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TEST DRIVE MEME #0

A TIME VORTEX has opened in downtown LA! Some magic folks have been contacted to close it, but they haven't gotten here fast enough for the vortex not to spill out a HECK TON OF DINOSAURS – all kinds of dinosaurs of all kinds of sizes. There are theoretically gentle herbivores among the fierce predators, but they are all pretty pissed off about their sudden, startling relocation, and a lot of them have spikes.

(The vortex is both temporally and spatially unstable, which is why the dinosaurs emerging onto the streets of LA are constrained neither by specific prehistorical era nor geographical location.)

What you do is up to you. Here are some suggestions, though:

Fight some dinosaurs. You might be trying to herd them back to the vortex, or just trying to stop them by any means possible.

Flee or hide. If you're lucky the dinosaurs won't work out how to open doors and you can spend your entire thread hiding behind the bar in a Starbucks with some other hapless civilians without having to confront any of them.

Try to capture the dinosaurs on camera. If you can get some really good photos you might be able to sell them to the local paper in order to supplement your elderly aunt's meagre income. Or just use them to get a bunch of notes on Tumblr, either way.

Take advantage of the chaos to do crime. The forces of law enforcement are preoccupied with all these prehistoric reptiles.

Or pretty much anything else you think your character might be doing. Any location in LA is game, although there's no real need to meticulously look them up – you can just assume a generic street, rooftop, store, etc. (You don't have to look up the dinosaurs, either.)

If you have a character who you'd like to assume is part of a team, but that team hasn't been named or brainstormed OOC yet or anything, feel free to indicate in your opening post that you're assuming your character is operating alongside others and encourage others to tag in as if they are part of the same team! Or just handwave it and assume they got caught without their usual teammates or separated from them. Whatever way works best for you.

Events from this test drive are not automatically assumed game canon, but individual threads can be if you and the people who you thread with end up mutually wanting to keep them.

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Ah, well. Next time I guess I'll take yours, keep higher.

[Julien lets himself be hauled up. Barefoot, he keeps his feet fairly birdy. The splayed toes help him keep balance that's not entirely certain just now, but he's getting stronger.]

There's other dinosaurs - [wait why is he arguing to keep trying to dodge teeth when he doesn't have to. He gives an apologetic smile] but I don't think either of us can do that much good against a rex. Good thing everyone pretty much converged, huh?

You know if you still wore armor I think that might've cracked my skull, sir. [he doesn't actually know if Aragorn ever wore armor, but Julien loves trying to fish information out of his mysterious sometimes-partner.]

That would depend on the armor.

[Julien's been through a lot today, so Strider doesn't mind sharing something about the past.]

If it were leather armor, you would have escaped with nothing more than a bad headache. Chainmail armor, well -- the headache would have been worse. But plate armor?

[He shakes his head.]

It was made to repel harder things than pigeon skulls. Hard though your head might be.

[Yup, he's teasing. Aragorn is fully in favor of getting Julien out of the line of fire -- if the boy is still dizzy, he's in no state to fight dinosaurs.]

[Picking his way across cracked tarmac Julien sporadically turns an arm into a huge white wing for a few seconds at a time to help keep his balance. He grins, a bit loopy.]

You're so considerate, sir. I'll try not to fly into plate armor. [He shakes his head and winces. Someone's going to be herding a Triceratops into the portal in a minute, he can see it further along the road.]

I have a headache, but that's gotta be the portal, or partly. All those lights. Better not be a concussion. I didn't black out.

Plate armor went out of fashion five hundred years ago. It was always useless without a horse, anyway. I never liked it.

[It was unavoidable, though, during his time as a knight. So.

Anyway, how about that portal?]

No, your eyes do not deceive you. The portal to the past is in front of us.

What, when they invented guns? It looks so cool, though. You probably looked like a badass... Feathers are my armor but you couldn't pull that look off.

[...feathers are armor, in that in bird form they cover him in layers, some blows can glance off them instead of striking true, and often the feathers and not the bird are what gets damaged.]

Oh. Uh - Strider, they have a car-wrecker dinosaur headed this way, and if the portal's moving around I'm just going to slow you down like this. [which would be a very self-sacrificial thing to say if he didn't follow it up by turning into a normal-sized dove again. He flaps a bit, still a bit dazed.]

[Oh, no. He doesn't want Julien flying out of the air, or getting picked up by a preying pterosaur. Strider holds up a hand, his left -- the one not holding the sword. He speaks a few words of ~~Elvish~~ the old language, the one that all animals understand:]

Julien, tolo nin!

[Lit: "come to me" -- his sidekick will be safest on Strider's shoulder. Both of them could be defended at once that way, and defense might be necessary very soon. Julien was right about the large prehistoric creature thundering their way.]

Okay...

[In this disoriented state Julien obeys without question, coming back like an effect from a John Woo movie. His feet reach, his first impulse is obviously to land on Aragorn's hand, but instead he takes another wingbeat and manages to land close enough to his non-sword shoulder to get there on his own, turning around in that ponderous dove way to face forwards. He does feel clearer now.]

I feel like a pet... What's your plan?

We run.

[At least for now, they need to get out of the giant -- herbivore's? Yes, Strider believes it's an herbivore -- way. Being between it and the portal is bad news. He takes off at a run, light of foot, moving remarkably quickly.]

What do you think?

[he asks, addressing the pigeon over his shoulder.]

Would you say that creature was carnivorous, or a plant-eater?

[For that, Julien swats at the back of Aragorn's head with a wing, not with any real force. If it comes up, he was trying to keep his balance - and he does have to flap a bit before he gets himself lined up so the wind of passage doesn't bother him.]

People say Triceratops was an herbivore, but it's got a cutting beak and lots of plant eaters will take meat if they can get it! Also they might be like bulls.

[Between them, you're the one with the education, Julien. While Aragorn has picked up a lot of things in his long lifetime, blind spots do crop up in his knowledge in unexpected places, and in some cases it's not exactly modern. Dinosaurs aren't his strong point. ~~Even he's not that old.~~]

And it's frightened. We can't lure this one into the portal.

But you may be on to something.

[Strider skids to a halt behind the lumbering creature and smacks it right in the flank with the flat of his sword.]

Noro!

[He doesn't know if the creature will respond to the command to run, but if it's bull-like, perhaps it could be driven.]

[clearly, he hasn't spent enough time around young children. Julien's not the world expert, but he was that young lately and knows a lot about birds.]

Whoah!

[The Triceratops shakes its great heavy head and starts to charge heavily. The primitive featherquills studding its hide make it look vaguely like it's been hit by lots of arrows. It's starting to turn as if it would like to come back around after what hit it, but it brushes against the portal - and is gone.]

Christ, sir, you're a piece of work. [He says this with nothing but admiration.] Now we really should get out of here before someone brings in a rex or something.

[A nod.]

Out of the line of fire, at least. We might not be able to stop a t-rex, but we may be able to help someone who's encountered one.

[He takes off away from the portal, intending to scout the area in a spiral.]

Right.

[Aragorn is being polite, to use "we". Clinging to his hoodie, Julien feels certain that he'll just be carried around for the rest of this venture. Like the pet or Animal Companion he always fears he's becoming. He's not thinking that another pair of hands arriving at the same time could help.]

I can cover more ground. I'm better now, I won't fly into anything. [There is a pterosaur the size and general shape of a large giraffe about...] And those guys are way too slow.

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