☆ ᴛᴇsᴛ ᴅʀɪᴠᴇ ᴍᴇᴍᴇ 01 ☆

[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 first 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. 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: The Illyria isn't a big ship, so the mess hall isn't very large, but there's room for a few tables with chairs, and there's a bank of replicators along one of the walls. You can ask for anything you want, from a simple cup of coffee to turducken to some nice fresh gagh. Looks like some other new arrival is having some trouble with their machine, though. Gonna give them a hand? Or maybe you've gotten your plate of food, but the only open seat is at an occupied table--perhaps introductions are in order. Mingle! These are going to be your crewmates for a long time, it seems.

C. Going up? Man, this ship is a mess! That trip across all those galaxies sure did a good job wrecking things. You're not sure about these turbolift things, but it beats climbing ladders and crawling through tubes to get to the other decks. 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, now what? Do you and your company try and fix the lift? Do you try and call for help? Do you crawl up into the shaft and try and make your way to another deck through the Jefferies tubes? 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!

Comments

[agathaheterodyne]

Battleship Yamato.... Did that mean she was a construct that thought she was a ship, or that she was a ship who could look like a person? A thrill of scientific excitement moved through agatha like lightning. "Perhaps we could figure it out, if you like," she said, meaning the flowers, yes. And the deeper mysteries beside. There was nothing quite so exciting as science not yet understood. Science she could learn from.

But then she went back to what had been said earlier and shook her head. "I can figure it out once I get in there, and whatever I break I'm sure I can fix. Like I said, I am a Spark."

[senkan_yamato]

Yamato...blushed. "I-I must refuse! My design is a matter of national secrecy, you understand?" And it was horribly embarrassing to think of someone seeing her...opened up. Did she have kidneys or boilers? She had heard rumors that some shipgirls when badly injured revealed parts of their true nature, leaking bunker oil and ice-cold water that could only have come from the depths where their hulks slowly rusted into oblivion. She hoped that was only a rumor.

"You keep saying that, but there is no significance to that word to me." Before there could be an outburst triggered by that statement though, the lights went out and Yamato had to resist the urge to cry out in confusion. Instead she called for-"Searchlights!"

There was a faint rustling and then on her shoulders, a pair of tiny spotlights switched on where they had not been before. They were crewed by...tiny people. Not clanks or obvious constructs, but tiny bobble-headed people, who had appeared as if by magic. One crew gleefully swung their high-powered light onto the face of Agatha's rotund follower and shouted something in language so high-pitched as to be practically inaudible.

[agathaheterodyne]

Agatha nodded quickly, holding up her hands. "It was only an offer. I would never dismantle, improve, or attempt to repair a sentient being without his, her, or its permission unless that is the only way to save the life in question. Your body is your body," she assured her. "Mine's been tinkered with enough against my will, I would NEVER do that to anyone else."

"You did it to me!" the round creature cried out.

Agatha sighed and rolled her eyes. "Fine. To keep a horrible monster from killing everyone, including people I care about, yes, then I would make them less dangerous. But I didn't disrupt your core of who you are. And I'll have you know, most of the others wanted you disassembled to bolts and melted in a boiler."

"I refuse to be grateful to any flesh creature for anything other than being a good meal!"

"I never asked for your gratitude," she said simply.

"I could squash it for you, if you wanted," the boxy clank offered. "I would be happy to kill for you my lady! Would you like to hear him cry out in pain? I can make him suffer."

"We can discuss it when we get back into Mechanicsburg," Agatha said with a heavy sigh, "Back into your proper body. Then we can spend a whole afternoon arguing about who I won't let you kill."

"I could kill Martellus," it offered helpfully.

"Don't tempt me," Agatha muttered under her breath. Then she turned her attention back to Yamato, looking apologetic. "Now I know why the townspeople talk about cages in the same breath they talk about children," she said, as though that made sense. The blush in her cheeks made it clear that she was regretting having said it at all. She was sure they hadn't meant for her to hear that they were betting on who she would produce the Heterodyne heirs with. Which was why the Castle had gleefully shared it. And then offered to kill the townspeople for her. She had a feeling that if she ever repaired her home, most of the effort of ruling would be keeping her people alive, protecting them from her allies. No wonder so many Heterodynes went insane....

"Anyway, a Spark is..." she stopped as the lights went out. Well, that probably wasn't good. She was relieved by the appearance of the spot lights and grinned. "you're useful to have around," she said with a bright smile. "If I tell you what a Spark is, think you'll let me fix the lift so we can get out of here, before it falls and we learn just how high up we are?"

[senkan_yamato]

That back and forth banter was...really, too much for Yamato to follow. But she had been flagship of the combined fleet, she knew all about threats and complaints and whinging subordinates. To air such grievances in public though, this was terribly gauche. Did they know how baddly their actions reflected on their mistress? Could they even conceive how much Kaga would have heaped disdain and ridicule on them if the aircraft carrier were here? The commentary about children and cages made even less sense-surely, some of the destroyer girls were rambunctious, but they were never that much trouble.

Still, they were spending a lot of time in a mobile room that was no longer mobile. "I have an alternitive solution." Yamato moved over to the door and wedged her delicate fingernails into the crack where it slid apart...and pulled. There was a moment of tension as she tested the door-and then pulled it easily open in a single slow motion, overcoming the motors that held it shut with a minimum of effort. Something evidently sensed the force she was using was sufficent if stopped to rip said motors from their mounting-there was scarcely any resistance at all as she flung the door open, revealing...well, a bulkhead, but also another door, though not one that they were well aligned with. This one would be trickier to open since it was above her head and there was only about a foot of clearance between the top of the turbolift and the floor of whatever corridor that was above them.

She just reached up and repeated the procedure-150,000 shaft horsepower and 70,000 tons of warship were not about to be stopped by a rather flimsy inner partition that was not even pressure-tight.

[agathaheterodyne]

Agatha leaned back against a wall watching her. "That is also a viable solution." she agreed, impressed with the construct before her. What couldn't this girl do? Who must have built her? She was like a Van Rijin. She was like a Muse. Very impressive. "However, is it not possible that doing that is also damaging the mechanics of the vessel?" she asked. "The doors are meant to open, yes, but not by being prized like a carapace."

It was the difference, to Agatha's mind, between using a rib splitter to get at someone's heart, or just slicing through the bone. Either could be repaired once the heart was no longer needed, but it was a matter of which kind of pain was caused while the patient was on the medical table. She supposed one way was as good as the other, even if Yamato's way meant that Agatha didn't have an excuse to check out what made this dirigible work.

[senkan_yamato]

"I was worried about that...but it seems likely that in an emergency, someone would need to force open the door so they would be designed to take it. It seemed a safer risk to take."

Yamato glanced at the doors and considered the question for a bit and then nodded slowly. "There must be some sort of fail-safe to protect the internal components. I did not feel them give much resistance once they began to open." The fact that there was little resistance that could have been put in her way was hardly here or there. She was a considerate person, and patted the door as she turned to Agatha, bracing the outer one open with a hand and the lift door with a foot. "Shall we?" Her free hand was extended, but finding a foothold on her to get up would be tricky...unless one climbed onto her of course.

[agathaheterodyne]

"Well, maybe I can help with this at least," Agatha said. She whistled sharply, and the small silent clank on her shoulder scampered up the offered hand, up Yamato's arm, to the hand that held open the outer door. Agatha whistled sharply, and a half dozen small clanks raced over i the first one, each armed with a small tool. They began working the tools into the opening, prising it open by leverage and numbers, rather than strength, to free Yamato to move more easily, and to make the opening wider. The small one that had been on her shoulder wordlessly directed the rest by pointing.

Agatha herself moved to help with the inner door. "We can remove the temporary support struts once we're out," she assured her.

[senkan_yamato]

Yamato smiled back at Agatha and shook her head. "It's quite alright. This is no problem for me at all, you just go right through and I'll follow as soon as everyone else is through." She certainly didn't seem to be straining at all, and instead decided to tell a story. "My sister, Musashi...she once became so upset that she crushed a doorknob in her hand. That made her even more angry so she threw the doorknob through the door itself, and the door on the far side of the hallway before it buried itself in the wall."

[agathaheterodyne]

"Alright," she murmured, gathering herself. If she blew this jump, she'd never hear - or feel - the end of it from Zeetha. She pressed herself against the back wall of the turbo lift, crouched, then attempted to leap through the door, over Yamato, without hitting her. She...

Well... she made it through the door, clocking her head on the frame, and she didn't hit Yamato, but the large beam weapon strapped to her leg fell free of the bindings and landed on the other girl as Aggie sprawled on the ground outside the lift.

She rolled onto her back, trying to get her bearings as the world slowly spun. she listened to the story and nodded once. She regretted the nod instantly. "Sounds about right."

so, do you want to have the ship under attack, or just suffering a temporary failure?

[senkan_yamato]

Yamato reached out and caught the strap on Agatha's raygun, tossing it up beside her, and then following herself once she was sure it was reasonably safe. She hadn't quite meant for the girl to jump the gap, and she wished she could have provided a hand-hold instead of that rather painful sounding thump.

The self declared BB simply pulled herself through the hall door, bracing it long enough for Agatha's clanks to clear the way before she released it. Whatever system was in charge of closing it, did so only slowly and after the last of the temporary bracing was removed, leaving plenty of time for people to get out of the way. It was quite a considerate door, all things considered.

Yamato had other concerns. Her rigging was a dull itch in the back of her mind, and while she was closer to her 46cm rifles, they were not yet in her grasp. "Do you require aid? I know basic first-aid myself, but not much more."

Let us say a temp. failure, since Aggie in combat leads to a lot of collateral damage....

[agathaheterodyne]

She groaned and sat up. "I think I'm alright. Just hit my head. You okay? Did I hit you?" she asked, pulling the weapon into her lap like a child might reach for a teddybear.

The dingbots dispersed, vanishing around corners until she had just the one she started with, the two slightly larger clanks and... A small orange weasel that was clinging to her now exposed ankle. It had a few too many legs, bolts in its neck, and sharp teeth.

[senkan_yamato]

Yamato offered a smile and sat neatly beside Agatha. "I may not look like it, but I am built to take and deal out hits. So though you did not hit me, I think it is safe to say that it would have done no lasting harm." She glanced at the raygun and frowned, then saw the weasel and pulled back a bit, fighting off the urge to go for her secondaries. All thoughts of her true durability were driven from her mind. "Ahhh...you seem to have a strange pet there." Yamato didn't really have a lot of context for this-but the legs and bolts made her think of Abyssals.

[agathaheterodyne]

"Hmm? Oh yeah. He's a special breed of weasel," she said, deciding not to give out too much information about him, just yet. What he could do made him a target if anyone her mother had gotten to was here... or if she lost the locket and anyone said something thinking they were talking to her. Lucrizia would happily kill the small beast. Agatha's only comfort, if you could call it that, was that knowing if her mother did that, she and this copy of her mother would both die. That was the other reason not to share too much, she'd rather not be held hostage because the wasp eater was easier to catch and hold than she was.

"He's been with me a while now. My friend Tarvek's family breeds them." True enough without explaining anything potentially dangerous or politically explosive.

[senkan_yamato]

"It has...too many legs." Yamato couldn't help but let that slip out-but she did slap the hand over her mouth in shame at having let it slip out. "I'm sorry! It's very...cute! Your friend is very lucky, yes." She tried to cover up, but the blush rose up her neck and onto her face until she felt shame almost melt her back down for scrap. The Pride of the Japanese Navy felt like she could die again, but she resisted the urge to do anything rash.

[agathaheterodyne]

Agatha chuckled lightly. "Yeah, I'm not sure why they were designed that way, the added legs don't seem to add any functionality," she said, tapping one of the weasel's middle paws lightly. "I mean, the sharper teeth make sense, and the bolts could imply that they occasionally need a jolt of energy," oh that was a nasty little thought... "But the extra legs?" she shrugged.

[senkan_yamato]

Yamato's expression went wooden as she glanced at the tiny robots and the raygun and the crazed eight-legged weasel. "Ahhh. Would this be some sort of...Frankenstien's monster sort of thing? Or one of those things the Americans write about in their pulp science fiction magazines, like a druggist who builds a machine to send burglars to another world?" Was she, in fact, sitting next to a mad scientist?

[agathaheterodyne]

She shrugged a bit. "I'm not sure about all that. There was a lesser spark named Frankenstein a while back, before I was born, but the Heterodyne boys got rid of him because he was making his constructs out of people who were still alive. These guys... I don't know how the first ones were made, but now I think they're bred. So less tampering, making this little boy an actual born creature, rather than a construct. Not that there is anything wrong with constructs of course. Some of the best people I know are constructs." The parents who raised her, Krosp... she wasn't sure quite how to count the Jägers, though....

[senkan_yamato]

This was...delicate territory. "As far as I know, the story of Doctor Victor Frankenstein is a work of fiction. The story was written by a Mary Shelley who told of an arctic expedition which found a doctor wandering far from civilization. The doctor had sought to create a powerful and beautiful figure, but he found his animated creation hideous and abandoned it. The creature watches people, but it's attempts to make contact with other humans go badly awry and it kills again and again. he demands that Victor make him a mate, but when the doctor reneges on this agreement, the creature kills first his friend and then his fiance. The story ends when the arctic explorer turns back from the pole and Victor dies, only for the monster to appear and tearfully mourn his creator before swearing to kill itself and drifting away from the ship on an ice raft." She fidgeted with her skirt, thinking about the next thing to say. "It is a very influential story, and has been adapted to the stage and screen many times. But it is only a story, so far as I know, and nothing in it is really possible-other than a trip to the north pole, though not with a wooden ship."

Yamato herself was another kettle of fish-though who truly understand from what source the ship-girls and abyssals had arisen to commence their fearsome battle? Even she was unsure of the origins of herself-or her enemy.

Sorry this is so long... >.< And spoilery for the first... um... 20th of the comic

[agathaheterodyne]

She leaned back a bit, as though there were in a meadow or on a beach, rather than the hall of a powered down defunct space ship. "Some stories that seem impossible still hold a core of truth," she said, thoughtfully. "I mean, I grew up thinking the Heterodyne stories couldn't possibly be right. Couldn't be true. They had to be exaggerated at the least, if not completely fictitious. And then one day, someone who was helping me run away drove it all home."

These were things she would have kept to herself as little as two months ago, but the people she most had to worry about? Her mother and the Baron? Well, her mother knew more or less where to find her, and the Baron wasn't a danger for the moment. And whatever he did to Gil... Gil wouldn't hurt her, not intentionally. Even with the brain overwrite. Somewhere in there, he was still Gil, and he was counting on her to find a way to fix things.

"I was walking down the street, quiet little town where I lived with my adoptive parents," she was leaving out that they were constructs, when she got to the names if the other realized that, fine, if not... She didn't know why she was still protecting their secret, they were safe now... but she had been protecting their secret since she was five, she couldn't betray it now. "when lightning started arcing sideways, shocking me and other people. There was a hole in the sky and some odd mechanical woman," probably a muse now that she thought of it. That would make sense. "She was pointing and seemed menacing, so I ran away. My locket was stolen, which held the only pictures I had of my birth parents, whose names I didn't really know. Turns out the locket was keeping me stupid. So finally able to think for the first time since I was eight or so, I get to the university to find out that the Baron and his son had come to see our work. After finding out that the plans we were sent were intentionally flawed, everyone started turning on each other. Next thing I know, Doctor Beetle is dead, and Doctor Merlot banished me from the university."

She shook her head. "I told my parents, and they told me to hurry and pack, and they went hunting for my locket, saying we'd leave at dawn. Except then I woke up in the garage, Herr Ketter's tractor has turned into a giant clank, one of the men who stole my locket thinks I killed his brother, and then the Baron gasses us all, and I wake up in the largest airship I had ever even imagined. There are other students there, including Theo DuMeed, who it turns out, I found out later, is related to me on my mother's side, and despite that seems to be a genuinely good person. I'm there a while, and I wind up meeting Krosp who is a feline construct made to be the emperor of all cats, a group of Jägermonsters, and found out that the Baron was holding the fabled hero, Othar, hostage. So I help save Othar, wind up fighting with a truly frighting woman named Von Pinn who turned out later to be one of the Muses, just to discover that there is a new kind of reverent, and that one of them was on board the airship the whole time. It took the hive engine that Doctor Beetle had been working on in secret, and unleashed the Swarm. Gil and I fought our way through, killed the Queen before it could birth a full swarm, and destroyed the drones. Othar then tried to kidnap me, and in the whole mess of trying to escape him, and convince Gil that I wasn't going to marry him just to tick off the Baron, my parents came in and saved me. They stole an airship. But while we're running away we come across the Baron, who in his shock spells it all out. My adoptive parents are actually Punch and Judy, from the Heterodyne stories. I mean, we all knew the Baron was Klaus from the stories, but it could have just been trying to make a fool of the most feared man in Europa. But then he says that my parents have to be Lucriza Mongfish and Bill Heterodyne. Add my uncle Barry to the list, and you have the main cast of nearly every Heterodyne story ever. The Baron ordered us locked up until he could get answers, separately. Of course my father, Adam who is Punch, not Bill, wouldn't have that, and he and my mother, Judy who was Lilith, not Lucrizia, fought to cover my escape."

She swallowed hard and looked at her hands. "Von Pinn killed them." she closed her hands tightly. "I still don't know how Gil managed to stitch them together again... but that's neither here nor there. At the time I saw them die to give me the chance to escape. Lilith threw me up to a higher platform so I could run. I found the other students and they helped me flee, but the only way off the castle is a smaller airship, and none of us knew how to fly. But Krosp did. One of the others gasped at the talking cat, but then someone said "Well, we're in a Heterodyne story now, talking cats and mad science are to be expected."

Sh looked up at her again. "So as far fetched as the story would sound as a play or a novel, the long lost HEterodyne heir, raised as a simple girl in a little nothing like Beetlsburg teamed up with the Baron's son to kill a Slaver Queen, destroy an active hive engine, be saved by Othar and then saved from Othar, be proposed to by the Baron's son, be saved by Punch and Judy then follow a talking cat off to steal an airship to begin my life of adventure.... It sounds like a fake, like it's impossible. And yet..." she shrugged. "Here I am. And frankly? That was downright calm compared to everything since I got to Mechanicsburg."

It's okay, I've read GG.

[senkan_yamato]

That was quite the story. Quite a unbelievable, otherworldly story-but who was she to doubt it. In this place, with the story she herself had?

..."In some ways, I envy you. I was built for one purpose. I was the strongest battleship the world had ever seen. I was built in secret, my true size and power concealed from the world. I was given the name of Yamato, the homeland of the Japanese people. The apex of my kind, none finer ever made, but I was held back for a 'decisive battle' until the war was nearly lost." She held out her fingers and began to tick off battles. "First Solomons. Sencond Solomons, Third Solomons, the Battle of Savo Island, the Battle of the South Pacific, the Nighttime Battle of Lunga point. I missed all of them. At Midway and the Battle of the Philippines, I was utterly impotent in the face of air-power. In the battle of Layte...I fired my guns in anger for the first time. And I was force to turn away." Tears of shame formed in her eyes, glistening in the light, and a few of her fairies tried to soothe her. "I, Yamato, turned and ran in shame from destroyers! Ships that weighed less than a single one of my turrets, whose broadsides were a hundred times smaller than my own!" She shook with the repressed emotion. "After that...I had only Operation Ten-go awaiting me. My final mission, without enough fuel to return to port, was to head to Okinawa and beach myself. I had not sailed six hours from Japanese waters when the attackers gathered to finish me off. Dive bombers ripped into me and torpedoes ripped open my sides until I rolled over and sank, taking all but a few hundred of my crew with me. That is the truth of history-I had been rebuilt to resist aerial attack with all the power available to me and I was able to strike down ten of my attackers. Twelve dead men for four thousand after my escorts were acounted for as well."

She gestured to herself. "This...body, this form, I cannot explain. I am a rusting hulk of shattered metal at the bottom of the ocean, broken in two by my death-throes, but I am here. Alive, when I was not even properly alive before. It is more than a Battleship like myself deserves."

Awesome!

[agathaheterodyne]

She reached over and put an arm around her. "It sounds like you kept being set up by the people giving you commands. I don't know who built the body you have now, but it seems brilliantly done, if you want my opinion. I can do my best, to help you if you want," Agatha said. "While we're both here, we can keep each other safe, or I can just protect you, if you want." she gave her arm a little squeeze. "And when we figure out how to go back home, you are welcome to come with me, if you want. Because I think you deserve a chance to be happy, no matter how things went wrong before."

[senkan_yamato]

"I...I hope you will not need protecting." Yamato offered a faint smile as she reached up and wiped away the tears. "I hope I will not need protecting either, for that matter. The things I cannot easily protect myself against are dangerous to be around." Unless it was rude people or...other things of that sort. "I was going to retrieve my equipment in fact."

"I must refuse the second offer however." She reached up and touched the golden mark at her throat, the imperial sigil. "I am the Emperor's ship, loyal no matter what. The cherry blossom falls when it is still beautiful, I account myself luckier than some." Not a prize like Nagato, or ambushed like Shinano, her youngest sister whom she had never known. "And there are still enemies to fight."

[agathaheterodyne]

"I hope we won't need protecting either, but I know what life is like, and the odds are, at some point we each will. I don't mind if the things around you are dangerous. I'm used to it," she said dryly, poking the small rotund clank. It swiped at her hand and began pontificating about how it would kill her. Aggie ignored it.

"I understand loyalty," she said softly. "But, if things ever change, and you wish, you will be welcome."

[senkan_yamato]

Yamato stood up, brushing off her knees and offered a hand to Agatha. "I thank you. If you would like, I am going to find the armory to recover my rigging and weapons. If you would care to see the largest cannons ever carried by a battleship..."

[agathaheterodyne]

Her eyes went about as wide as those cannons. "Yes, please!" she said, accepting the help and the offer.