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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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Vanessa Goldpaw, renowned director of the LA-based Goldpaw Technologies, professional science genius, and professional six foot tall leopard woman ever since that science accident, usually doesn't stand around downtown filming supernatural crises on her phone. Usually, at times like this, she is watching things proceed from the safety of her extremely classy office. Usually if she wanted to film dinosaurs she'd send someone else to do it for her. Usually, if she felt compelled to go take a first hand look at what was going on with something like this, she'd have an entourage with her.

However, today she is alone. She isn't so much filming the dinosaurs as filming the various heroes tackling them, but the difference is hard to spot without a pretty keen eye. She doesn't seem as concerned about the fact that she is on the same street as some dinosaurs as, perhaps, she should be. Actually that stegosaurus is getting kind of close. Her phone's flash seems to have made it angry. Perhaps someone should get her out of there.

Edited 2014-01-15 02:56 (UTC)

[Kit isn't one for heroism, but nobody else looks like they're paying attention at all, and that's Vanessa Goldpaw. She dashes out from the alley she'd been hiding in, waving her arms above her head and yelling.]

Dr. Goldpaw! Look out!

[she glances over in surprise, and in that moment the stegosaurus's tail swings round and narrowly avoids hitting her around the face]

[oop]

[she laughs, only slightly nervous, and, tucking her phone into her pocket, bounds back a few steps and yells to the girl:] Don't worry! I know what I'm doing.

[Kit looks incredulous.]

Maybe you shouldn't be out here? It's kind of dangerous.

Yuuya spots that and wings closer. "You may wish to back away- all right, get down!"

The plated dinosaur pivots and turns on its back legs, bringing the thagomizer at the end of its tail close enough to get in range. But before it could hit her Yuuya does, activating his ICPSS module so that the creature that knocks her out of the way is not a pigeon the size of a large condor but a compact young man. Spikes graze his back and he winces but does not relent. "Come on, come on, away from here!"

He may look and feel human but he smells more like a healthy pigeon, dinosaurlike, with an odd note like freshly baked bread. This is not the time for a bird to regret trying to rescue a giant cat, is it?

She lands a little less gracefully than she normally would – on her butt, with a feline yowl. She pushes herself up on her paw pads, wincing, and reaches for her phone where it's skidded a few feet away. "That was a close one," she says with a wry smile, apparently unfazed, and unapologetic to boot.

He does smell unusual, she notices, but she doesn't have time to dwell on it: behind him, the stegosaurus bellows. She takes a step back. "You good to run, kid?"

He smiles broadly, a little manic as he comes up from all fours, scuttling ducked away from the dinosaur. There is less blood than might be expected; the solid-state hologram surface of his "human" back is not impenetrable but it does absorb some damage. "Always! Ladies first."

That's unusual too, the relative lack of bleeding, but she figures he must just have powers. The power of invulnerability and the power to smell like a bird would make a pretty weird combo, though... Well, she of all people knows it ain't polite to ask people about their superpowers.

She grins at him and shakes her head – she's not offended by that, but he did just get whacked one with the sharp end of a dinosaur, so rather than going first she grabs him by the arm and pulls him along with her as she launches into a run.

Running away, yes, good. Shorter-legged Yuuya is half towed along, trying to keep up; his arm likely feels a little peculiar to the touch, but nothing worth getting distracted by.

Stegosaurus pivots well to get its dangerous end pointed in whichever direction, but it's less inclined to pursuit. Still, there are others. Like the pair of Pachycephalosaurus tearing across the asphalt. Under five feet tall but considerably longer than that, they lope side by side, eyes rolling, jostling each other as they run.

Yuuya tugs. "Let me go and I can fly off and distract them. You'll be all right from here, right?"

It seems that a stop at the Mintaka Industries lab for some more combative equipment was indeed in order. Baelheit's telekinetic abilities would hardly be of much use against anything on this scale, but the sonic pistol they'd developed last year might be. Judiciously amping up the power, he aims it at the stegosaurus and fires off a few concussive blasts. They don't seem to do much more than stun it, and Baelheit turns to Vanessa with a look of grim urgency.

"I suggest you get yourself to safety, Dr. Goldpaw, before things get truly out of hand," he advises, glancing back at the stumbling stegosaurus. Something with a little more firepower might do the trick, maybe.

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