nonotagain | 01. Test Drive Meme

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!tdm

01. Test Drive Meme

TEST DRIVE MEME

Thinking about joining Iterum? Unsure of who to bring or if they'll even fit the setting? Posting here offers you the chance to find out how they'll do while getting the sample for done for their application.

→ Comment down below with the character you'd like to test drive in the setting. Don't forget to add their name and canon in the subject line.
→ Choose a scenario or create your own, and tag around!
→ Test drives will be posted regularly in the months of March, June, September, and December.
→ Threads in the test drive are NOT eligible to use for activity checks, however, you can make them game canon if you wish and both you and your scene partner agree.

Possible Scenarios
Please note that all characters will initially arrive in their assigned housing; they are free to explore the City to their heart's content after that!

01. Arriving: You're pretty sure you knew where you were before you closed your eyes. But somewhere between then and now, you discover that you're definitely not there. In fact, the setting is so unfamiliar to you that it's bordering on unnerving and questions start to stack. Have you been abducted? Did you get drunk and pass out somewhere and not remember? Whatever the case, you need some answers. Or maybe this is familiar and the only thing that doesn't make sense is the layer of dust on everything around you which obviously means some time has passed. How much? No one seems to know. What you do know is that sitting around and waiting for answers is likely not going to happen.

So, you set out and hope to run into someone in the City that looks like they may be in a similar situation. Or, at the very least a person that might be able to provide some explanation. Veteran Chosen, make sure you warn the new people about the Shadows and advise them to steer clear of dark alleys and things that go bump in the night.

02. Party, party!: Now that you've arrived and hopefully settled, it's time to unwind. Inside your welcome basket is an invitation from the Duchess, who has decided to celebrate the growing population of the City with a massive "Welcome to the City" party in the Tower District. Wine spills free, and drugs abound, this is the kinda party that caters to all! The wicked and debauched demons and the good and decent who, if not careful, might end up tainted and corrupted at some point, like everyone else. Even if it's only for one night, why not cut loose and forget about whatever is pressing on your mind?

Nothing to wear? Check your closet, we're sure you'll find something suitable to wear.

03. Prominence: Everyone knows that the City sometimes influences its population on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, you arrived right in the middle of a heavy Prominence. Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, or Pride: choose your sin and get wicked. You'll find it's hard to avoid being sinful, almost as if your basic instincts are taking over.

04. Run!: A lot can go wrong in the City; demon attacks, muggings or there's even danger of being plucked from the streets and forced to partake in the Coliseum's version of Fight Club (if you know, you know). There are plenty of unsavoury types that all Chosen must be aware of. They rule the night, and once the sun goes down it becomes the Sinning Hour. Demons and monsters and humans capable of inciting just as much fear, if not more, come out to play. Mind yourself. It's hardly a tea party out there.

05. Network: Broadcast a video, voice or text message to anyone in your phone's directory. All Chosen have a device that they can use to communicate. Those that are returning will find their phone as it was, though without any contact that was previously in the City that is not currently. For the newly Chosen, a device will be supplied in your welcome basket and will match the type of telecommunications that was being used at the time of their exit.

06. Wild Card: Choose your own adventure in the game's multiple settings!

n a v i g a t i o n

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ It's beyond surreal to be sitting next to Clint Barton. Hawkeye. He'd been an Avenger once, which is cool enough in itself, but before that, he'd been a SHIELD agent. Coulson has only ever spoken of the other man with respect and admiration, which means that's exactly what Daisy herself feels for him. He doesn't have to prove himself; if Coulson says someone is good, she believes it without question.

Which is why it hurts to hear the mention of Fury in this context. She'd always hoped Coulson might have reached out to his old friends and finally let them in on his little Not Actually Dead secret, but then he really had died and she hadn't taken the time to look into things like that.

This isn't the sort of conversation she's prepared for. The world is ending and we're all gonna die? Sure, easy. Your old friend wasn't actually dead for five of the years you thought he was? Not so easy.

When at a loss of how the hell to approach a situation, trying for humor is always an option. ]

Well, Fury's not actually in charge of the books anymore, and Mack's a gamer, so you never— [ Her voice breaks off as something he said registers, her muscles tensing in reaction. ] Wait, did you say 5?

Yep. [He pops the p obnoxiously. Not addressing everything else immediately. No idea who Mack is, and Fury is always in charge, even when he fakes his own damn death.] Pretty sure it was supposed to come out years ago, but then- [He snaps his fingers.

But he's pretty sure that's not the issue here. He lets it sit for a moment, as laid back in his seat as he can be, before he asks the pertinent question.]

What year is it?

[ Years ago. Plural. The seconds that stretch between them feel like hours as they both come to the same conclusion of what's off about this entire line of thinking, and it's a true testament to Daisy's training and just how much she's been through the last few years that she doesn't start losing her shit. ]

2019. [ The answer comes out flat as she watches him apprehensively, knowing where this is going and not the least bit prepared for it. Funny, considering she'd just spent a couple of weeks hopping through seventy years of SHIELD's history. ] That was a year ago for me.

[ And she still feels guilty as hell for not being around to help in the fight against Thanos. If she'd stayed on Earth even just a week longer, she might have been able to stop him. Instead, she's carried the weight of billions of lives on her conscience, and that's just the human ones. ]

And 2019 was five ago for me.

[Which means she still thinks everyone's gone. He'd been off the radar for a while, made a decision, honed his skills with a blade. Started forging a new identity. Hadn't become a global name yet, hadn't left his bloody mark yet, but soon to come, fed on all the grief and anger and pain.]

It gets fixed. [He raises a hand to stop her before she says anything about that.] I didn't say it gets better. But it gets fixed. Everyone comes home the same way they disappeared. Guy responsible and his army get put down hard.

[And SHIELD's been gone for a while. He'd always heard rumors that it might not actually be gone, not really, not with Fury still around, but if it's still there, none of the Avengers got contacted about it.]

What's your name?

[ Five years. Sometime in those five years, they'd fixed it. The weight that lifts from her chest nearly has her in tears, her composure slipping at the sheer magnitude of the incredible bomb he's just dropped on her. And they'd stopped Thanos. They being the Avengers, of course — it has to be.

Lifting a hand to press fingers to her lips, she closes her eyes, taking a moment to process everything before answering his question. She has to assume they're from the same universe. Until there's something glaringly obvious to the contrary, it's just going to be a lot less brain-breaking to go with the notion they're both from at least the same place if not the same time.

Okay. She can do this. Dropping her hand again, she feels both energized and heavy with exhaustion as she introduces herself. ] Daisy Johnson. Coulson recruited me to SHIELD a year after the Battle of New York.

[ Sorry, Clint. You're not the only one with bombshells to drop. ]

[It's a lot to take in. He's not exactly pressed for time right now as it is. Not any more than usual. They also don't need to make a scene here.

He doesn't yet know what it means for people to wake up in different parts of the city. When he does, when he learns what it means to be a citizen of the Coliseum, he's going to find it darkly, darkly funny. When she gives her answer, and the further context, there is a very bright flare of anger. He only just barely bites back some very unkind things that immediately spring to the tip of his tongue.

It's the fact of what she is that stays the arrow loaded in his mouth. It would be a joke in the poorest of taste to make, and unless she's somehow a Hydra agent still lying low after all this time, there's no reason to blatantly lie to him. She says it because she believes it. She says it because that is her understanding of what happened.

He gets a little stupid when he gets impulsive; he knows this. Springing from his seat and leaving her is not going to get him any closer to answers. But locking himself down feels like it gets harder with each year. He chooses the stare at the screen in front of him instead, jaw grinding through the information and the implications, and makes himself remember to breathe.]

Agent Coulson died in the Battle of New York.

[Statement of fact.]

[ Okay, that's not a terrible start. If she were in his shoes, she probably wouldn't have been able to keep her cool. He'd have been quaked right out of his chair, Avenger or not, so she has to give credit where credit is due.

Taking a deep breath, she nods, everything about her as serious and sincere as she can make it. But she is a spy, so she won't blame him one bit if he doesn't believe her. It's not like she can call Coulson up right now and have him verify her story. ]

Yeah, he did. And a few days later, SHIELD brought him back with Project TAHITI. Level 10, designed to revive a fallen Avenger. It was Fury's order to not tell any of you, and I guess Coulson thought it was easier to just stick with it even after Fury made him Director.

[He's not exactly friends with Fury. Fury doesn't have friends, and the number of people he's ever trusted could be counted on one hand. But he has--had--a working relationship with the man. The fact that the man has contingency plans for his contingency plans is not a shocker. The fact that there might have been/was a plan for what happens if an Avenger falls in battle is not a shocker.

Little bit of a shocker that he might have had something that actually worked and kept it the highest level of secrecy. Clint can understand not making something like that public. Stark would've thrown a fit, Rogers would've walked a line, but that would be dangerous to release into the world, dangerous for enemies to get hold of. There would be ethical and existential questions galore.

And he used it on Coulson.

Clint can imagine how well that would've gone. Would have argued about it, that an agent, no matter how good or trusted, isn't on the same level as an Avenger, nevermind the fact that two of them are just damn agents. Would have wanted to get in touch with said agents. He--

--didn't. Let them all think he was dead this whole time. That doesn't seem like Phil. Even he'd been known to bend a rule or look the other way on an order if he didn't sit right with him. He only glances at Agent Johnson out of the corner of his eye.]

And when SHIELD collapsed, and Black Widow [easier not to use her name, lest two ghosts get invoked] released all that fun sensitive information out into the world? I've never heard of this project. Damn near everything was out there. [Some things weren't. Some things were never made digital. Was everything about this project destroyed? Was it too dangerous? Did something go wrong?]

[ She's never fully understood why Coulson didn't eventually reach out even just to the two agents he'd trusted for years. All she can figure is that the timing had never been right. He'd been under Fury's orders for a while, but then when he wasn't, they'd had HYDRA to deal with, and the effects of his exposure to GH.325. Maybe he hadn't wanted to walk back into their lives in case something went terribly wrong and he had to be... After that, there'd been the Inhumans, and HIVE, and trying and failing to make SHIELD public again. AIDA and the Framework. Being sent to the future...

And then he'd been out of time. She can guess why he hasn't told them since being brought back again — he's not "alive" exactly, though she'll fight anyone who says he's not still Phil Coulson. ]

According to May, Fury buried the intel when he "chose not to bury Coulson." That's what he told Hill anyway, and May found the drive right where he said — in Coulson's casket. [ She hadn't known him the first time he was buried. She hadn't stuck around for the second. ] The only related information that made it to the public was a bunch of scientific analyses of the GH drugs used in the project, but even FitzSimmons couldn't make sense of it without context, and since said context was destroyed months before your friend dumped SHIELD's secrets onto the internet... Well, trust me, we're better off without it.

[ The fact he's not using Romanoff's name makes her uneasy, but she'll follow his lead and go with it for now. ]

Made a whole plan to bring back an Avenger--he never told us about that, by the way, so obviously it was going to happen whether we wanted it or not--then brought back Coulson, so it worked, then buried the intel, then destroyed the context that could've made the intel valuable instead of gibberish.

[He can put two and fucking two together and see something went wrong loud and clear. It's his turn to scrub his face with his hands, blowing out air like trying to literally blow off steam.

They could've used him. The whole team at least gave a shit about Coulson, even the people that had only just met him, because that's the kind of effect he tended to have. Several of them had more than enough reason to like him, to trust him even. At any point, he could've popped back into their lives and helped. He sure couldn't have hurt. Maybe he could've kept the team together. Maybe he could've helped in Wakanda. Five fucking years Clint could've used Coulson in his life. Did he get dusted, too?]

What did Fury playing god do to him?

[ Well, it's pretty clear Clint doesn't put any of this past Fury, which will hopefully help him believe her. Their lives are full of weird shit, but it just hits differently when it involves someone you care about. Add in this place where they don't know if they can trust anything or anyone...

Daisy sighs heavily and shifts in her seat. A drink would be really nice right now. Or some painkillers. ]

In order for the procedure to work, they had to rewrite his memories so he didn't remember it. That messed him up more than anything because when he did remember, it was... [ Lifting a hand, she gestures helplessly. That's certainly how she'd felt that day she'd pulled him out of the memory machine after hearing him beg to be allowed to die. ] The drug did have side effects. In baseline humans, it left a sort of genetic homing beacon that nearly drove him insane. Once we figured out where it was pointing us, though, he was fine. The drug kept him alive as long as it was in his system.

[Rest assured that he hears every word Daisy says. It just immediately becomes difficult to see anything but red after rewrite his memories.

The logical part of him can quickly assess the need to something about the memory of dying paired with the reality of living. That might do something to a person, depending on the method of bring brought back. Sounds like it was already driving him nutso anyway because of--what the fuck does 'genetic homing beacon' even mean?

The emotional part of him can imagine Phil Coulson realizing there's an aberration in his memories and being unable to let a mystery go. Digging at himself until he knows the truth. Running himself into the ground trying to run a team, trying to keep a team from being too worried about him, trying to understand what happened to him, trying to understand what his boss and friend did.

There's something else about what she's saying that bothers him, something important, but it's hard to see past the choking swell of bright rage in his chest, no matter how brief it might end up being. He could start kicking out monitors. It would be easy. And he has half a mind to do it, and then flip the god damn table, take a chair and toss it out the front window. Make a scene and not care about the consequences.

He stands abruptly and marches out the door.

(He doesn't have a destination in mind. He just needs to move before he does something regrettable.)]

[ Well, she should have seen that coming. If she'd been the one on the receiving end of this conversation, she'd have quaked half the building apart by now, so it's a testament to Clint's control that he manages to leave without breaking anything. She stares after him numbly for a few moments before the guilt comes crashing in.

What the hell was she thinking? Just because he deserved to know the truth doesn't mean he deserved to have it all dropped on him like that. The only thing she can think is that her judgment must be impaired, first from the whole probably being dead thing, and then from learning what she had about the future — a future she'd probably never see. It must be hitting her harder than she realized for her compassion to slip like this.

Seconds pass as she argues with herself, weighing whether to force her presence upon him again or let him have time to cool down, but then she's up and out the door as well, rushing to catch up. ]

Barton! [ She calls out when she spots him, but she won't blame him in the slightest if he tells her to fuck off and leave him alone. ]

[The amount of fuck off energy dripping from him at least means people give him a fairly wide berth. He's not hard to spot. Doesn't slow in his march towards Anywhere But Here, but he doesn't say to fuck off.

He owes a lot to Fury, and he understands the former Director of SHIELD has a moral compass that veers in directions not everyone agrees with. Steve's not as black and white as people think--thought. But enough that his sensibilities still seemed hilariously out of date. Stark never really had a leg to stand on in the moralizing race, but that never stopped him. Fury always, always has the biggest possible picture in mind.

Doesn't make him any less pissed on his old handler's behalf.]

Did he know? [Because he's just presuming she's going to follow him; she just has to deal with the rancid vibes.] Fury, he tested this shit before, right? He knew what was going to happen to Coulson, fuck with his head, make him a little crazy?

[ He doesn't stop, but he doesn't lash out either. And when she's near enough, he even speaks to her, so... win? Probably the closest she's going to get to one, anyway, so she'll take it. ]

Coulson was in charge of testing it, and he's the one who told Fury to end the project. So yeah, Fury knew there was a possibility, but the memory rewrite was supposed to help, and he had May monitoring Coulson in case anything happened.

[ None of which is likely to sound any better to Clint. Daisy had lived through that last part and she'd been pissed as hell about it, but with everything that's happened since then, she just counts them lucky that Coulson didn't go completely batshit insane like Garrett had. And, well, if Fury hadn't made the call he did, she never would have met Coulson. She'd probably still be just a hacker living in a smelly van, raging at the world and trying to save it at the same time. ]

[That doesn't help, no. That Coulson agreed to test it in the first place sucks, but it apparently alarmed him enough to tell Fury to knock it off. Which didn't stick. Figures. That May was around to help--he figures that's the Cavalry, wasn't she benched and put desk-side?--means that there were some grave concerns about what Coulson might do, how he might react.]

Messing with heads never helps.

[He looks at her, briefly. He isn't angry at her. She's just giving him exactly what he asked for. She was a new recruit in a weird time. He breathes, tries to remember breathing, and while he isn't any less pissed, he can start trying to stuff some of it in a box for later, or seal it up in a mental mason jar, or anything to set it aside. It's not fully successful, but at least when he opens his mouth again, he sounds more sullen than enraged.]

You were a problem child, huh?

[He doesn't mean literally, although, frankly, anyone under the age of about thirty reads 'child' to him at this point. Don't get old. He means as a baby agent. Coulson doesn't get sent to recruit the easy cases. He's a great teacher who comes at problems sideways, has a great sense of when to have a heavy hand and when to be gentle, has a way of looking at someone like he can see into them. Figure them out like puzzles.

Agent Daisy Johnson can't possibly be anything near normal.]

[ Daisy's own experience of having her head messed with has her inclined to agree with the sentiment, except there are always exceptions to every rule. Coulson had made a pretty damn big one when he'd agreed to help her dad, and it's the only reason Cal Johnson isn't rotting in a cell somewhere. Yes, she'd lost the father she'd searched for her entire life, but he's alive and happy, and that's enough. It has to be with all she's lost.

So she doesn't say anything, because she understands all too well why he feels the way he does. There are scars there no one else will ever fully be able to comprehend, and it's an experience she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy. Even after all these years, she still dreams of Hive, the memories of being under his sway mixed in with all the other nightmares. ]

You have no idea. [ Amusement actually creeps into the words, a smile tugging at the very corners of her lips. ] Coulson arrested me for being a pain in SHIELD's ass, then he offered me a job on his new team. [ Dropping her voice like she's revealing a secret, she adds: ] I was their first mission.

[Clint huffs out a sound that on another day would be a bark of laughter.] Yeah, it's the best way to get recruited if you don't already have something weird going on with you. They figure it's better if you become a problem for them.

[Coulson with a whole baby team. God. He would've loved to see that. Next time he sees that eyepatched asshole, if ever again, they're going to have to have words. If he ever sees Coulson again--

The amusement bleeds away.]

Before, when you were explaining it. You said the drug kept him alive. [The rage is still there, tucked hot under his ribs. But the grief long buried is making itself known. He licks his lips and promises himself he won't punch anyone or anything out that isn't gym equipment. Right away.] It kept him alive. [The past tense had been bothering him, though it took until now to realize that's what it had been. He wants to ask, what's keeping him alive now, but that...is more optimistic than he can allow himself.]

[ Her something weird had cropped up after she'd been recruited, much to everyone's surprise. The 0-8-4 who turned out to be part-alien with superpowers. In another life, she might have ended up with the Avengers like Clint, but in this timeline, she'd found her family with Coulson and his little team.

Oh, right. He'd noticed that. Of course, he had — he was one of SHIELD's best. ]

He made a deal. [ Where would she even start explaining everything that led to that moment? She sighs heavily and crosses her arms over her middle, her own grief swelling like a wave ready to crash into her. ] It's... complicated, but to save the world, he gave up the thing keeping him alive. It took about a year to catch up with him, right before... Right before the world ended in a different way.

[ It's only been a year since she'd said goodbye to the man who'd become the center of her world. The father she always should have had, the person who believed in her no matter what. They'd fought by each other's sides, fought for each other, and saying goodbye was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do.

Another possibility occurs to her for why Coulson never approached Clint and it's like a fist clenches around her heart. She can't tell him that, not now. Not yet. ]

May was with him at the end. They went to Tahiti.

[It's the bad news he was expecting. At some point, later, he'll ask for the whole story. He's owed that much. But the specifics, the complicated details, don't matter right now.

What matters is that there were a number of years more that Coulson got to have. And now he's gone. Again. There's a finality in Daisy's tone that suggests there isn't going to be a second revival. And there shouldn't be. Once was bad enough.

(There is part of him that has to wonder about Tony. If there was a miracle revival drug floating around, and an Avenger fell, one whose body they at least still had-- If they had tapped Bruce for his brains on chemistry, biology--)

He abruptly stops, closes his eyes, tries to breathe through the pain. Lets out a laugh that is by no means happy. The irony. He'd lost (nearly) everyone that mattered that day, and never knew how much more he lost, too. Maybe it's better if Phil didn't make it to the day half the world turned to dust. Which side would he have landed on? Natasha couldn't (or wouldn't) stop him when he'd run off, disappeared, forged a monster out of pain, but maybe if a ghost from the past had still been around--]

He went to the place the project was named after? [There's a roughness underlying his voice.] Yeah, that's the kind of irony he'd like. He and May...they were close?

[Like close. Not just good working relationship close.]

[ It really was so Coulson to spend his last days in the place that had haunted him for six years. It's a magical place. Drinking wine on a beautiful beach wasn't a terrible way to go, she had to admit. And May said he'd been happy... ]

Yeah, they were. [ Fondness emerges from the cloud of sorrow hanging around her. She'd been so excited for them to finally take that step in their relationship. ] Took 'em a while to get there, but they did in the end.

[ That grief pierces through her again, because what if she never sees May again? They'd only just reconnected, leaning on each other as they dealt with all the bullshit of the last few weeks and now— ]

May is hoping to recreate the Academy in his name. She hated being stuck behind a desk, but I think she'd be a really great teacher. She was my SO, so I've seen the miracles she can work firsthand. [ Daisy's trying hard to lean on humor again, poking fun at her own disastrous early days of training, but the words fall flat as her heart is slowly crushed in her chest. ]

[Huh. So the cellist didn't work out, that's a shame, but...that he found someone right under his nose to be happy with... That makes it all worth it, doesn't it?]

Probably better for him I didn't know. I would've made so much fun of him as payback for some of the grief he gave me.

[He can't, actually, imagine it being better not knowing. Could Phil have done something about the Accords, or been a fucking voice of reason between Steve and Tony? Maybe Rhodes wouldn't have been shot down, and half the team in exile. Maybe they could've sorted out their god damn differences about Barnes in a reasonable way.

But he didn't. He wasn't there, and he did nothing to help. That stings. But Clint can't deny the appeal of honoring him with building back something better.]

If anyone can whip new blood into shape in his place, I'm sure she's not a bad choice.

[ There's so much Daisy wants to tell him. All the amazing and terrible things their team encountered, all the work they put in that no one ever knew about. The world thinks the Avengers took down HYDRA, but SHIELD did just as much work from the shadows. Hive and AIDA and, hell, her parents... Saving the world from a future where the last scraps of humanity were ruled over by the Kree.

But this isn't the time or the place for those stories. He's had to deal with too much already, he doesn't need even more incomprehensible shit heaped on his plate. Just look at where they are now; they've got more than enough to deal with. ]

I'm sorry. [ It comes out so suddenly, she almost can't believe she actually said it. But then, visibly conflicted, she continues. ] For just dropping all this on you. You deserved better than that. All of it.

[There are things he knows he deserves. Answers, for one thing. Maybe a quiet retirement that lasts more than two years, though he's never going to get his hopes up about that. Deserve better, though? After the things he's done, whether by necessity or by choice?

That's a slippery slope of thinking he doesn't tend to ascribe to. And it isn't fair of her to put guilt on herself just because they can both mourn the same man who was important in their lives. He shakes his head.] I asked. I would've wanted to know either way, and I appreciate you not sugarcoating anything. You and me, hey, we're gonna have to spend a night getting stupidly drunk, and you can tell me about him. And the things you and your team got up to.

And seeing as I've got a kind of glimpse in your future, you got questions, I figure I owe you any answers I can give.

Thanks. I appreciate that. [ And she does, because not knowing the details of something is likely to eat away at her if she lets it. She also appreciates the offer of getting drunk and sharing stories — she'd like to hear a few of his from Coulson's earlier days, if Clint's willing to share them. But the mention of their possibly shared future only serves to ratchet up her anxiety, her thoughts again trying to spiral out of control with all the What Ifs and unknowns. Maybe it's the fact that she trusts him implicitly, not just because he'd been an Avenger but because Coulson had trusted him, but she feels her guard slipping and doesn't fight it. ]

I've gotta be honest, I actually don't know if it is my future. Pretty sure I died before I woke up here. Wherever here is.

[ Which is the million-dollar question, isn't it. Where the hell are they? Who brought them here and for what purpose? Those are the answers she really needs, even if it only ends up helping other people like Clint who actually have a life to get back to. It won't be the first time she makes up her mind to sacrifice herself if it helps others have a better life. At least this time no one she loves is around to stop her. ]

01. Test Drive Meme

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