☆ ᴛᴇsᴛ ᴅʀɪᴠᴇ ᴍᴇᴍᴇ 02 ☆

[statusreport]

Welcome, cadets! Wanna dip your toes in the pool? Have a new character you wanna try out? Interested in the setting but not sure if your character's a good fit? Welcome to the second official Test Drive Meme for Illyria, for all your test drive needs! There are a few prompts for you to choose from below, or you can make up your own starter if none of the choices tickle your fancy. Threads from this meme can be counted as game canon if you like, if you apply and are accepted, so you don't have to meet someone again for the first time. Reserves are open at this time, and applications will be open September 8th thru 12th. Have fun!

☆ ᴘʀᴏᴍᴘᴛs ☆
A. Arrival: You wake up disoriented, finding yourself on what appears to be a medical bed. As you try and sit up, a young woman with blond hair pulled up in a tight bun stops you, urging you to take it easy. You were found in the cargo bay unconscious with a few other people, and while she's not sure where you came from or how you got here, you're here for the long haul, now. As you look around, you see a few other people in beds like the one you're lying on--do you recognize anyone from home? Or are these people complete strangers? Do any of them know what's going on, or how you got here? The only way to find out is to ask them!

B. Mealtime: While the Illyria has been mostly repaired, there are still some systems that aren't quite back at 100%. Unfortunately, one of these systems runs the replicators in the mess hall. Every order, no matter what you have requested, will result in a nice squirmy plate of Bithool gagh. Hope you're hungry!

C. Going up? You're not sure about these turbolift things, but it beats climbing ladders and crawling through tubes to get to the other decks. Besides, the ship is all fixed now, right? Surely you won't get stuck in it again. As you step into the lift, maybe there's someone already in there--or maybe someone steps in after you, but either way, you're not alone as the lift begins to ascend. Things seem to be going well for a moment, and then there's a loud screeching sound and the lights go dark as the lift stops dead in its shaft. Well, shit. Looks like this lift still needs a bit of work. Do you and your company try and fix the lift? Do you call for help? Do you crawl up into the shaft and try and make your way to another deck through the Jefferies tubes, possibly while humming the theme from Mission: Impossible? Who knows what peril may lie in the corridors between decks--do you take the risk, or wait to be rescued? Time to see if you're Starfleet material or not!

D. Excusez-moi? Maybe you dropped your communicator, or maybe you found the switch that makes it speak nothing but Spanish like Buzz Lightyear, but for some reason or another, your Universal Translator just isn't cutting the mustard. Be it Spanish, French, Klingon, or Vulcan, you just have no idea what this person in front of you is saying. Well, just walking away would be awfully rude, but how do you communicate with someone you can't understand??

Comments

Harry Kim | ST: Voyager

[neverpromoted]

It's not the first time Harry's found himself flung across the far reaches of the galaxy, but it is a little disorienting to not even be on one's own ship anymore. That, by all accounts, is weird.

But this is Starfleet and weird is what they've signed up for, so when the turbolift he's in suddenly just stops without warning, he simply glances upward and waits a long, tense moment, just to make sure they aren't about to go plummeting to their doom. He glances at his companion and allows one side of his mouth to quirk upward in a weary little smile. "Wouldn't happen to have a toolkit on you, would you?"

[ganbarimashu]

Stepping nervously into the... what was it called? Turbo-lift? Why couldn't they just call it an elevator? That was what it was, wasn't it? Ruby fidgets for a moment, waiting for the door to close, and then her big green eyes open wide as sand dollars when someone hustles to get on board before it can. Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, it's a boy. It's a... well, a man! He's a totally 100% grown-up adult man person!! Ruby doesn't know how to talk to boys at all, how is she going to survive this?? What if he asks her a question and she say something stupid? What if she can't even talk at all??

Okay, okay, get a grip, Ruby, you can do this. Maybe he won't want to talk! Maybe they can just make this trip in complete and total silence! That was normal, right? Nobody really talked in elevators back home, so... surely that would be the case here, too. Right?

Right?

Trying desperately not to hyperventilate, Ruby chews on her lower lip and shifts her weight back and forth from foot to foot. When the turbolift screeches to a sudden stop, though, Ruby finds herself failing at that whole not-hyperventilating thing. She presses herself against the wall as the lights flicker, and makes a startled, high-pitched noise when the man addresses her.

"No!" she gasps, and then claps both hands over her mouth. "I mean! No. Sir. I... I don't! I'm sorry!!"

She isn't sure why she would have a toolkit on her anyway, but she kind of wishes she did, because now she inexplicably feels like she has let this adult man person down. Her hands fisted by her face, Ruby looks pitifully up at him, though she maintains her distance. She's not exactly afraid of him--he has a nice face!--but everything about this situation, from the ship to the fact that she doesn't know anyone here, has her two hairs away from having a mental meltdown as it is.

[neverpromoted]

Cute kid. Harry can't really help the observation as he notes the girl in the turbolift with him. She looks young -- but that might be more in her demeanor rather than her look. She's obviously nervous for some reason -- maybe, like him, she's just appeared here without warning. He knows how disorienting and, frankly, awful that can be. He's just about to say something, to try to set her at ease a bit, when the turbolift does its thing.

Just as well. He probably would have made it worse had he managed anything before wryly asking for a toolkit.

He takes a step back as she exuberantly apologizes and lifts a hand, waving away the apology. "It's fine, it's fine. It was a joke, promise. It's okay." Harry puts a hand against the side of the turbolift, frown lines easing when he doesn't feel any overt vibrations. That's good, at least. Any shaking and he'd be the first to find a way out. "It's okay," he says again, actually smiling in her direction. "I think we're okay for now. There's safety protocols upon safety protocols on these things."

He drops his hand, smile still in place. "I'm Harry Kim, uh. Ensign on the USS Voyager... which is not this ship, but close enough."

[ganbarimashu]

She is pretty young--she's only fifteen--but it's true that she's quite timid and carries herself accordingly, which can make her seem smaller and younger than she really is. The fact that she has had very little contact with boys or men besides her father just makes her that much more nervous. She goes to an all-girls school and has no brothers, topped off with being raised by extremely strict parents... this is probably the first time in her life she's had any real freedom, and frankly it is terrifying.

The man waves a hand placatingly, assuring her it's okay, and Ruby does relax a little at his words. He has a very calming voice and a friendly face, and he sounds like he knows what he's talking about. She tentatively lowers her hands a bit, letting them rest by her collarbone instead. This is progress, Harry, I promise.

When he introduces himself, she tilts her head a little. This whole universal translator thing is still a bit of a mystery to her, so when he says his name is Hari, her brain runs through a list of reasons this is a very unusual name. 'Needle', 'joist', and 'acupuncture' are all rather strange things to name your child after, so she settles on 榛, which means alder tree, which is a far more acceptable namesake. 'Kim', though, sounds Korean, perhaps, so she's probably overthinking this, anyway.

"R-Ruby," she stammers, trying to be brave. "Kurosawa Ruby." He seems like a nice man, and she really does want to work on being less timid. She may be stuck in this elevator with him for a while, so... it's as good a place to start as any, right? She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, then forces her hands down to her sides. "So... you came here from another ship?" she asks carefully. "Were you transferred, or did you just wind up here out of the blue like I did?"

[neverpromoted]

She seems to calm a bit, settling into a body language that's a little less completely afraid to something just a little tense and uneasy. It's progress and Harry will take it for what it is. At least he's not scaring her anymore. (He wonders how he could scare anyone. No one, in all their encounters in the Delta Quadrant, had ever been intimidated by Harry Kim. He's still not sure if that's a gift or a curse.)

He turns to a control panel, carefully trying to pry it apart while she introduces herself, and he grins at her. Poor kid; she's trying and honestly? He's not all that enthused about being stuck in a lift, either. "It's a pleasure, Miss Kurosawa."

He gets the faceplate off and sets it aside, at his feet. While peering into the open control panel, he answers. "I just wound up here. Believe it or not, it's not the first time I've been thrown halfway across the galaxy in one go." He grunts as he works loose what looks like a very fried component. "I've the Operations Officer on Voyager. My job there is basically to keep things like these lifts running smoothly."

Okay, so that's overly-simplistic and not quite true, but anything to reassure the kid.

[ganbarimashu]

"A-ahh, you don't have to be so formal, Mister Harry," she says quickly, waving a hand. "Just Ruby is fine." She is much younger than he is, for one thing, but if anybody is 'Miss Kurosawa', it would be her elder sister. Dia is everything a proper young woman from a prominent family should be: she's confident, talented, and beautiful. Ruby is just... well, Ruby.

As he fiddles with the panel in the wall, Ruby inches closer, her hands still up by her chest. She's rather curious, to be honest. She's never had much of an aptitude for technical things, but they're very interesting, and all the colored wires are just so pretty! They look like a beautiful colored braid or something. Feeling a little braver now that the topic of interest is something besides her, Ruby moves a little bit closer and drops to a crouch near him, squinting at the wiring and then peering at the fried circuit in awe. It looks kind of like charcoal from a hibachi.

"Operations Officer?" she echoes, glancing up at him. "That sounds pretty important. This has happened to you before, though?" She looks somewhat apologetic. "That's kind of scary--you must be a very brave man, to have survived something like this!"

[neverpromoted]

"Ruby, then." He says it with an absentminded edge as he peers through the circuitry. The most obvious problem is, of course, the fried circuit, but something had to cause that -- so, even if he had a replacement circuit in his pocket, he can't just throw it in there. Whatever caused this would just do it all over again. He pulls the circuit, pokes around a few wires, and leans back with a sigh... and then a smile.

"Well, yeah. I've been stuck in a lift before. That was a prank, though." He shrugs, blushing a little because brave man? Really? That's... okay, that's more than he usually gets. "But plenty of things have happened, so I've generally pretty good at figure this stuff out. I think I jerry-rig a rewire around that fried component. It'll be enough to get us out of here and then I actually fix this thing."