality tv show. [Not really his guess; this all feels more nefarious than that. But right now it fits the evidence about as much as anything else he can come up with.]
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Had dates end worse than that. Guess we're not getting off too bad, then.
But this bein' for somebody's entertainment. I'd buy it. [There's a lot of sickos in the galaxy. Him too, sometimes.]
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But if we're entertainment, that means that somebody's watching.
[He peers into the trees around them, looking for a blink of light or a flash of metal.]
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I say we go lookin' for 'em. Beats stickin' around here. And I'm not too keen on being' someone's wildlife documentary.
There're enough self-important assholes out there that think nothin' of stringin' someone along like that. Hell, if you do it, at least realize it ain't common or normal.
Degenerates.
[He's already muttering as he's starting to head down the hill. He's taking it slow, though, looking for traps.] Hey, you see a two legged big ol' rat with clothes you let me know, an' stay out of his line of fire 'cause he's probably armed.
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[His hand goes back to his cold gun, not so much out of suspicion of the blue alien (they seem to have reached at least a temporary truce against a possible common enemy) but rather out of a readiness to freeze whatever bastards brought him here.
The alien's warning makes Snart glance his way in confusion though. Rat with clothes, armed and dangerous. Not as weird as a telepathic gorilla, but still pretty damn weird.]
Two-legged rat. I'll keep that in mind. [He drawls.]
By the way, the name's Snart. But some people call me Cold. [He wears Cisco's nickname like a prison tattoo. It's his now. It's a part of his identity.]
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[A space pirate guild. He takes breaks between his sentence to listen, and he's fairly quiet in his stride. Says a lot for a guy in thick boots, much like Snart is.]
Be honest. How much money you got on your head that you know about? I'm wanted by a buncha Kree. And I wouldn't put 'em past this kinda shit.
[All the spite there. All of it.]
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Freaks who don't care about money, just about getting the job done. This isn't their style. [He thinks. He doesn't know nearly as much about their M.O. as Mick and Rip, but based on what they've said, the Time Masters go for swift execution, not this kind of playing around.]
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Somebody who don't care about money is a lot more off-puttin' than someone who does. At least they got some grounding in reality. [He doesn't know if these guys do.] Usually they get too damn used to gettin' their own way. Or they're a priest.
[Equally crazy.]
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Besides which, Snart had been in the uninhabited Alpine mountains of 16th century Italy before finding himself here, which was already plenty far the hell out of the way of Team Flash.]
Any of those people you know who'd be into this kind of thing got time travel?
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How do you figure time travel got somethin' to do with this? [He looks at that weird mirror again. He thinks, just maybe, he sees some distant light through the trees.]
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[And the fact that he's fairly sure that no one on 15th Earth spoke the way Yondu speaks, which means that Snart was carried across time as well as space. Unless Yondu is speaking alien and this is Rip's translation pill making him sound like he has a southern accent.]
Any idea what year it is? By Earth reckoning? [He adds, just in case.]
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Well, I picked Peter up in ah... nineteen eighty... hell, what year. I know he goes on about. Oh yeah. Nineteen eighty eight. And Terran years are about three-hundred sixty days, right? And a day's about as long as a Xandarian day.
So twenty-five, twenty-six years give or take... Around the range o' twenty-fourteen I reckon.
What's it for you, Frosty?
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[He tilts his head.]
Time's a complicated thing. I'm from two thousand sixteen originally, but before I was brought here I was in fifteen-something, saying "Hi" to baby Galileo.
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[But, anyway.]
Okay, that is weird.
I think... we're gettin' near somewhere. Startin' to hear some people carryin' on.
[Which means he's slowing down, as this can go very well or very badly.]
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I really hope this isn't Lian Yu, or we're going to have some problems.
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[He says blandly, crouching behind some brush and finally catching sight of what looks like a derelict as hell ocean port.] There are a lotta people down there.
And if they ain't Terran, they're close to it.
[AKA he's the only blue guy, and that doesn't sit right.]
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We're either in the eighteenth century or we stumbled across a Hamilton after-party.
[He drawls then turns back to Yondu.]
You want to get out of here?
I've got an idea. The team of do-gooders I was with before have probably noticed by now that I'm gone. They're going to look for me [He's confident that Mick will start bashing in skulls if they try to abandon him. Even after everything.] and they'll eventually use the ship's computer to do it. All we've got to do it send up the right kind of smoke signal they'll come for me.
You in?
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