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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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Karkat was already out when the time vortex happened, across town from the West Coast Trailblazers' base, and his weapons. He is pretty sure he could give a few of these scalebeasts a run for their Earth money if he had his sickles on him, but without them he's pretty much useless.

Fortunately he is also pretty OK at running and hiding, and right now that's what he's doing – keeping his head down as he scuttles sideways from car to car. Any pretence of stealth mode is sort of ruined by the fact that he keeps on muttering "Fuck, fuck, fuck," under his breath.

Edited 2014-01-15 03:19 (UTC)

Tarvek is herding an enormous, lumbering brontosaurus towards the portal when he spots Karkat's horns and messy hair ducking behind a Prius.

Tarvek sprints towards the automobile, his long coat billowing. "Karkat!" he shouts. "Are you harmed?"

The brontosaurus swings its head around, curious.

Starscream is also out and about, in a sense of the word anyway. He's really just taking advantage of the ensuing chaos to scrounge about for useful supplies using the holo-matter projector, currently wholly focused on removing some potentially useful scrap parts from an expensive looking ferrari. Then out of nowhere, he senses movement and a sudden presence to his left.

He quickly turns to look, prepared to bully off whatever human interloper has stuck its nose into his business... and ends up letting out an undignified startled sounding squawk and falling on his ass, holoform flickering as he comes face to face with a panicked looking-- ......what IS that??? It's not one of the earth based meat bags, that's for sure, or if it is, it's certainly not a NORMAL one.... distantly he recalls seeing other similar individuals in the past, though he's not quite sure; the Decepticons have seen a lot of aliens in this large scale galactic war of theirs, but he's far to preoccupied with metaphorically pising himself at the moment to search his memory banks properly. He tries to recover with a quick retort to scare the creature off, but ends up just spluttering angrily.

Edited 2014-01-16 05:18 (UTC)

Karkat growls back. "Fuck off, shitspread," he snaps. "Is that your car?" He has a strong accent, although nothing from Earth – like someone who learned to speak using completely different sounds, not just someone used to using a different language.

Did that guy just flicker, though? Karkat narrows his eyes. He does kind of look like a supervillain ... but if he's taking parts out of cars during a dinosaur invasion he's probably a shitty one.

And just like that, Starscream switches channels from horrified to offended, puffing up like an angry cat. "O-OF COURSE it's my car!" he spits out defensively. "Why else would I be fiddling with its ridiculous under carriage? I'm merely trying to... to fix it, so that I can make a swift escape from this utterly terrifying situation." Putting on an authoritative tone of voice, he continues: "Now kindly remove your grubby presence from the vicinity of my vehicle, you're making it difficult to concentrate."

Karkat's lip curls away from his fangs, unimpressed. He doesn't know a lot about fixing human motor vehicles, but this guy isn't making his argument very convincing.

"Looks for me like it's quicker to just flap your ugly human legs out of here," he observes, folding his arms. It's not the best constructed English sentence he's ever uttered, but he's pretty sure it got his meaning across.

Is this fleshling actually serious? Practically hissing, Holo-scream pulls himself up to his full height... which, granted, is not quite as impressive as it would be if he were actually true-face to face with this creature...

(If there were ever a moment that he particularly lamented his current mode locked state, it would be every time he's had to try and strike fear in a pathetic tiny organic.)

Jabbing a gloved finger in Karkat's face he retorts: "I don't know where you get the gall to make assumptions about my priorities or common sense, but the effectiveness of my "human legs" in assisting an escape non-withstanding, it'd be unthinkable for me to leave this fine vehicle here to be stepped on by one of those monstrosities. So, ONCE AGAIN, I'll ask you make yourself scarce."

(Organics care about these primitive vehicular right? It's a little difficult for him to convincingly fake caring about something so simple.....)

It's fairly impressive anyway, at least, just because Karkat isn't very tall. Karkat is very determined not to be intimidated by this weirdo, though, and when he's dealing with humans it's easier not to worry that he doesn't have any weapons with him.

"Shit, really," he says, "you'd prefer literally to get torn apart by wild beasts than worrying about your car? Then it's basically my job to drag you out of here for your own good."

It's really astounding that he hasn't lost his patience yet, but the last threads of it are snapping. Starscream stoops, leaning in dangerously close until he's face to face with Karkat. "I'd like to see you try," he growls.

Ah, that seems to have done it. Or, seems to for a moment. Karkat's pointed ears press back against his head and he takes a step back – but if anything having had this near instinctual reaction makes him more annoyed. He pushes himself back up into Starscream's business, fists clenching. "Yeah?" he snarls. He can't fight dinosaurs without a weapon, but he thinks he could take this scrawny jerk. "Then let me get you front row tickets to the once a life time spectacle of me folding you in half and hauling your obtuse human cogitation cavity out of this reptile infested transit canyon."

Starscream stands his ground, fully prepared to strike the first blow from the moment that Karkat gets back up in his face, but then the angry little creature continues with his empty threats and suddenly there's utter bafflement written all over his face. He blinks a few times in confusion. Transit canyon...???? Not that he claims to have an excellent understanding of human terminology himself, but he's fairly certain that none of that sentence was what anyone would strictly call "proper english".

Then he snaps out of that train of thought and, without any warning whatsoever, jabs Karkat right in the stomach with as much force as he can muster with the holoform; definitely not the effect he would like to get across were he using his real body, but should be enough to send a painful sensation of concussive force through the little vermins torso.

Re: KARKAT VANTAS – HOMESTUCK

10thingsihateaboutme - 2014-01-27 04:02 (UTC) - Expand

Re: KARKAT VANTAS – HOMESTUCK

starscheme - 2014-01-27 05:04 (UTC) - Expand

Lucky for Karkat, Wildcat had been on the prowl (or, well, as much as you could when you were grocery shopping) when the vortex tore through the sky and emptied the dinosaurs into the streets of downtown LA. It didn't take her long to leap into action, dropping her paper grocery bags and loaf of bread and shifts quickly into one of her larger forms--a smilodon. She figures fight prehistoric with prehistoric, right?

Running down the street at full pelt, claws scraping against the tarmac and mask strapped tightly to the head of the large cat, she chases after some of the smaller dinosaurs--the bigger ones are far too large for her to even attempt to fight--and manages to bring down a few with a quick bite around their long necks. They scream as she crunches down and then hang limp in her jaws, blood dripping down the fangs.

And then her ears perk to a familiar sound. She drops the dinosaur, mentally hoping it'll be there when she gets back because she'd love to try and make some jerky out of it, and roars at another small pack that are circling some cars before she finds what she's looking for.

Without much warning, she's almost ontop of him, swatting and roaring angrily at a deinonychus that has gotten far too close for comfort. From a distance, she'd look like a mother tiger, protecting a cub, but from Karkat's point of view? A bloodied maw and suddenly a weight ontop of him? Maybe she didn't think this through well enough.

Edited 2014-01-16 18:42 (UTC)

She absolutely didn't – Karkat screams, a high pitched trilling sound like something halfway between a mammal and an insect, before he realises this is, in fact, a beast he knows.

"Fuck! Don't do that!"

Her ears pull back at the sheer pitch of his scream and she gives a small growl in his direction. The dinosaur in front hisses at the pair of them and goes in for another attempt at Nessa's throat. It misses, narrowly, and clamps down on her shoulder instead because she doesn't move completely out of the way. If she moved Karkat would be attacked, and right now she can take more blows than him. She yowls at the bite and swings one of mighty paws around to smack it clean in the side, trying to dislodge it, her mouth trying to reach it to yank it off. Thankfully she manages to stab one of her long canines into it's neck and tosses her head, sending it, and a strip of flesh from her shoulder, flying.

She's panting by now, giving herself a second to manage to compose herself enough before she quickly finishes the job with a well aimed swipe of her razor sharp claws. Then she drops to her haunches next to Karkat, making sure that there aren't any immediate threats before giving a small grumble and moving to inspect and lick her wound.

Karkat slowly straightens up once she's off him, brushing himself down and wrinkling his nose at the dinosaur corpse.

"Fucking hell," he says, looking over at his feline teammate, "at least give a guy a fucking warning before you pull a shit like that, geez."

She glances over, midway through tending the wound, her tongue still sticking out over her bloodied maw and teeth, and makes a grumbling growl noise before her body looks like it's melting away. Once she's more solid around the edges again, the prehistoric cat is replaced with a girl dressed in the same mask, blood all down the front of her and her costume, and the sleeve torn up and bleeding. She touches it lightly with a finger to make sure it's starting to get a little less oozy, before looking at him with a frown.

"So what was I supposed to do, huh? Let you become dino-chow? Don't think so, Karkitty."

She pushes up off the balls of her feet from her crouch so she's standing upright again, looking around at the overgrown lizards roaming the streets. Her pupils almost dilate at the sight of a herd of iguanadon running past, a hand running up to swipe some of the dripping blood off of her face. She turns to look back at Karkat, vaguely concerned.

"So, what's it gonna be. Am I taking you back to the den, or we going back out there as a pack? Where're your claws?"

"I don't know, make a roar or something so I know it's you. Fuck." He frowns, and growls nonspecifically at the dinosaurs. Or possibly at himself for being unarmed. "Don't have costume or weapons, can't do shit at these things."

She puts her hands on her hips and half rolls her eyes with a smile.

"A roar, with dinosaurs runnin' around probably won't warn you, Karkat," she sighs, pulling some viscera out of her wild hair, nodding as he continued. She doesn't know what he's exactly doing without his suit or weapons stashed somewhere on his person (even though she's currently dressed in a hooded cardigan and jeans with leg warmers) with the fact he's quite obviously him.

"Retreat, then," she offers, before quickly shifting again and standing next to him, obviously waiting for him to do something. Her ears twitch at roars that she couldn't source, and she glances at him with a little bit of urgency.

Milly is way too busy hauling cars and hocking them at dinosaurs to pay any mind to the troll boy scrambling for cover. Okay, normally she doesn't go for mass civilian property damage, but this T-Rex is proving to be a little much of a challenge for her. Not that she'd ever admit it. Of course Starbreaker can take down a stupid dinosaur! She just needs the right projectile, that's all.

She picks up the Toyota Camry Karkat is currently hunched behind and hurls it fender-first at the T-Rex. It hits the dinosaur full in the face, and it looks stunned -- with a triumphant little yell Milly flies forward to deal what most certainly will be the finishing blow, but the T-Rex shakes itself out of its momentary stupor and instead catches Milly with its giant tail, flinging her backwards. She crashes into the pavement not far from Karkat, kicking up an awful lot of rubble and dust, and shakes her head, letting out a frustrated little growl.

"Uuughh! You think you're getting away with that, do you?!" She scrambles to her feet, brushing little bits of concrete off her costume. She looks around quickly for another advantage -- cars are clearly not working -- and spots Karkat. "Hey, you! Mind lending a girl a hand here?"

Karkat, whose reaction to having the car he was hiding behind removed was to yelp in surprise and cower even harder, now stares at her in disbelief.

"Lend a hand with what?" he yells, spreading his arms. "Does this look like superpowers to you??"

Edited 2014-01-18 18:02 (UTC)

Milly gives him an incredulous look for a moment, as if she can't quite believe him. "I thought all aliens had powers!" she says, sounding genuinely surprised, but then she shifts gears entirely. She lets out a little scoff, drawing herself up, and digs her heels in to the broken bit of sidewalk she'd pulled herself out of, pointing an accusatory finger at the T-Rex already wheeling around to finish the job.

"You think you're going to get away with attacking the weak and defenseless, huh?! Well, you've got another thing coming! Heads up!!"

She launches herself into the air with an acrobatic little somersault, speeding forward to punch that T-Rex RIGHT in its face.

He growls in irritation – that's not the first time a human has assumed that being from space means he has superpowers, and it's certainly not the first time he's wished he did.

He's about to retort but she's already turned away to the T-Rex and –

Wait. What did she just say?

Karkat clenches his fists and yells after her, "Hey! Who the fuck are you calling weak and defenseless–!"

Edited 2014-01-25 19:20 (UTC)

If Milly catches his tone of irritation, she ignores it altogether, letting out a victorious cry as she drives her fist right into the T-Rex's snout. It lets out a furious roar, staggering back a few paces and crushing a couple of cars in the process, but it's not down just yet. It snaps its massive jaws at Milly, missing her by mere feet as she zooms out of the way, but her spirit hasn't exactly been dampened.

"That's right, you big ugly lizard! I'm not going to let you attack helpless citizens who can't even fight back! Take THIS!"

Milly snatches up a half crushed convertible from the ground, flying back up to hit the dinosaur in the face with it. Repeatedly. "THAT'S for terrifying these poor people! And THAT is for messing up my city! And THIS is for knocking me into the pavement!!"

She delivers one last good smack with the once-luxurious sports car and the T-Rex lets out an agonized howl, its little arms flailing as it turns to stomp away from the maddened teen cyborg intent on beating it up with a motor vehicle. Milly contemplates going after it, but she has to check on the civilians first. A hero's duty!

She lands with a little flourish back down next to Karkat, clearly expecting some sort of show of gratitude. She dusts her hands off and puts them on her hips, beaming. "Whew! Well, I think that one learn its lesson. What a fight! Honestly, I don't know I do it. Hey, you're not hurt, are you?"

Jon is currently wielding a sand-filled mannequin hand on a metal pole and he has spotted someone he knows who seems to require assistance. Better men than he have given in to temptation like this.

"Need a hand?" he calls out, crouching on the sidewalk a few yards behind Karkat.

Karkat looks around sharply, as if he half expects this to be another dinosaur of something.

It is not, of course. It is Jon. He relaxes a little, visibly.

"I'm fine," he hisses back, "I'm just trying to make the hell out of here before I get eaten by interdimensional hell reptile, whatever the fuck those are."

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